Amazed and sorrowful was King Etzel when he saw this.  “Alas,” cried he, “that such a hero should die bound and by the hands of a woman.  Here lieth the best of knights that ever came to battle or bore a shield.  Sorely doth this deed grieve me, however much I was his foe.”

Then spake old Hildebrand, full of horror that such a thing had come to pass, “Little shall it profit her that she hath slain him so foully,” he cried; “whatever hap to me, yet will I avenge bold Hagen.”

With these words he rushed at Kriemhild.  Loudly did she cry out, but little did that avail her, for with one great stroke Hildebrand clove her in twain.  The victims of fate lay still.  Sorely wept Dietrich and Etzel.  So ended the high feast in death and woe.  More is not to be said.  Let the dead rest.  Thus fell the Nibelungs, thus was accomplished the fate of their house!

The place of origin of the Nibelungenlied is much disputed, a number of scholars arguing for its Scandinavian genesis, but it may be said that the consensus of opinion among modern students of the epic is that it took its rise in Germany, along the banks of the Rhine, among the Frankish division of the Teutonic folk.  Place-names lend colour to this assumption.  Thus in the Odenwald we have a Siegfried Spring; a Brunhild Bed is situated near Frankfort; there is a Hagen Well at Lorch, and the Drachenfels, or Dragon’s Rock, is on the banks of the Rhine.  Singularly enough, however, if we desire a full survey of the Nibelungenlied story, we have to supplement it from earlier versions in use among the peoples of Scandinavia and Iceland.  These are distinctly of a more simple and early form than the German versions, and it is to be assumed that they represent the original Nibelungenlied story, which was preserved faithfully in the North, whereas the familiarity of its theme among the Southern Teutons caused it to be altered again and again for the sake of variety, until to some extent it lost its original outline.  Moreover, such poems as the Norse Volsunga Saga and Thidreks Saga, not to speak of other and lesser epics, afford many details relating to the Nibelungenlied which it does not contain in its present form.  It may be interesting to give a summary of the Volsunga Saga, which is a prose paraphrase of the Edda Songs.

The Volsunga Saga

The epic deals with the history of the treasure of the Nibelungs, and tells how a certain Hreithmar had it given him by the god Loki as a weregild for the slaying of the former’s son, Otur or Otter, who occasionally took the shape of that animal.  Loki in his turn obtained the ransom from the dwarf Andwari, who had stolen it from the river-gods of the Rhine.  The dwarf, incensed at losing the treasure, pronounced a most dreadful curse upon it and its possessors, saying that it would be the death of those who should get hold of it.  Thus Hreithmar, its first owner, was slain in his sleep by his son Fafnir, who carried the treasure away to the Gnita Heath, where, having taken the form of a dragon, he guarded it.