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Updated: June 2, 2025
The chief nymphs are the Rhine-daughters, Flosshilda, Woglinda, and Wellgunda. There are nine Valkyrie, of whom Brunhild is the leading one. Wagner's story of the Ring may be summarized as follows: A hoard of gold exists in the depths of the Rhine, guarded by the innocent Rhine-maidens. Alberich, the dwarf, forswears love to gain this gold. He makes it into a magic ring.
Our precious gold!" Too late! Far, far below, they heard a laugh, the rough, rude laugh of Alberich, the dwarf. After that, when the Rhine-daughters came to the rock where the gold had been, they could not sing their happy song. Their faces were very sad now, and they said: "Oh, why did Alberich steal our beautiful gold?
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.
"Upon your hand, the ring that is the one! Listen to my counsel, for Wotan's sake cast it from you!" "The ring? Cast it from me?" "To the Rhine-daughters give it back!" "To the Rhine-daughters, I, this ring? Siegfried's love-token? Are you mad?" Brünnhilde is unshaken by Waltraute's insistence. Good or bad arguments have nothing to do with the case, as it stands in her feeling.
"Look!" whispered one. "What is that scowling at us from the rocks below?" There, stealing along the river-bed, they saw a hideous little black dwarf. "Who are you, and what do you want?" asked the Rhine-daughters. "I am Alberich," answered the dwarf as he tried to climb up on the slippery rocks. "I came from the kingdom of the Nibelungs, down under the earth." "What!" said the Rhine-daughters.
She mounts her steed, and dashes into the funeral pyre of Siegfried after returning the ring to the Rhine-daughters. This supreme act of immolation breaks forever the power of the gods, as is shown by the blazing Walhalla in the sky; but at the same time justice has been satisfied, reparation has been made for the original wrong, and the free will of man becomes established as a human principle.
Siegfried relates his adventure with the Rhine-daughters, and when Hagen asks him if it is true that he can understand the language of the birds, he tells the whole story of his life in the "Rheinfahrt," a song built up of all the motives which have been heard in the "Siegfried" division, the melody of the sword, the stir of the woods, the song of the mysterious bird, Mime's enticement, the love of Brünnhilde, and the flaming fire following each other in rapid and brilliant succession through the measures of the picturesque description.
"My promise then stands in bad case, which I made to the Rhine-daughters when they turned to me in their trouble." Wotan, with the coldness of the Pharisee's "Look thou to that," replies, "Your promise does not bind me. The ring, my capture, I shall keep." "But you will have to lay it down with the ransom," Fafner insists.
Then comes the end. The body of Siegfried is burned on a funeral pyre, a grand funeral march is heard, and Brunhild rides into the flames and sacrifices herself for love's sake; the ring goes back to the Rhine-daughters; and the old world of the gods of Valhalla, of passion and sin is burnt up with flames, for the gods have broken moral law, and coveted power rather than love, gold rather than truth, and therefore must perish.
I do not want to hear the wailing of the Rhine-daughters." Wotan called back to his anxious family: "Only wait till evening and I promise I shall bring your lost youth back to you." "Far, far below the ground are gloomy depths, A mighty cavern, rocky, dark and vast."
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