(St. IX.) The two last lines of this stanza and the two first of the next are rejected by Professor Lachmann, because, as he thinks, they contradict the last line of St. XI, where Kriemhild professes her ignorance of the murderer. But Kriemhild is not a witness on oath, but a woman in a frenzy of grief, who does not weigh her words, but one moment utters an obvious suspicion, as if it were an ascertained fact, and the next confesses that she has no positive proof, and cannot act upon what she feels to be true. There is no very great inconsistency in saying, "A. and B. are at the bottom of this: if I could only bring it home to them, I'd make them smart for it." But the neuter pronoun in the third line, referring to _houbet_ in the second, proves that the second line is not interpolated. Professor Lachmann, indeed, gets over the difficulty by altering the gender of the pronoun to the masculine. (St. XI.) The last verse of this stanza seems a preparation for the display of Kriemhild's character in a new point of view. The softer parts of her character have been exhibited thus far; her revengeful and unforgiving spirit will gradually swallow up every other feeling, and at last close the poem with a general massacre. See, too, stanzas XXIII--XXXII--XLV. (St. XXI.) I have translated the second line of this stanza according to Simrock's version, but it is impossible to make any satisfactory sense of it. Professor Lachmann has justly printed the stanza in italics. (St. XLIII.) On this curious superstition, which is as much English and Scotch as German, see Nare's Glossary under the word "Wounds," and the notes to "Earl Richard" in the second volume of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." The whole passage is condemned as spurious by Lachmann, principally on account of the discrepancy in the mention of wounds in the plural, while only one wound was given by Hagan. There are, however, two similar discrepancies in the poem. Kriemhild is killed by Hildebrand apparently with a single blow, and immediately after is spoken of as hewn in pieces; and Rudeger is killed by a single blow at St. XXXVII, Thirty-seventh Adventure, while at St. L, same Adventure, he is described as _verhouwen_, and at St. XXXII, Thirty-eighth Adventure, as lying with severe death-wounds fallen in blood. EIGHTEENTH ADVENTURE (St. I.) Lachmann's Tenth Lay begins here and ends with St. XLV, Nineteenth Adventure. (St. XXI.) _They_ in the last line of this stanza seems to mean the Burgundians. (St. XXVI.) Here they go home to Netherland; before, in this Adventure, the Nibelungers' land is spoken of as the country of Siegmund. This has not escaped the hawk's eye of Lachmann. NINETEENTH ADVENTURE (St. XVIII.) The _morning gift_ was a present bestowed by the husband on the wife the morning after the wedding. It was often promised before marriage.