United States or Sri Lanka ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Siegfried! See, Brünnhilde Joyously hails thee, thy bride." She swings herself upon her steed and dashes into the furious flames. At last they die away, and the Rhine rushes forward from its banks and covers the pyre. The exultant Rhine-daughters are swimming in the flood, for Brünnhilde has thrown them the ring.
As Alberich hurried after the Rhine-daughters, he suddenly caught sight of the gold glittering in the morning sun. He stood still. Then he straightened up as tall as his crooked, misshapen little back would let him. He opened his eyes wide. "Oh! Sisters! See how Alberich is staring at our gold!" whispered one of the Rhine-daughters. "Perhaps this is the foe of which our father warned us.
It is part of the region over-ranged by the hunting-party of Hagen's devising. The horns of the hunters are heard in the distance, Siegfried's horn-call among them, and Hagen's. Our old acquaintances, the Rhine-daughters, rise to the surface of the water. They have warning or scent that Siegfried is not far, with the Ring, their stolen gold.
Wakened so bright!" Still Alberich stood and stared at the gold. "What is it?" he gasped. "What is it?" The Rhine-daughters shouted back to him: "Heigh-ho! and heigh-ho! Dear little imp of woe, Laugh with us, laugh with us! Heigh-ho and heigh-ho!" But Alberich did not laugh with them. He would not take his eyes off the gold. "That," said the maidens, "is our Rhine-gold."
Through the wavering ripples of water and light cuts the bright call of the gold, the call to wake up and behold. Again and again it rings, regularly a golden voice. The Rhine-daughters have quickly forgotten their victim.
In the Rhine River there lived three beautiful maidens. They were called the Rhine-daughters. They had long, golden hair, which floated upon the waves as they swam from rock to rock. When their father went away, he left in their care a great lump of pure gold. This gold was on the very top of the highest rock in the river.
He is nonchalantly adding himself to their train, when from the Rhine below rises the lament of the Rhine-daughters, begging that their gold may be given back to them. Wotan pauses with his foot on the bridge: "What wail is that?" Loge enlightens him, and, at Wotan's annoyed, "Accursed nixies!
How he had stooped to trickery and had stolen the gold with which to pay for Valhalla. He told of the sad hearts of the Rhine-daughters, and of the greedy Fafner, lying at the door of his forest cave, guarding his hoard. But last of all, he told of the dread of Alberich's curse. He told of his fear that the black Nibelung might regain the ring and by its power destroy Valhalla.
"Only one did I see," Loge says further the light fading out of the music "who had renounced love; for red gold he had forsworn the favor of woman." He relates Alberich's theft of the gold, as it had been told him by the Rhine-daughters, who had made him their advocate with Wotan, to procure its restitution. But their plea meets with a deaf ear.
The object now singly to be kept in view is the destruction of this latter, and capture of the Ring in his possession. Quickly it must be done, for "a wise woman there is, living for love of the Wälsung; were she to bid him restore the Ring to the Rhine-daughters, for ever and ever lost were the gold!" "The Ring I will have!" Hagen quiets the care-ridden Nibelung, "rest in peace!"
Word Of The Day