MYTHS OF THE RHINE
Translated from the French of X. B. Saintine
By Prof. M. Schele De Vere, LL. D.
Illustrated by Gustave Doré
Scribner, Armstrong, and Company
1874
CONTENTS
[ DESCRIPTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS. ]
DESCRIPTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS.
I.
Primitive Times.—The First Settlers on the Rhine.—Masters going to School.—Sanskrit and Breton.—An Idle God.—Microscopic Deities.—Tree Worship.—Birth-Trees and Death-Trees..[...003]
II.
The Druids and their Creed.—Esus.—The Holy Oak.—The Pforzheim Lime Tree.—A Rival Plant.—The Mistletoe and the Anguinufh.—The Oracle at Do-dona.—Immaculate Horses.—The Druidesses.—A late Elector.—Philanthropic Institution of Human Sacrifices.—Second Druidical. Epoch..[...027]
III.
A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.—The Two Banks of the Rhine.—Druid Stones.—Weddings and Burials.—Night Service.—A Demigod Glacier.—Social Duels.—A Countrywoman of Aspasia.—Boudoir of a Celtic Lady.—The Bard’s Story.—Teutons and Titans.—Earthquake..[...055]
IV.
The Roman Gods invade Germany.—Drusus and the Dru-idess.—Ogmius, the Hercules of Gaul.—Great Philological Discovery concerning Tentâtes.—Transformations of every kind.—Irmensul.—The Rhine deified.—The Gods cross the River.—Druids of the Third Epoch..[...091]
V.
The World before and since Odin.—Birth of Ymer.—The Giants of the Frost.—A Log split in Two.—The First Man and the First Woman.—The Ash Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.—Thor’s Three Jewels.—Freyr’s Enchanted Sword.—A Souvenir of the National Guard of Belleville.—The Story of Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.—Honey and Blood.—Invocation..[...121]
VI.
Short Biographies.—A Clairvoyant among the Gods.—A Bright God.—Tyr and the Wolf Fenris.—The Hospital at the Walhalla.—Why was Odin one-eyed.—The Three Norns.—Mimer the Sage.—A Goddess the Mother of Four Oxen.—The Love Affairs of Heimdall—The God with the Golden Teeth..[...153]
VII.
Heaven and Hell.—The Valkyrias.—Amusements in Walhalla.—Pork and Wild Boar.—A Frozen Hell.—Balder’s Death.—Frigg’s Devotion.—The Iron Tree Forest.—The Twilight of the Gods.—Iduna’s Apples.—The Fall of Heaven and the End of the World.—Reflections on that Event.—The Little Fellow still alive..[...175]
VIII.
How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time between one World and another.—How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.—How Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the Indians.—How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God Buddha.—About Mahabarata and Ramavana.—Chronology.—The World’s Age.—Comparative Tables.—Quotations.—Supporting Evidence.—A Cenotaph..[...211]
IX.
Confederation of all the Northern Gods.—Freedom of Religion.—Christianity.—Miserere mei!—Homeric Enumeration.—Prussian, Slavic, and Finnish Deities.—The God of Cherries and the God of Bees.—A Silver Woman.—Ilmarinnen’s Wedding Song.—A Skeleton God.—Yaga-Baba’s Pestle and Mortar.—Preparation for Battle.—The Little Chapel on the Hill.—The Signal for the Attack.—Jesus and Mary..[...217]
X.
Marietta and the Sweet-briar.—Esus and Jesus.—Amalgam.—A Neophyte.—Prohibition to eat Horseflesh.—Bishops in Arms.—Interruption.—Come Home, my Good Friend!—Prussia and the Myths of the Middle Ages.—Tybilinus, the Black God.—The little Blue Flower..[...245]
XI.
Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.—Sylphs, their Amusements and Domestic Arrangements.—Little Queen Mab.—Will-o’-the- Wisps.—White Elves and Black Elves.—True Causes of Natural Somnambulism.—The Wind’s Betrothed.—Fire-damp.—Master Haemmerling.—The Last of the Gnomes..[...263]
XII.
Elementary Spirits of the Water.—Petrarch at Cologne.—Divine Judgment by Water.—Nixen and Undines.—A Furlough till Ten o’clock.—The White footed Undine.—Mysteries on the Rhine.—The Court of the Great Nichus.—Nixcobt, the Messenger of the Dead.—His Funny Tricks.—I go in Search of an Undine..[...283]
XIII.
Familiar Spirits.—Butzemann.—The Good Frau Holle.—Kobolds.—A Kobold in the Cook’s Employ.—Zot-terais and the Little White Ladies.—The Killecroffs, the Devil’s Children.—White Angels.—Granted Wishes, a Fable..[...309]
XIV.
Giants and Dwarfs.—Duel between Ephesim and Gromme-lund.—Court Dwarfs and Little Dwarfs.—Ymer’s Sons.—The Invisible Reapers.—Story of the Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragaat.—How the Giants came to serve the Dwarfs..[...335]
XV.
Wizards and the Bewitched.—The Journey of Asa-Thor and his Companions.—The Inn with the Five Passages.—Skrymner.—A Lost Glove found again.—Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.—Combat between Thor and the King’s Nurse.—Frederick Barbarossa and the Kyffhâuser.—Teutonia! Teutonia!—What became of the Ancient Gods.—Venus and the good Knight Tannhâuser.—Jupiter on Rabbit Island.—A Modern God..[...371]
XVI.
Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women, and Serpent Women.—Children’s Myths.—Godmothers.—Fairies.—The Magic Wand and the Broomstick.—The Lady of Kynast.—The World of the Dead, the World of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.—Myths of Animals..[...399]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Father Rhine.................................................[...003]
The impassive historian .....................................[...004]
Vast forests as old as the world ............................[...005]
The first pioneers...........................................[...007]
The Celts were a people from India...........................[...009]
What happy people scholars are...............................[...010]
A horrible custom............................................[...019]
Dead man’s trees.............................................[...022]
The Druids now appear for the first time in Germany..........[...023]
The other chieftains were generally polygamists..............[...031]
Courts of justice were always held under an elm tree.........[...032]
Attempt to murder the mayor .................................[...033]
Mistletoe an officinal and sacred plant......................[...035]
Gauls........................................................[...037]
Serpents’ knots..............................................[...038]
Prophetic trembling and neighing.............................[...041]
A Druid teacher .............................................[...044]
The Germans were in full flight .............................[...046]
The bloody knife of the Druids ..............................[...052]
I turn my steps from the sacred precincts....................[...055]
Who are these other soldiers?................................[...057]
These laborers seem to suffer from some restraint............[...058]
I look around for a resting-place ...........................[...059]
A shepherd...................................................[...060]
The guard of a sword, which had been driven into the ground..[...061]
The shepherd,—as mournful as ever............................[...063]
Herds of swine are wallowing ................................[...066]
A young wife bearing the burden of united household..........[...067]
Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty ...............[...068]
Such were the ways of our fathers: rejoice in facing death...[...069]
The Druidical altars.........................................[...070]
As there is no window I peep through the trap-door...........[...072]
One of the chief men of the country .........................[...075]
She was a young Ionian girl, a country-woman of Aspasia......[...080]
The boudoir of a Celtic lady.................................[...082]
The Druid-bard...............................................[...085]
Death of Druids..............................................[...091]
A Druidess endowed with the gift of prophecy ................[...093]
The victorious march of the Romans ..........................[...094]
Her deities personified nothing but vices ...................[...096]
The Hercules—so called.......................................[...098]
Mercury, the son of Jupiter .................................[...099]
“O Varus, Varus, bring me back my legions!”..................[...103]
Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances..............[...105]
They made him a king, the King of German rivers..............[...106]
He had already allowed Jupiter to cross......................[...107]
The vines began to adorn the banks of the river..............[...108]
Once more caresses had their hoped-for effect................[...109]
He did his best to help everybody across.....................[...110]
Fnvolous and ill-mannered deities............................[...110]
The dauntless pirates will end by wearing white night-caps...[...113]
The great Northern Tempest ..................................[...115]
The German Druids gave way...................................[...117]
Iormungondur, the great sea serpent..........................[...118]
The giant Ymer has been born.................................[...123]
The first men had been born with a telescope in their pocket?[...127]
Ymer was the first to succumb................................[...128]
After the giants came the turn of land and sea monsters......[...129]
The new creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance.....[...132]
Deer, eland, and aurochs were bounding in herds..............[...133]
Incessantly a tiny squirrel comes and goes...................[...136]
A vulture perching upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree..[...137]
Thor’s weighty hammer Mjoïner................................[...139]
The good Freyr seated at Odin’s table........................[...141]
Portrait of Freyr............................................[...142]
Bragi and the beautiful Freya ...............................[...147]
Return of the eagle with the three precious vessels..........[...149]
Balder, the bright god.......................................[...151]
The wolf Fenris..............................................[...156]
Converse with each other by significative glances............[...159]
They were the Norns..........................................[...160]
He took counsel with the Norns...............................[...162]
“To Egir, the seas and navigation”...........................[...164]
Gefione took her four sons and changed them into oxen........[...165]
Jarl, the noble..............................................[...171]
The Valkyrias ...............................................[...175]
Beautiful nymphs of carnage..................................[...176]
A very mammoth of a boar.....................................[...180]
Feast in Scandinavian Paradise...............................[...181]
Hela, the pale goddess.......................................[...185]
“Balder, fair Balder, is going to die”.......................[...189]
Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself..............[...191]
Balder is amused by the game.................................[...192]
When the mother told her pitiful tale the iron trees wept....[...197]
The three sacred cocks announcing the Twilight of Greatness..[...202]
The death of the gods........................................[...208]
My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph............[...211]
I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped..........[...214]
The two religions face to face...............................[...217]
Ovid reciting his “Metamorphoses”............................[...219]
Druidic worship suspended by the Romans......................[...220]
“Miserere mei, Jesu”.........................................[...222]
Perkunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos............................[...224]
Puscatus,—a kind-hearted god ................................[...226]
Monstrous reptiles accompany the gods to Germany.............[...227]
He let his heavy mace fall upon a little town................[...238]
The blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen................................[...239]
Marietta appeared in their midst.............................[...245]
“Do you think I am a man to be taken in ?”...................[...251]
Horse-head, a la mode........................................[...253]
The Undines mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads..........[...258]
Have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken................[...259]
The Olympus of the North.....................................[...263]
Able to see without being seen ..............................[...266]
Dance of the white fairies ..................................[...269]
The black fairies personify Nightmare .......................[...271]
An important personage with a will of his own ...............[...272]
Enormous toads are posted about.as watchmen..................[...279]
Elementary spirits of the water..............................[...283]
Imaginary music .............................................[...288]
The nix with the harp .......................................[...289]
Schoolmaster’s son who had fallen in love with one of them...[...291]
He thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters..........[...294]
He rose suddenly and fled to another room ...................[...295]
The steward whispered some words in her ear .................[...297]
Niord, the Scandinavian god .................................[...299]
This creature is Nixcobt.....................................[...300]
The Vintner is hanged, and Nixcobt laughs heartily...........[...302]
Four Prussian soldiers watching the water ...................[...305]
The Zotterais protected sheep ...............................[...309]
The master has nothing to do.................................[...315]
Prefer to remember the Kobold a cheerful household companion.[...317]
The Zotterais as fond of stables as the Kobolds of kitchens..[...319]
They are naturally easily tired .............................[...321]
The Killecroffs are children of the Devil ...................[...322]
His nurse has to be reinforced by two goats and a cow........[...324]
The great Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther .......................[...326]
The fall of Killecroff ......................................[...331]
Giants and dwarfs............................................[...335]
The last of the giants.......................................[...337]
Grommelund and Ephesim ......................................[...339]
The humiliated giant.........................................[...340]
Our good little dwarfs ......................................[...341]
He stood at first with his mouth wide open ..................[...346]
A long and deep sigh of satisfaction.........................[...348]
Flight of the conspirators...................................[...353]
Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious cavity.....[...354]
They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth........[...355]
In his hand he held not a club but a lantern.................[...357]
Kreiss compelled to leave his position by torrents of tears..[...359]
The last two held each a long thorn in their hands...........[...361]
Kreiss entering the great meeting hall.......................[...363]
Putskuchen was in love.......................................[...364]
Ouadragant vanquished........................................[...367]
The passing of the wizard ...................................[...371]
Venus and Tannhàuser.........................................[...390]
His ex-colleague Jupiter ....................................[...396]
The author pursues the subject ..............................[...399]
The conscientious collector of myths.........................[...401]
The Druidess transformed into an accursed witch..............[...406]
To return was as impossible as to proceed....................[...409]
She had rejoined her victims ................................[...413]
He is the Lord Hackelberg....................................[...417]
These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men..............[...421]
Farewell.....................................................[...423]
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
I.
Primitive Times.—The First Settlers on the Rhine.—Masters going to School.—Sanskrit and Breton.—Ax Idle God.—Microscopic Deities.—Tree Worship.—Birth-Trees and Death-Trees.
The Rhine is born in Switzerland, in the Canton of Grisons; it skirts France and passes through it, and after a long and magnificent career it finally loses itself in the countless canals of Holland; and yet the Rhine is essentially a German river.
Already in the earliest ages, long before towns were built on its banks, it saw all the Germanic races dwell here in tents, watch their flocks, and fight their interminable battles, although the clash of arms and the blast of trumpets never for a moment aroused the impassive historian from his deep slumbers.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
His silence, long continued into later centuries, does not prevent us from supposing, however, that the Rhine was already at that time the great high-road on which the Germanic races wandered to and fro, and other races came to their native land. It was the Rhine that brought to them commerce and civilization; but on the Rhine came also invasions of a very different kind. We can allude here only to those religious invasions which are connected with our subject.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
In the earliest ages the South of Europe alone was inhabited, while the Northern part was covered with vast forests, as old as the world, and as yetunbroken by the footsteps of men. Dark, dismal solitudes, consisting of ancient woods or wretched morasses, where trees struggled painfully for existence and only the strongest survived when they reached the light and the sun; densely wooded deserts, in which vast herds of wild beasts pursued each other incessantly, while in the deep shadow of impenetrable foliage flocks of timid, trembling birds sought a refuge against hosts of voracious birds of prey. Thus, even while Man was yet absent, War was already reigning supreme here, and in these vast regions the Great Destroyer seemed to revel in it, as if it had been a feast, a necessity, a glory!
Had never human eye yet looked upon these magnificent but unknown regions?
Then, one fine day a host of savages appeared here and settled down with their flocks. After them came another host of more warlike and better armed men, who drove out the first comers and took possession of the tilled ground.
After them another race, and then still another. Thus it went on for years and for centuries, and all these waves of immigration came down from the extreme North, marking each halting place by a bloody battle, while the conquered people, driven by the sharp edge of the sword to seek new homes, by turns pursued and pursuing, went and peopled those wild unsettled countries which afterwards became known as Belgium and France, as Bretagne and England. Continuing their march from thence southward, from the Rhine to the Mediterranean, they spread right and left, east and west, and crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps, making themselves masters on one side of Iberia, and on the other side of the plains of Lombardy, thus changing from fugitives into conquerors.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
These conquered conquerors, driven from their own homes, and now driving other nations from their homes, these first pioneers who laid open one unknown country after another, were all children of one great family and all bore the same name of Celts.
But where was the first source from which this flood of families, of peoples, of nations, broke forth, that now overflowed Europe and in successive waves spread over the greater part of the Old World? Whence came these vast multitudes of Northern visitors, unexpected and unknown, who broke the mournful silence that had so long reigned in Europe? Were the frozen regions of the North pole, at that early time, really so fertile in men? We call upon men of science to answer our question. The question is a serious one, perhaps an indiscreet one, for who can be appealed to on such a difficult point? History? It did not exist. Monuments, written or sculptured? The Celts had never dreamt yet of writings or of carvings. Does this universal silence put it out of the power of our learned men to give a reply? Must they confess that they are unable to do so? By no means. Learned men never condescend to make such confessions. The Celts have left as a monument, a language, a dialect, still largely used in certain parts of ancient Bretagne as well as in the Principality of Wales.
Illustrious academicians, mostly Germans, did not hesitate to go to school once more in order to learn Breton. The self-denial of which science is capable, deserves our admiration.
After long labors, devoted to the separation of what belonged to the primitive language from subsequent additions, our great scholars found themselves once more face to face with Sanskrit, the sacred idiom of the Brahmins, the ancestor of the old German tongue, and of the old Celtic tongue, and thus of the Breton.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The matter was decided, scientifically and categorically, and no appeal allowed. The Celts were a people from India. Europeans are all descended from Indians, driven from home by some powerful pressure, a political or religious revolution, or one of those fearful famines which periodically devastate that immense and inexhaustible storehouse of nations.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
At first, we good people, artists, poets, or authors, who generally claim to possess some little knowledge, were rather surprised at such a decision. But the wise men had said so; Bengal and Bretagne had to fraternize; the Brahmins of Benares speak Breton and the Bretons of Bretagne speak Sanskrit. Bretagne is Indian and India is Breton.
Comparative Philology has taught the children of our day, that two syllables which are identical in the idioms of two different races, prove the connection between two nations; hybridism means kinship.
What happy people scholars are! They can converse with people who have been dead these three thousand years, and the grave has no secrets for them! A single word bequeathed to us by an extinct people, enables them to reconstruct that whole race.
But I am bound to ask them another question, a question of much greater importance to myself. What were the religious convictions of these first inhabitants of Europe? I am answered by Mr. Simon Pelloutier, a minister of the Reformed Church in Berlin, of French descent, who has studied the primitive creed of the Celts most thoroughly and successfully. He tells us that these people, before they had Druids, worshipped, or rather held in honor the sun, the moon, and the stars, a kind of Sabaism, which, however, did not exclude the belief in a God, who was the creator, but not the ruler, of all things.
This god appears to me to have been very imperfect; he was heavy, sleepy, and shapeless, having neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; he was incapable of feeling pity or anger, and the prayers and vows of men were unable to reach him. Invisible, intangible, and incomprehensible, he was floating in space, which he filled, and which he animated without bestowing a thought upon it; omnipotent and yet utterly inactive, creating islands and continents, and causing the sun and the stars to give light by his mere approach, this divine idler had created the world, but declined taking the trouble of governing his creation.
To whom had he confided the control over the stars in heaven? Mr. Pelloutier himself never could find out. As to the government of the earth, he had entrusted it to an infinite number of inferior deities, gods and sub-gods, of very small stature. They were as shapeless and as invisible as he was, but vastly more active, and endowed with all the energy which he had disdained to bestow upon himself. By their numbers and by their collective force they made up for their individual feebleness—and they must have been feeble indeed, since their extremely small size permitted a thousand of them to find a comfortable shelter under the leaf of a walnut tree!
Besides, they presided over the different departments which were assigned to them, not by hundreds, but by myriads, nay, by millions of myriads. Thus they rushed forth in vast hosts, stirring the air in lively currents, causing the rivers and brooks to flow onwards, watching over fields and forests, penetrating the soil to great depths, creeping in through every crack and crevice, and breaking out again through the craters of volcanoes. They formed a belt from the Rhine to the Taunus mountains, dazzling the whole region for a moment by a shower of sparks, and falling back upon the plain in the form of columns of black smoke.
Science has, moreover, established this incontestable principle, that motion can only be produced in two ways here, below: either by the acts of living beings, or by the contact of these microscopic deities.
Whenever the waters rose or broke forth in cataracts, whenever the leaves trembled in the wind, or the flowers bent before a storm, it was these diminutive gods who, invisible and yet ever active, forced the waters to come down in torrents, drove the tempest through the branches, bent the flowers down to the ground, and chased the dust of the highroads in lofty columns up to the clouds. It was they who caused the golden hair of the maid to fall down upon her shoulders as she went to the well, who shook the earthenware pitcher she carried on her shoulder, who crackled in the fire on the hearth, and who roared in the storm, or the eruptions of fiery mountains.
When I think of this little world of tiny insect gods, who passed through the air in swarms, coming and going, turning to the left and to the right, struggling and striving above and beneath (I ask their pardon for comparing these deities to humble insects, born in the mud and subject to infirmity and death like ourselves), I cannot help thinking of the beautiful lines by Lamartine, in which he so graphically describes life in Nature.
“Chaque fois que nos yeux, pénétrant dans ces ombres,
De la nuit des rameaux éclairaient les dais sombres,
Nous trouvions sous ces lits de feuille où dort l’été,
Des mystères d’amour et de fécondité.
Chaque fois que nos pieds tombaient dans la verdure
Les herbes nous montaient jusques à la ceinture,
Des flots d’air embaumé se répandaient sur nous,
Des nuages ailés partaient de nos genoux;
Insectes, papillons, essaims nageants de mouches,
Oui d’un éther vivant semblaient former les couches,
Ils’ montaient en colonne, en tourbillon flottant,
Comblaient l’air, nous cachaient l’un à l’autre un instant,
Comme dans les chemins la vague de poussière
Se lève sous les pas et retombe en arrière.
Ils roulaient; et sur l’eau, sur les prés, sur le foin,
Ces poussières de vie allaient tomber plus loin;
Et chacune semblait, d’existence ravie,
Epuiser le bonheur dans sa goutte de vie,
Et l’air qu’ils animaient de leurs frémissements
N’était que mélodie et que bourdonnements.”
Such were the gods known to the first ingenuous dwellers on the banks of the Rhine—gods worthy of a society but just beginning. And still, I venture to make a suggestion, which Mr. Simon Pelloutier, my guide up to this point, has unfortunately neglected to make. It is this: I feel as if there was hidden beneath this primitive and apparently puerile mythology a hideous monster, writhing in fearful threatenings and bitter mockery. This god Chaos, so careless and reckless, gifted with the power of creation but not with love for his work, seems to me nothing else but Matter, organizing itself. I have called these countless inferior deities microscopic. I should have called them molecular, for they are atoms, the monads of our science. There is evidently here a germ, not of a religious creed so much as of a philosophic system, a shadow of the materialism of a former civilization that is now degraded and nearly lost.
At first I doubted the correctness of the opinions of our learned men; but I begin to believe in them; yes, these early Celts had come, to us from distant India, from that ancient, decayed country, and in their knapsacks they had brought with them, by an accident, this fragment of their symbolic cosmogony, the sad meaning of which was, no doubt, a mystery to them also.
After some years, perhaps after some centuries, —for time does not count for much in those questions,—the Celts became weary of this selfish Deity, which was lost in the contemplation of its own being and dwelt in the centre of a cold and empty heaven, and they desired to establish some relations between him and themselves. Unable to appeal to the Creator, they appealed to Creation, and asked for a mediator, who should hear their complaints or accept their thank-offerings and transmit them to the Supreme Power.
We have already seen that they turned first to sun and moon; but they were ill rewarded for their efforts. These heavenly bodies were either too far removed from their clients to hear their complaints, or they were too busy with their own daily duties; at all events they shared with their common master in his indifference towards men.
Our pious friends were offended by this want of consideration, and thought of looking for other intercessors, who might be less busy; whom they might not only see with their eyes but touch with their hands, and who would remain as much as possible in the same place, so as to be always on hand when they were needed.
They appealed to rivers and mountains; but the rivers had nothing permanent but their banks, and went their way like the sun and moon; while the mountains, besides being the home of wolves, bears, and serpents, and thus enjoying an evil reputation, were continually hid by snow and rain from the eyes of the petitioners.
At last they turned to the trees, and as it always happens, they now found out that they ought to have commenced where they ended. A tree was an excellent mediator; standing between heaven and earth, it clung to the latter by its roots, while its trunk, shaped like an arrow, feathered with verdure, rose upwards as if to touch the sky.
The worship of trees was probably the first effect of sedentary life adopted by the Celts after their long, more or less forced wanderings; in a few years it prevailed on both sides of the river Rhine.
There was no lack of trees; every man had his own. As he could not carry it away with him, he became accustomed to live by its side.
Man could lean his hut against the trunk; the flock could sleep in its shade.
The birds came to it in numbers. If they were singing, it was a sign of joy to come; if they built their nests there, it was an invitation to marry.
The fruit-bearing tree suggested comfort, abundance, and enjoyment; it spoke of harvest feasts and cider-making, when friends gathered around it, holding in their hands large horns filled to overflowing with foaming drink.
Soon it became customary to plant at the birth of a child a tree which was to become a companion and a counsellor for life.
Thus in the course of time a copse represented a family.
The worship bestowed upon the tree consisted in pruning it, in making it grow straight, in freeing its bark from parasitical growth and in keeping the roots free from ants, rats, snakes and all dangerous enemies. Such continuous care naturally led in the course of time to an improvement in cultivation.
The tree worshippers, however, did more than this. On certain hallowed days they hung bouquets of herbs and of flowers on its branches, they brought food and drink, and thus fetichism crept in gradually. Alas! That men have never been able to keep from extremes!
When the wind whispered in the leaves, the devout owner listened attentively, trying anxiously to interpret the mystic language of his cedar or his pear tree, and often a regular conversation ensued.
It was a bad omen when a rising storm shook the tree fiercely; if the tempest was strong enough to break a branch, the event foretold a great calamity, and if it was struck by lightning, the owner was warned of his approaching death. The latter was resigned; he felt quite proud at having at last compelled his indolent god to reveal himself to his devout worshipper.
When a child died, it was buried under its own tree, a mere sapling.. But it was not so when a man died.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The Celts used various and strange means for the purpose of disposing of the remains of their deceased friends. In some countries they were burnt, and their own tree furnished the fuel for the funeral pile; in other countries the Todtenbaum (Tree of the Dead), hollowed out with an axe, became the owner’s coffin. This coffin was interred, unless it was intrusted to the current of the river, to be carried God knows where! Finally, in certain localities there existed a custom—a horrible custom!—of exposing the body to the voracity of birds of prey, and the place of exposure was the top of the very tree which had been planted at the birth of the deceased, and which in this case, quite exceptionally, was not cut down.
Now, observe, that in these four distinct methods by which human remains were restored to the four elements of air and water, earth and fire, we meet again the four favorite ways of burial still practiced in India, as of old, by the followers of Brahma, Buddha, and Zoroaster. The fire-worshippers of Bombay are as familiar with them as the dervishes who drown children in the Ganges. Thus we have here four proofs, instead of one, of the Indian origin of our Celts. For my part at least, I confess I am convinced by this quadruple evidence.
It is to be presumed that the use of Dead Men’s Trees and of posthumous drownings continued for centuries in ancient Gaul as well as in ancient Germany. About 1560 some Dutch laborers found, in examining a part of the Zuyder Zee, at a great depth, several trunks of trees which were marvelously well preserved and nearly petrified. Each one of these trunks had been occupied by a man, and contained some half-petrified fragments. It was evident that they had been carried down, trunk and man, by the Rhine, the Ganges of Germany.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
As recently as 1837 such Todtenbaume or Dead Men’s Trees, well preserved by the peculiar nature of the soil, have been discovered in England, near Solby in Yorkshire, and still more recently, in 1848, on Mount Lupfen in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
In face of such well authenticated evidence of Dead Men’s Trees having been confided to the current of rivers or the bosom of the earth, it seems superfluous to ask for additional proof in support of the fact that cremation was practiced all over ancient Europe. Nor do I consider myself, as a collector of myths, bound to prove everything. I do not mean to speak, therefore, any further of Birthday Trees, of Dead Men’s Trees, and of Fetich Trees,—which we shall moreover meet again presently,—and hasten on to other myths of far greater importance.
The Druids now appear for the first time in Gaul and in Germany.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
II.
The Druids and their Creed.—Esus.—The Holy Oak.—The Pforzheim Lime Tree.—A Rival Plant.—The Mistletoe and the Ansfuinum.—The Oracle at Dodona.—Immaculate Horses.—The Druidesses.—A late Elector.—Philanthropic Institution of Human Sacrifices.—Second Druidical Epoch.
The Druids were the first to bring to the Gauls as well as to the Germans religious truths, but their creed can be appreciated from no dogma of theirs; it must be judged by their rites.
The first question is: Whence did the Druids come? Were they disciples of the Magi, and did they come from Persia? Such an origin has been claimed for them: or had they been initiated by Isis in her ancient mysteries, and did they come from Egypt? This view also has its adherents. Or, finally, had they been driven towards Western Europe by one of the last waves of immigration, which left India under the pressure of some new calamity? Many think so.
As it seems to be difficult to decide between these three suggestions, it might be worth while to try and reconcile them with each other. It is a long way from India to Germany and to Gaul, and there might have been many stopping places between the country from which they started and their future home.
The Druids, like all other Celts, might very well have started from India, and choosing not the most direct way might have reached Europe only after making many a long halt in Persia and in Egypt.
'If that can be admitted, then there is no difficulty in assuming that the first Celts might very well have taken with them from the banks of the Indus and the Ganges only a few fragments of a sickly materialism taught by false teachers outside of the temple, while the Druids might have been initiated within the temple itself, thus learning to know the true nature of the Deity.
Their creed was founded upon a triple basis—one God; the immortality of the soul; and rewards and punishments in a future life.
These sound doctrines, which are as old as the world and form the foundation of all human morality, had ever been maintained by their wise men.
At a later period the Greeks, proud as they were of their Platonic philosophy, had not hesitated to acknowledge that they had obtained the first germ of it from the Celts, the Galati, and consequently from the Druids. One of the Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, openly admits that these same Celts had been orthodox in their religion, at least as far as their dogmas were concerned.
By what name was the Supreme Being known to the Druids? They called it Esus, which means the Lord, or they gave it the simple designation of Teut (God). Through this Teut the German races became afterwards Teutons, the sons and followers of Teut, and even in our day they call themselves in their own language Teutsche or Deutsche.
Three marvelously brief maxims contain almost the whole catechism of the Druids: Serve God; Abstain from evil; Be brave!
The Druids, being warriors as well as priests, displayed in the performance of their warlike priesthood all the energy, the severity, and the authority which must needs accompany such a strange combination of powers. Holding all the power of the state in their hands, and speaking in the name of God, commanding the army, controlling the public treasury, and acting not only as judges but also as physicians, they punished heresy and rebellion, and ended lawsuits as well as diseases, by the death of the person most interested.
Their laws, liberal and philanthropic in spite of their apparent severity, allowed a jury consisting of notables, to judge grave crimes; this fact of a jury suggests naturally the idea of extenuating circumstances, and thus the criminal, escaping more readily than the patient, frequently got off with a fine, if he was rich, or with banishment if he was poor.
Nevertheless all the efforts of the Druids did not succeed in thoroughly eradicating Tree worship; they were thus led to adopt one tree, to the exclusion of all others, which should rally around it the scattered adoration of all the nations. This official tree, a kind of green altar, on which God manifested himself to his priests, was an oak, a strong, vigorous oak, the king of the forests.
Thus the holy oak became known and honored; pious worshippers came by night, with torches in their hands, in long processions to present their offerings.
This usage soon became general among all Celtic nations. Around these oaks the Druids formed sacred precincts within which they lived with their families, for they were married; but they could have only one wife, while the other chieftains were generally polygamists.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
But the oak, although thus enjoying preeminence over all other trees, was by no means exclusively worshipped everywhere. Perhaps from religious antagonism, or perhaps merely from local usage, some provinces of Gaul and of Italy preferred the beech and the elm. In Gaul especially, the elm prevailed over the oak, and even Christian France still continued for a long time to plant an elm tree before every newly built church, so as to draw God’s blessing the more surely upon it; and down to the end of the Middle Ages courts of justice were always held under an elm tree. Hence the curious French proverb, which did not always have the mocking sense in which it is used nowadays, wait for me under the elm tree! (Attendez-moi sous forme) What was then a formal summons to appear before a judge has now come to mean: Wait till doomsday.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The ash tree, also, had its worshippers among the dwellers in high northern latitudes, and it was under the dense branches of an enormous ash tree that terrible Odin and his following of deities appeared in a dark cloud.
Thus Tree worship appeared once more. It has ever since continued to flourish more or less in Germany, and even now exists to a certain extent. But it is not the oaks, nor the beech, nor the elm, nor the ash tree, which in our day receives the worship of the young especially—but the lime tree. The admirers of the lime tree carry their fervor to fanaticism and their fanaticism to murder. I had been unwilling to believe this.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
But this morning I opened my newspaper and there I found an article, dated December 30, 1860, and stating that a young man from Pforzheim, in the Palatinate, attempted to murder the mayor of his town by means of a revolver, the four barrels of which were loaded with as many leaden balls. When he was arrested, he declared that he had personally nothing to say against the burgomaster, but that the latter had recently ordered certain lime trees to be cut down, that the good people of Pforzheim idolized these trees, and that he had determined to punish him for such profanation.
The paper added: “This young man belongs to an honorable family, his antecedents are excellent, and he has never shown the slightest symptom of mental derangement.”
How, then does it come about that the lime tree should in our day, in the nineteenth century, call forth sentiments of such extreme violence? The reason is that Young Germany has proclaimed it to be the Tree of Love, because its leaves are shaped like hearts.
If I were not afraid of getting myself into trouble, having a natural horror of all firearms, and especially of four barrelled revolvers, I should mention here, that anatomists protest against this pretended resemblance of the leaf to the heart. In reality it looks much more like the ace of hearts, as it terminates below in a sharp point—but superstition prevails over anatomy, and teaches us once more that science ought not to meddle with things pertaining to love.
The Druids’ Oak, although less tempting to gallant comparisons, finally excited almost equal fanaticism. Processions and sacrifices became well nigh endless; young maidens adorned it with garlands of flowers, interspersed with bracelets and necklaces, while warriors suspended in its branches the most precious spoil they brought home from their battles. If a storm arose, the other trees of the forest seemed in good faith, humbly to bow down before their chief.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
And yet it had an enemy, a fierce, relentless enemy. An abject, little plant, unknown and miserable in appearance, came unceremoniously and made its home on its sacred branches and even on its august summit; there it lived on its life’s blood, feeding on its sap, absorbing its substance, threatening to impede its natural growth, and finally carrying the impudence so far as to conceal the glossy leaves of the noble godlike tree under its own lustreless and viscous foliage. This hostile and impious plant was the Mistletoe, the mistletoe of the oak (Guythil).
Other people, less intelligent and less sagacious than the Druids, would have freed the tree from this unwelcome and obnoxious visitor, by simply climbing up and cutting off the parasite by means of a pruning bill. This would have been irreverent as well as impolitic. What would the people have thought? The people would most assuredly have reasoned, that the sacred tree had been rendered powerless, being unable to rid itself of its vermin.
The Druids did much better. They treated the mistletoe very much as we, in our day, treat a formidable member of the opposition; they gave it a place in the sanctuary. The mistletoe was proclaimed to be an official and sacred plant, and became an essential part of their worship. When it was to be detached from the tree, this was not done stealthily and by a mean iron bill-hook, but in the presence of all, amid public rejoicings and accompanied by solemn chants. The instrument was a golden reaping hook, and with it the Guythil was carefully cut off at the base and gathered in linen veils. These veils became henceforth sacred, and were not allowed to be used for ordinary purposes.
The Teutons who lived on the Rhine, obtained from the mistletoe a kind of glue, which they looked upon as a panacea against the sterility of women, the ravages of diseases, the effects of witchcraft,—and also as a means to catch birds.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The Gauls, on the other hand, dried it carefully and put the dust into pretty little scent-bags, which they presented to each other as New Year’s Gifts on the first day of the year. Hence, in t some provinces of France, the cry is still heard, “Aguilanneuf” (au gui l’an neuf), “Mistletoe for New Year!”
Modern science treats mistletoe simply as a purgative, and thus attempts to prove that our ancestors showed their affection to each other by exchanging presents of violent purgatives.
The introduction of this parasite plant into the sanctuary became, however, very soon a public benefit. For the oak-mistletoe obtained ere long considerable commercial value, and at once counterfeiters (for even under the Druids there existed such men) went to work and gathered it from other trees also, from apple trees and pear trees, from nut trees and lime trees, from beeches, elms, and even larches. The consequence was, that owners of orchards as well as owners of forests, rejoiced in the trick, at which the Druids discreetly winked; for they took advantage of the lesson.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
At one time venomous reptiles had become so numerous in the regions of the Rhine, that they caused continually serious accidents among the people, the majority of whom lived all day long in the open air, and did not always sleep under shelter. During their winter sleep, these reptiles rolled themselves up into vast balls, and became apparently glued to each other by a kind of viscous ooze. In this state they were called by the Celts Serpents Eggs, or rather Serpents’ Knots, while the Romans called them anguimim.
These strange balls were used medicinally by the Druids like the mistletoe; they employed them even in their religious ceremonies, and soon they became so rare, that only the wealthiest people could procure them, by paying their weight in gold. If the Druids had really at first been misled so as to adopt superstitious customs, which they repented of in their hearts, they soon found means to make these same superstitious rites beneficial to the people.
Unfortunately serpents’ knots, oaks, and their parasites, did not long satisfy a people ever desirous of new things. It is a well-known fact that innovations, however small may have been their first beginning, are sure to go on enlarging and increasing from day to day.
The old party of Tree worshippers, still numerous and very active as all old parties are, complained of the suppression of their companion-trees, the ancient family oracles, for the purpose of favoring one single oak tree,—a tree which yet was not able, in spite of all the privileges it enjoyed, to put them into communication with Estes, the god of heaven.
This complaint was certainly not unfounded;—it had to be answered.
The Druids consisted of three classes:—
The Druids proper (Eubages, they were called in Gaul) were philosophers as well as scholars, perhaps even magicians, for magic was at that time nothing more than the outward form of science. They were charged with the maintenance of the principles of morality, and had to study the secrets of nature. The Prophets, on the other hand, knew how to interpret in the slightest breath of wind, the language of the holy oak, which spoke to them in the rustling of its leaves, in the soughing of the branches, in the low cracking heard within the trunk, and even in the earlier or later appearance of the foliage. There were, finally, the Bards, poets bound to the altar.
While the bards were singing around the oak, the prophets caused it to render its oracles. These oracles soon increased largely not only in Europe, but also in Asia Minor, where a Celtic colony, according to Herodotus, established in the land they had conquered the oracle of Dodona. Early Greece worshipped an oak tree, which Strabo, however, assures us was a beech. There is no disputing about trees any more than about colors; but Homer calls it an oak, and an oak it must remain for us.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
This new movement, grafted upon the simple worship of the Druids, did not stop here. After having for some time been accustomed to converse with Teut by means of a tree, the Celts were naturally surprised at seeing that, while trees could speak, living creatures remained silent, and were apparently deprived of the power of foretelling the future. Certain chieftains, especially, felt aggrieved, upon setting out on a great campaign, that they were not allowed to carry the holy oak along with them, and in their intense devotion, fell upon the idea of consulting the nervous trembling of their horses and their sudden neighing in moments of surprise or terror,—for in order to be of prophetic nature the movements of the animals had to be involuntary and spontaneous. As this creed began to spread gradually, every man who was setting out on a journey or a warlike expedition mounted his horse in the firm conviction that he would be able to consult his four-footed prophet at any time during his absence from home, provided he was able to submit the omens to the learned interpretations of a soothsayer.
The Druid priests were not long in becoming seriously alarmed at these travelling oracles, liable as they naturally were to contradict each other.
As they had before chosen a single tree to be the sacred tree, so they now accepted as genuine omens only the symptoms noticed in certain horses which were bred within the sacred precincts and under their own eyes.
These horses, of immaculate whiteness and raised at public expense, were not employed for any work, and never had to submit to saddle or bridle. Wild and untamed, they roamed with fluttering manes in perfect liberty through the lofty forests. The freedom of their movements gave naturally a safer character to their omens, and thus these prophetic horses, which formed almost a part of the druidical clergy, enjoyed for a long time the highest authority in all Celtic countries, when suddenly one fine day new rivals arose.
Other living creatures entered into competition with them, and these rivals of the horses were—shall I say it?—were women. These women discovered, all of a sudden, that they also were endowed, and in the very highest degree, with the gifts of second sight, of inspiration, intuition, and divination.
When public opinion appealed to the Druids to give their views on this claim, they admitted, according to the statement of Tacitus, that women had something more instinctive and more divine in them than men, nay, even than horses. Their sensitive organization predisposed them to receive the gift of prophecy, and hence “women indeed act more readily from natural impulse, without reflection, than from thought or reason.”
This last explanation, improper in the highest degree, does not come from Tacitus, nor from myself, God forbid! It is the exclusive property of the aforementioned Mr. Simon Pelloutier. Let every one be responsible for his own work!
The Druids treated the women just as they had treated the horses, the mistletoe, and the trees. They acknowledged as true prophetesses only those who were already under the direct influence of the holy place and the sacred oak; that is to say, their wives and their daughters.
The principle of centralization of power is evidently not of modern origin.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Thus, there were now Druidesses, as there had been Druids before. The latter became the teachers of the young men; they taught their pupils the motions of the stars, the shape and extent of the earth, the divers products of nature, the history of their ancestors written in the form of poems which the bards recited; in fact, they taught them everything except reading and writing. Memory was as yet sufficient for all things. The priestesses, on the other hand, opened schools for the young girls; they taught them to sing and to sew, they initiated them into religious ceremonies and confided to them the knowledge of simples; nor was poetry neglected, as they had to learn by heart certain poems which were specially composed for their benefit. These verses, of somewhat doubtful lyrical character, probably taught them how to make bread, how to brew beer, and other small details of the kitchen and the house.
The Druidesses practiced also medicine. This threefold prerogative of being physicians, prophets, and preceptors, finally raised them so high in the estimation of the nation, that when the priests of Teut were compelled to abandon their sanctuaries, they did not hesitate to confide them to their guardianship. They even presided in their own right, at certain ceremonies.
If one of them excelled by the frequency, the lucidity, and the reliability of her inspirations, as was the case at different times with the illustrious Aurinia, Velleda, and Ganna, whom the Roman emperors even deigned to consult through their ambassadors, the proud Druids placed her with humble submission, at the head of their own college of priests. During this female dictatorship, she became the arbiter of the destiny of nations, decided on peace and war, and controlled all the movements of great armies.
Caesar tells us that he once asked one of his German captives, why Ariovistus, their chieftain, had never yet dared to meet him in battle, and was told in reply, that the Druidesses, after a careful examination of the eddies and whirlpools of the Rhine, had forbid his engaging in action till the time of the new moon. As a matter of course, the shrewd general profited by this information, and when the new moon appeared, the Germans were in full flight.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
But the Rhine has not yet given its oracles, and the time has not yet come, when Ganna Velleda, and Aurinia condescend to grant audiences to Roman ambassadors.
We only wished to trace in a few outlines the future development of this institution of Druidesses, which we shall meet again in the days of its decline. In the mean time, however, their influence and their power were daily growing. Were the Teutons at last satisfied? By no means. In spite of all the skill displayed by their diviners and the Druid-esses, they came to the conclusion, that neither the trembling foliage of the holy oak, nor the sudden starts, the wild leaps, and the more or less prolonged, loud neighings of the horses, afforded them sufficient excitement and perfectly reliable revelations. It occurred to them next, to consult animals, not in their outward manifestations, but in their still quivering entrails. This new ceremony could not fail to give to their religious worship a more serious aspect, and a certain savor of murder, which no doubt had its charms for a warlike people.
The Druids yielded once more, but they felt discouraged. What had become of that grand philosophic religion, which was content with prayer and meditation, and which they once—too fondly, perhaps—had hoped to be able to adapt to the nature of these barbarians?
They first consented to slay at the foot of the sacred oak, so long kept free from blood, a number of noxious beasts, like wolves, lynxes, and bears; but the turn of domestic animals came ere long, and they began to sacrifice sheep, goats, and finally man’s best companion in war, the horse. Not even the spotless white horses, heretofore looked upon with such profound and superstitious reverence, were spared any longer.
And at each step forward in this bloody career, the Druids, always resisting, and always compelled to yield, made their last and their very last concession, vainly hoping that they might thus retain for a little while longer the power, which they felt was fast slipping from their grasp.
Encouraged by success, the reformers finally came to the question, whether the most acceptable offering to be presented to God, was not the blood of man? Is not man, of all created beings, the most noble and the most perfect? Perhaps they were inclined to carry the argument still farther, and to reason that among all men the most worthy to be chosen and the most likely to be acceptable to God, were the Druids themselves? But they took care not to ask too much at once. They held this final consequence of a great principle in reserve, requiring for the present nothing more than a common victim, anything that might come in the way, provided it was a human being.
It might have been expected, that when this abominable demand was made to hallow murder by committing it in the name of Heaven, the descendants and heirs of the ancient sages would have remembered their noble ancestors who had put an end to the first and quite inoffensive superstitions of the early Celts. They ought to have veiled their faces, drawn back with horror, and recovering for once their former energy, appealed by means of the holy oak, the spotless horses, the soothsayers and the Druidesses, nay of heaven and earth itself, to the whole nation, calling upon them to anathematize the infamous petitioners. But they did no such thing. On the contrary they hastened to legalize such savage bloodshed by their holy consent. One might almost be led to suspect that they had themselves, underhand, suggested the horrible idea.
O ye hypocritical priests, ye false philosophers, ye tigers disguised as shepherds of the people!.... But we must check our indignation. For who knows, but they may have been swayed not so much by an instinct of cruelty as by a lofty political, or even philanthropic principle? Philanthropic? Yes, indeed; we will explain.
Among the Celts human life counted for little; it was lavished in battles, it was cast away in duels. At the time when the Gauls held large national assemblies, they tried to secure punctual attendance by simply putting to death the man who was the last to come; he paid for all the tardy ones. I do not mean to propose such a plan at the present day; but after all it was an infallible and economical measure. The Teutons, on the other hand, bloodless in their national assemblies, after a battle in which they had been victorious, delighted in massacring all their prisoners.
These massacres ceased from the time when the Druids claimed for themselves the exclusive right of human sacrifices.
The good Esus, having become bloodthirsty, demanded all the captives to be slain in expiation at his altar, and woe to him who dared to anticipate him in his wrath. He was excluded from the sacred precincts; he was declared an impious, sacrilegious person, who could no longer take his place among the citizens; and he ran great risk of being forced to offer his own life in compensation for that which by his fault was wanting at the holocaust.
When this custom became once fully established, the prisoners of war were all delivered up to the high-priest, who chose from among them one or more to be slain as an offering. The victim was generally one of the captive chieftains, and he was slain together with his war horse, so as to add to the impressiveness of the ceremony and to reconcile the spectators by the abundance of blood that was shed to the small number of victims.
After having carefully examined the opened bodies of man and animal, the sacrificing priest, his beard and clothes saturated with blood, raised his bloody right hand to heaven and, reeking with murder and breathing carnage, he proclaimed that his god was satisfied. The remainder of the prisoners were kept for another day, but that other day never came.
Thus a new office had been created: that of a sacrificing priest. On both banks of the Rhine, in Germany as well as in Gaul, the Druids reserved this office for themselves; in other Celtic countries, in Scandinavia and among the Scythians, women performed the terrible duty; we all remember as a proof of it, Iphigenia of Tauris.
Whatever we may think of this bloody innovation, it certainly benefited the prisoners, but the Druids obtained from it, after all, the greatest advantage. Their power, which had been seriously undermined, step by step, was once more firmly established. The opposition, which had paid no attention to their remonstrances or their prayers, shrunk from their knives.
From this moment begins the Second Period of the Druids.
The bloody knife of the Druids remained long all powerful, but we need not follow its later fate. Cæsar had conquered and pacified Gaul, and the successors of Augustus fulminated their Imperial decrees against the Druids, as slayers of men, while the same knife continued to shed the blood of the Germans.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
III.
A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.—The two Banks of the Rhine.—Druid Stones.—Weddings and Burials.—Xight Service.—A Dentigod Glacier.—Social Duels. A Countrywoman of Aspasia.—Boudoir of a Celtic Lady.—The Bard’s Story.—Teutons and Titans.—Earthquake.
Any one who has ever travelled in my company, must know that I am apt to stray from my way, or at least to choose the longest route. I have a fancy to-day, to turn my eyes and my steps away from those sacred precincts of the Druids, which had become slaughter-houses and in which the hand that blessed was also the hand that killed.
I desire to breathe an air less filled with the perfumes, or rather the fetid odor of sacrifices. Up there, on that hill-top, where the setting sun lights up the bright summit, I shall breathe more freely.
Here I am.
Beneath me the Rhine spreads out its two banks, not united yet by any bridge, and even without a ferry to bring the one nearer to the other.
But on both sides, half hid under dense willow thickets and gigantic reeds, there lie, in many a shallow little bay, large numbers of tiny barks. These cunning looking boats belong to harmless fishermen in the daytime; but at night they are filled with robbers and corsairs, who form in bands, cross over to the other side in search of booty, and even venture, if needs be, out into the Northern Sea. Just now nothing stirs; the fishermen have gone home, the corsairs have not come forth. I look farther out.
On the left bank there are some Gallic Celts encamped, with blue eyes, white skin, and abundant golden tresses. Almost naked, their principal garment seems to be that immense shield, almost as long as their body, which shelters them on the march as well as when they are at rest, and which protects them against the sun and the enemy alike. All of a sudden I hear them, with lips held close to one of the edges of their shields, utter sharp cries, which are taken up and repeated, from distance to distance, all the way down the river. To these cries, which no doubt represent their telegraphic system, there comes an answer from far sounding trumpets.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Who are these other soldiers with the black hair and the bronzed complexions? Carefully arrayed in symmetrical lines they advance steadily, clad in brilliant armor, and carrying banners surmounted by golden eagles with half open wings. Has Cæsar really succeeded, after ten years’ warfare, in making himself master of Gaul as far as the banks of the Rhine? I cannot doubt it; for at their approach, the Gauls lower their lance-heads, in token of their peaceful disposition, and allow them to pass.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
When they reach the river, the small Roman army pauses; under the protection of this armed force a few men, dressed in simple tunics, with no arms but tablets, a style, and ropes for measuring the ground, go to work preparing a plan, perhaps for a bridge, perhaps for a town.
German sentinels, take care!
From the height of my hill I look down upon a narrow strip of land on the right bank of the river, and here I see several groups of men, scattered here and there in the woods and on the plain, who work under the superintendence of a Druid. Some are digging up the roots of trees which overshadow and impoverish the ground; others draw long furrows with the iron of their ploughs. These laborers seem all to suffer from some restraint which impedes their movements, but of which at this distance I can discover no cause.
In order to meditate on this strange sight, I look around for a resting place. Half way up the hill I notice a small stone bench. As I draw nearer, the object grows in size and rises to such a height, that I should need a ladder if I wished to take possession of my seat.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
This apparent bench is a monument, a Druidical monument, and consists of two upright stones, on which rests a third, horizontal stone. In France, in England, and in Germany there are still found such Druidical altars, cromlechs or dolmens; these menhyrs astonished already Alexander of Macedonia when he marched through Scythia. In Bretagne, at Carnac, some of these stones, consisting of a single rock, rise by the wayside, as if to tell the traveller the story of the past, or they range themselves before his eyes in long lines, forming on the ground endless circles of emblematic meaning, as it is supposed. But the traveller can no longer understand their language. Was this an altar, or was it an idol, or perhaps only a simple monument raised over a grave. If they were altars, Carnac would be Olympus; if they were tombstones, it would be a cemetery.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
I was going all around the mystic three stones to examine them more closely, when I noticed close by a flock of sheep, and then a shepherd.
This shepherd, covered with a ragged sagum, had on his feet leather sandals, a half open wound on his forehead, which had not yet had time to close, enhanced the fierceness of his appearance. His burning glances fell now upon the Druidical stone and now upon another object which I had not noticed before. This was the guard of a sword which had been driven into the ground.
Could it be that this stone resting upon two supports, were new concessions made by the politic Druids?
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
As according to their spiritualistic views God could not render himself visible in a shape resembling our own, they had represented him as well as they could by a symbol. It appeared thus that human sacrifices were already no longer sufficient to maintain their creed.
While I was examining with growing curiosity this strange keeper of sheep, fair, with bare neck and bare feet, was busy watching on the same side of the hill another flock, and at the same time gathering herbs for medicinal purposes. When she was about to leave, she offered the shepherd to attend to his wound, sword handle, and this but he refused haughtily; she ran away laughing, and threw a flower into his face.
He did not pick up that flower; he did not salute that pretty girl as she left him. He looked at her with disdain.
Ah! I can doubt it no longer; this unhappy man is like the wood-cutter in the forest, and the laborers in the field, one of those prisoners taken in war, whom the Druids have spared, and now render useful. His closely shorn hair, his open wound, and the heavy wooden yoke which he has to carry on his neck, all betray his sad fate. He has made no reply to the half pitiful, half coquettish advances of the pretty gatherer of simples, because she has only awakened in his heart painful memories of his distant love, or of his wife, whom he is never to see again! He has cast glances of fierce hatred and burning revenge at the Druidical altar and the handle of the sword, because both of these objects point out the place of bloody sacrifices. Does he think he is himself destined to be slain? or was perhaps the warrior whom they slew yesterday, a man of his own tribe, his best friend, his own brother?
But I have taken refuge here in order to escape from these painful thoughts of blood and murder. I propose to seek new objects of interest.
Farther down, nearly at the foot of the hill, I see a few huts, or rather a few low, almost crushed roofs, which seem hardly to rise from the ground. Are they houses, or stables, or caves?
On the left bank Gauls and Romans have alike disappeared in the mists rising from the river. On the right bank the wood-cutters and the field-laborors are resting upon their axes or their ploughs, and seem to ask the sun if the day is not drawing to an end.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
A breeze is springing up, the shepherd gathers his flock and, as mournful as ever, he slowly takes the footpath that leads down the hill towards the village.
I follow him without knowing what mysterious power draws me in that direction.
Perhaps some Druid magician holds me under a potent spell, which enables me to forget who I am, whence I come, and even to what century I belong, and to witness these strange scenes, which, well nigh forgotten by all living beings, I alone am permitted to watch? Let me try, at all events, to profit by this rare piece of good fortune.
I reach the low village and find it occupied by a colony of Salic Franks, who live scattered all along the Rhine. With their eyes fixed upon the left bank, they are just now far more occupied with the invasion of Germany by the Romans, than with the thought of invading Gaul themselves.—I feel suddenly a deep interest in these people. What Frenchman of this nineteenth century can feel sure that the blood in his veins is not the same that once gave life and strength to these terrible warriors from the North, Franks or Gauls? We are all natives of one or the other bank of this great river Rhine, and feel towards each other, whether we live on the right or the left bank, very much like school-boys whose friendship is cemented by many a battle royal.
Being a Frenchman, I feel that I am about to pay a visit to my paternal ancestors—for the Franks have given us our name. No wonder that I feel deeply moved.
I examine the low huts of the village, if village it can be called, and find that they are separated from each other by commons and by fields, and that they finally lose themselves in the open country. Where now these scattered huts are standing, there may be one of these days a Mayence or a Cologne, and yet they will occupy no larger space with all their suburbs included.
On both sides of the road extend orchards, fenced in with reeds and all aglow with blooming apple trees; dark, sombre pine forests and swamps, the greenish waters of which are confined within slight dams; here and there the live rock crops out from the ground and interrupts the road, or huge trees are lying across, recently cut down and but just deprived of their branches. In the open pasture grounds huge buffaloes are lying about snorting and panting with fatigue, for they have worked all day in the plough; the neighing of horses is heard from one end of the country to the other, and gradually dies out as the sun sinks below the horizon; lean heifers, with long, spiral horns, push here and there their heads through the fence of the orchards to have a last bite at the tender foliage of the reeds, and small oxen of an inferior breed return to their quarters at the same time with the sheep, quite content to browse on the grass by the wayside, while herds of swine are wallowing in the mire of the low grounds.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The landscape resembles parts of Bretagne and of Normandy; but these provinces have no such huts. To see a human habitation, you have to rise high above the fences and hedges and then look down upon the ground.
At a place where two roads meet, the cracking of a whip is heard; hogs, sheep, and small oxen are driven aside to make way for a kind of procession, consisting of grave and solemn men and women, who almost all wear a look of consternation.
It is a wedding.
Two young people have just had their union blessed by the priests under the sacred oak. The bride is dressed in black, and wears a wreath of dark leaves on her head; she walks in the midst of her friends, bent double, as if weighed down by overwhelming thoughts. A matron, who walks on her left, holds before her eyes a white cloth; it is a shroud, the shroud in which she will be buried one of these days. On her right, a Druid intones a chant, in which he enumerates, in solemn rhythm, all the troubles and all the anxieties which await her in wedded life.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
“From this day, young wife, thou alone wilt have to bear all the burden of your united household.
“You will have to attend the baking oven, to provide fuel, and to go in search of food; you will have to prepare the resinous torch and the lamp.
“You will wash the linen at the fountain, and you will make up all the clothing;
“You will attend to the cow, and even to the horse if your husband requires it;
“Always full of respect, you will wait upon him, standing behind him, at his meals;
“If he chooses to take more wives, you will receive your new companions with sweetness; "If needs be, you will even offer to nurse the children of these favorites, and all from obedience to your karl (master);
“If he is angry against you and strikes you, you will pray to Esus, the only God, but you will never blame your husband, who cannot do wrong.
“If he expresses a wish to take you with him to war, you will accompany him to carry his baggage, to keep his arms in good condition, and to nurse him if he should be sick or wounded.
“Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty. Be happy, my child!”
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
When I heard this dolorous wedding song, which in some parts of France is to this day addressed to brides by local minstrels, when I saw this winding-sheet, the mournful costumes and the whole funereal wedding procession, I felt overcome with sadness. Just then, cries and joyous acclamations were heard at some little distance.
Another procession came from the opposite direction to the cross-roads; there all the faces were smiling and full of joyousness.
This was a funeral.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Such were the ways of our fathers; they rejoiced in facing death, which relieves man from all his sufferings; they had nothing but tears for man when he entered upon his trials.
In the meantime the twilight had passed into darkness. Small lights, looking like will-o’-the-wisps, were flitting to and fro in field and forest, going in all directions. Devout worshippers, carrying torches or lanterns in their hands, were going to consecrated places, to hold public worship or to recite private prayers. Some, and these were the majority, go in the direction of the oak forests, where the Druids are found; others, concealing the light of their lanterns as well as they can, go hither and thither, towards the copses of beeches and pine trees, or towards the river, or towards the hill, which was but just now shining brightly in the sunlight, but is now concealed in utter darkness.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
What are they going to do? They are going to worship the Rhine, the wells, the water-courses, the trees, the Druidical altars, and the sword-guards. For no creed yet but has had its schisms.
Orthodox or not, German or Gallic, the Franks have always shown a preference for nocturnal worship; they divide the year into moons, and count the moons not by days but by nights. And yet they have been suspected of worshipping the sun! And I had nearly fallen into the same error! How well it was that I came to see for myself!
As I am just now more interested in watching manners than in studying mythology, I pursue my investigations, especially as I know very well that we must know the lives which people lead in order to be able fully to appreciate the objects of their worship.
While all these small lights are flashing, like shooting stars, here and there through the landscape, certain specially bright lights seem to become stationary and permanent. These are the lighted-up windows of human habitations. I called the latter just now stables, or caves, and excepting a few of them, I must still call them such.
They are dug out of the ground, damp and dark; their ceiling is on a level with the surface of the earth, and their roof consists of layers of turf, or of dry thatch covered with moss. The only door resembles the lid of a snuff-box, and is set in the roof on a level with the ground. The dwelling has no light but such as enters through these trapdoors; consequently they are utterly dark during the whole rainy season and during winter, that is to say, for three fourths of the year! Darkness reigns supreme here; that darkness which is the enemy of all healthfulness, of enjoyment, of every comfort. No windows! No glass! O divine Apollo,—
“Thou of the silver bow, god of Claros, hear!”
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
I never had any objection to the doctrine which made of you, the brilliant personification of the sun, a first class divinity; but I think like honors ought to have been bestowed upon the unknown man who first invented windows and window-panes, the first glazier in fine. He ought at least to have been made a demigod, and if he had to remain a simple mortal, they ought surely to have remembered his name! Alas! that high honors are as unfairly distributed in heaven as upon earth!
As there is no window, I peep through the trapdoor to see how these subterranean dwellings look inside. The aspect is far from being as wretched as I had expected. I find that the walls are hung with mattings and the floor is beaten hard; by the side of the smoking lamp which is suspended from the main beam of the ceiling, there are hanging, on hooks, a hindquarter of venison, baskets filled with provisions, and implements for fishing and hunting. Besides, I notice long strings of medicinal herbs, such as we see in the shops of herb-doctors, and among these plants the mistletoe occupies, as a matter of course, the place of honor.
In another underground hut there appear actually some traces of luxury. Here the walls are incrusted with pebbles from the Rhine, of many colors and skillfully arranged; here and there weapons are arranged in various shapes; javelins with sharp hooks; framees, such as the ancient Franks were using; hatchets of stone or iron; “morning stars,” with sharp points, were pleasantly mingled with huge bucklers; large leather quivers and long arrows feathered at one end and with jagged teeth at the other. At first sight it looks as if for the purpose of softening somewhat the threatening aspect of these panoplies, the Celtic lady of the house had added some of her jewels to these weapons. But it is not so; these gold chains, these necklaces set with onyx and rubies, are worn by the grim warriors on the day of battle, quite as much in the nature of ornaments as for the purpose of protection. One of our sober, I may say, most sober historians, ascribes to this custom of our forefathers, the Franks, the gorget, worn still by officers in some European armies. Here also I see straw mats, but here they are trod under foot; they are used as carpets, not as hangings.
The deep and spacious dwelling contains, besides the large room which alone I can see through my dormer-window, a number of other rooms on all sides, or rather of other caves, which are all connected with each other. I am evidently before the palace of one of the chief men of the country.
In the first hut, into which I had looked, I had found the people at table, drinking a beverage made from grain and herbs—cerevisia—in horns of wild bulls, and talking about business—for our ancestors talked about business at dinner, just as we do. The conversation turned about exchanges of rams, a great fishing expedition to be undertaken jointly, an invasion to be made into the territory on the other
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
bank of the river, and most eagerly, about the approaching elections. For Montesquieu tells us that municipal and even constitutional government existed alike among the early Germans.
In the other dwelling, the one adorned with panoplies, they were talking neither of elections, nor of fishing, but they were likewise at table. Here they drank not only cerevisia in the horns of the brave, but also hydromel and hippocras in leathern tankards or human skulls, as white as ivory, adorned with silver and naturally shaped like cups. God be thanked that this custom has not been bequeathed to us by the Franks!
On that evening they were celebrating the welcome given to a young warrior who had already made himself known by great exploits and who belonged to a neighboring, friendly tribe.
When the meal was ended, and what a meal it was!—I shall be careful not to give the bill of fare, since the mere recital would cause an indigestion,—they thought of prolonging the entertainment given to their illustrious guest. But what could they do? The young Frankish ladies were not familiar yet with the piano, and the noble game of billiards had not yet been invented. They proposed riddles to be guessed, but this did not seem to afford much amusement to the young man. Then came a game with bones; but he nearly fell asleep. As the duty of hospitality required that they should make every possible effort to entertain their guest, a great man among the Cheruski or the Marcomanni, they proposed the handkerchief; this, seemed to arouse his attention.
The handkerchief game was at that time very popular; it was a kind of company duel. Two kind-hearted adversaries, having no other motive but to amuse themselves and to entertain the company, would seize with their left hand one end of a handkerchief, and with their right hand a table knife or a hunting knife, it did not matter which, provided the weapon was sharp and very pointed. For our good ancestors did not know foils with cork buttons or other arms of courtesy. Imbued with the strange idea that to fight, man against man, or a thousand against a thousand, was the greatest happiness upon earth, they delighted in occasionally cutting each other’s throat, even if they were the best friends in the world.
The spectators formed a ring around the combatants. After they had taken a solemn oath, by the rims of their bucklers, by the shoulders of their horses, and by the points of their swords, that they cherished no feeling of animosity against each other, a signal was given and the game commenced. For some time I saw how the handkerchief was stretched out, twisted and then suddenly turned around and around rapidly. Light red lines had already begun to mark the skin of the two adversaries; the blood was trickling down their arms, but these wounds were such trifles that the spectators took no notice of them and uttered not a single exclamation.
All of a sudden I heard three hurrahs in rapid succession; the welcomed guest, whom all had been striving to honor to the utmost of their capacity, had fallen down with his adversary’s knife still sticking in his breast. He was dead.
They had not been able to think of any better way to make him spend a pleasant evening. The good old times had a hospitality of their own!
This pleasant handkerchief game has survived, only slightly modified, in several countries of northern Europe. The handkerchief is generally wrapped around a rapier, so as to shorten the length of the blade. In the taverns of Holland the game is considered conducive to health; a knife wound gives a man a chance to escape apoplexy; it serves as a timely bleeding.
I had run away in horror. For an hour I wandered about, casting a furtive glance down a trapdoor here and there, and almost everywhere I saw men and women, horses and cattle, enjoying their rest, lying pell-mell on the same litter.
In one of these hovels I thought I recognized the young girl whom I had seen on the hill; her attitude of repose gave a peculiar charm to her supple and delicate limbs, and by the feeble flickering light of the lamp, she suggested the idea of a sleeping nymph.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
She was a young Ionian girl, a countrywoman of Aspasia; captured in war, she had been sold as a slave in twenty markets, developing in spite of such treatment, one grace and one beauty after another. On the banks of the Ilyssus, they would have erected an altar in her honor, on the banks of the Rhine they made her keep a herd of swine. She was not the only one of her sex, however, whom I saw during that fantastic night.
The sound of a shrill fife, mingling with the sweeter notes of a harp, attracted my attention. I went toward the spot from which the music came.
In a little room decked with flowers, a young woman was engaged in her toilet.
I ought to have fled once more,—this time from bashfulness or a sense of propriety,—but a conscientious historian is bound to overcome every difficulty, in order to ascertain the exact truth. It was a great piece of good luck, surely, to be able to report as an eye-witness, what might be seen in the boudoir of a Celtic lady.
My friend was sitting, half undressed, on a stool, with her hair loosened, and holding in her hand a metal mirror. An old woman, a servant or her mother, I cannot tell which—and yet it seemed to me as if I had seen both these women, as well as the beautiful swine-herd, somewhere before; when that was, however, I could not possibly tell—the old woman held the whole rich abundance of the young lady’s hair in both her hands and rubbed it with a horrid mixture of tallow, ashes, and plaster. Thanks to this wretched pomatum, the beautiful hair gradually changed from pale blonde to intense red, and thus enabled the owner to comply with a fashion, which I do not presume to criticise, but simply record here. Then she washed and combed it carefully, plaited it cunningly, and at last rubbed the shoulders and the neck of the beauty with melted butter, while she washed the face and the hands with foaming beer.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
After the demands of cleanliness had thus been satisfied, she placed before her mistress a slight collation, which was promptly served and promptly dispatched. While she was thus attending to her toilet and disposing of a bird’s meal, there was a cyclopean feast going on in an adjoining room; loud and violent voices were heard, everybody seemed to talk at once, and in such high tones that even the shrill fife could no longer be distinguished—for it was from this hall that the sound of music proceeded, which had attracted me to the dwelling.
The old woman evidently thought the feast was drawing to an end, for she hastened to finish her mistress’s toilet: She opened a wooden box and drew from it a pair of pretty red boots, which she put on the feet of the young beauty; then she threw over her white dress a purple scarf, which she fastened on the left shoulder with a long thorn from a sloe-tree. After that she tied a narrow scarlet ribbon around her head, handed her a collar and bracelets made of small berries, which in form and color were strikingly like corals, and finally, as the finishing touch, she daubed her cheeks with red by means of a cosmetic which I suspect consisted largely of brickdust. When the young Frankish beauty found that there was enough red—scarlet, crimson, purple, and pink—on her person from head to foot, she uttered a cry of triumph, especially when her husband, who entered her room, followed by his guests, seemed to be quite dazzled by the resplendent charms of his lovely wife, whom he had just bought.
To buy a woman was a familiar expression in Germany at that time, as it is now,—Ein weib kaufen. It must be borne in mind, however, that in those days the bride brought no dower; on the contrary, the husband paid her family a certain sum as compensation. We have inherited many of our usages from our Celtic forefathers; but as to this custom, we have not thought proper to keep it up.
I at once recognized the husband, although he was now all smiles in his face, and let us hope, all smiles in his heart also. He was the chief personage in the wedding procession, whom I had seen two hours before, looking so grave and solemn, so sad and mournful.
According to Druidical regulations, the bride has first of all waited upon him at table, humbly standing behind him like the other house slaves; then, towards the middle of the repast, she had gone to her room in order to exchange her girlish costume for the dress of a married woman—a woman who has the right to follow the fashions and to dress herself up in red from the heels of her feet to the end of her hair.
Now she receives her master at home; here she is mistress, and mistress she will remain. This was the rule among the Franks; for in spite of the lachrymose anthems of the bards and in spite of the sombre ceremonies of the wedding, the women became almost invariably the masters at home, a usage which, contrary to that of dowerless girls, may possibly have crossed the Rhine. Thinking it over, I found that during my nocturnal excursion into the land of my forefathers, I had been present—as a witness only, be it understood—at three successive entertainments; a feast of welcome, a business dinner, and a wedding dinner. Although they had not been calculated to satisfy my appetite, they had, at all events, made me extremely hungry. I was thinking, therefore, of retracing my steps and looking for a lodging, when I saw the Druid-bard, who had not disdained taking a seat at the nuptial feast, coming slowly and solemnly to the centre of the room, all the while drawing a few accords from, a kind of harp, which consisted of a closely bent bow with three strings instead of one.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
He was getting ready to charm the company with the recital of one of those long and mysterious poems which recount the history of the Celts. I delay my departure.
It has been said, and not without a show of reason, that the history of our Gallic or Germanic ancestors ought to be for us a subject of deep interest; but bold minds have in vain tried to raise up once more the old oak tree, to trim it and to let air and light enter within its canopy of leaves. The birds that once sang in its branches have left no trace behind them of their songs, and nothing has reached us from those sacred precincts but a few faint echoes.
I certainly have reason to praise my good fortune! What all these great scholars, these learned men, have not been able to accomplish by dint of energy and perseverance and aided by all their knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, I (I, the man whom you know) am enabled to do! Thanks to the bard’s long recital, I am able to fill up this blank,—the first, the only man in the history of mankind, who can throw light upon the impenetrable darkness of those ages!
The bard began. I listened, all attention and eagerness, trying to catch every sound and to impress every word upon my excellent memory.
In a pompous introduction he told us all about the first arrival of the Celts in Europe, the coming of the Druids as apostles of the true faith; he told us how a great colony of Salic Franks, Gauls, under the collective name of Pelasgi, all children of Teut, or Teutons, had first planted a sacred oak at Dodona. On this point I was already well informed. He then alluded to the building up of Athens, due as much to the Teutons as to the Greeks of Cecrops; he boasted, that when the Greeks were led astray by their corrupt imagination and wished to raise altars to Saturn, Jupiter, and all those false gods whom they had borrowed from the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, the Teutons rose in the name of outraged human reason, and proclaimed the only one God, breaking down all the false altars. Hence, he said, that formidable struggle, still so well known as the battle of the gods of Olympus against the Teutons or Titans....
I held my breath. What? Those terrible giants, those colossal men, whom Jupiter himself feared and who piled Ossa upon Pelion, or Pelion upon Ossa—they were Celts? They were the ancestors of the brave French?
O Titans, O my brothers, with what delight I listened to the sacred words of the bard, so that I might repeat them to you and rejoice with you in our glorious descent!
By special grace I understood the Germano-Celtic words of the bard without difficulty. But the poem was flowing on interminably; I began to mistrust my memory. Centuries succeeded centuries, events followed events, and they were as close to each other and as numerous as grains in a bag of wheat. The continuous exertion of all my faculties began to tell upon me. The most illustrious heroes of Gaul and of Germany appeared to me soon only like the faint forms seen by means of a magic lantern; Sigovesus and Bellovesus, the descendants of the great king Ambigat; Brennus, Btlgius, and Lutharius, sons or sons-in-law of that other great king Cambaules, began to turn around and arouad in my head, holding each other by the hand and performing an old British dance to the music of an old Breton instrument. Ariovistus played on the biniou. Then the sounds of the biniou, the shrill tones of the fife and the Druid harp were broken in upon by a terrible noise of countless church bells; the air shook all of a sudden, the earth trembled, everything around me fell to the ground with a great crash, the Druid, the house of the wedding, the trap-door, the hamlet, the trees, the hill, the Rhine and its banks, the heaven and the stars, all disappeared at the same moment, and I awoke in my arm-chair, surrounded by my poor books, which had just fallen from my knees.
The dinner bell was still ringing.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
IV.
The Roman Gods invade Germany.—Drusus and the Druidess.—Ogmius, the Hercules of Gaul.—Great Philological Discovery concerning Teut at es.—Transformations of every kind.—Irmexsul.—The Rhine deified.—The Gods cross the River.—Druids of the Third Epoch.
You may rest assured, I did not merely dream of that bold transformation of Teutons into Titans; one of the most learned and most reliable authors in my library, assures me of the fact. These great scholars are sometimes very clever men.
According to this authority, the Celts were very much taller than the Greeks, and this fact had naturally suggested to the latter the idea of speaking of them as giants. The Celtic Pelasgi, who were warlike shepherds like all the men of their race, usually watched their flocks as they were grazing on the high mountains, and it was these mountains which the myth accused them of piling up, one upon another, to scale the heavens. You will say, What mad follies of poets! I grant this; but after these mad poets came men like Hesiod and Homer, who changed the idle dream into stern reality, and upon this rock a new religion was founded, and with it, a new civilization.
Now the day has come when these same gods of Greece, having become the gods of great Rome, will pursue the Titans, or Teutons, to the very heart of Germany.
It is well known that Cæsar, after having conquered Gaul, had promptly crossed the Rhine, rather for the purpose of making a reconnaissance on the opposite bank of the river, than with any view to conquest. His successor went farther into Germany. Drusus, the adopted son of Augustus, and his lieutenant, reached the banks of the river Elbe, pursuing the Franks, the Teutons, the Burgundians, the Cheruski, the Marcomanni, all those children of the same great family, who had been overcome, put to flight, but never subjugated. All of a sudden, at the very moment when he is about to cross the river, there comes forth from the dark, dense forest, not a new army of barbarians, bristling with spears and halberts, but a woman, a tall, haughty looking woman, with long disheveled hair
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
flowing down upon her bare shoulders, and on her brow a crown of simple oak branches.
She steps across his path and with uplifted finger orders him in an imperious voice to turn back and to go to his camp to prepare for death.
It was a Druidess, endowed in the highest degree with the gift of prophecy; so it would seem at least, for Drusus had hardly entered the Roman camp, when he fell from his horse and expired.
Not all the Druidesses, however, succeeded in making the Roman generals go back, by a word or a gesture; nor did all the Roman generals fall from their horses and die. After fifty-five years of strangely varying fortunes, the Genius of Rome was victorious, and must needs have been victorious, for it led the whole world by its power. It brought with it also its gods, which in spite of their numbers, or rather perhaps because they were so numerous, met on the banks of the Rhine with a more determined resistance than its soldiers.
Rome had a magnificent mission to fulfill. Her glorious duty upon earth was to restore the unity of all the great human families, and to improve their condition by bringing them in contact with each other—by fraternity, in fine. To attain this end, she had generally employed War as her principal instrument; Religion had been a subsidiary agent only, a weapon which she kept concealed, but which she used with great efficacy to secure the permanency of her conquests.
Unfortunately, Roman gods were as liable to corruption, and to fearful corruption, as the great men of the Empire. Nations rise step by step on the grand ladder of civilization; when they have reached the top they must keep up their activity, without which no life and no progress can be maintained, and thus the moment comes when they are forced to descend again, till at last they sink into sensual degradation, into erudite, refined, voluptuous barbarism—the very bottom of the ladder.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Rome had begun by raising altars to all the virtues; now her deities personified nothing but vices. How could they expect to introduce them and make them acceptable to these coarse Germans, among whom prostitution, adultery, and theft were hardly known by name, who allowed a woman to claim hospitality at the house of any Karl, to rest under his roof, and even to share his couch, without fearing slander, if he had but put a naked sword between her and himself, and who had never known and could not know the use of locks and keys? Were they not accustomed to hang their most valuable possessions upon the branches of a consecrated tree in the open camp, or to place them on top of a druidical stone or beneath it, as they chose—knowing that there they were perfectly safe? When they had taken this simple precaution, they could go to bed and sleep quietly, and there was no need for putting a sentinel on guard.
Already, in the days of Cæsar, the Romans had employed a very ingenious and cunning device, in order to win over the simple Gauls. They had pretended to find their gods, their own peculiar gods, already established in the country from olden times. Thus there existed in Gaul a statue which the Etrusci had erected in honor of Ogmius, or rather Ogma. The Greek Lucian mentions it in these words:—
“It is a decrepit old man; his skin is black; this form of a man, however, wears the attributes of Hercules, the lion’s skin and the club.
“I thought at first,” Lucian adds, “that the Celts had invented this odd figure in order to laugh at the gods of Greece; but this so-called Hercules, who is of very great antiquity, drags after him a multitude of men, whom he leads by golden chains which he holds in his mouth, while they are fastened to the ears of his victims.”
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
This Ogmius was evidently a typical representation of Druidism itself; Ogma, in Celtic languages, means both science and eloquence. What has Hercules to do with all this? Nevertheless the Romans insisted upon calling him by that name.
Nor did they stop here. When they found all the nations they had conquered were continually speaking of a certain Teutates, they at once declared that they recognized in this popular person their own god Mercury. It was he and no other! It was Mercury, the son of Jupiter and the nymph Ma’ia. There was a striking resemblance, an unmistakable analogy! No one could misapprehend the thing for an instant!
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Oh, my good Romans, I don’t mean to blame you now for all the trouble you gave me when I was at college! I will forget all that—But what could make you conceive this stupid idea, of naturalizing among us your Mercury, the god of eloquence, if you choose, but above all the ever ready pimp of Jupiter, the god of trade and of thieves, and of naturalizing him in a land where trade, love, and thieves are so little known! In subservience to this Roman notion, some of our modern writers have been clever enough to prove that there were really many points of resemblance between Mercury and Teutates—but I, I openly deny it! Once more, philology shall come to my assistance, to overturn their doctrine. It was only this morning, while shaving, that I made a philologie discovery of the very highest importance, in which the public will take the most lively interest, and, I doubt not, the French Acadamy also.
The word Teut, as the reader no doubt knows perfectly well, means God; Tat in ancient Celtic and in modern Breton may be accurately rendered as father—so an old Breton woman assures me, who brought me up when I was a child. Add to Tat the termination Es, the diminutive form of Esus, the Lord, connect the three monosyllables, and you have Teut-Tat-Es, God, Father, and Lord!
Where—I appeal to all the famous historians so graphically described by Rabelais—where do you find a trace of Mercury in Teutates now? He is beyond all doubt the great divinity of the Celts, but you found it more convenient to follow the interested views of the Roman writers. And yet even if they were innocent of any design upon your credulity, might they not have been mistaken themselves? Are you not aware that Plutarch, conscientious Plutarch himself, after having witnessed the Feast of Tabernacles in Palestine, tells us gravely that the Jews worshipped Bacchus? You were not aware of it, come, confess it frankly! For I will confess to you, that I was not aware of it, myself, ten minutes ago; but Dr. Rosahl has just told me so. The good doctor is delighted at my discovery of the true meaning of Teut-Tat-Es; he thinks no etymological question of such importance ‘was ever more satisfactorily put and answered in the same breath. He advises me strongly to write a memoir on the subject, which he will undertake to bring to the notice of learned societies, and only suggests the expediency of leaving out any allusion to my old Breton nurse; but I am too conscientious a writer ever to omit quoting my authorities.
Now, since I have mentioned Rabelais, let us “return to our lambs,” that is, to our Teutons.
After the Roman conquest, the same transformation of native deities into classic gods continued in Germany. The sacred oak was changed into Jupiter, whom it represented symbolically; the Druidical altars became either Apollo or Diana; sometimes they were made to represent deities of inferior rank, nymphs, anything in fact. But these numerous metamorphoses, made rather hastily, led to a curious mistake.
The conquerors had met on the banks of the Weser a huge monolith, cut with an axe by simple and ignorant stone-carvers. It was called Irmensul. Like the Celtic Teutates, this Irmensul also attracted at certain fixed times an immense concourse of people. The Romans, appreciating the martial spirit of the natives, did not hesitate to declare that this was Mars, their god of war. Thereupon they paid it all possible honor, consecrating their weapons to the new deity, and offering countless propitiatory sacrifices.
Now, who was this Irmensul?
When Varus had invaded Germany, during the reign of Augustus, at the head of three legions, Arminius, a chieftain of the Cheruski (a Brunswicker, we would say nowadays), had surprised him, and completely surrounded his army in the marshes of Teutoburg, on the banks of the Weser. Every man of this army, whether a Roman or a warrior of the allied tribes wearing Roman livery, had perished by the sword. For eight days the bloody waters of the Weser had carried down more than thirty thousand dead bodies.
When the news of this disaster reached Augustus, he thought that Gaul was lost, Italy in danger, and Rome herself imperilled. Mad with grief, he would rise, for a month afterwards, night after night, and in his terror wander through his vast palace, crying out: “O Varus, Varus, bring me back my legions!”
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Well, the Irmensul was nothing more than a triumphal column erected in honor of Arminius and his Cheruski. Irmen is the same as the name Herman or Armin (Arminius), and sul means column. The Romans, however, did not know this, and they paid dearly for their ignorance. If they had known better they would not have committed the egregious blunder of kneeling down and worshipping the man who had destroyed the three legions of Varus. It is very evident that they were as ignorant of German as of Celtic. It ought not to surprise us, however, to see the soldiers of the imperial people change stones into gods, as Deucalion had changed them into men. Before the days of Homer, and for a long time after him, Jupiter was in Seleucia modestly represented by a fragment of rock and Cybele by a black stone. In Cyprus, the Venus of Paphos was nothing but a triangular or quadrangular pyramid, nor can I imagine what importance could be attached to three or four angles in a body, which was soon to assume the softest and most fascinating outlines. First the poets had come and sung of Cybele, the kind goddess, of Jupiter the omnipotent, and of Venus, the soul of the world and the queen of beauty. Inspired by their voice and the bold conceptions of their fancy, the sculptors had next employed the chisel upon these stones and these pyramids, and there had sprung forth from these shapeless masses the Lord of Gods, armed with his lightning, the beautiful Cytherea, armed with the most powerful weapons of all womanly graces. Oh, poets and sculptors, you have upset everything in religion! You are responsible for the loss of that austere simplicity which once characterized the faith of men! Miserable cutters of stone, reckless counters of syllables, you, and you alone, have substituted symbols for truth! Still, I do not condemn you; although I have stood up to defend the Druids of the earliest days, I am far from being insensible to the charms of art and of poetry; besides, what right have I, who speak of gods and myths, to pass sentence on those who have been the real creators of Mythology?
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
While the conquerors of the Teutons, in the pride of their cleverness, were committing blunder after blunder, and fell into the pits they had dug for others, the real gods of Rome stayed on the banks of the Rhine, where they had already been accepted by the Gauls. They were impatient enough to see Germany also erect them temples and statues, but the Rhine with uplifted waves barred the passage.
Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances of former days, when he had been compelled to appear in the triumphal processions of Germanicus, as a conquered river, loaded with chains, while the rabble and riffraff of Rome had insulted him to his face and covered him from head to foot with the mud of the Tiber.
The remembrance of his former humiliation seemed to revive his wrath at this day, and he unfolded his whole strength to take his revenge. In vain had the Olympians tried repeatedly to cross at different points; everywhere, from the Alps to the Northern Sea, they found him furious, roaring and rushing, full of threats in his green waters and besprinkling the banks with white foam.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
At last they bribed him to espouse the cause of the Empire: they made him a king, the king of German rivers. A king more or less mattered very little to a people who made and unmade kings at will.
The Rhine was evidently flattered by the distinction; and he laid aside his long cherished wrath.
He had already allowed Jupiter to cross, taking him perhaps for Esus; he now carefully examined the passports and certificates of good conduct of several other gods, and left the way open for Apollo and Minerva, Diana and some deities of fair repute; but when he saw Bacchus, his anger was rekindled. What? Were not the Germans mad and quarrelsome enough, when they had only taken too much beer? How could he consent to allow their passions to be aroused by potent wine? He was king, and as such bound to keep this scourge from his people.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The gods whom he had allowed to cross endeavored to plead for the son of Semele,—but he remained inexorable. His severity relaxed, however, when the vines planted by order of the Emperor Probus in parts of the Rheingau, began to adorn the banks of the river with their verdure—he was overcome, when he had once tasted the juice of the grape. He consented to let Bacchus pass from bank to bank, but only at the time of the vintage.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Once admitted, Bacchus soon brought into the land the whole crowd of gods and goddesses, who made up his following and who enjoyed no great reputation in Rome and in Greece. The Rhine became angry once more, but once more caresses and unexpected honors had their hoped-for effect. He was already a king; he now became a god.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Henceforth Father Rhine conceived a strong affection for his former adversaries. When he saw that the German bank had adopted the customs and the religion of the conquerors as fully as the Celtic bank, he abandoned completely his restrictive policy and did his best to help everybody across. Thus Jupiter was no sooner installed in Germany, than he summoned his Corybantes; Bacchus his Bacchantes and his Maenads, Diana her hunting nymphs, Venus her whole court of lascivious priestesses; the Dryads and the Hamadryads, the Naiads and the Tritons, the Fauns and the S il vans, all came one by one. It was a perfect invasion.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Germany, grave and solemn as she was, felt not a little troubled by this wholesale irruption of frivolous and ill-mannered deities, who so little agreed with her austere habits. The young, it is true, were more easily Romanized and readily caught at this poetical personification of all the forces of Nature; but the old, the chieftains, and above all the Druids, backed by a nearly unanimous people, asked each other what could be the meaning of this sudden enthusiasm for new gods, this half mad devotion to celestial clowns?
No one, however, dared to raise a hand; the Teutons had lost their former energy, they were enfeebled, unnerved and exhausted by their long but useless resistance. Hence, like true cowards, they appeared in the pagan temples, in order to conciliate the good-will of the conquerors, and then, to pacify their consciences, they hastened to some dark forest and there with anxious eyes and disturbed minds, they offered in fear and trembling their fervent worship to the sacred oak.
The Roman gods were soon to encounter far more formidable adversaries elsewhere.
Far beyond Germany, as we find it described and limited by geographers, there lived a host of nations, scattered over a vast territory, and extending as far East as the shores of the Caspian Sea. The Romans had never penetrated far into these unknown depths, which sent forth incessantly new armies of soldiers whom they classed indiscriminately under the vague and collective name of Hyperboreans. Such were the Huns, the Scythians, the Goths, the Slaves (Poles, Danes, Swedes, Russians, and Norwegians), all of them robbers and pirates. Some, under the name of Cimbrians, had joined the Teutons t and with them invaded Gaul and even Italy, till they encountered the armies of Marius; others, were about to cross the Pyrenees and to fall upon Spain. Among them all, the Scandinavians were by far the most powerful, intrepid soldiers and fearless sailors, who were soon to darken the waters of the Rhine with their countless vessels, and to make Charlemagne shed tears as he thought of the days to come.
Ere long these dauntless pirates will actually enter the Loire, then even the Seine; they will besiege Paris, and finally, thanks to the able statesmanship of King Charles, whom they call the Simple, they will become. Christians, after a fashion, and under the name of Normans take possession of one of the fairest provinces of France. Then they will cultivate the soil which they had heretofore robbed of its produce, they will drink beer instead of cider, they will peacefully devote themselves to lawsuits and cattle-raising, and will end by wearing white cotton night-caps—after having destroyed Rome and conquered England twice.
The Scandinavians, of Celtic origin like the Gauls and the Germans, led at first both nomadic and sedentary lives and were rather barbarous than unpolished; but they built cities and erected temples, in which they worshipped Odin the One-Eyed.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
If the harvest failed, or whenever the first warmth of spring aroused in them their innate fondness of vagabondage and war, they took to their boats or mounted their horses, and the stupefied nations of Europe watched the horizon and listened along the river courses, to distinguish whether this great Northern tempest, this storm of iron and fire, of blood and of tears, was rushing down upon them by land or by sea.
After having crossed Germany in all directions, some of these bands, or rather some remnants of such bands, settled from inclination or from necessity, in certain portions of the country, especially on the islands in the Main, the Weser, and the Neckar. Their priests soon made numerous converts among the neighbors to the faith of Odin. The Germans paid little heed to the difference between Odin and Teut. The two names designated, for them, one and the same god, the one god of the Celts.
The increasing influence of these Druids of the third epoch led, however, naturally to some opposition. The German priests accused them of being too profuse in the shedding of blood, and of having given their god Odin a companion in a certain god Thor, fond of overcoming giants, and of having thus destroyed the true nature of the original creed, which knew but one God.
A schism was about to divide the Druidical church, when the arrival of the Roman deities brought the two opposite parties once more together. Each yielded somewhat; they came to an understanding and finally joined hands in a conspiracy.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The Scandinavian Druids, forsaking the prudent reserve which they had so far scrupulously observed, declared that, in order to triumph over the Roman Olympians, Odin had not only the assistance of his all-powerful son Thor, but could, if he chose, summon an escort of gods at least as imposing in numbers as that of Jupiter himself.
The German Druids veiled their faces, but the people and the whole party which was opposed to Jupiter the wicked, and to Venus the shameless, joyfully accepted the proposition. However cruel the Scandinavian ritual appeared with its increased number of victims who had to be offered to the new gods, it seemed to them better still to worship Terror than to worship disgraceful Voluptuousness. They acknowledged Odin and his son Thor, and impatiently waited for the arrival of the others.
The German Druids gave way, hoping perhaps that the two hosts of deities would erelong fall out among themselves and soon destroy each other.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Father Rhine, in his equal affection for all his brother gods, was far too good-natured to take this admission of new deities amiss, and promptly went northward, to the most hyperborean regions of snow and ice, in search of the newly chosen gods.
The two parties soon met face to face. It is our solemn duty to explain fully the whole curious system of Scandinavian gods. We shall see that here, as in all that we shall have to add, legends, myths, and traditions abound in such numbers that they can be had for the asking.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
V.
The World before and since Odin.—Birth of Ymer.—The Giants of the Frost.—A Log split in Two.—The First Man and the First Woman—The Tree Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.—Thor’s Three Jewels. Freyr’s Enchanted Swoj’d.—A Souvenir of the National Guard of Bellville.—The Story of Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.—Honey and Blood.—Invocation.
The world was not born.
Thick mists, unbroken by light, unbounded in limit, filled space.
After a long period of darkness, silence, and perfect repose, a faint light is seen, vague and uncertain, hardly deserving the name; something is moving unsteadily in this night. The giant Ymer has been born spontaneously out of the mixture and assimilation of these closely compressed mists, which sudden and severe frost has condensated.
At that time men of science had not yet discussed the question of spontaneous generation; not one academy made mention of the subject.
Ymer, the sole inhabitant, the Robinson Crusoe of this world of darkness, became tired of his solitude. Guessing how he had been born himself, he gathered the mists that surrounded him, piled them one upon the other, shaped them into a form resembling his own, and once more the North wind came and solidified the mists. As he was a giant, he created giants; he also created mountains, no doubt for the purpose of furnishing seats for these giants, for the highest among them did not reach up to their belts. This does not mean, that these mountains were less high than they are nowadays, but the sons of Ymer were of such size that without bending down a little, they could not have rested their elbows on the summit of Chimborazo, and what is more marvelous still, Ymer himself not only was taller than every one of his sons, but taller than all of his sons together, standing one upon the shoulders of the other! When he stretched himself out full length, the Alps might have served him as a pillow, while his feet would have rested on Mount Caucasus.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
In order to produce such giants and such mountains, he had, of course, to consume large quantities of the material furnished by the chaos of mists; the remainder of this gaseous substance, trembling in vacant space and losing its balance, fell back into the depths of the valleys, and formed the ocean.
Some few animals began soon to stir in the waters, and on the shores of that vast sea; sphinxes and dragons, hydras and griffins, kraken and leviathans, all creatures of a low order, but in their proportions adapted to this colossal world, this world of the infinitely great, and no doubt related in some manner to the antediluvian families of mammoths and pterodactyls, of ichthyosauri and plesiosauri.
A god of the first race, a creator without being created, Ymer naturally did not possess that skill and that cleverness which can only be acquired by long experience. However strange, therefore, it may appear, however inexplicable, the fact is, that this world, fresh with new life and freed from the original mists, was nevertheless covered with darkness. The only light which existed was an occasional phosphorescence of the sea or a few flashes of electric light, such as an aurora borealis sends forth; and this faint glimmer alone illumined the pathway of those vast creatures, those monstrous reptiles, who, dazzled for an instant, plunged back into the lowest depths of the waters, casting up huge waves and tall columns of spray.
It must have been a peculiarly curious sight, certainly, to see those Giants of the Frost, as they were called, wandering, through the darkness across the boundless plains and along endless shores, under a sky without light, looking for each other from one end of the world to the other. To be sure, they could accomplish the journey in a few long strides, and if they were peculiarly anxious to see each other, face to face, they had only to wait for the chance of a momentary flash or a faint twilight glimmer.
The sight was no doubt curious, but there was no one to behold it.
This state of things could not last long. With a new god a new world also came into existence. This new god was very different from the first, it was Light itself, condensed at the southern extremity of the heavens, far from this earth inhabited by giants.
One fine day—an unlucky day for them, however—these giants noticed that the sky above their heads was suddenly assuming a faint pinkish hue, then violet, and finally purple. At this they rejoiced. But suddenly a ball of fire appeared, and they were terrified. It was Odin, Odin followed by his celestial family, which consisted at least of a dozen principal deities!
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
But no! no! I take it back! I rebel! No one can come in contact with these ancient myths, without knocking against some principle of astronomy. Astronomers find only seven principal deities in Scandinavian mythology, when they are called upon to transform them into planets, and twelve, when the question is about the signs of the Zodiac. That seems to me to make mythology a. little too easy. Does it not look as if the first men had been born with a telescope and a compass in their pocket, and as if they had erected an observatory long before they thought of building huts for themselves?
Fortunately I am not bound to follow their footsteps.
Certain historians of high authority have found out that Odin lived upon earth before he came to dwell in heaven. He was an illustrious conqueror, very expert at killing men, one of those scourges of God, who fall upon nations in order to break them to pieces. As a matter of course, these nations deified him after his death.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
I see nothing astronomical in all this.
Hence, I return to my own method, and propose to describe him, as he appeared to his Druids, his Scalds, and his worshippers.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
He arrived from the southern countries, no doubt from the Orient, bringing with him the sun, as an indispensable auxiliary in the great taskwhich he had undertaken, to reform this dark and ice-covered world: “For there was a time,” says the Edda, the bible of the Scandinavians, “when the sun, the moon, and the stars did not know the place they were to occupy. It was then the gods assembled and agreed as to the post which was to be assigned to each one of them.”
When the installation of the heavenly bodies had thus been agreed upon, Odin followed the example of all the Hercules of Egypt and of Greece, and began his benevolent career by freeing the earth of all the monsters by which it was infested. Ymer was the first to succumb to his blows, and after him, the other giants of the frost, “a race of evildoers,” adds the Edda. Evildoers? Whom did they aggrieve, I wonder? The complainants must have been the kraken, the griffins, and the serpents.
The world had hardly come into existence and already the right of the stronger had established the doctrine: Væ victis!
Of all the giants of the frost a single one escaped. He must have been a married man, for his descendants became after a while so numerous as to trouble the Ases, that is to say, Odin and his companions, the other gods.
After the giants, came the turn of land and sea monsters, who were almost as formidable as they themselves. In the general destruction two monsters only survived: the wolf Fenris, with his fearful jaws, which enabled him to crush mountains and even to injure the sun, and the serpent Iormungandur, the great sea serpent of world-wide renown. Both these monsters were one day to aid the giants of the frost in avenging themselves on their conqueror.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Odin thought he had now nothing more to fear, and returned to the realms of light, there to enjoy his glory in peace and to revel in the delights of Walhalla.
One morning he came down to see how the world was coming on since he had reorganized it, and he found to his great joy, that the new creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance. Grass was growing in the plains, on the slopes of hills, and even at the bottom of the rivers and the sea; here and there trees of varied forms and shapes arose and gave variety to the monotonous horizon; some, crowding together in groups on the mountain side, seemed to whisper confidentially to each other, as the breeze was lightly agitating their foliage, while others stood together in countless hosts, stretching away over hill and dale as far as eye could reach, but silent and immovable, like an army which remains motionless, while the chiefs are deliberating.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Behind the green curtain of forests, deer, eland, and aurochs were bounding in herds, now and then showing their beautiful horns or their dark bushy brows at the opening of some clearing; goats were climbing about on the rocks and venturing close to the brink of precipices; birds were singing in the groves, now swinging playfully on the supple branches of willows, and now darting suddenly on swift wings through the air; fish were gliding silently under the surface of the waters, which reflected their silvery sheen or broke in soft ripples, while butterflies and insects were sporting and buzzing around beautiful flowers.
Odin smiled; the artist was pleased with his work.
But were animals, impelled by natural instincts only and exclusively occupied with the desire to satisfy their coarse wants, were such animals worthy to be the sole owners of such a charming abode?
It occurred to him to invent a being which, without participating in the divine essence, might still rise high above all other creatures. This time the divine artist wanted a spectator, to witness his work, to appreciate it intelligently, and afterwards to profit by it for some good purpose.
He was meditating on it during a walk on the sea-shore, when a piece of wood, a fragment of a huge branch of a tree which the wind had broken off, attracted his attention. It had evidently fallen into a river, which had carried it out into the high sea, and there it had been beaten and bruised by ebb and tide. He drew this poor shapeless stick of wood towards him, split it in two and made out of it a man and a woman.
“Do you hear? Do you understand?” Asks the Edda, at this point.
Now, what is this intended to convey to us? That man, exposed to the caprices of the elements, is nothing but a poor plaything in the hands of Fate? Very well, let us admit this explanation. But can the sacred book of the Scandinavians really presume to teach us that the origin of mankind must be looked for in two sticks of wood? We cannot but think that that would be a sorry jest, alike unworthy of the general solemnity of the Edda and of the mysterious majesty of ancient cosmogonies.
Besides, we ought not to forget that all the Northern nations attributed a divine character to trees; if in Germany the oak was held sacred, the hyperboreans held the ash tree in great respect, and the question is only whether our first father was made of the wood of an ash tree, an oak, or a willow.
This leads us naturally to the consideration of the ash Ygdrasil and its curious population of gods, birds, and quadrupeds.
The branches of this marvelous tree spread over the whole surface of the earth; its top supported the Walhalla and rose is to the uppermost heavens, while its roots penetrated to the very bottom of hell. Under its shadow dwell Odin and his Ases, when the government of the world requires his presence, or some important question has to be decided.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Two swift winged ravens are incessantly flying to and fro in the Universe, to see what is going on; then they come and perch, one on his left and one on his right shoulder, and whisper into his ear the news of the day. A squirrel, as swift in its movements as the two ravens, is perpetually running up and down the tree. If you doubt my word, hear what the poet says:—
.... The fearful Odin Was seated beneath the ancient ash,
The sacred tree whose immortal brow
Rises and touches the vault of heaven.
On the top an eagle with eager eyes,
With piercing eyes, with ever open eyes,
Takes in the whole Universe in a single glance.
Odin receives his swift messages.
Incessantly a tiny squirrel
Comes and goes; the god’s voice cheers it onward.
All at once it dashes from the trunk to the top
And in an instant it returns again
From the top to the trunk. Odin, when it comes,
Turns an attentive ear to the squirrel.....
But the poet does not tell the whole story.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
To act as a check upon the reports of the eagle, the ravens, and the squirrel, a vulture is perching upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree, who looks over all the horizons of the earth and the universe, watching for the slightest stir and giving notice of any important event by his cries or the flapping of his wings.
Still other animals, however, inhabit the great ash tree Ygdrasil. Some of these play a sinister part in the great menagerie; they are hideous reptiles, half concealed in the slimy marshes into which one of the roots of the tree finds its way, and ever striving to pour their venom into the mire; beneath another root a dragon is crouching, who constantly gnaws at it, and four starving deer, rushing through its branches, forever devour its foliage.
“Do you hear? Do you understand?” asks the Edda once more.
For the present we do not presume to interpret these descriptions, and before we attempt to penetrate into these dark mysteries, we will mention the principal chiefs among the Ases.
The mystic marriage of Odin and Frigg resulted in the god Thor, who is held in equal veneration with his father. As his duty is to carry thunder and lightning, it is he who shakes the earth whenever he drives through the clouds in his car drawn by two goats and producing a noise represented by the words: “Pumerle pump! Ptimerle pump! Pliz! Pluz! Schmi! Schmur! Tarantara! Tarantara!”. This onomatopoetic translation of the flashing of lightning and the rolling of thunder, is not my own; it comes directly from Dr. Martin Luther, the great Reformer.
Thor is also engaged in pursuing and destroying the giants of the mountains, degenerate children of the giants of the frost, in size at least. At a later period we shall meet with giants of still smaller dimensions. Alas! that here below everything that is great and strong has a tendency to decrease steadily!
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
For this war against the giants Odin has bestowed upon his son three precious objects, which in the inventory of the Ases appear under the name of Thor’s Three Jewels. The first is his weighty hammer.
Mjoïner (some people call it his club), which goes forth by itself to meet giants and crushes their heads. One of the commentators upon the Edda professes to see in the giants of the mountains nothing but the mountains themselves, and in the hammer Mjoïner, nothing but lightning, which generally strikes their summit. We must evidently put as little faith in commentators as in astronomers.
The second of Thor’s jewels was a pair of iron gloves. As soon as he puts them on, his spear no sooner reaches the point at which it is aimed, than it returns to his hand, precisely as the falcon comes back to the keeper’s gauntlet, after having destroyed its victim.
The third jewel of Thor is his war belt; when he puts it on, his strength is twice as great as before; in fact, he becomes irresistible and would overthrow the great Odin himself. But Odin has nothing to fear on his part, for in spite of his brutal and passionate temper, Thor is always an obedient and submissive son.
Asa-Thor, that is to say, the Lord Thor, was most highly respected among men as the redhaired master of thunder and lightning, and as the destroyer of giants; and he was also greatly feared as an active, blustering god, of a troublesome, turbulent temper and of somewhat eccentric manners.
Another weapon, at least as marvelous as Asa-Thor’s famous hammer, was the sword of the god Freyr. This sword was endowed with an intelligence very rarely to be met with among swords, and punctually obeyed the orders of its master. Even in his absence, it went promptly and faithfully to carry out his orders, striking here and there at a given point, or making terrible havoc in the midst of a battle, without a hand at the hilt to direct its mortal blows.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The good Freyr, as pacific a god as ever lived, was quite indifferent to battles and fights; hence he gave his orders quietly to his faithful sword, while he remained comfortably seated at Odin’s table, enjoying his strong beer and the rarest wines.
I cannot help wishing that they might have known the art of manufacturing guns after this system, at the time when I was a lieutenant in the Belleville National Guard. It would have been so pleasant to see a rifle move gravely to and fro, quite alone, in front of the City Hall and the Guard House; or to meet a patrol of four guns, accompanied by a corporal, but a flesh and blood corporal to cry out: Who is there?
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
In the meantime the happy owners of these improved weapons might have been sitting, not at Odin’s table, but at the nearest coffee house or restaurant, drinking beer or wine just like the Scandinavian gods.
Unfortunately our manufacturers of arms have not yet reached that degree of skill, which our forefathers seem to have possessed, and thus I have never yet been able to enjoy such a sight.
The happy owner of this magic weapon, Freyr, presided over the general administration of the clouds; it was he who made fine weather or rain, a very troublesome office, which must have exposed him to countless petitions and most contradictory prayers.
His sister Freya, afterwards called Frigg, was Odin’s wife and the most honored goddess on earth as well as in heaven. She inspired and protected lovers, and very different from her sister in Greece, this Northern Venus enjoyed an unsullied reputation.
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.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
In well chosen cadences he imitated the clanking of cups, the cooing of doves and of lovers, the tumult of battles, the harmonies of the celestial spheres, and all this with such energy, such fire and such grace by turns, that Odin was enchanted, and having become a master himself about five minutes ago, on the spot changed his name of the Long-bearded God, which he had borne so far, to that of the God of Poetry. Moreover, he entrusted to his keeping the threefold treasure which had been taken from Kvasir’s murderers.
This was that god Bragi who alone succeeded in comforting the beautiful and inconsolable Freya in her great grief.
Through him the Druids were instructed in the art of verse; to him is due that terrible Scandinavian poetry, which contains, according to Ozanam, quite as much blood as honey.
As to Saga, she became the goddess of Tradition. “The heart of history is in tradition,” says a master, a sage, and a poet.
Good goddess Saga, your lips, I know, never touched the vessel containing Eloquence, nor that which held Logic, far from it! And still I count upon you to support me in carrying out my work, which I have perhaps imprudently begun; for I begin to be overwhelmed with materials, the subject is a very grave one, and, in spite of the good advice of my learned doctor and the assistance of my two charming lady-companions, time and strength threaten not to suffice. Therefore I beseech you as well as my readers, to grant me a short repose, before I proceed any farther on my journey through Odin’s fantastic world.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
VI.
Short Biographies.—A Clairvoyant among the Gods.—A Bright God.—Tyr and the Wolf Fenris.—The Hospital at the Walhalla.—Why was Odin one-eyed?—The Three Norns.—Mimer the Sage.—A Goddess the Mother of Four Oxen.—The Love Affairs of Heimdall, the God with the Golden Teeth.
We have no intention of giving here a complete list of the numerous deities of the North. We will only mention Hermode, Odin’s messenger and man of business; Forseti, the peacemaker; Widar, the god of silence, a dumb person who only walks on air, as if he were afraid to hear the noise of his own footsteps; Vali, the skilfull archer; Uller, the excellent skater, who taught the giant Tialff his art, in spite of what the poet Klopstock says to the contrary; Hoder, a mysterious deity, whose name must never be uttered by any one in heaven or on earth. Why not? Odin alone knows the reason.
Let us also mention Heimdall, with the golden teeth. A son of Odin, he had nine mothers—eight more than had ever been known before him. He is the guardian of Walhalla, and his duty is to watch lest the giants should one fine day attempt to storm the heavenly abode by means of the Bifrost bridge, that is, the rainbow. But the gods can sleep in peace; neither the eagle nor the ravens on the ash Ygdrasil can surpass Heimdall in vigilance. The senses of sight and hearing are in him developed to a perfectly marvelous degree; he can hear the grass grow in the meadows and the wool grow on the back of the sheep. From one end of the world he sees a fly pass through the air at the other end, and, more than that, he sees distinctly the different joints in its feet and the black or brown spots with which its wings are dotted. In the midst of the darkest night and at the bottom of the sea where it is deepest, he sees an atom moving and watches the marriage of monads. There is nothing in the whole universe hid from him.
But why should this god Heimdall have golden teeth, after a fashion of some of the natives of Sunda? Odin alone knows the reason.
Among all these gods Balder is the most richly endowed, the best, the handsomest and the most virtuous—Balder, the Bright God, by eminence. Although the son of Odin and Frigg, he might be taken for a son of Freya, on account of his strong resemblance to Love itself, not to the turbulent, passionate, and capricious Love of the Greeks, but to Love in the widest and noblest sense of the word,—Love, in fine, in its Christian meaning. Balder represents that universal goodness, loyalty, affection, and harmony, which binds all beings to each other; Bragi, the poet is his brother; Forseti, the peacemaker, is his son. But we shall but too soon have to return to him on a most melancholy occasion.
In spite of our desire to close this already too numerous list, we cannot well pass over in silence that poor Tyr, the very type of intrepidity and loyalty, who fell a victim to his own prowess and to his imprudent confidence in the other gods. The latter, having one day met the wolf Fenris, invited him to enjoy a good meal with them. The wolf, always voraciously hungry, listened to the proposal. Then the Ases, pretending to fear that he might play them an ugly trick on the way home, insisted upon leading him by a chain around his neck, pledging their word as gods, however, that they would set him free upon going to table.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Fenris, suspicious as all wolves, in fact, as all wicked creatures are, consented to be bound, but made it a condition that as a proof of the good faith of the Ases, one of them should put his hand into his mouth. Tyr agreed to do so without hesitation, not expecting that personages of such lofty position could possibly be faithless. The gods, however, did behave faithlessly and kept Fenris a prisoner, whereupon the wolf claimed the fulfillment of the pledge, and when Tyr put his hand into his mouth, coolly bit it off up to the wrist. Hence that particular joint has ever since been called the wolf’s joint, in memory of this inartistic amputation.
Thus the gods had a one-handed brother among them, after having long been presided over by a one-eyed god. But Tyr and Odin were by no means the only gods who labored under such an infirmity. Heimdall with the golden teeth must evidently have had a set of false teeth; Widar, the god of silence, was dumb, and Hoder, that mysterious being whose name must not be pronounced by any one, was blind. There was also a certain god, called Herblinde, who was not only blind but—actually dead! We poor mortals generally imagine that death includes blindness as a matter of course, but it was not so, apparently, among these mystic personages. Herblinde, for instance, was quite blind, although he was quite dead also, and yet he attended the meetings of the gods and even had a vote in their counsels. Do you understand that? I do not, I am sure.
And this grand council, this hospital of the Walhalla, which counted among its members a onehanded and a dumb god, a toothless and two blind gods, was, as I said, presided over by one-eyed Odin! This fact recalls forcibly the old proverb: Among the blind the one-eyed is king.
But why had Odin but one eye?
Fortunately I am able, for once, to give an answer to this question.
Astronomers have naturally found a reply to this Why? in their imperturbable system of sidereal interpretations. Odin was the sun-god; the sun was the eye of Nature, Nature had but one eye—consequently Odin was bound to be born one-eyed!.... Now you see why your daughter is deaf-mute.
The Edda, however, gives a different account of the matter, and I feel bound to adopt this explanation, as it is founded upon a knowledge of the most secret mysteries.
Odin had two eyes when he was born, and the sun was nothing more than his travelling companion, when he came from the far East, to revive and warm the earth which had so long been in the hands of’ the giants of the frost.
Several centuries after he had created man, he was one day walking up and down in the lower parts of his great ash tree Ygdrasil, and thinking of the greatly increased responsibility which rested upon him since he had added the government of the earth to that of heaven, and since the earth had begun to be peopled with a multitude of races. He was asking himself whether the knowledge of all things had been revealed to him fully enough to enable him satisfactorily to fill, his two great offices. He had quaffed ample draughts by turns from the three vessels of Kvasir, but Eloquence, Poetry, and even Logic do not supply Wisdom.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
As he passed by a large tank fed by a purling brook, he saw three beautiful swans swimming merrily about in it, who after having examined him with half thoughtful, half mocking attention, twisted their long flexible necks in strange contortions and then seemed to converse with each other by significative glances.
He spoke to them and asked them if they possessed the secret of Wisdom.
The swans suddenly plunged beneath the surface, and in their place there appeared three beautiful women, representing three different stages of life.
They were the Norns.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The first, called Urda, knew the Past; the second, called Verandi, saw the Present unfold itself before her eyes, hour by hour and minute by minute, and when to-day had become yesterday, her older sister gathered up the departed day and entered it on her record. Finally Skulda, the third, the Norn of the Future, enjoyed the privilege of beholding with her far-seeing eyes the germs of all future events and of being able to foretell with unerring accuracy the date and the consequences of their occurrence.
Let us pause here a moment to notice a remark communicated to me by the amiable and learned Dr. Rosalh, which may not be without interest to some of my readers.
It will be remembered that the Romans had at first pretended to recognize in these three Norns their own three Fates, probably because they were three and because they were women; at least I can see no other reason. Urda, Verandi, and Skulda were as beautiful and as graceful as the three Parcæ—Alecto, Lachesis, and Atropos—were ugly. Besides, their duties were entirely different. The Norns knew the fate of men, but they were utterly unable to lengthen human life. Such at least is the opinion of the great Holinshed in his Chronicles. Warburton sees in them nothing more than Valkyrias, but, what is far more astonishing, Shakespeare chose these three beautiful prophetic virgins, to furnish the three hideous, unclean, and toothless witches, the weird sisters, who called out to Macbeth, “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!”
Shakespeare had evidently taken the curse denounced by the Church against the ancient deities in its literal meaning.
Odin had a better opinion of the three sisters; he conversed for some time with them, and afterwards came frequently back to visit them. It was thus and by their aid that he gained experience.
But even Experience, added to the precious gifts of Eloquence, Poetry, and Logic, is not able to supply Wisdom.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
He took counsel with the Norns, and in his anxiety to possess this most precious of all gifts, he expressed his willingness to exchange for it, if needs be, his treasures of poetry and of eloquence, his magic armor which made him safe against all danger, his horse Sleipner, which had eight legs and crossed the air with the rapidity of lightning, his eagle and his vulture, his squirrel and his two ravens. Then he went to Mimer, the wisest man in existence, the successor of old Kvasir, and attended his lectures like the most humble and zealous of students. When he had mastered the subject, and felt that he had acquired Wisdom at last, he paid the philosopher liberally by giving him one of his own eyes, in order thus to show him the high value he set upon the service which had been rendered to him by Mimer.
This was the reason why Odin was one-eyed. The truth is far too honorable to the god to be hid under idle astronomical pretexts.
Now, what use did he make of his wisdom?
He began by regulating the government of heaven. The Ases had until now lived very much as they chose; he now gave to each of them a duty to perform: to Niord the management of rivers and of fishing; to Egir, the seas and navigation; and so to others, requiring regularity and accuracy of all, but sternly prohibiting the display of extreme zeal, just as Talleyrand used to do with his diplomatic apprentices.
Then he turned to the earth.
Here men had multiplied incessantly, and with their numbers their wants had increased, and alas! with these, their vices also! In order to satisfy the wants and to repress the vices, they had established among them that great, primitive law which constitutes the whole code of laws among barbarians—the right of the stronger.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
“TO EGIR, THE SEAS AND NAVIGATION.”
The most fertile pastures, the rocks and grottoes best fitted for dwellings and safe retreats, the forests that were richest in game and the springs that were most frequented by the flocks, all were taken by force and possession maintained by the strength of the sword.
Wise Odin felt that violence gave no right and that theft could not give a title to possession. He determined to establish the right of property, and to give it, for greater efficiency, a religious character which would make it sacred in the eyes of nations.
One of his daughters, Gefione, was sent by him to one of the most powerful chiefs of Scandinavia. She presented herself before his tent, with presents in her hands. In return she asked only for a span of land. The chief gave her a vast but uncultivated territory.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Next she went, with secret purposes in her mind and always inspired by Odin, to a distant country, into the mountains, where giants dwelt. Here she married one of these giants, the most powerful of them all, to whom she bore four sons. The strong are apt to be gentle. Gefione took her four sons, changed them into oxen, and by words of gentle persuasion induced her husband to harness them himself to a plough. A river marked the boundary of the field, on the other side stood an altar. Thus was the first piece of property inaugurated, by purchase, by labor, and under the protection of the gods. The first owner, the gigantic husband, represented Force submitting to Right, and the four oxen represented the hard-working family, improving the soil and enriching it with the sweat of their brow.
Soon people began to imitate Gefione’s example, and in all directions land was measured and laid out; stones were put up to mark the boundary lines of each legal possession, and these stones were held sacred.
In order to encourage men in these efforts, the Ases made it a point every morning to show their bright, shining heads above the horizon and thus to cheer them by their presence and the interest they took in their labors.
The god Thor even came once to pay a visit to his sister Gefione, and then cast a few flashes of lightning upon each one of the newly acquired pieces of land, to render them sacred. Hence the old, deeply rooted notion that lightning hallows all it touches. Afterwards, and as late as the fifteenth century, it was deemed sufficient at Bonn, at Cologne, and at Mayence, to cast Thor’s hammer upon the piece of land that had become a fief, in order to establish an absolute right of proprietorship.
But the right of property alone did not suffice to render human society stable and flourishing,—the nations of the earth longed for a hierarchy of rank and race; at least the divine pupil of the wise Mimer decided it should be so. The means he employed to found such a hierarchy and the system itself appear curious and odd enough to us, who are no gods, but, unsuitable as they look now, they were successful at the time.
By his order Heimdall, the god with the false teeth, abandoned his post as guardian of the Wal-halla for nine days, and after a long journey across the country, knocked at the door of a wretched tumbledown hut, where the Great-grandmother lived. Here he remained three days and three nights.
The Great-grandmother brought a male child into the world, black-skinned, broad-shouldered, with hard horny hands, and powerful arms. They called it Thrall, the serf.
Thrall’s natural inclination led him to prefer the hard work in mines and in the wilderness; he was fond of the society of domestic animals and even slept with them in their stables. His sons became cattle-raisers, miners, or charcoal-burners.
Heimdall had continued his journey. He next stopped at the Grandmother’s house, a small, simple cottage, but lacking in nothing that was useful.
Here he remained three days and three nights.
The Grandmother gave birth to a son, who was called Karl, the free man. Karl was fond of driving oxen under the yoke, of working in wood and in iron, of building boats and houses, and of trading. From him are descended our workmen and artisans, our merchants and builders.
Turning his face towards the south, Heimdall next went to a beautiful mansion, surrounded by magnificent gardens and reflected in the blue waters of a large lake. As the god had only to show his golden teeth in order to be welcomed by every woman he saw, the mistress of this mansion, the Mother, also received him with great delight and tried to do him honor. Dressed in her most costly robes she put an embroidered cloth upon a table of polished wood and offered him in silver dishes all the varieties of fish and game, in which the lake and the park near the house abounded. The Mother did everything to keep the god as long as possible at her house, but, as at the Grandmother’s and at the Great-grandmother’s, so he remained here only three days and three nights.
A son appeared to console the Mother for the departure of her illustrious guest; this child had at its birth already rosy cheeks, long hair, and a haughty look. When he was still a child, he was fond of brandishing his spear and of bending his bow; at fifteen he swam across the blue waters of the lake, or plunged on an unbroken horse into the depths of the forest, riding as fast as the wind. They called him Jarl, the noble.
Some years later Heimdall paid another visit to this country; delighted with the prowess of Jarl, he acknowledged him as his son and taught him the language of birds, which the gods alone understand and fluently speak. He taught him also the science of Runes, of runes of victory which are engraven on the blades of swords; runes of love to be traced upon drinking horns or the thumbnail; runes of the sea, with which the prow and the rudder of ships are decorated—in all cases precautionary measures by which alone ill fortune can be kept at bay.
Besides these gifts of knowledge, he bestowed upon him an inalienable, hereditary domain. This was the first entailed estate ever known in Europe.
Jarl, says the Edda, was a man of eight-horse power. Could we express it better in the noble railway Anglo-Saxon of our day, or does our modern English really go back to the old Scandinavian, as this coincidence would seem to prove?
Jarl’s descendants are the great chieftains, the barons, princes, kings, and Druids, who have all inherited great power from their divine ancestor with the golden teeth. They alone are his legitimate and acknowledged children; the descendants of the grandmother and great-grandmother are illegitimate. Still, whether acknowledged by the law or not, they all form a close chain, a single family, they all spring from the same god! Thus the humblest among them saw his rights secured for the future.
I must confess that, the more carefully I examine these barbarians, whether they were gods or men, the more I am surprised to discover beneath the outward cloak of their fables so many correct ideas of order and of justice. These fables had, of course, their day and then passed away. Up to the present time, it is true, there is not much of the day gone; perhaps also Odin may be blamed for having invented, before the world was a few hundred years old, both the Middle Ages and the Feudal System. But it would be wrong to blame him, for it must be acknowledged, that in spite of the violence of their manners and the bloody nature of their worship, a certain civilization had at last appeared among the Scandinavians. It may be called brutal, I grant; it may be called aggressive even, but it was after all an improvement, and it has held its own in the North, under snow and ice, like the vigorous plants of our Alps. How comes it that the Germans and the Franks, more favored by climate and by contact with highly civilized nations, remained so long inferior to the Scandinavians in this respect? Perhaps they were more liable to be invaded than the Sons of the North; the Scandinavians invaded the continent in all directions, but no one ever dreamt of invading their country.
After having thus established the right of property and a certain social hierarchy, Odin had next instituted marriage with the symbolic ring, and finally courts of justice.
But, since he had given to man an immortal soul, and since he held out to him reward or punishment in another world according to his deserts, Odin had been compelled to establish the first high tribunals in that other world.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
We must, therefore, find our way to Walhalla and even to Hell, if the reader is disposed to follow us to that place.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
VII.
Heaven and Hell.—The Valkyrias.—Amusements in Walhalla.—Pork and Wild Boar.—A Frozen Hell.—Balder’s Death.—Frigg’s Devotion.—The Iron Tree Forest.—The Twilight of the Gods.—Idunas’ Apples.—The Fall of Heaven and the End of the World.—Reflections on that Event.—The Little Fellow still alive.
When the warriors were preparing for battle, a number of blue-eyed young maidens, mounted on bright, shining horses, passed through their ranks, animating them with word and gesture, and whispering into their ears warlike songs to be soon changed into triumphal chants for those who fell on the battlefield, mortally wounded.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
These maidens were the Valkyrias, those Valkyrias whom ever since the poets and painters of the Ossianic school have reproduced in a thousand forms. Nor must it be forgotten that this remarkable school, which the Scotchman Macpherson revived towards the end of the eighteenth century, counted among its most ardent admirers two enthusiastic Frenchmen, whose names were Napoleon and Lamartine.
These Valkyrias, beautiful nymphs of carnage as they were, delighted in the clash of arms, the shedding of blood, and the dying groans of the wounded, even in the odors exhaled by the dying,—a taste which seems little suited to fair, blue-eyed maidens. These unnatural tastes were, however, justified to a certain extent, by the peculiar mission which they had to fulfill, a mission of kindness and tender compassion. They walked to and fro on the battlefield, not to carry off the dead, but to gather the souls of those who had fallen. Of the Seola (such was the sweet name of the Soul among the nations of Germanic or Scandinavian race), they rapidly asked these questions:—
“Seola, did you belong to a free man or to a slave?
“Seola, did your master honor the gods and the priests of those gods?
“Did he keep his pledged word?
“Did he die like a brave man, with his face to the enemy and not a fear in his heart?
“Seola, did he ever fight against the men of his own blood and his own race?”
The human soul, as soon as it escapes from the wretched bondage of this earth, no longer possesses the sad power of being able to tell a falsehood; Seola, therefore, answered these questions truthfully, even though it were to its own condemnation. In the latter case the Valkyrias left it to the black Alfs, a kind of demons who belonged to hell; but if the Seola had belonged to a brave and loyal warrior, the Valkyria instantly unfolded her white wines and took it to Walhalla, the home of the gods and the paradise of heroes.
This paradise, exclusively intended for free men, was still open to slaves also, if they had fallen by the side of their masters, or if they had thrown themselves voluntarily into the fire of the funeral pile for the purpose of continuing their service in the future life.
Let us see whether the delights of Walhalla were sufficiently attractive to warrant such selfimmolation.
The one great enjoyment of all who dwell in Walhalla was combat and strife. That is a matter of taste, but did they not carry combat and strife a little too far? They fought there for hours and hours, with eagerness, with fury, even piercing each other and cutting each other to pieces to their hearts’ delight. It is true, that as soon as the dinner hour came the blood ceased to flow, the wounds closed their gaping lips, the limbs that had been lopped off by the swords returned to their place, the broken heads and exposed entrails were restored without the surgeon’s aid, not leaving a scar behind, and the heroes went arm in arm to dinner, looking forward with joy to a repetition of the same merry sport as soon as the meal should be finished.
The fare at this table of gods and heroes does not seem to have been peculiarly wholesome; at all events it was not very varied.
The pork-butchers’ business was at that time uncommonly flourishing both in heaven and on earth. Tacitus tells us that among the races of the North, as far as the borders of the Baltic Sea, chieftains and matrons alike loved to wear suspended around their neck a small image of a pig as an emblem of abundance and fecundity. Rich and poor, all looked upon pork as the main supply of their pantry. The pig, however, was not deemed worthy to appear on Odin’s table, and its place was taken by the boar: the gods lived upon wild boar, men upon domestic pig, that was the whole difference.
I am often tempted to eat pork, and I am occasionally enabled to taste wild boar; but I must solemnly confess, swearing if needs be by my stomach, that in my opinion, the gods and the heroes had by no means the best of it. It may be, however, that wild boars here below are not quite equal to heavenly boars.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
However that may be, there appeared every morning upon the edge of one of the marvelous forests to be found in Walhalla, an enormous colossal boar, a very mammoth of a boar. The heroes proceeded to hunt it, accompanied at times by Thor, by Vali, the skillful archer, or by Tyr, the one-handed god, who nevertheless wielded his sword with power and accuracy. Then the monster was killed, cut up and roasted, and all dined together.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The next day there appeared on the edge of the marvelous forest another wild boar, quite as fat and quite as enormous, in fact in every respect as attractive as the boar of the day before—some think it was always the same animal, come to life again. Then a new hunt and a new dinner upon roasted wild boar. Surely we poor people might become disgusted for the rest of our lives, one would imagine,—and those were immortal gods! What taste!
But there is worse behind yet. The Scandinavian paradise was by no means the only one where the pork-butcher was thus glorified. In a neighboring paradise, which the Finns had established, we are told by a learned writer, the rivers were flowing with beer and hydromel, the mountains consisted of lard and the hills of half salted pork.
To help them in digesting their solid food, the Scandinavian gods drank, like those of Finland, great quantities of beer and hydromel; but they had in addition, an abundance of wine which they quaffed from gold cups. Wine! In this one word thoughtful historians have discovered a whole revelation.
Now would it ever have occurred to Odin, in his hyperborean lands, where the vine did not exist and could not possibly live, to bring the fruit of the vine to his paradise? Did he know grapes? And when had he learnt to know them? But as I do not wish to interrupt my story, I reserve the discussion of this great and important question, with several others of the same kind, for another chapter, in which I hope to be able to develop my views fully and scientifically.
Besides wine, beer, and hydromel, the blessed people in Walhalla had an additional precious beverage of their own, which it may safely be presumed, no mortal on earth has ever tasted. This ambrosia of a novel nature was obtained by the gods and heroes themselves, on certain favorable days, from the white substance of the moon. Yes, from the moon! Did they quaff it in full draughts or did they inhale it through calumets? We do not know, but the nations of the earth saw in these periodical bleedings of the moon the reason for her divers phases and her gradual diminution. When she became reduced to a mere crescent, fright was seen on all faces and oppressed all hearts. Were the great people up there forgetting themselves in their celestial orgies, and would they drink up the moon to the last drop?
It must be borne in mind that they, like the Germans, saw in the moon nothing but a transparent leathern bottle, filled with sweetened milk, and phosphorescent.
Let us return now. To hunt the boar, to breakfast on wild boar, to dine on the same dish, day after day, to drink beer and wine, and from time to time that mulled egg which the moon furnished, to fight morning and evening, to die and come to life again, merely for the purpose of fighting again—these were the amusements of that delightful place. Upon my word, it took Scandinavians to be content with such pleasures.
If Odin’s paradise appears to us but little attractive, his hell, on the other hand, seems to have been far from terrible, especially if we compare it with the hell of some of our great poets, such as Dante and Milton.
The hell of the Scandinavians occupied the lowest depths of the world and consisted of two parts, Nastrond and Niflheim. The latter is a kind of dismal vestibule shrouded in darkness, in which are seen wandering about the mournful seolas of those who have been neither good nor bad, neither heroes nor scoundrels, and of all who have not fallen by the sword. To die on one’s bed or in an armchair, was a wrong in Odin’s eyes, a grievous wrong, though not exactly a crime, since he punished it only with a temporary detention in those damp, low places, where darkness, silence, and weariness seemed to combine for their punishment. The dwellers in Niflheim had scarcely any amusement except their reciprocal yawns, and from time to time a flash of dim light which reached there when the little black Alfs came in or went out, busily engaged in conveying a load of souls.
The great criminals were thrown into Nastrond, the real hell. What is very remarkable is, that here there were no braziers and burning gridirons to be seen, no furnaces and masses of flames as in all the other hells. This was a hell of ice; it froze here hard enough to split iron, and the damned shivered with cold. Dante mentions something of the kind in his great work, but between the Florentine and the Scandinavian there can be no doubt who borrowed from the other.
It was quite natural after all that in these win-tery regions of Scandinavia, where cold is the greatest evil to be dreaded, intense, continued, eternal cold should have become the terror and the punishment of the criminal. The idea of a hell of fire, so far from keeping them from the fatal slope, might very well have tempted some chilly scoundrel to commit a great crime.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The poor wretches who were shivering in Nastrond with stiffened hands and eyes full of frozen tears, felt their tortures increased whenever Hela, the pale goddess, the queen of that place, Death itself, cast upon them a glance from her lack-lustre eyes.
Yes, it was Hela who reigned over this frightful iceberg; her palace is called Misery, her gate the Precipice, her reception room Grief, her bed Disease, her table Famine, and her throne Malediction!
The body of this terrible queen is party-colored, half white and half blue, and her breath is perfumed with that horrible cadaverous odor in which the Valkyrias delight.
But after all, the names seem to be worse than the sufferings themselves; for excessive cold paralyzes pain itself, and there is nothing here to compare with those classic places where lava-baths, rolling rocks, flaming wheels, horses of red-hot iron, boiling pitch, fiery arrows and the snake whips of the Eumenides made up an infernal stock of tortures which might well tempt the imagination of the greatest of poets.
In Nastrond there were no demons and no Eumenides; to be sure, there was a Bigvor and a Sisvor, furies if you will have it so, watching at the gates of hell, with the help of Gaun, the formidable dog, but all three are forbidden to enter within. The place of missing monsters is occupied by some of those whom Odin spared on the occasion of his first campaign against the giant sons of Ymer, and by the wolf Fenris, whom the Ases had treacherously captured. There are also two other wolves, convicted of having made an attempt upon the life of the Sun, and all of these monsters are firmly chained and appear rather as sufferers than as tormentors.
One of these days, their iron chains will be loosened; one of these days heaven will turn cold and hell will melt, and—then, woe to the gods!
Listen! The moment is drawing near when all these mysteries are to be solved. The hour is coming when you shall hear, when you shall understand! But before uttering these last words, final and at the same time fatal words, we must mention an event which at that moment occurred in the open assembly of the gods, filling heaven and earth with amazement, with pity and horror.
It must be acknowledged that so far the heavenly personages have appeared to be rather kindhearted and mild. Odin, in spite of his Druids and their demands for bloody sacrifices, seems to have been full of good intentions. The god Thor, with all his somewhat brutal ways, rendered great services to mankind; and the same hammer, which protected them against the giants, afterwards served, without the aid of geometry, to mark the boundary lines of their respective properties. The golden-teethed god, Heimdall, gave most undoubted evidence of his devotion to the human race and of his self-denial in his visits to the Grandmother and the Great-grandmother, and so did the other gods. But we had good reasons for not going through the whole list of the Ases. For there is one whom we keep in reserve so that he may appear at the right hour, and that is Loki, the god of evil and the genius of destruction.
Surpassing Odin himself in his magic skill, fair of form and features, a smile on his lips—thin lips, however, the Edda adds—and apparently possessed of the most jovial temper so as to make him a most agreeable person, Loki is in reality a compound of the most hideous vices. He is the representative of hatred and cruelty, of envy, hypocrisy, and perversity. In fact, he is our Satan, before the fall. If he had been king of hell, Miflheim and Nastrond would both have been filled with more tortures and more horrors than all the other hells which are known to men.
And yet he was the god upon whom the dwellers in Walhalla counted for their entertainment, and whom they had surnamed the Clown!
One day an ancient prophetess returns to life, rises in her grave, and utters a terrible cry: “Balder, fair Balder, is going to die!” With these words she falls back again upon her mournful couch and dies again—forever.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
In the meantime this cry has been heard even at the top of the ash Ygdrasil. The Ases are troubled and amazed; they meet, they look at each other, thoroughly frightened, for on the life of Balder depends the existence of all the other gods. Moreover, Balder the Bright is the glory of heaven and the love of the earth. Can Balder die, the most charming and the purest as well as the most beautiful of all the sons of Odin? He, who was so beautiful that Hela herself could not help smiling when she looked at him—he, so pure that no falsehood could be uttered in his presence and that a vessel containing an adulterated liquid would break instantly at his approach—he, so charming that all the gods love him as their favorite child, and that men have surnamed him Hope? No, no! Balder shall not die, said the Ases.
His distressed mother Frigg, Odin’s wife, shows her apprehensions by her intense anguish, and her sobs scarcely allow her to speak. She tells those who try to laugh at the sudden alarm of all who have heard the warning of the prophetess, that for several nights already she has been repeatedly, persistently warned in her dreams of the death of her well-beloved son. She would not believe it, she adds, but now she does believe.
The divine sybil Vola, whose predictions have never proved untrue, and Skulda, the Norn of the Future, are ‘summoned to appear. They consult with each other and this is their decision:—
“Balder is in danger; Balder will die unless all earthly substances that can inflict death, are rendered powerless.” Frigg descends to the earth and speaks to volcanoes and water-spouts, to frost and hail, and they promise to spare her son. Among the aquatic powers, from the ocean to the smallest brook, among the stones, from the mightiest rock to the pebble, and among the metals, from gold to iron, there is none that does not swear the same oath. The plants also promise, from the oak to the smallest shrub and down to the humblest grass.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Triumphantly she returns to heaven to announce the good news. Everybody is overjoyed. They celebrate the happy result of her journey by a family dinner, at which Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself by his merry jokes. He had never appeared in better spirits; had never seemed to sympathize more warmly with the happy court.
When the feast was ended and the last cups were drained in honor of Balder, some one proposed for the general amusement to try how far all these substances, vegetable or mineral, will be faithful to the oath they have sworn, when brought face to face with Balder. Beginning with the most inoffensive of them all, they throw at him a clod of earth; the clod of earth breaks into a cloud of dust before it touches him. Then they pour a pitcher of water over him and the water forms a cascade above him without wetting even his garments. They try to strike him with a hazel wand; the wand, slipping from the hand that holds it, breaks in two. Balder is amused by the game and encourages the bystanders to renew their attacks.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
The skillful Uller shoots at him a pointless arrow, aiming, from excessive caution, only at his shoulder. The arrow passes at a distance of twenty feet from its aim and continues its flight through the air, like a bird in search of its prey beyond the clouds.
Ten other assailants meet the same fate, trying their luck with a fragment of rock and a heavy branch in the shape of a club. But the fragment was of stone and remembered the promise given to Frigg, and the club was cut from a tree and the tree remembered the promise given to Frigg.
Encouraged by so many reassuring trials, Freyr desired to try his magic sword, but for once the faithful sword was deaf to his orders. Thor brandished his hammer, but the hammer suddenly reversed its action and well nigh made him fall back upon his heels. Freyr’s sword and Thor’s hammer were both of iron and the iron remembered the promise given to Frigg.
Loki took care not to appear.
The sport was over, as it seemed, when suddenly the blind god Hoder, Balder’s own brother, was seen to advance, feeling his way, towards the bright god. Hoder held in his hand a small bunch of leaves, a bit of grass, at least it appeared such after the fearful instruments that had just been brought into play.
Immense laughter, a laughter such as the gods of Homer were in the habit of enjoying, broke out at the sight; Loki laughed till his sides shook and Hoder himself shared the general hilarity. But he drew nearer and nearer, shaking his bit of verdure in the air; then, almost tottering and having learnt from the bystanders in what direction he would have to turn, he threw the slender twig against Balder, using his full force, which was prodigious.
He hit Balder full in the chest and the god fell instantly. That bright light which was always shining around him became extinct; he closed his eyes, and lowered his beautiful brow deprived of its glory.....Balder was dead!
He had been struck by a bit of mistletoe. Frigg had addressed her prayers to the oak tree, but she had not thought of the mistletoe which grows on the oak tree; the mistletoe had given no promise to Frigg. Must we look here for a symbolic meaning? Did this mean, that the Druidical mistletoe was soon to triumph over the gods of Scandinavia? This could not be so, for at the time to which we have come, there was no trace left of the wise worship of the Druids of the first epoch; the Druids of the second epoch were fast losing their power, and the Scandinavian gods were daily increasing in popularity, even beyond the banks of the Rhine.
But we ought not to interrupt this account of Balder’s death, which is as poetical and as touching as the most famous fables of Greece. When blind Hoder, whose name must not be uttered, you remember, hears the cries of despair which break out all around him, and encircle him on all sides with maledictions, he is troubled and seriously distressed. Then, all of a sudden joining in the distressed cries of the Ases, he falls utterly overcome upon his brother’s body and denounces Loki as the author of this calamity. Loki has reproached him for being the only one who took no part in the amusements by which they thought to honor Balder, and he it was who had not only given him the fatal plant but who had also directed his arm. Loki was jealous of all the perfections of Balder and he hated him as much as the other gods loved him.
They look for Loki, but he has disappeared. No doubt he has tried to escape from the vengeance of the Ases by seeking refuge in the mountains among the giants, his natural allies, or perhaps in the deep sea, with the serpent Iormungandur.
And whilst they thus lament, inquire, and investigate, Balder’s soul is carried off by the black Alfs to Niflheim, the dark vestibule of hell.
Odin still cherished hopes that his dead son might be restored to him. Upon his order Her-mode, the messenger of the gods, mounts his horse Sleipner and goes to see Hela, but neither promises nor threats can move the dread goddess. Fate has decided, and Fate is above the gods, as the gods are above men.
Then Frigg herself goes to see the pale goddess. Frigg weeps and the merciless goddess is unable to keep her heart from softening when she sees the tears of such a mother. She says to her:—
“Let all created beings—mind, I say, all created beings!—give a tear to Balder, a tear such as you have’ shed in my presence, and Balder shall be restored to you!”
Frigg was unwilling to trust any one but herself with the effort to realize such hopes. Once more she went over the world, gathering around her all the races of men, one after the other, and as she mentioned the name of Balder, tears flowed from all eyes.
For three months she visited all the forests and all the mountains, the seas and the lakes and the animals that live in the waters and the mountains; and seas and lakes and mountains wept. She went even to the abode of the giants, the enemies of the gods, and her grief made the giants also weep; every tree wept and every rock wept.
Frigg thought her task was accomplished, and was filled with joy; but she heard that in the far East of Midgard there lived an old woman in the heart of a forest of iron trees. As she lived alone there, far from any beaten track, she had never become known to the intrepid traveller. Now, however, Frigg sought her out by steep paths, cut up with gullies and fierce torrents, and at last found her. When the mother told her pitiful tale, the iron trees wept, but the old woman would not weep.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
They called her Thorck, and her heart was ten times as hard as her name.
“What do I care for your Balder?” she cried; “what do I care whether he is dead or alive? You have other sons; I have not one left me. Once I had four, and all four were my pride, my delight. They were so fair! They were so tall! Your son Thor killed every one of them. I wept much at that time. Now, it is all over. Look for tears elsewhere, I have no tears to give to other people’s sorrows!”
Frigg bowed down before her, begged her, conjured her, and even fell on her knees before her; but the old woman was inflexible. Balder had to remain a prisoner with Hela.
Some interpreters of Scandinavian runes have been of the opinion that the bereaved mother in the forest of iron trees was none other than Loki himself, changed into an old woman. That thought, however, is inadmissible. The Ases were beyond the reach of Hela, and Loki’s refusal would not have rendered void the unanimous vote of all Nature, when tears of pity and sympathy alone were to be given as votes. It is much more plausible to suppose, that Loki had induced Thorck to refuse by his counsels and by his enchantments; through him the heart of the old woman had’ become iron as well as the trees of the forest in which she lived. Thus Loki had twice caused the death of Balder!
It was at this time that a strange, almost incredible report was for the first time heard among men. The Druids whispered it cautiously into the ears of the initiated, and voices were said to utter it in the air during the night. This report, a terrible secret, a most unexpected revelation, stated that the gods were about to die! Thor would die, after seeing lightning become extinct in his hands; Odin himself would die, and so would the others. The fate of each one of them was depending on the fate of this fragile world over which they ruled, and this world had to perish because Balder had perished.
What? Should the Universe change back into chaos? Was there no all-powerful will that could arrest the process of destruction before it was too late? But where could such omnipotent will be found, now that the gods were no longer to be in existence?
Listen! listen to these verses from the Edda!
“Who is the most ancient among the gods?
“Alfader, that is, the universal father. He has always been and will ever be; he governs all things, both big and small; he has made the heavens, the earth and the gods. Odin created man, but Al-fader gave him his immortal soul!” Thus we come back to the pure essence of an only god, who is ever the same, whether his name be Teut, Esus, or Jehovah; the other gods are nothing but emanations proceeding from him, living symbols intended to live for a few thousand centuries—that is all.
“Do you hear? Do you understand now?
“Do you understand why the great ash tree Ygdrasil is continually gnawed at its root by a dragon? Why four famished stags feed upon its foliage? You understand? Well!
“But by what sign shall we recognize the approaching end of the gods—that which the Edda calls their twilight?
“The most important among all the sacred books of the North, a volume containing the prophecies of the divine sybil Vola, the Voluspa, will tell you.
“When the fatal moment draws near, their voice will cease to be able to utter the accustomed chants, and the luminous brightness radiating from their bodies will fade away little by little.
“When they leave their bath, their bodies will not dry at once, as they do now, but remain moist; drops of water will continually drip from them, and they will in this respect become like unto mortal men.
“In order to overcome these first symptoms of indisposition, the wife of the god Bragi, Iduna, will give them certain apples to eat, which she keeps in reserve. These apples will have the effect of strengthening them and of restoring to them a kind of fictitious youth for a few thousand years perhaps.
“One day, however, their eyes will begin to wink; the next morning, upon awaking, their eyelids will be found closed, and then they will turn red and blear.
“At table, when proceeding to their usual libations, their slightly tremulous hands will be unable to hold their cups steadily; some of the wine or the hydromel will escape and their garments will remain stained.
“Woe to them if a grain of dust adheres to these stained garments!
“Woe to them still more, if the wreaths of flowers or of jewels begin to fade and to wither on their brows!
“Finally, when the sweet perfumes which now are exhaled from their bodies, change into acrid and sickening odors, there will be nothing left for them but to make their last will.”
I am well convinced that this last phrase has been stealthily introduced into the Voluspa by some kind of criminal and fraudulent trick. The rest, however, is a faithful translation of the original text, as taken from the best authenticated editions.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
“Then,” the prophecy continues, “then three sacred cocks, dwelling in the three principal worlds, will crow and reply to each other, announcing the Twilight of Greatness.
“Then, everything on earth will be in disorder and confusion; families will be at variance with each other, the claims of blood will no longer be acknowledged, and brothers will be arrayed against brothers.
“Adultery and incest, robbery and murder, will prevail among men, and the age will be an age of barbarism, an age of the sword, an age of tempests, an age of wolves!
“The wolves will be ready to devour the sun. Three long winters, with no summers between them, will cover the earth with snow and ice; the branches of the trees will give way under the immense burden; the sun will be darkened more and more; the moon will dissolve into vapor and the stars will go out; the mountains, shaking in their foundations, will be tossed to and fro like reeds in a river; the earth will reject all the plants, the trees, and the rocks which it now bears; the waters will cast the fish upon the shore and with them their algae, their corals, and even the bodies of shipwrecked men, hideous skeletons, whose rattling bones will chime in grimly with the warning of the rising flood.
“Then the sea will grow dark, and upon its waters there will be seen floating that monstrous ship made of the nails of dead men. At the rudder, Ymer, the giant, will stand, having been recalled to life for a time, in order to assist Loki in scaling the heavens by the way of Bifrost, the rainbow, at the head of the other Giants of the Frost.
“Then Surtur the Black will arrive from the southern regions, from the realm of fire, with all of his malignant demons, bearing torches and ready to set heaven and earth on fire.
“Then Hela, the pale goddess of death, will set free her prisoners, the wolf Fenris first of all, and march at the head of these monsters to assist the powers of the South.
“Then the gods will take up their arms; Odin will gather them around him, and with them the heroes from Walhalla; and the last battle will be fought.”
But Vola’s prophecy has to be fulfilled; the gods must perish, and the world with them.
Freyr dies in the flames of Surtur the Black; Thor succumbs to the deadly embrace and the poisonous bites of the great serpent Iormungandur; but, before dying, he kills it. Odin is torn to pieces by the wolf Fenris.
During the struggle, the heavens have been scaled and the genii of fire enter on horseback through the breach, while the giants shake the ash Ygdrasil, which writhes uttering long sighs, and at last falls with the heavenly vault which it has been upholding. The conquerors and the conquered alike are crushed under the ruins, and the world being set on fire by Surtur the Black, vanishes in smoke.
Thus the night of the gods has to succeed to the twilight of the gods.
“O you, spirits of the mountains, do you know whether anything will continue to exist?” asks the Voluspa, at the end of these mournful prophecies.
It must be admitted that this sombre and terrible conception is not without a certain poetic grandeur, a certain savage heroism, which we cannot help admiring. In these verses the Edda is in no way inferior to the most brilliant pictures drawn by Dante or by Milton, and more than once it approaches nearly to the Apocalypse. Thus, as the inspired Apostle saw a new heaven and a new earth, the Edda also announces the coming of a time, when a new earth, more favored and more perfect than ours, shall succeed the old earth.
“When the earth is thus broken to pieces and devoured by fire, what shall happen next?
“There will come forth from the sea another earth, more beautiful and more perfect.
“And will any of the gods survive?
“Balder will be revived and come forth from the place of departed spirits, to rule over the new world under the guidance of the imperishable Al-fader. Then will be the reign of Justice.”
The mythology of the Scandinavians embraces, as we have shown, among its symbols all the great phenomena of Nature, the continual struggle between the two opposite principles, creation and destruction. Being, besides, more complicated and more intelligent than the mythology of the Gauls and the Germans, it deserved to fill a large space in our work, and such a space we have accorded it cheerfully.
But why was it that the civilization introduced by Odin contributed as little as the philosophy of the Druids to the real well-being and the improvement of mankind? I think I see the reason.
In the eyes of the German as well as of the Scandinavian, God was only just and rigid. The rule of the God of Love had not yet begun. Perhaps Balder was to inaugurate it in that other world which the Edda announced.
Do you hear? Do you understand?
Amid all the incidents which were to mark the general conflagration, there is one which particularly recalls to our mind a great historical event. Alexander of Macedonia once questioned certain Celtic ambassadors and was told by them, that what they feared most upon earth, was the falling down of the sky.
This apparently lofty answer filled the young conqueror with admiration, and it is still admired by modern students of history. It was, however, in reality nothing more than a simple, naïve rendering of one of their articles of faith; for all their prophetic books threatened them with the destruction of the heavens.
Another detail, the complete destruction of this globe of ours, after a series of fearful catastrophes, recalls to me, not exactly a great historical fact, but a simple game of my childhood, which may have been symbolic, nay, which may have come down to us from the Edda. This, however, I state with great hesitation.
Did you ever know one of the merriest games, which was once very much the fashion in city and country alike, when a firebrand, a burning stick, or a bunch of straw set on fire, was quickly passed from hand to hand? To prevent its going out, while you held it, you were bound to pass it as quickly as possible to your neighbor, repeating at the same time the expressive words: “The little fellow is still alive.” Your neighbor passed it to his neighbor and thus it travelled all around, always accompanied by the same, constant burden: “The little fellow is still alive!” This game was transformed during the Middle Ages, in the North, and especially in Bretagne, into the Torch Dance, as I have mentioned before. Now I imagine that this game, in some way or other, prefigured the universal conflagration that was to come, and the little fellow was the world.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
But we must make haste to reach our great scientific discussion.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
VIII.
How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time between one World and another.—How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.—How Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the Indians.—How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God Buddha.—About Mahabarata and Ramayana.—Chronology.—The World’s Age.—Comparative Tables.—Quotations.—Supporting Evidence.—A Cenotaph.
My reader has had a lucky escape.
Determined as I was to fathom in this chapter the true origin of the Scandinavian religion, and inspired by the zeal of a recent convert, I had collected and compared every document that could aid me in proving the Oriental descent of the priests of Odin as well as of the other Druids. I thought it was a beautiful doctrine, and especially an entirely new one.
When I finished my chapter, which I thought was exceedingly well done, I read it to Doctor Rosahl, expecting, I must confess, to be warmly congratulated.
“Why, my dear sir,” he said, when I had finished, “you have made great efforts to prove a thing which has been established long since. All the master minds of France and Germany, to say nothing of other nations, agree on that subject. I mean men like Fauriel, Lassen, Lenormand, Ampere, Eichhoff, Saint-Marc Girardin, Marmier, Klaproth, Ozanam, the two Rémusats, the two Thierrys, the two Humboldts, the two Grimms, not to mention twenty others.
“Why will you come to their assistance after they have won the victory? Do you merely wish to display your scholarship?”
I indignantly denied the charge, and seizing my manuscript with both hands, I resolutely threw it into the fire.
A remnant of paternal weakness induced me, however, to retain the summary of that famous chapter, and I have inserted it here in its regular place, so that it might bear evidence of my wasted labor. As the corpus delicti is no longer in existence, this summary may stand there like an inscription on an empty tomb, to honor the memory of the deceased.
My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph.
I—a scholar! Great God! Let the reader not be disturbed. My purpose in writing this work was nothing more than to try and collect along the banks of the Rhine all the curious myths which have survived the ancient creeds of Europe; for they have all come to the great river. There the traveller finds piled up, after the manner of alluvial layers, all the ancient fables, all the marvelous and often childish tales to which the credulity and lively imagination of our forefathers gave a ready welcome. With the exception of a very few cases, in which the grave nature of the subject lifts me necessarily into higher regions, I wish mainly to tell you once more Grandmamma’s Tales. That is what we are going to do next. The Edda itself has no other meaning, for Edda means the same as our grandmother.
No, I am too great a lover of tales of a tub ever to have claimed the reputation of being a scholar; but at times I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped. I have been shown the best spots, and I pilfer as well as I can—that is all.
An ignoramus and a pilferer, I resemble a bee which might fly into a botanical garden and, utterly unacquainted with the Latin names of flowers, carry off joyously a rich harvest, without pretending to be able to make academic honey.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
IX.
Confederation of all the Northern Gods.—Freedom of Religion.—Christianity.—Miserere mei!—Homeric Enumeration.—Prussian, Slavic, and Finnish Deities.—The God of Cherries and the God of Bees.—A Silver Woman.—Ilmarinnen’s Wedding Song.—A Skeleton God.—Yaga-Babcûs Pestle and Mortar.—Preparation for Battle.—The Little Chapel on the Hill.—The Signal for the Attack.—Jesus and Mary.
It is high time for us to return to the banks of the Rhine, where the two religions of Jupiter and Odin were about to meet face to face. At that time the terrible prophecies of the Edda were far from being near their fulfillment; Odin had a long period of omnipotence yet before him.
To the great surprise of the adversaries, the Romans, so far from showing any alarm at his approach, received him and his retinue of deities as old acquaintances.
According to their unchanging policy they would see in him nothing but a Jupiter, and in fierce Thor another gallant Mars, somewhat sobered by a long residence in northern countries and excessive use of beer.
The Romans looked, in fact, upon all of these Scandinavian gods and goddesses simply as upon myths of their own that came back to them once more.
The poets hallowed these claims and the historians tried to justify them. According to some, Odin the Conqueror, a member of the family of Ases, had first given to some of his conquests the name of Asia (which might very well be so), and then receded before the Roman armies to cold hyperborean regions. Here he had adopted the gods of his new conquerors, hoping that they would, in return, make him victorious—which seems to me in the highest degree improbable. According to others, the poet Ovid, when Augustus had banished him to Scythia, had learnt the language of the barbarians, among whom he was living, and finding them willing and eager to listen to him, had recited before them his “Metamorphoses.” This was all that was needed to induce the Scythians to make for themselves gods after the model of the Roman gods.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Tacitus, Plutarch, Strabo, and a host of the most illustrious writers never hesitated to give currency to such childish stories, ignoring entirely the date of the Scandinavian religion.
As Rome, however, permitted no human sacrifices, the priests of Odin and of Teut had at first withdrawn far from the beaten track, into the depths of dark old forests. There they could live quietly, practice without restraint the religion of their forefathers, and kill their men in perfect security. At least such were their hopes. The Roman soldiers, however, who handled the woodman’s axe as readily as the sword, and the spade as well as the spear, soon made big holes in these venerable forests, murdered the murderers, and overthrew their blood-stained altars.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Occasionally it happened that the brave legionaries who were employed in these hazardous enterprises, did not reappear. The proconsuls, whose duty it was to keep Germany in order, would have liked to inflict severe punishment; but just then the great reaction began to set in, from the North against the South.
Whilst Rome was making efforts to establish her power in Germany, certain German tribes, Franks and Burgundians, invaded France and began to settle down in some of the conquered Roman provinces. The proconsuls thought it both prudent and wise not to raise the question of religion; and for a long time a truce was tacitly agreed upon between all the different creeds, though not without some misgivings on both sides. Odin had his altars by the side of those of Jupiter; a temple in honor of Thor stood facing a temple dedicated to Mars, and if Bacchus, Diana, and Apollo had their sacred days, Bragi, Frigg, and Freya had theirs also.
In spite of this general toleration, the parties watched each other carefully.
Sooner or later a holy war had to break out; in certain regions it had already begun, when fishermen of the Rhine busily drawing in their nets, heard, for the first time, a still small voice coming down upon them on the waters of the river, which whispered the names of Jesus and Mary. The same voice and the same names were simultaneously heard again and again before Strasbourg, Mayence, and Cologne. It was Christianity that was approaching.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
These wondrous words, which now the river only murmured, had soon after been forced by some mystic power from the lips of the Druidesses in their prophetic exaltation and from the priests of Jupiter, as they consulted their auguries.
There was a Druid, who, in the act of sacrificing, was suddenly seized with inspiration, and dropping the bloody knife felt impelled to cry out: Miserere mei, Jesus! and yet Latin had until then been an unknown tongue among the Druids!
The nations stood expectant, waiting for the revelation of a new faith.
Soon a number of fugitives from Tolbiac, returning to the Rhine, produced consternation in all hearts by the announcement that Clovis, the king of the Franks, who had long been suspected of a secret understanding with Rome, had gone over to the god of the Christians, and that the god of the Christians was at that moment advancing at the head of ten legions of destroying angels.
When this news came, the rival religions laid aside their jealousy, and terrified by a common danger, joined hands to resist the invader. A general appeal was made not only by the followers of Odin to those of Jupiter, but also to the Northern gods, the Finnish gods, the Russian gods, and the Slavic gods. The danger was threatening to all alike, and they responded to the appeal and came to the Rhine. We cannot so rapidly pass over this vast Olympian assembly of gods, a poet’s dream, it may be, but a traditional dream, full of strange and striking splendor, which completes in a most unexpected manner the limited description we have tried to give of Northern Myths.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
At this grand meeting there appeared in the first place a goodly number of Borussian or Prussian gods, among whom stood first and foremost Percunos, the divine leader of the heavenly bodies; Pikollos, whose face was as pale as Hela’s and whose duty was, like hers, to preside over hell; exacting, however, from men nothing but prayers accompanied by beating hearts, he cared nothing whether he was feared or beloved. A third god, Potrympos, had the appearance of a youth, with smiling lips and with a wreath of wheat ears and flowers on his brow; this was the god of War. Of War? And what meant the smile on his lips and the wheat ears on his brow? They indicated that he was also the god of public supplies and even of love.
It seems that, in ancient Prussia, War was the purveyor-general and supplied everything.
In the retinue of this great trio, we find Antrympos, the god of seas and lakes; Poculos, the god of the air and of storms; then, after these gods ending in os, came other deities ending in us; Pilvitus, the god of riches, Auchwitus, the god of the sick, and Marcopulus, the god of the nobles. The latter was the terror of the common people, whom he held under an iron yoke. In order to conciliate his good will, they prayed to Puscatus, another god in us, but a kindhearted god. He lived under an elder tree, and the price he exacted in return for his mediation was the modest gift of a piece of bread and a schoppen of beer.
[Full Page Image] -- [Medium-Size]
Although their priests were called Crives or Waidelottes, their ceremonies were, nevertheless, mere imitations of those of the Druids. The Borussians honored particularly the famous oak of Remowe, to which Percunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos paid a daily visit. To these same gods they offered their prisoners of war; but they were not sacrificed by means of a knife after the German Or the Scandinavian manner. They destroyed them by fire or they gave them to be devoured to enormous serpents who lived upon the altar and for the altar.