, how will he slay the dragon, if he learns fear from
him? How will he obtain the Ring for me? Accursed dilemma! Here
am I fast caught, unless I find me wise counsel how to bring under
compulsion the fearless one himself...." "Quick, Mime!" Siegfried
interrupts Mime's meditations; "what is the name of the sword which
I have ground into filings?" "Nothung is the name of the notable
sword; your mother gave me the information." Siegfried at work
falls to lusty singing, a song of primitive character, of a kind
with what one can suppose Tubal-cain singing at his ancient anvil.
We see him pumping the forge-bellows while the steel melts, pouring
the metal into a mould, cooling the mould in a water-trough, breaking
the plaster, heating the sword, hammering the red blade, cooling
it again, riveting the handle, polishing the whole,--all of which
actions his song celebrates: "Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword!
(_Neidliches Schwert_ is literally "covetable sword") Why must
you of old be shattered? To powder I have ground your sharp
magnificence. I now melt the filings in the crucible. Hoho! Hoho!
Hahei! Hahei! Blow, bellows, brighten the glow! Wild in the forest
grew a tree. I hewed it down, I burned the brown ash to charcoal.
It lies heaped now on the hearth. The coals of the tree, how bravely
they burn, how bright and clear they glow! Upward they fly in a
spray of sparks and melt the steel-dust. Nothung! Nothung! Notable
sword! Your powdered steel is melting, in your own sweat you are
swimming, soon I shall swing you as my sword!"

Mime during this has been revolving his own problem, and has hit
upon a plan which seems to him to meet all the difficulties of
his case: Siegfried, beyond a doubt, will forge the sword and kill
Fafner. While he is tired and heated from the encounter, Mime will
offer him a drink brewed from simples of his culling, a few drops
of which will plunge the boy into deep sleep, when, with the weapon
he is at this moment forging, Mime will clear him out of the way and
take possession of Ring and treasure. Enchanted with his inspiration,
he sets to work at once preparing the somniferous drink.

Siegfried is singing at the top of his lungs: "In the water flowed
the stream of fire, it hissed aloud in anger, but the cold tamed
and chilled it; in the water it flows no more, stiff and hard it
is become, the lordly steel--but hot blood will bathe it soon.
Now sweat again that I may forge you, Nothung, notable sword!"