ry
tapestry suddenly stands forth like a vivid pattern the warbling
of a bird. Over and over, with pretty variations, the bird gives
its note. It catches Siegfried's attention; he listens. "You sweet
little bird," he at last addresses the singer up among the branches,
"I never heard you before. Is your home here in the forest?..." The
thought occurs to him, so natural to the simple: "Could I but understand
the sweet babbling, certainly it would tell me something--perhaps
about the dear mother!" He remembers hearing from Mime that one
might come to understand the language of the birds. Attractive
possibility! Pricked by his desire at once to bring it about, he
springs up, cuts one of the reeds growing around the pool where
Fafner goes to drink, and fashions it into a pipe. He tries upon
it to imitate the bird-note. "If I can sing his language," is his
reasoning, "I shall understand, no doubt, what he sings!" After
repeated attempts, charmingly comical, and much vain mending of
the reed with the edge of Nothung, he grows impatient, is ashamed
of his unsuccess before the "roguish listener." He tosses away the
silly reed and takes his silver horn. "A merry wild-wood note,
such as I can play, you shall hear! I have sounded it as a call to
draw to me some dear companion. So far, nothing better has come
than a wolf or a bear. Let us see, now, what it attracts this time,
whether a dear comrade will come to the call?" He places the horn
to his lips and sounds the cheery _Lock-weise_ (lure-call) over
and over, with long sustained notes between the calls, during which
he looks up at the bird, to see how he likes it. As a variation
he plays the motifs which describe himself, the large heroic
Siegfried-motif, and then the gay, rash, lesser Nothung-Siegfried
motif. He has returned to the Lock-weise, and is repeating it with
obstinate persistence, a-mind not to stop until the companion his
lonesomeness yearns for shall have answered him when a bellowing
sound behind him makes him face about. We had been warned already
by the _Wurm_-motif, heard before in Nibelheim, when Alberich by
the power of the Tarnhelm turned himself into a dragon. Siegfried
at sight of Fafner, whom the loud Lock-weise has drawn from his
slumbers and his cave, laughs aloud: "My tune has charmed forth
something truly lovely! A tidy comrade you would make for me!"
"What is that?" roars Fafner, fixing the glare of his eyes upon
the shapely form of Siegfried, insign