Hagen necessarily discerns evil omens as they journey on. The chap.
waters of the Danube are swollen, and as he searches along the banks
for a ferryman, he seizes the wondrous apparel of two wise women
who are bathing, one of whom promises that if he will give them
their raiment, they will tell how he may journey to the Huns' land.
Floating like birds before him on the flood, they lure him with hopes
of the great honours which are in store for him, and thus they recover
their clothes — a myth which feebly reflects the beautiful legends of
the Swan maidens and their knights. No sooner, however, are they
again clothed, than the wise woman who has not yet spoken tells
him that her sister has lied, and that from the Huns' land not one
shall return alive, except the king's chaplain. To test her words,
Hagen, as they are crossmg the river, throws the priest into the
stream ; but although he tries to push him down under the water,
yet the chaplain, although unable to swim, is carried by Divine aid
to the shore, and the doomed Burgundians go onwards to meet their
fate. In the house of Rudiger they receive a genial welcome ; but
when Rudiger's daughter approaches at his bidding to kiss Hagen,
his countenance seemed to her so fearful that she would gladly have
foregone the duty. On their departure Rudiger loads them with
gifts. To Gemot he gives a sword which afterwards deals the death-
blow to Rudiger himself, who resolves to accompany them ; while
Hagen receives the magnificent shield of Nuodung, whom Witege
slew. The ominous note is again sounded when Dietrich, who is
sent to meet the Burgundians, tells Hagen that Kriemhild still weeps
sore for the hero of the Niblung land ; and Hagen can but say that
her duty now is to Etzel, as Siegfried is buried and comes again no
more. It is the story of the Odyssey. When Dietrich is asked how
he knows the mind of Kriemhild, "What shall I say?" he answers ;
" every morning early I hear her, Etzel's wife, weep and wail full
sadly to the God of heaven for strong Siegfried's body."^ It is the
sorrow of Penelope, who mourns for the absence of Odysseus during
twenty weary years, though the suitors, like Etzel, are by her side,
or though, as other versions went, she became a mother while the
wise chief was far away fighting at Ilion or wandering over the wine-
faced sea.
is, therefore, quite unnecessary to give where the dawn-maidens mourn be- an abstract of the poem throughout, a cause they have to marry the giant, task which has been performed ahcady but are rescued by the man who made by many writers, and among them by the gold and silver cap, as Penelope Mr. Ludlow, Popular Epics, i. is delivered from her suitors by the ' Compare the Gaelic story of the man who wrought the bed in her bridal Rider of Grianaig (Campljcll, ill. iS), chamber.
