A whelp from its mother
I never took.
But where hast thou, Mime,
A wife dear and loving,
That I may call her mother?
MIME [Angrily.
What dost thou mean?
Fool, thou art mad!
Art thou then a bird or a fox?
SIEGFRIED
When I was a babe
Thou wert my nurse,
Made the mite clothing
To keep him warm;
But tell me, whence
Did the tiny mite come?
Could babe without mother
Be born to thee?
MIME [Greatly embarrassed.
Thou must always
Trust what I tell thee.
I am thy father
And mother in one.
SIEGFRIED
Thou liest, filthy old fright!
The resemblance 'twixt child and parent
I often have seen for myself.
I came to the limpid brook,
And the beasts and the trees
I saw reflected;
Sun and clouds too,
Just as they are,
Were mirrored quite plain in the stream.
I also could spy
This face of mine,
And quite unlike thine
Seemed it to me;
As little alike
As a fish to a toad:
And when had fish toad for its father?
MIME [Very angrily.
How canst thou talk
Such terrible stuff?
SIEGFRIED [With increasing animation.
Listen! At last
I understand
What in vain I pondered so long:
Why I roam the woods
And run to escape thee,
Yet return home in the end.
[He springs up.
I cannot go till thou tell me
What father and mother were mine.
MIME
What father? What mother?
Meaningless questions!
SIEGFRIED
[Springs upon Mime, and seizes him by the throat.
To answer a question
Thou must be caught first;
Willingly
Thou never wilt speak;
Thou givest nothing
Unless forced to.
How to talk
I hardly had learned
Had it not by force
Been wrung from the wretch.
Come, out with it,
Mangy old scamp!
Who are my father and mother?
MIME
[After making signs with his head and hands, is released by Siegfried.
Dost want to kill me outright!
Hands off, and the facts thou shalt hear,
As far as known to myself.
O ungrateful
And graceless child,