TWENTY-FIFTH ADVENTURE
([St. II.]) Lachmann's Fourteenth Lay begins here and ends with St. LVI, Twenty-sixth Adventure.
([St. XVIII.]) This is the only stanza in the second part where the term Nibelunger is applied to Siegfried's subjects as in the first part. In all succeeding passages it means the Burgundians.
([St. XIX.]) Ostervranken, according to von der Hagen, is Austrasia, or the Eastern portion of the Empire of the Franks, afterward, though in a more restricted sense, the Circle of Franconia.
([St. XXIII.]) Professor Lachmann observes that, if the fight with the Bavarians be not alluded to, the prediction contained in this stanza is not fulfilled, "quite against the prophetic style of this lay;" but I venture to submit that this is no prediction at all, but a mere expression of the very natural opinion that, if any army should attempt to swim a large river in a state of flood, many may be swept away and drowned. Gernot makes a similar remark on the want of a boatman at St. LXIV.
([St. XXIX.]) The raiment of these mermaids, which is styled wondrous farther on, seems to have been the swan-raiment worn by the Valkyries or Choosers of the Slain, which enabled its wearers to assume the shape of swans, or at least to fly away. Hagan therefore had good ground to begin with laying hands on the wardrobe of these water-nymphs, though his reason for doing so is so obscurely alluded to in the poem that it may be doubted whether the poet was himself aware of the original force of the legend. In the traditions respecting Vælund, Wieland, or Wayland the Smith, that hero captures a wife by a similar stratagem. The swan-maiden in Wieland's case was one of the Valkyries, and indeed the two mermaids in the Nibelungenlied appear, from the part assigned to them in the poem, to be genuine Choosers of the Slain. These swan-maidens, as far as their volatile character is concerned, seem to have given a hint to the author of Peter Wilkins.
([St. XLVIII.]) So in the old lay of Hildebrand (a fragment of which, written on the first and on the last leaf of a manuscript of the "Book of Wisdom" and other religious pieces, was discovered in the public library of Cassel by W. Grimm) that hero offers arm-rings to his son, who, not knowing him, had challenged him to fight. It was the custom to offer such rings on the point of a sword or spear, and to receive them in the same way. To prove this, W. Grimm quotes this passage among others. See Lachmann's treatise on the "Lay of Hildebrand" in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1833. The same word (bouc) is used both here and in the old lay.
([St. LXVII.]) This stanza, which appears in only two manuscripts, seems incompatible with the rest of the narrative. It was probably introduced by a reciter from the description of a ferry-boat in some other poem.
TWENTY-SIXTH ADVENTURE
([St. V.])