Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/183

Rh not of the blood-royal, this young nobleman entertained a sacrilegious love for a daughter of the Inca named Cusi Coyllur, or the 'joyful star.' The play opens with a dialogue between Ollantay and his servant Piqui Chaqui, a witty and facetious lad whose punning sallies form the comic vein which runs through the piece. Their talk is of Ollantay's love for the princess, and to them enters the High Priest of the Sun, who, by performing a miracle, endeavours to dissuade the audacious warrior from his forbidden love.

In the second scene the princess herself laments to her mother the absence of Ollantay. The Inca Pachacuti enters, and expresses warm affection for his child. Two songs are introduced, the first being a harvest song with a chorus threatening the birds that rob the corn, and the second a mournful love elegy.

The lover presses his suit upon the Inca in the third scene, and is scornfully repulsed. He bursts out into open defiance in a soliloquy of great force. Then there is an amusing dialogue with Piqui Chaqui, and another love song concludes the act. Ollantay collects an army of Antis, and occupies the impregnable fortress in the valley of the Vilcamayu, since called Ollantay-tampu, accompanied by two other chiefs named Urco Huaranca and Hanco Huayllu. Meanwhile Cusi Coyllur gave birth to a female child named Yma Sumac (How beautiful), a crime for which she was immured in a dungeon by her enraged father, the Inca Pachacuti.