Chapter XII: Part III: Siegfried

[Music: Motif of Mime’s Meditation]

PRELUDE

When Sieglinde ran into the woods with the pieces of the broken sword, Nothung, she took shelter in a cave where a wicked old dwarf lived alone. There a little boy was born. But Sieglinde had never thoroughly recovered from the shock of her husband’s death. The way through the woods had been difficult, and she had endured great hardships; so one day she called the Dwarf to her and gave him the broken sword, telling him to keep it for her son until he grew old enough to have a weapon of his own, and she told the Dwarf that she was Sieglinde, and that her husband had been Siegmund, the Volsung, and she finally said that she wanted the child to be named Siegfried; then she sank back and died. And so Siegfried, who was a very little baby then, never, really, saw either his father or mother.

The only father he knew, as he grew older, was the Dwarf, who was none other than Mime, Alberich’s half-brother. And he could not help knowing that Mime was wicked and sly, though the Dwarf pretended to love his foster-son, and tried to arouse some love in return.

Now, perhaps, you wonder, if Mime was so wicked, why he took care of the boy. I will tell you.

Mime, like every one else, wanted the Rhinegold, and could not get it, for Fafner, the Dragon, guarded it by night and day at Hate Hole. And being as sly and evil-minded as the rest of the Nibelungs, he had concocted a plot by which he thought he could obtain it. He hoped Siegfried, when he grew older, would slay Fafner with the sword Nothung, and win the Rhinegold. You see he hoped to accomplish Fafner’s death through Siegfried, just as Wotan had once tried to do through Siegmund. Only, after Siegfried had attained the Gold, Mime hoped to be able to poison him and steal from him the treasure.

But, to accomplish this, the broken sword must be mended, and this Mime could not do. Its splintered edges baffled even him—clever smith as he was. So he set to work forging other swords, and trying to fashion a blade keen enough to satisfy the boy-Volsung, and also to kill the Dragon at Hate Hole. But every weapon he made Siegfried broke into pieces, and demanded a stronger and still stronger sword, until Mime was in despair.

It angered him terribly, too, that Siegfried, more by instinct than anything else, knew how wicked his heart was, and how full of bad, cruel thoughts. The little, dark Nibelung could not understand how the boy, beautiful as the sun, golden-haired and keen-eyed, strong of limb and true of heart, loved to roam in the wide forests all the day, merrily blowing his silver horn and making friends with the woodland creatures, only returning to Mime’s cave at night. He could not realize the pleasure that the soft forest voices gave to the youth just growing into manhood; how he loved the wolves and bears better than the cringing, evil-eyed, horrible little Dwarf in the cave at home—the only home he knew.

As for Siegfried, the only thing he wondered at was that he ever went back to the cave at all. Why did he not roam away forever into the forest, search out that far, strange place called the world, that really seemed as if it must be a different universe from the one in which he lived? He could not tell. He only knew that a strange, irresistible something seemed to draw him back to Mime’s side every night—a something he could not explain or even understand. Meanwhile time passed.

[Music: Motif of Forest Life, sometimes called Motif of Love Life]

[Music: Motif of the Forging of Nothung

“Nothung! Nothung! Notable Sword!”]