Fig. 7.—OLD TEMPLE BAR, WITH TRAITORS’ HEADS.
They pass a gallows, round which a ghostly crew are hovering. The hanging men and the spectral dance must follow.
The rider carries his bride to a churchyard, and plunges down with her into a vault.
Bürger has utilised for his ballad a tradition of Woden as the God of the Dead, carrying off the souls on his hell-horse. The story is found in many places; amongst others in Iceland, and variously modified.
The nightmare is the same horse coming in and trampling on the sleeper’s chest. The reader will remember Fuseli’s picture of the head of the spectre horse peering in at the sleeper between the curtains of her bed, whilst an imp sits on and oppresses her bosom.
But the horse is not always ridden. Modern ideas, modern luxury, have invaded the phantom world, and now—we hear of death-coaches drawn by headless horses. These are black, like mourning carriages, and the horses are sable; a driver sits on the box; he is in black, but he has no weeper to his hat, because he has not a hat. He has not a hat, because he is without a head. The death-coach is sometimes not seen, but heard. At others it is seen, not heard. It rolls silently as a shadow along the road.
But, indeed, Woden had a black horse as well as one that was white. Rime-locks (Hrimfaxi) was his sable steed, and Shining-locks (Skinfaxi) his white one. The first is the night horse, from whose mane falls the dew; the second is the day horse, whose mane is the morning light. One of the legends of St. Nicholas refers to these two horses, which have been transferred to him when Woden was displaced. The saint was travelling with a black and a white steed, when some evil-minded man cut off their heads at an inn where they were spending the night. When St. Nicholas heard what had been done, he sent his servant to put on the heads again. This the man did; but so hurriedly and carelessly, that he put the black head on the white trunk, and vice versâ. In the morning St. Nicholas saw, when too late, what had been done. The horses were alive and running. This legend refers to the morning and the evening twilights, part night and part day. The morning twilight has the body dark and the head light; and the evening twilight has the white trunk and the black head.
St. Nicholas has taken Odin’s place in other ways. As Saint Klaus he appears to children at Yule. The very name is a predicate of the god of the dead. He is represented as the patron of ships; indeed, St. Nicholas is a puzzle to ecclesiastical historians—his history and his symbols and cult have so little in common. The reason is, that he has taken to him the symbols, and myths, and functions of the Northern god. His ship is Odin’s death-ship, constructed out of dead men’s finger and toe-nails.
