Mats Norrmann wrote: >Are you kidding man? Wagner had a great lot of humour, and that he >expressed in his works too. God, I am sorry! You are right: Wagner is a great humourist. Just listened to the Ring again today. Tremendous funny beginning: the Maidens singing "Weia! Wega" Goodness: Weia! Waga! And then: "Wagalaweia!" Fantastic! Wagalaweia! Now that's what I really call funny. Tremendous... (And please do not think strange words like these have anything to do with Medieval German. I did my thesis on Medieval German, you know. It is nothing but fantasy, unintentional funny fantasy. - A longer mail on the Ring's language will follow. - By the way: the Stabreim is nothing but a special form of the alliteration, and Wagner uses Stabreime en masse in the Ring. "Walle zur Wiege" - that is a pure Stabreim as "Kind und Kegel" in Modern German.) Robert Peters [log in to unmask]