POPULAR TALES FROM THE NORSE

By

SIR GEORGE WEBBE DASENT

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON THE ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF POPULAR

TALES

Notice to the Second Edition

The first edition of these Tales being exhausted, and a demand having

arisen for a second, the Translator has thought it right to add

thirteen tales, which complete the translation of Asbjörnsen and

Moe's collection, and to strengthen the Introduction by working in

some new matter, and by working out some points which were only

slightly sketched in the first edition.

The favour with which the book was welcomed makes it almost a duty to

say a word here on the many kind and able notices which have been

written upon it. Duties are not always pleasant, but the fulfilment

of this at least gives no pain; because, without one exception, every

criticism which the Translator has seen has shown him that his prayer

for 'gentle' readers has been fully heard. It will be forgiven him,

he hopes, when he says that he has not seen good ground to change or

even to modify any of the opinions as to the origin and diffusion of

popular tales put forth in the first edition. Much indeed has been

said by others _for_ those views; what has been urged _against_

them, with all kindness and good humour, in one or two cases, has

not availed at all to weigh down mature convictions deliberately

expressed after the studies of years, backed as they are by the

researches and support of those who have given their lives to this

branch of knowledge.

And now, before the Translator takes leave of his readers for the

second time, he will follow the lead of the good godmother in one of

these Tales, and forbid all good children to read the two which stand

last in the book. There is this difference between him and the

godmother. She found her foster-daughter out as soon as she came

back. He will never know it, if any bad child has broken his behest.

Still he hopes that all good children who read this book will bear in

mind that there is just as much sin in breaking a commandment even

though it be not found out, and so he bids them good-bye, and feels

sure that no good child will dare to look into those two rooms. If,

after this warning, they peep in, they may perhaps see something

which will shock them.

'Why then print them at all?' some grown reader asks. Because this

volume is meant for you as well as for children, and if you have gone

ever so little into the world with open eyes, you must have seen,

yes, every day, things much more shocking. Because there is nothing

immoral in their spirit. Because they are intrinsically valuable, as

illustrating manners and traditions, and so could not well be left

out. Because they complete the number of the Norse originals, and

leave none untranslated. And last, though not least, because the

Translator hates family versions of anything, 'Family Bibles',

'Family Shakespeares'. Those who, with so large a choice of beauty

before them, would pick out and gloat over this or that coarseness or

freedom of expression, are like those who, in reading the Bible,

should always turn to Leviticus, or those whose Shakespeare would

open of itself at Pericles Prince of Tyre. Such readers the

Translator does not wish to have.

Notice to the First Edition

These translations from the _Norske Folkeeventyr_, collected

with such freshness and faithfulness by MM. Asbjörnsen and Moe, have

been made at various times and at long intervals during the last

fifteen years; a fact which is mentioned only to account for any

variations in style or tone--of which, however, the Translator is

unconscious--that a critical eye may detect in this volume. One of

them, _The Master Thief_, has already appeared in Blackwood's

Magazine for November 1851; from the columns of which periodical it

is now reprinted, by the kind permission of the Proprietors.

The Translator is sorry that he has not been able to comply with the

suggestion of some friends upon whose good-will he sets all store,

who wished him to change and soften some features in these tales,

which they thought likely to shock English feeling. He has, however,

felt it to be out of his power to meet their wishes, for the merit of

an undertaking of this kind rests entirely on its faithfulness and

truth; and the man who, in such a work, wilfully changes or softens,

is as guilty as he 'who puts bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter'.

Of this guilt, at least, the Translator feels himself free; and,

perhaps, if any, who may be inclined to be offended at first, will

take the trouble to read the Introduction which precedes and explains

the Tales, they may find, not only that the softening process would

have spoilt these popular traditions for all except the most childish

readers, but that the things which shocked them at the first blush,

are, after all, not so very shocking.

For the rest, it ill becomes him to speak of the way in which his

work has been done: but if the reader will only bear in mind that

this, too, is an enchanted garden, in which whoever dares to pluck a

flower, does it at the peril of his head; and if he will then read

the book in a merciful and tender spirit, he will prove himself what

the Translator most longs to find, 'a gentle reader', and both will

part on the best terms.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ORIGIN

DIFFUSION

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

NORSE POPULAR TALES

CONCLUSION

TALES

I TRUE AND UNTRUE

II WHY THE SEA IS SALT

III THE OLD DAME AND HER HEN

IV EAST O' THE SUN, AND WEST O' THE MOON

V BOOTS WHO ATE A MATCH WITH THE TROLL

VI HACON GRIZZLEBEARD

VII BOOTS WHO MADE THE PRINCESS SAY, 'THAT'S A STORY'

VIII THE TWELVE WILD DUCKS

IX THE GIANT WHO HAD NO HEART IN HIS BODY

X THE FOX AS HERDSMAN

XI THE MASTERMAID

XII THE CAT ON THE DOVREFELL

XIII PRINCESS ON THE GLASS HILL

XIV THE COCK AND HEN

XV HOW ONE WENT OUT TO WOO

XVI THE MASTER-SMITH

XVII THE TWO STEP-SISTERS

XVIII BUTTERCUP

XIX TAMING THE SHREW

XX SHORTSHANKS

XXI GUDBRAND ON THE HILL-SIDE

XXII THE BLUE BELT

XXIII WHY THE BEAR IS STUMPY-TAILED

XXIV NOT A PIN TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THEM

XXV ONE'S OWN CHILDREN ARE ALWAYS PRETTIEST

XXVI THE THREE PRINCESSES OF WHITELAND

XXVII THE LASSIE AND HER GODMOTHER

XXVIII THE THREE AUNTS

XXIX THE COCK, THE CUCKOO, AND THE BLACK-COCK

XXX RICH PETER THE PEDLAR

XXXI GERTRUDE'S BIRD

XXXII BOOTS AND THE TROLL

XXXIII GOOSEY GRIZZEL

XXXIV THE LAD WHO WENT TO THE NORTH WIND

XXXV THE MASTER THIEF

XXXVI THE BEST WISH

XXXVII THE THREE BILLY-GOATS GRUFF

XXXVIII WELL DONE AND ILL PAID

XXXIX THE HUSBAND WHO WAS TO MIND THE HOUSE

XL DAPPLEGRIM

XLI FARMER WEATHERSKY

XLII LORD PETER

XLIII THE SEVEN FOALS

XLIV THE WIDOW'S SON

XLV BUSHY BRIDE

XLVI BOOTS AND HIS BROTHERS

XLVII BIG PETER AND LITTLE PETER

XLVIII TATTERHOOD

XLIX THE COCK AND HEN THAT WENT TO THE DOVREFELL

L KATIE WOODENCLOAK

LI THUMBIKIN

LII DOLL I' THE GRASS

LIII THE LAD AND THE DELL

LIV THE COCK AND HEN A-NUTTING

LV THE BIG BIRD DAN

LVI SORIA MORIA CASTLE

LVII BRUIN AND REYNARD

LVIII TOM TOTHERHOUSE

LIX LITTLE ANNIE THE GOOSE GIRL

APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION TO APPENDIX

1. WHY THE JACK SPANIARD'S WAIST IS SMALL

2. ANANZI AND THE LION

3. ANANZI AND QUANQUA

4. THE EAR OF CORN AND THE TWELVE MEN

5. THE KING AND THE ANT'S TREE

6. THE LITTLE CHILD AND THE PUMPKIN TREE

7. THE BROTHER AND HIS SISTERS

8. THE GIRL AND THE FISH

9. THE LION, THE GOAT, AND THE BABOON

10. ANANZI AND BABOON

11. THE MAN AND THE DOUKANA TREE

12. NANCY FAIRY

13. THE DANCING GANG

FOOTNOTES TO INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

ORIGIN

The most careless reader can hardly fail to see that many of the

Tales in this volume have the same groundwork as those with which he

has been familiar from his earliest youth. They are Nursery Tales, in

fact, of the days when there were tales in nurseries--old wives'

fables, which have faded away before the light of gas and the power

of steam. It is long, indeed, since English nurses told these tales

to English children by force of memory and word of mouth. In a

written shape, we have long had some of them, at least, in English

versions of the _Contes de ma Mère l' Oye_ of Perrault, and the

_Contes de Fées_ of Madame D'Aulnoy; those tight-laced, high-

heeled tales of the 'teacup times' of Louis XIV and his successors,

in which the popular tale appears to as much disadvantage as an

artless country girl in the stifling atmosphere of a London theatre.

From these foreign sources, after the voice of the English reciter

was hushed--and it was hushed in England more than a century ago--our

great-grandmothers learnt to tell of Cinderella and Beauty and the

Beast, of Little Red Riding-hood and Blue Beard, mingled together in

the _Cabinet des Fées_ with Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin's

wondrous lamp; for that was an uncritical age, and its spirit

breathed hot and cold, east and west, from all quarters of the globe

at once, confusing the traditions and tales of all times and

countries into one incongruous mass of fable, as much tangled and

knotted as that famous pound of flax which the lassie in one of these

Tales is expected to spin into an even wool within four-and-twenty

hours. No poverty of invention or want of power on the part of

translators could entirely destroy the innate beauty of those popular

traditions; but here, in England at least, they had almost dwindled

out, or at any rate had been lost sight of as home-growths. We had

learnt to buy our own children back, disguised in foreign garb; and

as for their being anything more than the mere pastime of an idle

hour--as to their having any history or science of their own--such an

absurdity was never once thought of. It had, indeed, been remarked,

even in the eighteenth century--that dreary time of indifference and

doubt--that some of the popular traditions of the nations north of

the Alps contained striking resemblances and parallels to stories in

the classical mythology. But those were the days when Greek and Latin

lorded it over the other languages of the earth; and when any such

resemblance or analogy was observed, it was commonly supposed that

that base-born slave, the vulgar tongue, had dared to make a clumsy

copy of something peculiarly belonging to the twin tyrants who ruled

all the dialects of the world with a pedant's rod.

At last, just at the close of that great war which Western Europe

waged against the genius and fortune of the first Napoleon; just as

the eagle--Prometheus and the eagle in one shape--was fast fettered

by sheer force and strength to his rock in the Atlantic, there arose

a man in Central Germany, on the old Thuringian soil, to whom it was

given to assert the dignity of vernacular literature, to throw off

the yoke of classical tyranny, and to claim for all the dialects of

Teutonic speech a right of ancient inheritance and perfect freedom

before unsuspected and unknown. It is almost needless to mention this

honoured name. For the furtherance of the good work which he began

nearly fifty years ago, he still lives and still labours. There is no

spot on which an accent of Teutonic speech is uttered where the name

of Jacob Grimm is not a 'household word'. His General Grammar of all

the Teutonic Dialects from Iceland to England has proved the equality

of these tongues with their ancient classical oppressors. His

Antiquities of Teutonic Law have shown that the codes of the

Lombards, Franks, and Goths were not mere savage, brutal customaries,

based, as had been supposed, on the absence of all law and right. His

numerous treatises on early German authors have shown that the German

poets of the Middle Age, Godfrey of Strasburg, Wolfram von

Eschenbach, Hartman von der Aue, Walter von der Vogelweide, and the

rest, can hold their own against any contemporary writers in other

lands. And lastly, what rather concerns us here, his Teutonic

Mythology, his Reynard the Fox, and the collection of German Popular

Tales, which he and his brother William published, have thrown a

flood of light on the early history of all the branches of our race,

and have raised what had come to be looked on as mere nursery

fictions and old wives' fables--to a study fit for the energies of

grown men, and to all the dignity of a science.

In these pages, where we have to run over a vast tract of space, the

reader who wishes to learn and not to cavil--and for such alone this

introduction is intended--must be content with results rather than

processes and steps. To use a homely likeness, he must be satisfied

with the soup that is set before him, and not desire to see the bones

of the ox out of which it has been boiled. When we say, therefore,

that in these latter days the philology and mythology of the East and

West have met and kissed each other; that they now go hand and hand;

that they lend one another mutual support; that one cannot be

understood without the other,--we look to be believed. We do not

expect to be put to the proof, how the labours of Grimm and his

disciples on this side were first rendered possible by the linguistic

discoveries of Anquetil du Perron and others in India and France, at

the end of the last century; then materially assisted and furthered

by the researches of Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, and others, in

India and England during the early part of this century, and finally

have become identical with those of Wilson, Bopp, Lassen, and Max

Müller, at the present day. The affinity which exists in a

mythological and philological point of view between the Aryan or

Indo-European languages on the one hand, and the Sanscrit on the

other, is now the first article of a literary creed, and the man who

denies it puts himself as much beyond the pale of argument as he who,

in a religious discussion, should meet a grave divine of the Church

of England with the strict contradictory of her first article, and

loudly declare his conviction, that there was no God. In a general

way, then, we may be permitted to dogmatize, and to lay it down as a

law which is always in force, that the first authentic history of a

nation is the history of its tongue. We can form no notion of the

literature of a country apart from its language, and the

consideration of its language necessarily involves the consideration

of its history. Here is England, for instance, with a language, and

therefore a literature, composed of Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norse, and

Romance elements. Is not this simple fact suggestive of, nay, does it

not challenge us to, an inquiry into the origin and history of the

races who have passed over our island, and left their mark not only

on the soil, but on our speech? Again, to take a wider view, and to

rise from archaeology to science, what problem has interested the

world in a greater degree than the origin of man, and what toil has

not been spent in tracing all races back to their common stock? The

science of comparative philology--the inquiry, not into one isolated

language--for nowadays it may fairly be said of a man who knows only

one language that he knows none--but into all the languages of one

family, and thus to reduce them to one common centre, from which they

spread like the rays of the sun--if it has not solved, is in a fair

way of solving, this problem. When we have done for the various

members of each family what has been done of late years for the Indo-

European tongues, its solution will be complete. In such an inquiry

the history of a race is, in fact, the history of its language, and

can be nothing else; for we have to deal with times antecedent to all

history, properly so called, and the stream which in later ages may

be divided into many branches, now flows in a single channel.

From the East, then, came our ancestors, in days of immemorial

antiquity, in that gray dawn of time of which all early songs and

lays can tell, but of which it is as impossible as it is useless to

attempt to fix the date. Impossible, because no means exist for

ascertaining it; useless, because it is in reality a matter of utter

indifference, when, as this tell-tale crust of earth informs us, we

have an infinity of ages and periods to fall back on whether this

great movement, this mighty lust to change their seats, seized on the

Aryan race one hundred or one thousand years sooner or later. [1] But

from the East we came, and from that central plain of Asia, now

commonly called Iran. Iran, the habitation of the tillers and

_earers_ [2] of the earth, as opposed to Turan, the abode of

restless horse-riding nomads; of Turks, in short, for in their name

the root survives, and still distinguishes the great Turanian or

Mongolian family, from the Aryan, Iranian, or Indo-European race. It

is scarce worth while to inquire--even if inquiry could lead to any

result--what cause set them in motion from their ancient seats.

Whether impelled by famine or internal strife, starved out like other

nationalities in recent times, or led on by adventurous chiefs, whose

spirit chafed at the narrowness of home, certain it is that they left

that home and began a wandering westwards, which only ceased when it

reached the Atlantic and the Northern Ocean. Nor was the fate of

those they left behind less strange. At some period almost as remote

as, but after, that at which the wanderers for Europe started, the

remaining portion of the stock, or a considerable offshoot from it,

turned their faces east, and passing the Indian Caucasus, poured

through the defiles of Affghanistan, crossed the plain of the Five

Rivers, and descended on the fruitful plains of India. The different

destiny of these stocks has been wonderful indeed. Of those who went

west, we have only to enumerate the names under which they appear in

history--Celts, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Slavonians--to see and to

know at once that the stream of this migration has borne on its waves

all that has become most precious to man. To use the words of Max

Müller: 'They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of

history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of

active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected

society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of

art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of

philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic

and Mongolian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of

history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the

world together by the chains of civilization, commerce, and

religion.' We may add, that though by nature tough and enduring, they

have not been obstinate and self-willed; they have been distinguished

from all other nations, and particularly from their elder brothers

whom they left behind, by their common sense, by their power of

adapting themselves to all circumstances, and by making the best of

their position; above all, they have been teachable, ready to receive

impressions from without, and, when received, to develop them. To

show the truth of this, we need only observe, that they adopted

Christianity from another race, the most obstinate and stiff-necked

the world has ever seen, who, trained under the Old Dispensation to

preserve the worship of the one true God, were too proud to accept

the further revelation of God under the New, and, rejecting their

birth-right, suffered their inheritance to pass into other hands.

Such, then, has been the lot of the Western branch, of the younger

brother, who, like the younger brother whom we shall meet so often in

these Popular Tales, went out into the world, with nothing but his

good heart and God's blessing to guide him; and now has come to all

honour and fortune, and to be a king, ruling over the world. He went

out and _did_. Let us see now what became of the elder brother,

who stayed at home some time after his brother went out, and then

only made a short journey. Having driven out the few aboriginal

inhabitants of India with little effort, and following the course of

the great rivers, the Eastern Aryans gradually established themselves

all over the peninsula; and then, in calm possession of a world of

their own, undisturbed by conquest from without, and accepting with

apathy any change of dynasty among their rulers, ignorant of the past

and careless of the future, they sat down once for all and

_thought_--thought not of what they had to do here, that stern

lesson of every-day life which neither men nor nations can escape if

they are to live with their fellows, but how they could abstract

themselves entirely from their present existence, and immerse

themselves wholly in dreamy speculations on the future. Whatever they

may have been during their short migration and subsequent settlement,

it is certain that they appear in the Vedas--perhaps the earliest

collection which the world possesses--as a nation of philosophers.

Well may Professor Müller compare the Indian mind to a plant reared

in a hot-house, gorgeous in colour, rich in perfume, precocious and

abundant in fruit; it may be all this, 'but will never be like the

oak, growing in wind and weather, striking its roots into real earth,

and stretching its branches into real air, beneath the stars and sun

of Heaven'; and well does he also remark, that a people of this

peculiar stamp was never destined to act a prominent part in the

history of the world; nay, the exhausting atmosphere of

transcendental ideas could not but exercise a detrimental influence

on the active and moral character of the Hindoos. [3]

In this passive, abstract, unprogressive state, they have remained

ever since. Stiffened into castes, and tongue-tied and hand-tied by

absurd rites and ceremonies, they were heard of in dim legends by

Herodotus; they were seen by Alexander when that bold spirit pushed

his phalanx beyond the limits of the known world; they trafficked

with imperial Rome, and the later empire; they were again almost lost

sight of, and became fabulous in the Middle Age; they were

rediscovered by the Portuguese; they have been alternately peaceful

subjects and desperate rebels to us English; but they have been still

the same immovable and unprogressive philosophers, though akin to

Europe all the while; and though the Highlander, who drives his

bayonet through the heart of a high-caste Sepoy mutineer, little

knows that his pale features and sandy hair, and that dusk face with

its raven locks, both come from a common ancestor away in Central

Asia, many, many centuries ago.

But here arises the question, what interest can we, the descendants

of the practical brother, heirs to so much historical renown,

possibly take in the records of a race so historically characterless,

and so sunk in reveries and mysticism? The answer is easy. Those

records are written in a language closely allied to the primaeval

common tongue of those two branches before they parted, and

descending from a period anterior to their separation. It may, or it

may not, be the very tongue itself, but it certainly is not further

removed than a few steps. The speech of the emigrants to the west

rapidly changed with the changing circumstances and various fortune

of each of its waves, and in their intercourse with the aboriginal

population they often adopted foreign elements into their language.

One of these waves, it is probable, passing by way of Persia and Asia

Minor, crossed the Hellespont, and following the coast, threw off a

mighty rill, known in after times as Greeks; while the main stream,

striking through Macedonia, either crossed the Adriatic, or, still

hugging the coast, came down on Italy, to be known as Latins.

Another, passing between the Caspian and the Black Sea, filled the

steppes round the Crimea, and; passing on over the Balkan and the

Carpathians towards the west, became that great Teutonic nationality

which, under various names, but all closely akin, filled, when we

first hear of them in historical times, the space between the Black

Sea and the Baltic, and was then slowly but surely driving before

them the great wave of the Celts which had preceded them in their

wandering, and which had probably followed the same line of march as

the ancestors of the Greeks and Latins. A movement which lasted until

all that was left of Celtic nationality was either absorbed by the

intruders, or forced aside and driven to take refuge in mountain

fastnesses and outlying islands. Besides all these, there was still

another wave, which is supposed to have passed between the Sea of

Aral and the Caspian, and, keeping still further to the north and

east, to have passed between its kindred Teutons and the Mongolian

tribes, and so to have lain in the background until we find them

appearing as Slavonians on the scene of history. Into so many great

stocks did the Western Aryans pass, each possessing strongly-marked

nationalities and languages, and these seemingly so distinct that

each often asserted that the other spoke a barbarous tongue. But, for

all that, each of those tongues bears about with it still, and in

earlier times no doubt bore still more plainly about with it,

infallible evidence of common origin, so that each dialect can be

traced up to that primaeval form of speech still in the main

preserved in the Sanscrit by the Southern Aryan branch, who, careless

of practical life, and immersed in speculation, have clung to their

ancient traditions and tongue with wonderful tenacity. It is this

which has given such value to Sanscrit, a tongue of which it may be

said, that if it had perished the sun would never have risen on the

science of comparative philology. Before the discoveries in Sanscrit

of Sir William Jones, Wilkins, Wilson, and others, the world had

striven to find the common ancestor of European languages, sometimes

in the classical, and sometimes in the Semitic tongues. In the one

case the result was a tyranny of Greek and Latin over the non-

classical tongues, and in the other the most uncritical and

unphilosophical waste of learning. No doubt some striking analogies

exist between the Indo-European family and the Semitic stock, just as

there are remarkable analogies between the Mongolian and Indo-

European families; but the ravings of Vallancy, in his effort to

connect the Erse with Phoenician, are an awful warning of what

unscientific inquiry, based upon casual analogy, may bring itself to

believe, and even to fancy it has proved.

These general observations, then, and this rapid bird's eye view, may

suffice to show the common affinity which exists between the Eastern

and Western Aryans; between the Hindoo on the one hand, and the

nations of Western Europe on the other. That is the fact to keep

steadily before our eyes. We all came, Greek, Latin, Celt, Teuton,

Slavonian, from the East, as kith and kin, leaving kith and kin

behind us; and after thousands of years the language and traditions

of those who went East, and those who went West, bear such an

affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond discussion or

dispute, the fact of their descent from a common stock.

DIFFUSION

This general affinity established, we proceed to narrow our subject

to its proper limits, and to confine it to the consideration,

_first_, of Popular Tales in general, and _secondly_, of

those Norse Tales in particular, which form the bulk of this volume.

In the first place, then, the fact which we remarked on setting out,

that the groundwork or plot of many of these tales is common to all

the nations of Europe, is more important, and of greater scientific

interest, than might at first appear. They form, in fact, another

link in the chain of evidence of a common origin between the East and

West, and even the obstinate adherents of the old classical theory,

according to which all resemblances were set down to sheer copying

from Greek or Latin patterns, are now forced to confess, not only

that there was no such wholesale copying at all, but that, in many

cases, the despised vernacular tongues have preserved the common

traditions far more faithfully than the writers of Greece and Rome.

The sooner, in short, that this theory of copying, which some, even

besides the classicists, have maintained, is abandoned, the better,

not only for the truth, but for the literary reputation of those who

put it forth. No one can, of course, imagine that during that long

succession of ages when this mighty wedge of Aryan migration was

driving its way through that prehistoric race, that nameless

nationality, the traces of which we everywhere find underlying the

intruders in their monuments and implements of bone and stone--a race

akin, in all probability, to the Mongolian family, and whose

miserable remnants we see pushed aside, and huddled up in the holes

and corners of Europe, as Lapps, and Finns, and Basques--No one, we

say, can suppose for a moment, that in that long process of contact

and absorption, some traditions of either race should not have been

caught up and adopted by the other. We know it to be a fact with

regard to their language, from the evidence of philology, which

cannot lie; and the witness borne by such a word as the Gothic Atta

for _father_, where a Mongolian has been adopted in preference

to an Aryan word, is irresistible on this point; but that, apart from

such natural assimilation, all the thousand shades of resemblance and

affinity which gleam and flicker through the whole body of popular

tradition in the Aryan race, as the Aurora plays and flashes in

countless rays athwart the Northern heaven, should be the result of

mere servile copying of one tribe's traditions by another, is a

supposition as absurd as that of those good country-folk, who, when

they see an Aurora, fancy it must be a great fire, the work of some

incendiary, and send off the parish engine to put it out. No! when we

find in such a story as the Master-thief traits, which are to be

found in the Sanscrit _Hitopadesa_ [4], and which reminds us at

once of the story of Rhampsinitus in Herodotus; which are also to be

found in German, Italian, and Flemish popular tales, but told in all

with such variations of character and detail, and such adaptations to

time and place, as evidently show the original working of the

national consciousness upon a stock of tradition common to all the

race, but belonging to no tribe of that race in particular; and when

we find this occurring not in one tale but in twenty, we are forced

to abandon the theory of such universal copying, for fear lest we

should fall into a greater difficulty than that for which we were

striving to account.

To set this question in a plainer light, let us take a well-known

instance; let us take the story of William Tell and his daring shot,

which is said to have been made in the year 1307. It is just possible

that the feat might be historical, and, no doubt, thousands believe

it for the sake of the Swiss patriot, as firmly as they believe in

anything; but, unfortunately, this story of the bold archer who saves

his life by shooting an apple from the head of his child at the

command of a tyrant, is common to the whole Aryan race. It appears in

Saxo Grammaticus, who flourished in the twelfth century, where it is

told of Palnatoki, King Harold Gormson's thane and assassin. In the

thirteenth century the _Wilkina Saga_ relates it of Egill,

Völundr's--our Wayland Smith's--younger brother. So also in the Norse

Saga of _Saint Olof_, king and martyr; the king, who died in

1030, eager for the conversion of one of his heathen chiefs Eindridi,

competes with him in various athletic exercises, first in swimming

and then in archery. After several famous shots on either side, the

king challenges Eindridi to shoot a tablet off his son's head without

hurting the child. Eindridi is ready, but declares he will revenge

himself if the child is hurt. The king has the first shot, and his

arrow strikes close to the tablet. Then Eindridi is to shoot, but at

the prayers of his mother and sister, refuses the shot, and has to

yield and be converted [_Fornm. Sog._, 2, 272]. So, also, King

Harold Sigurdarson, who died 1066, backed himself against a famous

marksman, Hemingr, and ordered him to shoot a hazel nut off the head

of his brother Björn, and Hemingr performed the feat [Müller's _Saga

Bibl._, 3, 359]. In the middle of the fourteenth century, the

_Malleus Maleficarum_ refers it to Puncher, a magician of the

Upper Rhine. Here in England, we have it in the old English

ballad of _Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough_, and _William of

Cloudesly_, where William performs the feat [see the ballad in

Percy's _Reliques_]. It is not at all of Tell in Switzerland

before the year 1499, and the earlier Swiss chronicles omit it

altogether. It is common to the Turks and Mongolians; and a legend of

the wild Samoyeds, who never heard of Tell or saw a book in their

lives, relates it, chapter and verse, of one of their famous

marksmen. What shall we say then, but that the story of this bold

master-shot was primaeval amongst many tribes and races, and that it

only crystallized itself round the great name of Tell by that process

of attraction which invariably leads a grateful people to throw such

mythic wreaths, such garlands of bold deeds of precious memory, round

the brow of its darling champion [5].

Nor let any pious Welshman be shocked if we venture to assert that

Gellert, that famous hound upon whose last resting-place the

traveller comes as he passes down the lovely vale of Gwynant, is a

mythical dog, and never snuffed the fresh breeze in the forest of

Snowdon, nor saved his master's child from ravening wolf. This, too,

is a primaeval story, told with many variations. Sometimes the foe is

a wolf, sometimes a bear, sometimes a snake. Sometimes the faithful

guardian of the child is an otter, a weasel, or a dog. It, too, came

from the East. It is found in the _Pantcha-Tantra_, in the

_Hitopadesa_, in Bidpai's _Fables_, in the Arabic original of

_The Seven Wise Masters_, that famous collection of stories

which illustrate a stepdame's calumny and hate, and in many mediaeval

versions of those originals [6]. Thence it passed into the Latin

_Gesta Romanorum_, where, as well as in the Old English version

published by Sir Frederick Madden, it may be read as a service

rendered by a faithful hound against a snake. This, too, like Tell's

master-shot, is as the lightning which shineth over the whole heaven

at once, and can be claimed by no one tribe of the Aryan race, to the

exclusion of the rest. 'The Dog of Montargis' is in like manner

mythic, though perhaps not so widely spread. It first occurs in

France, as told of Sybilla, a fabulous wife of Charlemagne; but it is

at any rate as old as the time of Plutarch, who relates it as an

anecdote of brute sagacity in the days of Pyrrhus.

There can be no doubt, with regard to the question of the origin of

these tales, that they were common in germ at least to the Aryan

tribes before their migration. We find those germs developed in the

popular traditions of the Eastern Aryans, and we find them developed

in a hundred forms and shapes in every one of the nations into which

the Western Aryans have shaped themselves in the course of ages. We

are led, therefore, irresistibly to the conclusion, that these

traditions are as much a portion of the common inheritance of our

ancestors, as their language unquestionably is; and that they form,

along with that language, a double chain of evidence, which proves

their Eastern origin. If we are to seek for a simile, or an analogy,

as to the relative positions of these tales and traditions, and to

the mutual resemblances which exist between them as the several

branches of our race have developed them from the common stock, we

may find it in one which will come home to every reader as he looks

round the domestic hearth, if he should be so happy as to have one.

They are like as sisters of one house are like. They have what would

be called a strong family likeness; but besides this likeness, which

they owe to father or mother, as the case may be, they have each

their peculiarities of form, and eye, and face, and still more, their

differences of intellect and mind. This may be dark, that fair; this

may have gray eyes, that black; this may be open and graceful, that

reserved and close; this you may love, that you can take no interest

in. One may be bashful, another winning, a third worth knowing and

yet hard to know. They are so like and so unlike. At first it may be,

as an old English writer beautifully expresses it, 'their father hath

writ them as his own little story', but as they grow up they throw

off the copy, educate themselves for good or ill, and finally assume

new forms of feeling and feature under an original development of

their own.

Or shall we take another likeness, and say they are national dreams;

that they are like the sleeping thoughts of many men upon one and the

same thing. Suppose a hundred men to have been eye-witnesses of some

event on the same day, and then to have slept and dreamt of it; we

should have as many distinct representations of that event, all

turning upon it and bound up with it in some way, but each preserving

the personality of the sleeper, and working up the common stuff in a

higher or lower degree, just as the fancy and the intellect of the

sleeper was at a higher or lower level of perfection. There is,

indeed, greater truth in this likeness than may at first sight

appear. In the popular tale, properly so called, the national mind

dreams all its history over again; in its half conscious state it

takes this trait and that trait, this feature and that feature, of

times and ages long past. It snatches up bits of its old beliefs, and

fears, and griefs, and glory, and pieces them together with something

that happened yesterday, and then holds up the distorted reflection

in all its inconsequence, just as it has passed before that magic

glass, as though it were genuine history, and matter for pure belief.

And here it may be as well to say, that besides that old classical

foe of vernacular tradition, there is another hardly less dangerous,

which returns to the charge of copying, but changes what lawyers call

the _venue_ of the trial from classical to Eastern lands.

According to this theory, which came up when its classical

predecessor was no longer tenable, the traditions and tales of

Western Europe came from the East, but they were still all copies.

They were supposed to have proceeded entirely from two sources; one

the _Directorium Humanae Vitae_ of John of Capua, translated

between 1262-78 from a Hebrew version, which again came from an

Arabic version of the 8th century, which came from a Pehlvi version

made by one Barzouyeh, at the command of Chosrou Noushirvan, King of

Persia, in the 6th century, which again came from the _Pantcha

Tantra_, a Sanscrit original of unknown antiquity. This is that

famous book of _Calila and Dimna_, as the Persian version is

called, attributed to Bidpai, and which was thus run to earth in

India. The second source of Western tradition was held to be that

still more famous collection of stories commonly known by the name of

the 'Story of the Seven Sages,' but which, under many names--Kaiser

Octavianus, Diocletianus, Dolopathos, Erastus, etc.--plays a most

important part in mediaeval romance. This, too, by a similar process,

has been traced to India, appearing first in Europe at the beginning

of the thirteenth century in the Latin _Historia Septem Sapientum

Romae_, by Dame Jehans, monk in the Abbey of Haute Selve. Here,

too, we have a Hebrew, an Arabic, and a Persian version; which last

came avowedly from a Sanscrit original, though that original has not

yet been discovered. From these two sources of fable and tradition,

according to the new copying theory, our Western fables and tales had

come by direct translation from the East. Now it will be at once

evident that this theory hangs on what may be called a single thread.

Let us say, then, that all that can be found in _Calila and

Dimna_, or the later Persian version, made A.D. 1494, of Hossein

Vaez, called the _Anvari Sohaïli_, 'the Canopic Lights'--from

which, when published in Paris by David Sahid of Ispahan, in the year

1644, La Fontaine drew the substance of many of his best fables.--Let

us say, too, that all can be found in the _Life of the Seven

Sages_, or the Book of Sendabad as it was called in Persia, after

an apocryphal Indian sage--came by translation--that is to say,

through the cells of Brahmins, Magians, and monks, and the labours of

the learned--into the popular literature of the West. Let us give up

all that, and then see where we stand. What are we to say of the many

tales and fables which are to be found in neither of those famous

collections, and not tales alone, but traits and features of old

tradition, broken bits of fable, roots and germs of mighty growths of

song and story, nay, even the very words, which exist in Western

popular literature, and which modern philology has found obstinately

sticking in Sanscrit, and of which fresh proofs and instances are

discovered every day? What are we to say of such a remarkable

resemblance as this?

The noble King Putraka fled into the Vindhya mountains in order to

live apart from his unkind kinsfolk; and as he wandered about there

he met two men who wrestled and fought with one another. 'Who are

you?' he asked. 'We are the sons of Mayâsara, and here lie our

riches; this bowl, this staff, and these shoes; these are what we

are fighting for, and whichever is stronger is to have them for his

own.'

So when Putraka had heard that, he asked them with a laugh: 'Why,

what's the good of owning these things?' Then they answered

'Whoever puts on these shoes gets the power to fly; whatever is

pointed at with this staff rises up at once; and whatever food one

wishes for in this bowl, it comes at once.' So when Putraka had

heard that he said 'Why fight about it? Let this be the prize;

whoever beats the other in a race, let him have them all'.

'So be it', said the two fools, and set off running, but Putraka

put on the shoes at once, and flew away with the staff and bowl up

into the clouds'.

Well, this is a story neither in the _Pantcha Tantra_ nor the

_Hitopadesa_, the Sanscrit originals of _Calila and Dimna_.

It is not in the _Directorium Humanae Vitae_, and has not passed

west by that way. Nor is it in the _Book of Sendabad_, and

thence come west in the _History of the Seven Sages_. Both these

paths are stopped. It comes from the _Katha Sarit Sagara_, the

'Sea of Streams of Story' of Somadeva Bhatta of Cashmere, who, in the

middle of the twelfth century of our era, worked up the tales found

in an earlier collection, called the _Vrihat Katha_, 'the

lengthened story', in order to amuse his mistress, the Queen of

Cashmere. Somadeva's collection has only been recently known and

translated. But west the story certainly came long before, and in the

extreme north-west we still find it in these Norse Tales in 'The

Three Princesses of Whiteland', No. xxvi.

'Well!' said the man, 'as this is so, I'll give you a bit of

advice. Hereabouts, on a moor, stand three brothers, and there they

have stood these hundred years, fighting about a hat, a cloak, and

a pair of boots. If any one has these three things, he can make

himself invisible, and wish himself anywhere he pleases. You can

tell them you wish to try the things, and after that, you'll pass

judgment between them, whose they shall be'.

Yes! the king thanked the man, and went and did as he told him.

'What's all this?' he said to the brothers. 'Why do you stand here

fighting for ever and a day? Just let me try these things, and I'll

give judgment whose they shall be.'

They were very willing to do this; but as soon as he had got the

hat; cloak, and boots, he said: 'When we meet next time I'll tell

you my judgment'; and with these words he wished himself away.

Nor in the Norse tales alone. Other collections shew how thoroughly

at home this story was in the East. In the Relations of _Ssidi

Kur_, a Tartar tale, a Chan's son first gets possession of a cloak

which two children stand and fight for, which has the gift of making

the wearer invisible, and afterwards of a pair of boots, with which

one can wish one's self to whatever place one chooses. Again, in a

Wallachian tale, we read of three devils who fight for their

inheritance--a club which turns everything to stone, a hat which

makes the wearer invisible, and a cloak by help of which one can wish

one's self whithersoever one pleases. Again, in a Mongolian tale, the

Chan's son comes upon a group of children who fight for a hood which

makes the wearer invisible; he is to be judge between them, makes

them run a race for it, but meanwhile puts it on and vanishes from

their sight. A little further on he meets another group, who are

quarrelling for a pair of boots, the wearer of which can wish himself

whithersoever he pleases, and gains possession of them in the same

way.

Nor in one Norse tale alone, but in many, we find traces of these

three wonderful things, or of things like them. They are very like

the cloth, the ram, and the stick, which the lad got from the North

Wind instead of his meal. Very like, too, the cloth, the scissors,

and the tap, which will be found in No. xxxvi, 'The Best Wish'. If we

drop the number three, we find the Boots again in 'Soria Moria

Castle', No. lvi. [Moe, Introd., xxxii-iii] Leaving the Norse Tales,

we see at once that they are the seven-leagued boots of Jack the

Giant Killer. In the _Nibelungen Lied_, when Siegfried finds

Schilbung and Niblung, the wierd heirs of the famous 'Hoard',

striving for the possession of that heap of red gold and gleaming

stones; when they beg him to share it for them, promising him, as his

meed, Balmung, best of swords; when he shares it, when they are

discontent, and when in the struggle which ensues he gets possession

of the 'Tarnhut', the 'cloak of darkness', which gave its wearer the

strength of twelve men, and enabled him to go where he would be

unseen, and which was the great prize among the treasures of the

dwarfs[7]; who is there that does not see the broken fragments of

that old Eastern story of the heirs struggling for their inheritance,

and calling in the aid of some one of better wit or strength who ends

by making the very prize for which they fight his own?

And now to return for a moment to _Calila and Dimna_ and _The

Seven Sages_. Since we have seen that there are other stories, and

many of them, for this is by no means the only resemblance to be

found in Somadeva's book [8] which are common to the Eastern and

Western Aryans, but which did not travel to Europe by translation;

let us go on to say that it is by no means certain, even when some

Western story or fable is found in these Sanscrit originals and their

translations, that that was the only way by which they came to

Europe. A single question will prove this. How did the fables and

apologues which are found in _Aesop_, and which are also

found in the _Pantcha Tantya_ and the _Hitopadesa_ come West?

That they came from the East is certain; but by what way, certainly

not by translations or copying, for they had travelled west long

before translations were thought of. How was it that Themistius, a

Greek orator of the fourth century [J. Grimm, _Reinhart Fuchs_,

cclxiii, Intr.] had heard of that fable of the lion, fox, and bull,

which is in substance the same as that of the lion, the bull, and

the two jackals in the _Pantcha Tantya_ and the _Hitopadesa_?

How, but along the path of that primaeval Aryan migration, and by

that deep-ground tone of tradition by which man speaks to man, nation

to nation, and age to age; along which comparative philology has, in

these last days, travelled back thither, listened to the accents

spoken, and so found in the East the cradle of a common language and

common belief.

And now, having, as we hope, finally established this Indian

affinity, and disposed of mere Indian copying, let us lift our eyes

and see if something more is not to be discerned on the wide horizon

now open on our view. The most interesting problem for man to solve

is the origin of his race. Of late years comparative philology,

having accomplished her task in proving the affinity of language

between Europe and the East, and so taken a mighty step towards

fixing the first seat of the greatest--greatest in wit and wisdom, if

not in actual numbers--portion of the human race, has pursued her

inquiries into the languages of the Turanian, the Semitic, and the

Chamitic or African races, with more or less successful results. In a

few more years, when the African languages are better known, and the

roots of Egyptian and Chinese words are more accurately detected,

Science will be better able to speak as to the common affinity of all

the tribes that throng the earth. In the meantime, let the testimony

of tradition and popular tales be heard, which in this case have

outstripped comparative philology, and lead instead of following her.

It is beyond the scope of this essay, which aims at being popular and

readable rather than learned and lengthy, to go over a prolonged

scientific investigation step by step. We repeat it. The reader must

have faith in the writer, and believe the words now written are the

results of an inquiry, and not ask for the inquiry itself. In all

mythologies and traditions, then, there are what may be called

natural resemblances, parallelisms suggested to the senses of each

race by natural objects and every-day events, and these might spring

up spontaneously all over the earth as home growths, neither derived

by imitation from other tribes, nor from seeds of common tradition

shed from a common stock. Such resemblances have been well

compared by William Grimm, [_Kinder and Hausmärchen_, vol. 3, _3d_

edition (Göttingen, 1856) a volume worthy of the utmost attention.]

to those words which are found in all languages derived from the

imitation of natural sounds, or, we may add, from the first lisping

accents of infancy. But the case is very different when this or that

object which strikes the senses is accounted for in a way so

extraordinary and peculiar, as to stamp the tradition with a

character of its own. Then arises a like impression on the mind, if

we find the same tradition in two tribes at the opposite ends of the

earth, as is produced by meeting twin brothers, one in Africa and the

other in Asia; we say at once 'I know you are so and so's brother,

you are so like him'. Take an instance: In these Norse Tales, No.

xxiii, we are told how it was the bear came to have a stumpy tail,

and in an African tale, [9] we find how it was the hyaena became

tailless and earless. Now, the tailless condition both of the bear

and the hyaena could scarcely fail to attract attention in a race of

hunters, and we might expect that popular tradition would attempt to

account for both, but how are we to explain the fact, that both

Norseman and African account for it in the same way--that both owe

their loss to the superior cunning of another animal. In Europe the

fox bears away the palm for wit from all other animals, so he it is

that persuades the bear in the Norse Tales to sit with his tail in a

hole in the ice till it is fast frozen in, and snaps short off when

he tries to tug it out. In Bornou, in the heart of Africa, it is the

weasel who is the wisest of beasts, and who, having got some meat in

common with the hyaena, put it into a hole, and said:

'Behold two men came out of the forest, took the meat, and put it

into a hole: stop, I will go into the hole, and then thou mayst

stretch out thy tail to me, and I will tie the meat to thy tail for

thee to draw it out'. So the weasel went into the hole, the hyaena

stretched its tail out to it, but the weasel took the hyaena's

tail, fastened a stick, and tied the hyaena's tail to the stick,

and then said to the hyaena 'I have tied the meat to thy tail;

draw, and pull it out'. The hyaena was a fool, it did not know the

weasel surpassed it in subtlety; it thought the meat was tied; but

when it tried to draw out its tail, it was fast. When the weasel

said again to it 'Pull', it pulled, but could not draw it out; so

it became vexed, and on pulling with force, its tail broke. The

tail being torn out, the weasel was no more seen by the hyaena: the

weasel was hidden in the hole with its meat, and the hyaena saw it

not. [_Kanuri Proverbs_, p. 167.]

Here we have a fact in natural history accounted for, but accounted

for in such a peculiar way as shows that the races among which they

are current must have derived them from some common tradition. The

mode by which the tail is lost is different indeed; but the manner in

which the common ground-work is suited in one case to the cold of the

North, and the way in which fish are commonly caught at holes in the

ice as they rise to breathe; and in the other to Africa and her

pitfalls for wild beasts, is only another proof of the oldness of the

tradition, and that it is not merely a copy.

Take another instance. Every one knows the story in the Arabian

Nights, where the man who knows the speech of beasts laughs at

something said by an ox to an ass. His wife wants to know why he

laughs, and persists, though he tells her it will cost him his life

if he tells her. As he doubts what to do, he hears the cock say to

the house-dog 'Our master is not wise; I have fifty hens who obey me;

if he followed my advice, he'd just take a good stick, shut up his

wife in a room with him, and give her a good cudgelling.' The same

story is told in Straparola [10] with so many variations as to show

it is no copy; it is also told in a Servian popular tale, with

variations of its own; and now here we find it in Bornou, as told by

Kölle.

There was a servant of God who had one wife and one horse; but his

wife was one-eyed, and they lived in their house. Now this servant

of God understood the language of the beasts of the forest when

they spoke, and of the birds of the air when they talked as they

flew by. This servant of God also understood the cry of the hyaena

when it arose at night in the forest, and came to the houses and

cried near them; so, likewise, when his horse was hungry and

neighed, he understood why it neighed, rose up, brought the horse

grass, and then returned and sat down. It happened one day that

birds had their talk as they were flying by above and the servant

of God understood what they talked. This caused him to laugh,

whereupon his wife said to him 'What dost thou hear that thou

laughest?' He replied to his wife 'I shall not tell thee what I

hear, and why I laugh'. The woman said to her husband 'I know why

thou laughest; thou laughest at me because I am one-eyed'. The man

then said to his wife 'I saw that thou wast one-eyed before I loved

thee, and before we married and sat down in our house'. When the

woman heard her husband's word she was quiet.

But once at night, as they were lying on their bed, and it was past

midnight, it happened that a rat played with his wife on the top of

the house and that both fell to the ground. Then the wife of the

rat said to her husband 'Thy sport is bad; thou saidst to me that

thou wouldst play, but when we came together we fell to the ground,

so that I broke my back'.

When the servant of God heard the talk of the rat's wife, as he was

lying on his bed, he laughed. Now, as soon as he laughed his wife

arose, seized him, and said to him as she held him fast: 'Now this

time I will not let thee go out of this house except thou tell me

what thou hearest and why thou laughest'. The man begged the woman,

saying 'Let me go'; but the woman would not listen to her husband's

entreaty.

The husband then tells his wife that he knows the language of beasts

and birds, and she is content; but when he wakes in the morning he

finds he has lost his wonderful gift; and the moral of the tale is

added most ungallantly: 'If a man shews and tells his thoughts to a

woman, God will punish him for it'. Though, perhaps, it is better,

for the sake of the gentler sex, that the tale should be pointed with

this unfair moral, than that the African story should proceed like

all the other variations, and save the husband's gift at the cost of

the wife's skin.

Take other African instances. How is it that the wandering Bechuanas

got their story of 'The Two Brothers', the ground-work of which is

the same as 'The Machandelboom' and the 'Milk-white Doo', and where

the incidents and even the words are almost the same? How is it that

in some of its traits that Bechuana story embodies those of that

earliest of all popular tales, recently published from an Egyptian

Papyrus, coeval with the abode of the Israelites in Egypt? and how is

it that that same Egyptian tale has other traits which reminds us of

the Dun Bull in 'Katie Woodencloak', as well as incidents which are

the germ of stories long since reduced to writing in Norse Sagas of

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? [11] How is it that we still

find among the Negroes in the West Indies [12] a rich store of

popular tales, and the Beast Epic in full bloom, brought with them

from Africa to the islands of the West; and among those tales and

traditions, how is it that we find a 'Wishing Tree', the counter-part

of that in a German popular tale, and 'a little dirty scrub of a

child', whom his sisters despise, but who is own brother to Boots in

the Norse Tales, and like him outwits the Troll, spoils his

substance, and saves his sisters? How is it that we find the good

woman who washes the loathsome head rewarded, while the bad man who

refuses to do that dirty work is punished for his pride; the very

groundwork, nay the very words, that we meet in Bushy-bride, another

Norse Tale? How is it that we find a Mongolian tale, which came

confessedly from India, made up of two of our Norse tales, 'Rich

Peter the Pedlar' and 'The Giant that had no heart in his

body' [_The Deeds of Bogda Gesser Chan_, by I. J. Schmidt

(Petersburg and Leipzig, 1839).]? How should all these things be, and

how could they possibly be, except on that theory which day by day

becomes more and more a matter of fact; this, that the whole human

race sprung from one stock, planted in the East, which has stretched

out its boughs and branches laden with the fruit of language, and

bright with the bloom of song and story, by successive offshoots to

the utmost parts of the earth.

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

And now, in the second place, for that particular branch of the Aryan

race, in which this peculiar development of the common tradition has

arisen, which we are to consider as 'Norse Popular Tales'.

Whatever disputes may have existed as to the mythology of other

branches of the Teutonic subdivision of the Aryan race--whatever

discussions may have arisen as to the position of this or that

divinity among the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Goths--about the

Norsemen there can be no dispute or doubt. From a variety of

circumstances, but two before all the rest--the one their settlement

in Iceland, which preserved their language and its literary treasures

incorrupt; the other their late conversion to Christianity--their

cosmogony and mythology stands before us in full flower, and we have

not, as elsewhere, to pick up and piece together the wretched

fragments of a faith, the articles of which its own priests had

forgotten to commit to writing, and which those of another creed had

dashed to pieces and destroyed, wherever their zealous hands could

reach. In the two Eddas, therefore, in the early Sagas, in Saxo's

stilted Latin, which barely conceals the popular songs and legends

from which the historian drew his materials, we are enabled to form a

perfect conception of the creed of the heathen Norsemen. We are

enabled to trace, as has been traced by the same hand in another

place [_Oxford Essays for_ 1898: 'The Norsemen in Iceland'.],

the natural and rational development of that creed from a simple

worship of nature and her powers, first to monotheism, and then to a

polytheistic system. The tertiary system of Polytheism is the soil

out of which the mythology of the Eddas sprang, though through it

each of the older formations crops out in huge masses which admit of

no mistake as to its origin. In the Eddas the natural powers have

been partly subdued, partly thrust on one side, for a time, by Odin

and the Aesir, by the Great Father and his children, by One Supreme

and twelve subordinate gods, who rule for an appointed time, and over

whom hangs an impending fate, which imparts a charm of melancholy to

this creed, which has clung to the race who once believed in it long

after the creed itself has vanished before the light of Christianity.

According to this creed, the Aesir and Odin had their abode in

Asgard, a lofty hill in the centre of the habitable earth, in the

midst of Midgard, that _middle earth_ which we hear of in early

English poetry, the abode of gods and men. Round that earth, which

was fenced in against the attacks of ancient and inveterate foes by a

natural fortification of hills, flowed the great sea in a ring, and

beyond that sea was Utgard, the outlying world, the abode of Frost

Giants, and Monsters, those old-natural powers who had been

dispossessed by Odin and the Aesir when the new order of the universe

arose, and between whom and the new gods a feud as inveterate as that

cherished by the Titans against Jupiter was necessarily kept alive.

It is true indeed that this feud was broken by intervals of truce

during which the Aesir and the Giants visit each other, and appear on

more or less friendly terms, but the true relation between them was

war; pretty much as the Norseman was at war with all the rest of the

world. Nor was this struggle between two rival races or powers

confined to the gods in Asgard alone. Just as their ancient foes were

the Giants of Frost and Snow, so between the race of men and the race

of Trolls was there a perpetual feud. As the gods were men magnified

and exaggerated, so were the Trolls diminished Frost Giants; far

superior to man in strength and stature, but inferior to man in wit

and invention. Like the Frost Giants, they inhabit the rough and

rugged places of the earth, and, historically speaking, in all

probability represent the old aboriginal races who retired into the

mountainous fastnesses of the land, and whose strength was

exaggerated, because the intercourse between the races was small. In

almost every respect they stand in the same relations to men as the

Frost Giants stand to the Gods.

There is nothing, perhaps, more characteristic of a true, as compared

with a false religion, than the restlessness of the one when brought

face to face with the quiet dignity and majesty of the other. Under

the Christian dispensation, our blessed Lord, his awful sacrifice

once performed, 'ascended up on high', having 'led captivity

captive', and expects the hour that shall make his foes 'his

footstool'; but false gods, Jupiter, Vishnu, Odin, Thor, must

constantly keep themselves, as it were, before the eyes of men, lest

they should lose respect. Such gods being invariably what the

philosophers call _subjective_, that is to say, having no

existence except in the minds of those who believe in them; having

been created by man in his own image, with his own desires and

passions, stand in constant need of being recreated. They change as

the habits and temper of the race which adores them alter; they are

ever bound to do something fresh, lest man should forget them, and

new divinities usurp their place. Hence came endless avatars in

Hindoo mythology, reproducing all the dreamy monstrosities of that

passive Indian mind. Hence came Jove's adventures, tinged with all

the lust and guile which the wickedness of the natural man planted on

a hot-bed of iniquity is capable of conceiving. Hence bloody Moloch,

and the foul abominations of Chemosh and Milcom. Hence, too, Odin's

countless adventures, his journeys into all parts of the world, his

constant trials of wit and strength, with his ancient foes the Frost

Giants, his hair-breadth escapes. Hence Thor's labours and toils, his

passages beyond the sea, girt with his strength-belt, wearing his

iron gloves, and grasping his hammer which split the skulls of so

many of the Giant's kith and kin. In the Norse gods, then, we see the

Norseman himself, sublimed and elevated beyond man's nature, but

bearing about with him all his bravery and endurance, all his dash

and spirit of adventure, all his fortitude and resolution to struggle

against a certainty of doom which, sooner or later, must overtake him

on that dread day, the 'twilight of the gods', when the wolf was to

break loose, when the great snake that lay coiled round the world

should lash himself into wrath, and the whole race of the Aesirs and

their antagonists were to perish in internecine strife.

Such were the gods in whom the Norseman believed--exaggerations of

himself, of all his good and all his bad qualities. Their might and

their adventures, their domestic quarrels and certain doom, were sung

in venerable lays, now collected in what we call the Elder, or Poetic

Edda; simple majestic songs, whose mellow accents go straight to the

heart through the ear, and whose simple severity never suffers us to

mistake their meaning. But, besides these gods, there were heroes of

the race whose fame and glory were in every man's memory, and whose

mighty deeds were in every minstrel's mouth. Helgi, Sigmund,

Sinfjötli, Sigurd, Signy, Brynhildr, Gudrun; champions and shield-

maidens, henchmen and corse-choosers, now dead and gone, who sat

round Odin's board in Valhalla. Women whose beauty, woes, and

sufferings were beyond those of all women; men whose prowess had

never found an equal. Between these, love and hate; all that can

foster passion or beget revenge. Ill assorted marriages; the right

man to the wrong woman, and the wrong man to the right woman;

envyings, jealousies, hatred, murders, all the works of the natural

man, combine together to form that marvellous story which begins with

a curse--the curse of ill-gotten gold--and ends with a curse, a

widow's curse, which drags down all on whom it falls, and even her

own flesh and blood, to certain doom. Such was the theme of the

wondrous Volsung Tale, the far older, simpler and grander original of

that Nibelungen Need of the thirteenth century, a tale which begins

with the slaughter of Fafnir by Sigurd, and ends with Hermanaric,

'that fierce faith-breaker', as the Anglo-Saxon minstrel calls him,

when he is describing, in rapid touches, the mythic glories of the

Teutonic race.

This was the story of the Volsungs. They traced themselves back, like

all heroes, to Odin, the great father of gods and men. From him

sprung Sigi, from him Rerir, from him Volsung, ripped from his

mother's womb after a six years' bearing, to become the Eponymus of

that famous race. In the centre of his hall grew an oak, the tall

trunk of which passed through the roof, and its boughs spread far and

wide in upper air. Into that hall, on a high feast day, when Signy,

Volsung's daughter, was to be given away to Siggeir, King of

Gothland, strode an old one-eyed guest. His feet were bare, his hose

were of knitted linen, he wore a great striped cloak, and a broad

flapping hat. In his hand he bore a sword, which, at one stroke, he

drove up to the hilt in the oak trunk. 'There', said he, 'let him of

all this company bear this sword who is man enough to pull it out. I

give it him, and none shall say he ever bore a better blade.' With

these words he passed out of the hall, and was seen no more. Many

tried, for that sword was plainly a thing of price, but none could

stir it, till Sigmund, the best and bravest of Volsung's sons, tried

his hand, and, lo! the weapon yielded itself at once. This was that

famous blade _Gram_, of which we shall hear again. Sigmund bore

it in battle against his brother-in-law, who quarrelled with him

about this very sword, when Volsung fell, and Sigmund and his ten

brothers were taken and bound. All perished but Sigmund, who was

saved by his sister Signy, and hidden in a wood till he could revenge

his father and brethren. Here with Sinfjötli, who was at once his son

and nephew, he ran as a werewolf through the forest, and wrought many

wild deeds. When Sinfjötli was of age to help him, they proceed to

vengeance, and burn the treacherous brother-in-law alive, with all

his followers. Sigmund then regains his father's kingdom, and in

extreme old age dies in battle against the sons of King Hunding. Just

as he was about to turn the fight, a warrior of more than mortal

might, a one-eyed man in a blue cloak, with a flapping hat, rose up

against him spear in hand. At that outstretched spear Sigmund smites

with his trusty sword. It snaps in twain. Then he knows that his luck

is gone; he sees in his foe Odin the giver of the sword, sinks down

on the gory battle-field, and dies in the arms of Hjordis, his young

wife, refusing all leechcraft, and bowing his head to Odin's will. By

the fortune of war, Hjordis, bearing a babe under her girdle, came

into the hands of King Hialprek of Denmark, there she bore a son to

Sigmund, Sigurd, the darling of Teutonic song and story. Regin, the

king's smith, was his foster-father, and as the boy grew up the

fairest and stoutest of all the Volsungs, Regin, who was of the dwarf

race, urged him day by day to do a doughty deed, and slay Fafnir the

Dragon. For Fafnir, Regin, and Otter had been brothers, sons of

Reidmar. In one of their many wanderings, Odin, Loki, and Haenir came

to a river and a forge. There, on the bank under the forge, they saw

an otter with a salmon in its mouth, which it ate greedily with its

eyes shut. Loki took a stone, threw it, and killed the beast, and

boasted how he had got both fish and flesh at one throw. Then the

Aesir passed on and came at night to Reidmar's house, asked a

lodging, got it, and showed their spoil. 'Seize and bind them lads',

cried Reidmar; 'for they have slain your brother Otter'. So they were

seized and bound by Regin and Fafnir, and offered an atonement to buy

off the feud, and Reidmar was to name the sum. Then Otter was flayed,

and the Aesir were to fill the skin with red gold, and cover it

without, that not a hair could be seen. To fetch the gold Odin sent

Loki down to the abodes of the Black Elves; there in a stream he

caught Andvari the Dwarf, and made him give up all the gold which he

had hoarded up in the stony rock. In vain the Dwarf begged and prayed

that he might keep one ring, for it was the source of all his wealth,

and ring after ring dropped from it. 'No; not a penny should he have'

said Loki. Then the dwarf laid a curse on the ring, and said it

should be every man's bane who owned it. 'So much the better' said

Loki; and when he got back, Odin saw the ring how fair it was, and

kept it to himself, but gave the gold to Reidmar. So Reidmar filled

the skin with gold as full as he could, and set it up on end, and

Odin poured gold over it, and covered it up. But when Reidmar looked

at it he saw still one grey hair, and bade them cover that too, else

the atonement was at an end. Then Odin drew forth the ring and laid

it over the grey hair. So the Aesir was set free, but before they

went, Loki repeated the curse which Andvari had laid upon the ring

and gold. It soon began to work. First, Regin asked for some of the

gold, but not a penny would Reidmar give. So the two brothers laid

their heads together and slew their sire. Then Regin begged Fafnir to

share the gold with him. But 'no', Fafnir was stronger, and said he

should keep it all himself, and Regin had best be off, unless he

wished to fare the same way as Reidmar. So Regin had to fly, but

Fafnir took a dragon's shape; 'and there', said Regin, 'he lies on

the "Glistening Heath", coiled round his store of gold and precious

things, and that's why I wish you to kill him.' Sigurd, told Regin

who was the best of smiths, to forge him a sword. Two are made, but

both snap asunder at the first stroke. 'Untrue are they like you and

all your race' cries Sigurd. Then he went to his mother and begged

the broken bits of _Gram_, and out of them Regin forged a new

blade, that clove the anvil in the smithy, and cut a lock of wool

borne down upon it by a running stream. 'Now, slay me Fafnir', said

Regin; but Sigurd must first find out King Hunding's sons, and avenge

his father Sigmund's death. King Hialprek lends him force; by Odin's

guidance he finds them out, routs their army, and slays all those

brothers. On his return, his foster-father still eggs him on to slay

the Dragon, and thus to shew that there was still a Volsung left. So,

armed with Gram, and mounted on Gran, his good steed, whom Odin had

taught him how to choose, Sigurd rode to the 'Glistening Heath', dug

a pit in the Dragon's path, and slew him as he passed over him down

to drink at the river. Then Regin came up, and the old feeling of

vengeance for a brother's blood grew strong, and as an atonement,

Sigurd was to roast Fafnir's heart, and carry it to Regin, who

swilled his fill of the Dragon's blood, and lay down to sleep. But as

Sigurd roasted the heart, and wondered if it would soon be done, he

tried it with his finger to see if it were soft. The hot roast burned

his finger, and he put it into his mouth, and tasted the life-blood

of the Dragon. Then in a moment he understood the song of birds, and

heard how the swallows over his head said one to the other, 'There

thou sittest, Sigurd, roasting Fafnir's heart. Eat it thyself and

become the wisest of men.' Then another said 'There lies Regin, and

means to cheat him who trusts him.' Then a third said 'Let Sigurd cut

off his head then, and so own all the gold himself.' Then Sigurd went

to Regin and slew him, and ate the heart, and rode on Gran to

Fafnir's lair, and took the spoil and loaded his good steed with it,

and rode away.

And now Sigurd was the most famous of men. All the songs and stories

of the North made him the darling of that age. They dwell on his soft

hair, which fell in great locks of golden brown, on his bushy beard

of auburn hue, his straight features, his ruddy cheeks, his broad

brow, his bright and piercing eye, of which few dared to meet the

gaze, his taper limbs and well knit joints, his broad shoulders, and

towering height. 'So tall he was, that as he strode through the full-

grown rye, girt with Gram, the tip of the scabbard just touched the

ears of corn.' Ready of tongue too, and full of forethought. His

great pleasure was to help other men, and to do daring deeds; to

spoil his foes, and give largely to his friends. The bravest man

alive, and one that never knew fear. On and on he rode, till on a

lone fell he saw a flickering flame, and when he reached it, there it

flamed and blazed all round a house. No horse but Gran could ride

that flame; no man alive but Sigurd sit him while he leaped through

it. Inside the house lay a fair maiden, armed from head to foot, in a

deep sleep. Brynhildr, Atli's sister, was her name, a Valkyrie, a

corse-chooser; but out of wilfulness she had given the victory to the

wrong side, and Odin in his wrath had thrust the horn of sleep into

her cloak, and laid her under a curse to slumber there till a man

bold enough to ride through that flame came to set her free, and win

her for his bride. So then she woke up, and taught him all runes and

wisdom, and they swore to love each other with a mighty oath, and

then Sigurd left her and rode on.

So on he rode to King Giuki's hall, Giuki the Niflung, King of

Frankland, whose wife was Grimhildr, whose sons were Gunnar and

Hogni, whose stepson was Guttorm, and whose daughter was the fair

Gudrun. Here at first he was full of Brynhildr, and all for going

back to fetch his lovely bride from the lone fell. But Grimhildr was

given to dark arts; she longed for the brave Volsung for her own

daughter, she brewed him the philtre of forgetfulness, he drained it

off, forgot Brynhildr, swore a brother's friendship with Gunnar and

Hogni, and wedded the fair Gudrun. But now Giuki wanted a wife for

Gunnar, and so off set the brothers and their bosom friend to woo,

but whom should they choose but Brynhildr, Atli's sister, who sat

there still upon the fell, waiting for the man who was bold enough to

ride through the flickering flame. She knew but one could do it, and

waited for that one to come back. So she had given out whoever could

ride that flame should have her to wife. So when Gunnar and Hogni

reached it, Gunnar rode at it, but his horse, good though it was,

swerved from the fierce flame. Then by Grimhild's magic arts, Sigurd

and Gunnar changed shapes and arms, and Sigurd leapt up on Gran's

back, and the good steed bore him bravely through the flame. So

Brynhildr the proud maiden was won and forced to yield. That evening

was their wedding; but when they lay down to rest, Sigurd unsheathed

his keen sword _Gram_, and laid it naked between them. Next

morning when he arose, he took the ring which Andvari had laid under

the curse, and which was among Fafnir's treasures, and gave it to

Brynhildr as a 'morning gift', and she gave him another ring as a

pledge. Then Sigurd rode back to his companions and took his own

shape again, and then Gunnar went and claimed Brynhildr, and carried

her home as his bride. But no sooner was Gunnar wedded, than Sigurd's

eyes were opened, and the power of the philtre passed away, he

remembered all that had passed, and the oath he had sworn to

Brynhildr. All this came back upon him when it was too late, but he

was wise and said nothing about it. Well, so things went on, till one

day Brynhildr and Gudrun went down to the river to wash their hair.

Then Brynhildr waded out into the stream as far as she could, and

said she wouldn't have on her head the water that streamed from

Gudrun's; for hers was the braver husband. So Gudrun waded out after

her, and said the water ought to come on her hair first, because her

husband bore away the palm from Gunnar, and every other man alive,

for he slew Fafnir and Regin and took their inheritance. 'Aye', said

Brynhildr, 'but it was a worthier deed when Gunnar rode through the

flame, but Sigurd dared not try!' Then Gudrun laughed, and said

'Thinkst thou that Gunnar really rode the flame? I trow _he_

went to bed with thee that night, who gave me this gold ring. And as

for that ring yonder which you have on your finger, and which you got

as your "morning-gift"; its name is Andvari's-spoil, and _that_

I don't think Gunnar sought on the "Glistening Heath"'. Then

Brynhildr held her peace and went home, and her love for Sigurd came

back, but it was turned to hate, for she felt herself betrayed. Then

she egged on Gunnar to revenge her wrong. At last the brothers

yielded to her entreaties, but they were sworn brothers to Sigurd,

and to break that oath by deed was a thing unheard of. Still they

broke it in spirit; by charms and prayers they set on Guttorm their

half-brother, and so at dead of night, while Gudrun held the bravest

man alive fast locked in her white arms, the murderer stole to the

bedside and drove a sword through the hero. Then Sigurd turned and

writhed, and as Guttorm fled he hurled Gram after him, and the keen

blade took him asunder at the waist, and his head fell out of the

room and his heels in, and that was the end of Guttorm. But with

revenge Brynhildr's love returned, and when Sigurd was laid upon the

pile her heart broke; she burst forth into a prophetic song of the

woes that were still to come, made them lay her by his side with Gram

between them, and so went to Valhalla with her old lover. Thus

Andvari's curse was fulfilled.

Gudrun, the weary widow, wandered away. After a while, she accepts

atonement from her brothers for her husband's loss, and marries Atli,

the Hun King, Brynhildr's brother. He cherished a grudge against

Giuki's sons for the guile they had practised against their brother-

in-law, which had broken his sister's heart, and besides he claimed,

in right of Gudrun, all the gold which Sigurd won from the Dragon,

but which the Niflung Princes had seized when he was slain. It was in

vain to attack them in fair fight, so he sent them a friendly

message, and invited them to a banquet; they go, and are overpowered.

Hogni's heart is cut out of him alive, but he still smiles; Gunnar is

cast into a pit full of snakes, but even then charms them to sleep

with his harp, all but one, that flies at his heart and stings him to

death. With them perished the secret of the Dragon's hoard, which

they had thrown into the Rhine as they crossed it on the way to

Hunland. Now comes horror on horror. Revenge for her brothers now

belongs to Gudrun; she slays with her own hand her two sons by Atli,

makes him eat their flesh, and drink their blood out of their skulls,

and, while the king slept sound, slew him in his bed by the help of

her brother Hogni's son. Then she set the hall a-blaze, and burnt all

that were in it. After that she went to the sea-shore, and threw

herself in to drown. But the deep will not have her, the billows bear

her over to King Jonakr's land. He marries her, and has three sons by

her, Saurli, Hamdir, and Erp, black-haired as ravens, like all the

Niflungs. Svanhild, her daughter by Sigurd, who had her father's

bright and terrible eyes, she has still with her, now grown up to be

the fairest of women. So when Hermanaric the mighty, the great Gothic

king, heard of Svanhild's beauty, he sent his son Randver to woo her

for him, but Bikki the False said to the youth: 'Better far were this

maiden for thee than for thy old father'; and the maiden and the

prince thought it good advice. Then Bikki went and told the king, and

Hermanaric bade them take and hang Randver at once. So on his way to

the gallows, the prince took his hawk and plucked off all its

feathers, and sent it to his father. But when his sire saw it, he

knew at once that, as the hawk was featherless and unable to fly, so

was his realm defenceless under an old and sonless king. Too late he

sent to stop the hanging; his son was already dead. So one day

as he rode back from hunting, he saw fair Svanhild washing her golden

locks, and it came into his heart how there she sat, the cause of all

his woe; and he and his men rode at her and over her, and their

steeds trampled her to death. But when Gudrun heard this, she set on

her three Niflung sons to avenge their sister. Byrnies and helms she

gave them so true that no sword would bite on them. They were to

steal on Hermanaric as he slept; Saurli was to cut off his hands,

Hamdir his feet, and Erp his head. So as the three went along, the

two asked Erp what help he would give them when they got to

Hermanaric. 'Such as hand lends to foot' he said. 'No help at all'

they cried; and passing from words to blows, and because their mother

loved Erp best, they slew him. A little further on Saurli stumbled

and fell forward, but saved himself with one hand, and said 'Here

hand helps foot: better were it that Erp lived.' So they came on

Hermanaric as he slept, and Saurli hewed off his hands, and Hamdir

his feet, but he awoke and called for his men. Then said Hamdir:

'Were Erp alive, the head would be off, and he couldn't call out.'

Then Hermanaric's men arose and took the twain, and when they found

that no steel would touch them, an old one-eyed man gave them advice

to stone them to death. Thus fell Saurli and Hamdir, and soon after

Gudrun died too, and with her ends the Volsung and the Niflung tale.

And here it is worth while to say, since some minds are so narrowly

moulded as to be incapable of containing more than one idea, that

because it has seemed a duty to describe in its true light the old

faith of our forefathers, it by no means follows that the same eyes

are blind to the glorious beauty of Greek Mythology. That had the

rare advantage of running its course free and unfettered until it

fell rather by natural decay than before the weapon of a new belief.

The Greeks were Atheists before they became Christian. Their faith

had passed through every stage. We can contemplate it as it springs

out of the dim misshapen symbol, during that phase when men's eyes

are fixed more on meaning and reality than on beauty and form, we can

mark how it gradually looks more to symmetry and shape, how it is

transfigured in the Arts, until, under that pure air and bright sky,

the glowing radiant figures of Apollo and Aphrodite, of Zeus and

Athene--of perfect man-worship and woman-worship, stand out clear and

round in the foreground against the misty distance of ancient times.

Out of that misty distance the Norseman's faith never emerged. What

that early phase of faith might have become, had it been once wedded

to the Muses, and learnt to cultivate the Arts, it is impossible to

say. As it is, its career was cut short in mid-course. It carried

about with it that melancholy presentiment of dissolution which has

come to be so characteristic of modern life, but of which scarce a

trace exists in ancient times, and this feeling would always have

made it different from that cheerful carelessness which so attracts

us in the Greeks; but even that downcast brooding heart was capable

of conceiving great and heroic thoughts, which it might have clothed

in noble shapes and forms, had not the axe of Providence cut down the

stately sapling in the North before it grew to be a tree, while it

spared the pines of Delphi and Dodona's sacred oaks, until they had

attained a green old age. And so this faith remained rude and rough;

but even rudeness has a simplicity of its own, and it is better to be

rough and true-hearted than polished and false. In all the feelings

of natural affection, that faith need fear no comparison with any

other upon earth. In these respects it is firm and steadfast as a

rock, and pure and bright as a living spring. The highest God is a

father, who protects his children; who gives them glory and victory

while they live, and when they die, takes them to himself; to those

fatherly abodes Death was a happy return, a glorious going home. By

the side of this great father stands a venerable goddess, dazzling

with beauty, the great mother of gods and men. Hand in hand this

divine pair traverse the land; he teaching the men the use of arms

and all the arts of war,--for war was then as now a noble calling,

and to handle arms an honourable, nay necessary, profession. To the

women she teaches domestic duties and the arts of peace; from her

they learn to weave, and sew, and spin; from her, too, the husbandman

learns to till his fields. From him springs poetry and song; from her

legend and tradition. Nor should it ever be forgotten that the

footsteps of Providence are always onward, even when they seem taken

in the dark, and that their rude faith was the first in which that

veneration for woman arose, which the Western nations may well claim

as the brightest jewel in their crown of civilization; that while she

was a slave in the East, a toy to the Greeks, and a housewife to the

Romans, she was a helpmeet to the Teuton, and that those stern

warriors recognized something divine in her nature, and bowed before

her clearer insight into heavenly mysteries. The worship of the

Virgin Mary was gradually developed out of this conception of woman's

character, and would have been a thing absurd and impossible, had

Christianity clung for ever to Eastern soil. And now to proceed,

after thus turning aside to compare the mythology of the Greek with

the faith of the Norseman. The mistake is to favour one or the other

exclusively instead of respecting and admiring both; but it is a

mistake which those only can fall into, whose souls are narrow and

confined, who would say this thing and this person you shall love,

and none other; this form and feature you shall worship and adore,

and this alone; when in fact the whole promised land of thought and

life lies before us at our feet, our nature encourages us to go in

and possess it, and every step we make in this new world of knowledge

brings us to fresh prospects of beauty, and to new pastures of

delight.

Such were the gods, and such the heroes of the Norseman; who, like

his own gods, went smiling to death under the weight of an inevitable

destiny. But that fate never fell on their gods. Before this

subjective mythological dream of the Norsemen could be fulfilled, the

religious mist in which they walked was scattered by the sunbeams of

Christianity. A new state and condition of society arose, and the

creed which had satisfied a race of heathen warriors, who externally

were at war with all the world, became in time an object of horror

and aversion to the converted Christian. This is not the place to

describe the long struggle between the new and the old faith in the

North; how kings and queens became the foster-fathers and nursing-

mothers of the Church; how the great chiefs, each a little king in

himself, scorned and derided the whole scheme as altogether weak and

effeminate; how the bulk of the people were sullen and suspicious,

and often broke out into heathen mutiny; how kings rose and kings

fell, just as they took one or the other side; and how, finally,

after a contest which had lasted altogether more than three

centuries, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden--we run them over in

the order of conversion--became faithful to Christianity, as preached

by the missionaries of the Church of Rome. One fact, however, we must

insist on, which might be inferred, indeed, both from the nature of

the struggle itself, and the character of Rome; and that is, that

throughout there was something in the process of conversion of the

nature of a compromise--of what we may call the great principle of

'give and take'. In all Christian churches, indeed, and in none so

much as the Church of Rome, nothing is so austere, so elevating, and

so grand, as the uncompromising tone in which the great dogmas of the

Faith are enunciated and proclaimed. Nothing is more magnificent, in

short, than the theory of Christianity; but nothing is more mean and

miserable than the time-serving way in which those dogmas are dragged

down to the dull level of daily life, and that sublime theory reduced

to ordinary practice. At Rome, it was true that the Pope could

congratulate the faithful that whole nations in the barbarous and

frozen North had been added to the true fold, and that Odin's grim

champions now universally believed in the gospel of peace and love.

It is so easy to dispose of a doubtful struggle in a single sentence,

and so tempting to believe it when once written. But in the North,

the state of things, and the manner of proceeding, were entirely

different. There the dogma was proclaimed, indeed; but the manner of

preaching it was not in that mild spirit with which the Saviour

rebuked the disciple when he said 'Put up again thy sword into his

place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.'

There the sword was used to bring converts to the font, and the

baptism was often one rather of blood than of water. There the new

converts perpetually relapsed, chased away the missionaries and the

kings who sheltered them, and only yielded at last to the

overwhelming weight of Christian opinion in the Western world. St

Olof, king and martyr, martyred in pitched battle by his mutinous

allodial freemen, because he tried to drive rather than to lead them

to the cross; and another Olof, greater than he, Olof Tryggvason, who

fell in battle against the heathen Swedes, were men of blood rather

than peace; but to them the introduction of the new faith into Norway

is mainly owing. So also Charlemagne, at an earlier period, had dealt

with the Saxons at the Main Bridge, when his ultimatum was

'Christianity or death'. So also the first missionary to Iceland--who

met, indeed, with a sorry reception--was followed about by a stout

champion named Thangbrand, who, whenever there was what we should now

call a missionary meeting, challenged any impugner of the new

doctrines to mortal combat on the spot. No wonder that, after having

killed several opponents in the little tour which he made with his

missionary friend through the island, it became too hot to hold him,

and he, and the missionary, and the new creed, were forced to take

ship and sail back to Norway.

'Precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little and there a

little', was the motto of Rome in her dealings with the heathen

Norsemen, and if she suited herself at first rather to their habits

and temper than to those of more enlightened nations, she had an

excuse in St Paul's maxim of making herself 'all things to all men.'

Thus, when a second attempt to Christianize Iceland proved more

successful--for in the meantime, King Olof Tryggvason, a zealous

Christian, had seized as hostages all the Icelanders of family and

fame who happened to be in Norway, and thus worked on the feelings of

the chiefs of those families at home, who in their turn bribed the

lawman who presided over the Great Assembly to pronounce in favour of

the new Faith--even then the adherents of the old religion were

allowed to perform its rites in secret, and two old heathen practices

only were expressly prohibited, the exposure of infants and the

eating of horseflesh, for horses were sacred animals, and the heathen

ate their flesh after they had been solemnly sacrificed to the gods.

As a matter of fact, it is far easier to change a form of religion

than to extirpate a faith. The first indeed is no easy matter, as

those students of history well know who are acquainted with the

tenacity with which a large proportion of the English nation clung to

the Church of Rome, long after the State had declared for the

Reformation. But to change the faith of a whole nation in block and

bulk on the instant, was a thing contrary to the ordinary working of

Providence and unknown even in the days of miracles, though the days

of miracles had long ceased when Rome advanced against the North.

There it was more politic to raise a cross in the grove where the

Sacred Tree had once stood, and to point to the sacred emblem which

had supplanted the old object of national adoration, when the

populace came at certain seasons with songs and dances to perform

their heathen rites. Near the cross soon rose a church; and both were

girt by a cemetery, the soil of which was doubly sacred as a heathen

fane and a Christian sanctuary, and where alone the bodies of the

faithful could repose in peace. But the songs and dances, and

processions in the church-yard round the cross, continued long after

Christianity had become dominant. So also the worship of wells and

springs was christianized when it was found impossible to prevent it.

Great churches arose over or near them, as at Walsingham, where an

abbey, the holiest place in England, after the shrine of St Thomas at

Canterbury, threw its majestic shade over the heathen wishing-well,

and the worshippers of Odin and the Nornir were gradually converted

into votaries of the Virgin Mary. Such practices form a subject of

constant remonstrance and reproof in the treatises and penitential

epistles of medieval divines, and in some few places and churches,

even in England, such rites are still yearly celebrated. [13]

So, too, again with the ancient gods. They were cast down from

honour, but not from power. They lost their genial kindly influence

as the protectors of men and the origin of all things good; but their

existence was tolerated; they became powerful for ill, and

degenerated into malignant demons. Thus the worshippers of Odin had

supposed that at certain times and rare intervals the good powers

shewed themselves in bodily shape to mortal eye, passing through the

land in divine progress, bringing blessings in their train, and

receiving in return the offerings and homage of their grateful

votaries. But these were naturally only exceptional instances; on

ordinary occasions the pious heathen recognized his gods sweeping

through the air in cloud and storm, riding on the wings of the wind,

and speaking in awful accents, as the tempest howled and roared, and

the sea shook his white mane and crest. Nor did he fail to see them

in the dust and din of battle, when Odin appeared with his terrible

helm, succouring his own, striking fear into their foes, and turning

the day in many a doubtful fight; or in the hurry and uproar of the

chase, where the mighty huntsman on his swift steed, seen in glimpses

among the trees, took up the hunt where weary mortals laid it down,

outstripped them all, and brought the noble quarry to the ground.

Looking up to the stars and heaven, they saw the footsteps of the

gods marked out in the bright path of the Milky Way; and in the Bear

they hailed the war-chariot of the warrior's god. The great

goddesses, too, Frigga and Freyja, were thoroughly old-fashioned

domestic divinities. They help women in their greatest need, they

spin themselves, they teach the maids to spin, and punish them if the

wool remains upon their spindle. They are kind, and good, and

bright, for _Holda_, _Bertha_, are the epithets given to them. And

so, too, this mythology which, in its aspect to the stranger and the

external world, was so ruthless and terrible, when looked at from

within and at home, was genial, and kindly, and hearty, and affords

another proof that men, in all ages and climes, are not so bad as

they seem; that after all, peace and not war is the proper state for

man, and that a nation may make war on others and exist; but that

unless it has peace within, and industry at home, it must perish from

the face of the earth. But when Christianity came, the whole

character of this goodly array of divinities was soured and spoilt.

Instead of the stately procession of the God, which the intensely

sensuous eye of man in that early time connected with all the

phenomena of nature, the people were led to believe in a ghastly

grisly band of ghosts, who followed an infernal warrior or huntsman

in hideous tumult through the midnight air. No doubt, as Grimm

rightly remarks [D. M., p. 900: _Wütendes Heer_], the heathen

had fondly fancied that the spirits of those who had gone to Odin

followed him in his triumphant progress either visibly or invisibly;

that they rode with him in the whirlwind, just as they followed him

to battle, and feasted with him in Valhalla; but now the Christian

belief, when it had degraded the mighty god into a demon huntsman,

who pursued his nightly round in chase of human souls, saw in the

train of the infernal master of the hunt only the spectres of

suicides, drunkards, and ruffians; and, with all the uncharitableness

of a dogmatic faith, the spirits of children who died unbaptized,

whose hard fate had thrown them into such evil company. This was the

way in which that wide-spread superstition arose, which sees in the

phantoms of the clouds the shapes of the Wild Huntsman and his

accursed crew, and hears, in spring and autumn nights, when sea-fowl

take the wing to fly either south or north, the strange accents and

uncouth yells with which the chase is pressed on in upper air.

Thus, in Sweden it is still Odin who passes by; in Denmark it is

King Waldemar's Hunt; in Norway it is _Aaskereida_, that is

_Asgard's Car_; in Germany, it is Wode, Woden, or Hackelberend,

or Dieterich of Bern; in France it is Hellequin, or King Hugo, or

Charles the Fifth, or, dropping a name altogether, it is _Le Grand

Veneur_ who ranges at night through the Forest of Fontainebleau.

Nor was England without her Wild Huntsman and his ghastly following.

Gervase of Tilbury, in the twelfth century, could tell it of King

Arthur, round whose mighty name the superstition settled itself, for

he had heard from the foresters how, 'on alternate days, about the

full of the moon, one day at noon, the next at midnight when the moon

shone bright, a mighty train of hunters on horses was seen, with

baying hounds and blast of horns; and when those hunters were asked

of whose company and household they were, they replied "of

Arthur's".' We hear of him again in _The Complaynt of Scotland_,

that curious composition attributed by some to Sir David Lyndsay of

the Mount in Fife, and of Gilmerton in East Lothian, pp. 97, 98,

where he says:

Arthur knycht, he raid on nycht,

With gyldin spur and candil lycht.

Nor should we forget, when considering this legend, that story of

Herne the Hunter, who

Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,

Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;

And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle,

And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain

In a most hideous and dreadful manner.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act. iv, sc. 4.

And even yet, in various parts of England, the story of some great

man, generally a member of one of the county families, who drives

about the country at night, is common. Thus, in Warwickshire, it is

the 'One-handed Boughton', who drives about in his coach and six, and

makes the benighted traveller hold gates open for him; or it is 'Lady

Skipwith', who passes through the country at night in the same

manner. This subject might be pursued to much greater length, for

popular tradition is full of such stories; but enough has been said

to show how the awful presence of a glorious God can be converted

into a gloomy superstition; and, at the same time, how the majesty of

the old belief strives to rescue itself by clinging, in the popular

consciousness, to some king or hero, as Arthur or Waldemar, or,

failing that, to some squire's family, as Hackelberend, or the 'one-

handed Boughton', or even to the Keeper Herne.

Odin and the Aesir then were dispossessed and degraded by our Saviour

and his Apostles, just as they had of old thrown out the Frost

Giants, and the two are mingled together, in medieval Norse

tradition, as Trolls and Giants, hostile alike to Christianity and

man. Christianity had taken possession indeed, but it was beyond her

power to kill. To this half-result the swift corruption of the Church

of Rome lent no small aid. Her doctrines, as taught by Augustine and

Boniface, by Anschar and Sigfrid, were comparatively mild and pure;

but she had scarce swallowed the heathendom of the North, much in the

same way as the Wolf was to swallow Odin at the 'Twilight of the

Gods', than she fell into a deadly lethargy of faith, which put it

out of her power to digest her meal. Gregory the Seventh, elected

pope in 1073, tore the clergy from the ties of domestic life with a

grasp that wounded every fibre of natural affection, and made it

bleed to the very root. With the celibacy of the clergy he

established the hierarchy of the church, but her labours as a

missionary church were over. Henceforth she worked not by

missionaries and apostles, but by crusades and bulls. Now she raised

mighty armaments to recover the barren soil of the Holy Sepulchre, or

to annihilate heretic Albigenses. Now she established great orders,

Templars and Hospitallers, whose pride and luxury, and pomp, brought

swift destruction on one at least of those fraternities. Now she

became feudal,--she owned land instead of hearts, and forgot that the

true patrimony of St Peter was the souls of men. No wonder that, with

the barbarism of the times, she soon fulfilled the Apostle's words,

'She that liveth in luxury is dead while she liveth', and became

filled with idle superstitions and vain beliefs. No wonder, then,

that instead of completing her conquest over the heathen, and

carrying out their conversion, she became half heathen herself; that

she adopted the tales and traditions of the old mythology, which she

had never been able to extirpate, and related them of our Lord and

his Apostles. No wonder, then, that having abandoned her mission of

being the first power of intelligence on earth, she fell like Lucifer

when the mist of medieval feudalism rolled away, and the light of

learning and education returned--fell before the indignation of

enlightened men, working upon popular opinion. Since which day,

though she has changed her plans, and remodelled her superstitions to

suit the times, she has never regained the supremacy which, if she

had been wise in a true sense, she seemed destined to hold for ever.

NORSE POPULAR TALES

The preceding observations will have given a sufficient account of

the mythology of the Norsemen, and of the way in which it fell. They

came from the East, and brought that common stock of tradition with

them. Settled in the Scandinavian peninsula, they developed

themselves through Heathenism, Romanism, and Lutheranism, in a

locality little exposed to foreign influence, so that even now the

Daleman in Norway or Sweden may be reckoned among the most primitive

examples left of peasant life. We should expect, then, that these

Popular Tales, which, for the sake of those ignorant in such matters,

it may be remarked, had never been collected or reduced to writing

till within the last few years, would present a faithful picture of

the national consciousness, or, perhaps, to speak more correctly, of

that half consciousness out of which the heart of any people speaks

in its abundance. Besides those world-old affinities and primaeval

parallelisms, besides those dreamy recollections of its old home in

the East, which we have already pointed out, we should expect to find

its later history, after the great migration, still more distinctly

reflected; to discover heathen gods masked in the garb of Christian

saints; and thus to see a proof of our assertion above, that a nation

more easily changes the form than the essence of its faith, and

clings with a toughness which endures for centuries to what it has

once learned to believe.

In all mythologies, the trait of all others which most commonly

occurs, is that of the descent of the Gods to earth, where, in human

form, they mix among mortals, and occupy themselves with their

affairs, either out of a spirit of adventure, or to try the hearts of

men. Such a conception is shocking to the Christian notion of the

omnipotence and omnipresence of God, but we question if there be not

times when the most pious and perfect Christian may not find comfort

and relief from a fallacy which was a matter of faith in less

enlightened creeds, and over which the apostle, writing to the

Hebrews, throws the sanction of his authority, so far as angels are

concerned. [Heb., xiii, 1: 'Let brotherly love continue. Be not

forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained

angels unawares.']

Nor could he have forgotten those words of the men of Lystra, 'The

Gods are come down to us in the likeness of men'; and how they called

'Barnabas Jupiter', and himself Mercury, 'because he was the chief

speaker.' Classical mythology is full of such stories. These

wanderings of the Gods are mentioned in the Odyssey, and the sanctity

of the rites of hospitality, and the dread of turning a stranger from

the door, took its origin from a fear lest the wayfaring man should

be a Divinity in disguise. According to the Greek story, Orion owed

his birth to the fact that the childless Hyrieus, his reputed father,

had once received unawares Zeus, Poseidon, and Hermes, or, to call

them by their Latin names, Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury. In the

beautiful story of Philemon and Baucis, Jupiter and Mercury reward

the aged couple who had so hospitably received them by warning them

of the approaching deluge. The fables of Phaedrus and Aesop represent

Mercury and Demeter as wandering and enjoying the hospitality of men.

In India it is Brahma and Vishnu who generally wander. In the Edda,

Odin, Loki, and Hoenir thus roam about, or Thor, Thialfi, and Loki.

Sometimes Odin appears alone as a horseman, who turns in at night to

the smith's house, and gets him to shoe his horse, a legend which

reminds us at once of the Master-smith. [14] Sometimes it is Thor

with his great hammer who wanders thus alone.

Now, let us turn from heathen to Christian times, and look at some of

these old legends of wandering gods in a new dress. Throughout the

Middle Age, it is our blessed Lord and St Peter that thus wander, and

here we see that half-digested heathendom to which we have alluded.

Those who may be shocked at such tales in this collection as 'the

Master-Smith' and 'Gertrude's Bird', must just remember that these

are almost purely heathen traditions, in which the names alone are

Christian; and if it be any consolation to any to know the fact, we

may as well state at once that this adaptation of new names to old

beliefs is not peculiar to the Norsemen, but is found in all the

popular tales of Europe. Germany was full of them, and there St Peter

often appears in a snappish ludicrous guise, which reminds the reader

versed in Norse mythology of the tricks and pranks of the shifty

Loki. In the Norse tales he thoroughly preserves his saintly

character.

Nor was it only gods that walked among men. In the Norse mythology,

Frigga, Odin's wife, who knew beforehand all that was to happen, and

Freyja, the goddess of love and plenty, were prominent figures, and

often trod the earth; the three Norns or Fates, who sway the wierds

of men, and spin their destinies at Mimirs' well of knowledge, were

awful venerable powers, to whom the heathen world looked up with love

and adoration and awe. To that love and adoration and awe, throughout

the middle age, one woman, transfigured into a divine shape,

succeeded by a sort of natural right, and round the Virgin Mary's

blessed head a halo of lovely tales of divine help, beams with soft

radiance as a crown bequeathed to her by the ancient goddesses. She

appears as divine mother, spinner, and helpful virgin (vierge

sécourable). Flowers and plants bear her name. In England one of our

commonest and prettiest insects is still called after her, but which

belonged to Freyja, the heathen 'Lady', long before the western

nations had learned to adore the name of the mother of Jesus. [15]

[15] Footnote: So also Orion's Belt was called by the Norsemen,

Frigga's spindle or _rock, Friggjar rock_. In modern Swedish,

_Friggerock_, where the old goddess holds her own; but in

Danish, _Mariaerock_, Our Lady's rock or spindle. Thus, too,

_Karlavagn_, the 'car of men', or heroes, who rode with Odin,

which we call 'Charles' Wain', thus keeping something, at least, of

the old name, though none of its meaning, became in Scotland

'Peter's-pleugh', from the Christian saint, just as Orion's sword

became 'Peter's-staff'. But what do 'Lady Landers' and 'Lady Ellison'

mean, as applied to the 'Lady-Bird' in Scotland?

The reader of these Tales will meet, in that of 'the Lassie and her

Godmother', No. xxvii, with the Virgin Mary in a truly mythic

character, as the majestic guardian of sun, moon and stars, combined

with that of a helpful, kindly woman, who, while she knows how to

punish a fault, knows also how to reconcile and forgive.

The Norseman's god was a god of battles, and victory his greatest

gift to men; but this was not the only aspect under which the Great

Father was revered. Not victory in the fight alone, but every other

good gift came down from him and the Aesir. Odin's supreme will was

that treasure-house of bounty towards which, in one shape or the

other, all mortal desires turned, and out of its abundance showers of

mercy and streams of divine favour constantly poured down to refresh

the weary race of men. All these blessings and mercies, nay, their

very source itself, the ancient language bound up in a single word,

which, however expressive it may still be, has lost much of the

fulness of its meaning in its descent to these later times. This word

was 'Wish', which originally meant the perfect ideal, the actual

fruition of all joy and desire, and not, as now, the empty longing

for the object of our desires. From this original abstract meaning,

it was but a step to pass to the concrete, to personify the idea, to

make it an immortal essence, an attribute of the divinity, another

name for the greatest of all Gods himself. And so we find a host of

passages in early writers, [_D. M._, p. 126 fol., where they are

cited at length.] in every one of which 'God' or 'Odin' might be

substituted for 'Wish' with perfect propriety. Here we read how 'The

Wish' has hands, feet, power, sight, toil, and art. How he works and

labours, shapes and masters, inclines his ear, thinks, swears,

curses, and rejoices, adopts children, and takes men into his house;

behaves, in short, as a being of boundless power and infinite free-

will. Still more, he rejoices in his own works as in a child, and

thus appears in a thoroughly patriarchal point of view, as the Lord

of creation, glorying in his handiwork, as the father of a family in

early times was glad at heart when he reckoned his children as arrows

in his quiver, and beheld his house full of a long line of retainers

and dependants. For this attribute of the Great Father, for Odin as

the God of Wish, the Edda uses the word 'Oski' which literally

expresses the masculine personification of 'Wish', and it passed on

and added the _works_ wish, as a prefix to a number of others,

to signify that they stood in a peculiar relation to the great giver

of all good. Thus we have _oska-steinn_, wishing-stone, i.e. a

stone which plays the part of a divining rod, and reveals secrets and

hidden treasure; _oska-byrr_, a fair wind, a wind as fair as

man's heart could wish it; _osk-barn_ and _oska-barn_, a child

after one's own heart, an adopted child, as when the younger

Edda tells us that all those who die in battle are Odin's _choice-

bairns_, his adopted children, those on whom he has set his heart,

an expression which, in their turn, was taken by the Icelandic

Christian writers to express the relation existing between God and

the baptized; and, though last, not least, _oska-maer_, wish-

maidens, another name for the Valkyries--Odin's corse-choosers--who

picked out the dead for him on the field of battle, and waited on the

heroes in Valhalla. Again, the Edda is filled with 'choice things',

possessing some mysterious power of their own, some 'virtue', as our

older English would express it, which belong to this or that god, and

are occasionally lent or lost. Thus, Odin himself had a spear which

gave victory to those on whose side it was hurled; Thor, a hammer

which destroyed the Giants, hallowed vows, and returned of itself to

his hand. He had a strength-belt, too, which, when he girded it on,

his god-strength waxed one-half; Freyr had a sword which wielded

itself; Freyja a necklace which, like the cestus of Venus, inspired

all hearts with love; Freyr, again, had a ship called _Skithblathnir_.

She is so great, that all the Aesir, with their weapons and war

gear, may find room on board her; and as soon as the sail is set,

she has a fair wind whither she shall go; and when there is no need

of faring on the sea in her, she is made of so many things, and

with so much craft, that Freyr may fold her together like a cloth,

and keep her in his bag.

[Snorro's _Edda_, Stockholm, 1842, translated by the writer.]

Of this kind, too, was the ring 'Dropper' which Odin had, and from

which twelve other rings dropped every night; the apples which Idun,

one of the goddesses, had, and of which, so soon as the Aesir ate,

they became young again; the helm which Oegir, the sea giant had,

which struck terror into all antagonists like the Aegis of Athene;

and that wonderful mill which the mythical Frodi owned, of which we

shall shortly speak.

Now, let us see what traces of this great god 'Wish' and his choice-

bairns and wishing-things we can find in these Tales, faint echoes of

a mighty heathen voice, which once proclaimed the goodness of the

great Father in the blessings which he bestowed on his chosen sons.

We shall not have long to seek. In tale No. xx, when Shortshanks

meets those three old crookbacked hags who have only one eye, which

he snaps up, and gets first a sword 'that puts a whole army to

flight, be it ever so great', we have the 'one-eyed Odin',

degenerated into an old hag, or rather--by no uncommon process--we

have an old witch fused by popular tradition into a mixture of Odin

and the three Nornir. Again, when he gets that wondrous ship 'which

can sail over fresh water and salt water, and over high hills and

deep dales,' and which is so small that he can put it into his

pocket, and yet, when he came to use it, could hold five hundred men,

we have plainly the Skith-blathnir of the Edda to the very life. So

also in the Best Wish, No. xxxvi, the whole groundwork of this story

rests on this old belief; and when we meet that pair of old scissors

which cuts all manner of fine clothes out of the air, that tablecloth

which covers itself with the best dishes you could think of, as soon

as it was spread out, and that tap which, as soon as it was turned,

poured out the best of mead and wine, we have plainly another form of

Frodi's wishing-quern--another recollection of those things of choice

about which the old mythology has so much to tell. Of the same kind

are the tablecloth, the ram, and the stick in 'the Lad who went to

the North Wind', No. xxxiv, and the rings in 'the Three Princesses of

Whiteland', No. xxvi, and in 'Soria Moria Castle', No. lvi. In the

first of those stories, too, we find those 'three brothers' who have

stood on a moor 'these hundred years fighting about a hat, a cloak,

and a pair of boots', which had the virtue of making him who wore

them invisible; choice things which will again remind the reader of

the _Nibelungen Lied_, of the way in which Siegfried became

possessed of the famous hoard of gold, and how he got that 'cap of

darkness' which was so useful to him in his remaining exploits. So

again in 'the Blue Belt', No. xxii, what is that belt which, when the

boy girded it on, 'he felt as strong as if he could lift the whole

hill', but Thor's 'choice-belt'; and what is the daring boy himself,

who overcomes the Troll, but Thor himself, as engaged in one of his

adventures with the Giants? So, too, in 'Little Annie the Goose-

girl', No. lix, the stone which tells the Prince all the secrets of

his brides is plainly the old Oskastein, or 'wishing-stone'. These

instances will suffice to show the prolonged faith in 'Wish', and his

choice things; a belief which, though so deeply rooted in the North,

we have already traced to its home in the East, whence it stretches

itself from pole to pole, and reappears in every race. We recognize

it in the wishing-cap of Fortunatus, which is a Celtic legend; in the

cornucopia of the Romans; in the goat Amalthea among the Greeks; in

the wishing-cow and wishing-tree of the Hindoos; in the pumpkin-tree

of the West Indian Ananzi stories; in the cow of the Servian legends,

who spins yarn out of her ear; in the Sampo of the Finns; and in all

those stories of cups, and glasses, and horns, and rings, and swords,

seized by some bold spirit in the midst of a fairy revel, or earned

by some kind deed rendered by mortal hand to one of the 'good folk'

in her hour of need, and with which the '_luck_' [See the well-

known story of 'The Luck of Eden Hall'.] of that mortal's house was

ever afterwards bound up; stories with which the local traditions of

all lands are full, but which all pay unconscious homage to the

worship of that great God, to whom so many heathen hearts so often

turned as the divine realizer of their prayers, and the giver of all

good things, until they come at last to make an idol out of their

hopes and prayers, and to immortalize the very 'Wish' itself.

Again, of all beliefs, that in which man has, at all times of his

history, been most prone to set faith, is that of a golden age of

peace and plenty, which had passed away, but which might be expected

to return. Such a period was looked for when Augustus closed the

temple of Janus, and peace, though perhaps not plenty, reigned over

what the proud Roman called the habitable world. Such a period the

early Christian expected when the Saviour was born, in the reign of

that very Augustus; and such a period some, whose thoughts are more

set on earth than heaven, have hoped for ever since, with a hope

which, though deferred for eighteen centuries, has not made their

hearts sick. Such a period of peace and plenty, such a golden time,

the Norseman could tell of in his mythic Frodi's reign, when gold or

_Frodi's meal_, as it was called, was so plentiful that golden

armlets lay untouched from year's end to year's end on the king's

highway, and the fields bore crops unsown. Here, in England, the

Anglo-Saxon Bede [Hist., ii, 16.] knew how to tell the same story of

Edwin, the Northumbrian King, and when Alfred came to be mythic, the

same legend was passed on from Edwin to the West Saxon monarch. The

remembrance of 'the bountiful Frodi' echoed in the songs of German

poets long after the story which made him so bountiful had been

forgotten; but the Norse Skalds could tell not only the story of

Frodi's wealth and bounty, but also of his downfall and ruin. In

Frodi's house were two maidens of that old giant race, Fenja and

Menja. These daughters of the giant he had bought as slaves, and he

made them grind his quern or hand-mill, Grotti, out of which he used

to grind peace and gold. Even in that golden age one sees there were

slaves, and Frodi, however bountiful to his thanes and people, was a

hard task-master to his giant hand-maidens. He kept them to the mill,

nor gave them longer rest than the cuckoo's note lasted, or they

could sing a song. But that quern was such that it ground anything

that the grinder chose, though until then it had ground nothing but

gold and peace. So the maidens ground and ground, and one sang their

piteous tale in a strain worthy of Aeschylus as the other worked--

they prayed for rest and pity, but Frodi was deaf. Then they turned

in giant mood, and ground no longer peace and plenty, but fire and

war. Then the quern went fast and furious, and that very night came

Mysing the Sea-rover, and slew Frodi and all his men, and carried off

the quern; and so Frodi's peace ended. The maidens the sea-rover took

with him, and when he got on the high seas he bade them grind salt.

So they ground; and at midnight they asked if he had not salt enough,

but he bade them still grind on. So they ground till the ship was

full and sank, Mysing, maids, and mill, and all, and that's why the

sea is salt [nor. _Ed. Skaldsk._, ch. 43.]. Perhaps of all the

tales in this volume, none could be selected as better proving the

toughness of a traditional belief than No. ii, which tells 'Why the

Sea is Salt'.

The notion of the Arch-enemy of God and man, of a fallen angel, to

whom power was permitted at certain times for an all-wise purpose by

the Great Ruler of the universe, was as foreign to the heathendom of

our ancestors as his name was outlandish and strange to their tongue.

This notion Christianity brought with it from the East; and though it

is a plant which has struck deep roots, grown distorted and awry, and

borne a bitter crop of superstition, it required all the authority of

the Church to prepare the soil at first for its reception. To the

notion of good necessarily follows that of evil. The Eastern mind,

with its Ormuzd and Ahriman, is full of such dualism, and from that

hour, when a more than mortal eye saw Satan falling like lightning

from heaven [St Luke, x, 18.], the kingdom of darkness, the abode of

Satan and his bad spirits, was established in direct opposition to

the kingdom of the Saviour and his angels. The North had its own

notion on this point. Its mythology was not without its own dark

powers; but though they too were ejected and dispossessed, they,

according to that mythology, had rights of their own. To them

belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by

the younger race of Odin and Aesir; and though this upstart dynasty,

as the Frost Giants in Promethean phrase would have called it, well

knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was fated to do them all

mischief, and to outlive them, they took her and made her queen of

Niflheim, and mistress over nine worlds. There, in a bitterly cold

place, she received the souls of all who died of sickness or old age;

care was her bed, hunger her dish, starvation her knife. Her walls

were high and strong, and her bolts and bars huge; 'Half blue was her

skin, and half the colour of human flesh. A goddess easy to know, and

in all things very stern and grim.' [Snor. _Edda,_ ch. 34, Engl.

Transl.]

But though severe, she was not an evil spirit. She only received

those who died as no Norseman wished to die. For those who fell on

the gory battle-field, or sank beneath the waves, Valhalla was

prepared, and endless mirth and bliss with Odin. Those went to Hel,

who were rather unfortunate than wicked, who died before they could

be killed. But when Christianity came in and ejected Odin and his

crew of false divinities, declaring them to be lying gods and demons,

then Hel fell with the rest; but fulfilling her fate, outlived them.

From a person she became a place, and all the Northern nations, from

the Goth to the Norseman, agreed in believing Hell to be the abode of

the devil and his wicked spirits, the place prepared from the

beginning for the everlasting torments of the damned. One curious

fact connected with this explanation of Hell's origin will not escape

the reader's attention. The Christian notion of Hell is that of a

place of heat, for in the East, whence Christianity came, heat is

often an intolerable torment, and cold, on the other hand, everything

that is pleasant and delightful. But to the dweller in the North,

heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and life without

fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in a cold region over

those who were cowards by implication, while the mead-cup went round,

and huge logs blazed and crackled in Valhalla, for the brave and

beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle. But under

Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the

cold uncomfortable goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fire

abound, and where the devils abide in everlasting flame.

Still, popular tradition is tough, and even after centuries of

Christian teaching, the Norse peasant, in his popular tales, can

still tell of Hell as a place where fire-wood is wanted at Christmas,

and over which a certain air of comfort breathes, though, as in the

goddess Hel's halls, meat is scarce. The following passage from 'Why

the Sea is Salt', No. ii, will sufficiently prove this:

'Well, here is the flitch', said the rich brother, 'and now go

straight to Hell.'

'What I have given my word to do, I must stick to' said the other;

so he took the flitch and set off. He walked the whole day, and at

dusk he came to a place where he saw a very bright light.

'Maybe this is the place' said the man to himself. So he turned

aside, and the first thing he saw was an old, old man, with a long

white beard, who stood in an outhouse, hewing wood for the

Christmas fire.

'Good even,' said the man with the flitch.

'The same to you; whither are you going so late?' said the man.

'Oh! I'm going to Hell, if I only knew the right way,' answered the

poor man.

'Well, you're not far wrong, for this is Hell,' said the old man;

'When you get inside they will be all for buying your flitch, for

meat is scarce in Hell; but mind you don't sell it unless you get

the hand-quern which stands behind the door for it. When you come

out, I'll teach you how to handle the quern, for it's good to grind

almost anything.'

This, too, is the proper place to explain the conclusion of that

intensely heathen tale, 'the Master-Smith', No. xvi. We have already

seen how the Saviour and St Peter supply, in its beginning, the place

of Odin and some other heathen god. But when the Smith sets out with

the feeling that he has done a silly thing in quarrelling with the

Devil, having already lost his hope of heaven, this tale assumes a

still more heathen shape. According to the old notion, those who were

not Odin's guests went either to Thor's house, who had all the

thralls, or to Freyja, who even claimed a third part of the slain on

every battle-field with Odin, or to Hel, the cold comfortless goddess

already mentioned, who was still no tormentor, though she ruled over

nine worlds, and though her walls were high, and her bolts and bars

huge; traits which come out in 'the Master-Smith', No. xvi, when the

Devil, who here assumes Hel's place, orders the watch to go back and

lock up _all the nine locks on the gates of Hell_--a lock for

each of the goddesses _nine_ worlds--and to put a padlock on

besides. In the twilight between heathendom and Christianity, in that

half Christian half heathen consciousness, which this tale reveals,

heaven is the preferable abode, as Valhalla was of yore, but rather

than be without a house to one's head after death, Hell was not to be

despised; though, having behaved ill to the ruler of one, and

actually quarrelled with the master of the other, the Smith was

naturally anxious on the matter. This notion of different abodes in

another world, not necessarily places of torment, comes out too in

'Not a Pin to choose between them', No. xxiv, where Peter, the second

husband of the silly Goody, goes about begging from house to house in

Paradise.

For the rest, whenever the Devil appears in these tales, it is not at

all as the Arch-enemy, as the subtle spirit of the Christian's faith,

but rather as one of the old Giants, supernatural and hostile indeed

to man, but simple and easily deceived by a cunning reprobate, whose

superior intelligence he learns to dread, for whom he feels himself

no match, and whom, finally, he will receive in Hell at no price. We

shall have to notice some other characteristics of this race of

giants a little further on, but certainly no greater proof can be

given of the small hold which the Christian Devil has taken of the

Norse mind, than the heathen aspect under which he constantly

appears, and the ludicrous way in which he is always outwitted.

We have seen how our Lord and the saints succeeded to Odin and his

children in the stories which told of their wanderings on earth, to

warn the wicked, or to help the good; we have seen how the kindliness

and helpfulness of the ancient goddesses fell like a royal mantle

round the form of the Virgin Mary. We have seen, too, on the other

hand, how the procession of the Almighty God degenerated into the

infernal midnight hunt. We have now to see what became of the rest of

the power of the goddesses, of all that might which was not absorbed

into the glory of the blessed Virgin. We shall not have far to seek.

No reader of early medieval chronicles and sermons, can fail to have

been struck with many passages which ascribe majesty and power to

beings of woman's sex. Now it is a heathen goddess as _Diana_;

now some half-historical character as _Bertha_; now a mythical

being as _Holda_; now _Herodias_; now _Satia_; now _Domina Abundia_,

or _Dame Habonde_ [16].

A very short investigation will serve to identify the two ancient

goddesses Frigga and Freyja with all these leaders of a midnight

host. Just as Odin was banished from day to darkness, so the two

great heathen goddesses, fused into one 'uncanny' shape, were

supposed to ride the air at night. Medieval chroniclers, writing in

bastard Latin, and following the example of classical authors, when

they had to find a name for this demon-goddess, chose, of course,

_Diana_ the heathen huntress, the moon-goddess, and the ruler of

the night. In the same way, when they threw Odin's name into a Latin

shape, he, the god of wit and will, as well as power and victory,

became Mercury. As for Herodias--not the mother, but the daughter who

danced--she must have made a deep impression on the mind of the early

Middle Age, for she was supposed to have been cursed after the

beheading of John the Baptist, and to have gone on dancing for ever.

When heathendom fell, she became confounded with the ancient

Goddesses, and thus we find her, sometimes among the crew of the

Wild Huntsman, sometimes, as we see in the passages below, in

company with, or in the place of _Diana, Holda, Satia_, and

_Abundia_, at the head of a bevy of women, who met at certain

places to celebrate unholy rites and mysteries. As for _Holda,

Satia_, and _Abundia_, 'the kind', 'the satisfying', and 'the

abundant', they are plainly names of good rather than evil powers;

they are ancient epithets drawn from the bounty of the 'Good Lady',

and attest the feeling of respect which still clung to them in the

popular mind. As was the case whenever Christianity was brought in,

the country folk, always averse to change, as compared with the more

lively and intelligent dwellers in towns, still remained more or less

heathen, [17] and to this day they preserve unconsciously many

superstitions which can be traced up in lineal descent to their old

belief. In many ways does the old divinity peep out under the new

superstition--the long train, the midnight feast, 'the good lady' who

presides, the bounty and abundance which her votaries fancied would

follow in her footsteps, all belong to the ancient Goddess. Most

curious of all is the way in which all these traditions from

different countries insist on the third part of the earth, the third

child born, the third soul as belonging to the 'good lady', who leads

the revel; for this right of a third, or even of a half, was one

which Freyja possessed. 'But Freyja is most famous of the Asynjor.

She has that bower in heaven hight Fólkvángr, and 'whithersoever she

rideth to the battle, there hath she one half of the slain; but Odin

the other half.' Again 'when she fares abroad, she drives two cats

and sits in a car, and she lends an easy ear to the prayers of men.'

[Snorro's _Edda_, Dasent's Translation, pp. 29 (Stockholm

1842).]

We have got then the ancient goddesses identified as evil influences,

and as the leader of a midnight band of women, who practised secret

and unholy rites. This leads us at once to witchcraft. In all ages

and in all races this belief in sorcery has existed. Men and women

practised it alike, but in all times female sorcerers have

predominated. [18] This was natural enough. In those days women were

priestesses; they collected drugs and simples; women alone knew the

virtues of plants. Those soft hands spun linen, made lint, and bound

wounds. Women in the earliest times with which we are acquainted with

our forefathers, alone knew how to read and write, they only could

carve the mystic runes, they only could chant the charms so potent to

allay the wounded warrior's smart and pain. The men were busy out of

doors with ploughing, hunting, barter, and war. In such an age the

sex which possessed by natural right book-learning, physic,

soothsaying, and incantation, even when they used these mysteries for

good purposes, were but a step from sin. The same soft white hand

that bound the wound and scraped the lint; the same gentle voice that

sung the mystic rune, that helped the child-bearing woman, or drew

the arrow-head from the dying champion's breast; the same bright eye

that gazed up to heaven in ecstacy through the sacred grove and read

the will of the Gods when the mystic tablets and rune-carved lots

were cast--all these, if the will were bad, if the soothsayer passed

into the false prophetess, the leech into a poisoner, and the

priestess into a witch, were as potent and terrible for ill as they

had once been powerful for good. In all the Indo-European tribes,

therefore, women, and especially old women, have practised witchcraft

from the earliest times, and Christianity found them wherever it

advanced. But Christianity, as it placed mankind upon a higher

platform of civilization, increased the evil which it found, and when

it expelled the ancient goddesses, and confounded them as demons with

Diana and Herodias, it added them and their votaries to the old class

of malevolent sorcerers. There was but one step, but a simple act of

the will, between the Norn and the hag, even before Christianity came

in. As soon as it came, down went Goddess, Valkyrie, Norn, priestess,

and soothsayer, into that unholy deep where the heathen hags and

witches had their being; and, as Christianity gathered strength,

developed its dogmas, and worked out its faith; fancy, tradition,

leechcraft, poverty, and idleness, produced that unhappy class, the

medieval witch, the persecution of which is one of the darkest pages

in religious history.

It is curious indeed to trace the belief in witches through the

Middle Age, and to mark how it increases in intensity and absurdity.

At first, as we have seen in the passages quoted, the superstition

seemed comparatively harmless, and though the witches themselves may

have believed in their unholy power, there were not wanting divines

who took a common-sense view of the matter, and put the absurdity of

their pretensions to a practical proof. Such was that good parish

priest who asked, when an old woman of his flock insisted that she

had been in his house with the company of 'the Good Lady', and had

seen him naked and covered him up, 'How, then, did you get in when

all the doors were locked?' 'We can get in,' she said, 'even if the

doors are locked.' Then the priest took her into the chancel of the

church, locked the door, and gave her a sound thrashing with the

pastoral staff, calling out 'Out with you, lady witch.' But as she

could not, he sent her home, saying 'See now how foolish you are to

believe in such empty dreams'. [19]

But as the Church increased in strength, as heresies arose, and

consequent persecution, then the secret meetings of these sectarians,

as we should now call them, were identified by the hierarchy with the

rites of sorcery and magic, and with the relics of the worship of the

old gods. By the time, too, that the hierarchy was established, that

belief in the fallen angel, the Arch-Fiend, the Devil, originally so

foreign to the nations of the West, had become thoroughly ingrafted

on the popular mind, and a new element of wickedness and superstition

was introduced at those unholy festivals. About the middle of the

thirteenth century, we find the mania for persecuting heretics

invading the tribes of Teutonic race from France and Italy, backed by

all the power of the Pope. Like jealousy, persecution too often makes

the meat it feeds on, and many silly, if not harmless, superstitions

were rapidly put under the ban of the Church. Now the 'Good Lady' and

her train begin to recede, they only fill up the background while the

Prince of Darkness steps, dark and terrible, in front, and soon draws

after him the following of the ancient goddess. Now we hear stories

of demoniac possession; now the witches adore a demon of the other

sex. With the male element, and its harsher, sterner nature, the

sinfulness of these unholy assemblies is infinitely increased; folly

becomes guilt, and guilt crime. [20]

From the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth

century the history of Europe teems with processes against witches

and sorcerers. Before the Reformation it reached its height, in the

Catholic world, with the famous bull of Innocent the Eighth in 1484,

the infamous _Malleus Maleficarum_, the first of the long list

of witch-finding books, and the zeal with which the State lent all

the terrors of the law to assist the ecclesiastical inquisitors.

Before the tribunals of those inquisitors, in the fifteenth century,

innumerable victims were arraigned on the double charge of heresy and

sorcery--for the crimes ran in couples, both being children and sworn

servants of the Devil. Would that the historian could say that with

the era of the Reformation these abominations ceased. The Roman

Hierarchy, with her bulls and inquisitors, had sown a bitter crop,

which both she and the Protestant Churches were destined to reap; but

in no part of the world were the labourers more eager and willing,

when the fields were 'black' to harvest, than in those very reformed

communities which had just shaken off the yoke of Rome, and which had

sprung in many cases from the very heretics whom she had persecuted

and burnt, accusing them at the same time, of the most malignant

sorceries. [21]

Their excuse is, that no one is before his age. The intense

personality given to the Devil in the Middle Age had possessed the

whole mind of Europe. We must take them as we find them, with their

bright fancy, their earnest faith, their stern fanaticism, their

revolting superstition, just as when we look upon a picture we know

that those brilliant hues and tones, that spirit which informs the

whole, could never be, were it not for the vulgar earths and oil out

of which the glorious work of art is mixed and made. Strangely

monotonous are all the witch trials of which Europe has so many to

show. At first the accused denies, then under torture she confesses,

then relapses and denies; tortured again she confesses again,

amplifies her story, and accuses others. When given to the stake, she

not seldom asserts all her confessions to be false, which is ascribed

to the power which the fiend still has over her. Then she is burnt

and her ashes given to the winds. Those who wish to read one

unexampled, perhaps for barbarity and superstition, and more curious

than the rest from the prominence given in it to a man, may find it

in the trial of Dr. Fian, the Scotch wizard, "which doctor was

register to the Devil, that sundry times preached at North Baricke

(North Berwick, in East Lothian) Kirke, to a number of notorious

witches." [22] But we advise no one to venture on a perusal of this

tract who is not prepared to meet with the most unutterable

accusations and crimes, the most cruel tortures, and the most absurd

confessions, followed as usual by the stoutest denial of all that had

been confessed; when torture had done her worst on poor human nature,

and the soul re-asserted at the last her supremacy over the body.

[23] One characteristic of all these witch trials, is the fact, that

in spite of their unholy connection and intrigues with the Evil One,

no witch ever attained to wealth and station by the aid of the Prince

of Darkness. The pleasure to do ill, is all the pleasure they feel.

This fact alone might have opened the eyes of their persecutors, for

if the Devil had the worldly power which they represented him to

have, he might at least have raised some of his votaries to temporal

rank, and to the pomps and the vanities of this world. An old German

proverb expresses this notorious fact, by saying, that 'every seven

years, a witch is three halfpence richer'; and so with all the unholy

means of Hell at their command, they dragged out their lives, along

with their black cats, in poverty and wretchedness. To this fate at

last, came the worshippers of the great goddess Freyja, whom our

forefathers adored as the goddess of love and plenty; and whose car

was drawn by those animals which popular superstition has ever since

assigned to the 'old witch' of our English villages.

The North was not free, any more than the rest of the Protestant

world, from this direful superstition, which ran over Europe like a

pestilence in the sixteenth century. In Sweden especially, the

witches and their midnight ridings to _Blokulla_, the black

hill, gave occasion to processes as absurd and abominable as the

trial of Dr. Fian and the witch-findings of Hopkins. In Denmark, the

sorceresses were supposed to meet at Tromsoe high up in Finmark, or

even on Heckla in Iceland. The Norse witches met at a Blokolle of

their own, or on the Dovrefell, or at other places in Norway or

Finmark. As might be expected, we find many traces of witchcraft in

these Tales, but it may be doubted whether these may not be referred

rather to the old heathen belief in such arts still lingering in the

popular mind than to the processes of the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries, which were far more a craze and mania of the educated

classes acting under a mistaken religious fanaticism against popular

superstitions than a movement arising from the mass of the community.

Still, in 'the Mastermaid', No. xi, the witch of a sister-in-law, who

had rolled the apple over to the Prince, and so charmed him, was torn

to pieces between twenty-four horses. The old queen in 'The Lassie

and her Godmother', No. xxvii, tries to persuade her son to have the

young queen burnt alive for a wicked witch, who was dumb, and had

eaten her own babes. In 'East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon', No.

iv, it is a wicked stepmother who has bewitched the prince. In 'Bushy

Bride', No. xlv, the ugly bride charms the king to sleep, and is at

last thrown, with her wicked mother, into a pit full of snakes. In

the 'Twelve Wild Ducks', No. viii, the wicked stepmother persuades

the king that Snow-white and Rosy-red is a witch, and almost

persuades him to burn her alive. In 'Tatterhood', No. xlvii, a whole

troop of witches come to keep their revels on Christmas eve in the

Queen's Palace, and snap off the young Princess's head. It is hard,

indeed, in tales where Trolls play so great a part, to keep witch and

Troll separate; but the above instances will show that the belief in

the one, as distinct from the other, exists in the popular

superstitions of the North.

The frequent transformation of men into beasts, in these tales, is

another striking feature. This power the gods of the Norseman

possessed in common with those of all other mythologies. Europa and

her Bull, Leda and her Swan, will occur at once to the reader's mind;

and to come to closer resemblances, just as Athene appears in the

Odyssey as an eagle or a swallow perched on the roof of the hall

[Od., iii, 372; and xxii, 239], so Odin flies off as a falcon, and

Loki takes the form of a horse or bird. This was only part of that

omnipotence which all gods enjoy. But the belief that men, under

certain conditions, could also take the shape of animals, is

primaeval, and the traditions of every race can tell of such

transformations. Herodotus had heard how the Neurians, a Slavonic

race, passed for wizards amongst the Scythians and the Greeks settled

round the Black Sea, because each of them, once in the year, became a

wolf for a few days, and then returned to his natural shape. Pliny,

Pomponius Mela, and St. Augustin, in his great treatise, _De

Civitate Dei_, tell the same story, and Virgil, in his Eclogues,

has sung the same belief [24]. The Latins called such a man, a

_turnskin--versipellis_, an expression which exactly agrees with

the Icelandic expression for the same thing, and which is probably

the true original of our _turncoat_. In Petronius the superstition

appears in its full shape, and is worth repeating. At the banquet of

Trimalchion, Nicoros gives the following account of the turn-skins

of Nero's time:

It happened that my master was gone to Capua to dispose of some

second-hand goods. I took the opportunity and persuaded our guest

to walk with me to the fifth milestone. He was a valiant soldier,

and a sort of grim water-drinking Pluto. About cock-crow, when the

moon was shining as bright as mid-day, we came among the monuments.

My friend began addressing himself to the stars, but I was rather

in a mood to sing or to count them; and when I turned to look at

him, lo! he had already stripped himself and laid down his clothes

near him. My heart was in my nostrils, and I stood like a dead man;

but he '_circumminxit vestimenta_', and on a sudden became a

wolf. Do not think I jest; I would not lie for any man's estate.

But to return to what I was saying. When he became a wolf, he began

howling, and fled into the woods. At first I hardly knew where I

was, and afterwards, when I went to take up his clothes, they were

turned into stone. Who then died with fear but I? Yet I drew my

sword, and went cutting the air right and left, till I reached the

villa of my sweetheart. I entered the court-yard. I almost breathed

my last, the sweat ran down my neck, my eyes were dim, and I

thought I should never recover myself. My Melissa wondered why I

was out so late, and said to me: 'Had you come sooner you might at

least have helped us, for a wolf has entered the farm, and worried

all our cattle; but he had not the best of the joke, for all he

escaped, for our slave ran a lance through his neck.' When I heard

this, I could not doubt how it was, and, as it was clear daylight,

ran home as fast as a robbed innkeeper. When I came to the spot

where the clothes had been turned into stone, I could find nothing

except blood. But when I got home, I found my friend the soldier in

bed, bleeding at the neck like an ox, and a doctor dressing his

wound. I then knew he was a turn-skin, nor would I ever have broke

bread with him again; No, not if you had killed me. [25]

A man who had such a gift or greed was also called lycanthropus,

a man-wolf or wolf-man, which term the Anglo-Saxons translated

literally in Canute's Laws _verevulf_, and the early English

_werewolf_. In old French he was _loupgarou_, which means the

same thing; except that _garou_ means man-wolf in itself without

the antecedent _loup_, so that, as Madden observes, the whole

word is one of those reduplications of which we have an example

in _lukewarm_. In Brittany he was _bleizgarou_ and _denvleiz_,

formed respectively from _bleiz_, wolf, and _den_, man; _garou_ is

merely a distorted form of _wer_ or _vere_, man and _loup_. In

later French the word became _waroul_, whence the Scotch _wrout_,

_wurl_, and _worlin_. [26]

It was not likely that a belief so widely spread should not have

extended itself to the North; and the grave assertions of Olaus

Magnus in the sixteenth century, in his Treatise _De Gentibus

Septentrionalibus_, show how common the belief in were-wolves was

in Sweden so late as the time of Gustavus Vasa. In mythical times

the _Volsunga Saga_ [_Fornald Sog_, i, 130, 131.] expressly

states of Sigmund and Sinfjötli that they became were-wolves--which,

we may remark, were Odin's sacred beasts--just in the same way as

Brynhildr and the Valkyries, or corse-choosers, who followed the god

of battles to the field, and chose the dead for Valhalla when the

fight was done, became swan-maidens, and took the shape of swans. In

either case, the wolf's skin or the swan's feathery covering was

assumed and laid aside at pleasure, though the _Völundr Quidr_,

in the _Edda_, and the stories of 'The Fair Melusina', and other

medieval swan-maidens, show that any one who seized that shape while

thus laid aside, had power over its wearer. In later times, when this

old heroic belief degenerated into the notion of sorcery, it was

supposed that a girdle of wolfskin thrown over the body, or even a

slap on the face with a wolfskin glove, would transform the person

upon whom the sorcerer practised into the shape of a ravening wolf,

which fled at once to the woods, where he remained in that shape for

a period which varied in popular belief for nine days, three, seven,

or nine years. While in this state he was especially ravenous after

young children, whom he carried off as the were-wolf carried off

William in the old romance, though all were-wolves did not treat

their prey with the same tenderness as that were-wolf treated

William.

But the favourite beast for Norse transformations in historic times,

if we may judge from the evidence afforded by the Sagas, was the

bear, the king of all their beasts, whose strength and sagacity made

him an object of great respect [See Landnama in many places.

_Egil's Sag., Hrolf Krak. Sag._].

SIR GEORGE WEBB DASANT