At noon on the next day Siegfried arrives alone on the banks of the Rhine, in search of a quarry which has escaped him.  The Rhine daughters, who concealed it purposely in hopes of recovering their ring, rise up out of the water, and swimming gracefully around promise to help him recover his game if he will only give them his ring.  Siegfried, who attaches no value whatever to the trinket, but wishes to tease them, refuses it at first; but when they change their bantering into a prophetic tone and try to frighten him by telling him the ring will prove his bane unless he intrust it to their care, he proudly answers that he has never yet learned to fear, and declares he will keep it, and see whether their prediction will be fulfilled:—­

   ’My sword once splintered a spear;—­
    The endless coil
    Of counsel of old,
    Wove they with wasting
    Curses its web;
    Norns shall not cover from Nothung! 
    One warned me beware
    Of the curse a Worm;
    But he failed to make me to fear,—­
    The World’s riches
    I won with a ring,
    That for love’s delight
    Swiftly I’d leave;
    I’ll yield it for sweetness to you;
    But for safety of limbs and of life,—­
    Were it not worth
    Of a finger’s weight,—­
    No ring from me you will reach!’

The Rhine maidens then bid him farewell, and swim away repeating their ominous prophecy.  After they have gone, the hunting party appear, heralded by the merry music of their horns.  All sit down to partake of the refreshments that have been brought, and as Siegfried has provided no game, he tries to do his share by entertaining them with tales of his early youth.

After telling them of his childhood spent in Mime’s forge, of the welding of Nothung and the slaying of Fafnir, he describes how a mere taste of the dragon’s blood enabled him to understand the songs of the birds.  Encouraged by Hagen, he next relates the capture of the tarn-helm and ring, and then, draining his horn in which Hagen has secretly poured an antidote to the draught of forgetfulness administered by Gutrune, he describes his departure in quest of the sleeping Walkyrie and his first meeting with Brunhilde.  At the mere mention of her name, all the past returns to his mind.  He suddenly remembers all her beauty and love, and starts wildly to his feet, but only to be pierced by the spear of the treacherous Hagen, who had stolen behind him to drive it into his heart.

The dying hero makes one last vain effort to avenge himself, then sinks feebly to the earth, while Hagen slips away, declaring that the perjurer had fully deserved to be slain by the weapon upon which he had sworn his false oath.  Gunther, sorry now that it is too late, bends sadly over the prostrate hero, who, released from the fatal effects of Gutrune’s draught, speaks once more of his beloved Brunhilde, and fancies he is once more clasped in her arms as of old.