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MIME. LOGE. MIME. LOGE. MIME. But, Mime, to bind thee what bred him the might? With evil wit welded Alberich, of gold he wrung from the Rhine, a ring; at its stubborn spell we stammer and stumble; with it bridles he all of us Nibelungs now to his bent. Once in our forges freely we welded gifts for our women, winningest gear; neatly like Niblungs we toiled, and laughed for love of the time. Now hotly he works us in holes and in hollows; for him alone we hammer and live. Through the golden ring his greed can guess what ore unhewn is withheld in the earth; then straight we must strike it, grovel and stir it; we smelt the booty and smite at the bars, without room or rest, to heap our ruler the hoard. What laggard was latest under his lash? He looks on me, alas! without mercy; a helm he wished heedfully welded; he hinted well the way he would have it. I marked in mind what boundless might must be in the work, as I wove the brass; so, hoped to save the helm for myself, and in its force from Alberich's fetter be free perhaps, yes perhaps, outwit my unwearying header with fetters to rise and befall him the ring wrench from his finger so that, then, such as I find him, a master in me he might feel! What let thy wisdom limp by the way? Ah, though the helm I had welded, the wonder, that in it hides, I read not aright how to hit! Who bespoke the work, and spoiled it away, he led me to learn, when truly too late, what a trick lurked in the toy; from my face he faded, and blows, that from nowhere known abounded, I bore. For such, my unthoughtful self I thank! (With cries, he rubs his back. The gods laugh.) LOGE (to Wotan). To seize, not light at least he seems. WOTAN. But the foe, ere fail thy wits, must fall. MIME (struck with the laughter of the gods examines them more carefully). Who are you that stir me so strongly for answers ? LOGE. Friends to thy kin; we come to free the Nibelungs forth from their need. (Alberich' s scolding and beating approach again.) MIME. Heed to yourselves! He is at hand! WOTAN. We wait for him here. (He seats himself quietly on a stone; Loge leans at his side. Alberich, who has taken the tarn-helm from his head and hung it in his girdle, with the swing of his whip drives before him a crowd of Nibelungs upwards from the lower hollow; they are laden with gold and silver treasure which, under Alberich' s continued abuse and blame, they store all in a pile and so heap to a hoard.) ALBERICH. To-wards! Away! Hihi! Hoho! Lazy lot, here aloft heighten the hoard! Thou there! On high! Hinder not thus! Harassing herd, down with it hither! Am I to help you? All of it here! (he suddenly sees Wotan and Loge) Hi! Who beholds? What walks this way? Mime! To me, rubbishing rogue! Ply'st thou thy tongue with the trespassing pair ? Forth, thou failer! Hence to thy forge and thy hammer! (With strokes of his whip he drives Mime in among the Mime. Loge. Mime. Loge. Mime. But, Mime, to bind thee, what gave him the power? By evil craft moulded Alberich from yellow gold of the Rhine a ring: at its mighty spell we tremble in wonder; by that now he enthralls us, the Nibelungs' darksome host. — Blithely we smiths once worked at our anvils, forged for our women trinkets so fair. delicate Nibelung toys: we lightly laughed at our toil. The wretch now compels us to creep into caverns, for him alone we ever must toil. Through the ring of gold his greed still descries where'er new treasure lies hid in the clefts: there must we all seek it, trace it and dig it, to melt the booty, to forge him the gold, with no peace nor rest for him to heap up the hoard. Just now, then, an idler wakened his ire! Poor, Mime, ah! my fate was the hardest. A helm of mail had I to forge him; with care he gave commands for its making. My wit conceived the mighty power that lay in the work I had forged of steel; the helm I fain had held for my own; to use the spell to free me from Alberich's sway: perchance — yes, perchance the tyrant himself to o'ermaster and place him by guile in my power; the ring then had I ravished, that, as a slave now I serve him, in thrall he should then be to me! And wherefore, wise one, didst thou not thrive? Ah! though the work I fashioned, the magic that lurks therein, the magic I guessed not aright. He who planned the work which then he seized, he taught me, alas, — but now all too late — what a spell lay in the helm. From my sight he vanished; but, lurking unseen, sharp strokes he showered on me. Such pay for my pains I, fool, did win! (He rubs his back. WOTAN and LOGE laugh.) Loge (to WOTAN). Confess, not light will be our task. Wotan. But the foe will fall, if thou but help! Mime (observes the gods more attentively). What mean all your questions? who are ye then, strangers? Loge. Friends to thee; from all their need the Niblungen folk we shall free! (MIME, on bearing ALBERICH's approach, shrinks back frightened.) Mime. Wotan. Look to yourselves; Alberich nears. We wait for him here. WOTAN seats himself quietly on a stone. — ALBERICH, who has removed the Tarnhelm from his head and hung it on his girdle, drives before him with brandished whip a host of NIBLUNGS from the caverns below. They are laden with gold and silver handiwork which, under Alberich's continuous abuse and scolding, they heap together so as to form a large pile. Alberich. Hither! Thither! Hehe! Hoho! Lazy herd! There in a heap pile up the hoard! Thou there, go up! Wilt thou get on? Indolent folk, down with the treasure! Shall I, then, help you? Here with it all! (He suddenly perceives WOTAN and LOGE.) Hey! who is there? What guests are these? — Mime, to me! Pestilent wretch! Pratest thou here with the vagabond pair? Off, thou sluggard! Back to thy smelting and smithing! (He drives MIME with blows of his whip into the crowd of possesses the properties of rendering its wearer invisible, and of endowing him with twelve men’s strength. The Tarnhelm is a favourite subject of Aryan myth and legend. In the Iliad it appears as the helmet of Hades, wherewith Athena hides herself that she may take part, unseen, in the battle against Troy (Iliad, v., 845). Out of the dark nether world the “daughters three” of Hesperus procure it for Perseus, that by its aid he may overcome the dreadful Gorgon. And lastly, it is the cloud wherewith the Homeric Gods envelope their favourite heroes, the veil wherein Khriemhild, in the Heldenbuch, wraps her betrothed Siegfried, to withdraw them from the adverse fight. Already, then, we perceive in our poem the presence of three opposing principles. First, the Gods, representing the higher, or spiritual, development of human nature (I do not, of course, intend to suggest that in these Gods is embodied the height of spiritual wisdom, attainable only through their downfall; but the creeds of even the rudest people may be regarded as embodying so much of spiritual knowledge as the minds of men in that state are capable of.]; secondly, the Giants,—the element of mere ignorance; and thirdly, the Nibelungs, the lowest or sensual element, becoming actively pernicious under the influence of the Spirit of Evil,—Alberich. Then we have the Spirit of Deceit,—Loge, the pretended friend and actual destroyer of each in turn, the giver of evil counsel to the higher powers, of capacity for active evil to the lower (in the deepest sense, sin is always a consequence of self-deception). It is the fire of Loge which heats the Devil’s furnaces, wherein at his bidding our baser impulses are ever forging the noxious and illusory temptations of the material world (see Loge’s address to Alberich, Rheingold, sc.3). It is Loge who enkindles in our higher nature the wasting flames of ambition and vain-glory, whereby the noblest expressions of human thought, the religious creeds of all ages—here symbolized in Wotan and the Gods—become gradually corrupted, until their vitality has perished, and they are ultimately consumed in the fire of their own self-deceit, to be replaced by a purer faith—the religion of Infinite Love. And finally, the Ring, by virtue of which all the evil is wrought, represents the perversion of the soul’s activity from universal to separate and selfish aims. It stands thus for selfishness, egoism, the beginning of all crime in the material world, and corresponds with Walhall, the emblem of selfish power and sovereignty, and the consequent seed of downfall in the spiritual world. Alberich’s tyrannical rule over the Nibelungs denotes the bitterness and restlessness of her dominion whose wages are Death. At the stage at which we have now arrived, the Gods already have obtained, by the aid of man’s ignorance, an undue supremacy, symbolized in the fortress Walhall. Undue, we will call it, because it is to be distinctly understood that the Gods are not here intended as types of the Eternal Verities, but only of those limited ideas of the motive powers of the universe which proceed from the human imagination; and therefore when they—when any religious creeds— commence to enclose themselves within the Walhall walls of dogmatism, and to impose these limitations upon the minds of their votaries—as what creeds do not?—the hours of their existence are already numbered, and the day of their doom is surely, if slowly, approaching. The loss of their freedom, the bond that binds them to ignorance, is their actual death-warrant, whatever temporary power and unreal splendor it may lend them. The “Runes of Bargain” in Wotan’s spear-shaft mark his present sovereignty at the price of ruin hereafter. (3) Mime has been left crouching and whimpering on the rocky floor. Thus Wotan and Loge find him. Loge is in all the following scene Wotan's very active vizier, furnishing the invention and carrying out the stratagems. Wotan, except to the eye, takes the background and has little to say; but as the blue of his mantle and the fresh chaplet on his locks strike the eye refreshingly in the fire-reddened cave, so his voice, with echoes in it of the noble upper world, comes like gusts of sweet air. Loge sets the cowering dwarf on his feet and by artful questions gets the whole story from him of the ring and the Nibelungs' woe. About the Tarnhelm, too, Mime tells Loge. At the recollection of the stripes he has suffered, he rubs his back howling. The gods laugh. That gives Mime the idea that these strangers must be of the great. He is in his turn questioning them, when he hears Alberich's bullying voice approaching. He runs hither and thither in terror and calls to the strangers to look to themselves, Alberich is coming! Wotan quietly seats himself on a stone to await him. (4) 19. Alberich’s Cry of Triumph Then Alberich, who has taken off the tarnhelmet and hung it from his girdle, is seen in the distance, driving a crowd of Nibelungs before him from the caves below. They are laden with gold and silver, which he forces them to pile up in one place and so form a hoard. He suddenly perceives Wotan and Loge. After abusing Mime for permitting strangers to enter Nibelheim, he commands the Nibelungs to descend again into the caverns in search of new treasure for him. They hesitate. You hear the Ring Motive. Alberich draws the ring from his finger, stretches it threateningly toward the Nibelungs and commands them to obey the ring’s master. The Nibelungs disperse in headlong flight and with Mime rush back into the cavernous recesses. (1) Alberich enters, full of his triumph, and now certain of his mastery over the race of dwarfs, expressed through the motive of Alberich’s cry of Triumph, developed out of the Motive of the Menial. The ensuing conversation with Loge and Wotan is accompanied largely by Loge’s chromatic motive. (2) Alberich enters driving before him with his scourge a whole army of little huddling, hurrying Nibelungs, groaning under the weight of great pieces of gold and silver smithwork, which, while he threatens and urges them, they heap in a duskily glimmering mound. In the fancy that they are not obeying fast or humbly enough, he takes the magic ring from his finger, kisses and lifts it commandingly over them, whereupon with cries of dismay they scramble away, scattering down the shafts, in feverish haste to be digging and delving. Heavy groans are in the music when it refers to the oppression of the Nibelungs; groans so tragic and seriously presented that they bring up the thought of other oppressions and killing labours than those of the Nibelungs. The music which later depicts the amassing of riches, indicates such horror of strain, such fatigue, such hopeless weariness of heart and soul, that the hearer must think with sharpened sympathy of all that part of humanity which represents the shoulder placed against the wheel. Alberich turns an angry eye upon the intruders: "What do you want?" It is then most especially that the calm notes of Wotan fall
crowd of the Nibelungs.) Hi! to your work! Wontedly hasten! Lighten below! From the greedy places pluck me the gold! The whip shall dint you, dig you not well! If listlessly Mime lets you be minded, he hardly will shield from my hand his shoulders; that I lurk like a neighbour when nobody looks, enough he lately has learned. Linger you still? Loiter and stay? (He draws his ring from his finger, kisses it, and stretches it threateningly out.) Shake in your harness, you shameful herd; fitly fear the ruling ring ! (With howling and crying, the Nibelungs, with Mime among them, disperse and slip, in all directions, down into the pits.) ALBERICH (fiercely approaching Wotan and Loge). What hunt you here? WOTAN. From Nibelheim's hiding land we lately in news have heard of endless wonders worked under Alberich, and greed to behold them gained thee hither thy guests. ALBERICH. Your grudge you ran rather to glut; such nimble guests I know well enough. LOGE. Know me indeed, drivelling dwarf? What seems there, so to bark at, in sight? When low in cowering cold thou lay'st, who fetched thee light and fostering fire, ere Loge laughed to thee first? What for were thy hammer, had I not heated thy forge? Kinsman I count thee, and friend I became, I think but faulty thy thanks! ALBERICH. For light-elves now is Loge's laughter, and slippery love; art thou fully their friend, as once my own thou wert ha ha! behold! I fear no further their hate! LOGE. So me to hope in thou mean'st! ALBERICH. In thy falsehood freely, not in thy faith! But at ease face I you all. LOGE. Lofty mood has lent thee thy might; great and grim thy strength has grown. ALBERICH. See'st thou the hoard my sullen host set me on high ? LOGE. Such harvest I never have known. ALBERICH. A daylight's deed, of scanty deepness; mighty measure must it end in hereafter. WOTAN. How helps thee now such a hoard in hapless Nibelheim, where nought for wealth can be won? ALBERICH. Goods to gather and hide when together, helps me Nibelheim's night; but from the hoard, in the hollow upheaped, unheard of wonders I wait for; the world with all its wideness my own is for ever. WOTAN. To thy kindness how will it come? ALBERICH. Though in listless breezes' breadth above me you live, laugh and love; with golden fist you gods I will fall on together! As love no more to me belongs, all that has breath must be without her; though gold was your bane, for gold you blindly shall grapple. On sorrowless heights in happy sway you hold yourselves; and dark-elves you look in their deepnesses down on; Have heed! Have heed! When first you men the Niblungs.) Hey! to your labour! Get ye hence straightway! Quickly below! From the new made shafts go get me the gold! "Who slowly digs shall suffer the whip! That no one be idle, Mime be surety, or scarce shall he scape from my scourge's lashes! That I ev'rywhere wander when no one is ware, that wots he, think I, full well! Linger ye still? Loiter ye then? (He draws his ring from his finger, kisses it and stretches it out threateningly.) Tremble in terror, ye vanquished host! All obey he rings's great lord! With howls and shrieks, the NIBLUNGS — among whom is MIME — separate and slip into different clefts in all directions. Alberich (looks long and suspiciously at WOTAN and LOGE). What seek ye here? Wotan. Of Nibelheim's darksome land strange tidings have reached our ears: great the wonders worked here by Alberich; on these now to feast us greed has made us thy guests. Alberich. Led hither by envy ye came: such gallant guests, believe, well I know! Loge. Know'st thou me well, ignorant imp? Then say, who am I? why dost so bark? In chilly caves when crouching thou lay'st, where were thy light and comforting fire then, had Loge not on thee laughed? What boots thee thy forging, were not thy forge lit by me? Kin to thee am I and once was kind: not warm, methinks, are thy thanks! Alberich. On light-elves laughs now Loge, the crafty rogue? Art thou, false one, their friend, as my friend once thou wert? Haha! I laugh! from them, then, nought need I fear. Loge. Methinks, then, me mayst thou trust. Alberich. In thy untruth trust I, not in thy truth! Undismayed now I defy you. Loge. Courage high thy might doth confer; grimly great waxes thy power! Alberich. See'st thou the hoard, by my host heaped for me there? Loge. A goodlier never was seen. Alberich. It is to-day but scanty measure! Proud and mighty shall the hoard be hereafter. Wotan. But what can boot thee the hoard, in joyless Nibelheim, where treasure nothing can buy? Alberich. Treasure to gather, and treasure to bury, serves me Nibelheim's night. But with the hoard that in caverns I hide shall wonders be worked by the Niblung! and by its might the world as my own I shall win me! Wotan. How beginn'st thou that, then, good friend? Alberich. Lapped in gently wafting breezes ye who now live, laugh and love: with golden grasp, ye godlike ones all shall be captured! As love by me was once forsworn, all that have life shall eke forswear it! Enchanted by gold, the greed for gold shall enslave you! On glorious heights abide ye in gladness, rocked in bliss; the dark elves ye disdain in your revels eternal! Beware! Beware! For first your men healingly upon the sense: They have heard tales of novel events in Nibelheim, of mighty wonders worked there by Alberich, and are come from curiosity to witness these. After this simple introduction from the greater personage, his light-foot, volatile, graceful minister takes Alberich in hand and practising confidently upon his intoxicated conceit of power, his pride in the cleverness which had contrived ring and wishing-cap, uses him like a puppet of which all the strings should be in his hand. Alberich recognises in Loge an old enemy. Loge's reply to Alberich's, "I know you well enough, you and your kind!" is perhaps, with its cheerful dancing flicker, his prettiest bit of self-description. "You know me, childish elf? Then, say, who am I, that you should be surly? In the cold hollow where you lay shivering, how would you have had light and cheering warmth, if Loge had never laughed for you?..." But Alberich seems to remember too many reasons for distrusting him. "I can now, however," he boasts, "defy you all!" and he calls to their notice the heaped riches—the “Hort”.(4) 20. The Motive of the Rising Hoard As Alberich boasts of his waxing store of gold wrought by the Nibelungs, there is heard the Motive of the Rising Hoard, a little further on appearing in a somewhat more developed form. He mocks the life of the gods, “who laugh and love, lapped in gently wafting brezes,” and Freia’s Motive is heard, and those of Renunciation, the Rising Hoard, and the motive of the Rhine Gold. (2) "But," remarks Wotan, "of what use is all that wealth in cheerless Nibelheim, where there is nothing to buy?" "Nibelheim," replies Alberich, "is good to furnish treasures and to keep them safe. But when they form a sufficient heap, I shall use them to make myself master of the world!" "And how, my good fellow, shall you accomplish this?" Alberich has apprehended in this guest one of the immortals,— which, taken into consideration a speech suggestive every time it resounds of calm heights and stately circumstances, is not strange. Alberich hates him, hates them all. This is his exposition of his plan: "You who, lapped in balmy airs, live, laugh, and love up there, with a golden fist I shall catch you all! Even as I renounced love, all that lives shall renounce it! Ensnared and netted in gold, you shall care for gold only! You immortal revellers, cradling yourselves on blissful heights in exquisite pastimes, you despise the black elf! Have a care!... For when you men have come to be the servants of my power, your sweetly adorned women, who would despise the dwarf's love, since he cannot hope for love, shall be forced to serve his pleasure. Ha ha! Do you hear? Have a care, have a care, I say, of the army of the night, when the riches of the Nibelungs once climb into the light!" Wotan, whose Olympian self-sufficiency is usually untroubled by what any mean other-person may say, at this cannot contain himself, but starting to his feet cries out a command for the blasphemous fool's annihilation! Before Alberich, however, has caught the words—his deafness perhaps it is which saves his life—Loge has called Wotan back to his reason. Practising on Alberich's not completely outlived simplicity, he by the ruse of feigning himself very stupid and greatly impressed by his cleverness, now induces him to show off for their greater amazement the power of the Tarnhelm, which it appears has not only the trick of making the wearer at will invisible, but of lending him whatever shape he may choose. Later we find that it has also the power to transport the wearer at pleasure to the ends of the earth in a moment of time. (4) Alberich looks with mistrust upon Wotan and Loge. He asks them what they seek in Nibelheim. Wotan tells him they have heard reports of his extraordinary power and have come to ascertain if they are true. After some parleying the Nibelung points to the hoard, saying: “It is the merest heap compared to the mountain of treasure to which it shall rise.” Here appears the RISING HOARD MOTIVE. Alberich boasts that the whole world will come under his sway (you hear the Ring Motive), that the gods who now laugh and love in the enjoyment of youth and beauty will become subject to him (you hear the Freia Motive); for he has abjured love (you hear the Motive of Renunciation). Hence, even the gods in Walhalls shall dread him (you hear a variation of the Walhalla Motive), and he bids them beware of the time when the night-begotten host of the Nibelungs shall rise from Nibelheim into the realm of daylight (you hear the Rhinegold Motive followed by the Walhalla Motive, for it is through the power gained by the Rhinegold that Alberich hopes to possess himself of Walhalla). (1) In this introduction to the Trilogy we find ourselves at once transported to a world of mystery, a world in which neither the bodily nor the spiritual eye can at once see clearly, and we apprehend with difficulty alike the actions and the motives of those who dwell within it. Nor is this atmosphere of mystery other than fitting for the representation of a legend which finds its roots far back in the earliest period of man’s conscious thought and incomplete expression; and with which Wagner has thought well to interweave the early searchings of his race after eternal truths, shrouded by them in obscure mythological parables, and interpreted by him in accordance with that system of philosophic thought most in harmony with his genius. The object of the Rhine-Gold is to set forth, in accordance with the indications of the legend, such an account of the origin of the Treasure, and of the Ring which is its symbol, as shall explain its fatal power and render intelligible the curse which pursues all who, even innocently, possess it. Now, in all this mysterious story which has woven into itself so many varying threads of history and legend, there is no more mysterious element than the Treasure itself. Whence did it come? Who were its original possessors? Why does it exercise so baneful an influence? Of all the versions, the Volsunga-sag alone professes to answer these questions, and even here the evidence is incomplete, and we are perforce led to the conclusion that before the legend had been transcribed, probably before it reached its settled form, the origin of the Nibelungen Hoard had been forgotten. The ethical idea of which the legend is an expression is undoubtedly that of the evil influence of gold, which, according to old German mythology, was operative alike on gods and men. The golden age, the time of the innocence of the gods, was before they knew gold; before the creation of the dwarf-race, who wrought the precious metal out of the earth, and thus brought the lust of gold and the passions of greed and avarice into the world. This idea is deeply imbedded in German mythology, and has been expressed under varying forms, of which undoubtedly the myth of the Nibelungen Hoard was originally one; therefore when
Page 2 and 3: DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN (“The Rin
Page 4 and 5: (With merry cries they swim away fr
Page 6 and 7: Be Flosshild’ floated to heaven!
Page 8 and 9: (By degrees the waves change into c
Page 10 and 11: My trusty brother! Tells the blockh
Page 12 and 13: at last who had warred on love; for
Page 14 and 15: Greets she so faintly the grayness
Page 18 and 19: have fall'n to my might, shall your
Page 20 and 21: Wretched and ravening rogues! (To h
Page 22 and 23: FRICKA (hurrying anxiously to Wotan
Page 24 and 25: Keep not what is cursed! Soon is se
Page 26: What sense is inside it? The name t

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