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THE VALKYRIES

BY

E. F. BENSON

Author of "Limitations," "Dodo," etc.



T. FISHER UNWIN

LONDON LEIPZIG PARIS

1903



[Illustration: The Flight of the Valkyries]

[Illustration: Brunnhilde]

[Illustration: Siegmund The Wolsung]

[Illustration: Waltraute]

[Illustration]


CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: THE HOUSE OF HUNDING

CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF THE STRANGER

CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF THE STRANGER

CHAPTER IV
THE RECOGNITION

CHAPTER V
THE STRIFE OF WOTAN AND FRICKA

CHAPTER VI
SIEGMUND'S LOT IS CAST

CHAPTER VII
THE FIGHT OF SIEGMUND

CHAPTER VIII
THE FLIGHT OF BRUNNHILDE

CHAPTER IX
THE SENTENCE OF BRUNNHILDE

CHAPTER X
THE SLEEP OF BRUNNHILDE.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

ILLUSTRATIONS


THE FLIGHT OF THE VALKYRIES Frontispiece
OFTEN HAD SHE SAT THERE
"LADY, I THANK THEE"
"TO-NIGHT WE ARE HOST AND GUEST"
AT THAT HE WRENCHED AT THE SWORD-HILT
"I GIVE THEE MINE OATH!" SAID HE
VERY SLOWLY SHE ARMED HERSELF
"WOTAN'S SPEAR IS STRETCHED AGAINST THEE, SIEGMUND"
BRUNNHILDE BRINGS SIEGLINDE TO THE VALKYRIES' MEETING-PLACE
CROUCHING AMONG HER SISTERS
THEN TENDERLY HE RAISED HER FROM WHERE SHE KNELT




PREFACE



In the following pages an attempt has been made to render as closely
as possible into English narrative prose the libretto of Wagner's
"Valkyrie". The story is one little known to English readers, and even
those who are familiar with the gigantic music may find in the story
something which, even when rendered into homely prose, will reveal to
them some new greatness of the master-mind of its author. It is in this
hope that I have attempted this version.

Whether I have attempted a task either absolutely impossible, or
impossible to my capacity, I cannot tell, for so huge is the scale of
the original, so big with passion, so set in the riot of storm-clouds
and elemental forces, that perhaps it can only be conveyed to the mind
as Wagner conveyed it, through such sonorous musical interpretations
as he alone was capable of giving to it. Yet even because the theme is
so great, rather than in spite of it, any interpretation, even that
of halting prose, may be unable to miss certain of the force of the
original.

The drama itself comes second in the tetralogy of the Ring, being
preceded by the Rheingold. But this latter is more properly to be
considered as the overture to a trilogy than as the first drama of
a tetralogy. In it the stage is set, and Heaven above, rainbow-girt
Walhalla, and the dark stir of the forces beneath the earth, Alberich
and the Niebelungs, enter the arena waiting for the puny and momentous
sons of men to assert their rightful lordship over the earth, at the
arising of whom the gods grow grey and the everlasting foundations of
Walhalla crumble. From the strange loves of Siegmund and Sieglinde,
love not of mortal passion, but of primeval and elemental need, the
drama starts; this is the first casting of the shuttle across the
woof of destiny. From that point, through the present drama, through
Siegfried, through the dusk of the gods the eternal grinding of the
mills continues. Once set going the gods themselves are powerless
to stop them, for the stream that turns them is stronger than the
thunderings of Wotan, for the stream is "That which shall be."

In storm the drama begins, in storm of thunder and all the range of
passion and of death it works its inevitable way, till for a moment
there is calm, when on the mountain-top Brunnhilde sleeps, waiting for
the coming of him whose she is, for the awakening to the joy of human
life. And there till Siegfried leaps the barrier of flame we leave her.

E. F. BENSON.




THE VALKYRIES


CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION


THE HOUSE OF HUNDING


Never before in the memory of man had spring been so late in
coming, and into mid-May had lasted the hurricanes and tempests of
winter. Not even yet was the armoury of its storms and squalls wholly
spent, and men, as they huddled by the fire and heard night by night,
and day by day the bugling of the wind, and the hiss of rain and the
patter of the hailstones, wondered what this subversion and stay of the
wholesome seasons should portend. For now for many years had strange
omens and forebodings shadowed and oppressed the earth. Some said that
the earth itself and Erda the spirit of earth were growing old; some
even had seen the great mother, not as of old she had appeared from
time to time, vigorous and young, clad in the fresh green of growing
things, but old and heavy-eyed, and her mantle was frosted over with
rime, for the chill of the unremitting years had fallen on her. Others
again said that in Walhalla, which Wotan the father of gods and men had
builded by the might of giants, all was not well; that shadows crowded
in places where no shadows should be, and that their companies grew
ever greater, and that dim voices of wailing and of warning sounded
in the ears and in the high places of the gods. Others said that the
gods themselves were growing old; that Wotan feared the spirits of
the earth, and of the places beneath the earth, for he was no longer
certain of his strength, and that age and the grey shadow of death
itself looked over his shoulder when he sat alone, and when he slept
with Fricka his wife visions of ill portent would trouble his dreams
so that often he rose at dead of night from his couch, and would look
from the walls of Walhalla over the still sleeping earth, wondering
from which quarter danger would come, and from where he would first see
the red light of war. Night by night he would commune with himself,
wondering how it was that the strength and the merriment of old days
had departed, wondering, yet in himself knowing. For he knew the Book
of Fate and of that which should be, as a man still dreaming knows that
he is in bed, and the night-hag rides him, and yet is powerless either
to fully sleep or fully wake. Certain also it was that day by day he
sent his daughters, whom he begat by Erda the spirit of the earth,
to slay and bring into Walhalla heroes of the sons of men, into whom
he breathed the spirit of eternal life so that for ever they should
guard those walls that once he thought impregnable; and day by day did
the eight Valkyries, led by Brunnhilde, the fairest and the strongest
of them all, go on their quests. She it was in whom above all Wotan
delighted, for so at one with him was the swift strength and fearless
will of the maid; it was to her he told all his intentions and his
purposes, and not to Fricka his wife, so that often when he talked with
Brunnhilde he scarcely knew whether he spoke to her or whether his own
soul but communed with itself. Yet though he thus guarded Walhalla,
thinking to make it safe, he knew that there was one thing in the world
which was stronger than he, and that was Fate. What Should Be, would
be, and What Should Be recked of Wotan as lightly as it recked of the
falling of a sparrow, or the passing of a spring shower.

Now these omens of gloom and fate which lay heavy on Walhalla,
troubled also the minds of men. If death came to the gods, should not
death come also to the earth and the children of the earth? When the
Master fell should not the servant fall also? Yet because the race of
men were yet but young on the earth, and vigorous, flourishing in stony
places like a creeping plant that shall soon cover the desert with its
stems, there were men, and those wise ones, who held that after the
fall of the gods the kingdoms of the world and all the sovereignty of
the earth should soon be given to the sons of men. And they looked for
the coming of one who should challenge the gods themselves, before whom
the everlasting foundations of Walhalla should crumble. He it was, they
said, whom Wotan feared, he who was free and owed nothing to the lords
of Walhalla, for Wotan knew that before him his own god-like strength
would crumble as a dead leaf, and as a dead leaf be borne away on the
winds. And in this long continuance of winter, when already spring
should have awakened the earth with its glad shout, they saw in figure
the winter of the gods; and when winter should cease and spring come,
even so would come in the fulness of time now nigh the upspringing
of men, in which should be forgotten the winter of the gods. For the
finger of fate pointed to the new time, when Walhalla should be shaken
and fall, and men should be slaves no longer to the early outworn gods,
but possess the earth in peace and plenty.

Yet still in mid-May the storms of winter were not spent; still the
sap of growing things stayed and stirred not in the barren branches
of the forest trees. And winter still froze and hardened in the heart
of Sieglinde the wife of Hunding. Though she had been long his wife,
yet she was still young, and her woman's heart hungered for love, and
starved for a man she could love, but froze again ever into ice at the
sight of her lord. Unwittingly and by compulsion of her kindred and his
she had married him; hate blossomed in her heart where the flower of
love should have made fragrance, and in all but deed she was unfaithful
to him. Day by day she did the work of a wife; she made his food for
him before he went out to the hunt, whether it was the deer he hunted
to make venison, or man that he hunted for vengeance, for he was of the
tribe of the Nied