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The musical fabric is enormously elaborate and gorgeous; but you cannot say, as you must in witnessing The Rhine Gold, The Valkyries, and the first two acts of Siegfried, that you have never seen anything like it before, and that the inspiration is entirely original. Not only the action, but most of the poetry, might conceivably belong to an Elizabethan drama.
Brynhild snatches the fragments of the broken sword, and flies, carrying off the woman with her on her war-horse; and Wotan, in terrible wrath, slays Hunding with a wave of his hand, and starts in pursuit of his disobedient daughter. The Third Act On a rocky peak, four of the Valkyries are waiting for the rest.
There are two motives in the story: the Swan-maids, and the Vengeance of the Captive Smith. Three brothers, Slagfinn, Egil and Völund, sons of the Finnish King, while out hunting built themselves a house by the lake in Wolfsdale. There, early one morning, they saw three Valkyries spinning, their swancoats lying beside them.
When this sacrifice to Wagner's scepticism as to the reality of any appeal to an audience that is not made through their bodily sense is omitted, the association of the theme with the sword is not formed until that point in the first act of The Valkyries at which Siegmund is left alone by Hunding's hearth, weaponless, with the assurance that he will have to fight for his life at dawn with his host.
Oh, but the valkyries will be busy tonight!" Ato and Odin led the rush down the stairs. There were only a dozen men below and they had already tired of warfare. Three fell and the others rushed off into the shadows. Ato's and Maya's fighters tumbled after them. There were only a few of the old people and children left.
And learned scholars will write tomes upon it, showing how many sentences there are in it ending with a punctuation mark; and old ladies and Methodist ministers will shake their heads over it and say: 'See what comes of not believing in Adam!" I walked on, singing the Ride of the Valkyries, the children staring at me, going to Sunday-school.
Thou wast there, Gizur the murderer, Ospakar's son! thou wast there, Swanhild the witch, Groa's daughter! thou wast there, Ketel Viking! with many another man; and there were we two also. Valkyries have kissed us and death draws near. Therefore, talk no more, but come and make an end. Greeting, Gizur, thou woman-murderer! Draw nigh! draw nigh! Out sword! up shield! and on, thou son of Ospakar!"
To the questioning Valkyries Brünnhilde gives in quick outline the story of her disobedience, and implores their help to save Sieglinde, for the Wälsungen all Wotan has threatened with destruction. She conjures them, too, to conceal herself, who has not the hardihood to face her father in the extremity of his indignation.
"What is that the Valkyries are saying?" asked the men and women in all the country round, and when they heard rightly, men left their labor and lay down to weep women dropped the buckets they were carrying to the well, and, leaning their faces over them, filled them with tears.
The third act shows the scene, a high rocky peak rising from among great pine-trees, where the Valkyries assemble for their return together to the hall of Wotan. On the clouds they come riding, each with a dead warrior laid across her steed.
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