In light of Louis Proyect's message about Wagner's _Der Ring des Niebelungen_, I would note the deep parallels between that tale and the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Lord of the Rings_, which I am noting once again as I am in the midst of reading that particular work to my nine year old daughter. I understand that this parallelism was pointed out to Tolkien, but that he firmly rejected the idea of either any direct influence or even of a parallelism. Their may have been no direct influence, although there certainly was an indirect one in that Tolkien was heavily influenced by a variety of medieval epics and poetry by the Norse, the Germanic, the Welsh, and the Finns, but the parallelisms are certainly there, ranging from the role of the dwarves to the nature of the Ring of Power itself. Barkley Rosser
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu