Kukuk vam haven, wo lange sail ik leven?
There were many legends of men and snakes who exchanged shapes, and whom it was unlucky to kill.[[4]]
The sun and moon, too, were familiar figures in legends.
Their movement across the sky was a flight from two pursuing wolves, of which one, the Fenris wolf, was fated one day to catch and devour the moon. The German, like the Greek, dreaded nothing more than the eclipse of sun or moon, and connected it with the destruction of all things and the end of the world. In the moon spots he saw a human form carrying a hare or a stick or an axe on his shoulder.
The Solstices impressed him most of all, with their almost constant day in summer, almost constant night in winter. Sun, moon, and stars were the eyes of heaven; there was a pious custom to greet the stars before going to bed. Still earlier, they were sparks of fire from Muspilli, to light the gods home. Night, day, and the sun had their cars--night and day with one horse, the sun with two: sunrise brought sounds sweeter than the song of birds or strings; the rising sun, it was said, rings for joy, murmuring daybreak laughs.[[5]]
Day brought joy, night sorrow; the first was good and friendly, the second bad and hostile. The birds greeted daytime and summer with songs of delight, but grieved in silence through night and winter: the first swallow and stork were hailed as spring's messengers. May with greening woods led in beloved summer, frost and snow the winter.
So myth, fable, and legend were interlaced in confusion; who can separate the threads?
At any rate, the point of view which they indicate remained the common one even far into the Middle Ages, and shewed simple familiar intercourse with Nature. Even legal formulæ were full of pictures from Nature. In the customary oath to render a contract binding, the promise is to hold, so it runs, 'so long as the sun shines and rivers flow, so long as the wind blows and birds sing, so far off as earth is green and fir trees grow, so far as the vault of heaven reaches.' As Schnaase says,[[6]] though with some exaggeration, such formulæ, in their summary survey of earth and sky, often give a complete landscape poem in a few words. He points out that in northern, as opposed to classic mythology, Nature was considered, not in the cursory Hebrew way, that hurried over or missed detail, but as a whole, and in her relation to man's inner life.
'The collective picture of heaven and earth, of cloud movement, of the mute life of plants--that side of Nature which had almost escaped the eye of antiquity--occupied the Northerner most of all.
'The Edda even represents all Nature together in one colossal form--the form of the giant Ymir, whom the sons of Boer slew, in order to make the mountains from his bones, the earth from his flesh, the skies from his skull.'