TO
THE MASTER’S DAUGHTER
EVA WAGNER
WITH HEARTFELT GRATITUDE
FOR HER KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT
THIS BOOK
Is Dedicated
PREFACE
The Story of the Rhinegold contains the four operas of Richard Wagner’s “Nibelungen Ring,” arranged for young people. The “Nibelungen Ring,” or “Nibelungen Cycle,” is built upon a colossal foundation: a number of the great Teutonic myths, welded together with the most masterly skill and consistency. It is evident that Wagner, like William Morris and other writers, has taken from the fragmentary mythological tales such material as would serve his purpose, adapting such incidents as he chose and as he considered appropriate to his work. But there are so many different versions of these old stories that it is very difficult to trace Wagner’s plot to its original birthplace. The various tales contained in the ancient sagas are so seemingly contradictory that anything connectedly authoritative appears impossible to trace. The one thing which seems to remain the same in almost all versions of the stories, ancient and modern, is the background of mythology, that great, gloomy cycle of gods, with the ever-recurring note of Fate which seems to have impressed all searchers in myths alike, and which inspired Wagner when he formed his mystical, solemn Fate motif.
Odin, Wuotan, Wodin, or Wotan, according to the different names given him in the old legends, is the central figure in the framework. If I read the story aright, the Norns, or more properly Nornir, are next in importance. They and their mother, the Vala, are the medium through which the relentless something behind the gods made itself felt in the world. The three sisters are named respectively Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld—freely translated Past, Present, and Future; or, as they were once styled, as correctly perhaps, Was, Is, and Shall Be. It is a question whether Erda and Urðr, the oldest Norn, might not originally have been identical. Dr. Hueffer speaks of Erda as the “Mother of Gods and Men,” but though “the Vala” is often found in mythology, the name Erda is rarely mentioned, whereas the titles for the three Norns seem to be unquestionably correct. The term Vala is usually translated as Witch, or Witch-wife, but, though a Vala was indeed a sorceress, she was a prophetess as well.
A step lower than the gods, yet gifted with supernatural power and far removed from the characteristics of human beings, were the dwarfs and the giants. The giants, we are told, were creatures belonging properly to the Age of Stone, which explains the fact that there were left but two representatives of the race at the time of the Golden Age. The dwarfs come under the head of elves. They were gifted with the utmost cleverness and skill. The giants were stupid and clumsy, and, save for their superhuman strength and size, entirely inferior to the small, sly dwarfs.
The world was strangely peopled in those days; many of the heroes were demi-gods, that is, descended from some god or goddess, and witches, dwarfs, and sorcerers mingled with human beings.
Many mortals, also, had magic power then. Otter, the son of Rodmar, changed himself into the animal for which he was named, and while in the shape of the otter he was caught and killed by three of the gods who were wandering over the earth in disguise. Rodmar demanded weregild,[A] and Loki, with a net, caught Andvari, a rich and malignant dwarf, and commanded him to pay a ransom of gold and gems, enough to cover the skin of the otter; for such was the weregild demanded by Rodmar. Andvari, of necessity, gave the gold for his own release, even adding a wonderful wealth-breeding Ring to cover up a single hair in the skin which the rest of the treasures had left unconcealed. The dwarf cursed the Ring, and the curse attended it through all its manifold ways of magic, to the end of the story.
[A] Weregild is almost untranslatable. It may mean payment, tax, forfeit, or ransom.