to include Hartmuth, Gudrun's unsuccessful wooer, and
his sister Ortrun. The most noteworthy character, perhaps, is the
above-mentioned Wate (or _Wade_), who is something like Hagen in the
_Nibelungenlied_ as far as valour and ferocity go, but is more of a
subordinate. Gudrun herself has good touches--especially where in her
joy at the appearance of her rescuers she flings the hated "wash" into
the sea, and in one or two other passages. But she is nothing like
such a _person_ as Brynhild in the Volsung story or Kriemhild in the
_Nibelungenlied_. Even the "wash" incident and the state which, in the
teeth of her enemies, she takes upon her afterwards--the finest thing
in the poem, though it frightens some German critics who see beauties
elsewhere that are not very clear to eyes not native--fail to give her
this personality. A better touch of nature still, though a slight one,
is her lover Herwig's fear, when he meets with a slight mishap before
the castle of her prison, that she may see it and reproach him with it
after they are married. But on the whole, _Kudrun_, though an
excellent story of adventure, is not a great poem in the sense in
which the _Nibelungenlied_ is one.

[Sidenote: _Shorter national epics._]

Besides these two long poems (the greater of which, the
_Nibelungenlied_, connects itself indirectly with others through the
personage of Dietrich[111]) there is a group of shorter and rather
older pieces, attributed in their present forms to the twelfth
century, and not much later than the German translation of the
_Chanson de Roland_ by a priest named Conrad, which is sometimes put
as early as 1130, and the German translation (see chapter iv.) of the
_Alixandre_ by Lamprecht, which may be even older. Among these smaller
epics, poems on the favourite mediaeval subjects of Solomon and
Marcolf, St Brandan, &c., are often classed, but somewhat wrongly, as
they belong to a different school. Properly of the group are _Koenig
Rother_, _Herzog Ernst_, and _Orendel_. All these suggest distinct
imitation of the _chansons_, _Orendel_ inclining rather to the
legendary and travelling kind of _Jourdains de Blaivies_ or _Huon_,
_Herzog Ernst_ to the more feudal variety. _Koenig Rother_,[112] the
most important of the batch, is a poem of a little more than five
thousand lines, of rather irregular length and rhythm, but mostly very
short, rhymed, but with a leaning towards assonance. The strong
connection of these poems with