FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1]: The word Runes is here used in its original signification,--that of mystery or secret. Each letter of the Runic alphabet was supposed to possess a mysterious and magical power. In the Scandinavian mythology, each Rune was originally dedicated to some deity; it also denoted some natural quality or object: their Asiatic origin is now proved beyond doubt. There is a remarkable poem in the elder Edda--the Song of Brynhildé, in which mention is made of several kinds of Runes. Among them may be classed numerous amulets of most of the Asiatic tribes, as well as of the Egyptians, Greeks, &c., on which these characters were cut or traced. The custom among sailors of marking their skins with letters and devices may clearly be traced to Runic origin, and the tattooing among savage tribes is evidently similarly derived. In Wilson's account of the Pelew Islands, King Abba Thulé is represented as tattooed with two crosses on the breast and two on one shoulder, with a snake, and these distinct northern Runes [Illustration of rune]. In the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, when superstition dragged her victims to the stake throughout all Christian Europe, the use of Runes became an especial object for the persecutions exercised by the authorities and clergy of Iceland,--the word Rune there signifying a mysterious and magical character. The songs of the Finns and Laps, which are supposed by them to possess magic powers, are still called Runes.--Translator. Vide Professor Finn Magnussen's Notes to the Elder Edda, vol. iii.
[Footnote 2]: King Eric the Sixth of Denmark, surnamed Plough Penny, the son and successor of Valdemar the Victorious, was murdered by the command of his brother, Junker Abel, Duke of Slesvig, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, on the 4th of August, 1250. Abel had frequently rebelled against his brother; but at last finding that his forces were unequal to the contest, he had recourse to stratagem, and made overtures of friendship to Eric, who gladly accepted them, and hesitated not to visit his brother at one of his palaces in Slesvig. After an apparently cordial reception, however, the duke contrived to turn the conversation on their former feuds, and reproached the king with having devastated his territories, saying, "Dost thou not remember how thou didst plunder my town of Slesvig, and compel my daughter to fly barefoot to a place of shelter? Thou shalt not do so twice." Eric was then seized and led to the river Slie, where he was placed in a boat, beheaded, and his body sunk by stones into the deepest part of the stream. In order to cover this crime, Duke Abel and twenty-four of his knights, according to the usage of those times, endeavoured to clear themselves of suspicion, by solemnly affirming that the king had met with his death by the upsetting of the boat, but two months afterwards the headless trunk floated to the river side, and the murder became known. The body was deposited in St. Benedict's church at Ringsted, where the Translator not long ago was shown one of the bones through an aperture of the walled-up niche.
[Footnote 3]: The placing runes upon the tongue was employed in Runic magic to waken the dead priestess, and compel her to give a prophetic answer to the magician whose spells had aroused her from the sleep of death. In the song of Vegtam, in the Elder Edda, known to the English reader in our poet Gray's fine translation, "The Descent of Odin," the Scandinavian bard describes the magic power of runes traced on the ground towards the north, and repeated as incantations, in calling forth the prophetic response from the tomb.
Right against the eastern gate,
By the moss-grown pile he sate,
Where long of yore to sleep was laid
The dust of the prophetic maid;
Facing to the northern clime,
Thrice he traced the Runic rhyme;
Thrice pronounced in accents dread,
The thrilling verse that wakes the dead,
Till from out the hollow ground,
Slowly breathed a sullen sound."
Translator's Note.
[Footnote 4]: Baldur, the son of Odin, was slain by Hother, a Danish warrior, his rival in the affections of Nanna, a Norwegian princess.
[Footnote 5]: Fragment of an old Danish ballad entitled "Agneté and the Merman."
[Footnote 6]: One of the most ancient and characteristic ballads of the north. It is the subject of one of M. Ohlenschlager's most popular tragedies.
[Footnote 7]: The superstitious belief in the existence of mermen, prevailed in Denmark at no very remote period. It seems probable that the pirates or Vikings of the north availed themselves of this superstition, by assuming the disguise of mermen to scare the inhabitants from those coasts it was important they should possess. The adventures of some Scandinavian pirate and maiden probably gave rise to the curious old ballad of Agneté and the Merman. See the Danish "Kjæmpe Viser."--Translator.
[Footnote 8]: Fragment of an heroic ballad.
[Footnote 9]: Varulve (Manwolf) according to ancient superstition, a man who had been metamorphosed for a certain time into a wolf. The superstitions of the Scandinavians, as handed down in the Sagas and Kempe Vise (heroic ballads), partake so much of the character of Eastern fable, that there can be little doubt of their Asiatic origin.--Translator.
[Footnote 10]: Nidaros, the ancient name of Drontheim in Norway.
[Footnote 11]: "Vola's qvad," or "The Song of the Prophetess," is one of the most imaginative poems in the Elder Edda. It opens with an account of the springing forth of creation from chaos, and after announcing death as the final doom of all physical nature, ends by foretelling the rise of a better and brighter world, from the ocean in which the first had been engulphed.--Translator.
[Footnote 12]: The name of the ancient castle of Copenhagen, built by Bishop Absalon in the thirteenth century as a defence against pirates.