{p. 113}PART IIIThe LegendsCHAPTER I.THE NATURE OF MYTHS.IN a primitive people the mind of one generation precisely repeats the minds of all former generations; the construction of the intellectual nature varies no more, from age to age, than the form of the body or the color of the skin; the generations feel the same emotions, and think the same thoughts, and use the same expressions. And this is to be expected, for the brain is as much a part of the inheritable, material organization as the color of the eyes or the shape of the nose.The minds of men move automatically: no man thinks because he intends to think; he thinks, as he hungers and thirsts, under a great primal necessity; his thoughts come out from the inner depths of his being as the flower is developed by forces rising through the roots of the plant.The female bird says to herself, "The time is propitious, and now, of my own free will, and under the operation of my individual judgment, I will lay a nestful of eggs and batch a brood of children." But it is unconscious that it is moved by a physical necessity, which has constrained all its ancestors from the beginning of time,{p. 114}and which will constrain all its posterity to the end of time; that its will is nothing more than an expression of age, development, sunlight, food, and "the skyey influences." If it were otherwise it would be in the power of a generation to arrest the life of a race.All great thoughts are inspirations of God. They are part of the mechanism by which he advances the race; they are new varieties created out of old genera.There come bursts of creative force in history, when great thoughts are born, and then again Brahma, as the Hindoos say, goes to sleep for ages.But, when the fever of creation comes, the poet, the inventor, or the philosopher can no more arrest the development of his own thoughts than the female bird, by her will-power, can stop the growth of the ova within her, or arrest the fever in the blood which forces her to incubation.The man who wrote the Shakespeare plays recognized this involuntary operation of even his own transcendent intellect, when he said:"Our poesy is a gum which oozesFrom whence 'tis nourished."It came as the Arabian tree distilled its "medicinal gum"; it was the mere expression of an internal force, as much beyond his control as the production of the gum was beyond the control of the tree.But in primitive races mind repeats mind for thousands of years. If a tale is told at a million hearth-fires, the probabilities are small, indeed, that any innovation at one hearth-fire, however ingenious, will work its way into and modify the narration at all the rest. There is no printing-press to make the thoughts of one man the thoughts of thousands. While the innovator is modifying{p. 115}the tale, to his own satisfaction, to his immediate circle of hearers, the narrative is being repeated in its unchanged form at all the rest. The doctrine of chances is against innovation. The majority rules.When, however, a marvelous tale is told to the new generation--to the little ones sitting around with open eyes and gaping mouths--they naturally ask, "Wheredid all this occur?" The narrator must satisfy this curiosity, and so he replies, "On yonder mountain-top," or "In yonder cave."The story has come down without its geography, and a new geography is given it.Again, an ancient word or name may have a signification in the language in which the story is told different from that which it possessed in the original dialect, and, in the effort to make the old fact and the new language harmonize, the story-teller is forced, gradually, to modify the narrative; and, as this lingual difficulty occurs at every fireside, at every telling, an ingenious explanation comes at last to be generally accepted, and the ancient myth remains dressed in a new suit of linguistic clothes.But, as a rule, simple races repeat; they do not invent.One hundred years ago the highest faith was placed in written history, while the utmost contempt was felt for all legends. Whatever had been written down was regarded as certainly true; whatever had not been written down was necessarily false.We are reminded of that intellectual old brute, Dr. Samuel Johnson, trampling poor Macpherson under foot, like an enraged elephant, for daring to say that he had collected from the mountaineers of wild Scotland the poems of Ossian, and that they had been transmitted, from mouth to mouth, through ages. But the great epic of the son of Fingal will survive, part of the widening{p. 116}heritage of humanity, while Johnson is remembered only as a coarse-souled, ill-mannered incident in the development of the great English people.But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals.And then grave and able men,--philosophers, scientists,--were seen with note-books and pencils, going out into Hindoo villages, into German cottages, into Highland huts, into Indiantepees, in short, into all lands, taking down with the utmost care, accuracy, and respect, the fairy-stories, myths, and legends of the people;--as repeated by old peasant-women, "the knitters in the sun," or by "gray-haired warriors, famousèd for fights."And, when they came to put these narratives in due form, and, as it were, in parallel columns, it became apparent that they threw great floods of light upon the history of the world, and especially upon the question of the unity of the race. They proved that all the nations were repeating the same stories, in some cases in almost identical words, just as their ancestors had heard them, in some most ancient land, in "the dark background and abysm of time," when the progenitors of the German, Gaul, Gael, Greek, Roman, Hindoo, Persian, Egyptian, Arabian, and the red-people of America, dwelt together under the same roof-tree and used the same language.But, above all, these legends prove the absolute fidelity of the memory of the races.We are told that the bridge-piles driven by the Romans, two thousand years ago, in the rivers of Europe,{p. 117}from which the surrounding waters have excluded the decaying atmosphere, have remained altogether unchanged in their condition. If this has been the case for two thousand years, why would they not remain unchanged for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years? If the ice in which that Siberian mammoth was incased had preserved it intact for a hundred years, or a thousand years, why might it not have preserved it for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years?Place a universal legend in the minds of a race, let them repeat it from generation to generation, and time ceases to be an element in the problem.Legend has one great foe to its perpetuation--civilization.Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in Tennyson--a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces.Hence we find the legends of the primitive American Indians adhering quite closely to the events of the past, while the myths that survive at all among the civilized nations of Europe are found in garbled forms, and. only among the peasantry of remote districts.In the future more and more attention will be given to the myths of primitive races; they will be accounted as more reliable, and as reaching farther back in time than many things which we call history. Thoughtful men will{p. 118}analyze them, despising nothing; like a chemist who resolves some compound object into its original elements--the very combination constituting a history of the object.H. H. Bancroft describes myths as--"A mass of fragmentary truth and fiction, not open to rationalistic criticism; a partition wall of allegories, built of dead facts cemented with wild fancies; it looms ever between the immeasurable and the measurable past."But he adds:"Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present.""It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact."[1]An universal myth points to two conclusions:First, that it is based on some fact.Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated.A myth should be analyzed carefully; the fungi that have attached themselves to it should be brushed off; the core of fact should be separated from the decorations and errors of tradition.But above all, it must be remembered that we can not depend upon either the geography or the chronology of a myth. As I have shown, there is a universal tendency to give the old story a new habitat, and hence we have Ararats and Olympuses all over the world. In the same[1. "The Native Races of America," vol. iii, p. 14.]{p. 119}way the myth is always brought down and attached to more recent events:"All over Europe-in Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland--the exploits of the oldest mythological heroes, figuring in the Sagas, Eddas, and Nibelungen Lied, have been ascribed, in the folk-lore and ballads of the people, to Barbarossa, Charlemagne, Boabdil, Charles V, William Tell, Arthur, Robin Hood, Wallace, and St. Patrick."[1]In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact.What dramatist or novelist has ever yet made a plot which did not consist of events that had already transpired somewhere on earth? He might intensify events, concentrate and combine them, or amplify them; but that is all. Men in all ages have suffered from jealousy,--like Othello; have committed murders,--like Macbeth; have yielded to the sway of morbid minds,--like Hamlet; have stolen, lied, and debauched,--like Falstaff;--there are Oliver Twists, Bill Sykeses, and Nancies; Micawbers, Pickwicks, and Pecksniffs in every great city.There is nothing in the mind of man that has not preexisted in nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature? It was thought at one time that man had made the flying-dragon out of his own imagination; but we now know that the image of thepterodactylhad simply descended from generation to generation. Sindbad's great bird, theroc, was considered a flight of the Oriental fancy, until science revealed the bones of thedinornis. All the winged beasts breathing fire are simply a recollection of the comet.In fact, even with the patterns of nature before it, the[1. Bancroft, "Native Races," note, vol. iii, p. 17.]{p. 120}human mind has not greatly exaggerated them: it has never drawn a bird larger than thedinornisor a beast greater than the mammoth.It is utterly impossible that the races of the whole world, of all the continents and islands, could have preserved traditions from the most remote ages, of a comet having struck the earth, of the great heat, the conflagration, the cave-life, the age of darkness, and the return of the sun, and yet these things have had no basis of fact. It was not possible for the primitive mind to have imagined these things if they had never occurred.{p. 121}CHAPTER II.DID MAN EXIST BEFORE THE DRIFT?FIRST, let us ask ourselves this question, Did man exist before the Drift?If he did, he must have survived it; and he could hardly have passed through it without some remembrance of such a terrible event surviving in the traditions of the race.If he did not exist before the Drift, of course, no myths descriptive of it could have come down to us.This preliminary question must, then, be settled by testimony.Let us call our witnesses"The palæolithic hunter of the mid and late Pleistocene river-deposits in Europe belongs, as we have already shown, to a fauna which arrived in Britain before the lowering of the temperature produced glaciers and icebergs in our country; he may, therefore, be viewed as being probably pre-glacial."[1]Man had spread widely over the earth before the Drift; therefore, he had lived long on the earth. His remains have been found in Scotland, England, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Greece; in Africa, in Palestine, in India, and in the United States.[2]"Man was living in the valley of the lower Thames before the Arctic mammalia had taken full possession of[1. Dawkins's "Early Man in Britain," p. 169.2. Ibid., pp. 165, 166.]{p. 122 }the valley of the Thames, and before the big-nosed rhinoceros had become extinct."[1]Mr. Tidderman[2] writes that, among a number of bones obtained during the exploration of the Victoria Cave, near Settle, Yorkshire, there is one which Mr. Busk has identified ashuman. Mr. Busk says:"The bone is, I have no doubt, human; a portion of an unusually clumsy fibula, and in that respect not unlike the same bone in the Mentone skeleton."The deposit from which the bone was obtained is overlaid "by a bed of stiff glacial clay, containing ice-scratched bowlders." "Here then," says Geikie, "is direct proof that men lived in England prior to the last inter-glacial period."[3]The evidences are numerous, as I have shown, that when these deposits came upon the earth the face of the land was above the sea, and occupied by plants and animals.###SECTION AT ST. ACHEUL.The accompanying cut, taken from Sir John Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," page 364, represents the strata at St. Acheul, near Amiens, France.[1. Dawkins's "Early Man in Britain," p. 137.2. "Nature," November 6, 1873.3. "The Great Ice Age," p. 475.]{p. 123}The upper stratum (a) represents a brick earth, four to five feet in thickness, and containing a few angular flints. The next (b) is a thin layer of angular gravel, one to two feet in thickness. The next (c) is a bed of sandy marl, five to six feet in thickness. The lowest deposit (d)immediately overlies the chalk; it is a bed of partially rounded gravel, and, in this,human implements of flint have been found. The spot was used in the early Christian period as a cemetery;frepresents one of the graves, made fifteen hundred years ago;erepresents one of the ancient coffins, of which only the nails and clamps are left, every particle of the wood having perished.And, says Sir John Lubbock:"It is especially at thelower part" of these lowest deposits "that the flint implements occur."The bones of the mammoth, the wild bull, the deer, the horse, the rhinoceros, and the reindeer are found near the bottom of these strata mixed with the flint implements of men."All the fossils belong to animals which live on land; . . . we find no marine remains."[2]Remember that the Drift is unfossiliferous and unstratified; that it fellen masse, and that these remains are found in its lower part, orcaught between it and the rocks below it, and you can form a vivid picture of the sudden and terrible catastrophe. The trees were imbedded with man and the animals; the bones of men, smaller and more friable, probably perished, ground up in the tempest, while only their flint implements and the great bones of the larger animals, hard as stones, remain to tell the dreadful story. And yet some human bones[1. "Prehistoric Times," p. 366.2. Ibid., pp. 366, 367.]{p. 124}have been found; a lower jaw-bone was discovered in a pit at Moulinguignon, and a skull and other bones were found in the valley of the Seine by M. Bertrand.[1]And these discoveries have not been limited to river-gravels. In the Shrub Hill gravel-bed in England, "in the lowest part of it, numerous flint implements of the palæolithic type have been discovered."[2]We have, besides these sub-drift remains, the skulls of men who probably lived before the great cataclysm,--men who may have looked upon the very comet that smote the world. They represent two widely different races. One is "the Engis skull," so called from the cave of Engis, near Liége, where it was found by Dr. Schmerling. "It is a fair average human skull, which might," says Huxley, "have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage."[3] It represents a###THE ENGIS SKULL.civilized, if not a cultivated, race of men. It may represent a victim, a prisoner, held for a cannibalistic feast or a trader from a more civilized region.[1. "Prehistoric Times," p. 360.2. Ibid., p. 351.3. "Man's Place in Nature," p. 156.]{p. 125}In another cave, in the Neanderthal, near Hochdale, between Düsseldorf and Elberfeld, a skull was found which is the most ape-like of all known human crania. The mail to whom it belonged must have been a barbarian brute of the rudest possible type. Here is a representation of it.###THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL.I beg the reader to remember these skulls when he comes to read, a little further on, the legend told by an American Indian tribe of California, describing the marriage between the daughter of the gods and a son of the grizzly bears, from which union, we are told, came the Indian tribes. These skulls represent creatures as far apart, I was about to say, as gods and bears. The "Engis skull," with its full frontal brain-pan, its fine lines, and its splendidly arched dome, tells us of ages of cultivation and development in some favored center of the race; while the horrible and beast-like proportions of "the Neanderthal skull" speak, with no less certainty, of undeveloped, brutal, savage man, only a little above the gorilla in capacity;--a prowler, a robber, a murderer, a cave-dweller, a cannibal, a Cain.{p. 126}We shall see, as we go on in the legends of the races on both sides of the Atlantic, that they all looked to some central land, east of America and west of Europe, some island of the ocean, where dwelt a godlike race, and where alone, it would seem, the human race was preserved to repeople the earth, while these brutal representatives of the race, the Neanderthal people, were crushed out.And this is not mere theorizing. It is conceded, as the result of most extensive scientific research:1. That the great southern mammalia perished in Europe when the Drift came upon the earth.2. It is conceded that these two skulls are associated with the bones of these locally extinct animals, mingled together in the same deposits.3. The conclusion is, therefore, logically irresistible, that these skulls belonged to men who lived during or before the Drift Age.Many authorities support this proposition that man--palæolithic man, man of the mammoth and the mastodon--existed in the caves of Europe before the Drift."After having occupied the English caves for untold ages, palæolithic man disappeared for ever, and with him vanished many animals now either locally or wholly extinct."[1]Above the remains of man in these caves comes a deposit of stalagmite, twelve feet in thickness, indicating a vast period of time during which it was being formed, and during this timeman was absent.[2]Above this stalagmite comes another deposit of cave-earth:"The deposits immediatelyoverlyingthe stalagmite and cave-earth contain an almosttotally different assemblage[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 411.2. Ibid., p. 411.]{p. 127}of animal remains, along with relics of the neolithic, bronze, iron, and historic periods."There is no passage, but, on the contrary, asharp and abrupt breakbetween these later deposits and the underlying palæolithic accumulations."[1]Here we have the proof that man inhabited these caves for ages before the Drift; that he perished with the great mammals and disappeared; and that the twelve feet of stalagmite were formed while no men and few animals dwelt in Europe. But some fragment of the human race had escaped elsewhere, in some other region; there it multiplied and replenished the earth, and gradually extended and spread again over Europe, and reappeared in the cave-deposits above the stalagmite. And, in like manner, the animals gradually came in from the regions on which the Drift had not fallen.But the revelations of the last few years prove, not only that man lived during the Drift age, and that he dwelt on the earth when the Drift fell, but that he can be traced backward for ages before the Drift; and that he was contemporary with species of great animals that had run their course, and ceased to exist centuries, perhaps thousands of years, before the Drift.I quote a high authority:"Most of the human relics of any sort have been found in the more recent layers of the Drift. They have been discovered, however, not only in the older Drift, but also, though very rarely,in the underlying Tertiary. For instance, in the Upper Pliocene at St. Prest, near Chartres, were found stone implements and cuttings on bone, in connection with relics of a long-extinct elephant (Elephas meridionalis)that is wholly lacking in the Drift. During the past two years the evidences of human existence in the Tertiary period, i. e., previous to the age of mammoths[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 411.]{p. 128}of the Diluvial period, have multiplied, and by their multiplication give cumulative confirmation to each other. Even in the lower strata of the Miocene (the middle Tertiary) important discoveries of stone knives and bone-cuttings have been made, as at Thenay, department of Marne-et-Loire, and Billy, department of Allier, France. Professor J. D. Whitney, the eminent State geologist of California, reports similar discoveries there also. So, then, we may believe that before the last great upheaval of the Alps and Pyrenees, and while the yet luxuriant vegetation of the then (i. e., in the Tertiary period) paradisaic climate yet adorned Central Europe, man inhabited this region."[1]We turn to the American Continent and we find additional proofs of man's pre-glacial existence. The "American Naturalist," 1873, says:"The discoveries that are constantly being made in this country are proving that man existed on this continent as far back in geological time as on the European Continent; and it even seems that America, really the Old World, geologically, will soon prove to be the birthplace of the earliest race of man. One of the late and important discoveries is that by Mr. E. L. Berthoud, which is given in full, with a map, in the 'Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for 1872,' p. 46. Mr. Berthoud there reports the discovery of ancient fire-places, rude stone monuments, and implements of stone in great number and variety, in several places along Crow Creek, in Colorado, and also on several other rivers in the vicinity. These fire-places indicate several ancient sites of an unknown race differing entirely from the mound-builders and the present Indians, while the shells and other fossils found with the remains make it quite certain that the deposit in which the ancient sites are foundis as old as the Pliocene, and perhaps as the Miocene. As the fossil shells found with the relies of man are of estuary forms, and as the sites of the ancient towns are on extended[1. "Popular Science Monthly," April, 1875, p. 682.]{p. 129}points of land, and at the base of the ridges or bluffs, Mr. Berthoud thinks the evidence is strongly in favor of the locations having been near some ancient fresh-water lake, whose vestiges the present topography of the region favors."I quote the following from the "Scientific American" (1880):"The finding of numerous relies of a buried race on an ancient horizon,from twenty to thirty feet below the present level of country in Missouri and Kansas, has been noted. The St. Louis 'Republican' gives particulars of another find of an unmistakable character made last spring (1880) in Franklin County, Missouri, by Dr. R. W. Booth, who was engaged in iron-mining about three miles from Dry Branch, a station on the St. Louis and Santa Fé Railroad. At a depth ofeighteen feet below the surfacethe miners uncovered a human skull, with portions of the ribs, vertebral column, and collar-bone. With them were found two flint arrow-heads of the most primitive type, imperfect in shape and barbed.A few pieces of charcoal were also foundat the same time and place. Dr. Booth was fully aware of the importance of the discovery, and tried to preserve everything found, but upon touching the skull it crumbled to dust, and some of the other bones broke into small pieces and partly crumbled away; but enough was preserved to fully establish the fact that they are human bones."Some fifteen or twenty days subsequent to the first finding, at a depth oftwenty-four feet below the surface, other bones were found--a thigh-bone and a portion of the vertebra, and several pieces ofcharred wood, the bones apparently belonging to the first-found skeleton. In both cases the bones rested on a fibrous stratum, suspected at the time to be a fragment of coarse matting. This lay upon a floor of softbut solid iron-ore, which retained the imprint of the fibers. . . ."The indications are that the filled cavity had originally been a sort of cave, and that the supposed matting was more probably a layer of twigs, rushes, or weeds, which the inhabitants of the cave had used as a bed, as the fiber{p. 130}marks cross each other irregularly. The ore-bed in which the remains were found, and part of which seems to have formed after the period of human occupation of the cave, lies in the second (or saccharoidal) sandstone of the Lower Silurian."Note the facts: The remains of this man are found separated--part are eighteen feet below the surface, part twenty-four feet--that is, they aresix feet apart. How can we account for this condition of things, except by supposing that the poor savage had rushed for safety to his shallow rock-shelter, and had there been caught by the world-tempest, andtorn to piecesand deposited in fragments with thedébristhat filled his rude home?In California we encounter a still more surprising state of things.The celebrated Calaveras skull was found in a shaftone hundred and fifty feet deep, under five beds of lava and volcanic tufa, and four beds of auriferous gravel.The accompanying cut represents a plummet found in digging a well in the San Joaquin Valley, California,thirty feet below the surface.###PLUMMET FROM SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, CAL.Dr. Foster says:"In examining this beautiful relic, one is led almost instinctively to believe that it was used as a plummet, for the purpose of determining the perpendicular to the horizon [for building purposes?]; . . . when we consider its symmetry of form, the contrast of colors brought out by the process of grinding and polishing, and the delicate drilling of the hole through a material (syenite) so liable to fracture, we are free to say it affords an exhibition of the lapidary's skill superior to anything yet furnished by the Stone age of either continent."[1][1. "The Prehistoric Races of the United States," p. 55.]{p. 131}In Louisiana, layers of pottery,six inches thick, with remnants of matting and baskets, were foundtwelve feet below the surface, and underneath what Dr. Foster believes to be strata of the Drift.[1]I might fill pages with similar testimony; but I think I have given enough to satisfy the reader that mandidexist before the Drift.I shall discuss the subject still further when I come to consider, in a subsequent chapter, the question whether pre-glacial man was or was not civilized.[1. "The Prehistoric Races of the United States," p. 56.]{p. 132}CHAPTER III.LEGENDS OF THE COMING OF THE COMET.WE turn now to the legends of mankind.I shall try to divide them, so as to represent, in their order, the several stages of the great event. This, of course, will be difficult to do, for the same legend may detail several different parts of the same common story; and hence there may be more or less repetition; they will more or less overlap each other.And, first, I shall present one or two legends that most clearly represent the first coming of the monster, the dragon, the serpent, the wolf, the dog, the Evil One, the Comet.The second Hindoo "Avatar" gives the following description of the rapid advance of some dreadful object out of space, and its tremendous fall upon the earth:"By the power of God there issued from the essence of Brahma a being shaped like a boar,white and exceeding small; this being,in the space of an hour, grew to the size of an elephant of the largest size,and remained in the air."That is to say, it was an atmospheric, not a terrestrial creature."Brahma was astonished on beholding this figure, and discovered, by the force of internal penetration, that it could be nothing but the power of the Omnipotent which had assumed a body and become visible. He now felt that God is all in all, and all is from him, and all in him;{p. 133}and said to Mareechee and his sons (the attendant genii): 'A wonderful animal has emanated from my essence; at first of the smallest size, it has in one hour increased to this enormous bulk, and, without doubt, it is a portion of the almighty power.'"Brahma, an earthly king, was at first frightened by the terrible spectacle in the air, and then claimed that he had produced it himself!"They were engaged in this conversation when thatvara, or 'boar-form,' suddenly uttered a soundlike the loudest thunder, and the echo reverberated andshook all the quarters of the universe."This is the same terrible noise which, as I have already shown, would necessarily result from the carbureted hydrogen of the comet exploding in our atmosphere. The legend continues:"But still, under this dreadful awe of heaven, a certain wonderful divine confidence secretly animated the hearts of Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii, who immediately began praises and thanksgiving. Thatvara(boar-form) figure, hearing the power of the Vedas and Mantras from their mouths, again made a loud noise, andbecame a dreadful spectacle. Shaking thefull flowing manewhich hung down his neck on both sides, and erecting the humidhairsof his body, he proudly displayed his two most exceedingly white tusks; then, rolling about his wine-colored (red) eyes, and erecting histail, he descendedfrom the region of the air, and plunged headforemost into the water. The whole body of water was convulsed by the motion, and began to rise in waves, while the guardian spirit of the sea, being terrified, began to tremble for his domain and cry for mercy.[1]flow fully does this legend accord with the descriptions of comets given by astronomers, the "horrid hair," the mane, the animal-like head! Compare it with Mr.[1. Maurice's "Ancient History of Hindustan," vol. i, p. 304.]{p. 134}Lockyer's account of Coggia's comet, as seen through Newell's large refracting telescope at Ferndene, Gateshead, and which he described as having a head like "a fan-shaped projection of light, withear-like appendages, at each side, which sympathetically complemented each other at every change either of form or luminosity."We turn to the legends of another race:The Zendavesta of the ancient Persians[1] describes a period of "great innocence and happiness on earth."This represents, doubtless, the delightful climate of the Tertiary period, already referred to, when endless summer extended to the poles."There was a 'man-bull,' who resided on an elevated region, which the deity had assigned him."This was probably a line of kings or a nation, whose symbol was the bull, as we see in Bel or Baal, with the bull's horns, dwelling in some elevated mountainous region."At last an evil one, denominated Ahriman, corrupted the world. After havingdared to visit heaven" (that is, he appeared first in the high heavens), "hedescended upon the earth and assumed the form of a serpent."That is to say, a serpent-like comet struck the earth."The man-bull waspoisoned by his venom, and died in consequence of it. Meanwhile, Ahrimanthrew the whole universe into confusion(chaos), for that enemy of good mingled himself with everything, appeared everywhere, and sought to do mischief above and below."We shall find all through these legends allusions to the poisonous and deadly gases brought to the earth by the comet: we have already seen that the gases which are proved to be associated with comets are fatal to life.[1. Faber's "Horæ Mosaicæ," vol. i, p. 72.]{p. 135}And this, be it remembered, is not guess-work, but the revelation of the spectroscope.The traditions of the ancient Britons[1] tell us of an ancient time, when"The profligacy of mankind had provoked the great Supreme to send a pestilential wind upon the earth. A purepoison descended, every blast was death. At this time the patriarch, distinguished for his integrity,was shut up, together with his select company, in theinclosure with the strong door. (The cave?) Here the just ones were safe from injury.Presently a tempest of fire arose. It split the earth asunderto the great deep. The lake Llion burst its bounds, and the waves of the sea lifted themselves on high around the borders of Britain,the rain poured down from heaven, and the waters covered the earth."Here we have the whole story told briefly, but with the regular sequence of events:1. The poisonous gases.2. The people seek shelter in the caves.3. The earth takes fire.4. The earth is cleft open; the fiords are made, and the trap-rocks burst forth.5. The rain pours down.6. There is a season of floods.When we turn to the Greek legends, as recorded by one of their most ancient writers, Hesiod, we find the coming of the comet clearly depicted.We shall see here, and in many other legends, reference to the fact that there was more than one monster in the sky. This is in accordance with what we now know to be true of comets. They often appear in pairs or even triplets. Within the past few years we have seen Biela's comet divide and form two separate comets, pursuing[1. "Mythology of the British Druids," p. 226.]{p. 136}their course side by side. When the great comet of 1811 appeared, another of almost equal magnitude followed it. Seneca informs us that Ephoras, a Greek writer of the fourth century before Christ, had recorded the singular fact of a comet's separation into two parts."This statement was deemed incredible by the Roman philosopher. More recent observations of similar phenomena leave no room to question the historian's veracity."[1]The Chinese annals record the appearance ofthreecomets--one large and two smaller ones--at the same time, in the year 896 of our era."They traveled together for three days. The little ones disappeared first and then the large one."And again:"On June 27th, A. D. 416, two comets appeared in the constellation Hercules, and pursued nearly the same path."[2]If mere proximity to the earth served to split Biela's comet into two fragments, why might not a comet, which came near enough to strike the earth, be broken into several separate forms?So that there is nothing improbable in Hesiod's description of two or three aërial monsters appearing at or about the same time, or of one being the apparent offspring of the other, since a large comet may, like Biela's, have broken in two before the eyes of the people.Hesiod tells us that the Earth united with Night to do a terrible deed, by which the Heavens were much wronged. The Earth prepared a large sickle of white iron, with jagged teeth, and gave it to her son Cronus, and stationed him in ambush, and when Heaven came, Cronus, his son, grasped at him, and with his "huge sickle, long and jagged-toothed," cruelly wounded him.[1. Kirkwood, "Comets and Meteors," p. 60.2. Ibid., p. 51.]{p. 137}Was this jagged, white, sickle-shaped object a comet?"And Night bare also hateful Destiny, and black Fate, and Death, and Nemesis."And Hesiod tells us that "she," probably Night--"Brought forth another monster,irresistible, nowise like to mortal man or immortal gods, in a hollow cavern; the divine, stubborn-hearted Echidna (half-nymph, with dark eyes and fair cheeks; and half, on the other hand, aserpent, huge and terrible and vast),speckled, andflesh-devouring, 'neath caves of sacred Earth. . . . With her, they say that Typhaon (Typhon) associated in love, a terrible and lawless ravisher for the dark-eyed maid. . . . But she (Echidna) bare Chimæra,breathing resistless fire, fierce and huge, fleet-footed as well as strong; this monster had three heads: one, indeed, of a grim-visaged lion, one of a goat, and another of a serpent, a fierce dragon;###COMET OF 1862. Aspect of the head of the comet at nine in the evening, the 23d August, and the 24th August at the same hour.{p. 138}in front a lion, a dragon behind, and in the midst a goat,breathing forth the dread strength of burning fire. Her Pegasus slew and brave Bellerophon."The astronomical works show what weird, and fantastic, and goblin-like shapes the comets assume under the telescope. Look at the representation on page 137, from Guillemin's work,[1] of the appearance of the comet of 1862, giving the changes which took place in twenty-four hours. If we will imagine one of these monsters close to the earth, we can readily suppose that the excited people, looking at "the dreadful spectacle," (as the Hindoo legend calls it,) saw it taking the shapes of serpents, dragons, birds, and wolves.And Hesiod proceeds to tell us something more about this fiery, serpent-like monster:"But when Jove had driven the Titans out from Heaven, huge Earth bare her youngest-born son, Typhœus (Typhaon, Typhœus, Typhon), by the embrace of Tartarus (Hell), through golden Aphrodite (Venus), whose hands, indeed, are apt for deeds on the score of strength, and untiring the feet of the strong god; and from his shoulders there were a hundred heads of a serpent, a fierce dragon playing withdusky tongues" (tongues of fire and smoke?), "and from the eyes in his wondrous heads are sparkled beneath the brows; whilst from all his headsfire was gleaming, as he looked keenly. In all his terrible heads, too,were voices sending forth every kind of voice ineffable. For one while, indeed, they would utter sounds, so as for the gods to understand, and at another time, again, the voice of a loud-bellowing bull, untamable in force and proud in utterance; at another time, again, that of a lion possessing a daring spirit; at another time, again, they would sound like to whelps, wondrous to hear; and at another, he would hiss, and the lofty mountains resounded.[1. "The Heavens," p. 256.]{p. 139}"And, in sooth, then would there have been done a deed past remedy, and he, even he, would have reigned over mortals and immortals, unless, I wot, the sire of gods and men had quickly observed him. Harshly then he thundered, and heavily and terribly the earth re-echoed around; and the broad heaven above, and the sea and streams of ocean, and the abysses of earth. But beneath his immortal feetvast Olympus trembled, as the king uprose and earth groaned beneath. And theheat from both caught the dark-colored sea, both of the thunder and the lightning, andfire from the monster, the heat arising from the thunder-storms,winds, and burning lightning.And all earth, and heaven, and sea, were boiling; and huge billows roared around the shores about and around, beneath the violence of the gods; andunallayed quaking arose. Pluto trembled, monarch over the dead beneath; and the Titans under Tartarus, standing about Cronus, trembled also, on account ofthe unceasing tumult and dreadful contention. But Jove, when in truth he had raised high his wrath, and had taken his arms, his thunder and lightning, and smoking bolt, leaped up and smote him from Olympus, and scorched all around the wondrous heads of the terrible monster."But when at length he had quelled it, after having smitten it with blows, the monsterfell down, lamed, andhuge Earth groaned. But theflamefrom the lightning-blasted monsterflashed forth in the mountain hollows, hidden and rugged, when he was stricken, andmuch was the vast earth burnt and melted by the boundless vapor, like as pewter, heated by the art of youths, and by the well-bored melting-pit, or iron, which is the hardest of metals, subdued in the dells of the mountain by blazing fire, melts in the sacred earth, beneath the hands of Vulcan. So, I wot,was earth melted in the glare of burning fire. Then, troubled in spirit, he hurled him into wide Tartarus."[1]Here we have a very faithful and accurate narrative of the coming of the comet:[1. "Theogony."]{p. 140}Born of Night a monster appears, a serpent, huge, terrible, speckled, flesh-devouring. With her is another comet, Typhaon; they beget the Chimæra, that breathes resistless fire, fierce, huge, swift. And Typhaon, associated with both these, is the most dreadful monster of all, born of Hell and sensual sin, a serpent, a fierce dragon, many-headed, with dusky tongues and fire gleaming; sending forth dreadful and appalling noises, while mountains and fields rock with earthquakes; chaos has come; the earth, the sea boils; there is unceasing tumult and contention, and in the midst the monster, wounded and broken up,falls upon the earth; the earth groans under his weight, and there he blazes and burns for a time in the mountain fastnesses and desert places, melting the earth with boundless vapor and glaring fire.We will find legend after legend about this Typhon he runs through the mythologies of different nations. And as to his size and his terrible power, they all agree. He was no earth-creature. He moved in the air; he reached the skies:"According to Pindar the head of Typhon reached to the stars, his eyes darted fire, his hands extended from the East to the West, terrible serpents were twined about the middle of his body, and one hundred snakes took the place of fingers on his hands. Between him and the gods there was a dreadful war. Jupiter finally killed him with a flash of lightning, and buried him under Mount Etna."And there, smoking and burning, his great throes and writhings, we are told, still shake the earth, and threaten mankind:And with pale lips men say,'To-morrow, perchance to-day,Encelidas may arise! "'{p. 141}CHAPTER IV.RAGNAROKTHERE is in the legends of the Scandinavians a marvelous record of the coming of the Comet. It has been repeated generation after generation, translated into all languages, commented on, criticised, but never understood. It has been regarded as a wild, unmeaning rhapsody of words, or as a premonition of some future earth catastrophe.But look at it!The very name is significant. According to Professor Anderson's etymology of the word, it means "the darkness of the gods"; fromregin, gods, andrökr, darkness; but it may, more properly, be derived from the Icelandic, Danish, and Swedishregn, a rain, andrök, smoke, or dust; and it may mean the rain of dust, for the clay came first as dust; it is described in some Indian legends as ashes.First, there is, as in the tradition of the Druids, page 135,ante, the story of an age of crime.The Vala looks upon the world, and, as the "Elder Edda" tells us--There saw she wadeIn the heavy streams,Men--foul murderersAnd perjurers,And them who others' wivesSeduce to sin.Brothers slay brothersSisters' childrenShed each other's blood. {p. 142}Hard is the world!Sensual sin grows huge.There are sword-ages, axe-ages;Shields are cleft in twain;Storm-ages, murder ages;Till the world falls dead,And men no longer spareOr pity one another."[1]The world has ripened for destruction; and "Ragnarok," the darkness of the gods, or the rain of dust and ashes, comes to complete the work.The whole story is told with the utmost detail, and we shall see that it agrees, in almost every particular, with what reason assures us must have happened."There are three winters," or years, "during which great wars rage over the world." Mankind has reached a climax of wickedness. Doubtless it is, as now, highly civilized in some regions, while still barbarian in others."Then happens that which will seem a great miracle: thatthe wolf devours the sun, and this will seem a great loss."That is, the Comet strikes the sun, or approaches so close to it that it seems to do so."The other wolf devours the moon, and this, too, will cause great mischief."We have seen that the comets often come in couples or triplets."The stars shall be hurled from heaven."This refers to the blazingdébrisof the Comet falling to the earth."Then it shall come to pass that the earth will shake so violently that trees will be torn up by the roots, the[1. Anderson, "Norse Mythology," p. 416.]{p. 143}mountains will topple down, and all bonds and fetters will be broken and snapped."Chaos has come again. How closely does all this agree with Hesiod's description of the shaking earth and the universal conflict of nature?"The Fenris-wolf gets loose."This, we shall see, is the name of one of the comets."The sea rushes over the earth, for the Midgard-serpent writhes in giant rage, and seeks to gain the land."The Midgard-serpent is the name of another comet; it strives to reach the earth; its proximity disturbs the oceans. And then follows an inexplicable piece of mythology:"The ship that is called Naglfar also becomes loose. It is made of the nails of dead men; wherefore it is worth warning that, when a man dies with unpared nails, he supplies a large amount of materials for the building of this ship, which both gods and men wish may be finished as late as possible. But in this flood Naglfar gets afloat. The giant Hrym is its steersman."The Fenris-wolf advances with wide-open mouth;the upper jaw reaches to heaven and the lower jaw is on the earth."That is to say, the comet extends from the earth to the sun."He would open it still wider had he room."That is to say, the space between the sun and earth is not great enough; the tail of the comet reaches even beyond the earth."Fire flashes from his eyes and nostrils."A recent writer says:"When bright comets happen to come very near to the sun, and are subjected to close observation under the{p. 144}advantages which the fine telescopes of the present day afford, a series of remarkable changes is found to take place in their luminous configuration. First,jets of bright light start out from the nucleus, and move through the fainter haze of the coma toward the sun; and then these jets are turned backward round the edge of the coma, and stream from it, behind the comet, until they are fashioned into a tail."[1]"The Midgard-serpent vomits forthvenom, defiling all the air and the sea; he is very terrible, and places himselfside by side with the wolf."The two comets move together, like Biela's two fragments; and they give out poison--the carbureted-hydrogen gas revealed by the spectroscope."In the midst of this clash and din the heavens are rent in twain, and the sons of Muspelheim come riding through the opening."Muspelheim, according to Professor Anderson,[2] means the day of judgment."Muspelsignifies an abode of fire, peopled by fiends. So that this passage means, that the heavens are split open, or appear to be, by the great shining comet, or comets, striking the earth; it is a world of fire; it is the Day of Judgment."Surt rides first, and before him and afterhim flames burning fire."Surt is a demon associated with the comet;[3] he is the same as the destructive god of the Egyptian mythology, Set, who destroys the sun. It may mean the blazing nucleus of the comet."He has a very good sword that shines brighter than the sun. As they ride over Bifrost it breaks to pieces, as has before been stated."[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 207.2. "Norse Mythology," p. 454.3. Ibid., p. 458.]{p. 145}Bifrost, we shall have reason to see hereafter, was a prolongation of land westward from Europe, which connected the British Islands with the island-home of the gods, or the godlike race of men.There are geological proofs that such a land once existed. A writer, Thomas Butler Gunn, in a recent number of an English publication,[1] says:"Tennyson's 'Voyage of Maeldune' is a magnificent allegorical expansion of this idea; and the laureate has also finely commemorated the old belief in the country of Lyonnesse,extending beyond the boundsof Cornwall:'A land of old upheaven from the abyssBy fire,to sink into the abyss again;Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,And the long mountains ended in a coastOf ever-shifting sands, and far awayThe phantom circle of a moaning sea.'"Cornishmen of the last generation used to tell stories of strange household relics picked up at the very low tides, nay, even of the quaint habitations seen fathoms deep in the water."There are those who believe that these Scandinavian Eddas came, in the first instance, from Druidical Briton sources.The Edda may be interpreted to mean that the Comet strikes the planet west of Europe, and crushes down some land in that quarter, called "the bridge of Bifrost."Then follows a mighty battle between the gods and the Comet. It can have, of course, but one termination; but it will recur again and again in the legends of different nations. It was necessary that the gods, the protectors of mankind, should struggle to defend them against these strange and terrible enemies. But their very helplessness[1. "All the Year Round."]{p. 146}and their deaths show how immense was the calamity which had befallen the world.The Edda continues:"The sons of Muspel direct their course to the plain which is called Vigrid. Thither repair also the Fenris-wolf and the Midgard-serpent."Both the comets have fallen on the earth."To this place have also come Loke" (the evil genius of the Norse mythology) "and Hrym, and with him all the Frost giants. In Loke's company are all the friends of Hel" (the goddess of death). "The sons of Muspel have then their efficient bands alone by themselves. The plain Vigrid is one hundred miles (rasts) on each side."That is to say, all these evil forces, the comets, the fire, the devil, and death, have taken possession of the great plain, the heart of the civilized land. The scene is located in this spot, because probably it was from this spot the legends were afterward dispersed to all the world.It is necessary for the defenders of mankind to rouse themselves. There is no time to be lost, and, accordingly, we learn--"While these things are happening, Heimdal" (he was the guardian of the Bifrost-bridge) "stands up, blows with all his might in the Gjallar-horn andawakens all the gods, who thereupon hold counsel. Odin rides to Mimer's well to ask advice of Mimer for himself and his folk."Then quivers the ash Ygdrasil, and all things in heaven and earth tremble."The ash Ygdrasil is the tree-of-life; the tree of the ancient tree-worship; the tree which stands on the top of the pyramid in the island-birth place of the Aztec race; the tree referred to in the Hindoo legends."The asas" (the godlike men) "and the einherjes" (the heroes) "arm themselves and speed forth to the battlefield. Odin rides first; with his golden helmet, resplendent{p. 147}byrnie, and his spear Gungner, he advances against the Fenris-wolf" (the first comet). "Thor stands by his side, but can give him no assistance, for he has his hands full in his struggle with the Midgard-serpent" (the second comet). "Frey encounters Surt, and heavy blows are exchanged ere Frey falls. The cause of his death is that he has not that good sword which he gave to Skirner. Even the dog Garm," (another comet), "that was bound before the Gnipa-cave, gets loose. He is the greatest plague. He contends with Tyr, and they kill each other. Thor gets great renown by slaying the Midgard-serpent, but retreats only nine paces when he falls to the earth dead,poisoned by the venom that the serpent blows upon him."He has breathed the carbureted-hydrogen gas!"The wolf swallows Odin, and thus causes his death; but Vidar immediately turns and rushes at the wolf, placing one foot on his nether jaw.["On this foot he has the shoe, for which materials have been gathering through all ages, namely, the strips of leather which men cut off from the toes and heels of shoes; wherefore he who wishes to render assistance to the asas must cast these strips away."]This last paragraph, like that concerning the ship Naglfar, is probably the interpolation of some later age. The narrative continues:"With one hand Vidar seizes the upper jaw of the wolf, and thus rends asunder his mouth. Thus the wolf perishes. Loke fights with Heimdal, and they kill each other.Thereupon Surt flings fire over the earth, and burns up all the world."This narrative is from the Younger Edda. The Elder Edda is to the same purpose, but there are more allusions to the effect of the catastrophe on the earthThe eagle screams,And with pale beak tears corpses. . . .Mountains dash together, {p. 148}Heroes go the way to Hel,And heaven is rent in twain. . . .All men abandon their homesteadsWhen the warder of MidgardIn wrath slays the serpent.The sun grows dark,The earth sinks into the sea,The bright starsFrom heaven vanish;Fire rages,Heat blazes,And high flames play'Gainst heaven itself"And what follow then? Ice and cold and winter. For although these things come first in the narrative of the Edda, yet we are told that "before these" things, to wit, the cold winters, there occurred the wickedness of the world, and the wolves and the serpent made their appearance. So that the events transpired in the order in which I have given them."First there is a winter called the Fimbul winter,""The mighty, the great, the iron winter,"[1]"'When snow drives from. all quarters, the frosts are so severe, the winds so keen, there is no joy in the sun.There are three such winters in succession, without any intervening summer."Here we have the Glacial period which followed the Drift. Three years of incessant wind, and snow, and intense cold.The Elder Edda says, speaking of the Fenris-wolf:"It feeds on the bodiesOf men, when they dieThe seats of the godsIt stains with red blood."[1. "Norse Mythology," p. 444.]{p. 149}This probably refers to the iron-stained red clay cast down by the Comet over a large part of the earth; the "seats of the gods" means the home of the god-like race, which was doubtless covered, like Europe and America, with red clay; the waters which ran from it must have been the color of blood."The Sunshine blackensIn the summers thereafter,And the weather grows bad."In the Younger Edda (p. 57) we are given a still more precise description of the Ice age:"Replied Har, explaining, that as soon as the streams, that are called Elivogs" (the rivers from under ice), "had came so far that the venomous yeast" (the clay?) "which flowed with them hardened, as does dross that runs from the fire, then it turned" (as) "into ice. And when this ice stopped and flowed no more, then gathered over it the drizzling rain that arose from the venom" (the clay), "and froze into rime" (ice), "and one layer of ice was laid upon another clear into the Ginungagap."Ginungagap, we are told,[1] was the name applied in the eleventh century by the Northmen to the ocean between Greenland and Vinland, or America. It doubtless meant originally the whole of the Atlantic Ocean. The clay, when it first fell, was probably full of chemical elements, which rendered it, and the waters which filtered through it, unfit for human use; clay waters are, to this day, the worst in the world."Then said Jafnhar: 'All that part of Ginungagap that turns to the north' (the north Atlantic) 'was filled with thick and heavy ice and rime, and everywhere within were drizzling rains and gusts. But the south part of Ginungagap was lighted up by the glowing sparks that flew out of Muspelheim.'"[1. "Norse Mythology," p. 447.]{p. 150}The ice and rime to the north represent the age of ice and snow. Muspelheim was the torrid country of the south, over which the clouds could not yet form in consequence of the heat--Africa.But it can not last forever. The clouds disappear; the floods find their way back to the ocean; nature begins to decorate once more the scarred and crushed face of the world. But where is the human race? The "Younger Edda" tells us:"During the conflagration caused by Surt's fire, a woman by the name of Lif and a man named Lifthraser lie concealed in Hodmimer's hold, or forest. The dew of the dawn serves them for food, and so great a race shall spring from them, that their descendants shall soon spread over the whole earth."[1]The "Elder Edda" says:"Lif and LifthraserWill lie hidIn Hodmimer's-holt;The morning dewThey have for food.From them are the races descended."Holt is a grove, or forest, or hold; it was probably a cave. We shall see that nearly all the legends refer to the caves in which mankind escaped from destruction.This statement,"From them are the races descended,"shows that this is not prophecy, but history; it refers to the past, not to the future; it describes not a Day of Judgment to come, but one that has already fallen on the human family.Two others, of the godlike race, also escaped in some[1. "Norse Mythology" p. 429.]{p. 151}way not indicated; Vidar and Vale are their names. They, too, had probably taken refuge in some cavern."Neither the sea nor Surt's fire had harmed them, and they dwell on the plains of Ida, where Asgardwas before. Thither come also the sons of Thor, Mode, and Magne, and they have Mjolner.Then come Balder and Hoder from Hel.Mode and Magne are children of Thor; they belong to the godlike race. They, too, have escaped. Mjolner is Thor's hammer. Balder is the Sun; he has returned from the abode of death, to which the comet consigned him. Hoder is the Night.All this means that the fragments and remnants of humanity reassemble on the plain of Ida--the plain of Vigrid--where the battle was fought. They possess the works of the old civilization, represented by Thor's hammer; and the day and night once more return after the long midnight blackness.And the Vala looks again upon a renewed and rejuvenated world:"She sees ariseThe second time.From the sea, the earth,Completely green.The cascades fall,The eagle soars,From lofty mountsPursues its prey."It is once more the glorious, the sun-lighted world the world of flashing seas, dancing streams, and green leaves; with the eagle, high above it all,"Batting the sunny ceiling of the globeWith his dark wings;"while"The wild cataracts leap in glory."{p. 152}What history, what poetry, what beauty, what inestimable pictures of an infinite past have lain hidden away in these Sagas--the despised heritage of all the blue-eyed, light-haired races of the world!Rome and Greece can not parallel this marvelous story:The gods conveneOn Ida's plains,And talk of the powerfulMidgard-serpent;They call to mindThe Fenris-wolfAnd the ancient runesOf the mighty Odin."What else can mankind think of, or dream of, or talk of for the next thousand years but this awful, this unparalleled calamity through which the race has passed?A long-subsequent but most ancient and cultivated people, whose memory has, for us, almost faded from the earth, will thereafter embalm the great drama in legends, myths, prayers, poems, and sagas; fragments of which are found to-day dispersed through all literatures in all lands; some of them, as we shall see, having found their way even into the very Bible revered alike of Jew and Christian:The Edda continues,"Then againThe wonderful Golden tabletsAre found in the grassIn time's morning,The leader of the godsAnd Odin's racePossessed them."And what a find was that! This poor remnant of humanity discovers "the golden tablets" of the former{p. 153}civilization. Doubtless, the inscribed tablets, by which the art of writing survived to the race; for what would tablets be without inscriptions? For they talk of "the ancient runes of mighty Odin," that is, of the runic letters, the alphabetical writing. And we shall see hereafter that this view is confirmed from other sources.There follows a happy age:"The fields unsownYield their growth;All ills cease.Balder comes.Hoder and Balder,Those heavenly gods,Dwell together in Odin's halls."The great catastrophe is past. Man is saved, The world is once more fair. The sun shines again in heaven. Night and day follow each other in endless revolution around the happy globe. Ragnarok is past.{p. 154}CHAPTER V.THE CONFLAGRATION OF PHAËTONNow let us turn to the mythology of the Latins, as preserved in the pages of Ovid, one of the greatest of the poets of ancient Rome.[1]Here we have the burning of the world involved in the myth of Phaëton, son of Phœbus--Apollo--the Sun--who drives the chariot of his father; he can not control the horses of the Sun, they run away with him; they come so near the earth as to set it on fire, and Phaëton is at last killed by Jove, as he killed Typhon in the Greek legends, to save heaven and earth from complete and common ruin.This is the story of the conflagration as treated by a civilized mind, explained by a myth, and decorated with the flowers and foliage of poetry.
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IN a primitive people the mind of one generation precisely repeats the minds of all former generations; the construction of the intellectual nature varies no more, from age to age, than the form of the body or the color of the skin; the generations feel the same emotions, and think the same thoughts, and use the same expressions. And this is to be expected, for the brain is as much a part of the inheritable, material organization as the color of the eyes or the shape of the nose.
The minds of men move automatically: no man thinks because he intends to think; he thinks, as he hungers and thirsts, under a great primal necessity; his thoughts come out from the inner depths of his being as the flower is developed by forces rising through the roots of the plant.
The female bird says to herself, "The time is propitious, and now, of my own free will, and under the operation of my individual judgment, I will lay a nestful of eggs and batch a brood of children." But it is unconscious that it is moved by a physical necessity, which has constrained all its ancestors from the beginning of time,
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and which will constrain all its posterity to the end of time; that its will is nothing more than an expression of age, development, sunlight, food, and "the skyey influences." If it were otherwise it would be in the power of a generation to arrest the life of a race.
All great thoughts are inspirations of God. They are part of the mechanism by which he advances the race; they are new varieties created out of old genera.
There come bursts of creative force in history, when great thoughts are born, and then again Brahma, as the Hindoos say, goes to sleep for ages.
But, when the fever of creation comes, the poet, the inventor, or the philosopher can no more arrest the development of his own thoughts than the female bird, by her will-power, can stop the growth of the ova within her, or arrest the fever in the blood which forces her to incubation.
The man who wrote the Shakespeare plays recognized this involuntary operation of even his own transcendent intellect, when he said:
"Our poesy is a gum which oozesFrom whence 'tis nourished."
"Our poesy is a gum which oozesFrom whence 'tis nourished."
"Our poesy is a gum which oozesFrom whence 'tis nourished."
It came as the Arabian tree distilled its "medicinal gum"; it was the mere expression of an internal force, as much beyond his control as the production of the gum was beyond the control of the tree.
But in primitive races mind repeats mind for thousands of years. If a tale is told at a million hearth-fires, the probabilities are small, indeed, that any innovation at one hearth-fire, however ingenious, will work its way into and modify the narration at all the rest. There is no printing-press to make the thoughts of one man the thoughts of thousands. While the innovator is modifying
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the tale, to his own satisfaction, to his immediate circle of hearers, the narrative is being repeated in its unchanged form at all the rest. The doctrine of chances is against innovation. The majority rules.
When, however, a marvelous tale is told to the new generation--to the little ones sitting around with open eyes and gaping mouths--they naturally ask, "Wheredid all this occur?" The narrator must satisfy this curiosity, and so he replies, "On yonder mountain-top," or "In yonder cave."
The story has come down without its geography, and a new geography is given it.
Again, an ancient word or name may have a signification in the language in which the story is told different from that which it possessed in the original dialect, and, in the effort to make the old fact and the new language harmonize, the story-teller is forced, gradually, to modify the narrative; and, as this lingual difficulty occurs at every fireside, at every telling, an ingenious explanation comes at last to be generally accepted, and the ancient myth remains dressed in a new suit of linguistic clothes.
But, as a rule, simple races repeat; they do not invent.
One hundred years ago the highest faith was placed in written history, while the utmost contempt was felt for all legends. Whatever had been written down was regarded as certainly true; whatever had not been written down was necessarily false.
We are reminded of that intellectual old brute, Dr. Samuel Johnson, trampling poor Macpherson under foot, like an enraged elephant, for daring to say that he had collected from the mountaineers of wild Scotland the poems of Ossian, and that they had been transmitted, from mouth to mouth, through ages. But the great epic of the son of Fingal will survive, part of the widening
{p. 116}
heritage of humanity, while Johnson is remembered only as a coarse-souled, ill-mannered incident in the development of the great English people.
But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals.
And then grave and able men,--philosophers, scientists,--were seen with note-books and pencils, going out into Hindoo villages, into German cottages, into Highland huts, into Indiantepees, in short, into all lands, taking down with the utmost care, accuracy, and respect, the fairy-stories, myths, and legends of the people;--as repeated by old peasant-women, "the knitters in the sun," or by "gray-haired warriors, famousèd for fights."
And, when they came to put these narratives in due form, and, as it were, in parallel columns, it became apparent that they threw great floods of light upon the history of the world, and especially upon the question of the unity of the race. They proved that all the nations were repeating the same stories, in some cases in almost identical words, just as their ancestors had heard them, in some most ancient land, in "the dark background and abysm of time," when the progenitors of the German, Gaul, Gael, Greek, Roman, Hindoo, Persian, Egyptian, Arabian, and the red-people of America, dwelt together under the same roof-tree and used the same language.
But, above all, these legends prove the absolute fidelity of the memory of the races.
We are told that the bridge-piles driven by the Romans, two thousand years ago, in the rivers of Europe,
{p. 117}
from which the surrounding waters have excluded the decaying atmosphere, have remained altogether unchanged in their condition. If this has been the case for two thousand years, why would they not remain unchanged for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years? If the ice in which that Siberian mammoth was incased had preserved it intact for a hundred years, or a thousand years, why might it not have preserved it for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years?
Place a universal legend in the minds of a race, let them repeat it from generation to generation, and time ceases to be an element in the problem.
Legend has one great foe to its perpetuation--civilization.
Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in Tennyson--a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces.
Hence we find the legends of the primitive American Indians adhering quite closely to the events of the past, while the myths that survive at all among the civilized nations of Europe are found in garbled forms, and. only among the peasantry of remote districts.
In the future more and more attention will be given to the myths of primitive races; they will be accounted as more reliable, and as reaching farther back in time than many things which we call history. Thoughtful men will
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analyze them, despising nothing; like a chemist who resolves some compound object into its original elements--the very combination constituting a history of the object.
H. H. Bancroft describes myths as--
"A mass of fragmentary truth and fiction, not open to rationalistic criticism; a partition wall of allegories, built of dead facts cemented with wild fancies; it looms ever between the immeasurable and the measurable past."
But he adds:
"Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present."
"It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact."[1]
An universal myth points to two conclusions:
First, that it is based on some fact.
Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated.
A myth should be analyzed carefully; the fungi that have attached themselves to it should be brushed off; the core of fact should be separated from the decorations and errors of tradition.
But above all, it must be remembered that we can not depend upon either the geography or the chronology of a myth. As I have shown, there is a universal tendency to give the old story a new habitat, and hence we have Ararats and Olympuses all over the world. In the same
[1. "The Native Races of America," vol. iii, p. 14.]
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way the myth is always brought down and attached to more recent events:
"All over Europe-in Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland--the exploits of the oldest mythological heroes, figuring in the Sagas, Eddas, and Nibelungen Lied, have been ascribed, in the folk-lore and ballads of the people, to Barbarossa, Charlemagne, Boabdil, Charles V, William Tell, Arthur, Robin Hood, Wallace, and St. Patrick."[1]
In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact.
What dramatist or novelist has ever yet made a plot which did not consist of events that had already transpired somewhere on earth? He might intensify events, concentrate and combine them, or amplify them; but that is all. Men in all ages have suffered from jealousy,--like Othello; have committed murders,--like Macbeth; have yielded to the sway of morbid minds,--like Hamlet; have stolen, lied, and debauched,--like Falstaff;--there are Oliver Twists, Bill Sykeses, and Nancies; Micawbers, Pickwicks, and Pecksniffs in every great city.
There is nothing in the mind of man that has not preexisted in nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature? It was thought at one time that man had made the flying-dragon out of his own imagination; but we now know that the image of thepterodactylhad simply descended from generation to generation. Sindbad's great bird, theroc, was considered a flight of the Oriental fancy, until science revealed the bones of thedinornis. All the winged beasts breathing fire are simply a recollection of the comet.
In fact, even with the patterns of nature before it, the
[1. Bancroft, "Native Races," note, vol. iii, p. 17.]
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human mind has not greatly exaggerated them: it has never drawn a bird larger than thedinornisor a beast greater than the mammoth.
It is utterly impossible that the races of the whole world, of all the continents and islands, could have preserved traditions from the most remote ages, of a comet having struck the earth, of the great heat, the conflagration, the cave-life, the age of darkness, and the return of the sun, and yet these things have had no basis of fact. It was not possible for the primitive mind to have imagined these things if they had never occurred.
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FIRST, let us ask ourselves this question, Did man exist before the Drift?
If he did, he must have survived it; and he could hardly have passed through it without some remembrance of such a terrible event surviving in the traditions of the race.
If he did not exist before the Drift, of course, no myths descriptive of it could have come down to us.
This preliminary question must, then, be settled by testimony.
Let us call our witnesses
"The palæolithic hunter of the mid and late Pleistocene river-deposits in Europe belongs, as we have already shown, to a fauna which arrived in Britain before the lowering of the temperature produced glaciers and icebergs in our country; he may, therefore, be viewed as being probably pre-glacial."[1]
Man had spread widely over the earth before the Drift; therefore, he had lived long on the earth. His remains have been found in Scotland, England, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Greece; in Africa, in Palestine, in India, and in the United States.[2]
"Man was living in the valley of the lower Thames before the Arctic mammalia had taken full possession of
[1. Dawkins's "Early Man in Britain," p. 169.
2. Ibid., pp. 165, 166.]
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the valley of the Thames, and before the big-nosed rhinoceros had become extinct."[1]
Mr. Tidderman[2] writes that, among a number of bones obtained during the exploration of the Victoria Cave, near Settle, Yorkshire, there is one which Mr. Busk has identified ashuman. Mr. Busk says:
"The bone is, I have no doubt, human; a portion of an unusually clumsy fibula, and in that respect not unlike the same bone in the Mentone skeleton."
The deposit from which the bone was obtained is overlaid "by a bed of stiff glacial clay, containing ice-scratched bowlders." "Here then," says Geikie, "is direct proof that men lived in England prior to the last inter-glacial period."[3]
The evidences are numerous, as I have shown, that when these deposits came upon the earth the face of the land was above the sea, and occupied by plants and animals.
###
SECTION AT ST. ACHEUL.
The accompanying cut, taken from Sir John Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," page 364, represents the strata at St. Acheul, near Amiens, France.
[1. Dawkins's "Early Man in Britain," p. 137.
2. "Nature," November 6, 1873.
3. "The Great Ice Age," p. 475.]
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The upper stratum (a) represents a brick earth, four to five feet in thickness, and containing a few angular flints. The next (b) is a thin layer of angular gravel, one to two feet in thickness. The next (c) is a bed of sandy marl, five to six feet in thickness. The lowest deposit (d)immediately overlies the chalk; it is a bed of partially rounded gravel, and, in this,human implements of flint have been found. The spot was used in the early Christian period as a cemetery;frepresents one of the graves, made fifteen hundred years ago;erepresents one of the ancient coffins, of which only the nails and clamps are left, every particle of the wood having perished.
And, says Sir John Lubbock:
"It is especially at thelower part" of these lowest deposits "that the flint implements occur."
The bones of the mammoth, the wild bull, the deer, the horse, the rhinoceros, and the reindeer are found near the bottom of these strata mixed with the flint implements of men.
"All the fossils belong to animals which live on land; . . . we find no marine remains."[2]
Remember that the Drift is unfossiliferous and unstratified; that it fellen masse, and that these remains are found in its lower part, orcaught between it and the rocks below it, and you can form a vivid picture of the sudden and terrible catastrophe. The trees were imbedded with man and the animals; the bones of men, smaller and more friable, probably perished, ground up in the tempest, while only their flint implements and the great bones of the larger animals, hard as stones, remain to tell the dreadful story. And yet some human bones
[1. "Prehistoric Times," p. 366.
2. Ibid., pp. 366, 367.]
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have been found; a lower jaw-bone was discovered in a pit at Moulinguignon, and a skull and other bones were found in the valley of the Seine by M. Bertrand.[1]
And these discoveries have not been limited to river-gravels. In the Shrub Hill gravel-bed in England, "in the lowest part of it, numerous flint implements of the palæolithic type have been discovered."[2]
We have, besides these sub-drift remains, the skulls of men who probably lived before the great cataclysm,--men who may have looked upon the very comet that smote the world. They represent two widely different races. One is "the Engis skull," so called from the cave of Engis, near Liége, where it was found by Dr. Schmerling. "It is a fair average human skull, which might," says Huxley, "have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage."[3] It represents a
###
THE ENGIS SKULL.
civilized, if not a cultivated, race of men. It may represent a victim, a prisoner, held for a cannibalistic feast or a trader from a more civilized region.
[1. "Prehistoric Times," p. 360.
2. Ibid., p. 351.
3. "Man's Place in Nature," p. 156.]
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In another cave, in the Neanderthal, near Hochdale, between Düsseldorf and Elberfeld, a skull was found which is the most ape-like of all known human crania. The mail to whom it belonged must have been a barbarian brute of the rudest possible type. Here is a representation of it.
###
THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL.
I beg the reader to remember these skulls when he comes to read, a little further on, the legend told by an American Indian tribe of California, describing the marriage between the daughter of the gods and a son of the grizzly bears, from which union, we are told, came the Indian tribes. These skulls represent creatures as far apart, I was about to say, as gods and bears. The "Engis skull," with its full frontal brain-pan, its fine lines, and its splendidly arched dome, tells us of ages of cultivation and development in some favored center of the race; while the horrible and beast-like proportions of "the Neanderthal skull" speak, with no less certainty, of undeveloped, brutal, savage man, only a little above the gorilla in capacity;--a prowler, a robber, a murderer, a cave-dweller, a cannibal, a Cain.
{p. 126}
We shall see, as we go on in the legends of the races on both sides of the Atlantic, that they all looked to some central land, east of America and west of Europe, some island of the ocean, where dwelt a godlike race, and where alone, it would seem, the human race was preserved to repeople the earth, while these brutal representatives of the race, the Neanderthal people, were crushed out.
And this is not mere theorizing. It is conceded, as the result of most extensive scientific research:
1. That the great southern mammalia perished in Europe when the Drift came upon the earth.
2. It is conceded that these two skulls are associated with the bones of these locally extinct animals, mingled together in the same deposits.
3. The conclusion is, therefore, logically irresistible, that these skulls belonged to men who lived during or before the Drift Age.
Many authorities support this proposition that man--palæolithic man, man of the mammoth and the mastodon--existed in the caves of Europe before the Drift.
"After having occupied the English caves for untold ages, palæolithic man disappeared for ever, and with him vanished many animals now either locally or wholly extinct."[1]
Above the remains of man in these caves comes a deposit of stalagmite, twelve feet in thickness, indicating a vast period of time during which it was being formed, and during this timeman was absent.[2]
Above this stalagmite comes another deposit of cave-earth:
"The deposits immediatelyoverlyingthe stalagmite and cave-earth contain an almosttotally different assemblage
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 411.
2. Ibid., p. 411.]
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of animal remains, along with relics of the neolithic, bronze, iron, and historic periods.
"There is no passage, but, on the contrary, asharp and abrupt breakbetween these later deposits and the underlying palæolithic accumulations."[1]
Here we have the proof that man inhabited these caves for ages before the Drift; that he perished with the great mammals and disappeared; and that the twelve feet of stalagmite were formed while no men and few animals dwelt in Europe. But some fragment of the human race had escaped elsewhere, in some other region; there it multiplied and replenished the earth, and gradually extended and spread again over Europe, and reappeared in the cave-deposits above the stalagmite. And, in like manner, the animals gradually came in from the regions on which the Drift had not fallen.
But the revelations of the last few years prove, not only that man lived during the Drift age, and that he dwelt on the earth when the Drift fell, but that he can be traced backward for ages before the Drift; and that he was contemporary with species of great animals that had run their course, and ceased to exist centuries, perhaps thousands of years, before the Drift.
I quote a high authority:
"Most of the human relics of any sort have been found in the more recent layers of the Drift. They have been discovered, however, not only in the older Drift, but also, though very rarely,in the underlying Tertiary. For instance, in the Upper Pliocene at St. Prest, near Chartres, were found stone implements and cuttings on bone, in connection with relics of a long-extinct elephant (Elephas meridionalis)that is wholly lacking in the Drift. During the past two years the evidences of human existence in the Tertiary period, i. e., previous to the age of mammoths
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 411.]
{p. 128}
of the Diluvial period, have multiplied, and by their multiplication give cumulative confirmation to each other. Even in the lower strata of the Miocene (the middle Tertiary) important discoveries of stone knives and bone-cuttings have been made, as at Thenay, department of Marne-et-Loire, and Billy, department of Allier, France. Professor J. D. Whitney, the eminent State geologist of California, reports similar discoveries there also. So, then, we may believe that before the last great upheaval of the Alps and Pyrenees, and while the yet luxuriant vegetation of the then (i. e., in the Tertiary period) paradisaic climate yet adorned Central Europe, man inhabited this region."[1]
We turn to the American Continent and we find additional proofs of man's pre-glacial existence. The "American Naturalist," 1873, says:
"The discoveries that are constantly being made in this country are proving that man existed on this continent as far back in geological time as on the European Continent; and it even seems that America, really the Old World, geologically, will soon prove to be the birthplace of the earliest race of man. One of the late and important discoveries is that by Mr. E. L. Berthoud, which is given in full, with a map, in the 'Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for 1872,' p. 46. Mr. Berthoud there reports the discovery of ancient fire-places, rude stone monuments, and implements of stone in great number and variety, in several places along Crow Creek, in Colorado, and also on several other rivers in the vicinity. These fire-places indicate several ancient sites of an unknown race differing entirely from the mound-builders and the present Indians, while the shells and other fossils found with the remains make it quite certain that the deposit in which the ancient sites are foundis as old as the Pliocene, and perhaps as the Miocene. As the fossil shells found with the relies of man are of estuary forms, and as the sites of the ancient towns are on extended
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," April, 1875, p. 682.]
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points of land, and at the base of the ridges or bluffs, Mr. Berthoud thinks the evidence is strongly in favor of the locations having been near some ancient fresh-water lake, whose vestiges the present topography of the region favors."
I quote the following from the "Scientific American" (1880):
"The finding of numerous relies of a buried race on an ancient horizon,from twenty to thirty feet below the present level of country in Missouri and Kansas, has been noted. The St. Louis 'Republican' gives particulars of another find of an unmistakable character made last spring (1880) in Franklin County, Missouri, by Dr. R. W. Booth, who was engaged in iron-mining about three miles from Dry Branch, a station on the St. Louis and Santa Fé Railroad. At a depth ofeighteen feet below the surfacethe miners uncovered a human skull, with portions of the ribs, vertebral column, and collar-bone. With them were found two flint arrow-heads of the most primitive type, imperfect in shape and barbed.A few pieces of charcoal were also foundat the same time and place. Dr. Booth was fully aware of the importance of the discovery, and tried to preserve everything found, but upon touching the skull it crumbled to dust, and some of the other bones broke into small pieces and partly crumbled away; but enough was preserved to fully establish the fact that they are human bones.
"Some fifteen or twenty days subsequent to the first finding, at a depth oftwenty-four feet below the surface, other bones were found--a thigh-bone and a portion of the vertebra, and several pieces ofcharred wood, the bones apparently belonging to the first-found skeleton. In both cases the bones rested on a fibrous stratum, suspected at the time to be a fragment of coarse matting. This lay upon a floor of softbut solid iron-ore, which retained the imprint of the fibers. . . .
"The indications are that the filled cavity had originally been a sort of cave, and that the supposed matting was more probably a layer of twigs, rushes, or weeds, which the inhabitants of the cave had used as a bed, as the fiber
{p. 130}
marks cross each other irregularly. The ore-bed in which the remains were found, and part of which seems to have formed after the period of human occupation of the cave, lies in the second (or saccharoidal) sandstone of the Lower Silurian."
Note the facts: The remains of this man are found separated--part are eighteen feet below the surface, part twenty-four feet--that is, they aresix feet apart. How can we account for this condition of things, except by supposing that the poor savage had rushed for safety to his shallow rock-shelter, and had there been caught by the world-tempest, andtorn to piecesand deposited in fragments with thedébristhat filled his rude home?
In California we encounter a still more surprising state of things.
The celebrated Calaveras skull was found in a shaftone hundred and fifty feet deep, under five beds of lava and volcanic tufa, and four beds of auriferous gravel.
The accompanying cut represents a plummet found in digging a well in the San Joaquin Valley, California,thirty feet below the surface.
###
PLUMMET FROM SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, CAL.
Dr. Foster says:
"In examining this beautiful relic, one is led almost instinctively to believe that it was used as a plummet, for the purpose of determining the perpendicular to the horizon [for building purposes?]; . . . when we consider its symmetry of form, the contrast of colors brought out by the process of grinding and polishing, and the delicate drilling of the hole through a material (syenite) so liable to fracture, we are free to say it affords an exhibition of the lapidary's skill superior to anything yet furnished by the Stone age of either continent."[1]
[1. "The Prehistoric Races of the United States," p. 55.]
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In Louisiana, layers of pottery,six inches thick, with remnants of matting and baskets, were foundtwelve feet below the surface, and underneath what Dr. Foster believes to be strata of the Drift.[1]
I might fill pages with similar testimony; but I think I have given enough to satisfy the reader that mandidexist before the Drift.
I shall discuss the subject still further when I come to consider, in a subsequent chapter, the question whether pre-glacial man was or was not civilized.
[1. "The Prehistoric Races of the United States," p. 56.]
{p. 132}
WE turn now to the legends of mankind.
I shall try to divide them, so as to represent, in their order, the several stages of the great event. This, of course, will be difficult to do, for the same legend may detail several different parts of the same common story; and hence there may be more or less repetition; they will more or less overlap each other.
And, first, I shall present one or two legends that most clearly represent the first coming of the monster, the dragon, the serpent, the wolf, the dog, the Evil One, the Comet.
The second Hindoo "Avatar" gives the following description of the rapid advance of some dreadful object out of space, and its tremendous fall upon the earth:
"By the power of God there issued from the essence of Brahma a being shaped like a boar,white and exceeding small; this being,in the space of an hour, grew to the size of an elephant of the largest size,and remained in the air."
That is to say, it was an atmospheric, not a terrestrial creature.
"Brahma was astonished on beholding this figure, and discovered, by the force of internal penetration, that it could be nothing but the power of the Omnipotent which had assumed a body and become visible. He now felt that God is all in all, and all is from him, and all in him;
{p. 133}
and said to Mareechee and his sons (the attendant genii): 'A wonderful animal has emanated from my essence; at first of the smallest size, it has in one hour increased to this enormous bulk, and, without doubt, it is a portion of the almighty power.'"
Brahma, an earthly king, was at first frightened by the terrible spectacle in the air, and then claimed that he had produced it himself!
"They were engaged in this conversation when thatvara, or 'boar-form,' suddenly uttered a soundlike the loudest thunder, and the echo reverberated andshook all the quarters of the universe."
This is the same terrible noise which, as I have already shown, would necessarily result from the carbureted hydrogen of the comet exploding in our atmosphere. The legend continues:
"But still, under this dreadful awe of heaven, a certain wonderful divine confidence secretly animated the hearts of Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii, who immediately began praises and thanksgiving. Thatvara(boar-form) figure, hearing the power of the Vedas and Mantras from their mouths, again made a loud noise, andbecame a dreadful spectacle. Shaking thefull flowing manewhich hung down his neck on both sides, and erecting the humidhairsof his body, he proudly displayed his two most exceedingly white tusks; then, rolling about his wine-colored (red) eyes, and erecting histail, he descendedfrom the region of the air, and plunged headforemost into the water. The whole body of water was convulsed by the motion, and began to rise in waves, while the guardian spirit of the sea, being terrified, began to tremble for his domain and cry for mercy.[1]
flow fully does this legend accord with the descriptions of comets given by astronomers, the "horrid hair," the mane, the animal-like head! Compare it with Mr.
[1. Maurice's "Ancient History of Hindustan," vol. i, p. 304.]
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Lockyer's account of Coggia's comet, as seen through Newell's large refracting telescope at Ferndene, Gateshead, and which he described as having a head like "a fan-shaped projection of light, withear-like appendages, at each side, which sympathetically complemented each other at every change either of form or luminosity."
We turn to the legends of another race:
The Zendavesta of the ancient Persians[1] describes a period of "great innocence and happiness on earth."
This represents, doubtless, the delightful climate of the Tertiary period, already referred to, when endless summer extended to the poles.
"There was a 'man-bull,' who resided on an elevated region, which the deity had assigned him."
This was probably a line of kings or a nation, whose symbol was the bull, as we see in Bel or Baal, with the bull's horns, dwelling in some elevated mountainous region.
"At last an evil one, denominated Ahriman, corrupted the world. After havingdared to visit heaven" (that is, he appeared first in the high heavens), "hedescended upon the earth and assumed the form of a serpent."
That is to say, a serpent-like comet struck the earth.
"The man-bull waspoisoned by his venom, and died in consequence of it. Meanwhile, Ahrimanthrew the whole universe into confusion(chaos), for that enemy of good mingled himself with everything, appeared everywhere, and sought to do mischief above and below."
We shall find all through these legends allusions to the poisonous and deadly gases brought to the earth by the comet: we have already seen that the gases which are proved to be associated with comets are fatal to life.
[1. Faber's "Horæ Mosaicæ," vol. i, p. 72.]
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And this, be it remembered, is not guess-work, but the revelation of the spectroscope.
The traditions of the ancient Britons[1] tell us of an ancient time, when
"The profligacy of mankind had provoked the great Supreme to send a pestilential wind upon the earth. A purepoison descended, every blast was death. At this time the patriarch, distinguished for his integrity,was shut up, together with his select company, in theinclosure with the strong door. (The cave?) Here the just ones were safe from injury.Presently a tempest of fire arose. It split the earth asunderto the great deep. The lake Llion burst its bounds, and the waves of the sea lifted themselves on high around the borders of Britain,the rain poured down from heaven, and the waters covered the earth."
Here we have the whole story told briefly, but with the regular sequence of events:
1. The poisonous gases.
2. The people seek shelter in the caves.
3. The earth takes fire.
4. The earth is cleft open; the fiords are made, and the trap-rocks burst forth.
5. The rain pours down.
6. There is a season of floods.
When we turn to the Greek legends, as recorded by one of their most ancient writers, Hesiod, we find the coming of the comet clearly depicted.
We shall see here, and in many other legends, reference to the fact that there was more than one monster in the sky. This is in accordance with what we now know to be true of comets. They often appear in pairs or even triplets. Within the past few years we have seen Biela's comet divide and form two separate comets, pursuing
[1. "Mythology of the British Druids," p. 226.]
{p. 136}
their course side by side. When the great comet of 1811 appeared, another of almost equal magnitude followed it. Seneca informs us that Ephoras, a Greek writer of the fourth century before Christ, had recorded the singular fact of a comet's separation into two parts.
"This statement was deemed incredible by the Roman philosopher. More recent observations of similar phenomena leave no room to question the historian's veracity."[1]
The Chinese annals record the appearance ofthreecomets--one large and two smaller ones--at the same time, in the year 896 of our era.
"They traveled together for three days. The little ones disappeared first and then the large one."
And again:
"On June 27th, A. D. 416, two comets appeared in the constellation Hercules, and pursued nearly the same path."[2]
If mere proximity to the earth served to split Biela's comet into two fragments, why might not a comet, which came near enough to strike the earth, be broken into several separate forms?
So that there is nothing improbable in Hesiod's description of two or three aërial monsters appearing at or about the same time, or of one being the apparent offspring of the other, since a large comet may, like Biela's, have broken in two before the eyes of the people.
Hesiod tells us that the Earth united with Night to do a terrible deed, by which the Heavens were much wronged. The Earth prepared a large sickle of white iron, with jagged teeth, and gave it to her son Cronus, and stationed him in ambush, and when Heaven came, Cronus, his son, grasped at him, and with his "huge sickle, long and jagged-toothed," cruelly wounded him.
[1. Kirkwood, "Comets and Meteors," p. 60.
2. Ibid., p. 51.]
{p. 137}
Was this jagged, white, sickle-shaped object a comet?
"And Night bare also hateful Destiny, and black Fate, and Death, and Nemesis."
And Hesiod tells us that "she," probably Night--
"Brought forth another monster,irresistible, nowise like to mortal man or immortal gods, in a hollow cavern; the divine, stubborn-hearted Echidna (half-nymph, with dark eyes and fair cheeks; and half, on the other hand, aserpent, huge and terrible and vast),speckled, andflesh-devouring, 'neath caves of sacred Earth. . . . With her, they say that Typhaon (Typhon) associated in love, a terrible and lawless ravisher for the dark-eyed maid. . . . But she (Echidna) bare Chimæra,breathing resistless fire, fierce and huge, fleet-footed as well as strong; this monster had three heads: one, indeed, of a grim-visaged lion, one of a goat, and another of a serpent, a fierce dragon;
###
COMET OF 1862. Aspect of the head of the comet at nine in the evening, the 23d August, and the 24th August at the same hour.
{p. 138}
in front a lion, a dragon behind, and in the midst a goat,breathing forth the dread strength of burning fire. Her Pegasus slew and brave Bellerophon."
The astronomical works show what weird, and fantastic, and goblin-like shapes the comets assume under the telescope. Look at the representation on page 137, from Guillemin's work,[1] of the appearance of the comet of 1862, giving the changes which took place in twenty-four hours. If we will imagine one of these monsters close to the earth, we can readily suppose that the excited people, looking at "the dreadful spectacle," (as the Hindoo legend calls it,) saw it taking the shapes of serpents, dragons, birds, and wolves.
And Hesiod proceeds to tell us something more about this fiery, serpent-like monster:
"But when Jove had driven the Titans out from Heaven, huge Earth bare her youngest-born son, Typhœus (Typhaon, Typhœus, Typhon), by the embrace of Tartarus (Hell), through golden Aphrodite (Venus), whose hands, indeed, are apt for deeds on the score of strength, and untiring the feet of the strong god; and from his shoulders there were a hundred heads of a serpent, a fierce dragon playing withdusky tongues" (tongues of fire and smoke?), "and from the eyes in his wondrous heads are sparkled beneath the brows; whilst from all his headsfire was gleaming, as he looked keenly. In all his terrible heads, too,were voices sending forth every kind of voice ineffable. For one while, indeed, they would utter sounds, so as for the gods to understand, and at another time, again, the voice of a loud-bellowing bull, untamable in force and proud in utterance; at another time, again, that of a lion possessing a daring spirit; at another time, again, they would sound like to whelps, wondrous to hear; and at another, he would hiss, and the lofty mountains resounded.
[1. "The Heavens," p. 256.]
{p. 139}
"And, in sooth, then would there have been done a deed past remedy, and he, even he, would have reigned over mortals and immortals, unless, I wot, the sire of gods and men had quickly observed him. Harshly then he thundered, and heavily and terribly the earth re-echoed around; and the broad heaven above, and the sea and streams of ocean, and the abysses of earth. But beneath his immortal feetvast Olympus trembled, as the king uprose and earth groaned beneath. And theheat from both caught the dark-colored sea, both of the thunder and the lightning, andfire from the monster, the heat arising from the thunder-storms,winds, and burning lightning.And all earth, and heaven, and sea, were boiling; and huge billows roared around the shores about and around, beneath the violence of the gods; andunallayed quaking arose. Pluto trembled, monarch over the dead beneath; and the Titans under Tartarus, standing about Cronus, trembled also, on account ofthe unceasing tumult and dreadful contention. But Jove, when in truth he had raised high his wrath, and had taken his arms, his thunder and lightning, and smoking bolt, leaped up and smote him from Olympus, and scorched all around the wondrous heads of the terrible monster.
"But when at length he had quelled it, after having smitten it with blows, the monsterfell down, lamed, andhuge Earth groaned. But theflamefrom the lightning-blasted monsterflashed forth in the mountain hollows, hidden and rugged, when he was stricken, andmuch was the vast earth burnt and melted by the boundless vapor, like as pewter, heated by the art of youths, and by the well-bored melting-pit, or iron, which is the hardest of metals, subdued in the dells of the mountain by blazing fire, melts in the sacred earth, beneath the hands of Vulcan. So, I wot,was earth melted in the glare of burning fire. Then, troubled in spirit, he hurled him into wide Tartarus."[1]
Here we have a very faithful and accurate narrative of the coming of the comet:
[1. "Theogony."]
{p. 140}
Born of Night a monster appears, a serpent, huge, terrible, speckled, flesh-devouring. With her is another comet, Typhaon; they beget the Chimæra, that breathes resistless fire, fierce, huge, swift. And Typhaon, associated with both these, is the most dreadful monster of all, born of Hell and sensual sin, a serpent, a fierce dragon, many-headed, with dusky tongues and fire gleaming; sending forth dreadful and appalling noises, while mountains and fields rock with earthquakes; chaos has come; the earth, the sea boils; there is unceasing tumult and contention, and in the midst the monster, wounded and broken up,falls upon the earth; the earth groans under his weight, and there he blazes and burns for a time in the mountain fastnesses and desert places, melting the earth with boundless vapor and glaring fire.
We will find legend after legend about this Typhon he runs through the mythologies of different nations. And as to his size and his terrible power, they all agree. He was no earth-creature. He moved in the air; he reached the skies:
"According to Pindar the head of Typhon reached to the stars, his eyes darted fire, his hands extended from the East to the West, terrible serpents were twined about the middle of his body, and one hundred snakes took the place of fingers on his hands. Between him and the gods there was a dreadful war. Jupiter finally killed him with a flash of lightning, and buried him under Mount Etna."
And there, smoking and burning, his great throes and writhings, we are told, still shake the earth, and threaten mankind:
And with pale lips men say,'To-morrow, perchance to-day,Encelidas may arise! "'
And with pale lips men say,'To-morrow, perchance to-day,Encelidas may arise! "'
And with pale lips men say,'To-morrow, perchance to-day,Encelidas may arise! "'
{p. 141}
THERE is in the legends of the Scandinavians a marvelous record of the coming of the Comet. It has been repeated generation after generation, translated into all languages, commented on, criticised, but never understood. It has been regarded as a wild, unmeaning rhapsody of words, or as a premonition of some future earth catastrophe.
But look at it!
The very name is significant. According to Professor Anderson's etymology of the word, it means "the darkness of the gods"; fromregin, gods, andrökr, darkness; but it may, more properly, be derived from the Icelandic, Danish, and Swedishregn, a rain, andrök, smoke, or dust; and it may mean the rain of dust, for the clay came first as dust; it is described in some Indian legends as ashes.
First, there is, as in the tradition of the Druids, page 135,ante, the story of an age of crime.
The Vala looks upon the world, and, as the "Elder Edda" tells us--
There saw she wadeIn the heavy streams,Men--foul murderersAnd perjurers,And them who others' wivesSeduce to sin.Brothers slay brothersSisters' childrenShed each other's blood. {p. 142}Hard is the world!Sensual sin grows huge.There are sword-ages, axe-ages;Shields are cleft in twain;Storm-ages, murder ages;Till the world falls dead,And men no longer spareOr pity one another."[1]
There saw she wadeIn the heavy streams,Men--foul murderersAnd perjurers,And them who others' wivesSeduce to sin.Brothers slay brothersSisters' childrenShed each other's blood. {p. 142}Hard is the world!Sensual sin grows huge.There are sword-ages, axe-ages;Shields are cleft in twain;Storm-ages, murder ages;Till the world falls dead,And men no longer spareOr pity one another."[1]
There saw she wadeIn the heavy streams,Men--foul murderersAnd perjurers,And them who others' wivesSeduce to sin.Brothers slay brothersSisters' childrenShed each other's blood. {p. 142}Hard is the world!Sensual sin grows huge.There are sword-ages, axe-ages;Shields are cleft in twain;Storm-ages, murder ages;Till the world falls dead,And men no longer spareOr pity one another."[1]
The world has ripened for destruction; and "Ragnarok," the darkness of the gods, or the rain of dust and ashes, comes to complete the work.
The whole story is told with the utmost detail, and we shall see that it agrees, in almost every particular, with what reason assures us must have happened.
"There are three winters," or years, "during which great wars rage over the world." Mankind has reached a climax of wickedness. Doubtless it is, as now, highly civilized in some regions, while still barbarian in others.
"Then happens that which will seem a great miracle: thatthe wolf devours the sun, and this will seem a great loss."
That is, the Comet strikes the sun, or approaches so close to it that it seems to do so.
"The other wolf devours the moon, and this, too, will cause great mischief."
We have seen that the comets often come in couples or triplets.
"The stars shall be hurled from heaven."
This refers to the blazingdébrisof the Comet falling to the earth.
"Then it shall come to pass that the earth will shake so violently that trees will be torn up by the roots, the
[1. Anderson, "Norse Mythology," p. 416.]
{p. 143}
mountains will topple down, and all bonds and fetters will be broken and snapped."
Chaos has come again. How closely does all this agree with Hesiod's description of the shaking earth and the universal conflict of nature?
"The Fenris-wolf gets loose."
This, we shall see, is the name of one of the comets.
"The sea rushes over the earth, for the Midgard-serpent writhes in giant rage, and seeks to gain the land."
The Midgard-serpent is the name of another comet; it strives to reach the earth; its proximity disturbs the oceans. And then follows an inexplicable piece of mythology:
"The ship that is called Naglfar also becomes loose. It is made of the nails of dead men; wherefore it is worth warning that, when a man dies with unpared nails, he supplies a large amount of materials for the building of this ship, which both gods and men wish may be finished as late as possible. But in this flood Naglfar gets afloat. The giant Hrym is its steersman.
"The Fenris-wolf advances with wide-open mouth;the upper jaw reaches to heaven and the lower jaw is on the earth."
That is to say, the comet extends from the earth to the sun.
"He would open it still wider had he room."
That is to say, the space between the sun and earth is not great enough; the tail of the comet reaches even beyond the earth.
"Fire flashes from his eyes and nostrils."
A recent writer says:
"When bright comets happen to come very near to the sun, and are subjected to close observation under the
{p. 144}
advantages which the fine telescopes of the present day afford, a series of remarkable changes is found to take place in their luminous configuration. First,jets of bright light start out from the nucleus, and move through the fainter haze of the coma toward the sun; and then these jets are turned backward round the edge of the coma, and stream from it, behind the comet, until they are fashioned into a tail."[1]
"The Midgard-serpent vomits forthvenom, defiling all the air and the sea; he is very terrible, and places himselfside by side with the wolf."
The two comets move together, like Biela's two fragments; and they give out poison--the carbureted-hydrogen gas revealed by the spectroscope.
"In the midst of this clash and din the heavens are rent in twain, and the sons of Muspelheim come riding through the opening."
Muspelheim, according to Professor Anderson,[2] means the day of judgment."Muspelsignifies an abode of fire, peopled by fiends. So that this passage means, that the heavens are split open, or appear to be, by the great shining comet, or comets, striking the earth; it is a world of fire; it is the Day of Judgment.
"Surt rides first, and before him and afterhim flames burning fire."
Surt is a demon associated with the comet;[3] he is the same as the destructive god of the Egyptian mythology, Set, who destroys the sun. It may mean the blazing nucleus of the comet.
"He has a very good sword that shines brighter than the sun. As they ride over Bifrost it breaks to pieces, as has before been stated."
[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 207.
2. "Norse Mythology," p. 454.
3. Ibid., p. 458.]
{p. 145}
Bifrost, we shall have reason to see hereafter, was a prolongation of land westward from Europe, which connected the British Islands with the island-home of the gods, or the godlike race of men.
There are geological proofs that such a land once existed. A writer, Thomas Butler Gunn, in a recent number of an English publication,[1] says:
"Tennyson's 'Voyage of Maeldune' is a magnificent allegorical expansion of this idea; and the laureate has also finely commemorated the old belief in the country of Lyonnesse,extending beyond the boundsof Cornwall:
'A land of old upheaven from the abyssBy fire,to sink into the abyss again;Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,And the long mountains ended in a coastOf ever-shifting sands, and far awayThe phantom circle of a moaning sea.'
'A land of old upheaven from the abyssBy fire,to sink into the abyss again;Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,And the long mountains ended in a coastOf ever-shifting sands, and far awayThe phantom circle of a moaning sea.'
'A land of old upheaven from the abyssBy fire,to sink into the abyss again;Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,And the long mountains ended in a coastOf ever-shifting sands, and far awayThe phantom circle of a moaning sea.'
"Cornishmen of the last generation used to tell stories of strange household relics picked up at the very low tides, nay, even of the quaint habitations seen fathoms deep in the water."
There are those who believe that these Scandinavian Eddas came, in the first instance, from Druidical Briton sources.
The Edda may be interpreted to mean that the Comet strikes the planet west of Europe, and crushes down some land in that quarter, called "the bridge of Bifrost."
Then follows a mighty battle between the gods and the Comet. It can have, of course, but one termination; but it will recur again and again in the legends of different nations. It was necessary that the gods, the protectors of mankind, should struggle to defend them against these strange and terrible enemies. But their very helplessness
[1. "All the Year Round."]
{p. 146}
and their deaths show how immense was the calamity which had befallen the world.
The Edda continues:
"The sons of Muspel direct their course to the plain which is called Vigrid. Thither repair also the Fenris-wolf and the Midgard-serpent."
Both the comets have fallen on the earth.
"To this place have also come Loke" (the evil genius of the Norse mythology) "and Hrym, and with him all the Frost giants. In Loke's company are all the friends of Hel" (the goddess of death). "The sons of Muspel have then their efficient bands alone by themselves. The plain Vigrid is one hundred miles (rasts) on each side."
That is to say, all these evil forces, the comets, the fire, the devil, and death, have taken possession of the great plain, the heart of the civilized land. The scene is located in this spot, because probably it was from this spot the legends were afterward dispersed to all the world.
It is necessary for the defenders of mankind to rouse themselves. There is no time to be lost, and, accordingly, we learn--
"While these things are happening, Heimdal" (he was the guardian of the Bifrost-bridge) "stands up, blows with all his might in the Gjallar-horn andawakens all the gods, who thereupon hold counsel. Odin rides to Mimer's well to ask advice of Mimer for himself and his folk.
"Then quivers the ash Ygdrasil, and all things in heaven and earth tremble."
The ash Ygdrasil is the tree-of-life; the tree of the ancient tree-worship; the tree which stands on the top of the pyramid in the island-birth place of the Aztec race; the tree referred to in the Hindoo legends.
"The asas" (the godlike men) "and the einherjes" (the heroes) "arm themselves and speed forth to the battlefield. Odin rides first; with his golden helmet, resplendent
{p. 147}
byrnie, and his spear Gungner, he advances against the Fenris-wolf" (the first comet). "Thor stands by his side, but can give him no assistance, for he has his hands full in his struggle with the Midgard-serpent" (the second comet). "Frey encounters Surt, and heavy blows are exchanged ere Frey falls. The cause of his death is that he has not that good sword which he gave to Skirner. Even the dog Garm," (another comet), "that was bound before the Gnipa-cave, gets loose. He is the greatest plague. He contends with Tyr, and they kill each other. Thor gets great renown by slaying the Midgard-serpent, but retreats only nine paces when he falls to the earth dead,poisoned by the venom that the serpent blows upon him."
He has breathed the carbureted-hydrogen gas!
"The wolf swallows Odin, and thus causes his death; but Vidar immediately turns and rushes at the wolf, placing one foot on his nether jaw.
["On this foot he has the shoe, for which materials have been gathering through all ages, namely, the strips of leather which men cut off from the toes and heels of shoes; wherefore he who wishes to render assistance to the asas must cast these strips away."]
This last paragraph, like that concerning the ship Naglfar, is probably the interpolation of some later age. The narrative continues:
"With one hand Vidar seizes the upper jaw of the wolf, and thus rends asunder his mouth. Thus the wolf perishes. Loke fights with Heimdal, and they kill each other.Thereupon Surt flings fire over the earth, and burns up all the world."
This narrative is from the Younger Edda. The Elder Edda is to the same purpose, but there are more allusions to the effect of the catastrophe on the earth
The eagle screams,And with pale beak tears corpses. . . .Mountains dash together, {p. 148}Heroes go the way to Hel,And heaven is rent in twain. . . .All men abandon their homesteadsWhen the warder of MidgardIn wrath slays the serpent.The sun grows dark,The earth sinks into the sea,The bright starsFrom heaven vanish;Fire rages,Heat blazes,And high flames play'Gainst heaven itself"
The eagle screams,And with pale beak tears corpses. . . .Mountains dash together, {p. 148}Heroes go the way to Hel,And heaven is rent in twain. . . .All men abandon their homesteadsWhen the warder of MidgardIn wrath slays the serpent.The sun grows dark,The earth sinks into the sea,The bright starsFrom heaven vanish;Fire rages,Heat blazes,And high flames play'Gainst heaven itself"
The eagle screams,And with pale beak tears corpses. . . .Mountains dash together, {p. 148}Heroes go the way to Hel,And heaven is rent in twain. . . .All men abandon their homesteadsWhen the warder of MidgardIn wrath slays the serpent.The sun grows dark,The earth sinks into the sea,The bright starsFrom heaven vanish;Fire rages,Heat blazes,And high flames play'Gainst heaven itself"
And what follow then? Ice and cold and winter. For although these things come first in the narrative of the Edda, yet we are told that "before these" things, to wit, the cold winters, there occurred the wickedness of the world, and the wolves and the serpent made their appearance. So that the events transpired in the order in which I have given them.
"First there is a winter called the Fimbul winter,""The mighty, the great, the iron winter,"[1]
"First there is a winter called the Fimbul winter,""The mighty, the great, the iron winter,"[1]
"First there is a winter called the Fimbul winter,"
"The mighty, the great, the iron winter,"[1]
"'When snow drives from. all quarters, the frosts are so severe, the winds so keen, there is no joy in the sun.There are three such winters in succession, without any intervening summer."
Here we have the Glacial period which followed the Drift. Three years of incessant wind, and snow, and intense cold.
The Elder Edda says, speaking of the Fenris-wolf:
"It feeds on the bodiesOf men, when they dieThe seats of the godsIt stains with red blood."
"It feeds on the bodiesOf men, when they dieThe seats of the godsIt stains with red blood."
"It feeds on the bodiesOf men, when they dieThe seats of the godsIt stains with red blood."
[1. "Norse Mythology," p. 444.]
{p. 149}
This probably refers to the iron-stained red clay cast down by the Comet over a large part of the earth; the "seats of the gods" means the home of the god-like race, which was doubtless covered, like Europe and America, with red clay; the waters which ran from it must have been the color of blood.
"The Sunshine blackensIn the summers thereafter,And the weather grows bad."
"The Sunshine blackensIn the summers thereafter,And the weather grows bad."
"The Sunshine blackensIn the summers thereafter,And the weather grows bad."
In the Younger Edda (p. 57) we are given a still more precise description of the Ice age:
"Replied Har, explaining, that as soon as the streams, that are called Elivogs" (the rivers from under ice), "had came so far that the venomous yeast" (the clay?) "which flowed with them hardened, as does dross that runs from the fire, then it turned" (as) "into ice. And when this ice stopped and flowed no more, then gathered over it the drizzling rain that arose from the venom" (the clay), "and froze into rime" (ice), "and one layer of ice was laid upon another clear into the Ginungagap."
Ginungagap, we are told,[1] was the name applied in the eleventh century by the Northmen to the ocean between Greenland and Vinland, or America. It doubtless meant originally the whole of the Atlantic Ocean. The clay, when it first fell, was probably full of chemical elements, which rendered it, and the waters which filtered through it, unfit for human use; clay waters are, to this day, the worst in the world.
"Then said Jafnhar: 'All that part of Ginungagap that turns to the north' (the north Atlantic) 'was filled with thick and heavy ice and rime, and everywhere within were drizzling rains and gusts. But the south part of Ginungagap was lighted up by the glowing sparks that flew out of Muspelheim.'"
[1. "Norse Mythology," p. 447.]
{p. 150}
The ice and rime to the north represent the age of ice and snow. Muspelheim was the torrid country of the south, over which the clouds could not yet form in consequence of the heat--Africa.
But it can not last forever. The clouds disappear; the floods find their way back to the ocean; nature begins to decorate once more the scarred and crushed face of the world. But where is the human race? The "Younger Edda" tells us:
"During the conflagration caused by Surt's fire, a woman by the name of Lif and a man named Lifthraser lie concealed in Hodmimer's hold, or forest. The dew of the dawn serves them for food, and so great a race shall spring from them, that their descendants shall soon spread over the whole earth."[1]
The "Elder Edda" says:
"Lif and LifthraserWill lie hidIn Hodmimer's-holt;The morning dewThey have for food.From them are the races descended."
"Lif and LifthraserWill lie hidIn Hodmimer's-holt;The morning dewThey have for food.From them are the races descended."
"Lif and LifthraserWill lie hidIn Hodmimer's-holt;The morning dewThey have for food.From them are the races descended."
Holt is a grove, or forest, or hold; it was probably a cave. We shall see that nearly all the legends refer to the caves in which mankind escaped from destruction.
This statement,
"From them are the races descended,"
shows that this is not prophecy, but history; it refers to the past, not to the future; it describes not a Day of Judgment to come, but one that has already fallen on the human family.
Two others, of the godlike race, also escaped in some
[1. "Norse Mythology" p. 429.]
{p. 151}
way not indicated; Vidar and Vale are their names. They, too, had probably taken refuge in some cavern.
"Neither the sea nor Surt's fire had harmed them, and they dwell on the plains of Ida, where Asgardwas before. Thither come also the sons of Thor, Mode, and Magne, and they have Mjolner.Then come Balder and Hoder from Hel.
Mode and Magne are children of Thor; they belong to the godlike race. They, too, have escaped. Mjolner is Thor's hammer. Balder is the Sun; he has returned from the abode of death, to which the comet consigned him. Hoder is the Night.
All this means that the fragments and remnants of humanity reassemble on the plain of Ida--the plain of Vigrid--where the battle was fought. They possess the works of the old civilization, represented by Thor's hammer; and the day and night once more return after the long midnight blackness.
And the Vala looks again upon a renewed and rejuvenated world:
"She sees ariseThe second time.From the sea, the earth,Completely green.The cascades fall,The eagle soars,From lofty mountsPursues its prey."
"She sees ariseThe second time.From the sea, the earth,Completely green.The cascades fall,The eagle soars,From lofty mountsPursues its prey."
"She sees ariseThe second time.From the sea, the earth,Completely green.The cascades fall,The eagle soars,From lofty mountsPursues its prey."
It is once more the glorious, the sun-lighted world the world of flashing seas, dancing streams, and green leaves; with the eagle, high above it all,
"Batting the sunny ceiling of the globeWith his dark wings;"
"Batting the sunny ceiling of the globeWith his dark wings;"
"Batting the sunny ceiling of the globeWith his dark wings;"
while
"The wild cataracts leap in glory."
"The wild cataracts leap in glory."
"The wild cataracts leap in glory."
{p. 152}
What history, what poetry, what beauty, what inestimable pictures of an infinite past have lain hidden away in these Sagas--the despised heritage of all the blue-eyed, light-haired races of the world!
Rome and Greece can not parallel this marvelous story:
The gods conveneOn Ida's plains,And talk of the powerfulMidgard-serpent;They call to mindThe Fenris-wolfAnd the ancient runesOf the mighty Odin."
The gods conveneOn Ida's plains,And talk of the powerfulMidgard-serpent;They call to mindThe Fenris-wolfAnd the ancient runesOf the mighty Odin."
The gods conveneOn Ida's plains,And talk of the powerfulMidgard-serpent;They call to mindThe Fenris-wolfAnd the ancient runesOf the mighty Odin."
What else can mankind think of, or dream of, or talk of for the next thousand years but this awful, this unparalleled calamity through which the race has passed?
A long-subsequent but most ancient and cultivated people, whose memory has, for us, almost faded from the earth, will thereafter embalm the great drama in legends, myths, prayers, poems, and sagas; fragments of which are found to-day dispersed through all literatures in all lands; some of them, as we shall see, having found their way even into the very Bible revered alike of Jew and Christian:
The Edda continues,
"Then againThe wonderful Golden tabletsAre found in the grassIn time's morning,The leader of the godsAnd Odin's racePossessed them."
"Then againThe wonderful Golden tabletsAre found in the grassIn time's morning,The leader of the godsAnd Odin's racePossessed them."
"Then againThe wonderful Golden tabletsAre found in the grassIn time's morning,The leader of the godsAnd Odin's racePossessed them."
And what a find was that! This poor remnant of humanity discovers "the golden tablets" of the former
{p. 153}
civilization. Doubtless, the inscribed tablets, by which the art of writing survived to the race; for what would tablets be without inscriptions? For they talk of "the ancient runes of mighty Odin," that is, of the runic letters, the alphabetical writing. And we shall see hereafter that this view is confirmed from other sources.
There follows a happy age:
"The fields unsownYield their growth;All ills cease.Balder comes.Hoder and Balder,Those heavenly gods,Dwell together in Odin's halls."
"The fields unsownYield their growth;All ills cease.Balder comes.Hoder and Balder,Those heavenly gods,Dwell together in Odin's halls."
"The fields unsownYield their growth;All ills cease.Balder comes.Hoder and Balder,Those heavenly gods,Dwell together in Odin's halls."
The great catastrophe is past. Man is saved, The world is once more fair. The sun shines again in heaven. Night and day follow each other in endless revolution around the happy globe. Ragnarok is past.
{p. 154}
Now let us turn to the mythology of the Latins, as preserved in the pages of Ovid, one of the greatest of the poets of ancient Rome.[1]
Here we have the burning of the world involved in the myth of Phaëton, son of Phœbus--Apollo--the Sun--who drives the chariot of his father; he can not control the horses of the Sun, they run away with him; they come so near the earth as to set it on fire, and Phaëton is at last killed by Jove, as he killed Typhon in the Greek legends, to save heaven and earth from complete and common ruin.
This is the story of the conflagration as treated by a civilized mind, explained by a myth, and decorated with the flowers and foliage of poetry.