Of the oath will I make swift ending!" that high-born woman…

"Of the oath will I make swift ending!" that high-born woman said. To her brother she sent her servants, and she bade them smite him dead. And they hewed his head from his body: she held it on high by the hair In sight of the Hero of Troneg. With grief beyond compare And with indignation of spirit he saw the head of his lord. Grimly he turned on Kriemhild, and spake his latest word: "Thou hast indeed made ending according to thy will. Even as I had foreseen it, so now doth fate fulfil. Dead now is the noble Gunther, the King of Burgundy, Young Giselher, Lord Gernot—yea, dead be the Princes Three. Now, now of the Hoard none knoweth save God and I alone— Never, thou Child of the Devil, unto thee shall its place be known!"

She answered: "An evil requital hast thou rendered into mine hand! This hold I at least in possession, Siegfried's battle-brand. He bare it, mine own, my belovèd, when I saw him for that last time, Ere thou, to my grief everlasting, wroughtest that foul crime!" She flashed it out of the scabbard—her hand he could not stay— For now from the knight she purposed to rend the life away: On high in her hands she swung it, from his body his head did she smite; And King Etzel saw, and he deemed it an evil and bitter sight. "Woe's me!" cried the King in anguish; "how is he stricken down,— Stricken by hands of a woman!—the hero of chiefest renown That ever in battle's forefront fighting his buckler bore! Were he never so much my foeman, mine heart is for him full sore!"