SOURCE: “Influence on English Literature” in The Nibelungenlied and Gudrun in England and America, David Nutt, 1903, pp. 118-35.

In the following excerpt, Sandbach explores Middle English and Modern English literary works that may have been influenced by or adapted from the Nibelungenlied.

…—In the literature of the Middle English period there is, so far as I know, only one reference to the Nibelungen story that can be looked upon as at all certain. This was pointed out by Professor W. P. Ker in Folk Lore, ix. 372, and occurs in the metrical romance of “Sir Degravant,” in the following passage (vv. 525 ff.):—

Y hade leve she were myne b Thane alle the gold in the Reyne b ffausoned one florene, b She is myne so dere.

(MS. drere)

Whatever the third of these lines means, the second clearly contains a reference to the Nibelungen Hoard. But such an expression...