Stories From Wagner

Stories From Wagner

*The Ring of the Curse*

(Der Ring des Nibelungen)


*PART I*

*THE RHINE-GOLD*


Hundreds of years ago in a wonderful time called the dawn of the world
there lived many strange beings which do not now exist. Gods and
goddesses dwelt in the clouds that hovered about the mountain peaks.
Great untamed giants roamed amid the valleys. Swarthy, misshapen
dwarfs, called Nibelungs[#], toiled in the caves of the under-world
heaping up treasures of gold and silver which never did anyone any good.
Ugly dragons crawled about on the earth; while beautiful water-nymphs
lived in the rivers and seas. Lastly there were heroes and savage men
who struggled together for the mastery in that far-off day when the
world was in the making.


[#] Pronounced Nee-bel-oongs.


How the end came to all these strange things, and how the reign of the
gods finally ceased, will be set down in this fourfold story I am about
to tell you.

In the clear depths of the river Rhine, in Germany, once dwelt three
water-nymphs—lovely maidens who were very like other maidens, except
that they passed their whole lives under the water and could not be seen
by ordinary eyes. Fair were they in face, and graceful in form. Their
eyes beamed gladness, for they had never known sorrow; while their long
golden hair floated about them like a garment, or tossed upon the
wave-crest as they played some merry game of hide-and-seek amid the
grottoes of their watery world. They were called the Rhine-Daughters,
and thus in frolicsome play did they spend their days—free from all care
save one. It was this care and the sorrow following close upon it that
caused the present story to be told.