Stories from Wagner

Stories From Wagner - is a book, which was published in 1905 and written by J. Walker McSpadden. Centuries before these stories were set to music in the soul of Richard Wagner, some of them were sung around crude fires by wild-looking men dressed in animal skins. They were repeated by word of mouth long before even the crudest art of writing was learned, and they were famous in different countries, although the stories often differed. For in those days people believed in spirits, good and evil, in giants, dwarfs, gods and goddesses. They told these stories to their children the way real history is taught today, and later legends were valued not only for their deep interest, but also because they showed how people lived and thought a long time ago, "while the world was in the making" . When Wagner, Germany's great musical dramatist, wrote his wonderful operas, he found that much of this rich material lay at his fingertips. Other parts Wagner adapted to suit his needs. And this is the form in which he used the tales used in the simple retelling in this volume: hence the propriety of the title, Stories From Wagner.