([St. LXIII.]) Kriemhild here deals with Blœdel as Juno does in the Iliad with Sleep, and in the Æneid with Œolus.
([St. LXXII.]) Something seems defective here, for it is not explained what bad object Kriemhild had in view in sending for her son, though it so happened that mischief came of it. Von der Hagen and Vollmer mention the account in the Vilkina Saga, according to which Kriemhild, in order to set the Huns and Burgundians by the ears, told her son to strike Hagan in the face, and Hagan returned the compliment by cutting off the lad's head and throwing it into his mother's lap, but this is incompatible with the manner in which the fighting begins in our poem, though this particular stanza seems to refer to something of that sort. The reviser of the Lassberg manuscript seems to have observed the difficulty; at least the last line of the stanza is different in that manuscript. Possibly this stanza may have crept in from a now lost recension, which more nearly resembled the Vilkina Saga. The like may be said of St. IV, Thirty-second Adventure, which contains the celebrated contradiction about the age of Dankwart.
THIRTY-SECOND ADVENTURE
([St. IV.]) This stanza is completely at variance with the earlier parts of the poem, in which Dankwart is represented as Siegfried's companion in arms. It is therefore a most efficient ally of those critics who attribute the poem to two or twenty different bards, and this has perhaps rather blinded them to its defects. It is quite inconsistent with the heroic character displayed by Dankwart in this very portion of the poem, and, as an answer to Blœdel's speech, is a consummate piece of stupidity. Blœdel had not accused Dankwart of having murdered Siegfried or offended Kriemhild, but of being the brother of Hagan, who had done both. Dankwart should either have attempted to show that Hagan, not himself, was innocent, or that they were not brothers, or he should have urged the hardship of making one brother suffer for the crimes of another. Any of these answers would have been to the purpose; not so the speech which is put into his mouth here. Blœdel, with equal absurdity, after having already told him that he must die because his brother Hagan had murdered Siegfried, now replies that he must die because his kinsmen Gunther and Hagan had done the deed. It appears probable that here, as elsewhere, a passage has crept in from another version of the legend, which agreed, more nearly than our poem, with the Vilkina Saga. I quote the following passage from the summary of that work in Vollmer's Preface to the "Nibelunge Nôt." "Hogni begged Attila to give peace to young Giselher, as he was guiltless of Sigurd's death. Giselher himself said that he was then only five winters old, and slept in his mother's bed; still he did not wish to live alone after the death of his brothers." In the Vilkina Saga Hogni, who answers to the Hagan of our poem, is represented as the brother of the other three kings. It may appear visionary to speculate on the contents of a poem which may never have existed, but certainly in any version of the legend, which represented Hagan as the brother of Gunther and Giselher, Giselher might naturally have made the speech here put into the mouth of Dankwart, and have been told in reply that he must die for the crime that his brothers Gunther and Hagan had committed. The idea of a recension more nearly allied to the Vilkina Saga than that which we possess is no notion of mine. It was started years ago by no less a person than Professor W. Grimm, though not with reference to this passage of the poem. See his "Deutsche Heldensage," p. 182.
([St. VII.]) This mention of Nudung's bride, together with what follows in the next stanza, is quite unintelligible, if we suppose an independent lay to begin at St. I.
THIRTY-THIRD ADVENTURE
([St. XXII.]) Lachmann seems here with reason to read Volkern for Giselheren, but have not the two stanzas, XXII and XXIII, changed places?
([St. XXX.]) With this stanza (St. 1916, L.) ends Lachmann's Eighteenth Lay. I must own that it appears to me quite impossible that any writer could end a separate poem in this manner. Similar objections may be made to the conclusion of most of these Lieder.