Valkyr, Wotan's daughter, contrary to his instructions, had protected
Siegmund in a quarrel which resulted in his death, and was condemned
by the irate god to fall into a deep sleep upon a rock surrounded by
flames, where she was to remain until a hero should appear bold enough
to break through the wall of fire and awaken her. Siegfried rescues
her. She wakens into the full consciousness of passionate love, and
yields herself to the hero, who presents her with the ring, but not
before it has worked its curse upon him, so that he, faithless even in
his faithfulness, wounds her whom he deeply loves, and drives her from
him. Meanwhile Gunther, Gutrune, and their half-brother Hagen conspire
to obtain the ring from Brünnhilde and to kill Siegfried. Through the
agency of a magic draught he is induced to desert her, after once more
getting the ring. He then marries Gutrune. The curse soon reaches its
consummation. One day, while traversing his favorite forests on a
hunting expedition, he is killed by Hagen, with Gunther's connivance.
The two murderers then quarrel for the possession of the ring, and
Gunther is slain. Hagen attempts to wrest it from the dead hero's
finger, but shrinks back terrified as the hand is raised in warning.
Brünnhilde now appears, takes the ring, and proclaims herself his true
wife. 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.

Such are the outlines of this great story, which will be told more in
detail when we come to examine the component parts of the trilogy. Dr.
Ludwig Nohl, in his admirable sketch of the Nibelungen poem, as Wagner
adapted it, gives us a hint of some of its inner meanings in the