And there, smoking and burning, his great throes and writhings, we are told, still shake the earth, and threaten mankind:
And with pale lips men say,
'To-morrow, perchance to-day,
Encelidas may arise! "'
{p. 141}
CHAPTER IV.
RAGNAROK
THERE is in the legends of the Scandinavians a marvelous record of the coming of the Comet. It has been repeated generation after generation, translated into all languages, commented on, criticised, but never understood. It has been regarded as a wild, unmeaning rhapsody of words, or as a premonition of some future earth catastrophe.
But look at it!
The very name is significant. According to Professor Anderson's etymology of the word, it means "the darkness of the gods"; from regin, gods, and rökr, darkness; but it may, more properly, be derived from the Icelandic, Danish, and Swedish regn, a rain, and rök, smoke, or dust; and it may mean the rain of dust, for the clay came first as dust; it is described in some Indian legends as ashes.
First, there is, as in the tradition of the Druids, page 135, ante, the story of an age of crime.
The Vala looks upon the world, and, as the "Elder Edda" tells us--