[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE ANCIENT SAXONS.
"The stupendously holy gods considered these things:
They gave names to the night and to the twilight;
They called the morning and mid-day so.
There sat an old man towards the east in a wood of iron,
Where he nourished the sons of Fenris.
Every one of these grew up prodigious—a giant form,—
The sons of the two brothers inhabit the vast mansions of the winds.
A hall stands brighter than the sun,
Covered with gold in Gimle."—The Volupsa.
The Saxons were a German or Gothic race, possessing an entirely different language to that of the Celts or ancient Britons; and although they do not appear to have attracted the same attention as the other tribes, they were, doubtless, settled at a very early period in Europe. At the time when they begin to stand forth so prominently in the pages of history, they occupied the peninsula of Jutland, now a portion of Denmark, with two or three neighbouring islands, known by the names of North Strande, Busen, and Heligoland, all situate near the mouth of the Elbe. As they, however, consisted of three tribes—namely, the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons—they probably, at a former period, stretched over a much larger surface of country, the boundaries of which it is now difficult to define. As early as the time of Ptolemy, a branch of this ancient Scythian race was denominated the Saxons. They claimed their descent from Odin, probably some old and celebrated warrior, whose deeds grew up under magnified traditions, until at last he was dignified with the title of their god. Like the Britons, they were a brave and fearless race, delighting in plunder and slaughter, ever choosing the most dangerous and perilous paths, loving the roll of the wave, and the roar of the storm, and generally landing under a gloomy and tempestuous sky, to surprise and attack the enemy. Their arms were a sharp sword, a keen-pointed dagger, a tall spear, and a ponderous battle-axe, all made of good iron. But the most dreaded weapon they wielded seems to have been a large heavy hammer, from which projected a number of sharp-pointed spikes. This fearful instrument was the terror of their enemies, and no helmet was proof against its blows. Their chiefs wore a kind of scaly armour, which appears to have been formed of iron rings, locked together upon a tight-fitting coat, or leathern doublet. The rims and bosses of their shields were of iron, while the body was sometimes formed of wood, and covered with leather. Many of these shields were large enough to protect the whole form, and as they were convex, no doubt the point of the enemy's weapon would glide off, unless it was struck firmly into the centre; thus they formed a kind of moveable bulwark, behind which the warrior sheltered himself in battle. They believed that the souls of those who bravely perished on the hard-fought field were at once wafted into the halls of Valhalla, and the terrible heaven which they pictured in a future state consisted in those dreadful delights so congenial to their brutal natures while on earth—being made up of a succession of conflicts and struggles, cleaving of helmets and hacking of limbs; and that when the twilight deepened over those awful halls, every warrior was again healed of his wounds; that they then sat down to their grim and hideous banquet, where they fed upon a great boar, whose flesh never diminished, however much they ate, and when they had satiated themselves with these savoury morsels, which they cut off with their daggers, they washed them down with deep draughts of mead, which they drank out of the skulls of their cowardly enemies. Into those halls the brave alone were admitted—the craven, and the coward, and those who fell not in the red and reeking ranks of battle, were doomed to dwell in the dark regions of Niflheim, where Hela, the terrible, reigned; where gaunt Famine stalked like a shadow beneath the vaulted dome; where Anguish ever writhed upon her hard bed, and dark Delay kept watch against the sombre doors which she never opened. Such were the eternal abodes those barbarians believed they should enter after death—the realms which their stormy spirits would soar into, when they could no longer guide their barks over the shadows of the overhanging rocks—when the tempestuous sea no longer bore them upon the thunder of its billows, and cast them upon some distant coast, to revel in carnage and slaughter;—it was then that they turned their dying eyes to the coveted halls of Valhalla, and that huge banquet-table on which the grisly boar lay stretched, surrounded by drinking-cups formed of human skulls.
Those who had not courage enough to win an entrance into these envied realms by their own bravery, put one of their slaves to death, considering that such a sacrifice was acceptable to Odin, and a sure passport into this ideal world. They, however, believed that Valhalla would at last pass away; Odin himself perish; that the good and the brave would inhabit another heaven, called Gimle; and the evil and the cowardly be consigned to a more awful place of punishment than that over which Hela reigned; that the gods would sit in judgment; that Surtur, the black one, would appear; and an evil spirit be liberated from the dark cave in which he had been for ages bound with chains of iron. That for three years increasing snow would fall from all quarters of the world, and during this long winter there would be no interim of summer, neither would any green thing grow, but all mankind would perish by each other's hands. That two huge monsters would appear; one of which would devour the sun, the other, the moon; that mountains and trees would be torn up, and the earth shaken to its deepest foundations. That the stars would be blotted out of heaven, and one wide shoreless sea cover the whole world, over which a solitary ship would float, built of the nails of dead men, and steered by the tall giant Hrymer. Then would the huge wolf Fenris open his enormous mouth, the lower jaw of which would touch the earth, the upper the heaven, over which a serpent would breathe poison, while the sons of Muspell rode forward, led by the black Surtur. A blazing fire, spreading out its myriad tongues of flame, would burn before and behind him; his sword would glitter like the sun, and the bridge which spanned across heaven, be broken. Towards a large plain would these terrible forces move, followed by Fenris, the wolf. The brazen trumpet of Heimdal would ring out such a startling peal, as would awaken the gods, and cause the mighty ash of Ygdrasil to tremble. Odin would put on his golden helmet, and all the gods rise up in arms, and after the wolf had devoured him, and its jaws had been rent asunder by Vidar, the whole universe would be destroyed.
Such a creed as this was calculated to nourish and keep alive the most benighted superstitions amongst its believers. Thus we find them drawing omens from the flight and singing of birds, placing their trust in good and evil days, and considering the full or new moon as the most favourable seasons in which to put into operation any important plan. They were influenced by the moving of the clouds, and directed by the course of the winds; and from the entrails of the victims sacrificed, they drew their auguries. The breastplates they wore were imperfect, unless the smith who forged them muttered a charm while he wielded his ponderous hammer. Even the graves of dead men were frequented, and those who slept their last sleep were intreated to answer them. They judged of the fate of a battle by seizing an enemy, and compelling him to fight with one of their own race. From the branches of the oak they cut short twigs, marked them, then scattered them at random upon a white garment, and while the priest looked upward, he took those on which his hand chanced to alight, and if they proved to be those on which the favourite mark was impressed, it was considered a good omen. They rode out the perilous tempest on the deep with better heart if, on the departure of their bark from the stormy beach, some priestess, with her hair blown back, stood upon the giddy headland, and chaunted the mystic rhyme which they believed would waft them, more safely than the most favourable breeze, to the distant shore. Even through the long night of time we can picture her standing upon the dizzy edge of the rock, while the white-winged sea-gull wheeled and screamed above her head; with the subdued thunder of the hoarse waves ever rolling at her feet—her drapery blown aside, and her wan thin lips moving; while they, tugging at the long oar with their brawny arms and bowed heads, sent up a silent prayer to the god of the storm.
Such were our forefathers—men who would startle at the stirring of a leaf, or the shooting of a star, yet brave enough to rush upon the point of a spear with a flushed cheek and a bright eye, and who could look death full in the face without a feeling of fear. Nor would it be difficult to point out, even in our own day, numbers of superstitious signs and omens, which are as implicitly believed in by the peasantry of the present age, as they were by the ancient Saxons during this dark period of our history. The chattering of a magpie, the croaking of a raven, the howling of a dog in the night, a winding-sheet in the candle, or a hollow cinder leaping out of the fire upon the hearth, are even now held amongst our superstitious countrymen as ominous of ill-luck, sickness, or death. Scarcely an obscure English province is without its wise-man, or cunning fortune-teller, those lingering remains of the Wicca of the Saxons, which have descended to us through the long lapse of nearly two thousand years, in spite of the burnings and other executions which were so common in our country only two or three centuries ago, when not to believe in witchcraft would have been held a crime equal to Atheism, by our more enlightened and comparatively modern forefathers.
The temple erected to their war-god, in their own country, appears to have been spacious and magnificent. On the top of a marble column stood this idol, in the figure of a tall, armed warrior, bearing a banner in his right hand, on which a red rose was emblazoned, while in his left he held a balance. His helmet was surmounted with a cock; on his breastplate a bear was engraven, while on the shield which was suspended from his shoulder was the image of a lion, upon a ground of flowers. Here, women divined, and men sacrificed, and into the battle was this warlike image borne by the priest; for as they could not trust themselves upon the sea without a charm being first muttered, so in the field did they require the image of their idol to countenance the contest. To this grim deity did they offer up their captives, and even those of their own tribe who had fled, and turned their backs upon the fight, for they looked upon cowardice as the greatest of crimes amongst their men, and wantonness in their women they punished with death.
Some of their idols are surrounded by a wild poetry, and an air of almost classic beauty, recalling to the mind the divinities worshipped by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Of such was their goddess, called the Mother of Earth, who was held so sacred, that only the priest was permitted to touch her. Her temple stood amid the solemn shadows of a silent grove; her figure was always covered by a white garment, which was washed in a secret lake; in those waters the slaves who administered at her shrine were drowned—no one, saving the priest, was allowed to go abroad, who were once entrusted with her mysteries. On holy days her image was borne in procession, on the backs of beautifully marked cows. Nothing but joy and peace then reigned throughout the whole length and breadth of the land: the bark was moored upon the beach; the spear and battle-axe hung upon the beam above the hearth, and Odin himself seemed to sleep. But this lasted no longer than the days allotted to these processions: when they had passed, the keel was again launched, the weapons taken from their resting-place, while "grim-visaged war resumed his wrinkled front." Even the cattle that fed upon the island where this temple stood were held so sacred, that it was a crime to touch them, and he who drew water from the fountain that flowed beside the grove, dared not, even by a whisper, disturb the surrounding silence. We might almost fancy, while reading the description of the idol they named Crodus, that we saw before us the embodiment of one of Spenser's beautiful stanzas, or that he himself had but turned into verse some old record, in which he found pictured this image of one of the ancient Saxon gods. It was of the figure of an old man, stooping through very age: he was clothed in a white garment; a girdle of linen, the ends of which hung loose, encircled his waist; his head was grey, and bare. He held in his right hand a vessel, in which flowers floated in water; his left hand rested upon a wheel, while he stood with his naked feet upon the back of a prickly perch. How like Spenser's description is the above, of his "Old January wrapped well in many weeds, to keep the cold away—of February, with the old waggon-wheels and fish—of the hand cold through holding all the day the hatchet keen." Such a resemblance would the eye of a poet trace, and so would he transform old Crodus, the Saxon idol, into the personification of one of his months.
Whoever broke into one of their temples, and stole the sacred vessels, was punished with a slow, lingering, and terrible death. To the very edge of the sands of the sea-shore was he dragged, when the tide was low, and there made fast—his ears were cut off, and other parts of his body mutilated—then he was left alone. Wave after wave came and went, and washed around him, as the tide came in; he felt the sea rising every minute, inch by inch—higher still, higher it came—every ripple that made a murmur on the shore rang his death-knell, until the last wave came that washed over him—then vengeance was satisfied. A more awful death can scarcely be imagined.
They were a tall, big-boned, blue-eyed race of men, and it appears from an old law made to punish a man who seized another by the hair, that they at one period wore it so long as to fall upon the shoulders. The females wore ornaments on their arms and necks. The government was generally vested in the hands of the aged, and they appear to have elected their ruler in war by the chiefs assembling and drawing lots. He on whom it fell, they followed and obeyed; but when the war was over, they were again all equal. They were divided into four orders—the Etheling, or noble, who never married below his own rank; the Free-man, who shared in the offices of government; the Freed-man, or he who, either by purchase or merit, had obtained his liberty; and the Serf, or slave. They reckoned their time by the number of nights, and counted their years by the winters. April they named Easter-month, after their goddess, Eostre. Thus we still retain a name which, though commemorating the worship of an ancient idol, has now become endeared to us by the Resurrection of Christ—a holy time which we can never forget, for at every return it seems to bring back a spirit of beauty into the world, whose pathway is strown with the sweetest and earliest flowers of spring. Bright spots of light every way break through this age of barbarism, and May, which again hangs the snow-white blossoms upon the hawthorn, they called milk-month; nor can we now repeat the name without images of lowing cattle and pleasant pastures springing up before us, and we marvel how so warlike a race ever came to make use of such poetical and pastoral names. The sun they worshipped as a goddess; the moon as a god. A Saxon poet would have called the former, "The golden lady of the day."