Tales out of school

by Frank R. Stockton

There is no knowing how much Kvasir would have done if he had lived longer. Perhaps he would have invented printing and paper; which, as matters turned out, nobody thought of doing until many hundred years later.

But this wise and good man was killed by two wicked dwarfs. They did this in order to steal from him this treasure of poetry, and the art of writing. You may wonder how they were going to get at the treasure, for, after they had killed him, there could be no more poetry; and they could not pick it out of his brain as a thief takes a pocket-book out of the pocket. But these dwarfs were magicians, and such people, you know, have a pretty good idea what they are about. They collected his blood, and mixed it with honey in three separate proportions. These they put into three jars which they closely sealed, and buried in a cave which had never been seen either by gods or men.

These three compounds were Logic, Eloquence, and Poetry. We shall never know what the dwarfs were going to do with them, for I am happy to say that they were not allowed to keep them.

THE THREE PRECIOUS JARS.

Odin’s two ravens had witnessed the whole performance of the dwarfs, and the sensible birds concluded this must be a great treasure, or it would not be worth so much trouble. So they flew straight to Odin, and told him all about it. Odin sent the squirrel up the tree Ygdrasil with an order for the eagle to leave his post, to fly to the cave, and to bring the jars to him.

This the eagle accomplished in a very short space of time, and Odin immediately opened each jar, and tasted the contents. He at once commenced reasoning eloquently in the most ravishing strains of poetry. His daughter Saga, and his son Bragi, were with their father; and, seeing how he enjoyed these new dishes, they wanted some too. Odin politely offered the first jar to Saga, but it probably did not taste pleasantly, as she declined to do more than just touch its contents to her lips. But Bragi drank up all his father had left, and immediately began to sing a magnificent chant. From that time he was called the god of poetry.

Bragi was not stingy with his treasure, but gave some of it to men, and thus the invention of the good Kvasir was used as he would have used it had he lived; and men learned to write, and to sing.

The greatest of the gods, next to Odin, was his son Thor. He was the god of tempests. He held thunderbolts shut up in his fists, and flung lightning from his fingers’ ends. He had a mighty hammer with which he reconstructed the world after Ymer had been killed. He splintered up the mountains, and made them all over again, and he knocked away at the crust of the earth, and made valleys and caves, and sometimes he amused himself by splitting open the earth, and tumbling a mountain or two into the abyss. And that was the way earthquakes came about. He made holes in some of the mountains, and let the imprisoned fire out of them.

Odin gave Thor three wonderful gifts. The first was his great hammer. It would go out of his hand to do his bidding, and then return of its own accord. The second was a pair of iron gloves. He had only to put these on, and his spear would come back into his hand after having destroyed his victim. The third was a war belt, which made him stronger than any other being while he wore it.