rs and
hunted alike human,--father and son found their dwelling burned
to the ground, the mother slain, the sister gone. They lived for
years together after that, in the woods, always in conflict with
enemies, of whom their peculiar daring and strength raised them
an infinite number. In time, when the son was well grown, Wotan
forsook him, left him to complete his development alone, under
the harsh training of the calamities and sorrows fatally incident
to the temper and manner of viewing things which that father had
bred in him. The lad received the usage of a sword in the forging,
extremes of furnace and ice-brook. So he stood at last, Wotan's
pupil and finished instrument, an embodied defiance of the law and
the gods, proper to do the work which the law of the gods forbade.
Some defence against the wrath which he must inevitably rouse,
his father could not but feel impelled to provide, yet could he
not, without violating the honour which in his simple-minded way
he was striving to preserve intact, give it to him directly. He
could not bestow upon him outright a _Sieges-schwert_--magical
sword which ensured victory. But he placed one where the young
man should find it.

The piece opens with the blustering music of a storm, whose violence
is rapidly dying down.

The curtain rises upon the interior of Hunding's very primitive
dwelling, built about a great ash-tree whose trunk stands in view.
Siegmund, predestined to be ever at strife with his fellow-man, in
circumstances of peculiar distress seeks the shelter of Hunding's
roof. We see him burst into the empty hall, staggering and panting.
His spear and shield have splintered beneath the enemies' strokes;
deprived of arms, he has been forced to flee; he has been so hotly
pursued, so beaten by the storm, that upon reaching this refuge he
can no more than drop beside the hearth and lie there, exhausted.

It is his sister's house to which fate has led him, where, ill-starred
and unhappy like himself, this other child of Waelse's lives, in
subjection to Hunding, her lord, who has come by her through some
obscure commerce, and to whom she is no more than part of the household
baggage.

Hearing the rustle of Siegmund's entrance, Sieglinde hurries in,
and, beholding a stranger outstretched upon the ground, stops short
to observe him. The strength of the prostrate body cannot fail to
strike her. At his gasped call for water, she hurries to fetch it
from the spring out of