III

A rocky and wooded valley opening on the Rhine. It is part of the

region over-ranged by the hunting-party of Hagen's devising. The

horns of the hunters are heard in the distance,--Siegfried's horn-call

among them, and Hagen's.

Our old acquaintances, the Rhine-daughters, rise to the surface of

the water. They have warning or scent that Siegfried is not far,

with the Ring, their stolen gold. They complain in their undulating

song of the darkness now in the deep, where of old it was light,

when the gold was there to shine for them. Notwithstanding their

loss, they are little less full of their fun than before; they

splash and frolic in the water and with their voices copy the crystal

play of the river. They pray the sun to send their way the hero

who shall give them back the gold, after which they will regard

without envy the sun's luminous eye! Siegfried's horn is heard.

Recognising it as that of the hero who interests them, they dive

under to consult together,--concerning the best method, of course,

of extracting from him the Ring.

Siegfried comes to the edge of the bank overhanging the river, in

search of tracks of his game, mysteriously lost. He is blaming some

wood-imp for playing him a trick, when the Rhine-daughters, rising

into sight, hail him by name. They adopt with him the playful, teasing

tone of pretty girls with a likely-looking young fellow: "What are

you grumbling into the ground?.... What imp excites your ire?...

Has a water-sprite bothered you?... Tell us, Siegfried, tell us!"

He watches them, smiling, and replies in their own vein: "Have you

charmed into your dwellings the shaggy fellow who disappeared from

my sight? If he is your sweetheart, far be it from me, you merry

ladies, to deprive you of him!" They laugh loud and long, the

Rhine-nymphs. "What will you give us, Siegfried, if we find your

game for you?" "I have so far no fruit of my chase. You must tell

me what you would like!" "A golden ring gleams on your finger..."

suggests Wellgunde, and, unable to restrain their eagerness, the

three cry out in a voice: "Give us that!" He considers the Ring a

moment. "A gigantic dragon I slew for the ring, and I am to part

with it in exchange for the paws of a worthless bear?" "Are you so

niggardly?... So higgling at a bargain?... You should be generous

to ladies!..." they shame him one after the other. With perfect

good humour, he offers as a better objection: "Were I to waste

my property on you, my wife, I suspect, would find fault." "She

is a shrew, no doubt?... I dare say she beats you.... The hero

has a presentiment of the weight of her hand!..." They laugh

immoderately. "Laugh away!" the hero laughs with them, but, not

to be compelled by their derision: "I shall none the less leave

you to disappointment, for the ring which you covet no teasing

shall get for you!" The wily maidens do not take this up, but,

turning from him, permit him to overhear the remarks about him

which they exchange among themselves: "So handsome! So strong!...

So fitted to inspire love!... What a pity that he is a miser!"

With shouts of laughter they duck under.

Siegfried turns away, untroubled, and descends further into the

narrow valley. But their words have not quite glanced off him.

"Why do I suffer such a mean report of myself? Shall I lend myself

to gibes of the sort? If they should come again to the water's

edge, the ring they might have!" Too large to feel demeaned by an

inconsistency, he shouts to them: "Hey, you lively water-beauties!

Come quickly! I make you a gift of the ring!" Taking it off, he holds

it toward them. This is the point in his fortunes where we perceive

the working of Siegfried's fate. If the nymphs, as one would have

felt safe in counting upon their doing, had risen and caught the

Ring from him with a laugh louder than any before, all might have

been well. Hagen would have had nothing to gain by killing him.

But the curse which doomed the owner of the Ring to a bloody end

would not have it so. It had been crippled, it is true, against the

noble one; it had failed to make him suspicious, sad, and careful.

But his violent death we see provided for when, by what seems the

merest hazard, his offer of the Ring to the Rhine-maidens is not

accepted on the expected terms. The sisters rise to his call, but

instead of faces dancing with laughter they show him grave and

warning countenances. Their subaqueous deliberations have resulted

in a most ill-inspired change of tactics. Instead of snatching at

the proffered Ring and glad to have it, they represent to Siegfried

that he will be under an obligation to them for ridding him of it.

His mood of giving is changed by a threat into one of refusal.

"Keep it, hero, and guard it with care, until you become aware of

the evil fate you are cherishing under its shape. Then you will

be glad if we will deliver you from the curse!" He slips back the

Ring on his finger and bids them tell what they know. "Siegfried!

We know of evil threatening you! To your danger you retain the

Ring! Out of the Rhine-gold it was forged; he who shaped it and

miserably lost it, placed a curse upon it long ago, that it should

bring death upon him who wore it. As you slew the dragon, even

so shall you be slain, and this very day, of this we warn you,

unless you give us the Ring to bury in the deep Rhine; its water

alone can allay the curse!" "You artful ladies," the hero shakes

his head, "let be that policy! If I hardly trusted your flatteries,

your attempt to alarm me deceives me still less...." When more

impressively still they reiterate their warning, protesting their

truth, urging the irresistible strength of the curse woven by the

Norns into the coil of the eternal law, he answers, and the nature

against which the curse had so long been of no effect shows brightly

forth in the brief tirade: "My sword once cleft asunder a spear.

The eternal coil of the law, whatever wild curses they have woven

into it, the Norns shall see cut through by Nothung. A dragon once

upon a time did of a truth warn me of the curse, but he could not

teach me to fear! Though the whole world might be gained to me by

a ring, for love I would willingly cede it; you should have it

if you gave me delight. But if you threaten me in life and limb,

though the ring should not enclose the worth of a finger, not by

any force could you get it from me! For life and limb, if I must

live loveless and a slave to fear,--life and limb, look you, like

this I cast them far away from me!" He takes up and flings a clod

of earth over his shoulder. The Rhine-daughters in agitation press

him still for a moment with warnings; but, realising the futility

of these, with the prophecy: "A proud woman will this very day

inherit of you; she will lend a more heedful ear to our warning!"

they finally swim away, as they announce: "To her! To her! To her!"

Their singing floats back, dying away, a long time after they have

taken their leave; Siefgried stands watching them out of sight,

amused: "In water as on land I have now learned the ways of women;

if a man resist their cajoling, they try threats with him; if he

boldly brave these, let him look for scorn and reproaches! And

yet--were it not for my truth to Gutrune, one of those dainty

water-women I should have liked to tame!"

The horns of the hunting-party are heard approaching. Siegfried

shouts in answer to their shouts. When Hagen and Gunther come in

sight, he calls to them to join him down there where it is fresh

and cool. The company with their freight of game descend into the

shady gorge, to camp for an hour. The wine-skins and drink-horns

are passed. Siegfried, questioned by Hagen of his fortune at the

chase, jestingly gives his account: "I came forth for forest-hunting,

but water-game was all that presented itself. Had I had a mind

to it, three wild water-birds I might have caught for you, who

sang to me, there on the Rhine, that I should be slain to-day!"

Never had he spoken with a more unclouded brow. Gunther starts at

his words and glances apprehensively at Hagen. Siegfried stretches

out contentedly between them, the ample sunshine in his blood,

and remembers that he is thirsty. Hagen treats the evil prophecy

as lightly as does Siegfried himself. In not unnatural sequence

to Siegfried's reference to the water-birds, he remarks: "I have

heard it reported, Siegfried, that you understand the language of

the birds. Is it true?" "I have not heeded their babble this many

a day--" Siegfried is saying, when Gunther's heavy and preoccupied

mien is borne upon him; he breaks off to reach him his drink-horn,

cheerily rallying him: "Drink, Gunther, drink! Your brother brings

it to you!" Gunther, oppressed by his dark doubt of Siegfried, is

not prompt in accepting the proffered cup. His reply obscurely

conveys his sense of some failure in their good-fellowship. Siegfried

takes it up merely to turn into occasion for one of his cordial

laughs. "You over-cheerful hero!" sighs Gunther. Something is wrong,

Siegfried cannot fail to see. He drops privately to Hagen his

interpretation of the friend's gloom: "Brünnhilde is giving him

trouble?" "If he understood her as well as you understand the song

of the birds!" Siegfried has an inspiration. Those last words of

Hagen's contain the germ of it. "Hei! Gunther!" he calls to the

blood-brother, who appears so sorely in need of cheering: "You

melancholy fellow! If you will thank me for it, I will sing you

tales from the days of my youth!"

Gunther's reply is politely encouraging. Hagen joins his invitation

to the half-brother's. The listeners place themselves at ease on

the ground about the narrator, seated in their midst on a mossy

stump. Then Siegfried, with his beautiful, bottomless zest in life,

recounts in vivid running sketches the story we know. One after

the other the familiar motifs pass in review. From them alone one

could reconstruct the tale. Of his childhood in Mime's cave, the

forging of Nothung, the slaying of the dragon. Of the wonder worked

by the drop of dragon's blood on the tongue, the little bird's good

counsel by which he won Tarnhelm and Ring, the same bird's warning

upon which he slew Mime. At this point, when we are wondering how,

with Brünnhilde wiped from his memory, he can proceed, Hagen hands

him a horn filled with wine, in which he has been seen expressing

the juice of an herb; this, the Nibelung's son, wise in the virtues

of simples, tells him, will sharpen his memory and bring close

remote events.

Siegfried takes the cup, but for a moment does not taste it, absorbed,

as is evident, in the effort to remember what came right after the

point in his story at which he just broke off. The forgetfulness-motif

suggests his baffled groping. Mechanically he sets the horn to

his lips--a strain of the tenderest and most ecstatic of the

Siegfried-Brünnhilde love-music marks the first effect of the draught

which dissolves the mists obscuring memory,--followed close by

the whole slowly unwinding Brünnhilde-motif. We feel as if we had

suddenly, with Siegfried, waked from a bad dream. We take a trembling

breath of relief at the weight removed from our heart.

A light of fixed joy grows and grows in Siegfried's face, as upon

this recovering of his true identity he takes up his story again:

"Wistfully I listened for the bird in the tree-tops. He sat there

still, and sang; 'Hei, Siegfried has slain the wicked dwarf! I

have in mind for him now the most glorious mate! On a high rock

she sleeps, a wall of flame surrounds her abode. If he should push

through the fire, if he should waken the bride, then were Brünnhilde

his own!'" Gunther hears in growing amazement. "Straightway,

unhesitating, I hastened forth. I reached the fire-girt rock. I

crossed the flaming barrier, and found in reward"--the memory holds

his breath suspended--a beautiful woman, asleep in a suit of gleaming

armour. I loosed the helmet from the glorious head; audaciously

with a kiss I waked the maid.... Oh, with what ardour did then

the arm of the lovely Brünnhilde enfold me!"

Gunther springs up in horrified comprehension. Two ravens at this

moment make sudden interruption, flying out of a tree and wheeling

above Siegfried's head. He starts up, in natural interest at the

apparition of Wotan's messengers. "Can you understand, too, the

croaking of these ravens?" sneers Hagen. Siegfried, looking after

the black birds as they bend their flight Rhine-wards, turns his

back to the questioner. "They bid me take vengeance!" Hagen grimly

interprets for himself, and with a quick thrust drives his spear

through Siegfried's body, from the back. Too late Gunther holds

his arm and the retainers spring to prevent him. Siegfried's eyes

flash wildly about for a weapon. He snatches up his great shield

and lifts it aloft to crush the perfidious enemy,--but his strength

fails, the shield drops, and he falls crashing backwards upon it.

"Hagen, what have you done?" comes accusingly from Gunther and

the men-of-arms, while a shudder runs through the assembly, and,

as one feels at the music's intimation, through the very heart

of nature. "Taken vengeance of perjury!" Hagen coldly replies,

and, turning from the group gathered around the dying hero, slowly

disappears in the gathering dusk. Gunther, seized with remorseful

anguish, bends over the wounded brother. Two of the company, aiding

his effort to rise, support him. It is clear at once that immediate

surroundings and recent events are blotted from his ken by the

brighter light of a remembered scene, filling the wide-open,

over-brilliant Wälsung-eyes. The music lets us into the secret

first of what it is--so absorbingly present to him in this last

hour: the moment marvellous among all in his existence, when he

had seen the sleeping Brünnhilde return to life. It is as if it

were all happening a second time, she having mysteriously since

that first awakening been again sunk into sleep, from which he

must now again recall her: "Brünnhilde, sacred bride... awake!...

Open your eyes.... Who sealed you again in sleep?... Who bound you

in joyless slumber? The Awakener is come. He kisses you awake....

He rends the confining bands... whereupon breaks forth upon him

the light of Brünnhilde's smile!... Oh, that eye, henceforth to

close no more!... Oh, the happy heaving of that breath!... Sweetest

languor, blissful darkness.... Brünnhilde welcomes me to her!..."

So he dies as he had lived, joyous and unafraid, the curse, while

having its way with him to the extent of securing his destruction,

crippled as ever before, when the death by which it would punish

is embraced like a bride.

For a long moment all stand motionless and heavily silent. It really

seems impossible that a spear-thrust could extinguish that

glowing,--that superabundant,--that splendid life. Night deepens.

At a sign from Gunther, the men lift the dead, laid upon his shield,

to their shoulders, and in solemn procession start upon the rocky

path homeward.

What is called Siegfried's funeral-march is, as it were, a funeral

oration spoken over him by a great voice, of one penetrated with

the sense of what he was and of earth's loss in him. "Listen! Listen

and shudder, all created things, and feel the shock, and measure

the magnitude, of your loss! Behold, he was brave among all heroes,

this Wälsung,--yet tender, too. He was the child of the love of two

beautiful, unhappy beings, and, a glory to them, he became--Siegfried,

the most exalted hero of the world! Mourn for him heroically, not

with tears, but battle-shouts, in keeping with his greatness!"

The moon breaks through the clouds and showers spectral light upon

the funeral train slowly moving up the hillside. Night-mists rise

from the Rhine and gradually blot out the scene.

When the mists disperse we find ourselves once more in the Hall

of the Gibichungen, where Gutrune, troubled by the tardiness of

the hunters in returning, strains her hearing for Siegfried's horn.

Bad dreams have disturbed her sleep, and the wild neighing of Grane,

and the sound of Brünnhilde laughing in the solitary night. "I

fear Brünnhilde!" she confesses to herself. Yet, in need of

companionship in her anxiety, she calls at the sister-in-law's

door; receiving no answer, she looks in. The room is empty. It

must have been Brünnhilde, then, whom she saw striding down to the

bank of the Rhine, unable, like herself, to sleep.

Hearing a stir, she again listens intently for Siegfried's horn.

Not that, but Hagen's lugubrious Hoiho! comes to her ear: "Hoiho!

Awake! Lights! Bright torches! We bring home spoils of the chase!"

He appears in advance of the party thus announced. "Up, Gutrune!

Welcome Siegfried, the strong hero returning home!" She is

frightened--the fact is to her so significant of not having heard

his horn. As the confused train accompanying the slain hero pours

into the hall, Hagen's exultation can no longer contain itself,

and, negligent of all suitable appearance of concern for Gutrune's

sorrow, he announces the death of her beloved with all the gloating

glee he feels: "The pallid hero, no more shall he blow the horn,

no more storm forth either to chase or to battle, nor sue ever

more for fair women!" They bring in the body, they set down the

bier. "The victim of a wild boar, Siegfried, your dead lord!" With

a shriek Gutrune falls fainting upon the inanimate form. Gunther

tries to comfort her, clearing himself, accusing Hagen: "He is

the accursed boar who slew the noble one!" "Yes, I killed him!"

boldly boasts Hagen, so near the attainment of his object that

he is careless of all else; "I, Hagen, struck him dead! He was

reserved for my spear, by which he swore his false oath. I have

earned the sacred right to his spoils, wherefore--I demand that

Ring!" "Back!" shouts Gunther, as Hagen approaches to take it.

"What belongs to me, you shall never touch! Dare you lay hands on

Gutrune's inheritance?" But Hagen, in his new mood, is quick of

his hands as earlier of his wits. He draws his sword and without

further parley attacks Gunther. The fight is short, Gunther falls.

He had been the claimant of the Ring but a few hours. Hagen hurries

to the bier to snatch his prey from Siegfried's finger. The dead

hand is slowly raised... and threateningly warns off the robber.

Hagen drops back.

In the stillness of horror which succeeds the loud outcry of the

women at the portent, a solemn figure parts the crowd and strides

slowly forward--Brünnhilde, to whom the passing hours have restored

calm, and to whom meditation has brought light.

She knows now what she should think, and what there remains to do.

Gutrune, hearing her voice, raises her own to accuse her of all

this woe overtaking them: "You--you incited the men against him--woe

that you should ever have entered this house!" "Hush! pitiable

girl!" Brünnhilde checks her, without anger. "You never were his

wedded wife; as his paramour you ensnared his affections. The mate

of his manhood am I, to whom he vowed eternal vows, before ever

he saw you!" Gutrune upon this, apprehending all, curses Hagen

who had given her the evil drink through which Siegfried had been

made to forget his former love.

A long space Brünnhilde stands in contemplation of Siegfried's

face, gazing with changing emotions, from passionate sorrow to

solemn exultation. She turns at length to the vassals and commands

them to build a great funeral pile. High and bright let the flames

leap which shall devour the noble body. Let them bring Grane, that

he with herself may follow the hero, whose honours her own body

yearns to share. While they are fulfilling her wish, she falls once

more into rapt study of the dead face, her own face becoming gentler

and gentler, as clearer and clearer understanding comes to her of

him and all that had happened. Her features appear softly glorified

at last with the light of forgiveness and reconcilement--and she

speaks his praise and justification: "Clear as the sun his light

shines upon me. He was the truest of all, this one who betrayed

me!" As an instance of his truth she quotes the incident of the

sword, placed, in loyalty to his friend, between himself and his own

beloved, "alone dear to him." "Vows more true than his were never

vowed by any; no one more faithfully than he observed a covenant; no

other ever loved with a love so unalloyed; and yet all vows, all

covenants, all obligations of love, were betrayed by him as never

by man before! Do you know how this came to be?..." The dealing with

her of Wotan she recognises in these extreme calamities falling

upon her; she must suffer all this to be brought, blind one, to a

comprehension of that which was demanded of her, which she had so

haughtily refused to consider when Waltraute pleaded for the gods.

She bows now under his heavy hand, but not without reproach and

arraignment: "Oh you, holy guardians of vows! Turn your eyes upon

my broad-blown woe: behold your eternal guilt! Hear my accusation,

most high god! Through his bravest action, desired by you and of

use to you, you devoted him who performed it to dark powers of

destruction...." (The old story of the Ring!) "By the truest of

all men born must I be betrayed, that a woman might grow wise!...

And have I understood at last what it is you want of me?... Aye,

of everything, of everything, everything, I have understanding!

All has in this hour become clear to me.... I hear the rustling,

too, of your ravens: with the message so fearfully yearned for

I send them both home.... Be at rest, be at rest, you god!" The

tone of these last words is that of the old Brünnhilde once more,

the tender daughter pitying her father's sorrows. Yes, let him be

at rest, for the Ring shall go back to the Rhine, to obtain which

result her dearest happiness has been sacrificed. She takes it from

Siegfried's finger, and places it--Siegfried's love-token, not to

be yielded up while she lives--upon her own. The Rhine-daughters,

when the funeral pile has burned to the ground, shall take it from

her ashes. She has had conversation in the night with the wise

sisters of the deep; no fear but that they will be at hand.

And is that what will be Brünnhilde's prophesied world-delivering

act? Restoring the Ring to the Rhine, thus saving the world definitely

from Alberich and the army of the night? Or can we suppose it to

be the act which she accomplishes in the same stroke,--the act of

plunging into their twilight the whole tribe of the tired unjust

gods, so long now tremulously awaiting their end? Or, is the latter

act Brünnhilde's supreme vengeance? Or,--this seems more likely,--an

act of supreme benevolence, the result of at last understanding

"everything, everything, everything!"?

The funeral pile decked with precious covers and flowers stands

ready, Siegfried's body upon it. Brünnhilde seizes a torch from

one of the attendants: "Fly home, you ravens, report to your master

what you have heard here by the shore of the Rhine! Pass, on your

way, near to Brünnhilde's rock: direct Loge, who is still smouldering

there, to Walhalla. For the dawn is now breaking of the end of the

gods! Thus do I hurl a burning brand into Walhalla's flaunting

citadel!" She sets fire with these words to the pyre, which rapidly

blazes up. Wotan's ravens are seen slowly flapping off toward the

horizon. Brünnhilde takes Grane from the young men holding him,

and, with all the joy now again in her voice, face, and words,

which illuminated the moment of her first union, long ago, with the

then so youthful and ingenuous Awakener, she rushes to be reunited

to him in death, springing with her jubilant Valkyrie-cry upon

Grane and with him plunging into the flames.

The fire flares doubly brilliant and high; the red glare of it

fills the whole scene. It becomes evident suddenly that the Hall of

the Gibichungen is burning. The people huddle together in terror.

When the funeral pile sinks to a heap, the Rhine is seen flooding in

upon the embers. Hagen, eagerly on the watch for his last chance,

beholds with the insanity of despair the Rhine-daughters rise from

the waves close beside the site of the pyre. Hurling from him shield

and spear, he dashes into the water to thrust them back. "Away

from the Ring!" Two of the jocose sisters for all reply entwine

their arms around his neck and draw him away and away with them

into the deep water. The third triumphantly holds up before his

eyes the recovered Ring.

As the fire dies among the blackened ruins of the Hall, and the

Rhine recedes into its boundaries, a red light breaks in the sky.

More and more brightly it glows, till Walhalla is discerned in its

central illumination, with its enthroned gods and heroes. Flames

are seen invading the stately hall. When the company of the Blessed

are completely wrapped in fire, the curtain falls.

The last word of the music is the exultant phrase by which Sieglinde

greeted the prophecy of Siegfried's birth. It has been woven all

through Brünnhilde's last ardently happy salutation to him, as

if in recognition of some mystical quality--in death--of birth.

So Wotan finds his rest, and the ill consequences at last end of

his unjust act--end with the reparation of the injustice, the return

of the gold to the Rhine. But has not the evil act been like the

Djinn of old, let out of the insignificant-looking urn, waxing

great, looming dark, and dictating hard terms! When Wotan in pride

of being committed it, against two simpletons, how could he have

divined that by this pin-point he set inexorable machinery moving

which should bring about his confusion, forcing him in its progress

to so many injustices more, injustices which his soul would loathe,

which would blight his best beloved, which would by far be his

greatest punishment!... The Trilogy is moral as a tract.