The Lay of the Nibelung Men - Anonymous

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in the hour of her need, must himself beware lest he make himself a traitor in sinning against those to whom he owes the greatest earthly debt a man can owe. It recognises that a man may be committing a far deeper wrong by refusing to help his country in a cause in which he thinks he detects some flaw, still more by striving with word or pen to paralyse the efforts of those who are fighting for her, than if he fought in a cause of which his conscience disapproves. Hence United Germany has been no congenial foster-mother for “the friends of every country save their own”; and her scholars are not wrong in claiming for their great epic its share in thus moulding the patriotic conscience.

      This translation is based on the text of Bartsch (edit. 1886), but the strophes of MS. C have been incorporated with it, so that it thus corresponds with the widely read modern German version of Simrock. For the English reader it may be explained that a marginal C denotes that the four lines which follow are taken from that source, and he will note that their ethical tendency is designed to be cumulative, to excite and maintain sympathy for the murdered hero and his widow, and to supply what justification can be found for her revenge. They appeal to the modern reader’s sense of justice, and are in themselves poetically not unworthy of being included, as they often elaborate a picturesque or stirring scene, and add touches of beauty, tenderness, or pathos which we could not wish away.

      The metre adopted is that on which William Morris fixed, with true poetic instinct, for his Story of Sigurd, the great sister-poem to the Nibelungenlied, from which, indeed, he really seems to have taken it, as it preserves the “ringing caesura” of that original, and, accentually, the same measure. It is not in essentials different from that of the Middle High German text, for the basis of that is accentual and not numerical, though other translators have thought that it was best reproduced by rigidly adhering to an iambic structure. This, in a long poem, is apt to have a somewhat heavy, monotonous effect, whereas the anapaestic-iambic measure not only secures something of the lightness of the movement of the original, but has for English readers a variety, freedom and swiftness, a “lilt,” which has made it of late years widely popular.

      The old division into “strophes” has been discarded. It has always seemed to me a literary offence so to print an epic as to convey the suggestion that it is but a long ballad. I cannot help thinking that this device was one adopted for convenience’ sake by the mediaeval reciters or chanters of the Lied, as was the gap in the line after the caesura, to mark artificially the cadence of the line. These, however, have a somewhat pedantic, formal, and so irritating effect on the modern reader who wants to enter into the spirit of an epic. The literary argument against the division into strophes is well stated by Bartsch: “I do not think that, fine as the Nibelungen strophe is in itself, and admirably as it lends itself to lyric treatment, its employment for the epic was a happy inspiration. A division into regular strophes is altogether antagonistic to the Epic: the even flow of the epic narrative does indeed require pauses, not, however, at prescribed, but at free intervals. And this principle we see invariably adhered to wherever a true epic has developed itself, in India, in Greece, in France.”

      In dropping the strophic arrangement, I have of course dropped the extra two syllables which lengthened the fourth line of each strophe. I incline to think that their presence is another indication that the Lied was originally intended, not for reading, but for chanting or recitative, like the older lays on which it was founded. It is a common device of singers thus to lengthen the last line of a verse; it helps to the satisfaction of the ear: but the effect is quite different in reading. As a reviewer in the Athenæum says: “No doubt it is theoretically proper to follow the original form with absolute fidelity, but unfortunately the line in English, or even, for that matter, in Modern German, is very different from the line in Middle High German. It drags grievously, and though it breaks the monotony to a certain extent, and occasionally produces a fine effect, yet more often it is merely irritating.” The adoption of the principle laid down by the only English translator who has preserved this peculiarity, that “the very essence of a poem is its exact metrical quality,” would at once condemn all translations of Homer and Virgil into blank or heroic verse, or indeed, into anything but English hexameters, and all translations of the classical drama into anything but trimeter iambics and unrhymed choruses in the impossible metres of the originals—a theory which surely needs only to be stated to expose its untenability. The essence of a poem lies in its spirit more than its formal structure; and whatever jars on the reader, and puts a drag on the swift and easy movement of the verse, so far interferes with his entering into the spirit of that poem.

      A. S. W.

      October, 1911.

       Table of Contents

       Of Kriemhild, and of her Dream

       Table of Contents

      Many a marvellous story have the ancient singers told

      Of heroes and their glory and their travail manifold,

      Of great feasts splendour-flashing that with weeping and wailing ended,

      Of the thunder of war-waves clashing—in the Lay shall ye hear all blended.

      In the Land Burgundian nurtured was a maiden princely of birth;

      Though ye searched, ye should find none fairer to the uttermost ends of the earth;

      And her name far-sung was Kriemhild, she was sweeter than speech may tell.

      Ah, many a valiant champion in battle for her sake fell!

      There was no man whose pride had warded his breast against love’s dart

      Shot from the eyes victorious, from the snare of many a heart:

      She was lovely beyond all measure that speech or thought may find,

      Yea, queenly withal and gracious, a glory of womankind.

      Three high-born Kings and wealthy guarded and held her dear;

      Gunther and Gernot, heroes in prowess without a peer,

      And Giselher the youngest, unmatched in foughten field:

      Their sister was she and their glory, and her sword were they and her shield.

      Lords were they of noble lineage, and of courtesy the crown,

      And their aweless might was matchless, and limitless their renown;

      And over the Land Burgundian they stretched the sceptred hand,

      Ere the strange, grim end of their story was told in Etzel’s land.

      In the City of Worms by the Rhine-flood these Kings in their might abode,

      And the best in the whole land served them, the proudest knights that rode,

      With glory of homage served them through their life’s triumphant tide—

      Till the day when in woeful battle through the Feud of the Queens they died.

      And the mother that bare them was Uta, and the treasures of queens were hers,

      And their father the old king Dankart, and he made them heritors

      Of his realm in the hour of his dying, a champion mighty of old,

      Who in days of his youth reaped harvest of glory manifold.

      As the tale of their goodlihead telleth, such kings were they, these three,

      Strong, fearless lords; and the vassals that bent before them the knee

      Were the best of all of whose doings their songs have the minstrels made,

      Stalwart and aweless of spirit, in battle unafraid.

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