Page:The Nibelungenlied - tr. Shumway - 1909.pdf/148

90 they plied not secret things, for little ease they had upon the bed. Siegfried bare him as though he were Gunther, the mighty king. In his arms he clasped the lovely maid. She cast him from the bed upon a bench near by, so that his head struck loudly against the stool. Up sprang the valiant man with all his might; fain would he try again. When he thought now to subdue her, she hurt him sore. Such defense, I ween, might nevermore be made by any wife.

When he would not desist, up sprang the maid. “Ye shall not rumple thus my shift so white. Ye are a clumsy churl and it shall rue you sore, I’ll have you to know fall well,” spake the comely maid. In her arms she grasped the peerless knight; she weened to bind him, as she had done the king, that she might have her case upon the bed. The lady avenged full sore, that he had rumpled thus her clothes. What availed his mickle force and his giant strength? She showed the knight her masterly strength of limb; she carried him by force (and that must needs be) and pressed him rudely ’twixt a clothes-press and the wall.

“Alas,” so thought the knight, “if now I lose my life at a maiden’s hands, then may all wives hereafter bear towards their husbands haughty mien, who would never do it else.”

The king heard it well and feared him for his liegeman’s life. Siegfried was sore ashamed; wrathful he waxed and with surpassing strength he set himself against her and tried it again with Lady Brunhild in fearful wise. It thought the king full long, before he conquered her. She pressed his hands, till from her strength the blood gushed forth from out the nails: