CHAPTER XI.MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK-TALES.

Other world of the Norsemen.

In the Northern religion, too, therefore, we have the same leading ideas which we have signalized in the Indian or Grecian systems. Especially does that notion of the breath of the body, or the smoke of the funeral pyre representing the soul of the hero and carried upward under care of the wind, come prominently forward. This might be expected because, it will be remembered, the wind in the Northern mythology is not, as with the Indians, a servant of Yama only, or as with the Greeks a lesser divinity, but is the first of all the gods. To Odin is assigned the task of collecting the souls of heroes who had fallen in battle; and there are few myths more poetical than that which pictures him riding to battle-fields to execute his mission. He is accompanied by his Valkyriur, ‘the choosers,’ a sort of Amazonian houris, half human, half-godlike, who ride through the air in the form of swans; wherefore they—who are originally, perhaps, the clouds—are often called in the Eddas, Odin’s swan-maidens. It has been said that this myth lived on in after-ages in the form of thePhantom ArmyandHerne the Hunter: and the essential part of it, the myth of the soul carried away by the wind, lived on more obscurely in a hundred other tales, some of which we may glance at in our next chapter uponMythology. But while this idea of the mounting soul is often clearly expressed—as, for instance, where in Beowulf,[108]in the last scene, the hero is burnt by the seashore, it issaid of him that hewand to wolcum, ‘curled to the clouds,’ imaging well the curling smoke of the pyre—there still lingered on other ideas of the death-home, a subterraneous land (Helheim, Hel’s home) ruled over by the goddess Hel,[109]and an infernal Styx-like stream, with the bridge of Indian mythology transferred to the lower world. And so much were the three distinct ideas interwoven, that in the myth of Balder each one may be traced. For here the sun-god, who is the very origin and prototype of the two more exalted elements of the creed of the heavenward journey,[110]has himself to stoop downward to the gates of Hel. If this legend sanctified for the heathens the practice of fire-burial, they had certainly so much excuse for their obstinate adherence to the older custom, as one of the most beautiful myths ever told might plead for them. We may look upon the story of the death and burning of Balder in two aspects—first as an image of the setting sun, next as an expression of men’s thoughts concerning death, and the course of the soul to its future home. If in this latter respect the story seems to mix up two different myths concerning the other world, we need not be surprised at that.

Balder dies, as the sun dies each day, and as the summer dies into winter. He falls, struck by a dart from the hand of his blind brother Hödr (the darkness), and the shadow of death appears for the first time in the homes of Asgard. At first the gods knew not what to make of it, ‘they were struck dumb with horror,’ says the Edda;[111]but seeing thathe is really dead, they prepare his funeral pyre. They took his shipHringhorni(Ringhorn, the disk of the sun), and on it set a pile of wood, with Balder’s horse and his armour, and all that he valued most, to which each god added some worthy gift. And when Nanna, the wife of Balder, saw the preparations, her heart broke with grief, and she too was laid upon the pile. Then they set fire to the ship, which sailed out burning into the sea.

But Balder himself had to go to Helheim, the dark abode beneath the earth, where reigns Hel,[112]the goddess of the dead. Then Odin sends his messenger, Hermödr, to the goddess, to pray her to let Balder return once more to earth. For nine days and nine nights Hermödr rode through dark glens, so dark that he could not discern anything until he came to the river Gjöll (‘the sounding’—notice that here the Greek Cocytus reappears), over which he rode by Gjöll’s bridge, which was pleasant with bright gold. A maiden sat there keeping the bridge; she inquired of him his name and lineage—for, said she, ‘Yestereve five bands of dead men rid over the bridge, yet they did not shake it so much as thou hast done. But thou hast not death’s hue upon thee; why, then, ridest thou here on the way to Hel?’

‘I ride to Hel,’ answered Hermödr, ‘to seek Balder. Hast thou perchance seen him pass this way?’

‘Balder,’ answered she, ‘hath ridden over Gjöll’s bridge. But yonder, northward, lies the road to Hel.’

Hermödr then rode into the palace, where he found his brother Balder filling the highest place in the hall, and inhis company he passed the night. The next morning he besought Hel, that she would let Balder ride home with him, assuring her how great the grief was among the gods.

Hel answered, ‘It shall now be proved whether Balder be so much loved as thou sayest. If, therefore, all things both living and lifeless weep for him, then shall he return. But if one thing speak against him or refuse to weep, he shall be kept in Helheim.’

And when Hermödr had delivered this answer, the gods sent off messengers throughout the whole world, to tell everything to weep, in order that Balder might be delivered out of Helheim. All things freely complied with this request, both man and every other living thing, and earths, and stones, and trees, and metals, just as thou hast no doubt seen these things weep when they are brought from a cold place into a hot one. As the messengers were returning, and deemed that their mission had been successful, they found an old hag, named Thokk,[113]sitting in a cavern, and her they begged to weep Balder out of Helheim. But she said:—

So Balder remained in Helheim.

Such was the sad conclusion of the myth of which the memory is kept up even in these days. For in Norway and Sweden—nay, in some parts of Scotland, thebale-firescelebrating the bale or death of the sun-god are lighted onthe day when the sun passes the highest point in the ecliptic. Balder will not, said tradition, remain for ever in Helheim. A day will come, the twilight of the gods, when the gods themselves will be destroyed in a final victorious contest with the evil powers. And then, when a new earth has arisen from the deluge which destroys the old, Balder, the god of Peace, will come from Death’s home to rule over this regenerate world. A sublime myth—if indeed it can be called amyth.

Diversity of myths.

Ifwe found it difficult to reduce to a consistent simplicity the religious ideas of the Aryan races, what hope have we to find any thread through the labyrinth of their unbridled imagination in dealing with more fanciful subjects? The world is all before them where to choose; nature, in her multitudinous works and ever-changing shows, is at hand to give breath to the faculty of myth-making, and lay the foundation of all the stories which have ever been told. The two elements concurrent to the manufacture of mythologies are the varying phenomena in nature, and that which is called the anthropomorphic (personifying) faculty in man. I do not mean by this that all myths represent natural appearances. Some simply relate events, real human experiences; all that is mythic about such stories is that they aremisplaced. Some one has gone through the adventures, but not the person of whom they are told. Other tales transfer in a like fashion human experiences to beings who are not human, to animals, to trees and streams, maybe even to implements, to spades and ploughs, to hatchets, swords, or ships. All these may be subject of mere tale-telling.But what I understand by mythology are the stories related of the gods—at all events, stories of supernatural beings who are almost gods. And among the Aryan folk, as the gods are in almost every instance the personifications of phenomena or powers of nature, the myths of widest extension were necessarily occupied with these.

Religion being the greatest concern of man, the myths which allied themselves most closely to his religious ideas would be those which maintained the longest life and most universal acceptance. In reviewing some of the Aryan myths—in a hasty and general review as it must needs be—the preceding chapter will serve to guide us to the myths most closely connected with religious notions, which have a chief claim upon our attention. Indeed, reading in a converse manner, it was the fact that so many myths clung around certain natural phenomena which allowed us, with proper reservation, to point these out as the phenomena which held the most intimate place in men’s minds and hearts.With proper reservations, because the highest, most abstracted god does not lend himself as a subject for the myth-making faculty. He stands apart from the polytheistic circle: below him stand the nature-gods who are also the heroes of the mythologies.

And now, with a backward glance to what has been already written, we may expect the chief myth systems to divide themselves into certain classes corresponding with the god—or natural phenomenon—that is their concern. We may expect to find myths relating especially to the labours of the sun, like those of Heracles and Thorr, or to the wind, like that of Hermes stealing the cattle of Apollo, or to the earth sleeping in the embrace of winter, or sorrowing for the loss of her greenery, or joying again in her recovered life. And again we may look to find myths moreintimately concerned with death, and with the looked-for future of the soul. These will mingle like mingling streams, but we shall often be able to trace their origin.

But, to begin with, do not suppose that, if I say that a natural phenomenon has given rise to a story, I mean to say that the story could not have arisen except through this natural phenomenon. Or, to put it in plainer language, do not suppose that if I say that this or that adventure is related of the sun or of the wind, I mean that the adventure was never heard of before the sun or wind was worshipped as a god or idealized as a hero. If Indra, or Apollo, is called the serpent-slayer, I do not mean that it is by the battle of the sun and the clouds that men got the idea of slaying serpents. If the wind is said to ride a-horseback over hill and dale, if the thunder-god is said to hurl his hammer at the mountain-tops, I do not mean that men never thought of horses or battle-hammers till they began to make stories about the wind and sun. What I do mean is that certain special forms of the myths related,as we now see them, were told of the Aryan god who was some phenomenon of nature—the sun or whatever he might be. It is necessary to give this word of caution, because the relationship of mythology to religion has sometimes, by recent writings upon the subject, been a good deal confused and obscured.

The diversity of the natural phenomena which give them rise will not in any way hinder the myths from reproducing thehumanelements which have, since the world began held their pre-eminence in romance and history. There will be love-stories, stories of battle and victory, of magic and strange disguises, of suddenly acquired treasure, and, most attractive of all to the popular mind, stories of princes and princesses whose princedom is hidden under a servilestation or beggar’s gaberdine, and of heroes who allow their heroism to rust for a while in strange inaction, that

‘Imitate the sun,Who doth permit the base contagious cloudsTo smother up his beauty from the world,That, when he please again to be himself,Being wanted, he may be more wondered at.’

Not necessarily because such heroeswerethe sun, but rather that the tales, appealing so intimately to the common sympathies of human nature, attach themselves pre-eminently to the great natural hero, the sun-god.

Sun-myths.

To begin, then, with the sun-god. His love-stories relate most commonly the pursuit of the dawn, a woman, by the god of day. She flies at the approach of the sun; or, if the two are married in early morning, when the day advances, the dawn dies or the sun leaves her to pursue his allotted journey. We read how Apollo pursued Daphnê, while she still fled from him, and at last, praying to the gods, was changed into a laurel, which ever afterwards remained sacred to the son of Lêtô. There is nothing new in the story; it might be related of any hero. Yet, as we find Greek art so often busy with it, we might guess that it had obtained for some reason a hold more than commonly firm upon the popular imagination. And when we turn from the Greek to the Sanskrit we are able to unravel the myth and show it, so far as the names are concerned, peculiar to the sun-god. Daphnê (it is believed) is the Sanskrit Ahanâ, that is to say, the Dawn.

A tenderer love-story is that which speaks of the sun and the dawn as united at the opening of the day, but of the separation which follows when the sun reveals himself in his true splendour. The parting, however, will not be eternal, for the sun in the evening shall sink into the armsof the west, as in the morning he left those of the east—all the physical appearances at sundown will correspond with those of the dawn—so in poetical language he will be said to return to his love again at the evening of life. In right accord with its natural origin and native attractiveness, we find this story repeated almost identically as regards its chief incidents by all the branches of the Aryan family. For an Indian version of it the reader may consult the story of Urvasi and Pururavas, told by Mr. Max Müller from one of the Vedas.[114]Urvasi is a fairy who falls in love with Pururavas, a mortal, and consents to become his wife, on condition that she should never see him without his royal garment on, ‘for this is the manner of women.’ For a while they lived together happily; but the Gandhavas, the fairy beings to whom Urvasi belonged, were jealous of her love for a mortal, and they laid a plot to separate them. ‘Now, there was a ewe with two lambs tied to the couch of Urvasi and Pururavas, and the fairies stole one of them, so that Urvasi upbraided her husband and said, “They steal my darlings as though I lived in a land where there is no hero, and no man.” And Pururavas said, “How can that be a land without heroes or men where I am?” and naked he sprang up. Then the Gandhavas sent a flash of lightning, and Urvasi saw her husband naked as by daylight. Then she vanished. “I come back,” she said; and went.’

Cupid loves Psyche as Pururavas Urvasi, but here the story is so far changed that the woman breaks the condition laid upon their union. Not this time by accident, but from the evil counselling of her two sisters, Psyche disobeys her husband. They have long been married, but she has neverseen his face; and doubts begin to arise lest some horrid monster, and not a god, may be the sharer of her couch. So she takes the lamp, and when she deems her husband is fast locked in sleep, gazes upon the face of the god of love.

‘But as she turned at lastTo quench the lamp, there happed a little thingThat quenched her new delight, for flickering,The treacherous flame cast on his shoulder fairA burning drop; he woke, and seeing her there,The meaning of that sad sight knew full well;Nor was there need the piteous tale to tell.’[115]

Here, it is true, we have wandered away from the adventures of the sun. Cupid or Eros is in no sense a sun-god; nor has Psyche any proved connection with Ushas, the Dawn. Once a sun-myth does not mean always a sun-myth.[116]So much the contrary, that it is part of our business to show how stories, first appropriated to Olympus or Asgard, may descend to take their place among the commonest collection of nursery tales. It is the case with this myth of the Dawn. The reader’s acquaintance with nursery literature has probably already anticipated the kinship to be claimed by one of the most familiar childish legends. But as one more link to rivet the bond of union betweenUrvasi and PururavasandBeauty and the Beast,let us look at a story of Swedish origin calledPrince Hatt under the Earth.

‘There was once, very very long ago, a king who had three daughters, all exquisitely fair, and much more amiable than other maidens, so that their like was not to be found far or near. But the youngest princess excelled her sisters, not only in beauty, but in goodness of heart and kindness of disposition. She was consequently greatly beloved by all, and the king himself was more fondly attached to her than to either of his other daughters.

‘It happened one autumn that there was a fair in a town not far from the king’s residence, and the king himself resolved on going to it with his attendants. When on the eve of departure, he asked his three daughters what they would like for fairings, it being his constant custom to make them some present on his return home. The two elder princesses began instantly to enumerate precious things of curious kinds; one would have this, the other that; but the youngest daughter asked for nothing. At this the king was surprised, and asked her whether she would not like some ornament or other; but she answered that she had plenty of gold and jewels. When the king, however, would not desist from urging her, she at length said, “There is one thing which I would gladly have, if only I might venture to ask it of my father.” “What may that be?” inquired the king; “say what it is, and if it be in my power you shall have it.” “It is this,” replied the princess, “I have heard talk of thethree singing leaves, and them I wish to have before anything else in the world.” The king laughed at her for making so trifling a request, and at length exclaimed, “I cannot say that you are very covetous, and would rather by half that you had asked for some greater gift. You shall, however, have what you desire, though it should cost mehalf my realm.” He then bade his daughters farewell and rode away.’

Of course he goes to the fair, and on his way home happens to hear the three singing leaves, ‘which moved to and fro, and as they swayed there came forth a sound such as it would be impossible to describe.’ The king was glad to have found what his daughter had wished for, and was about to pluck them, but the instant he stretched forth his hand towards them, they withdrew from his grasp, and a powerful voice was heard from under the earth saying, ‘Touch not my leaves.’ ‘At this the king was somewhat surprised, and asked who it was, and whether he could not purchase the leaves for gold or good words. The voice answered, “I amPrince Hatt under the Earth, and you will not get my leaves either with good or bad as you desire. Nevertheless I will propose to you one condition.” “What condition is that?” asked the king with eagerness. “It is,” answered the voice, “that you promise me the first living thing that you meet when you return to your palace.” ’ As we anticipate, the first thing which he meets is his youngest daughter, who therefore is left with lamentation under the hazel bush: and, as is its wont on such occasions, the ground opens, and she finds herself in a beautiful palace. Here she lives long and happily with Prince Hatt, upon condition that she shall never see him. But at last she is permitted to pay a visit to her father and sisters; and her stepmother succeeds in awakening her curiosity and her fears, lest she should really be married to some horrid monster. The princess thus allows herself to be persuaded to strike a light and gaze on her husband while he is asleep. Of course, just as her eyes have lighted upon a beautiful youth he awakes, and as a consequence of her disobedience—(here the story alters somewhat)—he is struck blind, andthe two are obliged to wander over the earth, and endure all manner of misfortunes before Prince Hatt’s sight is at last restored.

The sun is so apt to take the place of an almost super-human hero, that most of the stories of such when they are purely mythical relate some part of the sun’s daily course and labours. Thus in the Greek, Perseus, Theseus, Jason, are in the main sun-heroes, though they mingle with their histories tales of real human adventure. One of the most easily traceable sun-stories is that of Perseus and the Gorgon. The later representations of Medusa in Greek art give her a beautiful dead face shrouded by luxurious snaky tresses; but the earlier art presents us with a round face, distorted by a hideous grin from ear to ear, broad cheeks, low forehead, over which curl a few flattened locks. We at once see the likeness of this face to the full moon; a likeness which, without regard to mythology, forces itself upon us; and then the true story of Perseus flashes upon us as the extinction of the moon by the sun’s light. This is the baneful Gorgon’s head, the full moon, which so many nations superstitiously believed could exert a fatal power over the sleeper; and when slain by the son of Danaê, it is the pale ghostlike disc which we see by day. It is very interesting to see how the Greeks made a myth of the moon in its—one may say—literal unidealized aspect, in addition to the countless more poetical myths which spoke of the moon as a beautiful goddess, queen of the night, the virgin huntress surrounded by her pack of dogs—the stars. In the instance of Medusa these two aspects of one natural appearance are brought into close relationship, for Athênê—who is sometimes a moon-goddess—wears the Gorgon’s head upon her shield.

As we have passed on to speak of the moon, we may as

Moon-myths.

well notice some of the other moon-myths: though in the case of these, as of the myths of the sun, our only object must be to show the characteristic forms which this order of tales assumes, so that the way may be partly cleared for their detection; nothing like a complete list of the infinitely varied shapes which the same nature-story can assume being possible. One of the most beautiful of moon-myths is surely the tale of Artemis (Diana) and Endymion. This last, the beautiful shepherd of Latmos,[117]by his name ‘He who enters,’ is in origin the sun just entering thecaveof night.[118]The moon looking upon the setting sun is a signal for his long sleep, which in the myth becomes the sleep of death. The same myth reappears in the well-known German legend of Tannhäuser. He enters a mountain, the Venusberg, or Mount of Venus, and is not sent to sleep, but laid under an enchantment by the goddess within. In other versions of the legend the mountain is called not Venusberg but Horelberg, and from this name we trace the natural origin of the myth. For there was an old moon-goddess of the Teutons called Horel or Hursel. She therefore is the enchantress in this case; and the Christian knight falls a victim to the old German moon-goddess. It has been supposed that the story of the massacre of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins—whose bones they show to this day at Cologne—arose out of the same nature-myth; and that this St. Ursula is also none other than Hursel, followed by her myriad troop of stars.[119]

The northern religion, or say the old German creed its

Northern sun-myths, etc.

first cousin, has been fruitful in myths which were repeated all through the Middle Ages and out of which the greater part of our popular tales have sprung. Thor, originally the sun and now the god of thunder, the champion of men, and the enemy of the Jötuns (giants), becomes in later days Jack the Giant Killer; Odin, by a like descent, the Wandering Jew, or the Pied Piper of Hamelin. And thus through a hundred popular legends we can detect the natural appearance out of which they originally sprang. Let us look at them first in their old heathen forms. Thor, the hero and sun-god, the northern Heracles, distinguishes himself as the implacable enemy of the rime-giants and frost-giants, the powers of cold and darkness; and to carry on his hostilities, he makes constant expeditions, ‘farings’ into giant-land, or Jötunheim, as it is called; and these expeditions generally end in the thorough discomfiture of the strong but rude and foolish personifications of barren nature.

One of these, the adventure to the house of Thrym,[120]is to recover Thor’s hammer, which has been stolen by the giant and hidden many miles beneath the earth. A spy is sent from Asgard (the city of the gods) into Jötunheim, and brings back word that Thrym will not give up his prize unless Freyja—goddess of Spring and Beauty—be given to him as his bride; and at first Thor proposes this alternative to Freyja herself, little, as may be guessed, to her satisfaction.

‘Wroth was Freyja and with fury fumed,All the Æsir’s hall under her trembled;Broken flew the famed Brisinga necklace.’[121]

But the wily Loki settles the difficulty. Thor shall to Jötunheim clad in Freyja’s weeds,

‘Let by his side, keys jingle, and a neat coif set on his head.’

So taking Loki with him clad as a serving-maid, the god fares to Thrym’s house, as though he were the looked-for bride. It must, one would suppose, have been an anxious time for Thor and Loki, while unarmed they sate in the hall of the giant; for the hero could not avoid raising some suspicions by his unwomanly appearance and demeanour. He alone devoured, we are told, an ox, eight salmon, ‘and all the sweetmeats women should have,’ and he drank eight ‘scalds’ of mead. Thrym naturally exclaimed that he never saw brides eat so greedily or drink so much mead. But the ‘all-crafty’ Loki sitting by, explained how this was owing to the hurry Freyja was in to behold her bridegroom, which left her no time to eat for the eight nights during which she had been journeying there. And so again when Thrym says—

‘Why are so piercing Freyja’s glances?Methinks that fire burns from her eyes,’

Loki explains that for the same reason she had not slept upon her journey; and the foolish, vain giant is gulled once more. At last the coveted prize, the hammer, was brought in to consecrate the marriage, and ‘Thor’s soul laughed in his breast, when the fierce-hearted his hammer knew. He slew Thrym, the Thursar’s (giant’s) lord, and the Jötun’s race crushed he utterly.’

At another time Thor engages Alvîs, ‘of the race of theThursar,’[122]in conversation upon all manner of topics, concerning the names which different natural objects bear among men, among gods, among giants, and among dwarfs, until he guilefully keeps him above earth till after sunrise, which it is not possible for a dwarf or Jötun to do and live. So Alvîs bursts asunder.[123]This tale shows clearly enough how much Thor’s enemies are allied with darkness.

Thor is not always so successful. In another of his journeys[124]the giants play a series of tricks upon him, quite suitable to the Teutonic conception of the cold north, as a place of magic, glamour, and illusion. One giant induces the thunderer to mistake a mountain for him, and to hurl atitthe death-dealing bolt—his hammer Mjölnir. Afterwards he is set to drain a horn which he supposes he can finish at a draught, but finds that after the third pull at it, scarcely more than the rim has been left bare; at the same time Loki engages in an eating match with one Logi, and is utterly worsted. But in reality Thor’s horn has reached to the sea, and he has been draining at that; while the antagonist of Loki is the devouring fire itself. Next Thor is unable to lift a cat from the ground, for it is in truth the great Midgard serpent which girds the whole earth. Finally he is overcome in a wrestling match with an old hag, whose name is Ella, that is Old Age or Death. Enough has been said in these stories to show how directly the cloak of Thor descends to the heroes of our nursery tales, Jack the Giant Killer and Jack of the Bean-Stalk.

Not unconnected with the sun-god are the mythicalheroes of northern poetry, the Perseus or Theseus of Germany and Scandinavia. The famous Sigurd the Volsung, the slayer of Fafnir, or his counterpart Siegfrid of the Nibelung song, or again the hero of our own English poem Beowulf,[125]are especially at war with dragons—which represent the powers of darkness—or with beings of a Jötun-like character. They are all discoverers of treasure; and this so far corresponds with the character of Thor that the thunderbolt is often spoken of as the revealer of the treasures of the earth, and that the sign of it was employed as a charm for that purpose. And when we read the account of these adventures we see how entirely unhuman in character most of them were, and how much the incidents in the drama bear a reminiscence of the natural phenomena from which they sprang.

This is especially the case with Beowulf. The poem is weird and imaginative in the highest degree: the atmosphere into which we are thrown seems to be the misty delusive air of Jötunheim, and the unearthly beings whom Beowulf encounters must have had birth within the shadows of night and in the mystery which attached to the wild unvisited tracts of country. Grendel, a horrid ghoul who feasts on human beings, whom Beowulf wrestles with (as Thor wrestles with Ella) and puts to death, is described as an ‘inhabiter of the moors,’ the ‘fen and fastnesses;’ he comes upon the scene ‘like a cloud from the misty hills, through the wan night a shadow-walker stalking;’ and of him and his mother it is said,

‘They a father know not,Whether any of them wasBorn beforeOf the dark ghosts.’

They inhabit, in a secret land, the wolves’ retreat, and in ‘windy ways—

Where the mountain streamUnder the ness’s mistDownward flows.’

Wind-myths.

Of the myths which spring from the wind, and which may therefore be reckoned the children of Odin, by far the most interesting are those which attach to him in his part of Psycopomp, or soul-leader, and which form a part, therefore, of an immense series of tales connected with the Teutonic ideas of death as they were detailed in the last chapter. There were many reasons why these occupied a leading place in middle-age legend. The German race is naturally a gloomy or at least a thoughtful one: and upon this natural gloom and thoughtfulness the influence of their new faith acted with redoubled force, awaking men to thoughts not only of a new life but of a new death. Popular religion took as strong a hold of the darker as of the brighter aspects of Catholicism, and was busy grafting the older notions of the soul’s future state upon the fresh stock of revealed religion. Thus many of the popular notions both of heaven and hell may be discovered in the beliefs of heathen Germany. Let us, therefore, abandoning the series of myths which belong properly to the Aryan religious beliefs as given in Chapter IX. (though upon these, so numerous are they, we seem scarcely to have begun), turn to others which illustrate our last chapter. Upon one we have already touched; Odin, as chooser of the dead, hurrying through the air towards a battle-field withhis troop of shield-maidens, the Valkyriur;[126]or if we like to present the simpler nature-myth, the wind bearing away the departing breath of dying men, and the clouds which he carries on with him in his course. For there is no doubt that these Valkyriur, these shield-or swan-maidens, who have the power of transforming themselves at pleasure into birds, were originally none other than the clouds; perhaps like the cattle of Indra, they were at first the clouds of sunrise. We meet with such beings elsewhere than in northern mythology. The Urvasi, whose story we have been relating just now, after the separation from her mortal husband changes herself into a bird and is found by Pururavas in this disguise, sitting with her friends the Gandhavas upon the water of a lake. This means the clouds of evening resting upon the wide blue sky. The Valkyriur themselves, when they have been married to men, often leave them, as the Indian fairy left her husband; and lest they should do so it is not safe to restore them the swan’s plumage which they wore as Valkyriur; should they again obtain their old equipment they will be almost sure to don it and desert their home to return to their old life. The Valkyriur, then, are clouds; and in so far as they appear in the legends of other nations they have no intimate connection with Odin. But when they are the clouds of sunset, and when Odin in his character of soul-bearer becomes before all things the wind of thesettingsun (that breeze which so often rises just as the sun goes down, and which itself might stand for the escaping soul of the dying day), then the Valkyriur make part of an ancient myth of death. And almost all the stories of swan-maidens, or transformations into swans, which are so familiar to the ears of childhood, are related to Odin’s warrior maidens. If we notice the plot of these stories, we shall see that in themtoo the transformation usually takes place at sun-setting or sunrising. For instance, in the tale of the six swans in Grimm’sHousehold Stories,[127]the enchanted brothers of the princess can only reappear in their true shapes just one hour before sunset.

In Christian legends the gods of Asgard, subjected to the changes which inevitably follow a change of belief, became demoniacal powers; and Odin the chief god takes the place of the arch-fiend. For this part he is especially suited by his character of conductor of the souls; if he formerly led them to heaven, he now thrusts them down to hell. But so many elements came together to compose the mediæval idea of the devil that in this character the individuality of Odin is scarcely preserved. At times a wish to revive something of this personal character was felt, especially when the frequent sound of the wind awoke old memories; then Odin re-emerges as some particular fiend or damned human soul. He is the Wandering Jew, a being whose eternal restlessness well keeps up the character of the wind blowing where it listeth: or he is, as we have said, the Wild Huntsman of the Harz, and of many other places.

The name of this last being, Hackelberg, or Hackelbärend (cloak-bearer), sufficiently points him out as Odin, who in the heathen traditions had been wont to wander over the earth clad in a blue cloak,[128]and broad hat, and carrying a staff. Hackelberg, the huntsman to the Duke of Brunswick, had refused even on his death-bed the ministrations of a priest, and swore that the cry of his dogs waspleasanter to him than holy rites, and that he would rather hunt for ever upon earth than go to heaven. ‘Then,’ said the man of God, ‘thou shalt hunt on until the Day of Judgment.’ Another legend relates that Hackelberg was a wicked noble who was wont to hunt on Sundays as on other days, and (here comes in thepopularversion) to impress the poor peasants to aid him. One day he was joined suddenly by two horsemen. One was mild of aspect, but the other was grim and fierce, and from his horse’s mouth and nostril breathed fire. Hackelberg turned then from his good angel, and went on with his wild chase, and now, in company of the fiend, he hunts and will hunt till the last day. He is called in Germany thehel-jäger, ‘hell-hunter.’ The peasants hear his ‘hoto’ ‘hutu,’ as the storm-wind rushes past their doors, and if they are alone upon the hillside they hide their faces while the hunt goes by. The white owl, Totosel, is a nun who broke her vows, and now mingles her ‘tutu’ (towhoo) with his ‘holoa.’ He hunts, accompanied by two dogs (the two dogs of Yama), in heaven, all the year round, save upon the twelve nights between Christmas and Twelfth-night.[129]If any door is left open upon the night when Hackelberg goes by, one of the dogs will run in and lie down in the ashes of the hearth, nor will any power be able to make him stir. During all the ensuing year there will be trouble in that household, but when the year has gone round and the hunt comes again, the unbidden guest will rise from his couch, and, wildly howling, rush forth to join his master. Strangely distorted, therelurks in this part of the story a ray of the Vedic sleep-god Sârameyas.

‘Destroyer of sickness, guard of the house, oh, thou who takest all shapes, be to us a peace-bringing friend.’

The Valkyriur in their turn are changed by the mediæval spirit into witches. The Witches’ Sabbath, the old beldames on broomsticks riding through the air, to hold their revels on the Brocken, reproduce the swan-maidens hurrying to join the flight of Odin. And, again, changed once more, ‘Old Mother Goose’ is but a more modern form of a middle-age witch, when the thought of witches no longer strikes terror. And while we are upon the subject of witches it may be well to recall how the belief in witches has left its trace in our word ‘nightmare.’Marawas throughout Europe believed to be the name of a very celebrated witch somewhere in the North, though the exact place of her dwelling was variously stated. It is highly probable that this name Mara was once a byname of the death-goddess Hel, and itmaybe etymologically connected with the name of the sea (Meer), the sea being, as we have seen, according to one set of beliefs, the home of the soul.

Odin, or a being closely analogous with him, reappears in the familiar tale of the Pied Piper of Hameln, he who, when the whole town of Hameln suffered from a plague of rats and knew not how to get rid of them, appeared suddenly—no one knew from whence—and professed himself able to charm the pest away by means of the secret magic of his pipe. But it is a profanation to tell the enchanted legend otherwise than in the enchanted language of Browning:—

‘Into the street the piper stept,Smiling first a little smile,As if he knew what magic sleptIn his quiet pipe the while;Then like a musical adeptTo blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled.’

Then the townsfolk, freed from their burden, refused the piper his promised reward, and scornfully chased him from the town. On the 26th of June he was seen again, but this time (Mr. Browning has not incorporated this little fact) fierce of aspect and dressed like ahuntsman, yet still blowing upon the magic pipe.

Now it is not the rats who follow, but the children:—

‘All the little boys and girls,With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,Tripping and skipping, ran merrily afterThe wonderful music with shouting and laughter.’

And so he leads them away to Koppelberg Hill, and

‘Lo, as they reached the mountain side,A wondrous portal opened wide,As if a cavern were suddenly hollowed;And the Piper advanced and the children followed.And when all were in, to the very last,The door in the mountain side shut fast.’

Myths of death and the other world.

This too is a myth of death. It is astonishing when we come to examine into the origin of popular tales how many we find that had at first a funeral character. This Piper hath indeed a magic music which none can disobey, for it is the whisper of death; he himself is the soul-leading Hermes (the wind, the piper), or at least Odin, in the same office. But the legend is, in part at any rate, Slavonic; for it is a Slavonic notion which likens the soul to a mouse.[130]When we have got this clue, which the modern folk-lore easily gives us, the Odinic character of the Piper becomes very apparent. Nay,in this particular myth we can almost trace a history of the meeting of two peoples, Slavonic and German, and the junction of their legends. Let us suppose there had been some great and long-remembered epidemic which had proved peculiarly fatal to the children[131]of Hameln and the country round about. The Slavonic dwellers there—and in prehistoric times some Slavs were to be found as far west as the Weser—would speak of these deaths mythically as the departure of the mice (i.e.the souls), and perhaps, keeping the tradition, which we know to be universally Aryan, of a water-crossing, might tell of the mice as having gone to the water. Or further, they might feign that these souls were led there by a piping wind-god: he, too, is the common property of the Aryan folk. Then the Germans coming in, and wishing to express the legend in their mythological form, would tell how the same Piper had piped away all thechildrenfrom the town. So a double story would spring up about the same event. The Weser represents one image of death, and might have served for the children as well as for the mice: to make the legend fuller, however, another image is selected for them, the dark, ‘concealed’ place, namely, Hel, or the cave of Night and Death.

The two images of death which occur in the last story rival each other through the field of middle-age legend and romance. When we hear of a man being borne along in a boat, or lying deep in slumber beneath a mountain, we may let our minds wander back to Balder sailing across the ocean in his burning shipHringhorni, and to the same Balderin the halls of Hel’s palace. The third image of death is the blazing pyre unaccompanied by any sea-voyage. One or other of these three allegories meets us at every turn. If the hero has been snatched away by fairy power to save him from dying, and the last thing seen of him was in a boat—as Arthur disappears upon the lake Avalon—the myth holds out the hope of his return, and sooner or later the story of this return will break off and become a separate legend. Hence the numerous half-unearthly heroes, such as Lohengrin, who come men know not whence, and are first seen sleeping in a boat upon a river. These are but broken halves of complete myths, which should have told of the former disappearance of the knight by the same route. Both portions really belong to the tale of Lohengrin; he went away first in a ship in search of the holy grail, and in the truest version[132]returns in like manner in a boat drawn by aswan. In some tales he is called the Knight of the Swan. He comes suddenly, in answer to a prayer to Heaven for help, uttered by the distressed Else of Brabant. But he does not return at once again to the Paradise which has sent him to earth. He remains upon earth, and becomes the husband of Else, and a famous warrior; and part of another myth entwines itself with his story. Else must not ask his name; but she disobeys his imperative command, and this fault parts them for ever. Here we have Cupid and Psyche, or Prince Hatt and his wife, over again. The boat appears once more drawn by the same swan; Lohengrin steps into it, and disappears from the haunts of men. We have already seen how, through the Valkyriur, the swan is connected with ideas of death. It remains to notice how they are naturally so connected bythe beautiful legend that the swan sings once only in his life, namely, when he is leaving it—that his first song is his own funeral melody. A much older form of the Lohengrin myth is referred to in the opening lines ofBeowulf, where an ancestor of that hero is said to have been found, a little child, lying asleep in an open boat which had drifted, no one knows whence, to the shore of Gothland.

Death being thus so universally symbolized by the River of Death, it is easy to see the origin of the myth that ghosts will not cross living water. It meant nothing else than that a ghost cannot return again to life. Even witches cannot do so, as we know in the case of Tam O’Shanter, that when he reached the Brig’ o’ Doon the pursuit was baffled.

Many are the impressive stories connected with the myth of the soul’s transit over water—be it a River or a Sea of Death. In the dark days which followed the overthrow of the Western Empire, when all the civilization of its remoter territories had melted away, there grew up among the fishermen of Northern Gaul a wild belief that the Channel opposite them was the mortal river, and that the shores of this island were the asylum of dark ghosts. The myth went, that in the villages of the Gaulish coast the fishermen were summoned by rotation to perform the dreadful task of ferrying over the departed spirits. At night a knocking was heard on their doors, a signal of their duties, and when they approached the beach they saw boats lying deep in the water as though heavily freighted, but yet totheireyes empty. Each stepping in, took his rudder, and then by an unfelt wind the boat was wafted in one night across a distance which, rowing and sailing, they could ordinarily compass scarcely in eight. Arrived at the opposite shore (our coast), they heard names called over, and voices answering as if by rota, and they felt their boats becominglight. Then when all the ghosts had landed they were wafted back to Gaul.[133]

The belief in the passage by the soul over a ‘Bridge’ which is the bridge over the River of Death is as universal almost as the notion of that River of Death itself. Many creeds see that bridge in the Milky Way. The Vedic hymns do so. They call the Milky Way by many names, of which the most common is the path of Yama, the way to the house of Yama, and Yama is the ruler of the Dead—‘a narrow path,’ as we have already quoted.

‘A narrow path, an ancient one, stretches thither,[134]a path untrodden by men, a path I know of.’

The Persians, too, knew the bridge under the name of Kinvad or Chinvad. And from the Persians the Mohammedans get the same notion, which is embodied in the Koran. There the Bridge of Death is called Es-Sirat. It is finer than a hair and sharper than the edge of a sword, along which, nevertheless, the soul of the good Moslem will be snatched across like lightning or like the wind; but the wicked man or the unbeliever will fall headlong thence into an abyss of fire beneath.

The Norsemen had their Bridge of Souls in the Gjallarbrû, ‘The Resounding Bridge,’ over which Balder had to ride.[135]And when we read the mediæval accounts of journeys to the other world, to Purgatory or Hell, in almost every one we find that the passage over a Bridge—the Brig’ o’ Dread of the ballad—is a part of the journey.

Among the sleepers underground whose legend reproducesthe image of death as simply a life within the tomb, the most celebrated are Kaiser Karl in the Unterberg—the under-hill, or hill leading to the under-world; or, as another legend goes, in the Nürnberg, which is really the Niederberg (im niedern Berg), the down-leading hill; and Frederick Red-Beard sleeping in like manner at Kaiserslautern, or under the Rabenspurg (raven’s hill). Deep below the earth the old Kaiser sits, his knights around him, their armour on, the horses harnessed in the stable ready to come forth at Germany’s hour of need. His long red beard has grown through the table on which his head is resting. Once, it is said, a shepherd chanced upon the cave which leads down to the under-ground palace, and awoke the Emperor from his slumber. ‘Are the ravens still flying round the hill?’ asked Frederick. ‘Yes.’ ‘Then must I sleep another hundred years.’

We cannot speak of all the images of Death which reappear in the popular tales. Very many of these are taken from the funeral fire. We constantly meet with stories of maidens who lie (asleep probably) surrounded by a circle of flame, a hedge of fire. Through this the knight or hero must ride to awaken his beloved. When Skirnir went down to woo the maiden Gerda—the winter earth[136]—he found her house all surrounded by such a hedge of fire. But oddly enough, there is another way of representing the funeral fire symbolically as a circle of thorns, because thorns were constantly used to form the funeral pyre of the Northmen. Thence a thorn hedge takes the place of a hedge of flame, and it, or even a single thorn, may become the symbol of the funeral fire, and so of death.

Here are two stories in which we see how one image may pass into the other.

In the tale of Sigurd the Volsung both these symbols are used; when Sigurd first finds Brynhild she has been pricked by Odin with a sleep-thorn, in revenge, because she took part against his favourite Hialmgunnar; for she was a Valkyria. Sigurd awakes her. At another time he rides to her through a circle of fire which she has set round her house, and which no other man dared face. In the myth of Sigurd, twice as it were riding through death to Brynhild, we see first of all a nature-myth precisely of the same kind as the myth of Freyr and Gerda (p. 230),[137]precisely the reverse of the myth of Persephone. Brynhild is the dead earth restored by the kiss of the sun, or of summer. Afterwards the part of Brynhild is taken by the Sleeping Beauty, and Sigurd becomes the prince who breaks through the thorn-hedge. Observe one thing in the last story. The prick from the sleep-thorn becomes a prick from a spinning-wheel, and thus loses all its original meaning, while the circle of fire is transformed into a thorn-hedge—proof sufficient that they were convertible ideas.

Lastly, it remains to say that the stories of glass mountains ascended by knights are probably allegories of death—heaven being spoken of to this day by Russian and German peasants as a glass mountain.

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