Myths of the Rhine

by X.-B. Saintine

They say that once, when her husband had gone away on a long journey, she was so deeply grieved at his absence, that her tears ran day and night incessantly; these tears, however, differed from those of mortal beings; “they were all drops of gold which fell into her bosom,”—and hence the Northern people call the precious metal to this day Freyas tears.

One only among all the dwellers in Walhalla had been able to give her some comfort by singing his sweetest songs; this was the god Bragi, the god of poetry and beautiful words.

A tradition which deserves to be mentioned here, accounts for the manner in which he obtained this precious gift of eloquence and the art of poetry.

In the early days of the world, when the creating god had concentrated, so to say, all the active powers of humanity in a few individuals, and when a long life permitted these favored beings to carry on their studies till they reached a happy end, there lived on earth a wise man who possessed an art unknown, not among men only, but among the gods themselves. This was the art of perpetuating thoughts by word-painting, of reproducing them in outward forms, not to the eye by colors, but to the ear by sounds. This sage was called Kvasir. He had invented the Runes, the art of poetry, and the no less precious art of reproducing words and fixing them in writing. He cut his runes on beech tablets; if he had gone a step farther, he would have invented printing long before Guttenberg.

Kvasir was then the sole owner of the art of Poetry.

Two wicked dwarfs prowling about in search of treasures, took it into their heads, that the treasure of Poetry was better than any other, and forthwith determined to obtain possession of it. They killed Kvasir, into whose dwelling they had crept by stealth, and as they were masters in magic, like all the dwarfs of those days, they carefully collected his blood, and mixing it, in different proportions, with honey, put it into three vessels, which they closed hermetically. These three vessels contained respectively Logic, Eloquence, and Poetry. To keep them safe till the day on which they should be used, they buried them in the depths of a cave which was inaccessible to men and unknown to the gods themselves. But one of those travelling agents, who under the form of ravens, were continually wandering over the world in Odin’s employ, had been a silent witness of the transactions, the murder, the mixing, and the hiding of the three vessels. He returned instantly to the ash Ygdrasil and reported it all to his master. The god gave his orders, which the squirrel, no doubt, at once carried to the eagle, and the latter, who was continually on the watch on the top of the sacred tree, left his post for a few moments in charge of the vulture, and flew with rapid wings to the cave, from whence he returned laden with the three precious vessels. It is to be supposed that he carried one in his beak, and the two others, one in each of his claws.

He placed the mysterious vessels at Odin’s feet and at once returned to relieve the vulture and to resume his watch.

Odin opened first the vessel which contained Poetry and tasted the contents. From that moment he never spoke otherwise than in verse. He also tasted Logic, and henceforth he spoke and reasoned with such extreme accuracy, that he found no one to agree with him any longer; he tasted Eloquence, and as soon as he opened his lips, he might have been mistaken for one of our own most eminent lawyers. Gold chains seemed to come out from his lips, as was the case with Ogmius, with which he bound the ears and hearts of all his hearers.

Whilst he was thus enjoying himself, Bragi his son, and Saga his daughter, who were sitting by him, felt their mouths water and looked imploringly at him.

Setting aside the terror with which the Druids have surrounded Odin, he seems to have been occasionally good-natured, and certainly always acted like a kind father. He offered the vessel with Poetry first to Saga, courteously giving her the preference on account of her sex. She barely touched it with her lips. When Bragi’s turn came, he eagerly swallowed as much as he could, and without taking time to gather breath, he began a grand triumphal chant in honor of the feasts, the loves, the wars, and the greatness of the gods, the stars of the firmament, paradise, hell, and the ash Ygdrasil.