with huge two-handed sway
Brandish'd aloft the horrid edge came down
Wide wasting.
"Paradise Lost," b. 6.
([St. XLV.]) There certainly seems some confusion here. The only people who had injured Gunther in Hungary were the Huns who had massacred the yeomen, and these were not present in the hall. If, on the other hand, he suspected that the Huns in the hall were privy to it, why allow Etzel and Kriemhild to depart without so much as an observation? Why, as Lachmann has observed, does not Dietrich think it necessary even to make a request in their behalf? It is easy to remove these objections by declaring everything spurious between St. XXX and St. XII, Thirty-fourth Adventure, but unfortunately, though St. XXIV, Twenty-eighth Adventure, which brings Etzel and Kriemhild into the hall, is not admitted into Lachmann's Lays, it is clear from stanzas XII-XIV, Thirty-third Adventure (1898-1900 L.), which form part of his Eighteenth Lay, that both Etzel and Kriemhild were present in the hall when the fighting began, and indeed Lachmann admits that the plan of his Eighteenth Lay requires that they should quit it. The composer however of the lay, who surely ought to know his own plan best, seems to have been of a different opinion, for, after having set the Huns and Burgundians by the ears in the hall, and put Dankwart and Volker to keep the door, he has left us to guess the final result of these serious preliminary arrangements. The 7,000 Huns massacred here are no doubt the same as the 7,000 who accompanied Kriemhild to church at St. XX, Thirty-first Adventure, and the same perhaps as the men of Kriemhild mentioned at St. XX, Thirtieth Adventure. These last had attempted mischief, and Gunther may here take the will for the deed.
([St. LVIII.]) The meaning of this stanza is anything but clear. From the original, and the two readings von and vor, it would seem doubtful whether Hagan laments that he sat at a distance from Folker or that he took precedence of him.
THIRTY-FOURTH ADVENTURE
([St. XI.]) I must confess I cannot see any inconsistency between the first line of this stanza and the third of the preceding one; but there is certainly a discrepancy between the second line, in which both Hagan and Folker are mentioned as scoffing at Etzel, and the two stanzas immediately following, which confine the invectives to Hagan.
([St. XII.]) Lachmann's Nineteenth Lay begins here and ends with St. V, Thirty-sixth Adventure. Scarcely any of the whole twenty begin and end so unappropriated as this.
([St. XIX, XX, XXI.]) I have arranged these stanzas as Simrock and Beta have done. Braunfels places them XX, XIX, XXI.
THIRTY-FIFTH ADVENTURE