(St. LVII.) Lachmann's Fifteenth Lay begins here; it concludes with St. XIV, Twenty-eighth Adventure. TWENTY-SEVENTH ADVENTURE (St. XXIV.) I quote some passages from Ellis's "Specimens" on the custom of the two sexes eating apart: The king was to his palace, tho the service was ydo, Ylad with all his menye, and the queen to hers also, For hii held the old usages, that men with men were By hem selve, and women by hem selve also here. Robert of Gloucester.--"Specimens," vol. i. p. 100. The above metre, though very rough and uncouth, resembles that of the Nibelungenlied. In the corresponding passage quoted by Ellis from Geoffry of Monmouth, the custom is said to have come from Troy. "_Antiquam consuetudinem Trojæ servantes Britones consueverant mares cum maribus, mulieres cum mulieribus, festivos dies separatim celebrare._" Ellis gives a similar account of Arthur's coronation from Robert de Brunne's translation of Wace: Sometime was custom of Troy, When they made feast of joy, Men thogether should go to meat Ladies by themself should eat. See the note to St. LXXXI, Tenth Adventure. (St. XXXI.) There is a difficulty here from its being said that the young margravine was desired to go to court, _i.e._, to the assembly in the hall, when at St. XXIV the ladies (_die schönen_ in the original) had already returned thither. Lachmann removes the difficulty by condemning the stanzas XXXI, XXXII, XXXIV as spurious; he thinks it impossible that anyone can collect from the third line of St. XXII that the men went into a different hall from that which they had entered at St. XIX; but it is not the third but the second line of St. XXII that describes the separation of the men and women, and that too in the following words, _"Rittere unde vrouwen die giengen anderswâ_;" now who can collect from this verse that the women went and the men stayed? If words mean anything, both went away. As to the return of the ladies at St. XXIV, that rests on a doubtful reading, _die schönen_, the fair ones, whereas the best manuscript, that on which Professor Lachmann's text is generally founded, reads _die künen_, the bold ones, meaning the knights. I should add that the preliminary conversation from St. XXV to St. XXXI is fitter to be held in the young lady's absence. (St. XLIV.) These foreign champions are the Burgundians themselves according to von der Hagen. This is far from satisfactory, but I can offer nothing more so. Can it be possible that there was once a version (now lost) of the story, in which the Nibelungers, properly so called, accompanied the Burgundians into Hungary? This might account not merely for these foreign champions, but for the term _Nibelunge_ being applied to the Burgundians. But, in fact, everything relating to the Nibelungers is obscure and confused to the last degree. (St. L.) Nudung was the son, or, according to another account, the brother of Gotelind.