In virtues high and noble that gentle maiden dwelt, Full many a night and day, nor love for Leman felt. To never a knight or champion would she plight her virgin truth, Till she was gained for wedded fere by a right noble youth. That youth, he was the falcon, she in her dream beheld, Who by the two fierce eagles, dead to the ground was fell'd: But since right dreadful vengeance she took upon his foen; For the death of that bold hero, died full many a mother's son." After this exordium the story commences, the first half ending with the assassination of Siegfried. Some years after the murder of Siegfried, Chrimhilde gives her hand to Etzel, (or Attila,) king of the Huns, in order that through his power and influence she may be enabled to execute her long-cherished schemes of vengeance. The assassins accordingly, and all their kindred and followers, are induced to visit King Etzel at Vienna, where, by the instigation of Chrimhilde, a deadly feud arises; in the course of which almost the whole army on both sides are cruelly slaughtered. By the powerful, but reluctant aid of Dietrich of Bern,[8] Hagen, the murderer of Siegfried, is at last vanquished, and brought bound to the feet of the queen, who at once raises the sword of her departed hero, and with her own hand strikes off the head of his enemy. Hildebrand instantly avenges the atrocious and unhospitable act, by stabbing the queen, who falls exulting on the body of her hated victim. When Gunther's arms, and those of his brothers and champions, are brought to Worms, Brunhilde repents too late of her treachery to Siegfried, and the old queen Uta dies of grief. As to King Etzel, the poet professes himself ignorant, "whether he died in battle, or was taken up to heaven, or fell out of his skin, or was swallowed up by the devil;" leaving to his reader the choice of these singular catastrophes;--and thus the story ends.[9] The rivalry between Chrimhilde and her amazonian sister-in-law, Brunhilde, forms the most interesting and amusing episode in the poem; and the characters of the two queens--the fierce haughty Brunhilde, and the impassioned, devoted, confiding Chrimhilde--(whom the very excess of conjugal love converts into a relentless fury,) are admirably discriminated. "The work is divided into thirty-eight books, or _adventures_; and besides a liberal allowance of sorcery and wonders, contains a great deal of clear and animated narrative, and innumerable curious and picturesque traits of the manners of the age. The characters of the different warriors, as well as those of the two queens, and their heroic consorts, are very naturally and powerfully drawn--especially that of Hagen, the murderer of Siegfried, in whom the virtues of an heroic and chivalrous leader are strangely united with the atrocity and impenitent hardihood of an assassin.