(St. XXXVI.) The Wask forest is the mountainous range called in French the Vosges, which, as well as Worms, is to the west of the Rhine; this stanza is therefore at variance with St. I, Seventeenth Adventure, where the hunters cross the Rhine to return to Worms. Lachmann gets over the difficulty by his theory of separate lays. According to his arrangement St. XXXVI, this Adventure, is in the Seventh Lay, and St. I, Seventeenth Adventure, in the Eighth, and these two Lays are the work of different poets. Two points are certain; the first, that there were two traditionsas to the place of Siegfried's death, one fixing it in the Waskenwald, the other in the Odenwald; the second, that Gunther and Hagan were generally believed to have attacked Walter of Spain in the Waskenwald. Now there appears to me nothing improbable in supposing, either that a minstrel with his head full of Walter's history and the connection of Gunther and Hagan with the Waskenwald, might have recited _Waskenwalde_ for _Otenwalde_, or, on the other hand, that one, who was familiar with the tradition that Siegfried was killed in the Odenwald, might have found _an den Rîn_ at St. XXXVII, Sixteenth Adventure, and altered it to _über Rîn_. At any rate I cannot help thinking that either of these suppositions is less improbable than that a poet should first tell us how Gunther and Hagan plotted against Siegfried, how the latter accepted their treacherous invitation to the hunt, and how he went to take leave of his wife, and that then the provoking rogue should immediately close his poem without informing us what passed between Siegfried and his wife, whether the hunt took place, or whether the plot succeeded. SIXTEENTH ADVENTURE (St I.) Lachmann's Eighth Lay begins here and ends with St. I, Seventeenth Adventure. (St. XXII.) The _schelch_ or shelk seems by the description in Braunfels's Glossary to have been a kind of tragelaphus, with hair down the breast. (St. XXIII.) _Des gejeides meister_, I presume, means Siegfried himself, who at St. XXXIX is called _jegermeister_. (St. XXVII.) Tryst. Ye shall be set at such a tryst That hart and hind shall come to your fist. Squire of Low Degree.--Ellis's "Specimens," v. 1, p. 341. Tryst is a post or station in hunting, according to Cowell as quoted in Tyrwhitt's Glossary to Chaucer, but Walter Scott uses it for a place of appointment generally. (St. XXXVIII.) For the sweetness of "the panther's breath or rather body" I refer the reader to Gifford's note in his edition of Ben Jonson, v. 3, p. 257. It is worth while however to quote the following passage on panthers from Pliny's Natural History, 1. 8, c. 17, as it is not noticed by Gifford. "_Ferunt odore earum mire sollicitari quadrupedes cunctas, sed capitis torvitate terreri; quamobrem, occultato eo, reliqua dulcedine invitatas corripiunt._"