([St. LXVI.]) Lachmann transposes this and the two following stanzas to after St. XVI, Twenty-eighth Adventure, where they form the beginning of his Sixteenth Lay, which ends with St. XLIV, Twenty-ninth Adventure. The speech which begins at the third line of this stanza is attributed to the messenger by von der Hagen, and perhaps justly, as appears from the last verse of the next stanza, from which it would seem that the king heard the news afterward. On the other hand, Kriemhild here is addressed in the singular, while in a similar passage (St. XCI, Fourth Adventure) she is addressed by a messenger in the plural. She, however, would scarcely have uttered before Etzel the words at the close of St. LXVIII, Twenty-seventh Adventure.
TWENTY-EIGHTH ADVENTURE
([St. I.]) Bern is Verona according to von der Hagen and Wackernagel and the whole body of Commentators. Von der Hagen applies to Hildebrand the words in the third line, ez was im harte liet; so does Marbach. Braunfels and Beta apply them to Dietrich. But in that case would not the author have said dem was ez?
([St. IV.]) The Amelungs, or Amelungers, were the reputed descendants of Amala, king of the Goths, the tenth ancestor of Theodoric king of Italy.
([St. V.]) This famous hero, the redoubted Dietrich, is only a secondary character in the Nibelungenlied, though in old German traditions generally he bears the principal part. He was the son of a nocturnal spirit, and his fiery breath made him more than a match for Siegfried himself, as it melted the horny hide of his antagonist. He is identified, I believe, by universal consent, with Theodoric the Ostrogoth. I am afraid that it is too certain that he came to a bad end, but whether he disappeared on being summoned by a dwarf, or was carried off by the devil in the shape of a black horse, or, according to the monastic legend reported by Gibbon, was deposited by foul fiends in the volcano of Libari, is more than I can decide.
([St. XX.]) Lachmann's Seventeenth Lay begins here and ends with St. XXXII, Thirtieth Adventure.
([St. XXI.]) Hagan's suspicions are natural enough, for Kriemhild appears to have kissed nobody but Giselher, whereas, according to the etiquette of this poem, she should not only have kissed her other two brothers, but Hagan himself, not merely as her cousin, but as one of Gunther's principal retainers.
([St. XXVI.]) This stanza is rejected by Lachmann on account of the interior rhyme wære and swære in the third and fourth lines, but surely the outbreak of Hagan in the next stanza is the beginning of a speech. It would have been more plausible, if St. VIII is to be rejected, to reject St. XXI, Thirtieth Adventure, as well, for the first line of St. XXVII would come in very well after the last of St. XXIV; but then, on the other hand, no answer would be given to Kriemhild's question, "Where have you that bestowed?"
([St. XXVII.]) The two languages agree in taking the devil's name in vain by using it as a ludicrous but forcible negative. The phrase is authorized by Johnson.
([St. XXVIII.]) Von der Hagen explains these two robberies by observing that Hagan had despoiled Kriemhild of her own inheritance as well as of the wondrous hoard. The poem itself, however, seems to explain the matter somewhat differently. Hagan committed the first robbery when he took the hoard (St. XXXV, Nineteenth Adventure); the second, when he seized Siegfried's other treasures (St. CXXXII, Twentieth Adventure).