noble Rüdiger, your like is not upon the earth.'” Hagen refuses to fight, and withdraws with his shadow, Volker, and Gieseler. The others remain, and the strife begins; poor Gernot hurries to help his men; Rüdiger strikes a death-wound upon his head, and the last blow which Gernot aims with the sword given him by Rüdiger is Rüdiger's deathblow. The heroes sink together.

Palace and towers resound with the mourning over the heroes who have fallen, so that Dietrich of Berne, standing aloof as one that had no part in the quarrel, sends a messenger to learn the cause of the cries. Finding that Rüdiger, whom they have loved, is dead, Hildebrand demands his body for burial. Scorn is the answer of the Nibelungen; Dietrich's giant followers hereupon grasp their swords, and anew the combat rages. Volker, the merry gleeman, falls by the mighty hand of Hildebrand. Gieseler and a Gothic prince are mutually slain; and Hagen, to revenge Volker's death, presses upon Hildebrand with blows so terrible that the rushing can be heard far away of the mighty strokes of Balmung, the sword of Siegfried, about the head of the grisly Goth. Hildebrand, however, escapes with a heavy wound; he returns to Dietrich, but none of his followers. In the royal hall, solitary too, among the bodies of friend and foe, stand Gunther and Hagen. Then at length goes forth Dietrich; Gunther and Hagen wait gloomily, and when summoned to yield, Hagen refuses to do so until the sword of the Nibelungen is broken. Dietrich overpowers Hagen, with lion clasp binds him,

and leads him to Kriemhild. Gunther is also bound. Dietrich recommends that their lives be spared, and departs in gloom. But Kriemhild must drain to the dregs the cup of revenge. If Hagen will give her back the Nibelungen treasure, he shall keep his life. But Hagen is still defiant: "So long as one of my lords lives, I will not reveal the treasure.' Gunther is promptly slain, and his head brought by the fury to Hagen. "It is now ended," he cries. "Now is dead the noble Nibelungen king, as also the young Gieseler and Gernot. No one knows now the place of the treasure but God and I alone. From thee, cruel woman, it shall be forever hidden." "So, then," cries Kriemhild, "I have only the sword of my Siegfried." She draws it from its sheath, and Balmung at length avenges the murder in the hand of the furious queen of the Huns. Then springs up the old Hildebrand in wrath, because the peace which his lord asked for Gunther and Hagen was broken. Kriemhild sinks before his blow, with a shriek, and all is done. 66 With sorrow,' so ends the song, "was concluded the high festival of the king; as always joy gives sorrow at the end."

stanza runs :

The last

I cannot tell you farther about the slaughters red;
The hosts that then were smitten in silence all lay dead.
What afterwards befell, herein ye may not read;

Here has the song an ending; this is the Nibelungen Lied.

4

CHAPTER III.

THE NIBELUNGEN LIED-Continued.

In the preceding chapter the story of the Nibelungen Lied was told, after a brief account of what the poem was, and why it is worthy of attention from a generation like ours, removed eight hundred years from the time of its composition. I hope some traits of beauty and grandeur have made themselves plain, rude though it sometimes is. Here, at any rate, are the judgments of certain writers whose opinions deserve to be weighed: "From whatever side we view it," says Kurz,' "it is by far the most important work which the Middle Ages have given to us. We may dare, in proud confidence, to set it beside the best which has founded the glory of other races. "It is," says Carlyle," "by far the finest monument of old German art. A noble soul the singer must have been; he has a clear eye for the beautiful and true; the whole spirit of chivalry, of love, and of heroic valor must have lived in him and inspired him. Everywhere he shows a noble sensibility; the sad accents of parting friends, the lamentings of women, the high daring of men,-all that

1 Geschichte der deutschen Literatur.

The Nibelungen Lied.

is worthy and lovely prolongs itself in melodious echoes through his heart. A true old singer, and taught of nature herself." "Whoever," says Ludwig Baur,desires with poetical look to transport himself into primeval Germany must not only read, but study, the Iliad of the Germans, -The Nibelungen Lied. There the original spirit of the people breathes purest; there it becomes plain how formerly the world and the intricacy of human fate were regarded." But no tribute is so picturesque as that of Heinrich Heine: "Would you nice little people form an idea of the Nibelungen Lied, and the gigantic passions which move in it? Imagine to yourselves a clear summer night, the stars pale as silver, but large as suns, stepping forth in the blue sky, and that all the Gothic cathedrals of Europe had given one another a rendezvous upon a wide mountain plain. There would come striding on the Strassburg minster, the Kölner-Dom, the Campanile of Giotto, the cathedral of Rouen, and these would pay to the beautiful Notre Dame of Paris, very courteously, their obeisance. True, their walk would be a little clumsy; some among them would be slightly awkward, and one might often laugh at their infatuated waggling. But this would have an end when one should see how they would fall into a rage, slay one another, as Notre Dame de Paris raises her strong arms to Heaven, suddenly seizes a sword, and strikes the head from the greatest of all the cathedrals. But, no. So, you get no idea of the figures of the

1 Quoted by Schönhuth.

Nibelungen Lied. No tower is so high, and no stone so hard, as the grim Hagen and the revengeful Kriemhild."1

That the testimony is not all of this kind is true; and as an offset to the opinions just given, here is that of Frederick the Great, which has been framed, and is now kept under glass in the library at Zürich : “You have much too high an opinion of it. To my notion, it is not worth a charge of powder. I would not tolerate it in my library, but would sweep it out." There is a rare charm in the antique phrase in which the poem is given, as there is in the language of Chaucer. It is like the broken talk of childhood, and through it the conceptions come to the reader with a sweet and simple artlessness.

To give more particularly the account of the origin of the Nibelungen Lied, about one hundred and fifty years ago the Swiss Bodmer discovered in the castle of Hohenems, in Switzerland, two bulky manuscripts, agreeing in most respects, and giving the text of something long forgotten. The poem had no title, and for want of a better one, the words were used found at the end of the closing stanza, — “This is the Nibelungen Lied." In spite of Frederick the Great's disparaging criticism, it found readers, and more admired than condemned. Straightway came questions: Who wrote it? Is it possible to separate in it the historical and fabulous? and many more. It has been made the subject of that microscopic scrutiny which only Ger

1 Quoted in the Bibliothek der deutschen Klassiker.