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 420 NIBELUNGENLIED treacherously plunges a lance between his shoulders in a royal chase. After this Chriem- hild lives at Worms for thirteen years, Hagen having sunk all her Nibelungen treasure in the Khine. Then Etzel (Attila), king of the Huns, seeks her in marriage, and she consents, in order that she may avenge the death of Sig- f ried. After seven years of repose in Hungary she persuades Etzel to invite Gunther and his heroes to visit him. They accept, and go with a retinue of 10,000 men. At the castle of Riidiger, ambassador of the king, they are hos- pitably entertained. Provided with gifts, they advance into Etzel's land, who receives them with honor. A tumult results in a dreadful battle in which many of the heroes on both sides are slain, and Etzel and Chriemhild are barely rescued from the hall in which the Bur- gundians were raving with Berserkir rage. The hall is then assailed by 20,000 Huns. Gunther seeks a reconciliation, but rejects the proffered terms requiring the surrender of Hagen, and the queen orders the edifice to be set on fire. Only 600 Burgundians survive the conflagra- tion. The contest is renewed by Riidiger, and numerous heroes are so nearly matched that they slay each other, until at last of all the Burgundians only Gunther and Hagen remain, who are delivered in bonds to Chriemhild. She demands of the latter where the Nibelun- gen treasure is concealed, but he refuses to betray it so long as one of his lords lives. The head of Gunther is struck off, but Hagen still declares that he alone of men knows the secret, and that he will not reveal it. She then with the sword of Sigfried beheads him by a blow, but the Hunnish warrior Hildebrand disdains to see a hero fall beneath a woman's hand, and slays the queen; and Etzel and Dietrich sur- vive alone to lament the dead. The action of the poem extends over thirty years, and it abounds in passages of remarkable beauty. The origin of the traditions embodied in it is usually attributed to the Scandinavians. They are contained in the Edda, the Brynhilda, Gu- drun, and Sigurd of which are only the per- sonages of the Nibelungenlied in different out- lines. Johannes von Mtiller ascribes the au- thorship of the Nibelungenlied to Wolfram von Eschenbach; Bodmer to Kunrat, a scribe of Bishop Piligrim of Passau, and in a later view to Marner ; Adelung to Konrad of Wilrzburg ; Zeune to Klinsor von Ungarland ; A. W. von Schlegel to Heinrich von Ofterdingen; Von der Hagen to Walther von der Vogelweide; Karl Roth to Rudolf von Ems ; Gartner to the prelate Chuonrad ; Heinrich Haas to Wirnt von Gravenberg; Karl and Nikola Mosler to Friedrich von Hausen ; and Franz Pfeiffer to Kurenberg; but not one of these critics has been able to establish his opinion. Lachmann endeavored to show that the Nibelungenlied consists of 20 songs, originally unconnected and independent of each other, and of various dates. According to Holtzmann, the Nibelungenlied is the work of a single poet, and did not ori- NICARAGUA ginate by joining several national songs, though founded on the traditions then current, and traceable to the myths and legends common to all Indo-European races. As to the time of the composition of the poem, opinions vary from the 10th to the beginning of the 13th century. See Lachmann, Ueber die ursprungliche Gestalt des GedicJites von der Nibelunge Not (Berlin, 1816); Mone, Einleitung in das Nibelungen- lied (Heidelberg, 1818); Von der Hagen, Min- nesinger (Leipsic, 1838) ; Spaun, Heinrich von Ofterdingen und das Nibelungenlied (Linz, 1840) ; Holtzmann, Untersuchungen uber das Nibelungenlied (Stuttgart, 1854); Zarncke, Beitrage zur Erlcldrung und Geschichte des Niebelungenliedes (Leipsic, 1857); Gartner, Chuonrad und das Nibelungenlied (Pesth, 1857); Haas, Die Nibelungen in ihren Be- ziehungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters (Er- langen, 1860); Karl and Nikola Mosler, Der Nibelunge Noth (Leipsic, 1864) ; Bartsch, Un- tersuchungen uber das Nibelungenlied (Vienna, 1865) ; Pfeiffer, FreieForschung Kleine Schrif- ten zur Geschichte der deutschen Literatur und Sprache (Vienna, 1867) ; Zupitza, Ueber Franz Pfeiffer** Versuch (Oppeln, 1867); Schults, Der gegenwdrtige Stand der Nibelungenfrage (Schleiz, 1874) ; and Fischer, Die Forschungen uber das Nibelungenlied seit Lachmann (Leip- sic, 1874). There are English translations by Birch and Letsam. The best translation into modern German is by Simrock (new ed., Stutt- gart, 1874). MCANDER, a Greek poet of the middle of the 2d century B. C. He was a native of Cla- ros in Ionia, and succeeded his father as priest in the temple of Apollo. Of his voluminous works only two poetical treatises are extant, one on venomous animals, the other on poi- sons and their antidotes. The earliest edition is that of Venice (1499) ; the best that of J. G. Schneider (vol. i., Halle, 1792; vol. ii., Leipsic, 1816). NICARAGUA, a republic of Central America, lying between lat. 10 45' and 14 55' N., and Ion. 83 15' and 87 38' W., bounded N. by Hon- duras, E.'by the Caribbean sea, S. by Costa Rica, and W. by the Pacific ocean ; area, about 58,000 sq. m. ; pop. now estimated as low as 250,000. Capital, Managua. The N. bounda- ry line with Honduras is unsettled, but the Coco river is generally considered as the sepa- rating line. Nicaragua has nearly the form of an isosceles triangle, whose base is Costa Rica and the Pacific coast, and whose apex is at the mouth of the Coco river. The E. coast, which lies nearly N. and S., embraces the shore of the Caribbean sea from the mouth of that river to that of the San Juan river, about 280 m. Its southern part, from the delta of the San Juan to Monkey point, has dense forests and bold rocky headlands, the mountain ranges ap- proaching close to the water. Most of the streams here are short, shallow, and rapid. Beyond Monkey point the mountains recede inland, and the country near the sea is flat and