(St. LIV.) A difference of opinion exists in united Germany as to the interpretation of this passage, Lachmann, Simrock, Marbach, and Beta being on one side, and von der Hagen and Braunfels on the other. I readily vote with the majority. Rumolt's understrappers, as I conceive, are not the pots and pans, but the subaltern cooks, the scullions and other drudges of the royal kitchen. THIRTEENTH ADVENTURE (St. II.) I follow Lachmann's conjecture of _het_ for _heten_ in the third line of this stanza. (St. XXII.) Chaucer in like manner says of the carpenter's wife, "Canterbury Tales," v. 3255-- Full brighter was the shining of hire hewe, Than in the tower the noble yforged newe. For the brilliant addition to the simile he is perhaps indebted to Dante's Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca. The comparison of the brilliant color of a blooming northern beauty to gold, "red gold," as it is constantly called in old German and old English poetry, forms a curious contrast with the phrases of Catullus, "_inaurata pallidior statua_" "_magis fulgore expalluit, auri_," and that of Statius, "_pallidus fossor redit erutoque concolor auro_," not to mention the saying of Diogenes, that gold was pale through fear of those who had a design upon it. (St. XXIII.) Lachmann interprets the _gesinde_ or followers to be Gunther's, and rejects the stanza as spurious, and manufactured for the purpose of introducing Dankwart, who is represented as seeking out new quarters, without necessity, for people who were already quartered in the city. But are not the followers of Siegfried meant? (St. XXVII.) A curious instance of awkwardness in the service of the highest tables. (St. XXXII.) The original has in the first verse _in dem lande_, in the country, _i.e._, just outside the city walls, close under the castle, from the windows of which the ladies might see the tournament. The minster was in a separate part of the city, just as in London St. Paul's is at a certain distance from the Tower. Here the horses are sent for, which seems to show that the castle and the minster could not have been contiguous, yet they could not have been very far apart, as Kriemhild was in the habit of going to the minster before daybreak. (St. III, Seventh Adventure.) FOURTEENTH ADVENTURE (St. IV.) The same simile is applied to Kriemhild herself at St. XX, Fifth Adventure. (St. XXX.) In the dialogues that follow the queens are not particularly complimentary, but they at least use no weapons but their tongues. I do not know what authority the writer of "Murray's Handbook for Northern Germany" has for the following statement. "The combat between Chrimhelda and Brunhelda is supposed to have been fought on the south side of the Dom." (St. XXIII.) Wind, a mere nothing; this phrase is not uncommon in the poem. The prophets shall become wind.--Jer. v. 13.