Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
The field round about was full of tents, that they might rest after their labour. Thither the heroes led the beautiful maidens after the queen, who sat down therein on a rich couch. The Margrave had so ordered it, that they found it all goodly and fair. High beat the heart of Etzel. What they said to each other I know not. Kriemhild's white hand lay in the king's.
But, for all the folk could do, they pressed forward merrily. A thousand of the Nibelung knights in habergeons went with them, that had left fair women at home, the which they never saw more. The wounds of Siegfried gaped in Kriemhild's heart. The Christian faith was still weak in those days. Nevertheless they had a chaplain with them to say mass. He returned alive, escaped from much peril.
If he had had his sword to hand, Hagen had been a dead man. But the anguish of his wound constrained him. His colour was wan; he could not stand upright; and the strength of his body failed him, for he bare death's mark on his white cheek. Fair women enow made dole for him. Then Kriemhild's husband fell among the flowers.
"Awake, Sir Siegmund; Kriemhild, my lady, bade me go to fetch you. A wrong hath been done her that doth cut her to the heart, more than all other ills. Ye must help her mourn, for much it doth concern you." Siegmund sat up; he spake: "What are fair Kriemhild's ills, of which thou tellest me?" Weeping the messenger spake: "I cannot hide them from you; alas, bold Siegfried of Netherland is slain."
Thereupon sixty bold men armed them swiftly, and would have gone out with one accord to slay Hagen, the bold knight, and the fiddler, for Kriemhild's sake. But when the queen saw so small a number, she spake wrothfully to the heroes, "Think not to withstand Hagen with so few. Stark and bold as is Hagen of Trony, much starker is he that sitteth by him, Folker the fiddler by name, a wicked man.
The rings of his harness glow like fire. Hagen standeth by him. The strangers are well watched." They turned without more ado. When Folker saw this, he spake angrily to his comrade, "Let me go out to these knights. I would ask Kriemhild's men a question." "Nay, as thou lovest me," said Hagen.
The Hunic Atli name is also to be found on English soil, in Attlebridge and Attleborough. After the Great Migrations the various tribes and races became much intermixed. It was by a misunderstanding which arose then between the German Hunes and the Hunns under Attila's leadership, that Kriemhild's revenge after the murder of Siegfried was poetically transferred from the Rhine to the Danube.
No sooner, however, did it reach the city than it was seized upon by Hagen the traitor, and Kriemhild's wealth was no longer her own. That henceforth it might be secure from every one save himself and King Gunther, Hagen buried the great treasure beneath the fast-flowing river Rhine.
So he mused on the good old days, and what had happed long ago, for he had seen Hagen, that did him stark service in his youth. Yet now that he was old, he lost by him many a dear friend. Twenty-Ninth Adventure How Hagen and Folker Sat Before Kriemhild's Hall The two valiant knights, Hagen of Trony and Sir Dietrich, parted, and Gunther's man looked back for a comrade that he soon espied.
Another and much later story is sometimes told of these last sad days, how the hero's body was laid in a coffin, and buried in the quiet earth, amid the sorrowful lamentations of all the Rhineland folk; and how, at Kriemhild's earnest wish, it was afterwards removed to the place where now stands the little minster of Lorsch. As to which of these stories is the true one, it is not for me to say.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking