(St. IV.) This stanza is completely at variance with the earlier parts of the poem, in which Dankwart is represented as Siegfried's companion in arms. It is therefore a most efficient ally of those critics who attribute the poem to two or twenty different bards, and this has perhaps rather blinded them to its defects. It is quite inconsistent with the heroic character displayed by Dankwart in this very portion of the poem, and, as an answer to Blœdel's speech, is a consummate piece of stupidity. Blœdel had not accused Dankwart of having murdered Siegfried or offended Kriemhild, but of being the brother of Hagan, who had done both. Dankwart should either have attempted to show that Hagan, not himself, was innocent, or that they were not brothers, or he should have urged the hardship of making one brother suffer for the crimes of another. Any of these answers would have been to the purpose; not so the speech which is put into his mouth here. Blœdel, with equal absurdity, after having already told him that he must die because his brother Hagan had murdered Siegfried, now replies that he must die because his _kinsmen_ Gunther and Hagan had done the deed. It appears probable that here, as elsewhere, a passage has crept in from another version of the legend, which agreed, more nearly than our poem, with the Vilkina Saga. I quote the following passage from the summary of that work in Vollmer's Preface to the "Nibelunge Nôt." "Hogni begged Attila to give peace to young Giselher, as he was guiltless of Sigurd's death. Giselher himself said that he was then only five winters old, and slept in his mother's bed; still he did not wish to live alone after the death of his brothers." In the Vilkina Saga Hogni, who answers to the Hagan of our poem, is represented as the _brother_ of the other three kings. It may appear visionary to speculate on the contents of a poem which may never have existed, but certainly in any version of the legend, which represented Hagan as the _brother_ of Gunther and Giselher, Giselher might naturally have made the speech here put into the mouth of Dankwart, and have been told in reply that he must die for the crime that his _brothers_ Gunther and Hagan had committed. The idea of a recension more nearly allied to the Vilkina Saga than that which we possess is no notion of mine. It was started years ago by no less a person than Professor W. Grimm, though not with reference to this passage of the poem. See his "Deutsche Heldensage," p. 182. (St. VII.) This mention of Nudung's bride, together with what follows in the next stanza, is quite unintelligible, if we suppose an independent lay to begin at St. I. THIRTY-THIRD ADVENTURE (St. XXII.) Lachmann seems here with reason to read _Volkern_ for _Giselheren_, but have not the two stanzas, XXII and XXIII, changed places?