CHAPTER III
THE MOUNTAIN PASS
A wild storm was raging among the mountains. Great winds swept down from the high peaks and up from the valleys and crashed roaring through the woods. The thunder rumbled, and flashes of blue lightning shot across the dark sky. The heart of the tempest seemed to be at a rocky pass just below the path that led up to the Walküres’ rock.
Here, before a huge black cleft in the side of the mountain, stood the Wanderer, the wild storm all about him. With outstretched spear he was singing a strange chant, an awakening song, down into the black chasm before him; singing it to the wise woman of the world, Erda, the Earth Witch.
He called her by name, and bade her rise from her sleep and speak with him; and, as he chanted, a faint blue light glowed in the chasm, and Erda rose slowly from the black depths. Frost seemed to cling to her garments, and light gleamed all about her. Her face wore the same look of mystery as when she came so many years before to warn Wotan against the Ring.
In slow, dreamy tones she asked what the Wanderer wished, and why he had aroused her from her slumber of wisdom. He answered that he had come to ask her to prophesy once more; to tell him the wonders that she had dreamed.
“I sleep and dream!” answered the Earth Goddess. “I dream and search for wisdom. But, while I sleep, the Norns are awake. They weave their rope and spin. Why do you not seek them and ask them your questions?”
The Wanderer answered that they could only weave the histories of the world, but that she, in her wisdom, could, perhaps, tell him how to avert coming ill. But Erda shook her head dreamily, as though in a trance, and answered that she could tell him nothing; that the ways of the world bewildered her, and that she longed to return into her dark chasm and dream once more.
But Wotan restrained her. He told her of the Walküre’s disobedience and his own wrath. He spoke of the sorrow and grief that weighed heavily on his mind, of his forebodings, and that the Dusk of the Gods seemed nearer and nearer. And, after asking again for counsel, in vain, he said that he had grown to feel very little dread of the Dusk of the Gods. It was destiny, and he almost longed for it. And he spoke tenderly of the Volsung, who was even then drawing near to pass through the flame and free the Walküre from her chains of sleep.
When she was awakened, Wotan said—gifted with the power of prophecy for a moment—she would, by some deed, release the world from the sadness that it had labored under for so long, and she would expiate the old sin of the stealing of the Gold that was the beginning of the end of the Golden Age.