The third act shows a rocky mountain-top in storm and tempest. One by one the Valkyries appear riding on their horses through the driving clouds. Last comes Brünnhilde, with the terrified and despairing Sieglinde. Sieglinde wishes to die, but Brünnhilde entreats her to live for the sake of her child that is to be, and giving her the splintered fragments of Siegmund's sword, bids her escape to the forest, where Fafner watches over his treasure. The voice of the wrathful Wotan is now heard in the distance. He appears, indignant at Brünnhilde's disobedience, dismisses the other Valkyries, and tells Brünnhilde what her punishment is to be. She is to be banished from the sisterhood of Valkyries, and Valhalla is to know her no more. Thrown into a deep sleep, she shall lie upon the mountain-top, to be the bride of the first man who finds and wakens her. Brünnhilde pleads passionately for a mitigation of the cruel sentence, or at least that a circle of fire shall be drawn around her resting-place, so that none but a hero of valour and determination can hope to win her. Moved by her entreaties, Wotan consents. He kisses her fondly to sleep, and lays her gently upon a mossy couch, covered with her shield. Then he strikes the earth with his spear, calling on the fire-god Loge. Tongues of fire spring up around them, and leaving her encircled with a rampart of flame, he passes from the mountain-top with the words, 'Let him who fears my spear-point never dare to pass through the fire.'
With 'Die Walküre' the human interest of 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' begins, and with it Wagner rises to greater heights than he could hope to reach in 'Das Rheingold.' In picturesque force and variety 'Die Walküre' does not yield to its predecessors, while the passion and beauty of the immortal tale of the Volsungs lifts it dramatically into a different world. 'Die Walküre' is the most generally popular of the four works which make up Wagner's great tetralogy, for the inordinate length of some of the scenes in the second act is amply atoned for by the immortal beauties of the first and third. Twenty years ago Wagner's enemies used to make capital out of the incestuous union of Siegmund and Sieglinde, but it is difficult to believe in the sincerity of their virtuous indignation. No sane person would conceivably attempt to judge the personages of the Edda by a modern code of ethics; nor could any one with even a smattering of the details of Greek mythology affect to regard such a union as extraordinary, given the environment in which the characters of Wagner's drama move. It may be noted in passing that 'Die Walküre' is the latest of Wagner's works in which the traces of his earlier manner are still perceptible. For the most part, as in all his later works, the score is one vast many-coloured web of guiding themes, 'a mighty maze, but not without a plan!' Here and there, however, occur passages, such as the Spring Song in the first act and the solemn melody which pervades Brünnhilde's interview with Siegmund in the second, which, beautiful in themselves as they are, seem reminiscent of earlier and simpler days, and scarcely harmonise with the colour scheme of the rest of the work.