([St. II.]) I follow Lachmann's conjecture of het for heten in the third line of this stanza.
([St. XXII.]) Chaucer in like manner says of the carpenter's wife, "Canterbury Tales," v. 3255—
Full brighter was the shining of hire hewe,
Than in the tower the noble yforged newe.
For the brilliant addition to the simile he is perhaps indebted to Dante's
Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca.
The comparison of the brilliant color of a blooming northern beauty to gold, "red gold," as it is constantly called in old German and old English poetry, forms a curious contrast with the phrases of Catullus, "inaurata pallidior statua" "magis fulgore expalluit, auri," and that of Statius, "pallidus fossor redit erutoque concolor auro," not to mention the saying of Diogenes, that gold was pale through fear of those who had a design upon it.
([St. XXIII.]) Lachmann interprets the gesinde or followers to be Gunther's, and rejects the stanza as spurious, and manufactured for the purpose of introducing Dankwart, who is represented as seeking out new quarters, without necessity, for people who were already quartered in the city. But are not the followers of Siegfried meant?
([St. XXVII.]) A curious instance of awkwardness in the service of the highest tables.
([St. XXXII.]) The original has in the first verse in dem lande, in the country, i.e., just outside the city walls, close under the castle, from the windows of which the ladies might see the tournament. The minster was in a separate part of the city, just as in London St. Paul's is at a certain distance from the Tower. Here the horses are sent for, which seems to show that the castle and the minster could not have been contiguous, yet they could not have been very far apart, as Kriemhild was in the habit of going to the minster before daybreak. (St. III, Seventh Adventure.)
FOURTEENTH ADVENTURE