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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Rhine, by X. B. Saintine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Myths of the Rhine
+
+Author: X. B. Saintine
+
+Illustrator: Gustave Doré
+
+Translator: M. Schele De Vere
+
+Release Date: December 14, 2013 [EBook #44430]
+Last Updated: December 14, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYTHS OF THE RHINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MYTHS OF THE RHINE
+
+Translated from the French of X. B. Saintine
+
+By Prof. M. Schele De Vere, LL. D.
+
+Illustrated by Gustave Doré
+
+Scribner, Armstrong, and Company
+
+1874
+
+
+
+
+DESCRIPTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+I.
+
+Primitive Times.--The First Settlers on the Rhine.--Masters going to
+School.--Sanskrit and Breton.--An Idle God.--Microscopic Deities.--Tree
+Worship.--Birth-Trees and Death-Trees.....001
+
+II.
+
+The Druids and their Creed.--Esus.--The Holy Oak.--The Pforzheim Lime
+Tree.--A Rival Plant.--The Mistletoe and the Anguinufh.--The Oracle
+at Do-dona.--Immaculate Horses.--The Druidesses.--A late
+Elector.--Philanthropic Institution of Human Sacrifices.--Second
+Druidical. Epoch.....025
+
+III.
+
+A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.--The Two Banks of the
+Rhine.--Druid Stones.--Weddings and Burials.--Night Service.--A Demigod
+Glacier.--Social Duels.--A Countrywoman of Aspasia.--Boudoir of a Celtic
+Lady.--The Bard’s Story.--Teutons and Titans.--Earthquake.....053
+
+IV.
+
+The Roman Gods invade Germany.--Drusus and the Dru-idess.--Ogmius,
+the Hercules of Gaul.--Great Philological Discovery concerning
+Tentâtes.--Transformations of every kind.--Irmensul.--The Rhine
+deified.--The Gods cross the River.--Druids of the Third Epoch.....089
+
+V.
+
+The World before and since Odin.--Birth of Ymer.--The Giants of the
+Frost.--A Log split in Two.--The First Man and the First Woman.--The
+Ash Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.--Thor’s Three Jewels.--Freyr’s Enchanted
+Sword.--A Souvenir of the National Guard of Belleville.--The Story of
+Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.--Honey and Blood.--Invocation.....119
+
+VI.
+
+Short Biographies.--A Clairvoyant among the Gods.--A Bright God.--Tyr
+and the Wolf Fenris.--The Hospital at the Walhalla.--Why was Odin
+one-eyed.--The Three Norns.--Mimer the Sage.--A Goddess the Mother
+of Four Oxen.--The Love Affairs of Heimdall--The God with the Golden
+Teeth.....151
+
+VII.
+
+Heaven and Hell.--The Valkyrias.--Amusements in Walhalla.--Pork and Wild
+Boar.--A Frozen Hell.--Balder’s Death.--Frigg’s Devotion.--The Iron Tree
+Forest.--The Twilight of the Gods.--Iduna’s Apples.--The Fall of Heaven
+and the End of the World.--Reflections on that Event.--The Little
+Fellow still alive.....17
+
+VIII.
+
+How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time
+between one World and another.--How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.--How
+Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the
+Indians.--How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God
+Buddha.--About Mahabarata and Ramavana.--Chronology.--The World’s
+Age.--Comparative Tables.--Quotations.--Supporting Evidence.--A
+Cenotaph.....209
+
+IX.
+
+Confederation of all the Northern Gods.--Freedom of
+Religion.--Christianity.--Miserere mei!--Homeric Enumeration.--Prussian,
+Slavic, and Finnish Deities.--The God of Cherries and the God of
+Bees.--A Silver Woman.--Ilmarinnen’s Wedding Song.--A Skeleton
+God.--Yaga-Baba’s Pestle and Mortar.--Preparation for Battle.--The
+Little Chapel on the Hill.--The Signal for the Attack.--Jesus and
+Mary.....215
+
+X.
+
+Marietta and the Sweet-briar.--Esus and Jesus.--Amalgam.--A
+Neophyte.--Prohibition to eat Horseflesh.--Bishops in
+Arms.--Interruption.--Come Home, my Good Friend!--Prussia and the
+Myths of the Middle Ages.--Tybilinus, the Black God.--The little Blue
+Flower.....243
+
+XI.
+
+Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.--Sylphs, their Amusements
+and Domestic Arrangements.--Little Queen Mab.--Will-o’-the-
+Wisps.--White Elves and Black Elves.--True Causes of Natural
+Somnambulism.--The Wind’s Betrothed.--Fire-damp.--Master
+Haemmerling.--The Last of the Gnomes.....261
+
+XII.
+
+Elementary Spirits of the Water.--Petrarch at Cologne.--Divine Judgment
+by Water.--Nixen and Undines.--A Furlough till Ten o’clock.--The
+White footed Undine.--Mysteries on the Rhine.--The Court of the Great
+Nichus.--Nixcobt, the Messenger of the Dead.--His Funny Tricks.--I go in
+Search of an Undine.....281
+
+XIII.
+
+Familiar Spirits.--Butzemann.--The Good Frau Holle.--Kobolds.--A Kobold
+in the Cook’s Employ.--Zot-terais and the Little White Ladies.--The
+Killecroffs, the Devil’s Children.--White Angels.--Granted Wishes, a
+Fable.....307
+
+XIV.
+
+Giants and Dwarfs.--Duel between Ephesim and Gromme-lund.--Court Dwarfs
+and Little Dwarfs.--Ymer’s Sons.--The Invisible Reapers.--Story of the
+Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragaat.--How the Giants came to serve the
+Dwarfs.....333
+
+XV.
+
+Wizards and the Bewitched.--The Journey of Asa-Thor and his
+Companions.--The Inn with the Five Passages.--Skrymner.--A Lost Glove
+found again.--Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.--Combat between
+Thor and the King’s Nurse.--Frederick Barbarossa and the
+Kyffhâuser.--Teutonia! Teutonia!--What became of the Ancient
+Gods.--Venus and the good Knight Tannhâuser.--Jupiter on Rabbit
+Island.--A Modern God.....369
+
+XVI.
+
+Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women, and Serpent
+Women.--Children’s Myths.--Godmothers.--Fairies.--The Magic Wand and the
+Broomstick.--The Lady of Kynast.--The World of the Dead, the World of
+Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.--Myths of Animals.....397
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+   Father Rhine....................................................003
+
+   The impassive historian ........................................004
+
+   Vast forests as old as the world ...............................005
+
+   The first pioneers..............................................007
+
+   The Celts were a people from India..............................009
+
+   What happy people scholars are..................................010
+
+   A horrible custom...............................................019
+
+   Dead man’s trees................................................022
+
+   The Druids now appear for the first time in Germany.............023
+
+   Their creed must be judged by their rites.......................027
+
+   The other chieftains were generally polygamists.................031
+
+   Courts of justice were always held under an elm tree............032
+
+   Attempt to murder the mayor ....................................033
+
+   Mistletoe an officinal and sacred plant.........................035
+
+   Gauls...........................................................037
+
+   Serpents’ knots.................................................039
+
+   Prophetic trembling and neighing................................041
+
+   A Druid teacher ................................................044
+
+   The Germans were in full flight ................................046
+
+   The bloody knife of the Druids .................................052
+
+   I turn my steps from the sacred precincts.......................055
+
+   Who are these other soldiers?...................................057
+
+   These laborers seem to suffer from some restraint...............058
+
+   I look around for a resting-place ..............................059
+
+   A shepherd......................................................060
+
+   The guard of a sword, which had been driven into the ground.....061
+
+   The shepherd,--as mournful as ever..............................063
+
+   Herds of swine are wallowing ...................................066
+
+   A young wife bearing the burden of united household.............067
+
+   Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty ..................068
+
+   Such were the ways of our fathers: rejoice in facing death......069
+
+   The Druidical altars............................................070
+
+   As there is no window I peep through the trap-door..............072
+
+   One of the chief men of the country ............................075
+
+   She was a young Ionian girl, a country-woman of Aspasia.........080
+
+   The boudoir of a Celtic lady....................................082
+
+   The Druid-bard..................................................085
+
+   Death of Druids.................................................091
+
+   A Druidess endowed with the gift of prophecy ...................093
+
+   The victorious march of the Romans .............................094
+
+   Her deities personified nothing but vices ......................096
+
+   The Hercules--so called.........................................098
+
+   Mercury, the son of Jupiter ....................................099
+
+   “O Varus, Varus, bring me back my legions!”.....................103
+
+   Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances.................105
+
+   They made him a king, the King of German rivers.................106
+
+   He had already allowed Jupiter to cross.........................107
+
+   The vines began to adorn the banks of the river.................108
+
+   Once more caresses had their hoped-for effect...................109
+
+   He did his best to help everybody across........................110
+
+   Fnvolous and ill-mannered deities...............................110
+
+   The dauntless pirates will end by wearing white night-caps......113
+
+   The great Northern Tempest .....................................115
+
+   The German Druids gave way......................................118
+
+   Iormungondur, the great sea serpent.............................121
+
+   The giant Ymer has been born....................................123
+
+   The first men had been born with a telescope in their pocket?...127
+
+   Ymer was the first to succumb...................................128
+
+   After the giants came the turn of land and sea monsters.........129
+
+   The new creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance........132
+
+   Deer, eland, and aurochs were bounding in herds.................133
+
+   Incessantly a tiny squirrel comes and goes......................136
+
+   A vulture perching upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree.....137
+
+   Thor’s weighty hammer Mjoïner...................................139
+
+   The good Freyr seated at Odin’s table...........................141
+
+   Portrait of Freyr...............................................142
+
+   Bragi and the beautiful Freya ..................................147
+
+   Return of the eagle with the three precious vessels.............150
+
+   Balder, the bright god..........................................153
+
+   The wolf Fenris.................................................156
+
+   Converse with each other by significative glances...............159
+
+   They were the Norns.............................................160
+
+   He took counsel with the Norns..................................162
+
+   “To Egir, the seas and navigation”..............................164
+
+   Gefione took her four sons and changed them into oxen...........165
+
+   Jarl, the noble.................................................171
+
+   The Valkyrias ..................................................175
+
+   Beautiful nymphs of carnage.....................................176
+
+   A very mammoth of a boar........................................180
+
+   Feast in Scandinavian Paradise..................................181
+
+   Hela, the pale goddess..........................................185
+
+   “Balder, fair Balder, is going to die”..........................189
+
+   Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself.................191
+
+   Balder is amused by the game....................................192
+
+   When the mother told her pitiful tale the iron trees wept.......197
+
+   The three sacred cocks announcing the Twilight of Greatness.....202
+
+   The death of the gods...........................................208
+
+   My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph...............211
+
+   I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped.............214
+
+   The two religions face to face..................................217
+
+   Ovid reciting his “Metamorphoses”...............................219
+
+   Druidic worship suspended by the Romans.........................220
+
+   “Miserere mei, Jesu”............................................222
+
+   Perkunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos...............................224
+
+   Puscatus,--a kind-hearted god ..................................226
+
+   Monstrous reptiles accompany the gods to Germany................227
+
+   He let his heavy mace fall upon a little town...................238
+
+   The blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen...................................239
+
+   Marietta appeared in their midst................................245
+
+   “Do you think I am a man to be taken in ?”......................251
+
+   Horse-head, a la mode...........................................253
+
+   The Undines mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads.............258
+
+   Have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken...................259
+
+   The Olympus of the North........................................263
+
+   Able to see without being seen .................................266
+
+   Dance of the white fairies .....................................269
+
+   The black fairies personify Nightmare ..........................271
+
+   An important personage with a will of his own ..................272
+
+   Enormous toads are posted about.as watchmen.....................279
+
+   Elementary spirits of the water.................................283
+
+   Imaginary music ................................................288
+
+   The nix with the harp ..........................................289
+
+   Schoolmaster’s son who had fallen in love with one of them......291
+
+   He thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters.............294
+
+   He rose suddenly and fled to another room ......................295
+
+   The steward whispered some words in her ear ....................297
+
+   Niord, the Scandinavian god ....................................299
+
+   This creature is Nixcobt........................................300
+
+   The Vintner is hanged, and Nixcobt laughs heartily..............302
+
+   Four Prussian soldiers watching the water ......................305
+
+   The Zotterais protected sheep ..................................309
+
+   The master has nothing to do....................................315
+
+   Prefer to remember the Kobold a cheerful household companion....317
+
+   The Zotterais as fond of stables as the Kobolds of kitchens.....319
+
+   They are naturally easily tired ................................321
+
+   The Killecroffs are children of the Devil ......................322
+
+   His nurse has to be reinforced by two goats and a cow...........324
+
+   The great Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther ..........................326
+
+   The fall of Killecroff .........................................331
+
+   Giants and dwarfs...............................................335
+
+   The last of the giants..........................................337
+
+   Grommelund and Ephesim .........................................339
+
+   The humiliated giant............................................340
+
+   Our good little dwarfs .........................................341
+
+   He stood at first with his mouth wide open .................... 346
+
+   A long and deep sigh of satisfaction............................348
+
+   Flight of the conspirators......................................353
+
+   Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious cavity........354
+
+   They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth...........355
+
+   In his hand he held not a club but a lantern....................357
+
+   Kreiss compelled to leave his position by torrents of tears.....359
+
+   The last two held each a long thorn in their hands..............361
+
+   Kreiss entering the great meeting hall..........................363
+
+   Putskuchen was in love..........................................365
+
+   Ouadragant vanquished...........................................367
+
+   The passing of the wizard ......................................371
+
+   Venus and Tannhàuser............................................390
+
+   His ex-colleague Jupiter .......................................396
+
+   The author pursues the subject .................................399
+
+   The conscientious collector of myths............................401
+
+   The Druidess transformed into an accursed witch.................406
+
+   To return was as impossible as to proceed.......................409
+
+   She had rejoined her victims ...................................413
+
+   He is the Lord Hackelberg.......................................417
+
+   These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men.................421
+
+   Farewell........................................................423
+
+
+
+[Illustration: 023]
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+{003}_Primitive Times.--The First Settlers on the Rhine.--Masters
+going to School.--Sanskrit and Breton.--Ax Idle God.--Microscopic
+Deities.--Tree Worship.--Birth-Trees and Death-Trees._ The Rhine is born
+in Switzerland, in the Canton of Grisons; it skirts France and passes
+through it, and after a long and magnificent career it finally loses
+itself in the countless canals of Holland; and yet the Rhine is
+essentially a German river.
+
+{004}Already in the earliest ages, long before towns were built on its
+banks, it saw all the Germanic races dwell here in tents, watch their
+flocks, and fight their interminable battles, although the clash of
+arms and the blast of trumpets never for a moment aroused the impassive
+historian from his deep slumbers.
+
+[Illustration: 024]
+
+His silence, long continued into later centuries, does not prevent us
+from supposing, however, that the Rhine was already at that time the
+great high-{005}road on which the Germanic races wandered to and fro,
+and other races came to their native land. It was the Rhine that brought
+to them commerce and civilization; but on the Rhine came also invasions
+of a very different kind. We can allude here only to those religious
+invasions which are connected with our subject.
+
+[Illustration: 025]
+
+In the earliest ages the South of Europe alone was inhabited, while the
+Northern part was covered with vast forests, as old as the world, and as
+yet{006}unbroken by the footsteps of men. Dark, dismal solitudes,
+consisting of ancient woods or wretched morasses, where trees struggled
+painfully for existence and only the strongest survived when they
+reached the light and the sun; densely wooded deserts, in which vast
+herds of wild beasts pursued each other incessantly, while in the deep
+shadow of impenetrable foliage flocks of timid, trembling birds sought
+a refuge against hosts of voracious birds of prey. Thus, even while Man
+was yet absent, War was already reigning supreme here, and in these vast
+regions the Great Destroyer seemed to revel in it, as if it had been a
+feast, a necessity, a glory!
+
+Had never human eye yet looked upon these magnificent but unknown
+regions?
+
+Then, one fine day a host of savages appeared here and settled down with
+their flocks. After them came another host of more warlike and better
+armed men, who drove out the first comers and took possession of the
+tilled ground.
+
+After them another race, and then still another. Thus it went on for
+years and for centuries, and all these waves of immigration came down
+from the extreme North, marking each halting place by a bloody battle,
+while the conquered people, driven by the sharp edge of the sword to
+seek new homes, by turns pursued and pursuing, went and peopled those
+wild unsettled countries which afterwards be{007}came known as Belgium
+and France, as Bretagne and England. Continuing their march from thence
+southward, from the Rhine to the Mediterranean, they spread right and
+left, east and west, and crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps, making
+themselves masters on one side of Iberia, and on the other side of the
+plains of Lombardy, thus changing from fugitives into conquerors.
+
+[Illustration: 027]
+
+These conquered conquerors, driven from their own homes, and now driving
+other nations from their homes, these first pioneers who laid open one
+unknown country after another, were all children of one great family and
+all bore the same name of _Celts_.
+
+But where was the first source from which this {008}flood of families,
+of peoples, of nations, broke forth, that now overflowed Europe and in
+successive waves spread over the greater part of the Old World? Whence
+came these vast multitudes of Northern visitors, unexpected and unknown,
+who broke the mournful silence that had so long reigned in Europe? Were
+the frozen regions of the North pole, at that early time, really so
+fertile in men? We call upon men of science to answer our question. The
+question is a serious one, perhaps an indiscreet one, for who can
+be appealed to on such a difficult point? History? It did not exist.
+Monuments, written or sculptured? The Celts had never dreamt yet of
+writings or of carvings. Does this universal silence put it out of the
+power of our learned men to give a reply? Must they confess that they
+are unable to do so? By no means. Learned men never condescend to make
+such confessions. The Celts have left as a monument, a language, a
+dialect, still largely used in certain parts of ancient Bretagne as well
+as in the Principality of Wales.
+
+Illustrious academicians, mostly Germans, did not hesitate to go to
+school once more in order to learn Breton. The self-denial of which
+science is capable, deserves our admiration.
+
+After long labors, devoted to the separation of what belonged to the
+primitive language from subsequent additions, our great scholars found
+them{009}selves once more face to face with Sanskrit, the sacred idiom
+of the Brahmins, the ancestor of the old German tongue, and of the old
+Celtic tongue, and thus of the Breton.
+
+[Illustration: 029]
+
+The matter was decided, scientifically and categorically, and no appeal
+allowed. The Celts were a people from India. Europeans are all descended
+from Indians, driven from home by some powerful pressure, a political or
+religious revolution, or one of those fearful famines which periodically
+devastate {010}that immense and inexhaustible storehouse of nations.
+
+[Illustration: 030]
+
+At first, we good people, artists, poets, or authors, who generally
+claim to possess some little knowledge, were rather surprised at such
+a decision. But the wise men had said so; Bengal and Bretagne had to
+fraternize; the Brahmins of Benares speak Breton and the Bretons of
+Bretagne speak Sanskrit. Bretagne is Indian and India is Breton.
+
+Comparative Philology has taught the children of our day, that two
+syllables which are identical {011}in the idioms of two different races,
+prove the connection between two nations; hybridism means kinship.
+
+What happy people scholars are! They can converse with people who have
+been dead these three thousand years, and the grave has no secrets for
+them! A single word bequeathed to us by an extinct people, enables them
+to reconstruct that whole race.
+
+But I am bound to ask them another question, a question of much greater
+importance to myself. What were the religious convictions of these first
+inhabitants of Europe? I am answered by Mr. Simon Pelloutier, a minister
+of the Reformed Church in Berlin, of French descent, who has studied the
+primitive creed of the Celts most thoroughly and successfully. He tells
+us that these people, before they had Druids, worshipped, or rather held
+in honor the sun, the moon, and the stars, a kind of Sabaism, which,
+however, did not exclude the belief in a God, who was the creator, but
+not the ruler, of all things.
+
+This god appears to me to have been very imperfect; he was heavy,
+sleepy, and shapeless, having neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; he
+was incapable of feeling pity or anger, and the prayers and vows of men
+were unable to reach him. Invisible, intangible, and incomprehensible,
+he was floating in space, which he filled, and which he {012}animated
+without bestowing a thought upon it; omnipotent and yet utterly
+inactive, creating islands and continents, and causing the sun and the
+stars to give light by his mere approach, this divine idler had created
+the world, but declined taking the trouble of governing his creation.
+
+To whom had he confided the control over the stars in heaven? Mr.
+Pelloutier himself never could find out. As to the government of the
+earth, he had entrusted it to an infinite number of inferior deities,
+gods and sub-gods, of very small stature. They were as shapeless and as
+invisible as he was, but vastly more active, and endowed with all the
+energy which he had disdained to bestow upon himself. By their numbers
+and by their collective force they made up for their individual
+feebleness--and they must have been feeble indeed, since their extremely
+small size permitted a thousand of them to find a comfortable shelter
+under the leaf of a walnut tree!
+
+Besides, they presided over the different departments which were
+assigned to them, not by hundreds, but by myriads, nay, by millions
+of myriads. Thus they rushed forth in vast hosts, stirring the air in
+lively currents, causing the rivers and brooks to flow onwards, watching
+over fields and forests, penetrating the soil to great depths, creeping
+in through every crack and crevice, and breaking out {013}again through
+the craters of volcanoes. They formed a belt from the Rhine to the
+Taunus mountains, dazzling the whole region for a moment by a shower of
+sparks, and falling back upon the plain in the form of columns of black
+smoke.
+
+Science has, moreover, established this incontestable principle, that
+motion can only be produced in two ways here, below: either by the acts
+of living beings, or by the contact of these microscopic deities.
+
+Whenever the waters rose or broke forth in cataracts, whenever the
+leaves trembled in the wind, or the flowers bent before a storm, it was
+these diminutive gods who, invisible and yet ever active, forced the
+waters to come down in torrents, drove the tempest through the branches,
+bent the flowers down to the ground, and chased the dust of the
+highroads in lofty columns up to the clouds. It was they who caused the
+golden hair of the maid to fall down upon her shoulders as she went to
+the well, who shook the earthenware pitcher she carried on her shoulder,
+who crackled in the fire on the hearth, and who roared in the storm, or
+the eruptions of fiery mountains.
+
+When I think of this little world of tiny insect gods, who passed
+through the air in swarms, coming and going, turning to the left and to
+the right, struggling and striving above and beneath (I ask {014}their
+pardon for comparing these deities to humble insects, born in the
+mud and subject to infirmity and death like ourselves), I cannot help
+thinking of the beautiful lines by Lamartine, in which he so graphically
+describes life in Nature.
+
+     “Chaque fois que nos yeux, pénétrant dans ces ombres,
+     De la nuit des rameaux éclairaient les dais sombres,
+     Nous trouvions sous ces lits de feuille où dort l’été,
+     Des mystères d’amour et de fécondité.
+
+     Chaque fois que nos pieds tombaient dans la verdure
+     Les herbes nous montaient jusques à la ceinture,
+     Des flots d’air embaumé se répandaient sur nous,
+     Des nuages ailés partaient de nos genoux;
+     Insectes, papillons, essaims nageants de mouches,
+     Oui d’un éther vivant semblaient former les couches,
+     Ils’ montaient en colonne, en tourbillon flottant,
+     Comblaient l’air, nous cachaient l’un à l’autre un instant,
+     Comme dans les chemins la vague de poussière
+     Se lève sous les pas et retombe en arrière.
+
+     Ils roulaient; et sur l’eau, sur les prés, sur le foin,
+     Ces poussières de vie allaient tomber plus loin;
+     Et chacune semblait, d’existence ravie,
+     Epuiser le bonheur dans sa goutte de vie,
+     Et l’air qu’ils animaient de leurs frémissements
+     N’était que mélodie et que bourdonnements.”
+
+Such were the gods known to the first ingenuous dwellers on the banks
+of the Rhine--gods worthy of a society but just beginning. And still, I
+venture to make a suggestion, which Mr. Simon Pelloutier, my guide up to
+this point, has unfortunately neglected to make. It is this: I feel as
+if {015}there was hidden beneath this primitive and apparently puerile
+mythology a hideous monster, writhing in fearful threatenings and bitter
+mockery. This god Chaos, so careless and reckless, gifted with the power
+of creation but not with love for his work, seems to me nothing else
+but Matter, organizing itself. I have called these countless inferior
+deities microscopic. I should have called them molecular, for they are
+atoms, the monads of our science. There is evidently here a germ, not
+of a religious creed so much as of a philosophic system, a shadow of
+the materialism of a former civilization that is now degraded and nearly
+lost.
+
+At first I doubted the correctness of the opinions of our learned men;
+but I begin to believe in them; yes, these early Celts had come, to us
+from distant India, from that ancient, decayed country, and in their
+knapsacks they had brought with them, by an accident, this fragment
+of their symbolic cosmogony, the sad meaning of which was, no doubt, a
+mystery to them also.
+
+After some years, perhaps after some centuries, --for time does not
+count for much in those questions,--the Celts became weary of this
+selfish Deity, which was lost in the contemplation of its own being and
+dwelt in the centre of a cold and empty heaven, and they desired to
+establish some relations between him and themselves. Unable to appeal to
+{016}the Creator, they appealed to Creation, and asked for a mediator,
+who should hear their complaints or accept their thank-offerings and
+transmit them to the Supreme Power.
+
+We have already seen that they turned first to sun and moon; but they
+were ill rewarded for their efforts. These heavenly bodies were either
+too far removed from their clients to hear their complaints, or they
+were too busy with their own daily duties; at all events they shared
+with their common master in his indifference towards men.
+
+Our pious friends were offended by this want of consideration, and
+thought of looking for other intercessors, who might be less busy; whom
+they might not only see with their eyes but touch with their hands,
+and who would remain as much as possible in the same place, so as to be
+always on hand when they were needed.
+
+They appealed to rivers and mountains; but the rivers had nothing
+permanent but their banks, and went their way like the sun and moon;
+while the mountains, besides being the home of wolves, bears, and
+serpents, and thus enjoying an evil reputation, were continually hid by
+snow and rain from the eyes of the petitioners.
+
+At last they turned to the trees, and as it always happens, they now
+found out that they ought to have commenced where they ended. {017}A
+tree was an excellent mediator; standing between heaven and earth, it
+clung to the latter by its roots, while its trunk, shaped like an arrow,
+feathered with verdure, rose upwards as if to touch the sky.
+
+The worship of trees was probably the first effect of sedentary life
+adopted by the Celts after their long, more or less forced wanderings;
+in a few years it prevailed on both sides of the river Rhine.
+
+There was no lack of trees; every man had his own. As he could not carry
+it away with him, he became accustomed to live by its side.
+
+Man could lean his hut against the trunk; the flock could sleep in its
+shade.
+
+The birds came to it in numbers. If they were singing, it was a sign of
+joy to come; if they built their nests there, it was an invitation to
+marry.
+
+The fruit-bearing tree suggested comfort, abundance, and enjoyment; it
+spoke of harvest feasts and cider-making, when friends gathered around
+it, holding in their hands large horns filled to overflowing with
+foaming drink.
+
+Soon it became customary to plant at the birth of a child a tree which
+was to become a companion and a counsellor for life.
+
+Thus in the course of time a copse represented a family.
+
+The worship bestowed upon the tree consisted {018}in pruning it, in
+making it grow straight, in freeing its bark from parasitical growth
+and in keeping the roots free from ants, rats, snakes and all dangerous
+enemies. Such continuous care naturally led in the course of time to an
+improvement in cultivation.
+
+The tree worshippers, however, did more than this. On certain hallowed
+days they hung bouquets of herbs and of flowers on its branches, they
+brought food and drink, and thus fetichism crept in gradually. Alas!
+That men have never been able to keep from extremes!
+
+When the wind whispered in the leaves, the devout owner listened
+attentively, trying anxiously to interpret the mystic language of his
+cedar or his pear tree, and often a regular conversation ensued.
+
+It was a bad omen when a rising storm shook the tree fiercely; if the
+tempest was strong enough to break a branch, the event foretold a great
+calamity, and if it was struck by lightning, the owner was warned of
+his approaching death. The latter was resigned; he felt quite proud
+at having at last compelled his indolent god to reveal himself to his
+devout worshipper.
+
+When a child died, it was buried under its own tree, a mere sapling..
+But it was not so when a man died.{019}
+
+[Illustration: 039]
+
+The Celts used various and strange means for the purpose of disposing of
+the remains of their {021}deceased friends. In some countries they were
+burnt, and their own tree furnished the fuel for the funeral pile; in
+other countries the _Todtenbaum_ (Tree of the Dead), hollowed out with
+an axe, became the owner’s coffin. This coffin was interred, unless
+it was intrusted to the current of the river, to be carried God knows
+where! Finally, in certain localities there existed a custom--a horrible
+custom!--of exposing the body to the voracity of birds of prey, and the
+place of exposure was the top of the very tree which had been planted at
+the birth of the deceased, and which in this case, quite exceptionally,
+was not cut down.
+
+Now, observe, that in these four distinct methods by which human remains
+were restored to the four elements of air and water, earth and fire, we
+meet again the four favorite ways of burial still practiced in India,
+as of old, by the followers of Brahma, Buddha, and Zoroaster. The
+fire-worshippers of Bombay are as familiar with them as the dervishes
+who drown children in the Ganges. Thus we have here four proofs, instead
+of one, of the Indian origin of our Celts. For my part at least, I
+confess I am convinced by this quadruple evidence.
+
+It is to be presumed that the use of Dead Men’s Trees and of posthumous
+drownings continued for centuries in ancient Gaul as well as in ancient
+Germany. About 1560 some Dutch laborers found, {022}in examining a part
+of the Zuyder Zee, at a great depth, several trunks of trees which
+were marvelously well preserved and nearly petrified. Each one of these
+trunks had been occupied by a man, and contained some half-petrified
+fragments. It was evident that they had been carried down, trunk and
+man, by the Rhine, the Ganges of Germany.
+
+[Illustration: 042]
+
+As recently as 1837 such _Todtenbaume_ or Dead Men’s Trees, well
+preserved by the peculiar nature of the soil, have been discovered in
+England, near Solby in Yorkshire, and still more recently, in 1848, on
+Mount Lupfen in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
+
+In face of such well authenticated evidence of Dead Men’s Trees having
+been confided to the current of rivers or the bosom of the earth, it
+seems superfluous to ask for additional proof in support of the fact
+that cremation was practiced all over ancient Europe. Nor do I consider
+myself, as a collector of myths, bound to prove everything. I {023}do
+not mean to speak, therefore, any further of Birthday Trees, of Dead
+Men’s Trees, and of Fetich Trees,--which we shall moreover meet again
+presently,--and hasten on to other myths of far greater importance.
+
+The Druids now appear for the first time in Gaul and in Germany.
+
+[Illustration: 043]
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+{027}_The Druids and their Creed.--Esus.--The Holy Oak.--The Pforzheim
+Lime Tree.--A Rival Plant.--The Mistletoe and the Ansfuinum.--The
+Oracle at Dodona.--Immaculate Horses.--The Druidesses.--A late
+Elector.--Philanthropic Institution of Human Sacrifices.--Second
+Druidical Epoch_.
+
+The Druids were the first to bring to the Gauls as well as to the
+Germans religious truths, but their creed can be appreciated from no
+dogma of theirs; it must be judged by their rites.
+
+The first question is: Whence did the Druids {028}come? Were they
+disciples of the Magi, and did they come from Persia? Such an origin has
+been claimed for them: or had they been initiated by Isis in her
+ancient mysteries, and did they come from Egypt? This view also has its
+adherents. Or, finally, had they been driven towards Western Europe
+by one of the last waves of immigration, which left India under the
+pressure of some new calamity? Many think so.
+
+As it seems to be difficult to decide between these three suggestions,
+it might be worth while to try and reconcile them with each other. It is
+a long way from India to Germany and to Gaul, and there might have been
+many stopping places between the country from which they started and
+their future home.
+
+The Druids, like all other Celts, might very well have started from
+India, and choosing not the most direct way might have reached Europe
+only after making many a long halt in Persia and in Egypt.
+
+‘If that can be admitted, then there is no difficulty in assuming that
+the first Celts might very well have taken with them from the banks of
+the Indus and the Ganges only a few fragments of a sickly materialism
+taught by false teachers outside of the temple, while the Druids might
+have been initiated within the temple itself, thus learning to know the
+true nature of the Deity.
+
+Their creed was founded upon a triple basis--one {029}God; the
+immortality of the soul; and rewards and punishments in a future life.
+
+These sound doctrines, which are as old as the world and form the
+foundation of all human morality, had ever been maintained by their wise
+men.
+
+At a later period the Greeks, proud as they were of their Platonic
+philosophy, had not hesitated to acknowledge that they had obtained the
+first germ of it from the Celts, the Galati, and consequently from the
+Druids. One of the Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, openly
+admits that these same Celts had been orthodox in their religion, at
+least as far as their dogmas were concerned.
+
+By what name was the Supreme Being known to the Druids? They called it
+_Esus_, which means the Lord, or they gave it the simple designation
+of _Teut_ (God). Through this Teut the German races became afterwards
+Teutons, the sons and followers of Teut, and even in our day they call
+themselves in their own language Teutsche or _Deutsche_.
+
+Three marvelously brief maxims contain almost the whole catechism of the
+Druids: Serve God; Abstain from evil; Be brave!
+
+The Druids, being warriors as well as priests, displayed in the
+performance of their warlike priesthood all the energy, the severity,
+and the authority which must needs accompany such a strange combination
+of powers. {030}Holding all the power of the state in their hands, and
+speaking in the name of God, commanding the army, controlling the public
+treasury, and acting not only as judges but also as physicians, they
+punished heresy and rebellion, and ended lawsuits as well as diseases,
+by the death of the person most interested.
+
+Their laws, liberal and philanthropic in spite of their apparent
+severity, allowed a jury consisting of notables, to judge grave
+crimes; this fact of a jury suggests naturally the idea of extenuating
+circumstances, and thus the criminal, escaping more readily than
+the patient, frequently got off with a fine, if he was rich, or with
+banishment if he was poor.
+
+Nevertheless all the efforts of the Druids did not succeed in thoroughly
+eradicating Tree worship; they were thus led to adopt one tree, to the
+exclusion of all others, which should rally around it the scattered
+adoration of all the nations. This official tree, a kind of green altar,
+on which God manifested himself to his priests, was an oak, a strong,
+vigorous oak, the king of the forests.
+
+Thus the holy oak became known and honored; pious worshippers came by
+night, with torches in their hands, in long processions to present their
+offerings.
+
+This usage soon became general among all Celtic nations. Around these
+oaks the Druids formed sacred precincts within which they lived with
+their families, for they were married; but they could have {031}only one
+wife, while the other chieftains were generally polygamists.
+
+[Illustration: 051]
+
+But the oak, although thus enjoying preeminence over all other trees,
+was by no means exclusively worshipped everywhere. Perhaps from
+religious antagonism, or perhaps merely from local usage, some
+provinces of Gaul and of Italy preferred the beech and the elm. In Gaul
+especially, the elm prevailed over the oak, and even Christian France
+still continued for a long time to plant an elm tree before every newly
+built church, so as to draw God’s blessing the more surely upon it; and
+down to the end of the Middle Ages courts of justice were always held
+under an elm tree. Hence the curious {032}French proverb, which did not
+always have the mocking sense in which it is used nowadays, wait for
+me under the elm tree! (Attendez-moi sous forme) What was then a
+formal summons to appear before a judge has now come to mean: Wait till
+doomsday.
+
+[Illustration: 052]
+
+The ash tree, also, had its worshippers among the dwellers in high
+northern latitudes, and it was under the dense branches of an enormous
+ash tree that terrible Odin and his following of deities appeared in a
+dark cloud.
+
+Thus Tree worship appeared once more. It has ever since continued to
+flourish more or less in Germany, and even now exists to a certain
+extent. But it is not the oaks, nor the beech, nor the elm, nor the ash
+tree, which in our day receives the worship of the young especially--but
+the lime tree. The admirers of the lime tree carry their fervor to
+fanaticism and their fanaticism to murder. I had {033}been unwilling to
+believe this.
+
+[Illustration: 053]
+
+But this morning I opened my newspaper and there I found an article,
+dated December 30, 1860, and stating that a young man from Pforzheim, in
+the Palatinate, attempted to murder the mayor of his town by means of
+a revolver, the four barrels of which were loaded with as many leaden
+balls. When he was arrested, he declared that he had personally nothing
+to say against the burgomaster, but that the latter {034}had recently
+ordered certain lime trees to be cut down, that _the good people of
+Pforzheim idolized these trees_, and that he had determined to punish
+him for such profanation.
+
+The paper added: “This young man belongs to an honorable family, his
+antecedents are excellent, and he has never shown the slightest symptom
+of mental derangement.”
+
+How, then does it come about that the lime tree should in our day, in
+the nineteenth century, call forth sentiments of such extreme violence?
+The reason is that Young Germany has proclaimed it to be the Tree of
+Love, because _its leaves are shaped like hearts_.
+
+If I were not afraid of getting myself into trouble, having a natural
+horror of all firearms, and especially of four barrelled revolvers,
+I should mention here, that anatomists protest against this pretended
+resemblance of the leaf to the heart. In reality it looks much more
+like the ace of hearts, as it terminates below in a sharp point--but
+superstition prevails over anatomy, and teaches us once more that
+science ought not to meddle with things pertaining to love.
+
+The Druids’ Oak, although less tempting to gallant comparisons, finally
+excited almost equal fanaticism. Processions and sacrifices became
+well nigh endless; young maidens adorned it with garlands of flowers,
+{035}interspersed with bracelets and necklaces, while warriors suspended
+in its branches the most precious spoil they brought home from their
+battles. If a storm arose, the other trees of the forest seemed in good
+faith, humbly to bow down before their chief.
+
+[Illustration: 055]
+
+And yet it had an enemy, a fierce, relentless enemy. An abject, little
+plant, unknown and miserable in appearance, came unceremoniously and
+made its home on its sacred branches and even on its august summit;
+there it lived on its life’s blood, feeding on its sap, absorbing its
+substance, threatening {036}to impede its natural growth, and finally
+carrying the impudence so far as to conceal the glossy leaves of the
+noble godlike tree under its own lustreless and viscous foliage. This
+hostile and impious plant was the Mistletoe, the mistletoe of the oak
+(_Guythil_).
+
+Other people, less intelligent and less sagacious than the Druids, would
+have freed the tree from this unwelcome and obnoxious visitor, by simply
+climbing up and cutting off the parasite by means of a pruning bill.
+This would have been irreverent as well as impolitic. What would the
+people have thought? The people would most assuredly have reasoned, that
+the sacred tree had been rendered powerless, being unable to rid itself
+of its vermin.
+
+The Druids did much better. They treated the mistletoe very much as we,
+in our day, treat a formidable member of the opposition; they gave it a
+place in the sanctuary. The mistletoe was proclaimed to be an official
+and sacred plant, and became an essential part of their worship. When it
+was to be detached from the tree, this was not done stealthily and by a
+mean iron bill-hook, but in the presence of all, amid public rejoicings
+and accompanied by solemn chants. The instrument was a golden reaping
+hook, and with it the _Guythil_ was carefully cut off at the base and
+gathered in {037}linen veils. These veils became henceforth sacred, and
+were not allowed to be used for ordinary purposes.
+
+The Teutons who lived on the Rhine, obtained from the mistletoe a kind
+of glue, which they looked upon as a panacea against the sterility of
+women, the ravages of diseases, the effects of witchcraft,--and also as
+a means to catch birds.
+
+[Illustration: 057]
+
+The Gauls, on the other hand, dried it carefully and put the dust into
+pretty little scent-bags, which they presented to each other as New
+Year’s Gifts on the first day of the year. Hence, in t some provinces
+of France, the cry is still heard, “Aguilanneuf” (_au gui l’an neuf_),
+“Mistletoe for New Year!”
+
+Modern science treats mistletoe simply as a purgative, and thus attempts
+to prove that our ancestors showed their affection to each other by
+exchanging presents of violent purgatives.
+
+The introduction of this parasite plant into the {038}sanctuary became,
+however, very soon a public benefit. For the oak-mistletoe obtained ere
+long considerable commercial value, and at once counterfeiters (for even
+under the Druids there existed such men) went to work and gathered it
+from other trees also, from apple trees and pear trees, from nut trees
+and lime trees, from beeches, elms, and even larches. The consequence
+was, that owners of orchards as well as owners of forests, rejoiced
+in the trick, at which the Druids discreetly winked; for they took
+advantage of the lesson.
+
+[Illustration: 058]
+
+At one time venomous reptiles had become so numerous in the regions
+of the Rhine, that they caused continually serious accidents among the
+{039}people, the majority of whom lived all day long in the open air,
+and did not always sleep under shelter. During their winter sleep, these
+reptiles rolled themselves up into vast balls, and became apparently
+glued to each other by a kind of viscous ooze. In this state they were
+called by the Celts _Serpents Eggs_, or rather _Serpents’ Knots_, while
+the Romans called them _anguimim_.
+
+These strange balls were used medicinally by the Druids like the
+mistletoe; they employed them even in their religious ceremonies, and
+soon they became so rare, that only the wealthiest people could procure
+them, by paying their weight in gold. If the Druids had really at first
+been misled so as to adopt superstitious customs, which they repented of
+in their hearts, they soon found means to make these same superstitious
+rites beneficial to the people.
+
+Unfortunately serpents’ knots, oaks, and their parasites, did not long
+satisfy a people ever desirous of new things. It is a well-known fact
+that innovations, however small may have been their first beginning, are
+sure to go on enlarging and increasing from day to day.
+
+The old party of Tree worshippers, still numerous and very active as all
+old parties are, complained of the suppression of their companion-trees,
+the ancient family oracles, for the purpose of favoring {040}one single
+oak tree,--a tree which yet was not able, in spite of all the privileges
+it enjoyed, to put them into communication with _Estes_, the god of
+heaven.
+
+This complaint was certainly not unfounded;--it had to be answered.
+
+The Druids consisted of three classes:--
+
+The Druids proper (_Eubages_, they were called in Gaul) were
+philosophers as well as scholars, perhaps even magicians, for magic was
+at that time nothing more than the outward form of science. They were
+charged with the maintenance of the principles of morality, and had to
+study the secrets of nature. The Prophets, on the other hand, knew how
+to interpret in the slightest breath of wind, the language of the holy
+oak, which spoke to them in the rustling of its leaves, in the soughing
+of the branches, in the low cracking heard within the trunk, and even in
+the earlier or later appearance of the foliage. There were, finally, the
+Bards, poets bound to the altar.
+
+While the bards were singing around the oak, the prophets caused it to
+render its oracles. These oracles soon increased largely not only in
+Europe, but also in Asia Minor, where a Celtic colony, according to
+Herodotus, established in the land they had conquered the oracle of
+Dodona. Early Greece worshipped an oak tree, which Strabo, however,
+assures {041}us was a beech. There is no disputing about trees any more
+than about colors; but Homer calls it an oak, and an oak it must remain
+for us.
+
+[Illustration: 061]
+
+This new movement, grafted upon the simple worship of the Druids, did
+not stop here. After having for some time been accustomed to converse
+with Teut by means of a tree, the Celts were naturally surprised at
+seeing that, while trees could speak, living creatures remained silent,
+and were apparently deprived of the power of foretelling the future.
+Certain chieftains, especially, felt aggrieved, {042}upon setting out on
+a great campaign, that they were not allowed to carry the holy oak
+along with them, and in their intense devotion, fell upon the idea
+of consulting the nervous trembling of their horses and their sudden
+neighing in moments of surprise or terror,--for in order to be of
+prophetic nature the movements of the animals had to be involuntary and
+spontaneous. As this creed began to spread gradually, every man who was
+setting out on a journey or a warlike expedition mounted his horse in
+the firm conviction that he would be able to consult his four-footed
+prophet at any time during his absence from home, provided he was able
+to submit the omens to the learned interpretations of a soothsayer.
+
+The Druid priests were not long in becoming seriously alarmed at these
+travelling oracles, liable as they naturally were to contradict each
+other.
+
+As they had before chosen a single tree to be the sacred tree, so they
+now accepted as genuine omens only the symptoms noticed in certain
+horses which were bred within the sacred precincts and under their own
+eyes.
+
+These horses, of immaculate whiteness and raised at public expense, were
+not employed for any work, and never had to submit to saddle or bridle.
+Wild and untamed, they roamed with fluttering manes in perfect liberty
+through the lofty forests. The freedom {043}of their movements gave
+naturally a safer character to their omens, and thus these prophetic
+horses, which formed almost a part of the druidical clergy, enjoyed for
+a long time the highest authority in all Celtic countries, when suddenly
+one fine day new rivals arose.
+
+Other living creatures entered into competition with them, and these
+rivals of the horses were--shall I say it?--were women. These women
+discovered, all of a sudden, that they also were endowed, and in the
+very highest degree, with the gifts of second sight, of inspiration,
+intuition, and divination.
+
+When public opinion appealed to the Druids to give their views on this
+claim, they admitted, according to the statement of Tacitus, that women
+had something more instinctive and more divine in them than men, nay,
+even than horses. Their sensitive organization predisposed them to
+receive the gift of prophecy, and hence “women indeed act more readily
+from natural impulse, without reflection, than from thought or reason.”
+
+This last explanation, improper in the highest degree, does not come
+from Tacitus, nor from myself, God forbid! It is the exclusive property
+of the aforementioned Mr. Simon Pelloutier. Let every one be responsible
+for his own work!
+
+The Druids treated the women just as they had {044}treated the horses,
+the mistletoe, and the trees. They acknowledged as true prophetesses
+only those who were already under the direct influence of the holy place
+and the sacred oak; that is to say, their wives and their daughters.
+
+The principle of centralization of power is evidently not of modern
+origin.
+
+[Illustration: 064]
+
+Thus, there were now Druidesses, as there had been Druids before. The
+latter became the teachers of the young men; they taught their pupils
+the motions of the stars, the shape and extent of the earth, the divers
+products of nature, the history of their ancestors written in the form
+of poems which the bards recited; in fact, they taught them everything
+except reading and writing. Memory was as yet sufficient for all things.
+The priestesses, on the other hand, opened schools for the young girls;
+they taught them to sing and to sew, they initiated them into religious
+ceremonies and confided to them the knowledge of simples; nor was
+poetry neglected, as they had to learn by heart certain poems which were
+specially composed for their benefit. These verses, of somewhat doubtful
+{045}lyrical character, probably taught them how to make bread, how to
+brew beer, and other small details of the kitchen and the house.
+
+The Druidesses practiced also medicine. This threefold prerogative of
+being physicians, prophets, and preceptors, finally raised them so high
+in the estimation of the nation, that when the priests of Teut were
+compelled to abandon their sanctuaries, they did not hesitate to confide
+them to their guardianship. They even presided in their own right, at
+certain ceremonies.
+
+If one of them excelled by the frequency, the lucidity, and the
+reliability of her inspirations, as was the case at different times with
+the illustrious Aurinia, Velleda, and Ganna, whom the Roman emperors
+even deigned to consult through their ambassadors, the proud Druids
+placed her with humble submission, at the head of their own college of
+priests. During this female dictatorship, she became the arbiter of the
+destiny of nations, decided on peace and war, and controlled all the
+movements of great armies.
+
+Caesar tells us that he once asked one of his German captives, why
+Ariovistus, their chieftain, had never yet dared to meet him in battle,
+and was told in reply, that the Druidesses, after a careful examination
+of the eddies and whirlpools of the Rhine, had forbid his engaging in
+action till the {046}time of the new moon. As a matter of course, the
+shrewd general profited by this information, and when the new moon
+appeared, the Germans were in full flight.
+
+[Illustration: 066]
+
+But the Rhine has not yet given its oracles, and the time has not yet
+come, when Ganna Velleda, and Aurinia condescend to grant audiences to
+Roman ambassadors.
+
+We only wished to trace in a few outlines the future development of this
+institution of Druidesses, which we shall meet again in the days of its
+decline. {047}In the mean time, however, their influence and their power
+were daily growing. Were the Teutons at last satisfied? By no means. In
+spite of all the skill displayed by their diviners and the Druid-esses,
+they came to the conclusion, that neither the trembling foliage of the
+holy oak, nor the sudden starts, the wild leaps, and the more or less
+prolonged, loud neighings of the horses, afforded them sufficient
+excitement and perfectly reliable revelations. It occurred to them next,
+to consult animals, not in their outward manifestations, but in their
+still quivering entrails. This new ceremony could not fail to give to
+their religious worship a more serious aspect, and a certain savor of
+murder, which no doubt had its charms for a warlike people.
+
+The Druids yielded once more, but they felt discouraged. What had become
+of that grand philosophic religion, which was content with prayer and
+meditation, and which they once--too fondly, perhaps--had hoped to be
+able to adapt to the nature of these barbarians?
+
+They first consented to slay at the foot of the sacred oak, so long kept
+free from blood, a number of noxious beasts, like wolves, lynxes, and
+bears; but the turn of domestic animals came ere long, and they began
+to sacrifice sheep, goats, and finally man’s best companion in war,
+the horse. Not even the spotless white horses, heretofore looked upon
+{048}with such profound and superstitious reverence, were spared any
+longer.
+
+And at each step forward in this bloody career, the Druids, always
+resisting, and always compelled to yield, made their last and their very
+last concession, vainly hoping that they might thus retain for a little
+while longer the power, which they felt was fast slipping from their
+grasp.
+
+Encouraged by success, the reformers finally came to the question,
+whether the most acceptable offering to be presented to God, was not the
+blood of man? Is not man, of all created beings, the most noble and the
+most perfect? Perhaps they were inclined to carry the argument still
+farther, and to reason that among all men the most worthy to be chosen
+and the most likely to be acceptable to God, were the Druids themselves?
+But they took care not to ask too much at once. They held this final
+consequence of a great principle in reserve, requiring for the present
+nothing more than a common victim, anything that might come in the way,
+provided it was a human being.
+
+It might have been expected, that when this abominable demand was made
+to hallow murder by committing it in the name of Heaven, the descendants
+and heirs of the ancient sages would have remembered their noble
+ancestors who had put an end to the first and quite inoffensive
+superstitions {049}of the early Celts. They ought to have veiled their
+faces, drawn back with horror, and recovering for once their former
+energy, appealed by means of the holy oak, the spotless horses, the
+soothsayers and the Druidesses, nay of heaven and earth itself, to
+the whole nation, calling upon them to anathematize the infamous
+petitioners. But they did no such thing. On the contrary they hastened
+to legalize such savage bloodshed by their holy consent. One might
+almost be led to suspect that they had themselves, underhand, suggested
+the horrible idea.
+
+O ye hypocritical priests, ye false philosophers, ye tigers disguised as
+shepherds of the people!.... But we must check our indignation. For
+who knows, but they may have been swayed not so much by an instinct
+of cruelty as by a lofty political, or even philanthropic principle?
+Philanthropic? Yes, indeed; we will explain.
+
+Among the Celts human life counted for little; it was lavished in
+battles, it was cast away in duels. At the time when the Gauls held
+large national assemblies, they tried to secure punctual attendance by
+simply putting to death the man who was the last to come; he paid for
+all the tardy ones. I do not mean to propose such a plan at the present
+day; but after all it was an infallible and economical measure. {050}The
+Teutons, on the other hand, bloodless in their national assemblies,
+after a battle in which they had been victorious, delighted in
+massacring all their prisoners.
+
+These massacres ceased from the time when the Druids claimed for
+themselves the exclusive right of human sacrifices.
+
+The good Esus, having become bloodthirsty, demanded all the captives
+to be slain in expiation at his altar, and woe to him who dared to
+anticipate him in his wrath. He was excluded from the sacred precincts;
+he was declared an impious, sacrilegious person, who could no longer
+take his place among the citizens; and he ran great risk of being forced
+to offer his own life in compensation for that which by his fault was
+wanting at the holocaust.
+
+When this custom became once fully established, the prisoners of war
+were all delivered up to the high-priest, who chose from among them one
+or more to be slain as an offering. The victim was generally one of the
+captive chieftains, and he was slain together with his war horse, so
+as to add to the impressiveness of the ceremony and to reconcile the
+spectators by the abundance of blood that was shed to the small number
+of victims.
+
+After having carefully examined the opened bodies of man and animal,
+the sacrificing priest, his {051}beard and clothes saturated with blood,
+raised his bloody right hand to heaven and, reeking with murder and
+breathing carnage, he proclaimed that his god was satisfied. The
+remainder of the prisoners were kept for another day, but that other day
+never came.
+
+Thus a new office had been created: that of a sacrificing priest. On
+both banks of the Rhine, in Germany as well as in Gaul, the Druids
+reserved this office for themselves; in other Celtic countries, in
+Scandinavia and among the Scythians, women performed the terrible duty;
+we all remember as a proof of it, Iphigenia of Tauris.
+
+Whatever we may think of this bloody innovation, it certainly benefited
+the prisoners, but the Druids obtained from it, after all, the greatest
+advantage. Their power, which had been seriously undermined, step by
+step, was once more firmly established. The opposition, which had paid
+no attention to their remonstrances or their prayers, shrunk from their
+knives.
+
+From this moment begins the Second Period of the Druids.
+
+The bloody knife of the Druids remained long all powerful, but we need
+not follow its later fate. Cæsar had conquered and pacified Gaul,
+and the successors of Augustus fulminated their Imperial {052}decrees
+against the Druids, as slayers of men, while the same knife continued to
+shed the blood of the Germans.
+
+[Illustration: 072]
+
+[Illustration: 075]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+{055}_A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.--The two Banks of the
+Rhine.--Druid Stones.--Weddings and Burials.--Xight Service.--A Dentigod
+Glacier.--Social Duels. A Countrywoman of Aspasia.--Boudoir of a Celtic
+Lady.--The Bard’s Story.--Teutons and Titans.--Earthquake._
+
+Any one who has ever travelled in my company, must know that I am apt
+to stray from my way, or at least to choose the longest route. I have
+a fancy to-day, to turn my eyes and my steps away from those sacred
+precincts of the Druids, which {056}had become slaughter-houses and in
+which the hand that blessed was also the hand that killed.
+
+I desire to breathe an air less filled with the perfumes, or rather the
+fetid odor of sacrifices. Up there, on that hill-top, where the setting
+sun lights up the bright summit, I shall breathe more freely.
+
+Here I am.
+
+Beneath me the Rhine spreads out its two banks, not united yet by any
+bridge, and even without a ferry to bring the one nearer to the other.
+
+But on both sides, half hid under dense willow thickets and gigantic
+reeds, there lie, in many a shallow little bay, large numbers of tiny
+barks. These cunning looking boats belong to harmless fishermen in the
+daytime; but at night they are filled with robbers and corsairs, who
+form in bands, cross over to the other side in search of booty, and even
+venture, if needs be, out into the Northern Sea. Just now nothing stirs;
+the fishermen have gone home, the corsairs have not come forth. I look
+farther out.
+
+On the left bank there are some Gallic Celts encamped, with blue eyes,
+white skin, and abundant golden tresses. Almost naked, their principal
+garment seems to be that immense shield, almost as long as their body,
+which shelters them on the march as well as when they are at rest, and
+which protects {057}them against the sun and the enemy alike. All of a
+sudden I hear them, with lips held close to one of the edges of their
+shields, utter sharp cries, which are taken up and repeated, from
+distance to distance, all the way down the river. To these cries, which
+no doubt represent their telegraphic system, there comes an answer from
+far sounding trumpets.
+
+[Illustration: 077]
+
+Who are these other soldiers with the black hair and the bronzed
+complexions? Carefully arrayed in symmetrical lines they advance
+steadily, clad in brilliant armor, and carrying banners surmounted by
+golden eagles with half open wings. Has Cæsar really succeeded, after
+ten years’ warfare, in making himself master of Gaul as far as the banks
+of the Rhine? I cannot doubt it; for at their {058}approach, the Gauls
+lower their lance-heads, in token of their peaceful disposition, and
+allow them to pass.
+
+[Illustration: 078]
+
+When they reach the river, the small Roman army pauses; under the
+protection of this armed force a few men, dressed in simple tunics, with
+no arms but tablets, a style, and ropes for measuring the ground, go to
+work preparing a plan, perhaps for a bridge, perhaps for a town.
+
+German sentinels, take care!
+
+From the height of my hill I look down upon a {059}narrow strip of land
+on the right bank of the river, and here I see several groups of men,
+scattered here and there in the woods and on the plain, who work under
+the superintendence of a Druid. Some are digging up the roots of trees
+which overshadow and impoverish the ground; others draw long furrows
+with the iron of their ploughs. These laborers seem all to suffer from
+some restraint which impedes their movements, but of which at this
+distance I can discover no cause.
+
+In order to meditate on this strange sight, I look around for a resting
+place. Half way up the hill I notice a small stone bench. As I draw
+nearer, the object grows in size and rises to such a height, that I
+should need a ladder if I wished to take possession of my seat.
+
+[Illustration: 079]
+
+This apparent bench is a monument, a Druidical monument, and consists of
+two upright stones, on which rests a third, horizontal stone. In France,
+in England, and in Germany there are still found {060}such Druidical
+altars, cromlechs or dolmens; these menhyrs astonished already Alexander
+of Macedonia when he marched through Scythia. In Bretagne, at Carnac,
+some of these stones, consisting of a single rock, rise by the wayside,
+as if to tell the traveller the story of the past, or they range
+themselves before his eyes in long lines, forming on the ground endless
+circles of emblematic meaning, as it is supposed. But the traveller can
+no longer understand their language. Was this an altar, or was it an
+idol, or perhaps only a simple monument raised over a grave. If they
+were altars, Carnac would be Olympus; if they were tombstones, it would
+be a cemetery.
+
+[Illustration: 080]
+
+I was going all around the mystic three stones to examine them more
+closely, when I noticed close by a flock of sheep, and then a shepherd.
+
+This shepherd, covered with a ragged _sagum_, had on his feet leather
+sandals, a half open wound on his forehead, which had not yet had
+time to close, enhanced the fierceness of his appearance. His burning
+{061}glances fell now upon the Druidical stone and now upon another
+object which I had not noticed before. This was the guard of a sword
+which had been driven into the ground.
+
+Could it be that this stone resting upon two supports, were new
+concessions made by the politic Druids?
+
+[Illustration: 081]
+
+As according to their spiritualistic views God could not render himself
+visible in a shape resembling our own, they had represented him as well
+as they could by a symbol. It appeared thus that human sacrifices were
+already no longer sufficient to maintain their creed.
+
+While I was examining with growing curiosity this strange keeper of
+sheep, fair, with bare neck and bare feet, was busy watching on the same
+side of the hill another flock, and at the same time gathering herbs
+for medicinal purposes. When she was about to leave, she offered the
+shepherd to attend to his wound, sword handle, and this {062}but he
+refused haughtily; she ran away laughing, and threw a flower into his
+face.
+
+He did not pick up that flower; he did not salute that pretty girl as
+she left him. He looked at her with disdain.
+
+Ah! I can doubt it no longer; this unhappy man is like the wood-cutter
+in the forest, and the laborers in the field, one of those prisoners
+taken in war, whom the Druids have spared, and now render useful. His
+closely shorn hair, his open wound, and the heavy wooden yoke which he
+has to carry on his neck, all betray his sad fate. He has made no reply
+to the half pitiful, half coquettish advances of the pretty gatherer of
+simples, because she has only awakened in his heart painful memories of
+his distant love, or of his wife, whom he is never to see again! He has
+cast glances of fierce hatred and burning revenge at the Druidical altar
+and the handle of the sword, because both of these objects point out the
+place of bloody sacrifices. Does he think he is himself destined to be
+slain? or was perhaps the warrior whom they slew yesterday, a man of his
+own tribe, his best friend, his own brother?
+
+But I have taken refuge here in order to escape from these painful
+thoughts of blood and murder. I propose to seek new objects of interest.
+
+Farther down, nearly at the foot of the hill, I {063}see a few huts, or
+rather a few low, almost crushed roofs, which seem hardly to rise from
+the ground. Are they houses, or stables, or caves?
+
+On the left bank Gauls and Romans have alike disappeared in the mists
+rising from the river. On the right bank the wood-cutters and the
+field-laborors are resting upon their axes or their ploughs, and seem to
+ask the sun if the day is not drawing to an end.
+
+[Illustration: 083]
+
+A breeze is springing up, the shepherd gathers his flock and, as
+mournful as ever, he slowly takes {064}the footpath that leads down the
+hill towards the village.
+
+I follow him without knowing what mysterious power draws me in that
+direction.
+
+Perhaps some Druid magician holds me under a potent spell, which enables
+me to forget who I am, whence I come, and even to what century I belong,
+and to witness these strange scenes, which, well nigh forgotten by all
+living beings, I alone am permitted to watch? Let me try, at all events,
+to profit by this rare piece of good fortune.
+
+I reach the low village and find it occupied by a colony of Salic
+Franks, who live scattered all along the Rhine. With their eyes fixed
+upon the left bank, they are just now far more occupied with the
+invasion of Germany by the Romans, than with the thought of invading
+Gaul themselves.--I feel suddenly a deep interest in these people. What
+Frenchman of this nineteenth century can feel sure that the blood in his
+veins is not the same that once gave life and strength to these terrible
+warriors from the North, Franks or Gauls? We are all natives of one or
+the other bank of this great river Rhine, and feel towards each
+other, whether we live on the right or the left bank, very much like
+school-boys whose friendship is cemented by many a battle royal.
+
+Being a Frenchman, I feel that I am about to {065}pay a visit to my
+paternal ancestors--for the Franks have given us our name. No wonder
+that I feel deeply moved.
+
+I examine the low huts of the village, if village it can be called, and
+find that they are separated from each other by commons and by fields,
+and that they finally lose themselves in the open country. Where now
+these scattered huts are standing, there may be one of these days a
+Mayence or a Cologne, and yet they will occupy no larger space with all
+their suburbs included.
+
+On both sides of the road extend orchards, fenced in with reeds and all
+aglow with blooming apple trees; dark, sombre pine forests and swamps,
+the greenish waters of which are confined within slight dams; here and
+there the live rock crops out from the ground and interrupts the road,
+or huge trees are lying across, recently cut down and but just deprived
+of their branches. In the open pasture grounds huge buffaloes are lying
+about snorting and panting with fatigue, for they have worked all day in
+the plough; the neighing of horses is heard from one end of the country
+to the other, and gradually dies out as the sun sinks below the horizon;
+lean heifers, with long, spiral horns, push here and there their heads
+through the fence of the orchards to have a last bite at the tender
+foliage of the reeds, and small oxen of an {066}inferior breed return to
+their quarters at the same time with the sheep, quite content to browse
+on the grass by the wayside, while herds of swine are wallowing in the
+mire of the low grounds.
+
+[Illustration: 086]
+
+The landscape resembles parts of Bretagne and of Normandy; but these
+provinces have no such huts. To see a human habitation, you have to rise
+high above the fences and hedges and then look down upon the ground.
+
+At a place where two roads meet, the cracking of a whip is heard;
+hogs, sheep, and small oxen are driven aside to make way for a kind of
+procession, consisting of grave and solemn men and women, who almost all
+wear a look of consternation.
+
+It is a wedding.
+
+Two young people have just had their union blessed by the priests under
+the sacred oak. The bride is dressed in black, and wears a wreath of
+dark leaves on her head; she walks in the midst {067}of her friends,
+bent double, as if weighed down by overwhelming thoughts. A matron, who
+walks on her left, holds before her eyes a white cloth; it is a shroud,
+the shroud in which she will be buried one of these days. On her right,
+a Druid intones a chant, in which he enumerates, in solemn rhythm, all
+the troubles and all the anxieties which await her in wedded life.
+
+[Illustration: 087]
+
+“From this day, young wife, thou alone wilt have to bear all the burden
+of your united household.
+
+“You will have to attend the baking oven, to provide fuel, and to go
+in search of food; you will have to prepare the resinous torch and the
+lamp.
+
+“You will wash the linen at the fountain, and you will make up all the
+clothing;
+
+“You will attend to the cow, and even to the horse if your husband
+requires it;
+
+“Always full of respect, you will wait upon him, standing behind him, at
+his meals;
+
+“If he chooses to take more wives, you will receive your new companions
+with sweetness; {068} If needs be, you will even offer to nurse the
+children of these favorites, and all from obedience to your karl
+(master);
+
+“If he is angry against you and strikes you, you will pray to Esus, the
+only God, but you will never blame your husband, who cannot do wrong.
+
+“If he expresses a wish to take you with him to war, you will accompany
+him to carry his baggage, to keep his arms in good condition, and to
+nurse him if he should be sick or wounded.
+
+“Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty. Be happy, my child!”
+
+[Illustration: 088]
+
+When I heard this dolorous wedding song, which in some parts of France
+is to this day addressed to brides by local minstrels, when I saw this
+winding-sheet, {069}the mournful costumes and the whole funereal wedding
+procession, I felt overcome with sadness. Just then, cries and joyous
+acclamations were heard at some little distance.
+
+Another procession came from the opposite direction to the cross-roads;
+there all the faces were smiling and full of joyousness.
+
+This was a funeral.
+
+[Illustration: 089]
+
+Such were the ways of our fathers; they rejoiced in facing death, which
+relieves man from all his sufferings; they had nothing but tears for man
+when he entered upon his trials.
+
+In the meantime the twilight had passed into darkness. Small lights,
+looking like will-o’-the-wisps, were flitting to and fro in field and
+forest, going in all directions. Devout worshippers, carrying torches
+or lanterns in their hands, were going to consecrated places, to hold
+public worship or to recite private prayers. {070}Some, and these were
+the majority, go in the direction of the oak forests, where the Druids
+are found; others, concealing the light of their lanterns as well as
+they can, go hither and thither, towards the copses of beeches and pine
+trees, or towards the river, or towards the hill, which was but just
+now shining brightly in the sunlight, but is now concealed in utter
+darkness.
+
+[Illustration: 090]
+
+What are they going to do? They are going to worship the Rhine, the
+wells, the water-courses, the trees, the Druidical {071}altars, and the
+sword-guards. For no creed yet but has had its schisms.
+
+Orthodox or not, German or Gallic, the Franks have always shown a
+preference for nocturnal worship; they divide the year into moons,
+and count the moons not by days but by nights. And yet they have been
+suspected of worshipping the sun! And I had nearly fallen into the same
+error! How well it was that I came to see for myself!
+
+As I am just now more interested in watching manners than in studying
+mythology, I pursue my investigations, especially as I know very well
+that we must know the lives which people lead in order to be able fully
+to appreciate the objects of their worship.
+
+While all these small lights are flashing, like shooting stars, here
+and there through the landscape, certain specially bright lights seem
+to become stationary and permanent. These are the lighted-up windows of
+human habitations. I called the latter just now stables, or caves, and
+excepting a few of them, I must still call them such.
+
+They are dug out of the ground, damp and dark; their ceiling is on a
+level with the surface of the earth, and their roof consists of layers
+of turf, or of dry thatch covered with moss. The only door resembles the
+lid of a snuff-box, and is set in the roof on a level with the ground.
+The dwelling {072}has no light but such as enters through these
+trapdoors; consequently they are utterly dark during the whole rainy
+season and during winter, that is to say, for three fourths of the year!
+Darkness reigns supreme here; that darkness which is the enemy of all
+healthfulness, of enjoyment, of every comfort. No windows! No glass! O
+divine Apollo,--
+
+“Thou of the silver bow, god of Claros, hear!”
+
+[Illustration: 092]
+
+I never had any objection to the doctrine which made of you, the
+brilliant personification of the sun, a first class divinity; but I
+think like honors ought to have been bestowed upon the unknown man who
+first invented windows and window-panes, the {073}first glazier in fine.
+He ought at least to have been made a demigod, and if he had to remain a
+simple mortal, they ought surely to have remembered his name! Alas! that
+high honors are as unfairly distributed in heaven as upon earth!
+
+As there is no window, I peep through the trapdoor to see how these
+subterranean dwellings look inside. The aspect is far from being as
+wretched as I had expected. I find that the walls are hung with mattings
+and the floor is beaten hard; by the side of the smoking lamp which
+is suspended from the main beam of the ceiling, there are hanging, on
+hooks, a hindquarter of venison, baskets filled with provisions, and
+implements for fishing and hunting. Besides, I notice long strings of
+medicinal herbs, such as we see in the shops of herb-doctors, and among
+these plants the mistletoe occupies, as a matter of course, the place of
+honor.
+
+In another underground hut there appear actually some traces of luxury.
+Here the walls are incrusted with pebbles from the Rhine, of many colors
+and skillfully arranged; here and there weapons are arranged in various
+shapes; javelins with sharp hooks; framees, such as the ancient Franks
+were using; hatchets of stone or iron; “morning stars,” with sharp
+points, were pleasantly mingled with huge bucklers; large leather
+quivers and long arrows feathered at one end and with jagged teeth
+{074}at the other. At first sight it looks as if for the purpose of
+softening somewhat the threatening aspect of these panoplies, the Celtic
+lady of the house had added some of her jewels to these weapons. But it
+is not so; these gold chains, these necklaces set with onyx and rubies,
+are worn by the grim warriors on the day of battle, quite as much in the
+nature of ornaments as for the purpose of protection. One of our
+sober, I may say, most sober historians, ascribes to this custom of
+our forefathers, the Franks, the gorget, worn still by officers in some
+European armies. Here also I see straw mats, but here they are trod
+under foot; they are used as carpets, not as hangings.
+
+The deep and spacious dwelling contains, besides the large room which
+alone I can see through my dormer-window, a number of other rooms on
+all sides, or rather of other caves, which are all connected with each
+other. I am evidently before the palace of one of the chief men of the
+country.
+
+In the first hut, into which I had looked, I had found the people at
+table, drinking a beverage made from grain and herbs--cerevisia--in
+horns of wild bulls, and talking about business--for our ancestors
+talked about business at dinner, just as we do. The conversation turned
+about exchanges of rams, a great fishing expedition to be undertaken
+jointly, an invasion to be made into the territory on the other{075}
+
+{077}bank of the river, and most eagerly, about the approaching
+elections. For Montesquieu tells us that municipal and even
+constitutional government existed alike among the early Germans.
+
+In the other dwelling, the one adorned with panoplies, they were talking
+neither of elections, nor of fishing, but they were likewise at table.
+Here they drank not only cerevisia in the _horns of the brave_, but also
+hydromel and hippocras in leathern tankards or human skulls, as white
+as ivory, adorned with silver and naturally shaped like cups. God be
+thanked that this custom has not been bequeathed to us by the Franks!
+
+On that evening they were celebrating the welcome given to a young
+warrior who had already made himself known by great exploits and who
+belonged to a neighboring, friendly tribe.
+
+When the meal was ended, and what a meal it was!--I shall be careful
+not to give the bill of fare, since the mere recital would cause an
+indigestion,--they thought of prolonging the entertainment given to
+their illustrious guest. But what could they do? The young Frankish
+ladies were not familiar yet with the piano, and the noble game of
+billiards had not yet been invented. They proposed riddles to be
+guessed, but this did not seem to afford much amusement to the young
+man. Then came a game with bones; but he nearly fell {078}asleep. As the
+duty of hospitality required that they should make every possible
+effort to entertain their guest, a great man among the Cheruski or the
+Marcomanni, they proposed the _handkerchief_; this, seemed to arouse his
+attention.
+
+The handkerchief game was at that time very popular; it was a kind of
+company duel. Two kind-hearted adversaries, having no other motive but
+to amuse themselves and to entertain the company, would seize with their
+left hand one end of a handkerchief, and with their right hand a table
+knife or a hunting knife, it did not matter which, provided the weapon
+was sharp and very pointed. For our good ancestors did not know foils
+with cork buttons or other arms of courtesy. Imbued with the strange
+idea that to fight, man against man, or a thousand against a thousand,
+was the greatest happiness upon earth, they delighted in occasionally
+cutting each other’s throat, even if they were the best friends in the
+world.
+
+The spectators formed a ring around the combatants. After they had taken
+a solemn oath, by the rims of their bucklers, by the shoulders of
+their horses, and by the points of their swords, that they cherished no
+feeling of animosity against each other, a signal was given and the game
+commenced. For some time I saw how the handkerchief was stretched out,
+twisted and then suddenly {079}turned around and around rapidly. Light
+red lines had already begun to mark the skin of the two adversaries; the
+blood was trickling down their arms, but these wounds were such trifles
+that the spectators took no notice of them and uttered not a single
+exclamation.
+
+All of a sudden I heard three hurrahs in rapid succession; the welcomed
+guest, whom all had been striving to honor to the utmost of their
+capacity, had fallen down with his adversary’s knife still sticking in
+his breast. He was dead.
+
+They had not been able to think of any better way to make him spend a
+pleasant evening. The good old times had a hospitality of their own!
+
+This pleasant handkerchief game has survived, only slightly modified,
+in several countries of northern Europe. The handkerchief is generally
+wrapped around a rapier, so as to shorten the length of the blade. In
+the taverns of Holland the game is considered conducive to health; a
+knife wound gives a man a chance to escape apoplexy; it serves as a
+timely bleeding.
+
+I had run away in horror. For an hour I wandered about, casting a
+furtive glance down a trapdoor here and there, and almost everywhere
+I saw men and women, horses and cattle, enjoying their rest, lying
+pell-mell on the same litter.
+
+In one of these hovels I thought I recognized {080}the young girl whom
+I had seen on the hill; her attitude of repose gave a peculiar charm to
+her supple and delicate limbs, and by the feeble flickering light of the
+lamp, she suggested the idea of a sleeping nymph.
+
+[Illustration: 100]
+
+She was a young Ionian girl, a countrywoman of Aspasia; captured in war,
+she had been sold as a slave in twenty markets, developing in spite of
+such treatment, one grace and one beauty after another. On the banks of
+the Ilyssus, they would have erected an altar in her honor, on the banks
+of the Rhine they made her keep a herd of swine. {081}She was not the
+only one of her sex, however, whom I saw during that fantastic night.
+
+The sound of a shrill fife, mingling with the sweeter notes of a harp,
+attracted my attention. I went toward the spot from which the music
+came.
+
+In a little room decked with flowers, a young woman was engaged in her
+toilet.
+
+I ought to have fled once more,--this time from bashfulness or a sense
+of propriety,--but a conscientious historian is bound to overcome every
+difficulty, in order to ascertain the exact truth. It was a great piece
+of good luck, surely, to be able to report as an eye-witness, what might
+be seen in the boudoir of a Celtic lady.
+
+My friend was sitting, half undressed, on a stool, with her hair
+loosened, and holding in her hand a metal mirror. An old woman, a
+servant or her mother, I cannot tell which--and yet it seemed to me as
+if I had seen both these women, as well as the beautiful swine-herd,
+somewhere before; when that was, however, I could not possibly tell--the
+old woman held the whole rich abundance of the young lady’s hair in
+both her hands and rubbed it with a horrid mixture of tallow, ashes, and
+plaster. Thanks to this wretched pomatum, the beautiful hair gradually
+changed from pale blonde to intense red, and thus enabled the owner
+to comply with a fashion, which I do not presume to criticise, but
+{082}simply record here. Then she washed and combed it carefully,
+plaited it cunningly, and at last rubbed the shoulders and the neck of
+the beauty with melted butter, while she washed the face and the hands
+with foaming beer.
+
+[Illustration: 102]
+
+After the demands of cleanliness had thus been satisfied, she placed
+before her mistress a slight collation, which was promptly served and
+promptly dispatched. While she was thus attending to her toilet and
+disposing of a bird’s meal, there was a cyclopean feast going on in an
+adjoining room; loud and violent voices were heard, everybody seemed
+{083}to talk at once, and in such high tones that even the shrill fife
+could no longer be distinguished--for it was from this hall that the
+sound of music proceeded, which had attracted me to the dwelling.
+
+The old woman evidently thought the feast was drawing to an end, for she
+hastened to finish her mistress’s toilet: She opened a wooden box and
+drew from it a pair of pretty red boots, which she put on the feet of
+the young beauty; then she threw over her white dress a purple scarf,
+which she fastened on the left shoulder with a long thorn from a
+sloe-tree. After that she tied a narrow scarlet ribbon around her head,
+handed her a collar and bracelets made of small berries, which in form
+and color were strikingly like corals, and finally, as the finishing
+touch, she daubed her cheeks with red by means of a cosmetic which I
+suspect consisted largely of brickdust. When the young Frankish beauty
+found that there was enough red--scarlet, crimson, purple, and pink--on
+her person from head to foot, she uttered a cry of triumph, especially
+when her husband, who entered her room, followed by his guests, seemed
+to be quite dazzled by the resplendent charms of his lovely wife, whom
+he had just _bought_.
+
+To buy a woman was a familiar expression in Germany at that time, as
+it is now,--_Ein weib kaufen_. It must be borne in mind, however, that
+{084}in those days the bride brought no dower; on the contrary, the
+husband paid her family a certain sum as compensation. We have inherited
+many of our usages from our Celtic forefathers; but as to this custom,
+we have not thought proper to keep it up.
+
+I at once recognized the husband, although he was now all smiles in his
+face, and let us hope, all smiles in his heart also. He was the chief
+personage in the wedding procession, whom I had seen two hours before,
+looking so grave and solemn, so sad and mournful.
+
+According to Druidical regulations, the bride has first of all waited
+upon him at table, humbly standing behind him like the other house
+slaves; then, towards the middle of the repast, she had gone to her
+room in order to exchange her girlish costume for the dress of a married
+woman--a woman who has the right to follow the fashions and to dress
+herself up in red from the heels of her feet to the end of her hair.
+
+Now she receives her master _at home_; here she is mistress, and
+mistress she will remain. This was the rule among the Franks; for in
+spite of the lachrymose anthems of the bards and in spite of the sombre
+ceremonies of the wedding, the women became almost invariably the
+masters at home, a usage which, contrary to that of dowerless girls,
+may possibly have crossed the Rhine. {085}Thinking it over, I found that
+during my nocturnal excursion into the land of my forefathers, I had
+been present--as a witness only, be it understood--at three successive
+entertainments; a feast of welcome, a business dinner, and a wedding
+dinner. Although they had not been calculated to satisfy my appetite,
+they had, at all events, made me extremely hungry. I was thinking,
+therefore, of retracing my steps and looking for a lodging, when I
+saw the Druid-bard, who had not disdained taking a seat at the nuptial
+feast, coming slowly and solemnly to the centre of the room, all the
+while drawing a few accords from, a kind of harp, which consisted of a
+closely bent bow with three strings instead of one.
+
+[Illustration: 105]
+
+He was getting ready to charm the company with the recital of one of
+those long and mysterious poems which recount the history of the Celts.
+I delay my departure.
+
+It has been said, and not without a show of reason, that the history of
+our Gallic or Germanic ancestors ought to be for us a subject of deep
+interest; but bold minds have in vain tried to raise {086}up once more
+the old oak tree, to trim it and to let air and light enter within its
+canopy of leaves. The birds that once sang in its branches have left no
+trace behind them of their songs, and nothing has reached us from those
+sacred precincts but a few faint echoes.
+
+I certainly have reason to praise my good fortune! What all these great
+scholars, these learned men, have not been able to accomplish by dint
+of energy and perseverance and aided by all their knowledge of Latin,
+Greek, and Sanskrit, I (I, the man whom you know) am enabled to do!
+Thanks to the bard’s long recital, I am able to fill up this blank,--the
+first, the only man in the history of mankind, who can throw light upon
+the impenetrable darkness of those ages!
+
+The bard began. I listened, all attention and eagerness, trying to catch
+every sound and to impress every word upon my excellent memory.
+
+In a pompous introduction he told us all about the first arrival of the
+Celts in Europe, the coming of the Druids as apostles of the true
+faith; he told us how a great colony of Salic Franks, Gauls, under the
+collective name of Pelasgi, all children of Teut, or Teutons, had
+first planted a sacred oak at Dodona. On this point I was already well
+informed. He then alluded to the building up of Athens, due as much to
+the Teutons as to the {087}Greeks of Cecrops; he boasted, that when the
+Greeks were led astray by their corrupt imagination and wished to
+raise altars to Saturn, Jupiter, and all those false gods whom they had
+borrowed from the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, the Teutons rose in the
+name of outraged human reason, and proclaimed the only one God, breaking
+down all the false altars. Hence, he said, that formidable struggle,
+still so well known as the battle of the gods of Olympus against the
+_Teutons_ or _Titans_....
+
+I held my breath. What? Those terrible giants, those colossal men, whom
+Jupiter himself feared and who piled Ossa upon Pelion, or Pelion upon
+Ossa--they were Celts? They were the ancestors of the brave French?
+
+O Titans, O my brothers, with what delight I listened to the sacred
+words of the bard, so that I might repeat them to you and rejoice with
+you in our glorious descent!
+
+By special grace I understood the Germano-Celtic words of the bard
+without difficulty. But the poem was flowing on interminably; I began
+to mistrust my memory. Centuries succeeded centuries, events followed
+events, and they were as close to each other and as numerous as grains
+in a bag of wheat. The continuous exertion of all my faculties began to
+tell upon me. The most illustrious {088}heroes of Gaul and of Germany
+appeared to me soon only like the faint forms seen by means of a magic
+lantern; Sigovesus and Bellovesus, the descendants of the great king
+Ambigat; Brennus, Btlgius, and Lutharius, sons or sons-in-law of that
+other great king Cambaules, began to turn around and arouad in my head,
+holding each other by the hand and performing an old British dance to
+the music of an old Breton instrument. Ariovistus played on the biniou.
+Then the sounds of the biniou, the shrill tones of the fife and the
+Druid harp were broken in upon by a terrible noise of countless church
+bells; the air shook all of a sudden, the earth trembled, everything
+around me fell to the ground with a great crash, the Druid, the house of
+the wedding, the trap-door, the hamlet, the trees, the hill, the Rhine
+and its banks, the heaven and the stars, all disappeared at the same
+moment, and I awoke in my arm-chair, surrounded by my poor books, which
+had just fallen from my knees.
+
+The dinner bell was still ringing.
+
+[Illustration: 111]
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+{091}_The Roman Gods invade Germany.--Drusus and the Druidess.--Ogmius,
+the Hercules of Gaul.--Great Philological Discovery concerning Teut at
+es.--Transformations of every kind.--Irmexsul.--The Rhine deified.--The
+Gods cross the River.--Druids of the Third Epoch._
+
+You may rest assured, I did not merely dream of that bold transformation
+of Teutons into Titans; one of the most learned and most reliable
+authors in my library, assures me of the fact. These great scholars are
+sometimes very clever men.
+
+According to this authority, the Celts were very much taller than the
+Greeks, and this fact had naturally suggested to the latter the idea
+of speaking of them as giants. The Celtic Pelasgi, who were warlike
+shepherds like all the men of their race, usually watched their flocks
+as they were {092}grazing on the high mountains, and it was these
+mountains which the myth accused them of piling up, one upon another,
+to scale the heavens. You will say, What mad follies of poets! I grant
+this; but after these mad poets came men like Hesiod and Homer, who
+changed the idle dream into stern reality, and upon this rock a new
+religion was founded, and with it, a new civilization.
+
+Now the day has come when these same gods of Greece, having become the
+gods of great Rome, will pursue the Titans, or Teutons, to the very
+heart of Germany.
+
+It is well known that Cæsar, after having conquered Gaul, had promptly
+crossed the Rhine, rather for the purpose of making a reconnaissance
+on the opposite bank of the river, than with any view to conquest.
+His successor went farther into Germany. Drusus, the adopted son of
+Augustus, and his lieutenant, reached the banks of the river Elbe,
+pursuing the Franks, the Teutons, the Burgundians, the Cheruski, the
+Marcomanni, all those children of the same great family, who had been
+overcome, put to flight, but never subjugated. All of a sudden, at the
+very moment when he is about to cross the river, there comes forth from
+the dark, dense forest, not a new army of barbarians, bristling with
+spears and halberts, but a woman, a tall, haughty looking woman, with
+long disheveled hair{093}
+
+[Illustration: 113]
+
+{094}
+
+[Illustration: 114]
+
+{095}flowing down upon her bare shoulders, and on her brow a crown of
+simple oak branches.
+
+She steps across his path and with uplifted finger orders him in an
+imperious voice to turn back and to go to his camp to prepare for death.
+
+It was a Druidess, endowed in the highest degree with the gift of
+prophecy; so it would seem at least, for Drusus had hardly entered the
+Roman camp, when he fell from his horse and expired.
+
+Not all the Druidesses, however, succeeded in making the Roman generals
+go back, by a word or a gesture; nor did all the Roman generals fall
+from their horses and die. After fifty-five years of strangely varying
+fortunes, the Genius of Rome was victorious, and must needs have been
+victorious, for it led the whole world by its power. It brought with
+it also its gods, which in spite of their numbers, or rather perhaps
+because they were so numerous, met on the banks of the Rhine with a more
+determined resistance than its soldiers.
+
+Rome had a magnificent mission to fulfill. Her glorious duty upon earth
+was to restore the unity of all the great human families, and to
+improve their condition by bringing them in contact with each other--by
+fraternity, in fine. To attain this end, she had generally employed War
+as her principal instrument; Religion had been a subsidiary agent only,
+a weapon which she kept concealed, {096}but which she used with great
+efficacy to secure the permanency of her conquests.
+
+Unfortunately, Roman gods were as liable to corruption, and to fearful
+corruption, as the great men of the Empire. Nations rise step by step
+on the grand ladder of civilization; when they have reached the top they
+must keep up their activity, without which no life and no progress can
+be maintained, and thus the moment comes when they are forced to descend
+again, till at last they sink into sensual degradation, into erudite,
+refined, voluptuous barbarism--the very bottom of the ladder.
+
+[Illustration: 116]
+
+Rome had begun by raising altars to all the virtues; now her deities
+personified nothing but vices. How could they expect to introduce
+them and make them acceptable to these coarse Germans, among whom
+prostitution, adultery, and theft were hardly known by name, who allowed
+a woman {097}to claim hospitality at the house of any _Karl_, to rest
+under his roof, and even to share his couch, without fearing slander, if
+he had but put a naked sword between her and himself, and who had
+never known and could not know the use of locks and keys? Were they not
+accustomed to hang their most valuable possessions upon the branches
+of a consecrated tree in the open camp, or to place them on top of a
+druidical stone or beneath it, as they chose--knowing that there they
+were perfectly safe? When they had taken this simple precaution, they
+could go to bed and sleep quietly, and there was no need for putting a
+sentinel on guard.
+
+Already, in the days of Cæsar, the Romans had employed a very ingenious
+and cunning device, in order to win over the simple Gauls. They
+had pretended to find their gods, their own peculiar gods, already
+established in the country from olden times. Thus there existed in Gaul
+a statue which the Etrusci had erected in honor of _Ogmius_, or rather
+_Ogma_. The Greek Lucian mentions it in these words:--
+
+“It is a decrepit old man; his skin is black; this form of a man,
+however, wears the attributes of Hercules, the lion’s skin and the club.
+
+“I thought at first,” Lucian adds, “that the Celts had invented this odd
+figure in order to laugh at {098}the gods of Greece; but this so-called
+Hercules, who is of very great antiquity, drags after him a multitude of
+men, whom he leads by golden chains which he holds in his mouth, while
+they are fastened to the ears of his victims.”
+
+[Illustration: 118]
+
+This _Ogmius_ was evidently a typical representation of Druidism itself;
+_Ogma_, in Celtic languages, means both science and eloquence. What
+has Hercules to do with all this? Nevertheless the Romans insisted upon
+calling him by that name.
+
+Nor did they stop here. {099}When they found all the nations they had
+conquered were continually speaking of a certain _Teutates_,
+they at once declared that they recognized in this popular person their
+own god Mercury. It was he and no other! It was Mercury, the son of
+Jupiter and the nymph Ma’ia. There was a striking resemblance, an
+unmistakable analogy! No one could misapprehend the thing for an
+instant!
+
+[Illustration: 119]
+
+Oh, my good Romans, I don’t mean to blame you now for all the trouble
+you gave me when I was at college! I will forget all that--But what
+could make you conceive this stupid idea, of naturalizing among us your
+Mercury, the god of eloquence, if {100}you choose, but above all the
+ever ready pimp of Jupiter, the god of trade and of thieves, and of
+naturalizing him in a land where trade, love, and thieves are so little
+known! In subservience to this Roman notion, some of our modern writers
+have been clever enough to prove that there were really many points of
+resemblance between Mercury and Teutates--but I, I openly deny it! Once
+more, philology shall come to my assistance, to overturn their doctrine.
+It was only this morning, while shaving, that I made a philologie
+discovery of the very highest importance, in which the public will take
+the most lively interest, and, I doubt not, the French Acadamy also.
+
+The word _Teut_, as the reader no doubt knows perfectly well, means
+_God; Tat_ in ancient Celtic and in modern Breton may be accurately
+rendered as _father_--so an old Breton woman assures me, who brought me
+up when I was a child. Add to _Tat_ the termination _Es_, the diminutive
+form of _Esus_, the _Lord_, connect the three monosyllables, and you
+have _Teut-Tat-Es_, God, Father, and Lord!
+
+Where--I appeal to all the famous historians so graphically described
+by Rabelais--where do you find a trace of Mercury in Teutates now? He is
+beyond all doubt the great divinity of the Celts, but you found it more
+convenient to follow the interested views of the Roman writers. And yet
+{101}even if they were innocent of any design upon your credulity, might
+they not have been mistaken themselves? Are you not aware that Plutarch,
+conscientious Plutarch himself, after having witnessed the Feast of
+Tabernacles in Palestine, tells us gravely that the Jews worshipped
+Bacchus? You were not aware of it, come, confess it frankly! For I will
+confess to you, that I was not aware of it, myself, ten minutes ago;
+but Dr. Rosahl has just told me so. The good doctor is delighted at
+my discovery of the true meaning of _Teut-Tat-Es_; he thinks no
+etymological question of such importance ‘was ever more satisfactorily
+put and answered in the same breath. He advises me strongly to write a
+memoir on the subject, which he will undertake to bring to the notice of
+learned societies, and only suggests the expediency of leaving out any
+allusion to my old Breton nurse; but I am too conscientious a writer
+ever to omit quoting my authorities.
+
+Now, since I have mentioned Rabelais, let us “return to our lambs,” that
+is, to our Teutons.
+
+After the Roman conquest, the same transformation of native deities
+into classic gods continued in Germany. The sacred oak was changed into
+Jupiter, whom it represented symbolically; the Druidical altars became
+either Apollo or Diana; sometimes they were made to represent deities
+of inferior rank, nymphs, anything in fact. But these numerous
+{102}metamorphoses, made rather hastily, led to a curious mistake.
+
+The conquerors had met on the banks of the Weser a huge monolith,
+cut with an axe by simple and ignorant stone-carvers. It was called
+_Irmensul_. Like the Celtic Teutates, this Irmensul also attracted
+at certain fixed times an immense concourse of people. The Romans,
+appreciating the martial spirit of the natives, did not hesitate to
+declare that this was Mars, their god of war. Thereupon they paid it
+all possible honor, consecrating their weapons to the new deity, and
+offering countless propitiatory sacrifices.
+
+Now, who was this Irmensul?
+
+When Varus had invaded Germany, during the reign of Augustus, at
+the head of three legions, Arminius, a chieftain of the Cheruski (a
+Brunswicker, we would say nowadays), had surprised him, and completely
+surrounded his army in the marshes of Teutoburg, on the banks of the
+Weser. Every man of this army, whether a Roman or a warrior of the
+allied tribes wearing Roman livery, had perished by the sword. For eight
+days the bloody waters of the Weser had carried down more than thirty
+thousand dead bodies.
+
+When the news of this disaster reached Augustus, he thought that Gaul
+was lost, Italy in danger, and Rome herself imperilled. Mad with grief,
+he would {103}rise, for a month afterwards, night after night, and in
+his terror wander through his vast palace, crying out: “O Varus, Varus,
+bring me back my legions!”
+
+[Illustration: 123]
+
+Well, the Irmensul was nothing more than a triumphal column erected
+in honor of Arminius and his Cheruski. _Irmen_ is the same as the
+name _Herman or Armin_ (Arminius), and _sul_ means column. The Romans,
+however, did not know this, and they paid dearly for their ignorance.
+If they had known better they would not have committed the egregious
+blunder of kneeling down and worshipping the man who had destroyed the
+three legions of Varus. It is very evident that they were as ignorant of
+German as of Celtic. {104}It ought not to surprise us, however, to
+see the soldiers of the imperial people change stones into gods, as
+Deucalion had changed them into men. Before the days of Homer, and for
+a long time after him, Jupiter was in Seleucia modestly represented by
+a fragment of rock and Cybele by a black stone. In Cyprus, the Venus of
+Paphos was nothing but a triangular or quadrangular pyramid, nor can I
+imagine what importance could be attached to three or four angles in
+a body, which was soon to assume the softest and most fascinating
+outlines. First the poets had come and sung of Cybele, the kind goddess,
+of Jupiter the omnipotent, and of Venus, the soul of the world and the
+queen of beauty. Inspired by their voice and the bold conceptions of
+their fancy, the sculptors had next employed the chisel upon these
+stones and these pyramids, and there had sprung forth from these
+shapeless masses the Lord of Gods, armed with his lightning, the
+beautiful Cytherea, armed with the most powerful weapons of all womanly
+graces. Oh, poets and sculptors, you have upset everything in religion!
+You are responsible for the loss of that austere simplicity which once
+characterized the faith of men! Miserable cutters of stone, reckless
+counters of syllables, you, and you alone, have substituted symbols
+for truth! Still, I do not condemn you; although I have stood up
+to {105}defend the Druids of the earliest days, I am far from being
+insensible to the charms of art and of poetry; besides, what right have
+I, who speak of gods and myths, to pass sentence on those who have been
+the real creators of Mythology?
+
+[Illustration: 125]
+
+While the conquerors of the Teutons, in the pride of their cleverness,
+were committing blunder after blunder, and fell into the pits they had
+dug for others, the real gods of Rome stayed on the banks of the Rhine,
+where they had already been accepted by the Gauls. They were impatient
+enough to see Germany also erect them temples and statues, but the Rhine
+with uplifted waves barred the passage.
+
+Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances {106}of former days,
+when he had been compelled to appear in the triumphal processions of
+Germanicus, as a conquered river, loaded with chains, while the rabble
+and riffraff of Rome had insulted him to his face and covered him from
+head to foot with the mud of the Tiber.
+
+The remembrance of his former humiliation seemed to revive his wrath
+at this day, and he unfolded his whole strength to take his revenge. In
+vain had the Olympians tried repeatedly to cross at different points;
+everywhere, from the Alps to the Northern Sea, they found him
+furious, roaring and rushing, full of threats in his green waters and
+besprinkling the banks with white foam.
+
+[Illustration: 126]
+
+At last they bribed him to espouse the cause of the Empire: they made
+him a king, the king of German rivers. A king more or less mattered very
+little to a people who made and unmade kings at will.
+
+The Rhine was evidently flattered by the distinction; and he laid aside
+his long cherished wrath.
+
+He had already allowed Jupiter to cross, taking {107}him perhaps for
+Esus; he now carefully examined the passports and certificates of good
+conduct of several other gods, and left the way open for Apollo and
+Minerva, Diana and some deities of fair repute; but when he saw Bacchus,
+his anger was rekindled. What? Were not the Germans mad and quarrelsome
+enough, when they had only taken too much beer? How could he consent to
+allow their passions to be aroused by potent wine? He was king, and as
+such bound to keep this scourge from his people.
+
+[Illustration: 127]
+
+The gods whom he had allowed to cross endeavored to plead for the son of
+Semele,--but he remained inexorable. His severity relaxed, however, when
+the vines planted by order of the Emperor {108}Probus in parts of the
+Rheingau, began to adorn the banks of the river with their verdure--he
+was overcome, when he had once tasted the juice of the grape. He
+consented to let Bacchus pass from bank to bank, but only at the time of
+the vintage.
+
+[Illustration: 0128]
+
+Once admitted, Bacchus soon brought into the land the whole crowd of
+gods and goddesses, who made up his following and who enjoyed no great
+reputation in Rome and in Greece. The Rhine {109}became angry once more,
+but once more caresses and unexpected honors had their hoped-for effect.
+He was already a king; he now became a god.
+
+[Illustration: 129]
+
+Henceforth Father Rhine conceived a strong affection for his former
+adversaries. When he saw that the German bank had adopted the customs
+and the religion of the conquerors as fully as the Celtic bank, he
+abandoned completely his restrictive policy and did his best to help
+everybody across. Thus Jupiter was no sooner installed in Germany, than
+he summoned his Corybantes; Bacchus his Bacchantes and his Maenads,
+Diana {110}her hunting nymphs, Venus her whole court of lascivious
+priestesses; the Dryads and the Hamadryads, the Naiads and the Tritons,
+the Fauns and the S il vans, all came one by one. It was a perfect
+invasion.
+
+[Illustration: 130]
+
+Germany, grave and solemn as she was, felt not a little troubled by this
+wholesale irruption of frivolous {111}and ill-mannered deities, who so
+little agreed with her austere habits. The young, it is true, were more
+easily Romanized and readily caught at this poetical personification of
+all the forces of Nature; but the old, the chieftains, and above all the
+Druids, backed by a nearly unanimous people, asked each other what could
+be the meaning of this sudden enthusiasm for new gods, this half mad
+devotion to celestial clowns?
+
+No one, however, dared to raise a hand; the Teutons had lost their
+former energy, they were enfeebled, unnerved and exhausted by their long
+but useless resistance. Hence, like true cowards, they appeared in the
+pagan temples, in order to conciliate the good-will of the conquerors,
+and then, to pacify their consciences, they hastened to some dark forest
+and there with anxious eyes and disturbed minds, they offered in fear
+and trembling their fervent worship to the sacred oak.
+
+The Roman gods were soon to encounter far more formidable adversaries
+elsewhere.
+
+Far beyond Germany, as we find it described and limited by geographers,
+there lived a host of nations, scattered over a vast territory, and
+extending as far East as the shores of the Caspian Sea. The Romans
+had never penetrated far into these unknown depths, which sent forth
+incessantly new armies of soldiers whom they classed indiscriminately
+{112}under the vague and collective name of Hyperboreans. Such were
+the Huns, the Scythians, the Goths, the Slaves (Poles, Danes, Swedes,
+Russians, and Norwegians), all of them robbers and pirates. Some, under
+the name of Cimbrians, had joined the Teutons t and with them invaded
+Gaul and even Italy, till they encountered the armies of Marius; others,
+were about to cross the Pyrenees and to fall upon Spain. Among them all,
+the Scandinavians were by far the most powerful, intrepid soldiers and
+fearless sailors, who were soon to darken the waters of the Rhine
+with their countless vessels, and to make Charlemagne shed tears as he
+thought of the days to come.
+
+Ere long these dauntless pirates will actually enter the Loire, then
+even the Seine; they will besiege Paris, and finally, thanks to the
+able statesmanship of King Charles, whom they call the Simple, they will
+become. Christians, after a fashion, and under the name of Normans take
+possession of one of the fairest provinces of France. Then they will
+cultivate the soil which they had heretofore robbed of its produce, they
+will drink beer instead of cider, they will peacefully devote themselves
+to lawsuits and cattle-raising, and will end by wearing white cotton
+night-caps--after having destroyed Rome and conquered England twice.
+
+The Scandinavians, of Celtic origin like the {113}Gauls and the Germans,
+led at first both nomadic and sedentary lives and were rather barbarous
+than unpolished; but they built cities and erected temples, in which
+they worshipped Odin the One-Eyed.
+
+[Illustration: 133]
+
+If the harvest failed, or whenever the first warmth of spring aroused
+in them their innate fondness of vagabondage and war, they took to their
+boats or mounted their horses, and the stupefied nations {114}of Europe
+watched the horizon and listened along the river courses, to distinguish
+whether this great Northern tempest, this storm of iron and fire, of
+blood and of tears, was rushing down upon them by land or by sea.
+
+After having crossed Germany in all directions, some of these bands,
+or rather some remnants of such bands, settled from inclination or from
+necessity, in certain portions of the country, especially on the islands
+in the Main, the Weser, and the Neckar. Their priests soon made numerous
+converts among the neighbors to the faith of Odin. The Germans paid
+little heed to the difference between Odin and Teut. The two names
+designated, for them, one and the same god, the one god of the Celts.
+
+The increasing influence of these Druids of the third epoch led,
+however, naturally to some opposition. The German priests accused them
+of being too profuse in the shedding of blood, and of having given their
+god Odin a companion in a certain god Thor, fond of overcoming giants,
+and of having thus destroyed the true nature of the original creed,
+which knew but one God.
+
+A schism was about to divide the Druidical church, when the arrival of
+the Roman deities brought the two opposite parties once more together.
+Each yielded somewhat; {115}they came to an understanding and finally
+joined hands in a conspiracy.
+
+[Illustration: 135]
+
+{117}The Scandinavian Druids, forsaking the prudent reserve which they
+had so far scrupulously observed, declared that, in order to triumph
+over the Roman Olympians, Odin had not only the assistance of his
+all-powerful son Thor, but could, if he chose, summon an escort of gods
+at least as imposing in numbers as that of Jupiter himself.
+
+The German Druids veiled their faces, but the people and the whole party
+which was opposed to Jupiter the wicked, and to Venus the shameless,
+joyfully accepted the proposition. However cruel the Scandinavian ritual
+appeared with its increased number of victims who had to be offered to
+the new gods, it seemed to them better still to worship Terror than to
+worship disgraceful Voluptuousness. They acknowledged Odin and his son
+Thor, and impatiently waited for the arrival of the others.
+
+The German Druids gave way, hoping perhaps that the two hosts of deities
+would erelong fall out among themselves and soon destroy each other.
+
+Father Rhine, in his equal affection for all his brother gods, was
+far too good-natured to take this admission of new deities amiss, and
+promptly went northward, to the most hyperborean regions of snow and
+ice, in search of the newly chosen gods.
+
+The two parties soon met face to face. {118}It is our solemn duty to
+explain fully the whole curious system of Scandinavian gods. We shall
+see that here, as in all that we shall have to add, legends, myths, and
+traditions abound in such numbers that they can be had for the asking.
+
+[Illustration: 141]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+{121}_The World before and since Odin.--Birth of Ymer.--The Giants of
+the Frost.--A Log split in Two.--The First Man and the First Woman--The
+Tree Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.--Thor’s Three Jewels. Freyr’s Enchanted
+Swoj’d.--A Souvenir of the National Guard of Bellville.--The Story of
+Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.--Honey and Blood.--Invocation._
+
+The world was not born.
+
+Thick mists, unbroken by light, unbounded in limit, filled space.
+
+After a long period of darkness, silence, and perfect repose, a faint
+light is seen, vague and uncertain, hardly deserving the name; something
+is moving unsteadily in this night. The giant Ymer has been born
+spontaneously out of the mixture {122}and assimilation of these closely
+compressed mists, which sudden and severe frost has condensated.
+
+At that time men of science had not yet discussed the question of
+spontaneous generation; not one academy made mention of the subject.
+
+Ymer, the sole inhabitant, the Robinson Crusoe of this world of
+darkness, became tired of his solitude. Guessing how he had been born
+himself, he gathered the mists that surrounded him, piled them one upon
+the other, shaped them into a form resembling his own, and once more the
+North wind came and solidified the mists. As he was a giant, he
+created giants; he also created mountains, no doubt for the purpose of
+furnishing seats for these giants, for the highest among them did not
+reach up to their belts. This does not mean, that these mountains were
+less high than they are nowadays, but the sons of Ymer were of such size
+that without bending down a little, they could not have rested their
+elbows on the summit of Chimborazo, and what is more marvelous still,
+Ymer himself not only was taller than every one of his sons, but taller
+than all of his sons together, standing one upon the shoulders of the
+other! When he stretched himself out full length, the Alps might have
+served him as a pillow, while his feet would have rested on {123}Mount
+Caucasus.
+
+[Illustration: 143]
+
+{125}In order to produce such giants and such mountains, he had, of
+course, to consume large quantities of the material furnished by the
+chaos of mists; the remainder of this gaseous substance, trembling in
+vacant space and losing its balance, fell back into the depths of the
+valleys, and formed the ocean.
+
+Some few animals began soon to stir in the waters, and on the shores
+of that vast sea; sphinxes and dragons, hydras and griffins, kraken
+and leviathans, all creatures of a low order, but in their proportions
+adapted to this colossal world, this world of the infinitely great, and
+no doubt related in some manner to the antediluvian families of mammoths
+and pterodactyls, of ichthyosauri and plesiosauri.
+
+A god of the first race, a creator without being created, Ymer naturally
+did not possess that skill and that cleverness which can only be
+acquired by long experience. However strange, therefore, it may appear,
+however inexplicable, the fact is, that this world, fresh with new
+life and freed from the original mists, was nevertheless covered with
+darkness. The only light which existed was an occasional phosphorescence
+of the sea or a few flashes of electric light, such as an aurora
+borealis sends forth; and this faint glimmer alone illumined the pathway
+of those vast creatures, those monstrous {126}reptiles, who, dazzled for
+an instant, plunged back into the lowest depths of the waters, casting
+up huge waves and tall columns of spray.
+
+It must have been a peculiarly curious sight, certainly, to see those
+Giants of the Frost, as they were called, wandering, through the
+darkness across the boundless plains and along endless shores, under a
+sky without light, looking for each other from one end of the world to
+the other. To be sure, they could accomplish the journey in a few long
+strides, and if they were peculiarly anxious to see each other, face
+to face, they had only to wait for the chance of a momentary flash or a
+faint twilight glimmer.
+
+The sight was no doubt curious, but there was no one to behold it.
+
+This state of things could not last long. With a new god a new world
+also came into existence. This new god was very different from the
+first, it was Light itself, condensed at the southern extremity of the
+heavens, far from this earth inhabited by giants.
+
+One fine day--an unlucky day for them, however--these giants noticed
+that the sky above their heads was suddenly assuming a faint pinkish
+hue, then violet, and finally purple. At this they rejoiced. But
+suddenly a ball of fire appeared, and they were terrified. It was Odin,
+Odin followed {127}by his celestial family, which consisted at least of
+a dozen principal deities!
+
+[Illustration: 147]
+
+But no! no! I take it back! I rebel! No one can come in contact
+with these ancient myths, without knocking against some principle of
+astronomy. Astronomers find only seven principal deities in Scandinavian
+mythology, when they are called upon to transform them into planets, and
+twelve, when the question is about the signs of the Zodiac. That seems
+to me to make mythology a. little too easy. Does it not look as if the
+first men had been born with a telescope and a compass in their pocket,
+and as if they had erected an observatory long before they thought of
+building huts for themselves?
+
+Fortunately I am not bound to follow their footsteps.
+
+Certain historians of high authority have found out that Odin lived
+upon earth before he came to dwell in heaven. He was an illustrious
+conqueror, {128}very expert at killing men, one of those scourges of
+God, who fall upon nations in order to break them to pieces. As a matter
+of course, these nations deified him after his death.
+
+[Illustration: 148]
+
+I see nothing astronomical in all this.
+
+Hence, I return to my own method, and propose to describe him, as he
+appeared to his Druids, his Scalds, and his worshippers.
+
+[Illustration: 149]
+
+He arrived from the southern countries, no doubt from the Orient,
+bringing with him the sun, as an indispensable auxiliary in the
+great task{129} which {131}he had undertaken, to reform this dark and
+ice-covered world: “For there was a time,” says the Edda, the bible of
+the Scandinavians, “when the sun, the moon, and the stars did not know
+the place they were to occupy. It was then the gods assembled and agreed
+as to the post which was to be assigned to each one of them.”
+
+When the installation of the heavenly bodies had thus been agreed upon,
+Odin followed the example of all the Hercules of Egypt and of Greece,
+and began his benevolent career by freeing the earth of all the monsters
+by which it was infested. Ymer was the first to succumb to his blows,
+and after him, the other giants of the frost, “a race of evildoers,”
+ adds the Edda. Evildoers? Whom did they aggrieve, I wonder? The
+complainants must have been the kraken, the griffins, and the serpents.
+
+The world had hardly come into existence and already the right of the
+stronger had established the doctrine: _Væ victis!_
+
+Of all the giants of the frost a single one escaped. He must have been a
+married man, for his descendants became after a while so numerous as
+to trouble the Ases, that is to say, Odin and his companions, the other
+gods.
+
+After the giants, came the turn of land and sea monsters, who were
+almost as formidable as they themselves. In the general destruction two
+monsters {132}only survived: the wolf Fenris, with his fearful jaws,
+which enabled him to crush mountains and even to injure the sun, and the
+serpent Iormungandur, the great sea serpent of world-wide renown. Both
+these monsters were one day to aid the giants of the frost in avenging
+themselves on their conqueror.
+
+[Illustration: 152]
+
+Odin thought he had now nothing more to fear, and returned to the realms
+of light, there to enjoy his glory in peace and to revel in the delights
+of Walhalla.
+
+{133}One morning he came down to see how the world was coming on since
+he had reorganized it, and he found to his great joy, that the new
+creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance. Grass was growing in
+the plains, on the slopes of hills, and even at the bottom of the rivers
+and the sea; here and there trees of varied forms and shapes arose
+and gave variety to the monotonous horizon; some, crowding together in
+groups on the mountain side, seemed to whisper confidentially to each
+other, as the breeze was lightly agitating their foliage, while others
+stood together in countless hosts, stretching away over hill and dale
+as far as eye could reach, but silent and immovable, like an army which
+remains motionless, while the chiefs are deliberating.
+
+[Illustration: 153]
+
+Behind the green curtain of forests, deer, eland, and aurochs were
+bounding in herds, now and then showing their beautiful horns or
+their dark bushy brows at the opening of some clearing; goats were
+{134}climbing about on the rocks and venturing close to the brink of
+precipices; birds were singing in the groves, now swinging playfully on
+the supple branches of willows, and now darting suddenly on swift wings
+through the air; fish were gliding silently under the surface of the
+waters, which reflected their silvery sheen or broke in soft ripples,
+while butterflies and insects were sporting and buzzing around beautiful
+flowers.
+
+Odin smiled; the artist was pleased with his work.
+
+But were animals, impelled by natural instincts only and exclusively
+occupied with the desire to satisfy their coarse wants, were such
+animals worthy to be the sole owners of such a charming abode?
+
+It occurred to him to invent a being which, without participating in the
+divine essence, might still rise high above all other creatures. This
+time the divine artist wanted a spectator, to witness his work, to
+appreciate it intelligently, and afterwards to profit by it for some
+good purpose.
+
+He was meditating on it during a walk on the sea-shore, when a piece of
+wood, a fragment of a huge branch of a tree which the wind had broken
+off, attracted his attention. It had evidently fallen into a river,
+which had carried it out into the high sea, and there it had been beaten
+and bruised by {135}ebb and tide. He drew this poor shapeless stick of
+wood towards him, split it in two and made out of it a man and a woman.
+
+“Do you hear? Do you understand?” Asks the Edda, at this point.
+
+Now, what is this intended to convey to us? That man, exposed to the
+caprices of the elements, is nothing but a poor plaything in the hands
+of Fate? Very well, let us admit this explanation. But can the sacred
+book of the Scandinavians really presume to teach us that the origin of
+mankind must be looked for in two sticks of wood? We cannot but think
+that that would be a sorry jest, alike unworthy of the general solemnity
+of the Edda and of the mysterious majesty of ancient cosmogonies.
+
+Besides, we ought not to forget that all the Northern nations attributed
+a divine character to trees; if in Germany the oak was held sacred, the
+hyperboreans held the ash tree in great respect, and the question is
+only whether our first father was made of the wood of an ash tree, an
+oak, or a willow.
+
+This leads us naturally to the consideration of the ash _Ygdrasil_ and
+its curious population of gods, birds, and quadrupeds.
+
+The branches of this marvelous tree spread over the whole surface of the
+earth; its top supported {136}the Walhalla and rose is to the uppermost
+heavens, while its roots penetrated to the very bottom of hell. Under
+its shadow dwell Odin and his Ases, when the government of the world
+requires his presence, or some important question has to be decided.
+
+[Illustration: 156]
+
+Two swift winged ravens are incessantly flying to and fro in the
+Universe, to see what is going on; then they come and perch, one on his
+left and one on his right shoulder, and whisper into his ear the news
+of the day. A squirrel, as swift in its movements as the two ravens,
+is perpetually running up and down the tree. If you doubt my word, hear
+what the poet says:--
+
+     .... The fearful Odin Was seated beneath the ancient ash,
+     The sacred tree whose immortal brow
+     Rises and touches the vault of heaven.
+     {137}On the top an eagle with eager eyes,
+     With piercing eyes, with ever open eyes,
+     Takes in the whole Universe in a single glance.
+     Odin receives his swift messages.
+     Incessantly a tiny squirrel
+     Comes and goes; the god’s voice cheers it onward.
+     All at once it dashes from the trunk to the top
+     And in an instant it returns again
+     From the top to the trunk. Odin, when it comes,
+     Turns an attentive ear to the squirrel.....
+
+But the poet does not tell the whole story.
+
+[Illustration: 157]
+
+To act as a check upon the reports of the eagle, the ravens, and the
+squirrel, a vulture is perching {138}upon the loftiest top of the sacred
+tree, who looks over all the horizons of the earth and the universe,
+watching for the slightest stir and giving notice of any important event
+by his cries or the flapping of his wings.
+
+Still other animals, however, inhabit the great ash tree Ygdrasil. Some
+of these play a sinister part in the great menagerie; they are hideous
+reptiles, half concealed in the slimy marshes into which one of the
+roots of the tree finds its way, and ever striving to pour their
+venom into the mire; beneath another root a dragon is crouching, who
+constantly gnaws at it, and four starving deer, rushing through its
+branches, forever devour its foliage.
+
+“Do you hear? Do you understand?” asks the Edda once more.
+
+For the present we do not presume to interpret these descriptions,
+and before we attempt to penetrate into these dark mysteries, we will
+mention the principal chiefs among the Ases.
+
+The mystic marriage of Odin and Frigg resulted in the god Thor, who
+is held in equal veneration with his father. As his duty is to carry
+thunder and lightning, it is he who shakes the earth whenever he drives
+through the clouds in his car drawn by two goats and producing a noise
+represented by the words: “_Pumerle pump! Ptimerle pump! Pliz! Pluz!
+Schmi! Schmur! Tarantara! Tarantara!_”. {139}This onomatopoetic
+translation of the flashing of lightning and the rolling of thunder,
+is not my own; it comes directly from Dr. Martin Luther, the great
+Reformer.
+
+Thor is also engaged in pursuing and destroying the giants of the
+mountains, degenerate children of the giants of the frost, in size at
+least. At a later period we shall meet with giants of still smaller
+dimensions. Alas! that here below everything that is great and strong
+has a tendency to decrease steadily!
+
+[Illustration: 159]
+
+For this war against the giants Odin has bestowed upon his son three
+precious objects, which in the inventory of the Ases appear under the
+name of _Thor’s Three Jewels._ The first is his weighty hammer.
+
+_Mjoïner_ (some people call it his club), which goes forth by itself to
+meet giants and crushes their heads. One of the commentators upon the
+Edda professes to see in the giants of the mountains nothing but the
+mountains themselves, and in the hammer Mjoïner, nothing but lightning,
+which generally strikes their summit. We must evidently {140}put as
+little faith in commentators as in astronomers.
+
+The second of Thor’s jewels was a pair of iron gloves. As soon as he
+puts them on, his spear no sooner reaches the point at which it is
+aimed, than it returns to his hand, precisely as the falcon comes back
+to the keeper’s gauntlet, after having destroyed its victim.
+
+The third jewel of Thor is his war belt; when he puts it on, his
+strength is twice as great as before; in fact, he becomes irresistible
+and would overthrow the great Odin himself. But Odin has nothing to fear
+on his part, for in spite of his brutal and passionate temper, Thor is
+always an obedient and submissive son.
+
+Asa-Thor, that is to say, the Lord Thor, was most highly respected
+among men as the redhaired master of thunder and lightning, and as
+the destroyer of giants; and he was also greatly feared as an active,
+blustering god, of a troublesome, turbulent temper and of somewhat
+eccentric manners.
+
+Another weapon, at least as marvelous as Asa-Thor’s famous hammer, was
+the sword of the god Freyr. This sword was endowed with an intelligence
+very rarely to be met with among swords, and punctually obeyed the
+orders of its master. Even in his absence, it went promptly and
+faithfully {141}to carry out his orders, striking here and there at a
+given point, or making terrible havoc in the midst of a battle, without
+a hand at the hilt to direct its mortal blows.
+
+[Illustration: 161]
+
+The good Freyr, as pacific a god as ever lived, was quite indifferent
+to battles and fights; hence he gave his orders quietly to his faithful
+sword, while he remained comfortably seated at Odin’s table, enjoying
+his strong beer and the rarest wines.
+
+I cannot help wishing that they might have known the art of
+manufacturing guns after this system, at the time when I was a
+lieutenant in the Belleville National Guard. It would have been so
+pleasant to see a rifle move gravely to and fro, quite alone, in front
+of the City Hall and the Guard House; or to meet a patrol of four
+{142}guns, accompanied by a corporal, but a flesh and blood corporal to
+cry out: Who is there?
+
+[Illustration: 162]
+
+In the meantime the happy owners of these improved weapons might have
+been sitting, not at Odin’s table, but at the nearest coffee house or
+restaurant, {143}drinking beer or wine just like the Scandinavian gods.
+
+Unfortunately our manufacturers of arms have not yet reached that degree
+of skill, which our forefathers seem to have possessed, and thus I have
+never yet been able to enjoy such a sight.
+
+The happy owner of this magic weapon, Freyr, presided over the general
+administration of the clouds; it was he who made fine weather or rain,
+a very troublesome office, which must have exposed him to countless
+petitions and most contradictory prayers.
+
+His sister Freya, afterwards called Frigg, was Odin’s wife and the
+most honored goddess on earth as well as in heaven. She inspired and
+protected lovers, and very different from her sister in Greece, this
+Northern Venus enjoyed an unsullied reputation.
+
+They say that once, when her husband had gone away on a long journey,
+she was so deeply grieved at his absence, that her tears ran day and
+night incessantly; these tears, however, differed from those of mortal
+beings; “they were all drops of gold which fell into her bosom,”--and
+hence the Northern people call the precious metal to this day _Freyas
+tears_.
+
+One only among all the dwellers in Walhalla had been able to give her
+some comfort by singing {144}his sweetest songs; this was the god Bragi,
+the god of poetry and beautiful words.
+
+A tradition which deserves to be mentioned here, accounts for the manner
+in which he obtained this precious gift of eloquence and the art of
+poetry.
+
+In the early days of the world, when the creating god had concentrated,
+so to say, all the active powers of humanity in a few individuals,
+and when a long life permitted these favored beings to carry on their
+studies till they reached a happy end, there lived on earth a wise man
+who possessed an art unknown, not among men only, but among the gods
+themselves. This was the art of perpetuating thoughts by word-painting,
+of reproducing them in outward forms, not to the eye by colors, but
+to the ear by sounds. This sage was called Kvasir. He had invented the
+_Runes_, the art of poetry, and the no less precious art of reproducing
+words and fixing them in writing. He cut his runes on beech tablets; if
+he had gone a step farther, he would have invented printing long before
+Guttenberg.
+
+Kvasir was then the sole owner of the art of Poetry.
+
+Two wicked dwarfs prowling about in search of treasures, took it into
+their heads, that the treasure of Poetry was better than any other, and
+forthwith determined to obtain possession of it. They killed Kvasir,
+into whose dwelling they had crept by {145}stealth, and as they were
+masters in magic, like all the dwarfs of those days, they carefully
+collected his blood, and mixing it, in different proportions, with
+honey, put it into three vessels, which they closed hermetically. These
+three vessels contained respectively Logic, Eloquence, and Poetry. To
+keep them safe till the day on which they should be used, they buried
+them in the depths of a cave which was inaccessible to men and unknown
+to the gods themselves. But one of those travelling agents, who under
+the form of ravens, were continually wandering over the world in Odin’s
+employ, had been a silent witness of the transactions, the murder, the
+mixing, and the hiding of the three vessels. He returned instantly to
+the ash Ygdrasil and reported it all to his master. The god gave his
+orders, which the squirrel, no doubt, at once carried to the eagle, and
+the latter, who was continually on the watch on the top of the sacred
+tree, left his post for a few moments in charge of the vulture, and flew
+with rapid wings to the cave, from whence he returned laden with the
+three precious vessels. It is to be supposed that he carried one in his
+beak, and the two others, one in each of his claws.
+
+He placed the mysterious vessels at Odin’s feet and at once returned to
+relieve the vulture and to resume his watch.
+
+Odin opened first the vessel which contained {146}Poetry and tasted the
+contents. From that moment he never spoke otherwise than in verse.
+He also tasted Logic, and henceforth he spoke and reasoned with such
+extreme accuracy, that he found no one to agree with him any longer; he
+tasted Eloquence, and as soon as he opened his lips, he might have been
+mistaken for one of our own most eminent lawyers. Gold chains seemed to
+come out from his lips, as was the case with Ogmius, with which he bound
+the ears and hearts of all his hearers.
+
+Whilst he was thus enjoying himself, Bragi his son, and Saga his
+daughter, who were sitting by him, felt their mouths water and looked
+imploringly at him.
+
+Setting aside the terror with which the Druids have surrounded Odin, he
+seems to have been occasionally good-natured, and certainly always acted
+like a kind father. He offered the vessel with Poetry first to Saga,
+courteously giving her the preference on account of her sex. She barely
+touched it with her lips. When Bragi’s turn came, he eagerly swallowed
+as much as he could, and without taking time to gather breath, he began
+a grand triumphal chant in honor of the feasts, the loves, the wars, and
+the greatness of the gods, the stars of the firmament, paradise, hell,
+and the ash Ygdrasil. {147}
+
+[Illustration: 167]
+
+{149}In well chosen cadences he imitated the clanking of cups, the
+cooing of doves and of lovers, the tumult of battles, the harmonies of
+the celestial spheres, and all this with such energy, such fire and
+such grace by turns, that Odin was enchanted, and having become a master
+himself about five minutes ago, on the spot changed his name of the
+Long-bearded God, which he had borne so far, to that of the God of
+Poetry. Moreover, he entrusted to his keeping the threefold treasure
+which had been taken from Kvasir’s murderers.
+
+This was that god Bragi who alone succeeded in comforting the beautiful
+and inconsolable Freya in her great grief.
+
+Through him the Druids were instructed in the art of verse; to him is
+due that terrible Scandinavian poetry, which contains, according to
+Ozanam, quite as much blood as honey.
+
+As to Saga, she became the goddess of Tradition. “The heart of history
+is in tradition,” says a master, a sage, and a poet.
+
+Good goddess Saga, your lips, I know, never touched the vessel
+containing Eloquence, nor that which held Logic, far from it! And still
+I count upon you to support me in carrying out my work, which I have
+perhaps imprudently begun; for I begin to be overwhelmed with materials,
+the subject is a very grave one, and, in spite of the good advice of my
+learned doctor and the assistance of my two charming lady-companions,
+time and strength threaten not to suffice. Therefore I beseech you as
+well as my readers, to grant me a short repose, before I proceed any
+farther on my journey through Odin’s fantastic world.
+
+[Illustration: 170]
+
+[Illustration: 173]
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+{153}Short Biographies.--_A Clairvoyant among the Gods.--A Bright
+God.--Tyr and the Wolf Fenris.--The Hospital at the Walhalla.--Why was
+Odin one-eyed?--The Three Norns.--Mimer the Sage.--A Goddess the Mother
+of Four Oxen.--The Love Affairs of Heimdall, the God with the Golden
+Teeth._
+
+We have no intention of giving here a complete list of the numerous
+deities of the North. We will only mention Hermode, Odin’s messenger and
+man of business; Forseti, the peacemaker; Widar, the god of silence,
+a dumb person who only walks on air, as if he were afraid to hear
+the noise of his own footsteps; Vali, the skilfull archer; Uller, the
+excellent skater, who taught the giant Tialff his art, in spite of what
+the poet Klopstock says to the contrary; Hoder, a mysterious deity,
+whose name must never be uttered by any one in heaven or on earth. Why
+not? Odin alone knows the reason.
+
+Let us also mention Heimdall, with the golden teeth. A son of Odin, he
+had nine mothers--eight more than had ever been known before him. He
+is the guardian of Walhalla, and his duty is to watch lest the giants
+should one fine day attempt to storm the heavenly abode by means of the
+Bifrost bridge, that is, the rainbow. But the gods can sleep in peace;
+neither the eagle nor the ravens on the ash Ygdrasil can surpass
+Heimdall in vigilance. The senses of sight and hearing are in him
+developed to a perfectly marvelous degree; he can hear the grass grow in
+the meadows and the wool grow on the back of the sheep. From one end of
+the world he sees a fly pass through the air at the other end, and, more
+than that, he sees distinctly the different joints in its feet and the
+black or brown spots with which its wings are {155}dotted. In the midst
+of the darkest night and at the bottom of the sea where it is deepest,
+he sees an atom moving and watches the marriage of monads. There is
+nothing in the whole universe hid from him.
+
+But why should this god Heimdall have golden teeth, after a fashion of
+some of the natives of Sunda? Odin alone knows the reason.
+
+Among all these gods Balder is the most richly endowed, the best, the
+handsomest and the most virtuous--Balder, the Bright God, by eminence.
+Although the son of Odin and Frigg, he might be taken for a son of
+Freya, on account of his strong resemblance to Love itself, not to the
+turbulent, passionate, and capricious Love of the Greeks, but to Love
+in the widest and noblest sense of the word,--Love, in fine, in its
+Christian meaning. Balder represents that universal goodness, loyalty,
+affection, and harmony, which binds all beings to each other; Bragi, the
+poet is his brother; Forseti, the peacemaker, is his son. But we shall
+but too soon have to return to him on a most melancholy occasion.
+
+In spite of our desire to close this already too numerous list, we
+cannot well pass over in silence that poor Tyr, the very type of
+intrepidity and loyalty, who fell a victim to his own prowess and to his
+imprudent confidence in the other gods. {156}The latter, having one day
+met the wolf Fenris, invited him to enjoy a good meal with them. The
+wolf, always voraciously hungry, listened to the proposal. Then the
+Ases, pretending to fear that he might play them an ugly trick on the
+way home, insisted upon leading him by a chain around his neck, pledging
+their word as gods, however, that they would set him free upon going to
+table.
+
+[Illustration: 176]
+
+Fenris, suspicious as all wolves, in fact, as all wicked creatures are,
+consented to be bound, but made it a condition that as a proof of the
+good faith of the Ases, one of them should put his hand into his mouth.
+Tyr agreed to do so without hesitation, not expecting that personages of
+such lofty position could possibly be faithless. The gods, {157}however,
+did behave faithlessly and kept Fenris a prisoner, whereupon the wolf
+claimed the fulfillment of the pledge, and when Tyr put his hand into
+his mouth, coolly bit it off up to the wrist. Hence that particular
+joint has ever since been called _the wolf’s joint_, in memory of this
+inartistic amputation.
+
+Thus the gods had a one-handed brother among them, after having long
+been presided over by a one-eyed god. But Tyr and Odin were by no means
+the only gods who labored under such an infirmity. Heimdall with the
+golden teeth must evidently have had a set of false teeth; Widar, the
+god of silence, was dumb, and Hoder, that mysterious being whose name
+must not be pronounced by any one, was blind. There was also a certain
+god, called Herblinde, who was not only blind but--actually dead! We
+poor mortals generally imagine that death includes blindness as a matter
+of course, but it was not so, apparently, among these mystic personages.
+Herblinde, for instance, was quite blind, although he was quite dead
+also, and yet he attended the meetings of the gods and even had a vote
+in their counsels. Do you understand that? I do not, I am sure.
+
+And this grand council, this hospital of the Walhalla, which counted
+among its members a onehanded and a dumb god, a toothless and two blind
+{158}gods, was, as I said, presided over by one-eyed Odin! This fact
+recalls forcibly the old proverb: Among the blind the one-eyed is king.
+
+But why had Odin but one eye?
+
+Fortunately I am able, for once, to give an answer to this question.
+
+Astronomers have naturally found a reply to this Why? in their
+imperturbable system of sidereal interpretations. Odin was the sun-god;
+the sun was the eye of Nature, Nature had but one eye--consequently
+Odin was bound to be born one-eyed!.... Now you see why your daughter is
+deaf-mute.
+
+The Edda, however, gives a different account of the matter, and I feel
+bound to adopt this explanation, as it is founded upon a knowledge of
+the most secret mysteries.
+
+Odin had two eyes when he was born, and the sun was nothing more than
+his travelling companion, when he came from the far East, to revive and
+warm the earth which had so long been in the hands of’ the giants of the
+frost.
+
+Several centuries after he had created man, he was one day walking up
+and down in the lower parts of his great ash tree Ygdrasil, and thinking
+of the greatly increased responsibility which rested upon him since he
+had added the government of the earth to that of heaven, and since the
+earth {159}had begun to be peopled with a multitude of races. He was
+asking himself whether the knowledge of all things had been revealed
+to him fully enough to enable him satisfactorily to fill, his two great
+offices. He had quaffed ample draughts by turns from the three vessels
+of Kvasir, but Eloquence, Poetry, and even Logic do not supply Wisdom.
+
+[Illustration: 179]
+
+As he passed by a large tank fed by a purling brook, he saw three
+beautiful swans swimming merrily about in it, who after having examined
+him with half thoughtful, half mocking attention, twisted their long
+flexible necks in strange contortions and then seemed to converse with
+each other by significative glances.
+
+He spoke to them and asked them if they possessed the secret of Wisdom.
+
+The swans suddenly plunged beneath the surface, {160}and in their place
+there appeared three beautiful women, representing three different
+stages of life.
+
+They were the Norns.
+
+[Illustration: 180]
+
+The first, called Urda, knew the Past; the second, called Verandi, saw
+the Present unfold itself before her eyes, hour by hour and minute by
+minute, and when to-day had become yesterday, her older sister gathered
+up the departed day and entered it on her record. Finally Skulda, the
+third, the Norn of the Future, enjoyed the privilege of beholding with
+her far-seeing eyes the germs of all future events and of being able to
+foretell with unerring accuracy the date and the consequences of their
+occurrence.
+
+Let us pause here a moment to notice a remark communicated to me by the
+amiable and learned {161}Dr. Rosalh, which may not be without interest
+to some of my readers.
+
+It will be remembered that the Romans had at first pretended to
+recognize in these three Norns their own three Fates, probably because
+they were three and because they were women; at least I can see no other
+reason. Urda, Verandi, and Skulda were as beautiful and as graceful
+as the three Parcæ--Alecto, Lachesis, and Atropos--were ugly. Besides,
+their duties were entirely different. The Norns knew the fate of men,
+but they were utterly unable to lengthen human life. Such at least is
+the opinion of the great Holinshed in his Chronicles. Warburton sees
+in them nothing more than Valkyrias, but, what is far more astonishing,
+Shakespeare chose these three beautiful prophetic virgins, to furnish
+the three hideous, unclean, and toothless witches, the weird sisters,
+who called out to Macbeth, “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king
+hereafter!”
+
+Shakespeare had evidently taken the curse denounced by the Church
+against the ancient deities in its literal meaning.
+
+Odin had a better opinion of the three sisters; he conversed for some
+time with them, and afterwards came frequently back to visit them. It
+was thus and by their aid that he gained experience.
+
+But even Experience, added to the precious gifts {162}of Eloquence,
+Poetry, and Logic, is not able to supply Wisdom.
+
+[Illustration: 182]
+
+He took counsel with the Norns, and in his anxiety to possess this most
+precious of all gifts, he expressed his willingness to exchange for it,
+if needs be, his treasures of poetry and of eloquence, his magic armor
+which made him safe against all danger, his horse Sleipner, which had
+eight legs and crossed the air with the rapidity of lightning, his eagle
+and his vulture, his squirrel and his two {163}ravens. Then he went to
+Mimer, the wisest man in existence, the successor of old Kvasir, and
+attended his lectures like the most humble and zealous of students. When
+he had mastered the subject, and felt that he had acquired Wisdom at
+last, he paid the philosopher liberally by giving him one of his own
+eyes, in order thus to show him the high value he set upon the service
+which had been rendered to him by Mimer.
+
+This was the reason why Odin was one-eyed. The truth is far too
+honorable to the god to be hid under idle astronomical pretexts.
+
+Now, what use did he make of his wisdom?
+
+He began by regulating the government of heaven. The Ases had until now
+lived very much as they chose; he now gave to each of them a duty to
+perform: to Niord the management of rivers and of fishing; to Egir, the
+seas and navigation; and so to others, requiring regularity and accuracy
+of all, but sternly prohibiting the display of extreme zeal, just as
+Talleyrand used to do with his diplomatic apprentices.
+
+Then he turned to the earth.
+
+Here men had multiplied incessantly, and with their numbers their wants
+had increased, and alas! with these, their vices also! In order to
+satisfy the wants and to repress the vices, they had established among
+them that great, primitive law which {164}constitutes the whole code of
+laws among barbarians--the right of the stronger.
+
+[Illustration: 184]
+
+“TO EGIR, THE SEAS AND NAVIGATION.”
+
+The most fertile pastures, the rocks and grottoes best fitted for
+dwellings and safe retreats, the forests that were richest in game and
+the springs that were most frequented by the flocks, all were taken by
+force and possession maintained by the strength of the sword.
+
+Wise Odin felt that violence gave no right and that theft could not
+give a title to possession. He {165}determined to establish the right of
+property, and to give it, for greater efficiency, a religious character
+which would make it sacred in the eyes of nations.
+
+One of his daughters, Gefione, was sent by him to one of the most
+powerful chiefs of Scandinavia. She presented herself before his tent,
+with presents in her hands. In return she asked only for a span of land.
+The chief gave her a vast but uncultivated territory.
+
+[Illustration: 185]
+
+Next she went, with secret purposes in her mind and always inspired by
+Odin, to a distant country, into the mountains, where giants dwelt. Here
+she married one of these giants, the most powerful of them all, to whom
+she bore four sons. The strong are apt to be gentle. Gefione took her
+four sons, changed them into oxen, and by words of gentle persuasion
+induced her husband to harness them himself to a plough. A river marked
+the boundary of the field, on the other side stood an altar. Thus was
+the first piece of property inaugurated, {166}by purchase, by labor, and
+under the protection of the gods. The first owner, the gigantic husband,
+represented Force submitting to Right, and the four oxen represented the
+hard-working family, improving the soil and enriching it with the sweat
+of their brow.
+
+Soon people began to imitate Gefione’s example, and in all directions
+land was measured and laid out; stones were put up to mark the boundary
+lines of each legal possession, and these stones were held sacred.
+
+In order to encourage men in these efforts, the Ases made it a point
+every morning to show their bright, shining heads above the horizon and
+thus to cheer them by their presence and the interest they took in their
+labors.
+
+The god Thor even came once to pay a visit to his sister Gefione, and
+then cast a few flashes of lightning upon each one of the newly acquired
+pieces of land, to render them sacred. Hence the old, deeply rooted
+notion that lightning hallows all it touches. Afterwards, and as late as
+the fifteenth century, it was deemed sufficient at Bonn, at Cologne, and
+at Mayence, to cast Thor’s hammer upon the piece of land that had become
+a fief, in order to establish an absolute right of proprietorship.
+
+But the right of property alone did not suffice to render human society
+stable and flourishing,--{167}the nations of the earth longed for a
+hierarchy of rank and race; at least the divine pupil of the wise Mimer
+decided it should be so. The means he employed to found such a hierarchy
+and the system itself appear curious and odd enough to us, who are no
+gods, but, unsuitable as they look now, they were successful at the
+time.
+
+By his order Heimdall, the god with the false teeth, abandoned his post
+as guardian of the Wal-halla for nine days, and after a long journey
+across the country, knocked at the door of a wretched tumbledown hut,
+where the _Great-grandmother_ lived. Here he remained three days and
+three nights.
+
+The Great-grandmother brought a male child into the world,
+black-skinned, broad-shouldered, with hard horny hands, and powerful
+arms. They called it _Thrall_, the serf.
+
+Thrall’s natural inclination led him to prefer the hard work in mines
+and in the wilderness; he was fond of the society of domestic
+animals and even slept with them in their stables. His sons became
+cattle-raisers, miners, or charcoal-burners.
+
+Heimdall had continued his journey. He next stopped at the
+_Grandmother’s_ house, a small, simple cottage, but lacking in nothing
+that was useful.
+
+Here he remained three days and three nights.
+
+The Grandmother gave birth to a son, who was called _Karl_, the free
+man. {168}Karl was fond of driving oxen under the yoke, of working in
+wood and in iron, of building boats and houses, and of trading. From him
+are descended our workmen and artisans, our merchants and builders.
+
+Turning his face towards the south, Heimdall next went to a beautiful
+mansion, surrounded by magnificent gardens and reflected in the blue
+waters of a large lake. As the god had only to show his golden teeth
+in order to be welcomed by every woman he saw, the mistress of this
+mansion, the _Mother_, also received him with great delight and tried
+to do him honor. Dressed in her most costly robes she put an embroidered
+cloth upon a table of polished wood and offered him in silver dishes
+all the varieties of fish and game, in which the lake and the park near
+the house abounded. The Mother did everything to keep the god as long
+as possible at her house, but, as at the Grandmother’s and at the
+Great-grandmother’s, so he remained here only three days and three
+nights.
+
+A son appeared to console the Mother for the departure of her
+illustrious guest; this child had at its birth already rosy cheeks,
+long hair, and a haughty look. When he was still a child, he was fond of
+brandishing his spear and of bending his bow; at fifteen he swam across
+the blue waters of the lake, or plunged on an unbroken horse into
+{169}the depths of the forest, riding as fast as the wind. They called
+him Jarl, the noble.
+
+Some years later Heimdall paid another visit to this country; delighted
+with the prowess of Jarl, he acknowledged him as his son and taught
+him the language of birds, which the gods alone understand and fluently
+speak. He taught him also the science of Runes, of runes of victory
+which are engraven on the blades of swords; runes of love to be traced
+upon drinking horns or the thumbnail; runes of the sea, with which the
+prow and the rudder of ships are decorated--in all cases precautionary
+measures by which alone ill fortune can be kept at bay.
+
+Besides these gifts of knowledge, he bestowed upon him an inalienable,
+hereditary domain. This was the first entailed estate ever known in
+Europe.
+
+Jarl, says the Edda, was a man of _eight-horse power_. Could we express
+it better in the noble railway Anglo-Saxon of our day, or does
+our modern English really go back to the old Scandinavian, as this
+coincidence would seem to prove?
+
+Jarl’s descendants are the great chieftains, the barons, princes,
+kings, and Druids, who have all inherited great power from their divine
+ancestor with the golden teeth. They alone are his legitimate
+and acknowledged children; the descendants of the grandmother and
+great-grandmother are illegitimate. {170}Still, whether acknowledged by
+the law or not, they all form a close chain, a single family, they all
+spring from the same god! Thus the humblest among them saw his rights
+secured for the future.
+
+I must confess that, the more carefully I examine these barbarians,
+whether they were gods or men, the more I am surprised to discover
+beneath the outward cloak of their fables so many correct ideas of order
+and of justice. These fables had, of course, their day and then passed
+away. Up to the present time, it is true, there is not much of the day
+gone; perhaps also Odin may be blamed for having invented, before the
+world was a few hundred years old, both the Middle Ages and the Feudal
+System. But it would be wrong to blame him, for it must be acknowledged,
+that in spite of the violence of their manners and the bloody nature
+of their worship, a certain civilization had at last appeared among
+the Scandinavians. It may be called brutal, I grant; it may be called
+aggressive even, but it was after all an improvement, and it has held
+its own in the North, under snow and ice, like the vigorous plants of
+our Alps. How comes it that the Germans and the Franks, more favored by
+climate and by contact with highly civilized nations, remained so long
+inferior to the Scandinavians in this respect? Perhaps they were more
+liable to be invaded than the Sons of the North; the Scandinavians
+invaded the continent {171}in all directions, but no one ever dreamt of
+invading their country.
+
+After having thus established the right of property and a certain social
+hierarchy, Odin had next instituted marriage with the symbolic ring, and
+finally courts of justice.
+
+But, since he had given to man an immortal soul, and since he held out
+to him reward or punishment in another world according to his deserts,
+Odin had been compelled to establish the first high tribunals in that
+other world.
+
+[Illustration: 191]
+
+We must, therefore, find our way to Walhalla and even to Hell, if the
+reader is disposed to follow us to that place.
+
+[Illustration: 195]
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+{175}Heaven and Hell.--_The Valkyrias.--Amusements in Walhalla.--Pork
+and Wild Boar.--A Frozen Hell.--Balder’s Death.--Frigg’s Devotion.--The
+Iron Tree Forest.--The Twilight of the Gods.--Idunas’ Apples.--The Fall
+of Heaven and the End of the World.--Reflections on that Event.--The
+Little Fellow still alive._
+
+When the warriors were preparing for battle, a number of blue-eyed young
+maidens, mounted on {176}bright, shining horses, passed through their
+ranks, animating them with word and gesture, and whispering into their
+ears warlike songs to be soon changed into triumphal chants for those
+who fell on the battlefield, mortally wounded.
+
+[Illustration: 196]
+
+These maidens were the Valkyrias, those Valkyrias whom ever since the
+poets and painters of the Ossianic school have reproduced in a thousand
+forms. Nor must it be forgotten that this remarkable school, which the
+Scotchman Macpherson revived {177}towards the end of the eighteenth
+century, counted among its most ardent admirers two enthusiastic
+Frenchmen, whose names were Napoleon and Lamartine.
+
+These Valkyrias, beautiful nymphs of carnage as they were, delighted in
+the clash of arms, the shedding of blood, and the dying groans of the
+wounded, even in the odors exhaled by the dying,--a taste which seems
+little suited to fair, blue-eyed maidens. These unnatural tastes were,
+however, justified to a certain extent, by the peculiar mission which
+they had to fulfill, a mission of kindness and tender compassion. They
+walked to and fro on the battlefield, not to carry off the dead, but to
+gather the souls of those who had fallen. Of the _Seola_ (such was the
+sweet name of the Soul among the nations of Germanic or Scandinavian
+race), they rapidly asked these questions:--
+
+“Seola, did you belong to a free man or to a slave?
+
+“Seola, did your master honor the gods and the priests of those gods?
+
+“Did he keep his pledged word?
+
+“Did he die like a brave man, with his face to the enemy and not a fear
+in his heart?
+
+“Seola, did he ever fight against the men of his own blood and his own
+race?”
+
+The human soul, as soon as it escapes from the {178}wretched bondage of
+this earth, no longer possesses the sad power of being able to tell a
+falsehood; Seola, therefore, answered these questions truthfully, even
+though it were to its own condemnation. In the latter case the Valkyrias
+left it to the black Alfs, a kind of demons who belonged to hell; but
+if the Seola had belonged to a brave and loyal warrior, the Valkyria
+instantly unfolded her white wines and took it to Walhalla, the home of
+the gods and the paradise of heroes.
+
+This paradise, exclusively intended for free men, was still open to
+slaves also, if they had fallen by the side of their masters, or if they
+had thrown themselves voluntarily into the fire of the funeral pile for
+the purpose of continuing their service in the future life.
+
+Let us see whether the delights of Walhalla were sufficiently attractive
+to warrant such selfimmolation.
+
+The one great enjoyment of all who dwell in Walhalla was combat and
+strife. That is a matter of taste, but did they not carry combat and
+strife a little too far? They fought there for hours and hours, with
+eagerness, with fury, even piercing each other and cutting each other to
+pieces to their hearts’ delight. It is true, that as soon as the dinner
+hour came the blood ceased to flow, the wounds closed their gaping lips,
+the {179}limbs that had been lopped off by the swords returned to their
+place, the broken heads and exposed entrails were restored without the
+surgeon’s aid, not leaving a scar behind, and the heroes went arm in arm
+to dinner, looking forward with joy to a repetition of the same merry
+sport as soon as the meal should be finished.
+
+The fare at this table of gods and heroes does not seem to have been
+peculiarly wholesome; at all events it was not very varied.
+
+The pork-butchers’ business was at that time uncommonly flourishing both
+in heaven and on earth. Tacitus tells us that among the races of the
+North, as far as the borders of the Baltic Sea, chieftains and matrons
+alike loved to wear suspended around their neck a small image of a pig
+as an emblem of abundance and fecundity. Rich and poor, all looked
+upon pork as the main supply of their pantry. The pig, however, was not
+deemed worthy to appear on Odin’s table, and its place was taken by the
+boar: the gods lived upon wild boar, men upon domestic pig, that was the
+whole difference.
+
+I am often tempted to eat pork, and I am occasionally enabled to taste
+wild boar; but I must solemnly confess, swearing if needs be by my
+stomach, that in my opinion, the gods and the heroes had by no means the
+best of it. It may {180}be, however, that wild boars here below are not
+quite equal to heavenly boars.
+
+[Illustration: 200]
+
+However that may be, there appeared every morning upon the edge of one
+of the marvelous forests to be found in Walhalla, an enormous colossal
+boar, a very mammoth of a boar. The {181}heroes proceeded to hunt it,
+accompanied at times by Thor, by Vali, the skillful archer, or by Tyr,
+the one-handed god, who nevertheless wielded his sword with power and
+accuracy. Then the monster was killed, cut up and roasted, and all dined
+together.
+
+[Illustration: 201]
+
+The next day there appeared on the edge of the marvelous forest another
+wild boar, quite as fat and quite as enormous, in fact in every respect
+as attractive as the boar of the day before--some think it was always
+the same animal, come to life again. Then a new hunt and a new dinner
+upon roasted wild boar. Surely we poor people might become disgusted for
+the rest of our lives, one would imagine,--and those were immortal gods!
+What taste!
+
+But there is worse behind yet. The Scandinavian {182}paradise was by
+no means the only one where the pork-butcher was thus glorified. In a
+neighboring paradise, which the Finns had established, we are told by
+a learned writer, the rivers were flowing with beer and hydromel, the
+mountains consisted of lard and the hills of half salted pork.
+
+To help them in digesting their solid food, the Scandinavian gods drank,
+like those of Finland, great quantities of beer and hydromel; but they
+had in addition, an abundance of wine which they quaffed from gold cups.
+Wine! In this one word thoughtful historians have discovered a whole
+revelation.
+
+Now would it ever have occurred to Odin, in his hyperborean lands, where
+the vine did not exist and could not possibly live, to bring the fruit
+of the vine to his paradise? Did he know grapes? And when had he learnt
+to know them? But as I do not wish to interrupt my story, I reserve the
+discussion of this great and important question, with several others
+of the same kind, for another chapter, in which I hope to be able to
+develop my views fully and scientifically.
+
+Besides wine, beer, and hydromel, the blessed people in Walhalla had
+an additional precious beverage of their own, which it may safely be
+presumed, no mortal on earth has ever tasted. This {183}ambrosia of a
+novel nature was obtained by the gods and heroes themselves, on certain
+favorable days, from the white substance of the moon. Yes, from the
+moon! Did they quaff it in full draughts or did they inhale it through
+calumets? We do not know, but the nations of the earth saw in these
+periodical bleedings of the moon the reason for her divers phases and
+her gradual diminution. When she became reduced to a mere crescent,
+fright was seen on all faces and oppressed all hearts. Were the great
+people up there forgetting themselves in their celestial orgies, and
+would they drink up the moon to the last drop?
+
+It must be borne in mind that they, like the Germans, saw in the moon
+nothing but a transparent leathern bottle, filled with sweetened milk,
+and phosphorescent.
+
+Let us return now. To hunt the boar, to breakfast on wild boar, to dine
+on the same dish, day after day, to drink beer and wine, and from time
+to time that mulled egg which the moon furnished, to fight morning
+and evening, to die and come to life again, merely for the purpose of
+fighting again--these were the amusements of that delightful place. Upon
+my word, it took Scandinavians to be content with such pleasures.
+
+If Odin’s paradise appears to us but little attractive, his hell, on the
+other hand, seems to have been {184}far from terrible, especially if we
+compare it with the hell of some of our great poets, such as Dante and
+Milton.
+
+The hell of the Scandinavians occupied the lowest depths of the world
+and consisted of two parts, _Nastrond_ and _Niflheim_. The latter is
+a kind of dismal vestibule shrouded in darkness, in which are seen
+wandering about the mournful seolas of those who have been neither good
+nor bad, neither heroes nor scoundrels, and of all who have not fallen
+by the sword. To die on one’s bed or in an armchair, was a wrong in
+Odin’s eyes, a grievous wrong, though not exactly a crime, since he
+punished it only with a temporary detention in those damp, low places,
+where darkness, silence, and weariness seemed to combine for their
+punishment. The dwellers in Niflheim had scarcely any amusement except
+their reciprocal yawns, and from time to time a flash of dim light which
+reached there when the little black Alfs came in or went out, busily
+engaged in conveying a load of souls.
+
+The great criminals were thrown into Nastrond, the real hell. What
+is very remarkable is, that here there were no braziers and burning
+gridirons to be seen, no furnaces and masses of flames as in all the
+other hells. This was a hell of ice; it froze here hard enough to split
+iron, and the damned shivered with cold. Dante mentions something of
+{185}the kind in his great work, but between the Florentine and the
+Scandinavian there can be no doubt who borrowed from the other.
+
+It was quite natural after all that in these win-tery regions of
+Scandinavia, where cold is the greatest evil to be dreaded, intense,
+continued, eternal cold should have become the terror and the punishment
+of the criminal. The idea of a hell of fire, so far from keeping them
+from the fatal slope, might very well have tempted some chilly scoundrel
+to commit a great crime.
+
+[Illustration: 205]
+
+The poor wretches who were shivering in Nastrond {186}with stiffened
+hands and eyes full of frozen tears, felt their tortures increased
+whenever Hela, the pale goddess, the queen of that place, Death itself,
+cast upon them a glance from her lack-lustre eyes.
+
+Yes, it was Hela who reigned over this frightful iceberg; her palace is
+called Misery, her gate the Precipice, her reception room Grief, her bed
+Disease, her table Famine, and her throne Malediction!
+
+The body of this terrible queen is party-colored, half white and half
+blue, and her breath is perfumed with that horrible cadaverous odor in
+which the Valkyrias delight.
+
+But after all, the names seem to be worse than the sufferings
+themselves; for excessive cold paralyzes pain itself, and there is
+nothing here to compare with those classic places where lava-baths,
+rolling rocks, flaming wheels, horses of red-hot iron, boiling pitch,
+fiery arrows and the snake whips of the Eumenides made up an infernal
+stock of tortures which might well tempt the imagination of the greatest
+of poets.
+
+In Nastrond there were no demons and no Eumenides; to be sure, there was
+a Bigvor and a Sisvor, furies if you will have it so, watching at the
+gates of hell, with the help of Gaun, the formidable dog, but all three
+are forbidden to enter within. {187}The place of missing monsters is
+occupied by some of those whom Odin spared on the occasion of his first
+campaign against the giant sons of Ymer, and by the wolf Fenris, whom
+the Ases had treacherously captured. There are also two other wolves,
+convicted of having made an attempt upon the life of the Sun, and all of
+these monsters are firmly chained and appear rather as sufferers than as
+tormentors.
+
+One of these days, their iron chains will be loosened; one of these days
+heaven will turn cold and hell will melt, and--then, woe to the gods!
+
+Listen! The moment is drawing near when all these mysteries are to
+be solved. The hour is coming when _you shall hear, when you shall
+understand!_ But before uttering these last words, final and at the same
+time fatal words, we must mention an event which at that moment
+occurred in the open assembly of the gods, filling heaven and earth with
+amazement, with pity and horror.
+
+It must be acknowledged that so far the heavenly personages have
+appeared to be rather kindhearted and mild. Odin, in spite of his Druids
+and their demands for bloody sacrifices, seems to have been full of good
+intentions. The god Thor, with all his somewhat brutal ways, rendered
+great services to mankind; and the same hammer, which protected them
+against the giants, afterwards served, {188}without the aid of
+geometry, to mark the boundary lines of their respective properties.
+The golden-teethed god, Heimdall, gave most undoubted evidence of his
+devotion to the human race and of his self-denial in his visits to the
+Grandmother and the Great-grandmother, and so did the other gods. But we
+had good reasons for not going through the whole list of the Ases. For
+there is one whom we keep in reserve so that he may appear at the right
+hour, and that is Loki, the god of evil and the genius of destruction.
+
+Surpassing Odin himself in his magic skill, fair of form and features,
+a smile on his lips--thin lips, however, the Edda adds--and apparently
+possessed of the most jovial temper so as to make him a most agreeable
+person, Loki is in reality a compound of the most hideous vices. He
+is the representative of hatred and cruelty, of envy, hypocrisy, and
+perversity. In fact, he is our Satan, before the fall. If he had been
+king of hell, Miflheim and Nastrond would both have been filled with
+more tortures and more horrors than all the other hells which are known
+to men.
+
+And yet he was the god upon whom the dwellers in Walhalla counted for
+their entertainment, and whom they had surnamed the Clown!
+
+One day an ancient prophetess returns to life, rises in her grave, and
+utters a terrible cry: “Balder, {189}fair Balder, is going to die!”
+ With these words she falls back again upon her mournful couch and dies
+again--forever.
+
+[Illustration: 209]
+
+In the meantime this cry has been heard even at the top of the ash
+Ygdrasil. The Ases are troubled and amazed; they meet, they look at
+each other, thoroughly frightened, for on the life of Balder depends the
+existence of all the other gods. Moreover, {190}Balder the Bright is
+the glory of heaven and the love of the earth. Can Balder die, the most
+charming and the purest as well as the most beautiful of all the sons of
+Odin? He, who was so beautiful that Hela herself could not help smiling
+when she looked at him--he, so pure that no falsehood could be uttered
+in his presence and that a vessel containing an adulterated liquid would
+break instantly at his approach--he, so charming that all the gods love
+him as their favorite child, and that men have surnamed him Hope? No,
+no! Balder shall not die, said the Ases.
+
+His distressed mother Frigg, Odin’s wife, shows her apprehensions by
+her intense anguish, and her sobs scarcely allow her to speak. She tells
+those who try to laugh at the sudden alarm of all who have heard the
+warning of the prophetess, that for several nights already she has
+been repeatedly, persistently warned in her dreams of the death of her
+well-beloved son. She would not believe it, she adds, but now she does
+believe.
+
+The divine sybil Vola, whose predictions have never proved untrue, and
+Skulda, the Norn of the Future, are ‘summoned to appear. They consult
+with each other and this is their decision:--
+
+“Balder is in danger; Balder will die unless all earthly substances that
+can inflict death, are rendered powerless.” {191}Frigg descends to the
+earth and speaks to volcanoes and water-spouts, to frost and hail, and
+they promise to spare her son. Among the aquatic powers, from the ocean
+to the smallest brook, among the stones, from the mightiest rock to the
+pebble, and among the metals, from gold to iron, there is none that does
+not swear the same oath. The plants also promise, from the oak to the
+smallest shrub and down to the humblest grass.
+
+[Illustration: 211]
+
+Triumphantly she returns to heaven to announce the good news. Everybody
+is overjoyed. They celebrate the happy result of her journey by a family
+dinner, at which Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself by his
+merry jokes. He had never appeared in better spirits; had never seemed
+to sympathize more warmly with the happy court.
+
+When the feast was ended and the last cups were drained in honor of
+Balder, some one proposed for the general amusement to try how far all
+these substances, vegetable or mineral, will be faithful to the oath
+they have sworn, when brought face to face with Balder. {192}Beginning
+with the most inoffensive of them all, they throw at him a clod of
+earth; the clod of earth breaks into a cloud of dust before it touches
+him. Then they pour a pitcher of water over him and the water forms a
+cascade above him without wetting even his garments. They try to strike
+him with a hazel wand; the wand, slipping from the hand that holds
+it, breaks in two. Balder is amused by the game and encourages the
+bystanders to renew their attacks.
+
+[Illustration: 212]
+
+The skillful Uller shoots at him a pointless arrow, aiming, from
+excessive caution, only at his shoulder. The arrow passes at a distance
+of twenty feet from its aim and continues its flight through {193}the
+air, like a bird in search of its prey beyond the clouds.
+
+Ten other assailants meet the same fate, trying their luck with a
+fragment of rock and a heavy branch in the shape of a club. But the
+fragment was of stone and remembered the promise given to Frigg, and the
+club was cut from a tree and the tree remembered the promise given to
+Frigg.
+
+Encouraged by so many reassuring trials, Freyr desired to try his magic
+sword, but for once the faithful sword was deaf to his orders. Thor
+brandished his hammer, but the hammer suddenly reversed its action and
+well nigh made him fall back upon his heels. Freyr’s sword and Thor’s
+hammer were both of iron and the iron remembered the promise given to
+Frigg.
+
+Loki took care not to appear.
+
+The sport was over, as it seemed, when suddenly the blind god Hoder,
+Balder’s own brother, was seen to advance, feeling his way, towards the
+bright god. Hoder held in his hand a small bunch of leaves, a bit of
+grass, at least it appeared such after the fearful instruments that had
+just been brought into play.
+
+Immense laughter, a laughter such as the gods of Homer were in the habit
+of enjoying, broke out at the sight; Loki laughed till his sides shook
+and Hoder himself shared the general hilarity. {194}But he drew
+nearer and nearer, shaking his bit of verdure in the air; then, almost
+tottering and having learnt from the bystanders in what direction he
+would have to turn, he threw the slender twig against Balder, using his
+full force, which was prodigious.
+
+He hit Balder full in the chest and the god fell instantly. That bright
+light which was always shining around him became extinct; he closed his
+eyes, and lowered his beautiful brow deprived of its glory.....Balder
+was dead!
+
+He had been struck by a bit of mistletoe. Frigg had addressed her
+prayers to the oak tree, but she had not thought of the mistletoe which
+grows on the oak tree; the mistletoe had given no promise to Frigg. Must
+we look here for a symbolic meaning? Did this mean, that the Druidical
+mistletoe was soon to triumph over the gods of Scandinavia? This could
+not be so, for at the time to which we have come, there was no trace
+left of the wise worship of the Druids of the first epoch; the Druids of
+the second epoch were fast losing their power, and the Scandinavian gods
+were daily increasing in popularity, even beyond the banks of the Rhine.
+
+But we ought not to interrupt this account of Balder’s death, which
+is as poetical and as touching as the most famous fables of Greece.
+{195}When blind Hoder, whose name must not be uttered, you remember,
+hears the cries of despair which break out all around him, and encircle
+him on all sides with maledictions, he is troubled and seriously
+distressed. Then, all of a sudden joining in the distressed cries of the
+Ases, he falls utterly overcome upon his brother’s body and denounces
+Loki as the author of this calamity. Loki has reproached him for being
+the only one who took no part in the amusements by which they thought to
+honor Balder, and he it was who had not only given him the fatal
+plant but who had also directed his arm. Loki was jealous of all the
+perfections of Balder and he hated him as much as the other gods loved
+him.
+
+They look for Loki, but he has disappeared. No doubt he has tried to
+escape from the vengeance of the Ases by seeking refuge in the mountains
+among the giants, his natural allies, or perhaps in the deep sea, with
+the serpent Iormungandur.
+
+And whilst they thus lament, inquire, and investigate, Balder’s soul is
+carried off by the black Alfs to Niflheim, the dark vestibule of hell.
+
+Odin still cherished hopes that his dead son might be restored to him.
+Upon his order Her-mode, the messenger of the gods, mounts his horse
+Sleipner and goes to see Hela, but neither promises nor threats can move
+the dread goddess. Fate has {196}decided, and Fate is above the gods, as
+the gods are above men.
+
+Then Frigg herself goes to see the pale goddess. Frigg weeps and the
+merciless goddess is unable to keep her heart from softening when she
+sees the tears of such a mother. She says to her:--
+
+“Let all created beings--mind, I say, all created beings!--give a tear
+to Balder, a tear such as you have’ shed in my presence, and Balder
+shall be restored to you!”
+
+Frigg was unwilling to trust any one but herself with the effort to
+realize such hopes. Once more she went over the world, gathering around
+her all the races of men, one after the other, and as she mentioned the
+name of Balder, tears flowed from all eyes.
+
+For three months she visited all the forests and all the mountains,
+the seas and the lakes and the animals that live in the waters and the
+mountains; and seas and lakes and mountains wept. She went even to the
+abode of the giants, the enemies of the gods, and her grief made the
+giants also weep; every tree wept and every rock wept.
+
+Frigg thought her task was accomplished, and was filled with joy; but
+she heard that in the far East of Midgard there lived an old woman in
+the heart of a forest of iron trees. As she lived alone there, far
+from any beaten track, she had never {197}become known to the intrepid
+traveller. Now, however, Frigg sought her out by steep paths, cut up
+with gullies and fierce torrents, and at last found her. When the mother
+told her pitiful tale, the iron trees wept, but the old woman would not
+weep.
+
+[Illustration: 217]
+
+{198}They called her Thorck, and her heart was ten times as hard as her
+name.
+
+“What do I care for your Balder?” she cried; “what do I care whether he
+is dead or alive? You have other sons; I have not one left me. Once I
+had four, and all four were my pride, my delight. They were so fair!
+They were so tall! Your son Thor killed every one of them. I wept much
+at that time. Now, it is all over. Look for tears elsewhere, I have no
+tears to give to other people’s sorrows!”
+
+Frigg bowed down before her, begged her, conjured her, and even fell on
+her knees before her; but the old woman was inflexible. Balder had to
+remain a prisoner with Hela.
+
+Some interpreters of Scandinavian runes have been of the opinion that
+the bereaved mother in the forest of iron trees was none other than
+Loki himself, changed into an old woman. That thought, however, is
+inadmissible. The Ases were beyond the reach of Hela, and Loki’s refusal
+would not have rendered void the unanimous vote of all Nature, when
+tears of pity and sympathy alone were to be given as votes. It is much
+more plausible to suppose, that Loki had induced Thorck to refuse by his
+counsels and by his enchantments; through him the heart of the old woman
+had’ become iron as well as the trees of the forest in {199}which she
+lived. Thus Loki had twice caused the death of Balder!
+
+It was at this time that a strange, almost incredible report was for the
+first time heard among men. The Druids whispered it cautiously into
+the ears of the initiated, and voices were said to utter it in the air
+during the night. This report, a terrible secret, a most unexpected
+revelation, stated that the gods were about to die! Thor would die,
+after seeing lightning become extinct in his hands; Odin himself would
+die, and so would the others. The fate of each one of them was depending
+on the fate of this fragile world over which they ruled, and this world
+had to perish because Balder had perished.
+
+What? Should the Universe change back into chaos? Was there no
+all-powerful will that could arrest the process of destruction before
+it was too late? But where could such omnipotent will be found, now that
+the gods were no longer to be in existence?
+
+Listen! listen to these verses from the Edda!
+
+“Who is the most ancient among the gods?
+
+“Alfader, that is, the universal father. He has always been and will
+ever be; he governs all things, both big and small; he has made the
+heavens, the earth and the gods. Odin created man, but Al-fader gave
+him his immortal soul!” {200}Thus we come back to the pure essence of
+an only god, who is ever the same, whether his name be Teut, Esus, or
+Jehovah; the other gods are nothing but emanations proceeding from him,
+living symbols intended to live for a few thousand centuries--that is
+all.
+
+“Do you hear? Do you understand now?
+
+“Do you understand why the great ash tree Ygdrasil is continually
+gnawed at its root by a dragon? Why four famished stags feed upon its
+foliage? You understand? Well!
+
+“But by what sign shall we recognize the approaching end of the
+gods--that which the Edda calls their _twilight?_
+
+“The most important among all the sacred books of the North, a volume
+containing the prophecies of the divine sybil Vola, the _Voluspa,_ will
+tell you.
+
+“When the fatal moment draws near, their voice will cease to be able
+to utter the accustomed chants, and the luminous brightness radiating
+from their bodies will fade away little by little.
+
+“When they leave their bath, their bodies will not dry at once, as they
+do now, but remain moist; drops of water will continually drip from
+them, and they will in this respect become like unto mortal men.
+
+“In order to overcome these first symptoms of {201}indisposition, the
+wife of the god Bragi, Iduna, will give them certain apples to eat,
+which she keeps in reserve. These apples will have the effect of
+strengthening them and of restoring to them a kind of fictitious youth
+for a few thousand years perhaps.
+
+“One day, however, their eyes will begin to wink; the next morning, upon
+awaking, their eyelids will be found closed, and then they will turn red
+and blear.
+
+“At table, when proceeding to their usual libations, their slightly
+tremulous hands will be unable to hold their cups steadily; some of the
+wine or the hydromel will escape and their garments will remain stained.
+
+“Woe to them if a grain of dust adheres to these stained garments!
+
+“Woe to them still more, if the wreaths of flowers or of jewels begin to
+fade and to wither on their brows!
+
+“Finally, when the sweet perfumes which now are exhaled from their
+bodies, change into acrid and sickening odors, there will be nothing
+left for them but to make their last will.”
+
+I am well convinced that this last phrase has been stealthily introduced
+into the Voluspa by some kind of criminal and fraudulent trick. The
+rest, however, is a faithful translation of the original {202}text, as
+taken from the best authenticated editions.
+
+[Illustration: 222]
+
+“Then,” the prophecy continues, “then three sacred cocks, dwelling
+in the three principal worlds, will crow and reply to each other,
+announcing the _Twilight of Greatness._
+
+“Then, everything on earth will be in disorder and confusion; families
+will be at variance with {203}each other, the claims of blood will no
+longer be acknowledged, and brothers will be arrayed against brothers.
+
+“Adultery and incest, robbery and murder, will prevail among men, and
+the age will be an age of barbarism, an age of the sword, an age of
+tempests, an age of wolves!
+
+“The wolves will be ready to devour the sun. Three long winters, with
+no summers between them, will cover the earth with snow and ice; the
+branches of the trees will give way under the immense burden; the sun
+will be darkened more and more; the moon will dissolve into vapor and
+the stars will go out; the mountains, shaking in their foundations, will
+be tossed to and fro like reeds in a river; the earth will reject all
+the plants, the trees, and the rocks which it now bears; the waters will
+cast the fish upon the shore and with them their algae, their corals,
+and even the bodies of shipwrecked men, hideous skeletons, whose
+rattling bones will chime in grimly with the warning of the rising
+flood.
+
+“Then the sea will grow dark, and upon its waters there will be seen
+floating that monstrous ship made of the nails of dead men. At the
+rudder, Ymer, the giant, will stand, having been recalled to life for
+a time, in order to assist Loki in scaling the heavens by the way of
+Bifrost, the {204}rainbow, at the head of the other Giants of the Frost.
+
+“Then Surtur the Black will arrive from the southern regions, from the
+realm of fire, with all of his malignant demons, bearing torches and
+ready to set heaven and earth on fire.
+
+“Then Hela, the pale goddess of death, will set free her prisoners, the
+wolf Fenris first of all, and march at the head of these monsters to
+assist the powers of the South.
+
+“Then the gods will take up their arms; Odin will gather them around
+him, and with them the heroes from Walhalla; and the last battle will be
+fought.”
+
+But Vola’s prophecy has to be fulfilled; the gods must perish, and the
+world with them.
+
+Freyr dies in the flames of Surtur the Black; Thor succumbs to
+the deadly embrace and the poisonous bites of the great serpent
+Iormungandur; but, before dying, he kills it. Odin is torn to pieces by
+the wolf Fenris.
+
+During the struggle, the heavens have been scaled and the genii of fire
+enter on horseback through the breach, while the giants shake the ash
+Ygdrasil, which writhes uttering long sighs, and at last falls with
+the heavenly vault which it has been upholding. The conquerors and the
+conquered alike are crushed under the ruins, and the world {205}being
+set on fire by Surtur the Black, vanishes in smoke.
+
+Thus the night of the gods has to succeed to the twilight of the gods.
+
+“O you, spirits of the mountains, do you know whether anything will
+continue to exist?” asks the Voluspa, at the end of these mournful
+prophecies.
+
+It must be admitted that this sombre and terrible conception is not
+without a certain poetic grandeur, a certain savage heroism, which we
+cannot help admiring. In these verses the Edda is in no way inferior to
+the most brilliant pictures drawn by Dante or by Milton, and more than
+once it approaches nearly to the Apocalypse. Thus, as the inspired
+Apostle saw a new heaven and a new earth, the Edda also announces the
+coming of a time, when a new earth, more favored and more perfect than
+ours, shall succeed the old earth.
+
+“When the earth is thus broken to pieces and devoured by fire, what
+shall happen next?
+
+“There will come forth from the sea another earth, more beautiful and
+more perfect.
+
+“And will any of the gods survive?
+
+“Balder will be revived and come forth from the place of departed
+spirits, to rule over the new world under the guidance of the
+imperishable Al-fader. {206}Then will be the reign of Justice.”
+
+The mythology of the Scandinavians embraces, as we have shown, among
+its symbols all the great phenomena of Nature, the continual struggle
+between the two opposite principles, creation and destruction. Being,
+besides, more complicated and more intelligent than the mythology of the
+Gauls and the Germans, it deserved to fill a large space in our work,
+and such a space we have accorded it cheerfully.
+
+But why was it that the civilization introduced by Odin contributed as
+little as the philosophy of the Druids to the real well-being and the
+improvement of mankind? I think I see the reason.
+
+In the eyes of the German as well as of the Scandinavian, God was only
+just and rigid. The rule of the God of Love had not yet begun.
+Perhaps Balder was to inaugurate it in that other world which the Edda
+announced.
+
+Do you hear? Do you understand?
+
+Amid all the incidents which were to mark the general conflagration,
+there is one which particularly recalls to our mind a great historical
+event. Alexander of Macedonia once questioned certain Celtic ambassadors
+and was told by them, that what they feared most upon earth, was the
+falling down of the sky.
+
+This apparently lofty answer filled the young {207}conqueror with
+admiration, and it is still admired by modern students of history. It
+was, however, in reality nothing more than a simple, naïve rendering of
+one of their articles of faith; for all their prophetic books threatened
+them with the destruction of the heavens.
+
+Another detail, the complete destruction of this globe of ours, after
+a series of fearful catastrophes, recalls to me, not exactly a great
+historical fact, but a simple game of my childhood, which may have
+been symbolic, nay, which may have come down to us from the Edda. This,
+however, I state with great hesitation.
+
+Did you ever know one of the merriest games, which was once very much
+the fashion in city and country alike, when a firebrand, a burning
+stick, or a bunch of straw set on fire, was quickly passed from hand
+to hand? To prevent its going out, while you held it, you were bound to
+pass it as quickly as possible to your neighbor, repeating at the same
+time the expressive words: “_The little fellow is still alive_.” Your
+neighbor passed it to his neighbor and thus it travelled all around,
+always accompanied by the same, constant burden: “The little fellow is
+still alive!” This game was transformed during the Middle Ages, in
+the North, and especially in Bretagne, into the Torch Dance, as I have
+mentioned before. {208}Now I imagine that this game, in some way or
+other, prefigured the universal conflagration that was to come, and _the
+little fellow_ was the world.
+
+[Illustration: 228]
+
+But we must make haste to reach our great scientific discussion.
+
+[Illustration: 231]
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+{211}_How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time
+between one World and another.--How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.--How
+Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the
+Indians.--How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God
+Buddha.--About Mahabarata and Ramayana.--Chronology.--The World’s
+Age.--Comparative Tables.--Quotations.--Supporting Evidence.--A
+Cenotaph._
+
+My reader has had a lucky escape.
+
+Determined as I was to fathom in this chapter the true origin of the
+Scandinavian religion, and inspired by the zeal of a recent convert, I
+had collected and compared every document that could aid me in proving
+the Oriental descent of the priests of Odin as well as of the other
+Druids. I {212}thought it was a beautiful doctrine, and especially an
+entirely new one.
+
+When I finished my chapter, which I thought was exceedingly well done,
+I read it to Doctor Rosahl, expecting, I must confess, to be warmly
+congratulated.
+
+“Why, my dear sir,” he said, when I had finished, “you have made great
+efforts to prove a thing which has been established long since. All the
+master minds of France and Germany, to say nothing of other nations,
+agree on that subject. I mean men like Fauriel, Lassen, Lenormand,
+Ampere, Eichhoff, Saint-Marc Girardin, Marmier, Klaproth, Ozanam, the
+two Rémusats, the two Thierrys, the two Humboldts, the two Grimms, not
+to mention twenty others.
+
+“Why will you come to their assistance after they have won the victory?
+Do you merely wish to display your scholarship?”
+
+I indignantly denied the charge, and seizing my manuscript with both
+hands, I resolutely threw it into the fire.
+
+A remnant of paternal weakness induced me, however, to retain the
+summary of that famous chapter, and I have inserted it here in its
+regular place, so that it might bear evidence of my wasted labor. As the
+_corpus delicti_ is no longer in existence, this summary may stand there
+like an inscription {213}on an empty tomb, to honor the memory of the
+deceased.
+
+My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph.
+
+I--a scholar! Great God! Let the reader not be disturbed. My purpose
+in writing this work was nothing more than to try and collect along the
+banks of the Rhine all the curious myths which have survived the ancient
+creeds of Europe; for they have all come to the great river. There the
+traveller finds piled up, after the manner of alluvial layers, all the
+ancient fables, all the marvelous and often childish tales to which
+the credulity and lively imagination of our forefathers gave a ready
+welcome. With the exception of a very few cases, in which the grave
+nature of the subject lifts me necessarily into higher regions, I wish
+mainly to tell you once more _Grandmamma’s Tales_. That is what we are
+going to do next. The Edda itself has no other meaning, for _Edda_ means
+the same as our _grandmother_.
+
+No, I am too great a lover of tales of a tub ever to have claimed the
+reputation of being a scholar; but at times I like to glean a little
+where scholars have reaped. I have been shown the best spots, and I
+pilfer as well as I can--that is all.
+
+An ignoramus and a pilferer, I resemble a bee which might fly into a
+botanical garden and, utterly {214}unacquainted with the Latin names
+of flowers, carry off joyously a rich harvest, without pretending to be
+able to make academic honey.
+
+[Illustration: 234]
+
+[Illustration: 237]
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+{217}_Confederation of all the Northern Gods.--Freedom of
+Religion.--Christianity.--Miserere mei!--Homeric Enumeration.--Prussian,
+Slavic, and Finnish Deities.--The God of Cherries and the God
+of Bees.--A Silver Woman.--Ilmarinnen’s Wedding Song.--A Skeleton
+God.--Yaga-Babcûs Pestle and Mortar.--Preparation for Battle.--The
+Little Chapel on the Hill.--The Signal for the Attack.--Jesus and Mary._
+
+It is high time for us to return to the banks of the Rhine, where the
+two religions of Jupiter and Odin were about to meet face to face.
+{218}At that time the terrible prophecies of the Edda were far from
+being near their fulfillment; Odin had a long period of omnipotence yet
+before him.
+
+To the great surprise of the adversaries, the Romans, so far from
+showing any alarm at his approach, received him and his retinue of
+deities as old acquaintances.
+
+According to their unchanging policy they would see in him nothing but a
+Jupiter, and in fierce Thor another gallant Mars, somewhat sobered by a
+long residence in northern countries and excessive use of beer.
+
+The Romans looked, in fact, upon all of these Scandinavian gods and
+goddesses simply as upon myths of their own that came back to them once
+more.
+
+The poets hallowed these claims and the historians tried to justify
+them. According to some, Odin the Conqueror, a member of the family of
+Ases, had first given to some of his conquests the name of Asia (which
+might very well be so), and then receded before the Roman armies to cold
+hyperborean regions. Here he had adopted the gods of his new conquerors,
+hoping that they would, in return, make him victorious--which seems to
+me in the highest degree improbable. According to others, the poet Ovid,
+when Augustus had banished him to Scythia, had learnt the language of
+the barbarians, {219}among whom he was living, and finding them willing
+and eager to listen to him, had recited before them his “Metamorphoses.”
+ This was all that was needed to induce the Scythians to make for
+themselves gods after the model of the Roman gods.
+
+[Illustration: 239]
+
+Tacitus, Plutarch, Strabo, and a host of the most illustrious writers
+never hesitated to give currency to such childish stories, ignoring
+entirely the date of the Scandinavian religion.
+
+As Rome, however, permitted no human sacrifices, the priests of Odin
+and of Teut had at first withdrawn far from the beaten track, into the
+depths of dark old forests. There they could live quietly, practice
+without restraint the religion of their forefathers, and kill their men
+in perfect security. At least such were their hopes. The Roman soldiers,
+however, who handled the woodman’s axe {220}as readily as the sword, and
+the spade as well as the spear, soon made big holes in these venerable
+forests, murdered the murderers, and overthrew their blood-stained
+altars.
+
+[Illustration: 240]
+
+{221}Occasionally it happened that the brave legionaries who were
+employed in these hazardous enterprises, did not reappear. The
+proconsuls, whose duty it was to keep Germany in order, would have liked
+to inflict severe punishment; but just then the great reaction began to
+set in, from the North against the South.
+
+Whilst Rome was making efforts to establish her power in Germany,
+certain German tribes, Franks and Burgundians, invaded France and began
+to settle down in some of the conquered Roman provinces. The proconsuls
+thought it both prudent and wise not to raise the question of religion;
+and for a long time a truce was tacitly agreed upon between all the
+different creeds, though not without some misgivings on both sides. Odin
+had his altars by the side of those of Jupiter; a temple in honor of
+Thor stood facing a temple dedicated to Mars, and if Bacchus, Diana, and
+Apollo had their sacred days, Bragi, Frigg, and Freya had theirs also.
+
+In spite of this general toleration, the parties watched each other
+carefully.
+
+Sooner or later a holy war had to break out; in certain regions it had
+already begun, when fishermen of the Rhine busily drawing in their nets,
+heard, for the first time, a still small voice coming down upon them on
+the waters of the river, which whispered the names of Jesus and Mary.
+{222}The same voice and the same names were simultaneously heard again
+and again before Strasbourg, Mayence, and Cologne. It was Christianity
+that was approaching.
+
+[Illustration: 242]
+
+These wondrous words, which now the river only {223}murmured, had soon
+after been forced by some mystic power from the lips of the Druidesses
+in their prophetic exaltation and from the priests of Jupiter, as they
+consulted their auguries.
+
+There was a Druid, who, in the act of sacrificing, was suddenly seized
+with inspiration, and dropping the bloody knife felt impelled to cry
+out: _Miserere mei, Jesus!_ and yet Latin had until then been an unknown
+tongue among the Druids!
+
+The nations stood expectant, waiting for the revelation of a new faith.
+
+Soon a number of fugitives from Tolbiac, returning to the Rhine,
+produced consternation in all hearts by the announcement that Clovis,
+the king of the Franks, who had long been suspected of a secret
+understanding with Rome, had gone over to the god of the Christians, and
+that the god of the Christians was at that moment advancing at the head
+of ten legions of destroying angels.
+
+When this news came, the rival religions laid aside their jealousy,
+and terrified by a common danger, joined hands to resist the invader.
+A general appeal was made not only by the followers of Odin to those of
+Jupiter, but also to the Northern gods, the Finnish gods, the Russian
+gods, and the Slavic gods. The danger was threatening to all alike, and
+they responded to the appeal and came to the Rhine. {224}We cannot so
+rapidly pass over this vast Olympian assembly of gods, a poet’s dream,
+it may be, but a traditional dream, full of strange and striking
+splendor, which completes in a most unexpected manner the limited
+description we have tried to give of Northern Myths.
+
+[Illustration: 244]
+
+At this grand meeting there appeared in the first place a goodly number
+of Borussian or Prussian gods, among whom stood first and foremost
+Percunos, the divine leader of the heavenly bodies; Pikollos, whose
+face was as pale as Hela’s and whose duty was, like hers, to preside
+over hell; exacting, however, from men nothing but prayers accompanied
+by beating hearts, he cared nothing whether he was feared or beloved. A
+third god, Potrympos, had the appearance of a youth, with smiling lips
+and with a wreath of wheat ears and flowers on his brow; this was the
+god of War. Of War? And what meant the smile on his lips and the wheat
+ears on his brow? They indicated that he was also the god of public
+supplies and even of love.
+
+It seems that, in ancient Prussia, War was the purveyor-general and
+supplied everything.
+
+In the retinue of this great trio, we find Antrympos, the god of seas
+and lakes; Poculos, the god of the air and of storms; then, after these
+gods ending in _os_, came other deities ending in _us_; Pilvitus, the
+god of riches, Auchwitus, the god of the sick, and Marcopulus, the god
+of the nobles. The latter was the terror of the common people, whom he
+held under an iron yoke. In order to {226}conciliate his good will, they
+prayed to Puscatus, another god in us, but a kindhearted god. He
+lived under an elder tree, and the price he exacted in return for his
+mediation was the modest gift of a piece of bread and a _schoppen_ of
+beer.
+
+[Illustration: 246]
+
+Although their priests were called Crives or Waidelottes, their
+ceremonies were, nevertheless, mere imitations of those of the Druids.
+The Borussians honored particularly the famous oak of Remowe, to which
+Percunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos paid a daily visit. To these same gods
+they offered their prisoners of war; but they were not sacrificed by
+means of a knife after the German {227}Or the Scandinavian manner. They
+destroyed them by fire or they gave them to be devoured to enormous
+serpents who lived upon the altar and for the altar.
+
+[Illustration: 247]
+
+Now all these gods have come to Germany accompanied by their monstrous
+reptiles, by griffins fearful to behold, and by demons summoned
+from hell, all called upon to take part in the impending struggle.
+{228}Almost at the same time with the Prussian gods arrived also the
+Scythian gods and those of the Sarmatians, the former in chariots,
+according to the manner of travelling which prevailed among those
+nations. They also bowed low, like their people, before the all-powerful
+Tahiti, the great representative of their religion, Fire. The Scythians
+had evidently derived very little profit from hearing Ovid read his
+“Metamorphoses.”
+
+The others were but few in numbers; their representatives were their
+chief triad: Perun, their Jupiter Tonans; Rujewit, who controlled the
+clouds; and Sujatowist, the judge of the dead. These three brought in
+their train only Trizbog and the Tassanis, that is, the plague and the
+furies. Their other gods, unable to do anything for success in war, had
+wisely stayed at home.
+
+Can I neglect mentioning the names and attributes of these inoffensive
+local deities, whom the fierce Sarmatians worshipped. They were:--
+
+Kirnis, who causes the cherries to ripen;
+
+Sardona, who watches over the nut trees;
+
+Austeïa, who presides over the education of bees;
+
+The sweet Kolna, who sees to the marriage of flowers.
+
+There were also gods or goddesses of corn, of the kneading-tub and the
+wash-tub, the god of flies and the god of butterflies; we must confess
+that {229}these deities could hardly have been very useful on the banks
+of the Rhine.
+
+But Odin and Jupiter could count upon more efficient and more reliable
+allies in the gods of Finland.
+
+The gods bear almost always the impress of the character of their
+followers and of those over whom they rule, and what other nation has
+ever given such proofs of undaunted courage as the Finns or Finlanders?
+Pirates on the Baltic, as the Scandinavians were pirates on the ocean,
+they shared with them the booty that could be gotten in all the Northern
+seas. They had originally come from the high table-lands of Asia,
+together with their brethren the Turks, the Mongols, and the Tartars;
+their first appearance was made under the name of Ugorians, Ogres, and
+surely the Ogres have made a lasting and a terrible impression on bur
+popular tales!
+
+The Finns consisted almost exclusively of sailors and soldiers, of
+miners and blacksmiths. To smelt iron and to fashion it into anchors
+for their ships, into lances, swords, and spears, was their principal
+occupation. Hence they paid special reverence to Rauta-Rekhi, the
+personification of iron; to Wulangoinen, the father of iron, and to
+Ruojuota, the nurse of iron. They worshipped in like manner with special
+zeal three sombre virgins, whose powerful breasts were running over
+with a dark milk, {230}which turned into iron as it cooled off, as water
+turns into ice when it cools off.
+
+Their principal gods, besides these whom I have mentioned, were again
+three, and, as usual, three brothers.
+
+The oldest, Vainamoinen, of hoary age, created celestial and terrestial
+fire, that is to say, the sun and the volcanoes.
+
+The second, Ukko, has to provide them with fire, so as to prevent the
+earth from returning to the condition of an immense icicle, and the sun
+to the form of a heap of extinct embers. Living in the clouds he now
+blows upon the sun and now upon the volcanoes so as to keep up the blaze
+in both, and encourages them with his voice, the thunder.
+
+Ilmarinnen, the third, a very industrious and most skillful workman, has
+forged the earth and the seven heavens by which it is surrounded; hence
+he is called the _Eternal Blacksmith_. He spends his life at the forge,
+making sometimes stars of all sizes and at other times spare moons.
+He has even made a silver woman, not for himself, however, but for a
+younger brother, whose manifold and incessant occupations left him no
+time to take the necessary steps for a suitable marriage. This woman
+of fine metal, well-made, beautiful, charming, and of the sweetest
+disposition, had but one single defect,--no {231}one could come near her
+without being chilled to the marrow of his bones.
+
+However, the most skillful blacksmith cannot be expected to make a
+perfect woman at the first trial.
+
+When the question of his own marriage was mooted, Ilmarinnen preferred
+taking a ready made wife, and, according to the usage which prevailed
+among the Finns as well as among the Germans, he bought one.
+
+For the sake of enjoying some relief after such a long enumeration of
+deities, now entirely out of fashion, I feel strongly tempted to insert
+here _a saga_, a Finnish legend, which treats of this very marriage of
+Ilmarinnen, the blacksmith, and was composed by his own sister. In this
+wedding-song, which is full of the sweetest and chastest sentiments,
+she exhibits the domestic life of these artisan-gods, who sometimes were
+disposed to beat their wives,--at least the saga suggests the occurrence
+of such events.
+
+Ilmarinnen has just been married and becomes impatient, he actually
+swears at not seeing his young bride come to him in great haste. Listen
+to what is sung to him, with an accompaniment on a small Kantele
+guitar, by his sister, the hostess of Pohjola, in order to calm him the
+better:--
+
+“O husband, brother of my brothers, you have {232}already waited long
+for the coming of this happy day; wait patiently a little longer. Your
+well beloved will not tarry long. She finishes her toilet; but you know
+it is far to the fountain to which she has to go for water.
+
+“O husband, brother of my brothers, be patient! She has just put on her
+robe, but she has only put on one sleeve. You would surely not have her
+appear before you with one sleeve empty?
+
+“O husband, she has just arranged her hair; a beautiful belt encircles
+her waist, but she has a shoe only on one foot; she must needs have time
+to put on the other shoe also.
+
+“Husband,.... here she is coming,.... but she has put on only one
+glove,.... give her time to put on the other!”
+
+When the young bride appears at last, the good hostess of Pohjola is
+suddenly deeply concerned for her:--
+
+“O wife, O purchased maid, O dove that has been sold! My sister, my
+poem, my green branch, how many tears you will shed!
+
+“Your family were very eager to have the money paid down for you in the
+hollow of a shield.
+
+“Poor ignorant girl, you thought you were leaving the paternal roof for
+a few hours, for a day, perhaps! Alas! You have surrendered forever, you
+have a master now!” {233}And then turning once more to Ilmarinnen, she
+adds:--
+
+“O husband, brother of my brothers, do not teach this child, the slave,
+whip in hand, the way she must walk.
+
+“Do not make her cry under the rod or under the stick; teach her gently,
+in a soft voice, with closed doors.
+
+“The first year by words, the second year by a frown, the third year by
+gently pressing her foot. Be patient!
+
+“If, after three years, she is unwilling to learn, O husband, brother of
+my brothers, take a few slender reeds, take a little broom-sedge,
+chastise her, but with a rod covered with wool.
+
+“If she still resists, well; cut a twig in the woods, a willow branch,
+not too stout, and hide it beneath your garment. Let no one guess what
+is going to happen.
+
+“Above all, do not strike her hands nor her face; for her brother might
+well ask you: Has a wolf bitten her? Her father might well say to you:
+Has a bear torn her thus?”
+
+Does not this Saga, with all its harsh allusions, breathe a most
+touching tenderness? It seems that the most delicate sentiments
+were preserved intact amid the coarsest manners and the most violent
+passions. What was your name, O naïve muse of {234}Finland, who inspired
+the good hostess of Pohjola? Were you not perhaps a daughter of those
+beautiful Indian gandharvas, who said,--
+
+“The elephant is led by a rope, the horse by a bridle, and a woman by
+her heart.”
+
+And does it not remind us of our humble and simple-minded neighbors,
+when we hear how this Eternal Blacksmith, this first-class god who has
+made heaven and earth, who buys a wife and beats her, expresses his fear
+of the reproaches of his brother-in-law and his father-in-law?
+
+After this pause we must go on describing the other armies of gods
+who had hastened to the banks of the Rhine in order to resist a common
+enemy.
+
+By the side of the heavenly representatives of Scythia and Sarmatia,
+of Prussia and Finland, we find other gods belonging to the different
+Slavonic races. But why should we repeat here a complete list of all
+this multitude of allies, whose curious names the most retentive memory
+could not possibly retain?
+
+Suffice it to say that the Lithuanians, the Moravians, the Silesians,
+Bohemians, and Russians were represented at this meeting by their most
+formidable deities. There was Ilia, the great archer, whose arrows hit
+the mark after having passed through a thickness of nine fir trees;
+Radgost, the {235}merciless destroyer; Flintz, the skeleton god, who
+bore a lion’s head on his shoulders and drove a chariot of flames;
+and the giant Yaga-Baba, whose head reached high above the loftiest
+mountains. When a warrior was seized with fear before he beheld the
+enemy, he immediately took him from the ranks and brayed him in a wooden
+mortar with an iron pestle.
+
+All four of them brought in their retinue whole battalions of Strygi
+or blood-suckers, of voracious Trolls, Marowitzes, and Kikimoras, who
+smothered their victims; of Polkrans and Leschyes, the latter a kind of
+dwarf satyrs, who could at will change into giants, and the former half
+men and half dogs, singing and barking alternately. Their songs,
+as fearful as their barkings, spread terror around them, and they
+themselves killed at a hundred yards’ distance by the venom of their
+breath.
+
+Such were the allies whom the Roman and Scandinavian gods arrayed
+against Christianity.
+
+When the new comers had been properly organized, Jupiter’s eagle rose
+above the clouds, uttered three piercing cries, turning to the three
+points of the horizon, and at once from the East, from the West, and
+from the South, there came forth the gods of Rome and Greece, abandoning
+their mysterious retreats. There was Neptune with his Tritons, his
+Harpies, and his marine monsters; and {236}there was Pluto with his
+Fates, his Furies, and his whole host from hell.
+
+Odin struck his buckler, and from the far North came not only the gods
+and the Valkyrias, with the heroes of Walhalla, but even the adversaries
+of the Ases,--Hela, the wolf Fenris, the Giants of the Frost with Loki
+at their head,--and all enlisted under him to take part in the immense
+slaughter.
+
+Never had the armies of a Darius, an Alexander, an Attila, or a
+Charlemagne, presented a more imposing and more terrible aspect; nor has
+the world ever seen the like since.
+
+When the Sibyls and the Norns, the augurs and the witches had been
+consulted, the march began.
+
+A few miles from the other side of the river, in the direction of
+Argentoratum (Strasbourg), about half way up the slope of a gentle hill,
+there stood a little chapel which had not been quite finished.
+
+The Sibyls and Druidesses had pointed out this building as the end of
+the first day’s march, not doubting but that the god of the Christians
+would appear at the head of his legions, to defend his temple.
+
+The Confederates were advancing silently under cover of the night
+in order to surprise the enemy, whom they thought fully prepared for
+resistance. Odin was in command of the right wing of the {237}army,
+Jupiter of the left. The Scythian, Sarma-tian, Borussian, and Finnish
+deities under the orders of Tahiti, Perun, Percunos, Wainamoinen, and
+Radgost, commanded the centre.
+
+As soon as they came in sight of the hill, they noticed a very peculiar
+twinkling light, which shone out from the deep darkness, and was
+surrounded below by a circle of light.
+
+Immediately the three light-footed messengers of the Roman, Slavonic,
+and Scandinavian gods, Mercury, Algis, and Hermode, were sent out to
+reconnoitre, accompanied by the Eumenides, the Valkyrias, and a small
+detachment of Lapithes and Centaurs. When they returned they reported
+that the light proceeded from the flaming swords of ten thousand
+destroying angels. They were quite sure of it.
+
+Some of the allies immediately rushed forth, as is the usage in all epic
+battles, to challenge the chiefs of the angels to single combat. But
+Jupiter and Odin, thinking that all these private contests can only
+jeopardize the success of the great battle, compelled them to obey
+orders.
+
+Thor, who had been one of the first to rush forth, was so much
+disappointed, that in his anger he let his heavy mace fall upon a little
+town that was on their route, and that might possibly have impeded the
+progress of the army. The mace {238}instantly returned to the hand of
+the owner, and then fell and returned again and again.
+
+[Illustration: 258]
+
+The barking of Cerberus, the three-headed dog, of his brother dog Garm,
+and the howlings of the Strygi, the Kikimoras, and the Polkrans.
+
+This was by no means all of the concert.
+
+Mars, Odin, Potrympos, and the other war-gods now drew their swords,
+which produced a fearful grating sound as they came out of their
+sheaths; next Jupiter sounds his thunder among the Romans, and after him
+thunder Perun among the Slaves, Ukko among the Finns, and Thor among
+the Scandinavians. The repeated crash of thunder. And thanks to this
+incident, the plain had been cleared and levelled at the same time, and
+the signal for the attack was given at once. The Corybantes beat their
+drums in muffled tones; the chants of the Bards and the Skalds responded
+from the right and the left wing, although their harps were soon drowned
+in the bleat of the trumpets, the furious {239}lightning mingles with
+the rumbling of the chariots of Tabiti, of Flintz, the skeleton god,
+and of Pocu-los and Stribog, the gods of waterspouts and of Northern
+tempests; the Egipans, the Cyclops, the blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen, begin
+to push immense masses of rock before them, brandishing entire oak trees
+as spears; while the Giants of the Frost with fearful clamor, which is
+taken up by the whole army of invaders, follow them, led by the equally
+gigantic Yaga-Baba, the terrible conductor of such an infernal concert,
+who marks the time by beating with his iron pestle upon his wooden
+mortar.
+
+[Illustration: 259]
+
+All these fearful noises, all these echoing explosions, seem to confound
+heaven and earth; the {240}horizon trembles and shakes, the mountains
+start and stagger.
+
+But the holy hill stands unmoved.
+
+The light which at first shone only at the base has gradually risen as
+high as the summit, and the little chapel now shines brightly like a
+brilliant constellation.
+
+Surprised at seeing no enemy appear, the army of the pagan gods makes a
+halt.
+
+Suddenly, O miracle! lifted up as if by a gust of wind from on high,
+the little chapel vanishes, and in its place is seen a simple altar
+surmounted by a cross.
+
+Before this altar stands a young maid, showing neither ornament nor
+weapon of defense,--a Virgin barefooted, with a child in her arms.
+
+She comes down the hill, a smile on her lips; the brilliant light still
+encircles her brow and the brow of the infant; she comes straight up to
+the allied gods, who begin to look at each other in utter consternation.
+
+She draws nearer, and all of a sudden an irresistible panic seizes
+Jupiter and Odin, Mars and Thor, Wainomoinen and Perun, together with
+the Eumenides, the Tassanis, the Cyclops, and the Giants, and all turn
+back towards the river, cross it in fearful disorder, and crush each
+other in their desperate flight, while their own temples and {241}their
+own statues fall to pieces in the universal destruction.
+
+Some of these were buried in the Rhine, where we shall hereafter find
+them once more; the remainder reached in sad condition their northern
+homes, abandoning almost the whole of Germany to Jesus and Mary.
+
+It is but right to notice that in all the traditions which speak of this
+struggle between the gods and the rising religion of Christ, no mention
+is ever made of the Teut and the Esus of the Celts, the Alfader of the
+Scandinavians, the Jumala of the Finns, and the Bog of the Slaves,--nor
+is the Unknown God of the Romans ever mentioned. The reason is that
+each one of these grand deities, like the Indra of the Indian heaven,
+contained all the others and represented to the mind the idea of the
+only one eternal God.
+
+This grand but vain effort of the pagan gods was made, according to
+tradition, about the year 510 of the Christian era. In the course of the
+same year King Clovis determined to erect a temple in honor of Christ
+which should be worthy of Him, and laid the foundation of the Minster
+at Strasbourg, perhaps with a design to replace the little chapel, which
+had disappeared in so miraculous a manner.
+
+[Illustration: 265]
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+{245}_Marietta and the Sweet-briar.--Esus and Jesus.--A malgam--
+A Neophyte.--Prohibition to eat Horse-flesh.--Bishops in
+Arms.--Interruption.--Come Home, my Good Friend!--Prussia and the Myths
+of the Middle Ages.--Tybilimts, the Black God.--The little Blue Flower._
+
+All who know me and esteem me will testify to my great natural modesty.
+Even when I have {246}to do with fables, I would not venture to
+invent the smallest thing; I am incapable of committing such a crime.
+Nevertheless, some of my incredulous readers, when they see the
+marvelous nature of the poem, in which the triumph of Jesus and Mary
+over the allied pagan gods was celebrated, might possibly fancy it to be
+a product of my imagination. In self-defense I feel bound to quote here
+one of the countless traditions which allude to this great event. I once
+more borrow from the Muse of the Finns.
+
+“There lived in those days a virgin who was so pure, so pure and chaste,
+that her eyes had never seen anything but the eyes of her sisters, that
+her hands had never yet touched a being in creation for the purpose of
+caressing it.
+
+“She lived alone in her chamber, in company with her distaff, and
+ignorant of what happened even within the narrow circle of shadows which
+the sun traced around her house, and the image of a man was as foreign
+to her eyes as it was to her mind. Her thoughts and her eyes had alike
+kept their chastity perfect.
+
+“She was called Marietta.
+
+“One day, on a fine spring morning, Marietta felt a vague and
+incomprehensible desire to enjoy the beauties of Nature. Her heart rose
+within her with strange emotion. {247} “Impelled rather by a desire of
+her own than by a command from on high, she opened her door and hastened
+to a meadow inclosed with a hedge, which was near the house.
+
+“In this hedge a sweet-briar was in bloom. She drew near to inhale the
+fragrance; she touched the flower, and that was all that was needed.
+Marietta became a mother, and when her son was born she felt by the
+boundless pride that filled her heart, that she had given birth to a
+god.
+
+“In the mean time the other gods of her own country and of the adjoining
+countries had been warned by their prophetesses that this child, born
+of a virgin and a flower, would one day drive them out of heaven; they
+assembled, fully armed and determined that mother and child must both
+die so as to prevent the threatened catastrophe.
+
+“At the moment when they were holding their secret councils, Marietta
+appeared in their midst holding her infant in her arms, and all these
+gods, who had until now wielded such absolute power, fled in dismay to
+the far North, and the icy gates of the North Pole closed behind them.”
+
+This is the story of Marietta and her child Jesus.
+
+It would certainly seem as if this naïve account, well known among the
+ancient legends of Finland, was nothing less than a slight sketch of
+that great epic poem which we have laid before our readers. {248}We have
+only filled out the details by the aid of similar documents.
+
+Henceforth Christianity enjoyed the results of that great day at
+Argentoratum. At a later period the conquered gods, it is true, showed
+once more signs of resistance on isolated points, but from the first,
+this triumph of Mary and Jesus, and perhaps also the victories obtained
+by King Clovis, changed the first dawn of Christianity in Germany into a
+kind of purifying conflagration, which spread rapidly from the Rhine to
+the Weser and from the Weser to the Danube.
+
+Curious circumstances sometimes came to its assistance. Thus, many
+Teutons had been taught by their Druid teachers to acknowledge but one
+single God, and this primitive doctrine naturally reconciled them to
+the new creed. But, more than that, the particular god whom they thus
+acknowledged, was called _Esus_, almost Jesus! Others had followed the
+example of the Slaves and worshipped the handle of their swords, which
+bore the form of a cross; they naturally recognized in the Christian
+cross a familiar emblem of protection and safety. Even baptism was in
+no way distasteful to the followers of Odin. They readily adopted, it in
+memory of the regular and regenerative ablutions with water which their
+ancient creed prescribed. Odin had said to them in the Runic chapter of
+the {248}Edda: “If I wish a man never to perish in combat, _I sprinkle
+him with water soon after his birth?_”
+
+Finally, this just man, put to death by wicked men, this risen Christ,
+reminded them forcibly of their own god Balder. Evidently the predicted
+time had come. Balder, the ancient prisoner of Niflheim, was about to
+renew the world; in his new shape, the Bright God was no longer the son
+of Frigg; he was now Mary’s son and his name was Jesus.
+
+This disposition, however, although plainly shown in many parts of
+Germany, was by no means unanimous.
+
+At the table of King Clovis, the bishops, and Saint Reni himself, were
+compelled to sit by the side of Scandinavian Druids. When they intoned
+their Benedicite, the latter never failed to pour out their libations
+in honor of Asa-Thor and Asa-Freyr. In spite of all the heroic and
+indefatigable efforts of the priests, polytheism survived even among the
+new converts, who would walk devoutly in the processions of Christian
+worship, while they carried their idols and their fetishes under their
+arms, and who never failed to make the sign of the cross when
+they passed a tree or a spring that had been held sacred by their
+forefathers. What could be done to make them sincere and orthodox
+Christians? {250}Liberty, in the sense in which we understand it now,
+and have good reason to understand it, would have appeared to a Teuton
+or a Slave as a beautiful woman, with a wooden yoke around her neck and
+all her limbs in chains. Germany had her laws, as well as every other
+Northern country her written or unwritten laws, but the dignity of a
+freeborn man consisted mainly in disregarding these laws. The free man
+left his country, to engage in war wherever he chose, and his family,
+to live in any country he might prefer. It was the same thing with
+religious matters; he reserved to himself his independent judgment,
+the right to worship as he chose and the privilege of combining such
+articles of creed as pleased him.
+
+This curious freedom of religion, this curious amalgamation of creeds,
+produced the strange result, that the neophytes especially remained half
+pagan and half Christian, and preferred generally to “ride on the fence”
+ between the two creeds.
+
+In the Nibelungen Lied, which we look upon as nothing more than a great
+epic poem of the Scandinavians, pagan at first but Christianized at
+a later period, men are represented as going devoutly to church after
+having consulted the Nix of the river as to their future fate. This is,
+no doubt, a true picture of the Germany of the early Christian days.
+{251}Some looked upon baptism, with its magnificent and pompous
+ceremonies, as a pleasure; others submitted to it for a consideration.
+Ozanam, who is exceedingly well informed about everything that refers
+to this curious period of transition in point of religion, tells the
+following anecdote:--
+
+[Illustration: 271]
+
+One day there was a crowd of candidates for baptism; each one of them
+was, as usual, dressed in white, as emblematic of purity. This symbolic
+dress, made of a suitable material, was a present from the Church to
+the neophyte, which he had carefully to preserve as an evidence of his
+conversion.
+
+Now, on that day, all the available robes had been given away, when one
+more candidate for baptism presented himself; the priest found at last a
+robe of light color, but unfortunately in wretched condition.
+
+“What do you mean?” exclaimed the neophyte, angrily drawing back; “have
+I not a right to claim a white robe as well as the others, and one of
+fine wool?” and looking furiously at the priest he added: “Do you think
+I am a man to be taken {252}in? This is the twentieth time that I am
+baptized, and I have never been offered such rags before!”
+
+The naïve candor of this good Teuton could make me almost believe that
+he misunderstood the nature of the ceremony altogether, and looked upon
+it only as a gratuitous distribution of wearing apparel.
+
+Other more painful mistakes were made when the Christian missionaries,
+crossing rivers and seas at the risk of their lives, went to the
+uttermost confines of Germany, and there encountered half savage nations
+who were still worshipping the Scandinavian gods.
+
+The patient zeal, the gentleness, and the eloquence of these holy men,
+succeeded finally in overcoming the convictions of these barbarians, and
+in introducing among them not only the Gospel, but also the worship of
+saints. The people received baptism, and not only welcomed the saints
+with great eagerness and enthusiasm, but in their desire to do them all
+the honor in their power, they hastened to turn every one of them into
+a god! They erected altars to these new gods, and on these altars they
+offered them human sacrifices.
+
+These same missionaries had been instructed to prohibit the use of
+horseflesh among the new converts; but they found it very difficult
+to overcome a custom which at that time was very general. {253}We can
+hardly, at the present day, understand the importance which the Church
+attached to this abstinence, since now-a-days the best of people are
+perfectly willing to allow their horses to be taken from their stables
+for the purpose of being served up at table!
+
+[Illustration: 273]
+
+The most serious difficulty in all such critical periods is this, that
+while the true and faithful clergymen by their prodigious labors and
+admirable self-devotion succeeded in converting and disciplining
+great multitudes, false priests appeared among them, taking forcible
+possession of parishes and bishoprics, often without waiting till they
+became vacant. Pepin of Heristal and Charles Martel, his son, had just
+compelled the pagan Saxons to take refuge behind the Weser. When the
+war was over and they proceeded to dismiss the commanders of {254}this
+numerous army till the beginning of another campaign, as was the custom
+in those days, the majority among them claimed, as a reward for services
+rendered, the right to exchange the sword for the crozier and the helmet
+for the mitre. They evidently thought that the profession was an easy
+one to practice and rich in rewards.
+
+Pepin and Charles resisted, but they had to give way.
+
+To the great disgust of the newly converted populations and to the great
+injury of the holy cause, which they professed to have served, these
+warrior-priests brought with them into the Church the manners of
+the camp and the fortress. They surrounded themselves with squires,
+falconers, and riding-masters, with horses and hounds; they hawked, they
+hunted, they lived high, giving themselves up to all kinds of excesses,
+and drawing the sword against any one who should venture to reproach
+them.
+
+When war began once more, they almost all returned to arms, without,
+on that account renouncing their ecclesiastic duties. Gerold, Bishop of
+Mayence, perished in a battle against the Saxons; his son succeeded
+him on the episcopal throne, and had hardly been consecrated when
+he proceeded to avenge his father. He rushes into battle, challenges
+Gerold’s murderer, kills him, and quietly returns to {255}Mayence for
+the purpose of officiating there at Mass and of returning thanks to God
+for his success.
+
+Such acts of violence and such worldly enjoyments were incomprehensible
+to the faithful; gradually the Church of the Apostles began to fear
+the Church of the Soldiers. The Saxons, having vastly increased their
+numbers by an alliance with the Scythians and Scandinavians, appeared
+once more in the field.
+
+“But,” exclaims the reader, whom I fancy I hear at this distance, “but
+this is history, church history moreover, and you told us you would tell
+us all about gods!”
+
+I confess I did, sir; and that is the reason why I have traced out, on
+this historical ground, the narrowest and shortest possible path, on
+which I can safely return to my own domain.
+
+“Well, then, let us return, my good friend.”
+
+I beg your pardon, sir, but before we return, allow me at least
+to glorify three men, who were called upon at that time to save
+Christianity, and with it civilization, by the pen, the word, and the
+sword. These equally great and equally heroic men are now three of our
+saints.
+
+“Saints again!”
+
+Yes, sir, the first is Pope Gregory, the second Saint Boniface the
+missionary, and the third the Emperor Charlemagne. Do not be afraid; I
+shall {256}do no more than mention them, for fear of going again out
+of my way and of speaking of forbidden subjects, against which you have
+warned me. Allow me, however, to add that if the struggle which the
+great Emperor undertook, was a long and ter-tible one, it was also
+glorious far beyond all. Was it not marvelous, I ask you, to see
+this nation of Franks, which but just now consisted of a mixture of
+barbarians, go forth under the command of their young king, to become
+the protector of Rome, of civilization, and of Christianity? The mace
+had become a shield, the siege-ram a wall and a rampart.
+
+“Of course! Everybody knows that!”
+
+But, did you know this, sir: When the Saxons, conquered for the tenth
+time, had received baptism, together with their king Witikind, when the
+Rhine, also baptized, had become a French river and a Christian river,
+when the whole of Germany bowed low before the cross, one of the nations
+of that country, the Borussians (Pruszi, or Prussians), refused to give
+up their old gods, and continued to refuse for several centuries to
+come? And yet it was so. The proscribed gods, finding a refuge on the
+banks of the Oder and the Spree, paid frequent visits, as was quite
+natural, to their former followers. It was thus that the old pagan creed
+was long preserved in the remote regions of Germany. You see, sir, I
+have returned to my subject. {257}Let us rapidly conclude this first
+part of our task, so as to reach at last the modern gods, who were as
+popular as the others, and in their way neither less strange nor less
+curious.
+
+During the time of the Middle Ages, Germany had been filling up with
+towns and castles, feudal dungeons bearing aloft a helmet and a
+cross. The cross arose wherever two streets met in a city and at every
+cross-road in the country; the most beautiful cathedrals in the world
+and the most magnificent monasteries were reflected in her broad river;
+and still, in field and forest, in city and country, and along the banks
+of the Rhine, the false gods were worshipped in secret.
+
+As the church taught that they were to be looked upon as demons, the
+people dared not treat them badly. Demons are not guests to be turned
+out rudely.
+
+“From the eighth century of our Christian era,” says one of our erudite
+authorities, “the Saxons and Sarmatians heard the Christian missionaries
+speak so continually of the formidable power of Satan, that they thought
+it best to worship him secretly in order to disarm his wrath and perhaps
+to win his favor. They called him the Black God or _Tybilinus_; the
+Germans call him, even now, _Dibel or Teufel_.”
+
+This Black God now became for all the German {258}nations the army
+leader of their proscribed gods, an army which was presently to be
+largely increased.
+
+The princes and knights, followed by their vassals, departed in large
+numbers, on the Crusades, but they brought back from the Crusades,
+together with holy relics, traditions of Gnomes, Peris, and Undines.
+
+[Illustration: 278]
+
+The Rhine, disgusted at the loss of his royal dignity, and determined to
+take his vengeance on the warrior-bishops, received these last arrivals
+as he had those who came before. In his healing waters the Undines
+mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads; the Gnomes found shelter under
+the rocks, where they were hospitably received by the Dwarfs, and in the
+evening twilight the Nymphs, the Elves, and the Dryads danced once more
+merrily in company with Sylphs, Fairies, and Peris.
+
+No doubt Christian Germany looked afterwards at all this more in the
+light of food for the imagination than of trouble for the conscience,
+but in that happy land, where people believe and dream {259}at the same
+time, and where the words of the poet are as true as the Gospel, the
+imagination easily gets the better of conscience. Thus the search after
+the little blue flower led many a learned man astray, far off into half
+satanic paths. Besides, it lies in the nature of the German mind, which
+has always a tendency towards idealism, its magnetic pole, to oppose to
+the orthodox religion another more secret and more mysterious creed.
+
+[Illustration: 279]
+
+This was the case already in the fourteenth and {260}fifteenth century;
+it is the case still in this, the nineteenth century, especially among
+the country people, who have passed through the age of witchcraft in
+which the Black God ruled supreme, and, completely modifying their pagan
+notions, have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken, the mountain of
+the Witches’ Sabbath.
+
+Let us now see what the dwellers on the banks of the Rhine have done
+with all their old gods and demi-gods of every denomination.
+
+[Illustration: 283]
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+{263}Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.--_Sylphs,
+their Amusements and Domestic Arrangements.--Little Queen Mab.
+--Will-o’-the-Wisps.--White Elves and Black Elves.--True Causes of
+Natural Somnambulism.--The Wind’s Betrothed.--Fire-damp.--Master
+Haemmerling.--The Last of the Gnomes._
+
+The reader is requested to recall what I have said before, that in
+Germany manners, customs, and creeds, matters of prejudice as well as
+matters of art, and even of science, may have a beginning, {264}but
+never have an end. In that ancient home of mysticism and of philosophy,
+everything is permanently rooted, everything is made for eternity, like
+those old oak trees of the Hercynia of antiquity: when the parent tree
+is cut down, and has no longer a trunk to bear boughs and branches,
+it sends forth new shoots from the roots. Druidism also has become
+permanent there. We have seen it fight against the gods of the Romans;
+it fought in like manner against Christianity under Witikind; it was
+kept alive, though in concealment, by the first iconoclasts or image
+breakers, and when that whole vast country was at last conquered and
+became wholly devoted to Catholicism, it broke forth once more quite
+unexpectedly in the first days of the Reformation. Luther was a Druid
+still.
+
+Thanks to this tenacity of life which characterizes creeds, and thanks
+to the prolific nature of that soil, whatever seems to have disappeared,
+rises again, under new forms, and whatever has perished is recalled to
+life in some way or other. Let us prove this.
+
+Among all those gods which we have mentioned before, none surely would
+seem to have been more readily forgotten, swept away by the wind, which
+they claimed to render useless, or buried in the dust with which they
+seemed to compete, than those tiny, microscopic deities, called Monads.
+{265}And yet this was by no means the case. Did they not, in fact,
+represent the elementary spirits? And the worship of the elements
+continued in spite of all other creeds which tried to suppress it
+forever.
+
+Only these atomic deities, still quite small, exceedingly small, had
+increased in the most astonishing manner, when compared with their
+original diminutiveness. They had even assumed a form and a body, a
+visible body and a shape by no means void of grace.
+
+They had become Alps or Alfs, better known afterwards under their
+Eastern designation of Sylphs.
+
+It happened occasionally that a belated traveller, a peasant or a
+charcoal burner, returning homeward from a wedding towards the beginning
+of night, would be fortunate enough to meet at a clearing in the woods
+or on the banks of a brook with a band of little goblins, who were
+making merry in the dim twilight.
+
+These were Sylphs, a little people flying in swarms through the air,
+making their nest in a flower or building one with a few bits of grass
+at the foot of a broom-sedge, and going out only in the evening to pay
+visits and as good neighbors to perform their social duties.
+
+If the traveller, the peasant, or the charcoal burner {266}had walked
+softly on the fine sand of the brook or on a grass-grown path on which
+his steps could not be heard, and if he had then stopped in time so as
+to be able to see without being seen, he might witness their gambols and
+ascertain the secrets of their private life, without running any risk.
+
+[Illustration: 286]
+
+Have you, dear reader, have you heard Mercutio, in Shakespeare’s “Romeo
+and Juliet,” relate how Queen Mab came, and say:--{267}
+
+     “Oh, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.....
+     Her wagon spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
+     The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
+     The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
+     The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
+     Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
+     Her wagoner, a small, gray-coated gnat!”
+
+Well, the peasant, the traveller, or the charcoal burner, enjoyed a
+sight which was by no means less curious.
+
+Some of his Sylphs, suspending a thread of gossamer from one blade of
+grass to another, made a delightful swing for their amusement, or took a
+spiders web to supply them with a hammock. Others danced wildly about
+in the air, beating their tiny wings with harmonious accuracy and
+furnishing thus an orchestra for the aerial ball.
+
+Not far from them some little sylph ladies, no doubt excellent
+housekeepers, were washing their linen in the beams of the moon, or
+preparing a feast.
+
+The provisions consisted of a mixture of honey with the nectar of
+flowers, a few drops of milk which the hanging udders of young heifers
+had left on the high grass, and a few pearls of that precious dew which
+aromatic plants secrete; this mixture was used as a seasoning for some
+butterfly-eggs beaten up white as snow.
+
+If during the repast darkness fell upon them and {268}suddenly
+covered the guests with its sombre cloak, other hobgoblins, the
+Will-o’-the-Wisps, with wings of fire, came and took seats at the
+hospitable table, paying for their entertainment by diffusing a pleasant
+light all over the place.
+
+The principal occupation of these elves consisted in walking before
+the wanderer who had lost his way so as to lead him back again into the
+right path.
+
+Such were some of the harmless spirits of Air and Fire. Everything
+has, however, been changed in these two elements. The Will-o’-the-Wisps
+especially, angry at the reports of wicked people, that they are nothing
+more than the products of burning hydrogen, or at best phosphorus in
+a volatile form floating above damp places, have conceived a veritable
+hatred against men and now only appear when they wish to tempt
+travellers into marshes and deep ravines.
+
+As to the Sylphs, they also seem to have heard similar stories which
+have been told about them, or they may have been irritated by the
+chemist Liebig, who in his “Treatise on the Composition of the Air,”
+ absolutely denies their existence, having found in his apparatus neither
+Sylphs nor Sylphides.
+
+They have changed into faithless Elves, hostile to men, like the other
+Gnomes.{269}
+
+[Illustration: 289]
+
+{271}The Fairies of our day are divided into two formidable classes.
+
+The White Fairies are damsels who wander about on meadows and in woods,
+like the Willis of the Slaves, and lie in wait for inexperienced young
+men, whom they persuade to join in their dances and keep dancing, till
+they lose their breath and generally fall to the ground never to rise
+again. German stories are full of such wicked tricks. The place where
+they perform their diabolic dances, becomes quite silvery under their
+feet. The shepherds can thus at once recognize the place where they have
+been, and are sure to hasten away at once with their flocks.
+
+[Illustration: 291]
+
+The Black Fairies personify Nightmare and Somnambulism, but only Natural
+Somnambulism, it must be borne in mind. {272}When men fall into this
+state, the Black Elf directs all the motions of the sleeper; he lives in
+him, thinks and acts for him, makes him get upon the furniture and climb
+upon roofs, and keeps him from falling, unless... Poor sleeper, he allowed
+them breath enough to swell the sails of a vessel or to chase the clouds
+from one end of the heavens to another.
+
+Among the Celts all magicians had been able to command the winds and
+the tempests at will; even now certain men in Norway and in Lapland will
+sell you, for a small price, the wind you desire to carry you home.
+
+Careful! The Black Fairies are treacherous and cruel; the Fairy who
+controls you for the moment may at any moment take a fancy to throw you
+from your height.
+
+[Illustration: 292]
+
+The Alfs, who have thus become Elves or Fairies, are of course not the
+only Spirits of the Air; their fragile and delicate structure would
+never have al{272}In Germany, on the contrary, the wind was looked upon
+as an elementary power. It was not deified, as in Rome, where there was
+a whole windy family of gods, like Eurus, Æolus, Boreas, and Favonius,
+but it was an important personage, with a will of his own and
+independent action. The poets did their part to give importance to
+_Master Wind._
+
+I have in my hand a ballad, which will enable the reader to judge for
+himself:--
+
+“Gretchen, the pretty miller’s daughter, was courted by the son of the
+king. Her father, the miller, knowing that kings’ sons are not apt to
+marry, had chosen her a husband, a young flour merchant from Rotterdam.
+
+“The Dutchman was on his way up the Rhine; that very evening he was
+expected to arrive, to make his proposals.
+
+“Gretchen called upon Master Wind to help her; he came in by the window,
+but not without breaking a number of panes.
+
+“‘What do you wish me to do?’
+
+“‘A man wants to marry me, against my will; he is coming in a sail boat;
+contrive it so that he cannot land at Bingen.’
+
+“The wind blew, and blew so well that the boat, instead of coming up to
+Bingen, was driven back again as far as Rotterdam. {274} “At Rotterdam
+also it could not make land; it was driven into the North Sea, and there
+the Dutchman is perhaps still sailing about at this day.
+
+“But Master Wind had made his conditions before he went to work blowing
+so well; and the pretty miller’s daughter had agreed to them without
+hearing them, for all around her the furniture, the doors, and the
+blinds were shaking and rattling furiously, thanks to her visitor. Thus
+it came about that poor Gretchen found herself betrothed to Master Wind,
+which made her very sad, for now she had less hope than ever of marrying
+the king’s son.
+
+“However, Master Wind was as gallant towards his fair betrothed as he
+could be. Every morning, when she opened her window, he would throw
+her in beautiful bouquets of flowers which he had torn off in the
+neighboring gardens.
+
+“If any young man of the village, whom she had rejected, passed without
+saluting her, Master Wind was promptly at hand to carry off his hat
+and send it up in the air so high, that soon it looked no bigger than a
+lark. It was well for him that Master Wind did not, with the hat, take
+his head off at the same time.
+
+“One day (when Master Wind must have been asleep), the king’s son came
+to the mill, made his {275}way without difficulty to Gretchen’s chamber,
+and forthwith desired to kiss her. Gretchen did not object. But at once,
+and although out of doors all was quiet, the tables and chairs performed
+a wild dance, and the doors and windows began to slam as if they had
+been mad.
+
+“Gretchen herself began to twirl around and around in the most
+unaccountable manner; her hair was loosened by an invisible hand and
+whisked about her head with strange rustling and dismal whistling.
+
+“Terrified by the sight of a tempest in a close room, the prince
+cried:--
+
+“‘Ah! accursed one, you are the betrothed of Master Wind!’
+
+“And at the same moment a terrible gust of wind carried off the king’s
+son, the miller’s daughter, and the mill, and no one ever saw or heard
+anything more of them.
+
+“Perhaps they went to join the Dutchman, who was all the time sailing
+about in the North Sea, or the hat, which was still on its way in the
+clouds.”
+
+The legend does not tell us whether it was before or after this
+occurrence that Master Wind married Mistress Rain.
+
+So much for the Spirits of the Air.
+
+As for the Spirits of the Fire, it must be remembered {276}that the
+Will-o’-the-Wisps were by no means their only representatives. There
+were also Salamanders, too well known to be described here; and St.
+Elmo Fires, near relations of the Will-o’-the-Wisps. But we must pause
+a moment to speak of the formidable Fire-damp, the miner’s terror. The
+remarkable feature about it is that it plays so insignificant a part in
+the popular German myths, although it has destroyed so many victims in
+all mountainous countries, and above all in the Hartz mountains.
+
+This subterranean lightning, far more fatal than that of the upper
+regions, is known to the people of the Rhine simply as a tall monk, whom
+they call Master Haemmerling.
+
+Master Haemmerling visits the mines from time to time in the guise of a
+harmless amateur, or of an inspector, who is not fond of being hurried.
+However, on Fridays especially, he is subject to violent attacks of
+anger. If a laborer handles his pickaxe awkwardly, or if he is insolent
+to his master, or the master harsh to him and requiring too much, he is,
+quick as a flash of lightning, between them when they are as yet half
+way under ground. Then he suddenly draws his long legs together, and
+between his two knees crushes their heads with as little hesitation and
+ceremony as a mother would show in destroying between her two thumbs the
+{277}little hateful insect that has troubled her darling child.
+
+Nothing more need be said of the elementary spirits of Air and Fire;
+but as we have followed Master Haemmerling into the lower depths of
+the mountains, we might just as well remain there a while and make the
+acquaintance of the Gnomes, the Spirits of the Earth.
+
+Can you see, through the dense air which fills these immense caverns,
+the long, gigantic stalactites, reaching from the ceiling to the
+floor and strongly impregnated with iron? They are the columns of this
+subterranean palace, and around these stalactites, peaceful, slumbering
+waters form a kind of little lakes, the shores of which look as if they
+were covered with rust.
+
+Here and there, in the damp low grounds, half choked with ore and slag
+of various kinds, dark reeds are growing in the shape of lizards; like
+lizards they bend backwards, moving their heads from side to side and
+showing thus the diamond eye which shines brilliantly at the extreme
+end.
+
+These dark depths seem to teem with fantastic creatures; close by a
+heap of grains of gold, stands immovable a watchful, silent guardian,
+a griffin; a pack of black dogs, also guardians of the treasures hid in
+this world of precious metals and {278}stones, are roaming incessantly
+along the ceiling. On the sloping sides, dwarfs not larger than
+grasshoppers, and jumping about like peas in the sieve of the winnower,
+are gathering right and left the tiny gold and silver spangles which
+are left at their disposal, while enormous toads are posted about as
+watchmen.
+
+Finally, far back in the remotest part of these abysses the kings of
+this empire are moving about; these thick-set men, with stout limbs and
+monstrous heads, are the Gnomes.
+
+But people hardly believe in Gnomes any longer; the hard-working miners
+who ought to come every day in contact with them, deny their existence,
+and they have gradually passed into the class of fabulous beings.
+
+Still, I am told that as recently as last year, a pretty peasant girl
+from the neighborhood of Hamburg appeared on a certain evening at a
+ball, with a large ruby on her finger. She professed to have received
+this gem from an Earth Spirit, who had appeared to her at the entrance
+to the Faunus mines.
+
+The gossips of the village were not satisfied, however, with the
+account, and suspected the Gnome to have been an English Gnome, who
+was travelling abroad for his health and courting pretty girls for his
+amusement. This conviction {279}was so strong that the poor girl had to
+leave the country in disgrace.
+
+This is the last Gnome that has been mentioned in that part of Germany.
+
+[Illustration: 299]
+
+[Illustration: 303]
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+{283}Elementary Spirits of the Water.--_Petrarch at Cologne.--Divine
+Judgment by Water.--Nixen and Undines.--A Furlough till Ten
+o’clock.--The White-footed Undine.--Mysteries on the Rhine.--The Court
+of the Great Nichus.--Nix-COBT, the Messenger of the Dead.--His Funny
+Tricks.--I go in Search of an Undine._
+
+“After leaving Aix-la-Chapelle, I had stopped at Cologne, on the left
+bank of the Rhine, which I then found completely covered with several
+rows of women, a countless and charming multitude....
+
+“Adorned with flowers or aromatic herbs, the sleeves {284}pushed up above
+the elbow, they dipped their soft white hands and arms into the river,
+murmuring certain mysterious words which I could not understand.
+
+“I questioned some people. They told me it was an ancient custom of the
+country. Thanks to these ablutions and certain prayers which accompanied
+them, the river carried down with it all the diseases, which would
+otherwise have attacked them during the coming year. I answered,
+smilingly: ‘How happy the people of the Rhine must be if the kind river
+thus takes all their sufferings to distant countries! The Po or the
+Tiber have never been able to do as much for us.’”
+
+These are the words which Petrarch wrote in one of his familiar letters,
+written on St. John’s Eve.
+
+This letter, as precious by its date as by its contents, proves beyond
+all question, that in the fourteenth century the Rhine was popularly
+worshipped and adored on the very days on which the summer solstice is
+celebrated by bonfires after the manner of the old fire worshippers.
+
+Unfortunately the Christians ended by appealing to the elements, to Fire
+or Water, as to a judicial authority.
+
+The popular notion that the elements were perfectly pure and would hence
+instinctively reject every impure substance, led naturally to ordeals
+{285}by water. The accused was undressed; his hands and feet were tied
+crosswise, the right hand to the left foot and the right foot to the
+left hand, and thus bound he was thrown into a river or any watercourse
+that was deep enough. If he floated, he was guilty and instantly burnt;
+if he sank and remained for some time at the bottom of the water, he was
+considered innocent--but he was drowned.
+
+Heinrich Heine, at least, tells us that this was the infallible result
+of justice in the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages ended in Germany but
+yesterday.
+
+There was also a trial by bread and cheese (_exorcismus panis hordeacei,
+vel casei, ad probationem veri_), but bread and cheese are not elements.
+Let us return to the elementary spirits of Water.
+
+During the great religious reaction which took place after the days
+of Charlemagne, all the mythological gods of rivers and streams
+had gradually returned, more or less successfully, to their former
+occupations. The great Nix or Nichus, upon whom devolved the rule over
+all the rivers of Germany, was no other than the ancient Niord, a
+very important deity and a kind of Northern Neptune. This very weighty
+discovery is due to the learned Mallet.
+
+No doubt this god Niord was one of those who, on their disastrous flight
+from Argentoratum, had {286}fallen into the Rhine. They thought that he
+was drowned, but he had only taken refuge in one of the lowest, almost
+unfathomable depths of the river. From this safe retreat the great
+Nichus had defied the decrees of Councils and the anathemas of the
+Christians hurled against all elementary spirits alike; there he had
+summoned the subaltern deities of sources, ponds, lakes, and smaller
+streams, the nymphs of the banks, and the hideous, scaly monsters which
+swarmed at the bottom of the river. Organizing all these into a people,
+an escort, and an army, he had come forth and invaded at the head of his
+host the banks of the Neckar and the Main, the Moselle and the Meuse,
+the great tributaries of the Rhine, and governed the inhabitants of the
+banks by terror. More than once he had extended his ravages far beyond
+the plains, overthrowing churches that had but just been completed, and
+drowning in his waters all the deserters from the altars of Odin.
+
+Niord was a wicked god, who had a fearful temper. He held his subjects,
+to whatever class they might belong, completely under his yoke, treating
+them capriciously and cruelly, and making of the Rhine a hell of waters.
+
+It is to this dark and damp kingdom of the great Nichus that we have to
+go in order to make the acquaintance, not of his great dignitaries, but
+{287}of the very humblest and lowest of his subjects, the Nixen and the
+male and female Undines, a race of anathematized demons, who make up, by
+themselves, almost the whole population of this realm beneath the waters
+of the Rhine.
+
+What! Must we really count our beautiful Lore, the charming fairy
+Lorelei, you who preferred death to the punishment of making all men
+fall in love with you, much as you loved men in general, must we count
+you among the demons, evildoing and accursed sprites? No! How public
+opinion has stoutly held its own in defiance of all the decrees of the
+Church. Nixen, like the Fairies, are by common consent divided into two
+classes: Nixen proper, who are former pagan deities and not too much to
+be dreaded, and female Nixen, almost always harmless and at times even
+useful.
+
+It is these latter only of whom we shall hereafter speak as Undines.
+
+The Nixen of the first class are ever ready to assume any disguise that
+may aid them in attaining their purpose. Some of them roam about in
+deserted places near the banks of rivers; others have at times
+appeared in the neighboring towns, pretending to be foreign ladies of
+distinction, or artists, generally great performers on the harp. Here
+they have begun intrigues with credulous lovers or unlucky admirers.
+Others appear at village {288}celebrations, mingling in the dance with
+such energy, that their partners are intoxicated, carried away, and,
+losing their heads, think they continue to hear the sound of harps and
+violins, while they are already far away, led on by imaginary music, and
+only return to consciousness on the banks of the river, at the moment
+when they are about to sink helpless into the waters of the Rhine.
+
+[Illustration: 308]
+
+One important point, however, must not be overlooked. To protect
+one’s self against the allurements of these accursed fairies, a bit of
+horehound or marjoram is sufficient. We hope all who propose visiting
+the Rhine will be careful always to keep such an herb on their person.
+Before they take out their passports they ought always to pay a visit to
+an herbalist.
+
+The second class of Nixen, the only one in which we are interested, the
+Undines, are, as far as I have been able to learn, the restless souls of
+{289}poor girls who, driven to despair by love, have thrown themselves
+into the Rhine. Unfortunately German lovers, not very courageous at
+best, are but too apt to seek relief in suicide.
+
+[Illustration: 309]
+
+According to the somewhat uncertain information for which I am indebted
+to my authorities or to my intercourse with the Rosahl family, the
+Undines {290}are born as human beings and very inferior in power to
+the genuine Nixen. They live under the water exactly the same time they
+would have lived on earth, if they had not voluntarily put an end
+to their existence. They are thus granted a kind of exceptional
+resurrection and have here a preliminary purgatory, in which they but
+too frequently expiate, if not the sin of their love, at least that of
+their death.
+
+In the lowest depths of the river, at the bottom of vast, submerged
+grottoes, a secret tribunal, presided over by the great Nichus, holds
+its solemn meetings. Here they are disciplined with the utmost severity,
+as is abundantly proven by a great number of terrible stories, such as
+the account of the three Undines of Sinzheim, which the two brothers
+Grimm report in their great work.
+
+Three young girls of marvelous beauty, three sisters, appeared every
+evening at the social meetings of Epfenbach, near Sinzheim and took
+their seats among the linen-spinners. They brought new songs and merry
+stories which no one had heard before. Where did they come from? No one
+knew, and no one dared to ask for fear of appearing suspicious. They
+were the delight of these meetings, but as soon as the clock struck ten
+they rose, and neither prayers nor supplications could induce them to
+stay a moment longer. {291}One evening the schoolmaster’s son, who had
+fallen in love with one of them, undertook to prevent their departure
+at the usual hour; he put back the wooden clock, which usually gave them
+warning.
+
+[Illustration: 311]
+
+The next day some people from Sinzheim, who were walking by the side
+of the lake, heard groans rising from the depths of the lake, while the
+surface was stained by three large spots of blood. From that time the
+three sisters were never seen again at the evening assemblies, and
+the school{292}master’s son faded away gradually. He died very soon
+afterwards.
+
+These three sisters, so gentle, so lovely and laborious, had in nothing
+betrayed a connection with the spirits of the lower world. The only
+thing was, that people remembered how the hems of their garments had
+frequently been wet, a sure sign by which Undines can be recognized.
+Otherwise they seem to have been very much like other girls, and the
+severity of the great Nichus appears hardly reasonable.
+
+As to this hour of ten o’clock, however, military rules cannot be more
+rigorous than his.
+
+It must, on the other hand, not be imagined that all Undines are as
+gentle and resigned as these three sisters. There are some who bitterly
+resent having been abandoned by their lovers, and try to revenge
+themselves; these seem to partake to some degree of the character of
+the Nixen, or rather,--why should we not say so at once and quite
+candidly?--they remain faithful to their instincts as women.
+
+As a proof of this statement I will quote a short but perfect little
+drama, which Miss Margaret Rosahl has, at my request, copied from
+Busching’s voluminous collection.
+
+Count Herman von Filsen, whose estates lay on the right bank of the
+Rhine, between Oslerspey {293}and Brauback, was about to marry the rich
+heiress of the castle of Rheins, on the other bank. His messenger had
+started to carry the letters of invitation to all the guests, but a
+sudden rise of the waters had nearly prevented his crossing a small
+stream. In trying to get over, his horse stumbled, and was drowned. The
+messenger, however, did not lose courage, but went on his way on foot.
+Everywhere he found the brooks swollen into streams, and the torrent
+seemed to press him more and more closely, describing curves and
+zigzags, with countless cataracts, barring him the way on all sides and
+making the usual path impassable.
+
+By the aid of a huge stick and jumping from rock to rock, the poor, half
+bewildered man kept on, walking well-nigh at hap-hazard, till he found
+himself near the Rhine, into which the swollen torrent, rushing after
+him with sudden fury, seemed determined to push him.
+
+Fortunately a small boat was lying quite near the shore: he loosened it,
+took the oars, and returned to Filsen.
+
+When he reached the castle he said to the Count: “Sir, a Nix has barred
+me the way.”
+
+The Count did not believe in Nixen. He sent out another messenger. But
+the same adventure befell him.
+
+The wedding day had been fixed and the Count {294}went on, although he
+feared his friends and followers would be few in number.
+
+One morning, as he crossed the river from the right bank to the left,
+in order to pay a visit to his lady love, a sudden tempest broke out. He
+thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters, bending over the
+bow of the boat and trying to draw it down into the abyss beneath
+the waters. Thereupon he became thoughtful, sent for his steward,
+and ordered him to find out what had become of a certain girl of the
+neighborhood, Gott-friede from Braubach.
+
+[Illustration: 314]
+
+{295} “I met her a few days ago,” replied the steward, “as she was going
+to St. Marks Chapel, and I offered her holy water. Gottfriede asked me
+about your approaching wedding. She was very well, and seemed to be in
+good spirits.”
+
+“Go and see if you can find her,” said the Count, “and bring me word.”
+
+[Illustration: 315]
+
+During the wedding feast Hermann von Filsen appeared joyous and
+attentive to his bride, the new Countess, but the effort to appear so
+caused his perspiration to break out profusely, especially when all of
+a sudden a small woman’s foot, white and delicate, appeared to his eyes,
+and to his only, on the ceiling of the dinner-hall.
+
+He felt a chill in all his limbs. He rose suddenly {296}and fled to
+another room, followed by his wife, his mother, and all the guests, who
+thought he had been seized with sudden illness.
+
+In this room he saw, and he alone again saw, a white hand raise a
+curtain and with the forefinger beckon him to follow.
+
+Long time ago Hermann had heard, without paying any attention at that
+time to the statement, that such a small white foot and a small white
+hand indicated the presence of an Undine and the coming of an inevitable
+calamity.
+
+Now he believed it.
+
+The bishop, who had performed the marriage ceremony, was at the dinner.
+Hermann went straight up to him, knelt down, and confessed aloud, and
+with many tears, that a young girl named Gottfriede, fairer and better
+than all her sisters, had loved him dearly, and that he had returned
+her love and then abandoned her. Gottfriede had sought oblivion of her
+sufferings in the river, and now was bent upon revenge.
+
+“Bless me, father, for I am going to die!”
+
+The bishop, before uttering the words of absolution, demanded first that
+the Count should abjure his impious faith in such supernatural beings,
+of whom the Church knew nothing.
+
+“How can I refuse to believe what I see? There she is! Looking as pale
+as she was this morning {297}at the bow of the boat. Her hair, full of
+green grass, is hanging in disorder all over her shoulders; she looks at
+me with a tearful smile.”
+
+“Nothing but visions!” replies the bishop. “Your eyes deceive you.”
+
+“But it is not only by the eye that I am aware of her presence, I hear
+her voice; she is calling me? Forgive me, Gottfriede!”
+
+[Illustration: 317]
+
+“You are out of your mind! These are the devil’s snares! And who tells
+you that the girl has ceased to live? That she has committed a crime?
+Thanks be to God, Gottfriede came to me, she confessed to me penitently,
+and now she is in a convent!” At this moment the assembly, already
+deeply excited, was somewhat startled by the entrance of the steward,
+who looked terrified, went up to the Count’s mother, and whispered some
+words into her ear. She could not repress a cry.
+
+“Dead!” she said.
+
+“Yes, she is dead, and I also must die!” cried Hermann in accents of
+despair.
+
+The young bride, offended at this avowal of a previous attachment, had
+at first stood aloof; now, consulting her own heart alone, she thought
+of contesting {298}the right of this invisible rival, and with open arms
+drew near the Count; but he pushed her aside rudely.
+
+The bishop began his exorcisms. While he was repeating the prescribed
+words, the Count asked:--
+
+“What do you want of me, Gottfriede? Forgive me and we will all pray
+for you. You are seeping and kissing me by turns, but your kisses are
+nothing but bitterness and sorrow to me, since I have given my name to
+another, since another is my--”
+
+He could not complete the sentence. Uttering a sharp cry he fell at full
+length to the ground, and on his neck appeared a long, bluish mark, such
+as is seen in strangled persons.
+
+The great Nichus is, as we have seen, the master, the despot, the
+_Wassermann_, par excellence, of all this watery, dark world, peopled
+by Nixen and Undines. His authority is, moreover, by no means limited
+to the exercise of judicial functions; his will, constantly under the
+influence of an ill-regulated appetite, is law for everybody; the male
+Nixen are his Court, and his harem is kept full by the fairest among
+those women who become his own by suicide. This greenish-complexioned
+Sardanapalus is said to celebrate incredibly monstrous orgies with his
+drowned Odalisques.
+
+He is, in reality, Niord, the Scandinavian god, {299}and this Niord
+again is, originally, one of those old Roman emperors, who were deified,
+and whose portraits Petronius has left us drawn in mud and blood.
+
+[Illustration: 319]
+
+His principal agent, and the Jack-of-all-trades of the whole community,
+Nixcobt, the messenger of the dead, has to maintain communication
+between the people who live on the river, and those who live in it.
+He is perhaps the most eccentric of all the mythical personages of the
+Rhine.
+
+When morning is about to dawn and the mountain tops are beginning to
+glow in a faint subdued light, a kind of low, thickset man of the most
+hideous appearance, may occasionally be seen gliding along the houses of
+a town, keeping carefully in the shade, or slipping down the hill-side
+between the long rows of grapes, which are almost as high as he is. His
+terrible head turns upon his slender neck as upon a pivot, and thus he
+can see and examine everything without stopping for a moment. His bare
+shoulders, his elbows, knees, and cheekbones are covered with scales;
+small pins appear {300}at intervals at his ankles; his round glamous
+eyes have a bright red point in the centre; his teeth and hair are
+green, and his enormous mouth, split wide open and shaped like the mouth
+of a fish, wears a fixed smile, which strikes terror in the beholder.
+This creature is Nixcobt.
+
+[Illustration: 320]
+
+With daybreak he is back in the river to inquire if its mournful
+population has been added to over night by some victim, suicide or not.
+He takes down a description of each one, draws up a report, inquires as
+to what induced them to seek refuge in the new world, and offers them
+his services for the purpose of letting the friends and parents
+know, {301}whom they may have left behind, ignorant of their fate and
+inconsolable at their loss.
+
+Then he amuses the great Nichus with all his stories and all the clever
+tricks he has been playing during his nocturnal visits to the people in
+the villages and towns on the river.
+
+These merry tricks of Master Nixcobt form even in our day an ever
+welcome staple of amusement to the young spinners during the long winter
+nights, accompanied as they are by the cheerful hum of the swiftly
+turning wheels.
+
+One day Nixcobt calls upon the tax collector of a little town on the
+Rhine, whom he finds in great consternation. His wife has left his house
+and he does not know what has become of her. To console him Nixcobt
+tells him that she is dead, having drowned herself, and as a proof of
+it, he shows him a letter which he has with his own hands taken from the
+pockets of the deceased.
+
+The husband, whose tears had been flowing freely, dries them quickly,
+becomes furious, and looks at his children with fierce glances. He is
+jealous of their dead mother. Nixcobt laughs and goes to some one else.
+
+That some one else, an honest vintner of the Rheingau, has the night
+before killed his friend in an excess of passion and then thrown the
+body into the Rhine, together with the knife with which {302}he had
+committed the murder. This knife Nix-cobt now presents to him, for he
+takes delight in restoring lost objects of this kind.
+
+While the murderer stands petrified at the sight of the still bloody
+knife, the Gnome hastens to the Mayor to report to him the whole matter.
+
+An inquiry is held, the vintner is found, holding the bloody knife in
+his hand, he is hanged and Nixcobt laughs heartily.
+
+One night a notary of Badenheim, near Mayence, hears in his sleep a
+voice saying:--
+
+“John Harnisch, the great Nichus is courting your wife, who has been
+changed into an Undine three months ago; she will not listen to him, and
+{303}he wants you to tell him how he must manage to please her.”
+
+The notary thought it was a bad dream, uttered a sigh as he thought of
+his deceased wife, and fell asleep once more. But a chilly hand resting
+upon his breast waked him once more, and the voice said:--
+
+“John Harnisch, speak, speak promptly and be sincere, or you shall never
+sleep again.”
+
+John Harnisch resisted for some time longer, but a red flame dimly
+lighted up his alcove and he saw a row of green teeth and scaly cheek
+bones. Thoroughly frightened, he said what he could.
+
+“Thanks!” cries Nixcobt, and breaks out into a far sounding laugh.
+
+We might fill folios with all the lugubrious jokes of this messenger
+of the dead, but we will abstain. Besides, Nixcobt has lost all respect
+now-a-days. He is no longer seen gliding along the houses in towns or
+slipping through the rows in the vineyards.
+
+We might in like manner tell a vast number of interesting stories and
+quote endless _Lieder_ and ballads, which treat of Nixen and Undines.
+For there are, besides, Undines of rivers and Undines of lakes, and
+there are even some in the ocean; in Germany all watercourses, down to
+the tiniest rills, have their Undines. {304}Only day before yesterday
+I was walking on the banks of the Rhine; only yesterday on those of
+the Moselle, This morning, wandering about at haphazard I encountered a
+brook, a mere rill, which attracted me by its sweet murmurs. I followed
+it, followed it for two hours. I happened to have nothing else to do.
+
+My tiny rill, a mere infant so near its source, was turning and twisting
+in the thick grass and seemed to try and walk on all fours as little
+children do. Farther down it had become a little girl, having increased
+in size and bulk; it now wandered hither and thither, carelessly,
+capriciously, leaping merrily over the rocks and carrying off here
+a flower and there a flower that grew on its banks, no doubt for the
+purpose of making a bouquet. Still farther on, I witnessed its marriage
+with a big brook that had come down all the way from the mountains; it
+was a young woman now, a wife, and walked soberly through the plain,
+like a prudent stream, bearing already boats on its surface and
+preparing to join an elder sister, the Moselle. Soon I had to cross
+it on a bridge; on this same bridge four Prussian soldiers were busy
+watching the water as it flowed by, no doubt in the hope of catching
+a fair Undine as she was stealthily slipping down the river. As for
+myself, I had in vain traced the unknown little river from its birth
+all {305}along its banks, under the thick shelter of willows and alder
+bushes; neither day before yesterday on the Rhine, nor yesterday on the
+Moselle, nor today, did I ever find a trace of a Nymph, a Nix, or an
+Undine!
+
+What must be my conclusion?
+
+A thief who had been brought before a police court and was there
+confronted with two persons who had seen him steal, said:--
+
+“These men claim that they have seen me, but I, I could bring twenty
+other witnesses who would swear that they have not seen me!”
+
+“What does that prove?” asked the judge of the court.
+
+[Illustration: 325]
+
+I saw nothing. “What does that prove?” as the wise judge said to the
+thief.
+
+[Illustration: 329]
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+{309}Familiar Spirits.--_Butzemann.--The Good Frau Holle.--Ko-bolds.--A
+Kobold in the Cook’s Employ.--Zotterais and the Little White
+Ladies.--The Killecroffs, the Devil’s Children.--White Angels.--Granted
+Wishes, a Fable._
+
+France, which is skeptic to the core, has no idea of the importance of
+certain visible or invisible spirits, who eagerly seek the society of
+man, sleeping {310}under his roof, or in certain cases becoming members
+of his family, in the strictest sense of the word. Besides, they render
+efficient services to a good housekeeper; they may do great harm if they
+are made angry, and they give at times most useful advice.
+
+These hobgoblins, little known outside of Germany and England, frequent
+also the French provinces watered by the Meuse, the Moselle, and the
+Rhine, and are sometimes brought to Paris by cooks from Alsace and
+coachmen from Lorraine.
+
+Let us rapidly glance, not at all, but at some of the best authenticated
+among these familiar spirits.
+
+Evening has come, the night is dark, and master and mistress are fast
+asleep. A servant with a candle in her hand and gaping to her heart’s
+content, goes once more over the house, looking in all the corners and
+out of the way places and putting everything in order. All of a sudden a
+door is swiftly opened and closed again right in her face and her light
+is blown out. You will say a window has been left open and the draught
+has done all this.
+
+By no means! It is the _Butzemann_.
+
+Some merry companions are assembled in the large dining-room of the
+hotel and celebrate there a feast of grapes in memory of the divine
+Dionysius. The night advances and there they are still, {311}glass
+in hand, singing, drinking.... Silence! all of a sudden singing and
+drinking comes to an end; the glasses halt half way in the midst of a
+toast; the heavy eyes open wide, the trembling knees grow strong
+once more. Every one of the guests hastens home. Three times a hairy,
+ill-shapen creature has come and knocked with its wings against the
+window. You will say it was a bat.
+
+By no means! It is the _Butzemann!_
+
+The family is gathering around the warm porcelain stove, where they can
+safely defy cold winter. The men are smoking, a pot of beer by their
+side; the women are knitting and talking of the approaching wedding
+of the eldest daughter. Oh misery! Away back in the fireplace, a great
+noise is heard; a bright light shines. Coals and sparks are scattered
+all around, and some have fallen upon the dress of the betrothed. What
+is the matter? You will say again, it was a knot in the wood, perhaps a
+chestnut that had been overlooked in the ashes and has burst now.
+
+By no means! it is the _Butzemann!_
+
+The Butzemann, a prophetic family spirit, warns you of coming danger
+and bids you prepare for an approaching misfortune. Never undertake
+a journey, never get married if a clear sign has made you aware that
+Butzemann has put his veto upon your journey or your marriage. The only
+difficulty {312}you will have is to distinguish between Butzemann and a
+puff of wind, a bat, or an exploding chestnut.
+
+It is much easier to recognize _Frau Holle_, as her presence is always
+announced by unmistakable indications. She has assumed the task of
+overlooking the poor country girls at their work. But it has never been
+found out why this benevolent fairy of work-people does not live in some
+great industrial city, or some beautiful country district, where the
+signs of active life are abundant and the whirring of wheels or the
+stamping of machinery is heard; where the spinners sing, and the
+washerwomen beat time at the limpid stream. She prefers, with
+unaccountable perverseness, to live in dismal swamps, beside faithless
+Will-o’-the-Wisps and low Nixen!
+
+No one has ever dared examine this question so closely as to ascertain
+the precise truth.
+
+Some have dropped timid hints that Frau Holle, now occupying a very
+humble position and rated among the familiar spirits only, was once upon
+a time a high and mighty personage, but they have had nothing more to
+say of her past glory, as is the case with poor ladies who have been
+“unfortunate.” Others, with more boldness or more knowledge, have
+recognized in her the goddess Frigg, Odin’s wife. Dear Frau Holle! what
+a coming down! what poor creatures we are, after all. {313}As soon as
+the cross was planted on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, Frigg,
+under the name of Hertha (Mother Earth), had taken refuge on an island
+in the ocean, where she lived invisible and alone in the heart of a
+sacred forest, which was constantly invaded by the waves of the sea.
+
+A priest, who had remained faithful to the old religion, alone knew the
+hour and the minute when the goddess would deign once more to appear to
+men. At the given moment he drew forth, on the marshy island, a chariot
+wrapped in veils. Hertha got in, and for some days travelled through the
+world, diffusing all around her good will and consolation. Then all wars
+were suspended; not only the sword went back into its sheath, but all
+irons, all defensive and offensive weapons and even the iron shoes of
+the ploughs, had to be kept carefully concealed. Hertha invited the
+world to enjoy peace and repose.
+
+Now let us see in what respect Frau Holle or Holla reminds us of the
+good goddess.
+
+At certain periods of the year, especially at Christmas, Frau Holle
+leaves her marshy island in order to inspect the world. All who work in
+linen, spinning, weaving, embroidery, or starching, are by turns visited
+by the good lady. Their idleness and their carelessness are severely
+punished. If one fine morning Annie finds her wheel {314}or Kate her
+loom covered with green slime, if Bertha notices her work torn in the
+place which she repaired only the night before, or if the water has over
+night turned greasy and looks discolored, the poor girls may be sure
+that Frau Holle has been on her round of inspection.
+
+If she is pleased, on the other hand, the ribbon around the distaff
+holds a pretty marshflower, a lily, an iris, or a gladiolus; on the lace
+cushion or on the seamstress’s work a little golden needle is stuck, and
+on the heap of specially well washed and well folded linen lies a cake
+of perfumed soap, which fills the whole house with its sweet odor.
+
+Sometimes Frau Holle finds her way mysteriously to a garret, where a
+poor woman is lying sick with fever, the result of overwork. Then she
+finishes herself the work that had been begun, and when she leaves she
+puts a few florins under the pillow of the sleeping sufferer.
+
+Blessings be upon you, good Dame Holle! Even if you were really once a
+goddess of the first rank, you need not blush at your present condition.
+Still, we cannot help asking, with a slight tremor of fear, how it can
+have come about, that the noble Frigg, the all powerful Hertha,
+should have been reduced to play the lady patroness of washerwomen and
+seamstresses? How has this island in the ocean, with its sacred forest,
+become a wretched {315}marsh, fetid and ill reputed? There is but one
+answer to such a question: Frigg has been unfortunate.
+
+But the spinners and seamstresses, the clear-starchers and embroiderers
+are not the only ones who are honored by kind attentions from the
+supernatural world. The brothers Grimm say:--
+
+[Illustration: 335]
+
+“In certain parts of the world, every person--man, woman, or child--has
+his own goblin to do menial service; he carries water, cuts wood, and
+fetches beer.” During all this time the master has nothing to do but to
+set still and to see the work done.
+
+This goblin is evidently the _Genius loci_ of the ancients.
+
+Among all these goblins, however, one is by far the most famous in
+Germany, and at the same time the oddest, of whom the most extraordinary
+stories are told. They call him _Kobold._
+
+During the night the Kobold sets everything to {316}rights in the
+kitchen; he cleans the glasses, the plates, the pans, and wages war
+against the spiders and the mice. For all these attentions he asks only
+a little food, specially prepared for him, for he would never dream to
+ask for a share of his master’s dinner.
+
+Although he seems to be specially devoted to the cook’s department, the
+Kobold is first of all attached to the house. If the cook is dismissed,
+or if the master moves, he nevertheless remains in his old home, quite
+ready to offer his services to the new comers. If the cook goes, she
+says to her who takes her place:--
+
+“Do not forget to put a little panada on the kneading trough for the
+Kobold, or he might play you some ugly tricks. Be careful, for he is not
+always in good humor.”
+
+If the Kobold, or in his place the cat, eats the panada, the new cook is
+sure to say:--
+
+“Chim has been here; I see we shall be good friends.”
+
+But if Chim has left the dainty untouched, or has merely tasted it, she
+is troubled.
+
+“Perhaps he wants it made with the yolk of an egg? Or perhaps I had not
+put enough butter to it?”
+
+Although the Kobold is almost always invisible, he is at all times
+ready for a chat. {317}What are we to make of these strange beings, the
+servants of our servants, who are even more faithful than the latter to
+the house which they have once made their home, who do not, as we are
+told is the case in some countries, insist so strongly upon certain
+privileges that it becomes uncertain whether the servants are not
+themselves masters and those who think themselves to be masters are in
+reality servants? They generally do nothing but kindness. Nevertheless
+they keep out of sight, thus shunning all public return for their
+benevolent services. What are we to make of such servants? Martin Luther
+answers in his “Table Talk.”
+
+[Illustration: 337]
+
+“For many years,” he says, “a servant had a familiar spirit who sat down
+by her on the hearth, where she had made a little place for him, and
+they talked to each other during the long winter evenings. One day she
+asked Heinzchen (Chim, Heinzchen, and Kurt Chimgen are the pet names by
+which German and Alsatian cooks generally call their Ko-bolds) to let
+her see him in his natural shape. At first Heinzchen refused. {318}but
+at last, as she insisted, he told her to go down into the cellar, where
+he would show himself to her.” “She took a candle,” he goes on to say,
+“and went into the cellar, where the Kobold appeared to her in the
+likeness of a child of hers who had died some years before.” Whether
+he vanished then, leaving her in amazement and terror, or whether he
+resumed the shape in which she had been accustomed to see him, we are
+not told. It is a grim story upon which we do not care to dwell, for we
+prefer to remember the Kobold as a cheerful household companion. It is
+pleasant to think of those quaint little creatures, whose world is the
+kitchen, and to imagine the joy they feel in sharing the busy, bustling
+life that goes on there daily. Be sure they know every nook and corner
+about,--every stew-pan and ladle, and are learned in the steamy scents
+and fragrant savors which are the atmosphere of their home. At night
+when the fires are out, and the family is asleep, they have a life of
+their own. They are on the best possible terms with the cat, which they
+permit to share their food, and with which they no doubt waltz when in a
+gamesome mood. Happy Kobolds.
+
+According to general belief the Kobolds belong as much to the race
+of men as to the world of spirits; they retain the size and shape of
+infants, and that knife which so often is noticed in the form {319}of
+a caudal appendage, is nothing less than the instrument with which they
+have been put to death.
+
+There exist, however, quite a number of troublesome hobgoblins, who turn
+the house upside down and deprive the people to whom they bear a grudge
+of all peace and sleep, till they well nigh drive them mad. But these
+creatures ought, in my opinion, not be mixed up with the Kobolds. The
+latter are almost invariably gentle and inoffensive; if they sometimes
+become angry, they act just like children; they break and smash things,
+but they are easily pacified by the sight of some little tit-bit, as for
+instance, a panada made with butter and eggs.
+
+[Illustration: 339]
+
+The Zotterais and the Little White Ladies seem, in their habits at
+least, to come nearer to Kobolds. Very useful and easily satisfied, the
+Zotterais are as fond of stables as the Kobolds are of kitchens;
+they curry the horses, nurse {320}them when they are sick, and
+keep everything in excellent order in their racks as well as in the
+harness-room.
+
+The Little White Ladies, on the other hand, are more delicate in their
+instincts and often quite fastidious; they like only blood horses, Arab
+or Turkish horses, and hence the popular idea that they have originated
+in the East.
+
+They slip into the stables of wealthy people, while the grooms are
+asleep; here they light a small candle, which they always keep about
+them, and then proceed to business.
+
+In the morning, when the head, coachman makes his round to see that
+everything is right, he sometimes finds a drop of wax on the smooth
+coat of a sorrel or an Isabel colored horse, and then he says to the
+grooms:--
+
+“You have not had much to do to-day, my friends, with your horses; I see
+the little lady has been here.”
+
+The Zotterais are of unmistakable German origin, for they take care of
+horses without regard to race and without the help of a wax candle. They
+have, of course, harder work to do and are more apt to become soiled
+or to have accidents; but, nevertheless, they accomplish their purpose.
+They are naturally easily tired, and hence they require a knot to be
+made in the mane of a horse, where {321}they can suspend themselves and
+rest. There is not a peasant on the banks of the Rhine or the Meuse, who
+would neglect this duty, and I have myself often seen them attend to it
+carefully.
+
+[Illustration: 341]
+
+Formerly the Zotterais also protected sheep against ticks and kept their
+wool from getting tangled; they even derived their name from Zotte,
+which means a flock of wool. In those days, it must be presumed, from
+the habits of those benevolent little people, the fleeces must have been
+whiter and better kept than they are now-a-days; but sheep raisers had
+the unlucky idea, produced probably by avarice, that not a particle of
+wool should be left on ram or ewe, and thus deprived their tiny friends
+of all means to rest and recover breath when hard at work. The Zotterais
+looked upon this neglect of what was due to them as an insult, and
+abandoned the flocks of sheep for the horses in the stables. Besides,
+they found it impossible to live on good terms with the shepherds’ dogs.
+
+We must finally mention the most important and most extraordinary of all
+familiar spirits, whom we must needs include among these favored beings,
+{322}as he represents nothing less than the son of the house, the child
+of the family.
+
+This is the _Killecroff or Suppositus._ The last mentioned name is
+given to him because this so-called son of the house is in reality a
+changeling, a supposed child, which has been put into the place of the
+real child.
+
+[Illustration: 342]
+
+Who has taken the legitimate child from its cradle in order to put into
+its place a _Killecroff_, and who is the real father of the latter?
+
+Both of these questions are met by one and the same answer. The Devil!
+We have so far carefully avoided touching on matters of witchcraft; but
+unfortunately they are as well known on the banks of the Rhine as on
+those of the Thames and the Seine. The _Killecroffs_, however, children
+of the Devil and begotten according to popular belief during the orgies
+of the Witches’ Sabbath, have been really in existence upon earth;
+_suppositi_ or not, they have played their part in the world’s history
+and occasionally even left behind them illustrious descendants. {323}In
+the same way as the Swedish king Vilkins and Merovæus, king of the
+Franks, boasted of being the sons of a sea-god, the dynasty of the
+Jagellons in Poland were proud of their original descent from the Devil,
+no doubt through Killecroffs, and actually bore in their arms certain
+emblems of hell.
+
+How can a real Killecroff be recognized, since he has been, improperly
+enough, counted in among the Kobolds?
+
+[Illustration: 343]
+
+From his first appearance in the world, the Killecroff excites the
+astonishment, and sometimes the {324}admiration of his reputed parents.
+He sucks so heartily and with such an appetite that his nurse has to be
+reinforced by two goats and a cow, like the renowned Gargantua.
+
+When he is weaned a new marvel appears: he swallows his soup by the
+tureen, “as much as two peasants and two threshers in the barn would
+take,” says a celebrated writer in speaking of this subject.
+
+He grows up and keeps everything in commotion around him; he provokes
+quarrels not only among the servants, but even between his parents. If
+some untoward event occurs he roars with laughter, on a day of rejoicing
+he sheds tears and moans piteously. He takes a stick or a spit and rides
+on it in his room, from morning till evening, climbing on every
+chair and table, breaking everything that comes in his way, injuring
+himself--also quite as readily, provoking cats, dogs, and even the
+parrot on his perch, till they all mew and bark and scream. Then he runs
+to the stable and sticks a pin into the croup of a horse to see it kick,
+and then breaks open the doors and locks by the aid of a huge stick
+of wood; next he rushes into the garden, playing the part of a tempest
+there, destroying, uprooting, and breaking everything.
+
+In the poultry yard he wrings the hens’ necks and walks over the young
+chickens; in the kitchen {325}he loves to take up the tops of pots and
+pans and to season the dishes according to his fancy with salt, pepper,
+dust, ashes, oil, vinegar, mustard, sand, or sawdust, and never leaves
+without having turned on the water everywhere.
+
+If a visitor arrives, he takes possession of him and stands between his
+legs, and walks on his toes, pulls the buttons off his waistcoat, and
+draws the strings out of his shoes; he troubles and annoys him in every
+way, he pinches and scratches, he worries and tortures him. When his
+mother cautiously observes that he must not trouble the gentleman he
+obeys like a good child and leaves the gentleman alone, but not without
+having first broken his watch-chain, taken his cane, and hid his
+spectacles; the cane he drops accidentally into the well; as for the
+spectacles, he forgets where he has put them. When the poor visitor,
+quite overcome and exhausted, at last rises to go, he stumbles and falls
+down the stairs, thanks to a string which his playful young friend, the
+Killecroff, has stretched across the top step.
+
+The Killecroffs are generally the delight of their parents; fortunately
+they do not live long.
+
+The great man whom I have quoted before, told the Duke of Anhalt
+frankly, that if he were a sovereign like the duke, he would run the
+risk and become a murderer in such a case, by ordering {326}every such
+son of the devil to be thrown into the Moldau!
+
+This great man, who believed so firmly in Killecroffs, who believed
+likewise in Butzemann, in Ko-bolds, in Nixen and Undines, who saw the
+Devil in every fly that came to drink his ink or to perch on his nose,
+was again Dr. Martin Luther.
+
+[Illustration: 346]
+
+The great Reformer, who was so valiant in combating the superstitions of
+the Papists, seems to have taken very little trouble to get rid of his
+own.
+
+But among the many delusions, in which he apparently delighted, there
+was one, a really charming {327}one, which arose from the Christian
+religion itself, and which, it seems to me, I cannot well pass over in
+silence when speaking of familiar spirits.
+
+I mean Guardian Angels.
+
+A most erudite and clever academician, Mr. Alfred Maury, tells us in
+his charming book on “Magic and Astrology,” that according to Egyptian
+doctrines a special star foretold the arrival of every man in this
+world. In proof of this statement, he refers us to Horapollon, in his
+“Treatise on Hieroglyphics.”
+
+We infinitely prefer taking Mr. Maury’s own evidence; and he adds: “This
+creed exists still in some remote districts among rural populations, and
+especially in Germany.”
+
+It may be that in certain portions of Germany every man may still have
+faith in his star; we are willing to believe it, since he says so; but
+almost everywhere the star has been superseded by a Guardian Angel,
+the White Angel, as they call him, a far more tempting personage, and
+infinitely more intimate and sympathetic. The White Angel is much more
+than the _Genius loci_; it is in fact the _Genius personalis_.
+
+Without entering here upon a serious discussion, on the subject of
+Guardian Angels, whom the modern Church is disposed to ignore, we shall
+prefer {328}inserting here, as a complement to our chapter on Familiar
+Spirits, a legend, which we were fortunate enough to obtain directly
+from very truthful and very beautiful lips:--
+
+“A white figure appeared before the young girl as she awoke.
+
+“‘I am your Guardian Angel!’
+
+“‘Then you will grant me the wishes which I shall mention?’
+
+“‘I shall carry them to God’s throne. You may count upon my assistance.
+What are your wishes?’ “‘O White Angel, I am tired of continually
+turning the spindle, and my fingers are getting to be so hard by
+constant work, that yesterday, at the dance, my partner might have
+imagined he was holding a wooden hand.’
+
+“‘Your partner was that fine looking gentleman from Hesse? Did he not
+tell you that he adored your blue eyes and fair hair, and that he would
+make you a baroness, if you would go home with him?’
+
+“‘White Angel, make me a baroness.’
+
+“The evening of that day a young peasant came and asked Louisa’s mother
+for her daughter’s hand. The mother said, Yes.
+
+“‘White Angel, deliver me from this boor. I want to be a baroness!’
+
+“But the mother, who was a widow, had energy {329}enough for two. The
+White Angel did not appear again; Louisa had to yield, and went on
+turning her spindle.
+
+“One day her husband, who was a hard-working man, had over-exerted
+himself and was taken ill. Louisa had seen her gentleman again.
+
+“‘White Angel, he loves me still. He has sworn he would marry me if I
+were a widow.’.... She dared not say more. Her husband recovered his
+health completely. The White Angel still turned a deaf ear to her
+wishes. She lost all hope of ever becoming a baroness.
+
+“Some years later Louisa was the mother of two beautiful children;
+she was fond of her husband, whose labor procured for her all that she
+needed, and when she thought of him and her two darlings, the spindle
+felt quite soft to her fingers.
+
+“One evening, when she was only half asleep, lying by her husband’s
+side, with one of her hands in his, and the youngest of her babies at
+her bosom, the white figure appeared once more and she heard a gentle
+voice whispering something into her ear. It was the voice of the White
+Angel.
+
+“What did it say?
+
+“It told her a fable.
+
+“‘A little fish was merrily swimming about in the water and looking
+seriously at a pretty blackcap which first circled around and around in
+the air {330}and then alighted softly on a branch of a willow which grew
+close to the bank of the river.
+
+“‘“Oh,” said the little fish, “how happy that bird is. It can rise up
+to the heavens and go high up to the sun to warm itself in its rays. Why
+cannot I do the same?”
+
+“‘The blackcap was looking at the fish at the same time, and said:--
+
+“‘“Oh! how happy that fish is! The element in which it lives furnishes
+it at the same time with food; it has nothing to do but to glide along.
+How I should like to sport in the fresh, transparent water!”
+
+“‘At that moment, a kite pounced upon the poor little fish, while a
+scamp of a schoolboy threw a stone at the bird; the blackcap fell into
+the water, the fresh, transparent water, and for a moment struggled in
+it before it died, while the little fish, carried aloft, could go up
+on high to the sun and warm itself in its rays. Their wishes had been
+granted.’
+
+“‘Louisa,’ continued the gentle voice, ‘our duty as Guardian Angels is
+far more frequently to thwart wishes than to satisfy them.’
+
+“This was the moral of the fable.
+
+“Louisa pressed her husband’s hand warmly, kissed her last born,
+and said: ‘Thank you, White Angel, thank you.’” {331}I am certainly
+delighted to think, that if the poor Germans have Killecroffs among
+their familiar spirits, they have at least also White Angels.
+
+[Illustration: 351]
+
+[Illustration: 355]
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+{335}Giants and Dwarfs.--_Duel between Efthesim and Grommelund.--Court
+Dwarfs and Little Dwarfs.--Ymer’s Solis.--The Invisible Reapers.--Story
+of the Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragant.--How the Giants came to
+serve the Dwarfs._
+
+If legendary tradition is only a distant vibration of the bell of
+history, where must we go and look for traces of the real existence of
+giants? Must we believe the Edda or Holy writ itself? Afterwards the
+great fossil skeletons of mammoths, mastodons, and other antediluvian
+animals only revived the {336}memory of gigantic men. The Apocryphal
+Books tell us that in the days of Enoch, a number of angels, amounting
+to two hundred, had conceived a desire for the daughters of men and came
+down to Mount Hermon in order to be near them. Some of the principal
+ones are even mentioned by name; there were Urakabaramiel, Sanyaza,
+Tamiel, and Akibiel. Is it a wonder, then, that credulous people should
+have believed that devils also, who after all are but fallen angels,
+have acted in the same way towards the descendants of Eve. The
+Killecroffs, we have seen, were the offspring of a union between
+devils and earthborn women; in like manner giants were the offspring
+of marriages between women and angels. Women are evidently capable of
+setting heaven, earth, and hell on fire.
+
+Germany, which was the last part of Europe to enter the great Catholic
+Church, and was to be the first to leave it again at the time of the
+Reformation, kept up the belief in giants longer than any other country.
+Perhaps this was one of the results of the right of free inquiry.
+
+The giant Einheer lived in the days of Charlemagne and even served
+in his army. Several centuries later there were gigantic burgraves
+(Burggra-fen), living all along the banks of the Rhine. They have a well
+known story there of a young and ingenious giant’s daughter, who had
+been jealously {337}guarded in her father’s castle, and when she got
+out into the fields for the first time in her life, brought back in her
+apron a peasant with his plough and his two horses, whom she had picked
+up on the way. She showed them to her father as being all three little
+animals of very curious shape.
+
+[Illustration: 357]
+
+After a while, however, the giants became smaller and smaller, until
+there were only a few left in the highest mountains, in dark forests,
+and in the romances of chivalry. After that they disappeared altogether.
+
+The report is, however, that a single couple, man and wife, are kept
+alive by magic art in an isolated part of the Hartz Mountains, to serve
+as a specimen of the lost race. {338}At first the giants had produced
+universal terror. The god Thor was blessed because he had driven them,
+armed as he was with his famous iron mace, all across the Hercynian
+forest. But as people became better acquainted with them, their fears
+subsided. They turned out to be far from cruel, to eat human flesh only
+in cases of dire necessity, and to act generally not only kindly, but
+even like simpletons--a misfortune common to most men, who are too
+fully developed in length or in breadth. This latter weakness is well
+supported by a popular German tale.
+
+An old duke of Bavaria had at his court a dwarf, called Ephesim, and a
+giant, called Grommelund. The latter laughed at the dwarf, and Ephesim
+threatened to box his ears. Grommelund laughed only the more heartily
+and challenged Ephesim to carry out his threat. The dwarf accepted
+the challenge, and the duke, having been a witness of the whole scene,
+ordered at once that a field for single combat should be prepared.
+
+Everybody expected to do as the giant did and laugh at the pigmy; as the
+poor little fellow was hardly two feet high and would have had to climb
+a long way before reaching the giant’s ears. But it turned out very
+differently.
+
+The dwarf began by walking all around the giant as if to take his
+measure. The good-natured giant, {339}standing up immovable, looks down
+upon him and laughs till his sides shake; but while he is holding his
+hands to his sides, the dwarf unties his shoestrings and then worries
+him by kicking and pinching his calves.
+
+[Illustration: 359]
+
+Grommelund laughs more loudly than ever, thanks to the tickling, takes
+a few strides, steps on his loose shoestrings, nearly stumbles, and at
+last, with a thoughtful presence of mind, characteristic of his race, he
+stoops down to tie the strings.
+
+Ephesim has foreseen this, he avails himself of the opportunity, and
+slaps the giant’s cheek with his little hand, so heartily that the sound
+reaches the ears of the duke and the lords of his court, who applaud
+Ephesim’s skill enthusiastically.
+
+The poor giant, humiliated and overcome, left the town, it is said, and
+sought refuge in the mountains, where he died of shame.
+
+The people were thus beginning to have a very humble opinion of giants,
+when a rumor was spread that they had entered the service of the dwarfs;
+{340}not of court dwarfs, but of little dwarfs, who are so small that,
+by their size, the others appear as giants.
+
+[Illustration: 360]
+
+These little dwarfs appear in the popular tales of Germany, under
+different names, as _Wichtelman-ner, Metallarii, or Homunculi_, and
+evidently, at one time, were found in great numbers throughout all the
+mountainous parts of the North. In Bretagne they were also known as
+_Couribes, Parulpiquets or Cornicouets_, but as they are ugly and evil
+disposed, I presume they are not of the same race with our good little
+dwarfs. These latter appear in the evening at the foot of large oak
+trees, or in old ruins, where they come by the {341}thousand out
+of every crack and crevice and gambol and frolic, but vanish at the
+smallest noise.
+
+[Illustration: 361]
+
+{343}As to their origin there are different opinions entertained. One
+theory alone is worthy of belief, because it is mentioned already in the
+Edda.
+
+According to the Scandinavian Bible, when Odin had killed the giant
+Ymer, his decaying body produced an innumerable quantity of small
+worms. By a law of natural order which had already become operative with
+insects, each worm changed into a chrysalis, and out of each chrysalis
+came forth a little man, resembling, with a few trifling differences,
+the race of full sized men, whom Odin had created.
+
+Like ourselves, they also are subject to all the infirmities of age,
+to disease and death; like ourselves, they are at times capable of
+reasoning with fairness. Skillful metallurgists, they are at work in the
+mines, where we have already met them; they are not without imagination,
+and even know what piety is.
+
+What religion do they profess?
+
+For a long time, we are told, the majority, having been converted to
+Christianity, were under its benign influence, in a far higher degree
+than we, for they did not carry on war among themselves, and all
+authors, legends, and ballads agree, that they were gentle and peaceful,
+loving each other, {344}kindly disposed towards others, laborious,
+and very obliging. Hence they were universally known as the _Peaceful
+People_,--das stille Volk.
+
+“In ancient times,” says Wyss, “men lived in the valleys, and around
+their dwellings, in the cavities of the rocks, dwelt the little dwarf
+people, keeping always on very good terms with them, and helping them
+even at times in their work in the fields. They took great delight in
+doing good in this way; for generally they were very busy mining in the
+mountains, and digging in the ground to collect the tiny particles of
+gold and silver that could be obtained.”
+
+Sometimes field laborers coming out to plant or to weed, found their
+work already done, and heard the dwarfs, hid behind the bushes, break
+out into loud laughter, when they showed their amazement.
+
+It happened one day, early in the morning, that some peasants in passing
+a cornfield, saw that the stalks were falling in long rows, as if by
+their own will; they were most cunningly cut off below, and now they
+were ranging themselves, also to all appearance by their own act, in
+long sheaves. The peasants had no doubt that the good little dwarfs
+were there, working away stealthily, but of the tiny workmen not a trace
+could be seen.
+
+The dwarfs possessed, in common with all these {345}mysterious races,
+the power of making themselves invisible. They had nothing to do, for
+that purpose, but merely to draw a little hood over their ears, which
+formed part of their costume.
+
+Our countrymen, seeing that the wheat was not ripe enough to be cut,
+became exceedingly angry against these injudicious friends, and arming
+themselves with twigs, went to work striking right and left in the hope
+of hurting one or the other by chance. They really heard some faint
+cries of distress in the furrows, and soon the first rows of wheat
+which had been left standing were thrown into violent disorder, thus
+testifying to the flight of the little ones.
+
+Several of the dwarfs became even visible, as the twigs suddenly tore
+the hoods from their heads. Thereupon the men became furious and tried
+to strike all the harder; but suddenly a violent storm broke forth
+and the hail came down in torrents, cutting the whole standing crop to
+pieces and sparing only the rows that had been reaped.
+
+The rude countrymen now saw clearly that the Quiet People had foreseen
+the hailstorm and anticipated the harvest on that account. They repented
+their brutality, but the dwarfs, disgusted by their ingratitude, never
+again appeared in that region of country. Similar occurrences took place
+in other countries. {346}Now let us see, by what perseverance, by what
+skill, and especially by what audacious conceptions these tiny beings,
+not much more than a few inches high, succeeded in making themselves
+masters of the giants.
+
+[Illustration: 366]
+
+They were running about quite bewildered, pushing and jostling each
+other in their anxiety to regain their little mole-hill, he stood at
+first with his mouth {347}wide open, lost in amazement. Then, to amuse
+himself in true lordly fashion, he crushed a few dozen with his foot.
+
+But he was not without curiosity, and hence he tried in the next place
+to find out something about their manners. The moment was not very well
+chosen, it must be confessed. Men do not usually choose a city that has
+just been taken by storm and given up to pillage, for the purpose of
+studying the manners and customs of its citizens. But we have seen
+before this, that giants are not remarkably bright.
+
+Our giant, whose name I have never been able to ascertain and whom I
+will call for convenience sake, _Quadragant_ (“Quadragant was rather
+colossal,” I once read in “Amadis of Gaul;” our giant was really
+colossal, for he measured thirty feet in height), our giant, I say,
+stretched himself out at full length and fixed his eyes upon the hole
+out of which he had pulled the oak tree. He heard a low humming noise
+underground, but he could see nothing.
+
+He thought he would wait patiently, and in waiting he fell quietly
+asleep, turning over so as to lie on his back, his usual position when
+he was sleeping.
+
+After a few hours’ sound and heavy sleep, such as all giants are said to
+enjoy, he awoke. Finding {348}that the sun had in the mean time followed
+his example and gone to sleep, he remembered that it was supper time,
+and as he thought of the delights in store for him he uttered a long and
+deep sigh of satisfaction. But something that his long drawn breath had
+brought up, suddenly jumped out of his mouth.
+
+[Illustration: 368]
+
+This something was one of the dwarfs; and this dwarf, the boldest and
+most intelligent among them all, was called Kreiss.
+
+But in order to make it clear how Kreiss happened to be almost in the
+giant’s throat, which was {349}of course only accidentally his home for
+a time, we must go back and see what had happened while Quadragant was
+asleep.
+
+When the little pigmies found their tree uprooted and their people
+scattered in all directions, escaping through every crack and crevice in
+the soil, they had rushed into a long subterranean passage, excavated
+in days long gone by, by their forefathers. Here they had uttered their
+well known cries of distress, resembling the chirp of crickets, and thus
+they had finally reached the ruins of an old castle, inhabited by vast
+numbers of their people, and chosen as the place of meeting of the
+General Council of the dwarfs.
+
+Kreiss happened to have arrived the night before, as one of a numerous
+deputation, and he at once suggested the propriety of burying the dead
+with all due honors, before anything else was done. After that, they
+might go to work stopping up all the holes and openings made by the
+tearing up of the sapling, and filling the excavation which it had
+produced, so that the rain might not come and inundate their long
+gallery, which was their only safe means of communication.
+
+The two resolutions offered by Kreiss were carried by acclamation, and
+all, loaded with brush and with stakes, went immediately to work. There
+were some ten thousand of them. {350}They thought the giant had left,
+but they found him lying full length on the ground and snoring most
+fiercely. Their first impulse was to escape, but Kreiss held them back.
+He had conceived a bold plan; he proposed to capture the giant. Were
+they not already provided with ropes and with stakes? Was there not
+strength in numbers? They immediately went to work, and in less than an
+hour the murderer, unable as he was to make the slightest motion, was
+bound to the soil which he had soaked with their blood.
+
+“What do you say?.... Yes, sir, you are undoubtedly right. This looks
+very much like the manner in which Gulliver was treated in the island
+of Lilliput. How can we help that? Besides, we must remember that there
+have been dwarfs in Germany from time immemorial. If Jonathan Swift
+undertook to transfer them to imaginary countries, whose business is
+that and who is liable to be charged with plagiarism, I ask you?”
+
+We will not stop to discuss this trifling matter, which is of little
+importance. We have weightier matters than that in hand.
+
+When the work was done and with the excitement of the efforts the first
+enthusiasm also had somewhat passed away, the question arose what was
+to be done with their capture. They looked at each other in great
+perplexity. {351}The dwarfs are kind hearted people, who have a great
+horror of blood. Besides, it would have been more difficult even, to
+dispose of the giant after death than to kill him. Still, if they did
+not kill Quadragant he would, as soon as he was awake, go to work and
+cry for help lustily; then the other giants would, no doubt, hasten to
+his assistance. The disgrace inflicted upon one of their brethren would
+in all probability render them furious, and they would proceed at once
+to uproot all the trees and to pursue the poor little people of dwarfs
+down into the very bowels of the earth.
+
+While these and similar observations were passing in the crowd from one
+group to another, Kreiss remained silent and thoughtful, supporting his
+head in his hand and his hand on his elbow.
+
+In the mean time the crowd passed from simple talk to grumbling and from
+grumbling to threats. There was nothing left but to undo what was done
+as promptly as possible, to abandon this ridiculous enterprise and
+to restore the giant to liberty in the same way in which he had
+been deprived of it--during his sleep. If he should awake before the
+operation was over, why, then they might try to appease his wrath by
+handing over to him the authors of this fatal project.
+
+Ah! one can see at a glance, that these dwarfs, small as they were,
+were nevertheless men, and {352}that it is better not to venture upon
+attacking giants!
+
+They were utterly discouraged and demoralized. Calm in spite of all this
+excitement around him, Kreiss was still meditating, apparently quite
+unmindful of all the invectives that were hurled at him and the little
+hands that were threatening him. But when some of them actually began to
+loosen the ropes, he suddenly dropped his hands from his elbow and his
+brow, and turning sharply upon his aggressors, he said:--
+
+“I acknowledge my mistake and I am ready to atone for it. Go,--my seven
+brothers and myself, we will alone set the giant free again. If he
+awakes, he shall have to do with us and with us only. Go!”
+
+The former conspirators were well content to accept the proposition, and
+without bestowing a thought upon their murdered brethren, they escaped
+as fast as they could. In the dim twilight of the last hour of the day
+one might have seen them running nimbly through the tall grass and under
+the cupolas of mushroom, arousing in their hurry the beetles and moths,
+or even mounting upon their backs in order to reach by their aid all the
+more quickly their safe retreat in the ruins of the old castle.
+
+When all were gone save Kreiss and his seven {353}brothers, he said
+to them: “Now that we are alone, we alone shall reap the glory of the
+enterprise! So far from regretting what I have done, I mean on the
+contrary, to enlarge our project in a manner which shall redound to the
+eternal glory of our race.”
+
+[Illustration: 373]
+
+The dwarfs are not only skillful metallurgists, but they are also most
+expert carpenters and builders.
+
+Hence the good people of the Rheingau are {354}convinced that they have
+built all those ruins of solid old castles, in which they are still
+living and which they have so cunningly repaired and propped up that
+they will last forever.
+
+[Illustration: 374]
+
+Now Quadragant was sleeping with his mouth wide open, as all large
+people are apt to’ do. Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious
+cavity, armed with a long spear which was equally sharp and pointed at
+both ends. He took care to rest at first most cautiously only upon
+the projections of the teeth, which formed, so to say, a double row of
+parallel battlements. By such assistance he passed from one end of the
+abyss to the other, without troubling the slumbers of the giant by the
+{355}slightest awkwardness in his movements. For a case of emergency
+Kreiss held his spear firmly in his hands, ready to fasten it so between
+the two jaws as to prevent their closing upon him.
+
+[Illustration: 375]
+
+His brothers were in the meantime busily engaged in preparing posts,
+pins, and rafters, which they handed to him as he needed them. One of
+them even went with him to assist him.
+
+They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth, and strengthened
+the piles by beams, which secured them to each other. The work was by
+no means an easy one, for in the mouth of the giant it was as dark as
+night, and there reigned in it a heat equal to that of an oven. Moreover
+Quadragant had dined that day on a deer and several {356}hares, and
+as he liked his game high, like every good judge of fine dinners, the
+perfumes of his breath increased the inconvenience caused by the heat
+and the darkness.
+
+Kreiss’s brother was all of a sudden taken ill, and had to leave to join
+the others outside. They, however, continued work on the scaffolding,
+and watched the giant carefully.
+
+Quadragant was absolutely in the hands of the eight dwarf brothers.
+
+They had passed up a lantern to Kreiss, which he hung upon one of
+the transverse beams, and he now continued his work alone resolutely,
+although he was every now and then compelled to stop his nose.
+
+His work was at last completed, and he was just about to leave this
+damp, pestiferous abyss, when the giant awoke, and his first sigh
+carried off the brave pigmy, as a gust of wind would have carried off
+a dry leaf from a branch, and hurled him senseless into space. He fell
+heavily upon the chest of the colossus.
+
+As soon as he recovered from the shock, he looked around carefully, and
+saw, to his great satisfaction, that the bonds which held the giant
+were beyond doubt strong enough to hold him a prisoner. Then he crept
+cautiously all along the neck as far as his ear, and by its aid climbed
+up the chin, after having crossed the cheek in its whole {357}length.
+When he had found a convenient restingplace, he drew himself up to his
+full height, and raising his feeble voice as loud as he could, he said
+to the giant:--
+
+“Murderer of our brethren, you are our prisoner, and you must die!
+Commend your soul to God.”
+
+[Illustration: 377]
+
+The giant tried to see the tiny being who was speaking to him so boldly,
+and cast down his eyes. At first he could distinguish nothing but a
+feeble glimmering light at the extremity of his nose; but the nose
+itself completely concealed the speaker.
+
+Kreiss then advanced a few steps from the chin towards the mouth of the
+colossus, and the latter now perceived a kind of little man, dressed in
+a cloak of mouse skin, which he grandly wrapped around him, as Hercules
+did with the skin of the Nemean lion.
+
+In his hand, however, he held not a club, but a lantern, in which a
+firefly did service as candle.
+
+Thanks to this phosphorescent sheen, which seemed to surround Kreiss
+as with a halo, Quadragant could examine him at leisure, and he asked
+himself how such an embryo could have flown out of his mouth, and how
+he, Quadragant, could have become his prisoner? {358}The contemptuous
+glance which he threw at the dwarf made Kreiss aware of what he was
+discussing in his mind.
+
+“You think you are not captured yet,” he said. “Very well, try to get up
+and walk, if you can!” Quadragant did try, and found that he was firmly
+fastened to the ground by ropes and chains, by each single hair of his
+head, by every hair on his body. He tried to speak to the pigmy, and he
+could not, by any effort of his, move his jaws in the slightest way.
+
+“As to the manner of your death,” Kreiss went on, “if the wolves and the
+vultures do not hasten your end, hunger will do the work.”
+
+At this thought of dying of hunger, a mode of death which he had always
+looked upon as the most terrible of all, Quadragant’s heart gave way,
+and he began to cry piteously. Two torrents of tears flowed down his
+cheeks, and after turning around the prominence of his lips, ran over
+from his chin.
+
+Kreiss was compelled to leave his position, so as to avoid the double
+current.
+
+Although quite firm in his resolution, he was naturally kind-hearted.
+These many tears of such unwonted size finally touched ‘him, but his
+sympathy made him only the more determined to render his vengeance as
+useful as it was complete. {359} “Listen to me, giant. You can buy your
+life, if you choose.” Quadragant’s tears ceased to flow. Here was life
+offered to him, and with that life he saw first of all a good supper
+in store for him, and if his mouth had not been held so tight by the
+scaffolding erected in it by Kreiss, his big face would have grinned
+from ear to ear.
+
+[Illustration: 379]
+
+“But,” continued the dwarf, “you will Tiave to devote your life and
+your liberty, if we restore both to you, to the service of our decimated
+people; do you hear? You must understand me clearly; you will not be our
+protector, but our servant; you will unhesitatingly perform every kind
+of work which may be required of you for our safety or our comfort.
+First of all you will replant that oak tree, {360}under which the dwarfs
+of this district were living in peace, and you will water it every
+morning until it has taken root again. Now, close your eyes, if you mean
+to accept our conditions!”
+
+Quadragant opened and shut his eyes quickly ten times in succession.
+
+Kreiss made with his lamp a kind of telegraphic signal; his brothers,
+all seven dressed in garments of mouse skin or mole skin, and carrying
+each one a lantern with a firefly inside, climbed in an instant upon the
+face of the giant, which now looked quite brightly illuminated.
+
+Three of them took their station on his forehead; two others by the side
+of each eye. The last two held each a long thorn in their hands, which
+they seemed to use as a dagger.
+
+Kreiss, who had remained at his place, said again to the giant:--
+
+“If, after you have been set free, you dare utter a sound to call for
+help, you lose both of your eyes instantly. Mind the warning!”
+
+Armed with his double pointed spear, he then went once more into
+Quadragant’s mouth, and loosened one of the transverse beams which
+formed the ceiling. The giant assisted him with his tongue in the work
+of demolition; then, after drawing a long sigh of relief, he closed his
+mouth and crushed between his formidable jaws all the timber, posts,
+{361}and beams, as if they had been a bundle of matches, and swallowed
+the whole in anticipation of his supper.
+
+[Illustration: 381]
+
+After that he swore an oath which binds the giants as firmly as the
+invocation of the Styx pledged the s of Greece.
+
+“By the earth, which is my mother, by the mountains, which are her
+bones, by the woods and forests, which are her hair, by the brooks, the
+streams, and the rivers, which are the blood of her veins, I, {302}the
+giant Quadragant, declare that I am the slave of the dwarfs.”
+
+At sunrise Quadragant was up again, carrying his new masters between
+his fingers, which he twisted together in the shape of a cradle. In
+less than five minutes he reached, in obedience to their orders, the
+old castle in ruins, where a ‘solemn meeting was held, not only by the
+fugitives of the day before, but also by the principal representatives
+of all the dwarfs of that part of Germany.
+
+When the sentinels announced the arrival of the giant, all thought their
+last hour had come and endeavored to escape, hoping to find a refuge in
+the lowest depths of the old building. Kreiss, however, had ordered the
+giant to put him down in front of the cellars of the castle, and now
+entered the great Meeting Hall, assuming like all great conquerors, an
+air of extreme modesty.
+
+Then he informed them that the giant was their slave!
+
+They at once threw themselves at his feet and expressed their desire to
+proclaim him Emperor of the Dwarfs.
+
+Kreiss, however, having heard of a recent experiment of that kind,
+was far from believing such sudden enthusiasm to be either deep or
+permanent.
+
+
+[Illustration: 383]
+
+From that day the giant abandoned his {363}old name of Quadragant, and
+assumed that of _Ptitskuchen,_ which at that time meant Friend of
+the Dwarfs, but which, translated into modern German, represents our
+_omelette soufflee_.
+
+[Illustration: 385]
+
+{365}At first all went well; but at the end of three weeks Putskuchen
+looked sad and melancholy; Putskuchen only took half a dozen meals a
+day; Putskuchen was slowly fading away; Putskuchen was in love, in love
+with a young giantess, who taunted him with having become the servant of
+these wretched pygmies and reproached him with his poverty. The unhappy
+creature fell off more and more, the _omelette soufflee_ fell down flat,
+and Putskuchen was a mere lath of thirty feet in length.
+
+Kreiss had always felt a certain tenderness for him, and hence, after
+having asked the consent of all the other chieftains, he placed in the
+giant’s hands a large heap of gold scales such as the dwarfs were in the
+habit of collecting in the neighboring mountains.
+
+It was enough to buy three wives, instead of one.
+
+The fact had no sooner become known than all {366}the happy giant
+fathers of the country desired him as a son-in-law, and when they saw
+how liberally his services had been rewarded by his new masters, they
+were all eager to become the serfs of the dwarfs.
+
+Thus, thanks to Kreiss, the giants gradually came all, one by one, and
+entered the service of the dwarfs.
+
+Certain skeptics have maintained that the whole story is symbolic.
+
+According to their interpretation the giant fastened to the ground and
+muzzled by the dwarfs, is the people, the people always kept down
+and always held in subjection, in spite of its gigantic strength. The
+dwarfs, who lived under the oak, the sacred tree of all nations of
+Celtic origin, are the priests.
+
+We say: Shame upon people, who would change a legend into an apologue
+and our friend Kreiss into a Druid!
+
+When the dwarfs became reconciled again to men, they compelled the
+giants to execute for them great works of public utility, such as
+bridges and highroads, which were afterwards generally ascribed to the
+Romans.
+
+The belief in little dwarfs continues to this day to exist in most of
+the Northern countries. They still live in myriads in the subterranean
+regions {367}and in the rocks in Westphalia, in Sweden, and in Norway,
+and they are still hard at work amassing vast treasures.
+
+[Illustration: 387]
+
+[Illustration: 391]
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+{371}Wizards and the Bewitched.--_The Journey of A sa-Thor and his
+Companions.--The Inn with the Five Passages.--Skryinner.--A Lost Glove
+found again.--Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.--Combat between
+Thor and the King’s Nurse.--FREDERICH BARBAROSSA AND THE
+KYFFHAUSER.--Teutonia! Teutonia!--What became of the Ancient
+Gods.--Venus and the good Knight Tannhauser.--Jupiter on Rabbit
+Island.--A Modern God._
+
+Hear! hear! New and greater marvels still! But, unfortunately, we shall
+be under the sad necessity of returning to our giants once more, much as
+we have already spoken of them, from giant Ymer down to Quadragant, and
+there may be too much even of the best things in this world. But let
+the reader take courage; this time my giants are not real giants; or at
+least they are giants of a very peculiar species. But instead of losing
+time with limitations and explanations, let us begin our story.
+
+It was in the days when the Scandinavian gods were still in the full
+enjoyment of their power.
+
+One fine day the god Thor, curious to see certain distant lands of
+which they had told him most marvelous stories, set out on his travels,
+accompanied by Raska, Tialff, and Loki. Leaving Sweden and Norway
+behind, they arrived at the sea-shore and crossed over by swimming. A
+mere trifle, of course, for people of their kind. On the opposite shore
+they found a vast plain, and as night was approaching and they began to
+feel that rest would be acceptable, they looked out for a shelter. In
+this vast and deserted plain they see but one single building; a huge,
+ill-shapen, and abandoned house, {373}rather broad than high and of
+altogether exceptional appearance. It has neither doors nor windows,
+nor even a roof; but the night fog may possibly conceal a part of the
+edifice. The travellers enter and find a square, low vestibule, and at
+the end of it five long passages; each of the travellers takes one of
+these passages, looking for a door or a bed in the dark. As they find
+neither bed nor chamber, they resign themselves and lie down on the
+floor, with their backs to the wall.
+
+But even the walls seem to be elastic, and so does the floor; perhaps
+a layer of straw or of moss was spread over them and gave them the
+softness of felt, rather coarse, to be sure, but not unpleasant. The
+travellers felt that they could sleep there comfortably and warm. So
+they did.
+
+At daybreak Thor rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms and proposed to
+take a turn in the country, to stretch his legs and to shake off the
+heaviness of sleep. Through the white mists which were still hanging on
+the tops of high hills he thought he saw a huge mass of disheveled hair,
+and then he discovered in the centre of that head two eyes. At first
+he thought this head and these eyes were simply a rock covered with
+shrubbery and two small pools of water shining in the rays of the
+rising sun. But soon the disheveled head began to move, bent down to
+the ground, and turned now {374}to one side and now to another. In the
+meantime the mists had risen and Thor found that he was standing before
+a giant of such enormous size that those whom he was generally engaged
+in hunting down would not have reached to his knee.
+
+The giant advanced toward him, always looking here and there, and still
+with his eyes fixed on the ground, as if he were looking for something
+he had lost.
+
+Thor, who was easily incensed by the sight of a giant, went straight up
+to meet him and said in an arrogant tone:--
+
+“What are you doing here? What is your name? Who are you?”
+
+“My name is Skrymner,” replied the other. “Did you not know? As for me,
+I have no need to ask you any such question; you are the god Thor, one
+of those under sized gods who live with Odin on the ash tree Ygdrasil.
+Have you seen my glove? I have lost my glove; yes! yesterday,” he
+added in the most indifferent manner possible, and as if he were solely
+occupied with his search.
+
+“I have found nothing of the kind,” replied Thor, who was always in bad
+humor, and now regretted that he did not have his hammer at hand.
+
+“And do you travel quite alone?” asked Skrymner. {375}
+
+“I have three companions.”
+
+“I do not see them.”
+
+“They are all three still asleep in that house there, in which we have
+spent the night.”
+
+And with his finger he pointed at the house, which they had used as an
+inn for the night.
+
+Skrymner looked both surprised and delighted. “My glove!” he cried,
+“that is my glove! I have found it.” He hastened to pick up this
+apparent house with its five long passages, and took it up, but not
+before he had shaken it, holding it close to the ground, and showing
+thus that he was not without a feeling of humanity.
+
+Loki, Tialft, and Raska tumbled out upon the grass, rather terrified
+by their sudden ascension and the sudden somerset which they had been
+forced to make. But as soon as they had recovered from their first
+surprise, and especially from the discovery that they had spent the
+night in a glove, they thought of continuing their journey.
+
+The country was unknown to them, but Skrymner offered to act as guide
+and even to carry their baggage. So much obliging kindness and courtesy
+drove all aggressive thoughts out of Thor’s mind, especially as he now
+had his hammer.
+
+At the first stopping place, and just when they were getting ready for
+breakfast, the giant left them, although only after having pointed out
+to {376}them the road they ought to take. Thor, however, found he was
+unable to open the knapsack in which they carried their provisions; all
+the strings and small chains by which it was fastened, were in knots.
+They had to proceed on their journey without having had any breakfast, a
+necessity which is most disagreeable to travellers, and even to gods.
+
+As hour after hour passed and the plain remained deserted and sterile,
+their hunger became tormenting. They listened with all their might,
+hoping they might hear the roaring of a bear or the lowing of a cow,
+determined as they were to dine upon the one or the other; but the dull
+rumbling of a storm and the distant roll of thunder was all they heard.
+
+Thor was furious at the idea that any one should venture to thunder
+without having obtained permission from him, the god of thunder, and
+rushed forward. Following the direction of the noise, he reached a rocky
+defile, overshadowed by a few oak trees, where he found Skrymner lying
+at full length between two hills and snoring furiously. This snoring it
+was which the travellers had taken for the roaring of a storm.
+
+“No doubt,” said Thor to himself, “the wretch is at work digesting the
+provisions of which he has robbed us. No doubt it was he who tied all
+those knots in the strings of our knapsack, in order to {377}conceal his
+theft; but he shall pay for it dear! Besides, did he not speak of me as
+an undersized god?”
+
+With these words he seized his hammer and threw it at the head of the
+sleeping giant, who did not stir, but only passed his hand over his brow
+as if a dead leaf falling from a tree had tickled him a little.
+
+Thor went up closer and struck him once more on the back of his head,
+directly on the cerebellum, which in giants is unusually developed.
+
+This time the sleeper opened one eye, closed it again, and after having
+scratched himself at the place where he had been struck, he fell asleep
+again.
+
+Brutal by nature and doubly so when fasting, Thor had become perfectly
+furious when he found himself thus mysteriously powerless. Fully
+determined the next time to make an end, once for all, of his adversary,
+he put on his invisible belt, which had the gift of doubling his
+strength, seized his hammer with both hands and threw it with such
+amazing force at the giant, that it sank up to the handle into one of
+his cheeks and Thor had no small trouble in getting it to come back to
+him.
+
+This time Skrymner was fully roused; he opened both of his eyes, raised
+his hand to his cheek, and exclaimed that it was impossible to sleep
+comfortably {378}in that place, as a fly had just stung him in the
+cheek.
+
+Then, perceiving his assailant, who stood right before him, he asked him
+good-naturedly, how he happened to be there, and whether he had lost
+his way. In the meantime the other travellers are also coming up and
+Skrymner offers to show them the way to the great city of Utgard, where
+he promises they will find a good inn, a good table, a warm reception,
+and not only enough for their wants but all that their heart can desire.
+
+Thor does not know what to think. Overcome and confounded, he follows
+the footsteps of his guide, without being able to form any idea except
+the one: to avenge himself in a signal manner for all his humiliations.
+
+The city of Utgard is of incredible size, the city walls, the houses,
+the trees, the furniture, all are gigantic. Our travellers could easily
+pass between the legs of the little children they met in the streets,
+as we modern people pass under the triumphal arches of the ancients. You
+see, now we are no longer in Lilliput, we have reached the island of the
+giants with Gulliver. Gulliver might very well be the offspring of some
+Scandinavian legend.
+
+The king received Thor and, his friends, laughing heartily at their
+small size, and the seats they are offered are three times as high as
+they are. {379}After a host of adventures in which our men, that is to
+say, our gods, are continually victimized, Thor in his rage challenges
+the giants to single combat. The king accepts the challenge and
+offers to back his nurse, a toothless old woman, against the god. Thor
+consents, eager as he is to vent his wrath on somebody, and determines
+to pitch His Majesty’s nurse out of the window. But by all his efforts
+he hardly succeeds in lifting her slightly off the ground, and he
+himself, exhausted by the struggle, sinks on his knees.
+
+On the next day our travellers came to the conclusion that they had
+travelled far enough. Skrymner again showed the way, with his usual
+courtesy, and when they were well out of the town he took the god Thor
+aside and said to him: “So far you have only known my name and nothing
+of myself, now you ought to know that I am Skrym-ner, the wizard. You
+ought, therefore, not to mind anything that has happened to you during
+these last days. You thought you were striking me three times with your
+hammer, but in reality you were striking the impenetrable rocks, on
+which I was apparently sleeping. As to the nurse, you have given proof
+there of such strength as I should not even have expected from the great
+Thor, when you lifted her from the ground; for the toothless old woman
+is none other but Death, yes Death, {380}whom I had compelled to
+come and take part in our games. The rest was all enchantment, mere
+delusions! I wanted to see if the power of the art of Magic was equal to
+that of the gods. Farewell, Asa-Thor, and a pleasant journey to you.”
+
+More enraged than ever, Asa-Thor was about to throw himself upon him;
+but the pretended giant had fled in the shape of a bird. Then Thor
+turned back towards the city of Utgard, determined to destroy it
+utterly, but before his eyes it dissolved into a column of smoke.
+
+Well, I promised you some of Mother Goose’s stories--have I kept word?
+And do not imagine that this story of Thor and the giants’ city is of
+doubtful origin--you will find it in chapters 23, 24, 25, and 26 of the
+sacred book called Edda.
+
+Of magicians and wizards I could say much, but the road is long and I
+am in haste to reach the end. And who does not know the story of the
+prowess of Merlin and of the Maugis?
+
+In all the ancient traditions of the North there are found innumerable
+tales of wizards, witchcraft, and ghosts. Now rocks are changed into
+palaces, and now brutes into men and men into brutes; and the same
+fantastic but always epic element prevails largely in all the old
+romances of chivalry as well as in the great poems of Ariosto and Tasso.
+{381}In almost all countries we find that epic poetry is closely allied
+to religious sentiments and through these to the marvelous; for it has
+always found a first home in temples and a first use for temples. Thus
+it was in India with the Mahabarata, and in Greece with the myths of
+Hercules and of Orpheus. It could not be otherwise with the Gallic or
+German bards, nor with the Scandinavian skalds, all of whose grand poems
+are most unfortunately unknown at present.
+
+But a feature more peculiarly German than the wizards, are the
+bewitched, often called the Sleepers. In these Germany incorporates, as
+it were, the loftiest of her patriotic aspirations, the saddest of her
+disappointments, the most persistent of her hopes. They represent not
+only her old faith, that could never be completely eradicated, but
+also her old favorites, a Hermann and a Siegfried, the hero of the
+Nibelungen, a Theodoric and a Charlemagne, a Witikind and a Frederick
+Barbarossa, a William Tell and a Charles V. Her heroes, her beloved,
+her glory--she has not allowed them to fall into oblivion and be severed
+from the present; she will not admit that they are dead, they are but
+asleep. Witikind under the Siegberg in Westphalia, Charlemagne in the
+lowest rooms of his old castle at Nuremberg. There--and not, as might
+have been imagined, in Aix-la-Chapelle--the mighty old {382}Emperor
+rests majestically, surrounded by his brave champions, ready to awake
+again whenever God shall be pleased to tell him that the moment has
+come.
+
+As for Frederick Barbarossa, he sleeps in the Kyffhauser, one of the
+porphyry and granite mountains of the Taunus, and so do others; there is
+no denying the fact, for they have been seen!
+
+A few years after his disappearance from this world, Frederick showed
+himself upon the summit of one of these mountains, whenever the sound of
+a musical instrument was heard in the valley. Knowing his love of music,
+the Philharmonic Societies of Erfurth and of other towns to this day,
+are fond of serenading the old warrior.
+
+It is said that one evening, when the clock at Tilleda struck midnight,
+certain musicians who had ascended the Kyffhauser, suddenly saw the
+mountain open and a number of women adorned with jewels and carrying
+torches, came out of the opening. They beckoned to them, the men
+followed, continuing to play on their instruments and thus they came
+where the Emperor was. The latter ordered a good supper to be served,
+and when they were ready to leave again, the fair ladies of the court
+escorted them back, with their torches in their hands, and at the last
+moment gave to each of them a poplar branch. The poor musicians had
+{383}hoped for better things from the Emperor’s generosity, and when
+they reached the foot of the mountain, they threw their branches into
+the road, very indignant at having been so badly treated. Only one among
+the number kept his branch, and when he reached home, carefully stuck it
+by the side of the consecrated bunch of box which hung over the head of
+his bed. Immediately, O marvel! each leaf of the poplar branch changed
+into a gold ducat. When the others heard of this, they hastened to look
+for their branches, but they never found them again.
+
+On another occasion a shepherd--others say a miner--met on the
+Kyffhäuser a monk with a white beard, who unceremoniously and just as
+if he had asked him to come and see his next door neighbor, told him
+to come with him and see the Emperor Barbarossa, who wanted to speak
+to him. At first the poor shepherd was dumb-founded; then he began to
+tremble in all his limbs. The monk, however, reassured him and led him
+into a narrow, dark valley, and then, striking the ground three times
+with his rod, he said: “Open! open! open!”
+
+Thereupon a great noise arose beneath the feet of the monk and the
+shepherd; the earth seemed to quake and then a large opening became
+visible. They found they were in a long gallery, lighted up {384}by a
+single lamp and closed at the other end by folding doors of brass. The
+monk, who no doubt was a magician, knocked three times at the door with
+his rod, saying again: “Open! open! open!” and the brass doors turned
+upon their hinges, producing the same noise which they had heard before
+underground.
+
+They were now in a grotto, whose ceiling and walls, blackened by the
+smoke of an immense number of torches, seemed to be hung with black as
+a sign of mourning. It might have been taken for a mortuary chapel, only
+there was no coffin or catafalque visible. The shepherd had, in the
+mean time, begun to tremble once more, but the monk repeated his summons
+before a silver door, which thereupon opened in the same manner as the
+brass door.
+
+In a magnificent room lighted but dimly and in such a manner that it
+was impossible to tell where the light came from, they saw the Emperor
+Frederick, seated upon a golden throne, with a golden crown on his
+head; as they entered he gently inclined his head, contracting his bushy
+eyebrows. His long red beard had grown through the table before him and
+fell down to the ground.
+
+Turning, not without visible effort, towards the shepherd, he spoke to
+him for some time on different subjects and recommended to him to repeat
+{385}what he heard to his friends at home. His voice was feeble, but it
+grew strong and sonorous as soon as he alluded to the glory of Germany.
+Then he said:--
+
+“Are the ravens still flying over the mountains?”
+
+“Yes!” replied the shepherd.
+
+“Are the dead trees still hanging over the abysses of the Kyffhâuser as
+in former days?”
+
+“Who could uproot them, unless it be a great storm?”
+
+“Has no one spoken to you of the reappearance of the old woman?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Well then, I must sleep another hundred years!”
+
+He made a sign to the shepherd that he could go, and then fell asleep,
+murmuring the name of a woman which died on his lips.
+
+For among these great Sleepers of Germany there is also a woman, but a
+woman rather of symbolic than real existence. What is the difference?
+Tradition gives the following account of her:--
+
+When Witikind was beaten by Charlemagne at Engter, a poor old woman,
+unable to follow him in his flight, uttered lamentable cries and thus
+added to the panic among the defeated army. When the {386}soldiers
+obeyed Witikind’s orders and stopped for a moment in the heat of their
+flight, they threw a mass of sand and rock upon the old woman. They did
+not expect that she would die when thus buried alive; their commander
+had told them: “She will come back!”
+
+This old woman, who is to come back, is Teutonia, and it was her name
+that Frederick Barbarossa was murmuring to himself as he fell asleep
+for another century.
+
+When the old woman shall have succeeded in extricating herself from
+this mass of sand and rock which weighs her down, then and then only
+the great day will come. The heroes who now are held captive in their
+mountains and subterranean grottoes, will shake off the torpor of their
+long sleep; they will reappear among their people, the dead trees will
+bear new foliage to proclaim their return by a miracle, and the cry of:
+Teutonia! Teutonia! will resound in a thousand valleys, and the birds
+even will repeat the name!
+
+They say that when this long wished for day does come, Germany will be
+freed of all her difficulties, and will boast of having but one
+creed, one law, and one heart; she will be glorious and free, one and
+indivisible!
+
+We must wait for the birds to tell us so, before we believe it. {387}At
+that time Teutonia and her emperors were alike asleep. They mention a
+peasant woman from Mayence, who on her way home became so exhausted and
+unable to bear the heat of the sun, that she had to seek shelter in an
+isolated house, standing by the wayside in the midst of a plantation of
+young trees. It was a dwelling of a skillful magician. She asked him for
+leave to rest there a few moments. As he was in the midst of some of
+his most abstruse calculations, he only replied by nodding his head, and
+glanced with his eye at a bench in the most distant part of the room.
+She went and sat down, but only on the edge, hardly knowing if she was
+allowed to do so or not; every moment she got up to ask her host if she
+disturbed him, and if she had not better leave him, tired and exhausted
+as she was. She told him that she would much rather endure the heat and
+the fatigue, than be a burden to him, she begged him not to mind her and
+to go on just as if she were not there, and a host of similar phrases.
+
+Annoyed by her incessant, idle talk, the magician suddenly turned round
+and fixedly looked her full in the face. Immediately she fell asleep.
+(There was no doubt some knowledge of magnetism already in the world
+at that time, but as yet only of magic magnetism). When the good woman
+awoke, {388}she was alone; her host had left her. To her great regret
+she was compelled to leave without being able to thank him for his
+hospitality in her usual profuse manner, and to beg him to excuse her
+falling asleep, when he did her the honor of keeping her company.
+
+As she left the house, she was not a little surprised to see around the
+house, not a copse of young trees, but a number of tall pine trees and
+noble oaks, but she thought it possible she might have left by another
+door than that by which she had entered.
+
+When she at last reached her village, new surprises were in store for
+her. Of all the good people whom she met on her way or whom she saw
+standing in the doors of their houses, she could not recognize a single
+one; she had to look a long time before she found her own house, and
+when she reached it at last, it was inhabited by strange people, who in
+spite of her protestations, pushed her out and treated her as mad.
+
+Then followed a lawsuit, the result of which was to prove, that instead
+of sleeping an hour or so on that bench, as she believed, she had been
+asleep there a hundred years. Thus the young saplings had had time to
+grow up into large trees and her house to change masters. The
+strangers who were now living in it and who had turned her out so
+{389}unceremoniously, were nothing less than her great grandchildren.
+
+I hope, however, the matter was settled amicably.
+
+The Germans have, with that perseverance which characterizes the nation,
+preserved all that could be preserved of their ancient gods as well as
+of their former heroes; they do not like to lose anything, only they
+did not embalm their favorites, but used enchantment. Let us, however,
+notice at once for the honor of the gods, that they were never condemned
+to sleep indefinitely. Not one of them is found among the great
+Sleepers, such as Charlemagne, Witikind, Frederick I., William Tell, or
+the peasant woman, from the neighborhood of Mayence. It is true, they
+were exiled to certain remote districts, which they were not allowed to
+leave, but they could at least move about and continue their former mode
+of life there, after a fashion.
+
+It is not so very long since certain charcoal burners protested that
+they had seen Asa-Thor, for want of giants to combat, hurl his hammer
+against the tallest trees, which he broke and uprooted.
+
+They had also seen the enchanted hunt of Diana, whose deep-mouthed dogs
+bark at night and disturb the slumbers of honest people in {390}Bohemian
+villages. Who has not heard of the intrigues of old Venus, not with
+her former, classic lover, the god Mars, but with the good knight
+Tannhäuser? If we are to believe Heinrich
+
+Heine, even Jupiter has been recently discovered again in one of the
+Norwegian islands.
+
+[Illustration: 410]
+
+It would be the height of imprudence, of course, to undertake an account
+of the discovery, after such a master. I shall, therefore, be content to
+present a mere summary of this remarkable tradition.
+
+There is an island in the Northern seas, which is bordered by icebergs
+and arid mountains: the valleys are dim and dark with heavy mists, the
+mountain tops are covered with snow for nine months of the year.
+
+Here, one dismal morning, some travellers landed, driven by a tempest
+much more than by their own free will. They were mostly savants, members
+of great academies from Stockholm and St. Petersburg, who had undertaken
+a voyage of discovery to the polar regions. The arid, almost {391}bare
+soil did not promise a pleasant resting place, but the mountain slopes
+towards the south produced fine grass and dwarf gooseberry bushes, and
+the immense number of holes in the ground, together with distinct traces
+of debris left at the openings, proved that the island was at all
+events inhabited by countless numbers of rabbits. Of other animal life,
+however, no trace could be found.
+
+Rabbits seemed to be the only inhabitants of the island, and that was
+tempting enough for poor sailors who had for some time been put on salt
+rations.
+
+Our savants prepared, therefore, a large number of traps and snares,
+when suddenly a fierce tempest of snow and hail broke out, and compelled
+them instantly to seek refuge in a spacious cave which opened in that
+direction.
+
+They were not a little surprised to find here an old man, bald, hollow
+cheeked, and pale, whose body was emaciated and decrepit and who was
+hardly clothed in spite of the rigor of the climate. But beneath all
+these signs of extreme old age, and great destitution, the stranger
+displayed an air of authority, and on his serene and lofty brow such
+supernatural majesty, that the travellers were filled with respect and
+reverence, and well-nigh trembled at his appearance. {392}An eagle of
+the largest variety, but so reduced that he looked the mere skeleton
+of a bird, and with faded and disheveled plumage, sat in a corner, the
+picture of misery, with his dull eyes and his drooping wings. He was the
+old man’s sole companion.
+
+The two hermits, having no other means of subsistence, lived by hunting,
+and the old man found in addition, means to carry on a modest traffic
+in the furs of the only game that the island contained; he laid up large
+supplies of the small peltry and exchanged it for luxuries.....
+
+But my pen refuses to go on. I cannot reconcile it to my principles as
+an author nor to my conscience as an honest student of genuine myths, to
+repeat here a story, which is altogether apocryphal, and which belongs
+much less to tradition than to mystification.
+
+Now, this old man was Jupiter, and as I think it over, I come to the
+conclusion that Mr. Heine, who laughs at the most serious things, has
+skillfully concealed his irony under the cloak of an interesting story,
+for the mere purpose of telling us that the Chief of the Gods, dread
+Jupiter, has become--a dealer in rabbit skins!
+
+I cannot follow his example.
+
+Without wandering from my subject, for I am still speaking of false
+gods, I will substitute for {393}this necessarily much curtailed
+account, another story which I can warrant as authentic.
+
+“In Persia,” we are told by Count Gobineau, in a recently published
+book of great merit, “the _Soufys,_ that is to say the savants and
+philosophers, reject all dogmatic religion and believe in the reunion of
+the soul with God in trances only. When this union is complete, the soul
+is transformed and becomes itself a participant in the nature of the
+uncreated essence, and Man is God.” Human folly is always a disease
+produced by human pride.
+
+France, also, has produced a few gods of that kind; I do not mean to
+mention them, however, as belonging to the myths of the Rhine, which
+have special reference to Germany only. But among the Germans, also,
+there is a school of philosophers who without going as far as the
+Persians go, are utterly incredulous, and disregarding trances
+and immortal souls alike, have finally denied the existence of God
+altogether and made themselves gods. This shows how anxious savants as
+well as ignorant men are, in that beautiful country, to people the earth
+with deities of every kind!
+
+It is the history of one of these earth-born gods which I propose to
+give here, before I close this long chapter. Alas! he is dead now, and
+that is a great pity; but he did live once; on that essential point
+there is no lack of evidence. I could even, {394}like the Thuringian
+peasants when speaking of Frederick Barbarossa, say: “I have seen him!”
+
+In the year 1800 there was born in Düsseldorf, in Prussia, a child in a
+Jewish family recently converted to Christianity. This child might well
+have been looked upon as of supernatural origin, so entirely different
+was it, from its earliest days, from all that had ever been seen before.
+Martin Luther no doubt, if the child had been one of his own, would have
+pronounced him to be a Killecroff.
+
+He was not only noisy and troublesome, but he was also a pedant; he
+snubbed professors and listened to the advice of very young children.
+When his parents scolded him, he only laughed at them; when a grave
+event disturbed a neighbor’s household, he laughed; when the French took
+his native city, he laughed; in fine he was always laughing.
+
+However, as he grew up, he gorged himself with logic, with mathematics,
+with Greek and Latin and Hebrew and all kinds of good things besides.
+He became even a philosopher before he was of age, but his philosophy
+consisted mainly in a sarcastic laugh. When they spoke to him of the
+position he might occupy in Düsseldorf, and of the wealth he might
+acquire, his only answer was a grimace.
+
+A rabbi spread out before him heaps of gold, {395}promising to give him
+that and more, if he would be his slave only for a few years; he refused
+to listen to him. As he was a vain man, the demon of Fame endeavored to
+tempt him, but he laughed in his face.
+
+At last the devil, a real devil, I am sure (his name was George William
+Frederick Schlegel) whispered into his ear: “Would you like to be a
+god?”
+
+This time our young philosopher did not laugh. He became a god, and,
+from official jealousy, proceeded to deny the great God in Heaven until
+he lost all human sentiments. He lived alone, friendless, childless,
+without a family and giving up even his mother country, finding that
+everything had to be done over again in this world, which he had not
+created.
+
+After leaving Germany he came to France, and here in France he laughed
+louder and bitterer than ever. In France they did not believe in his
+divinity; they did not worship him, but they loved him as if he had been
+a simple mortal; in France he made friends and he became like other men
+once more. Finally, as he was after all bad only in his wit, he became
+voluntarily a convert as he saw the evil fruit of his teachings. He
+took a wife to himself with the sanction of the Church, and he died
+a believer. {396}This ex-god was called Heinrich Heine, that Heinrich
+Heine, who laughed so bitterly at his ex-colleague, Jupiter, and spoke of
+him as a dealer in rabbit skins.
+
+[Illustration: 416]
+
+[Illustration: 419]
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+{399}Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women and Serpent
+Women.--_Children’s Myths.--Godmothers.--Fairies.--The Magic Wand and
+the Broomstick.--The Lady of Kynast.--The World of the Dead,’ the World
+of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.--Myths of Animals._
+
+Well? Have you seen enough of the gods and demigods of Germany, of the
+Nixen and goblins, the Kobolds, the giants, and the dwarfs? Have I shown
+you enough of this vast storehouse of human folly? I must confess, it
+makes me melancholy to speak of all this, and I feel an urgent desire to
+“shut up shop.”
+
+The conscientious collector of myths, who has more material than he can
+manage, and sees new myths continually rising before him, is not unlike
+those learned physicians who spend their lives among crowds of insane
+people. A fever of imitation seizes them and soon they begin to wander
+like their patients.
+
+Perhaps I have reached that point myself without becoming aware of it.
+The reader must judge for himself.
+
+My mind, filled with myths, symbols, and eccentricities, is ready to ask
+for mercy, and still I feel it, there are some things yet to be done.
+For instance, I recollect having promised to give a completion of the
+history of the Druidesses, that is to say, of women, those myth-like
+beings by eminence! That kind of instinctive sense, that delicacy of
+almost intuitive perceptions which distinguished them from the other
+sex in its material coarseness, could not fail to give them easily the
+advantage over men. In Celtic lands as in Scandinavia they were the
+models of all virtues, the oracles of the house. They were occasionally
+beaten, {401}it is true, but they were also grandly honored, and in
+Germany especially people burnt incense before them, long before they
+smoked tobacco in their presence.
+
+[Illustration: 421]
+
+{403}At the time when Christianity came, the women played a prominent
+and truly glorious part there; all the historians bear witness. Between
+the fourth and the sixth century Fritigill, Queen of the Marcomanni,
+Clotilda, Queen of France, and Bertha. Queen of England, had compelled
+their husbands to bow down before the Cross, and not by witchcraft, as
+the pagans wickedly maintained, but simply by persuasion. Other women,
+who belonged to noble families or to the common people at large, a
+Krimhild, a Thekla, and a Liobat, assisted the missionaries in their
+dangerous enterprise and actually helped them in cutting down the sacred
+oak trees.
+
+What had become, during these long continued persecutions, of you, fair
+Gann, noble Aurinia, majestic Velleda, and of your sisters, the other
+Druidesses?
+
+They were wandering about in dark forests, proscribed and weeping over
+their departed glory; they concealed themselves in remote places where
+the agents of the civil power but rarely appeared. Sometimes, of an
+evening, they would venture forth, approach a belated traveller on a
+cross-road, and {404}hold with him mysterious converse. Sometimes,
+also, the inhabitants of a village, or even of a larger place, would go
+secretly to their well chosen hiding places to consult them on the good
+or evil chances of their prospects in life, or on an epidemic that was
+attacking their cattle. Some people, and among them not unfrequently
+recent converts, who were still strongly imbued with their former creed,
+would ask them to name their new-born infants and thus to bring them
+good luck. Hence they were at first known as _Godmothers_, and at a
+later time as _Fairies_.
+
+It was naturally supposed that like the ancient fairies of the East,
+these women also derived their power from the stars, for why else should
+they have been met so constantly on the mountain slopes, when the moon
+was shining brightly, or slipping suddenly from behind a rock or a tree,
+where will-o’-the-wisps and fireflies alone were in the habit of being
+about?
+
+Among these fairies many were kind and naturally benevolent; others, no
+doubt embittered by their fate, appeared irascible and ill disposed. Woe
+to the men, or even the cattle upon whom they cast an evil eye!
+
+This evil influence could be averted only by the assistance of another
+fairy, a good one in this case, who relieved you more or less promptly
+by means {405}of a talisman, a constellated stone, or certain words
+possessed of magic power.
+
+Now, if we add to these godmothers, to these godchildren, to good and
+bad fairies, the terrible Ogres, whose very name filled the people of
+those days with terror, you will know all the mysterious personages
+which appear in the myths of children and which we have all known in our
+early days.
+
+If we were to examine these legends and traditions more carefully, we
+should no doubt easily find “Bluebeard” again among the old burggraves
+of the Rhine, as “Puss in Boots” has already been discovered there. “The
+Sleeping Beauty” might very well be the peasant woman who had slept a
+century under the influence of magic magnetism, and why should not our
+little dwarf Kreiss and his brothers have furnished the first idea
+of little Tom Thumb, with Quadragant to play the part of the ogre? In
+“Cinderella” we might with the same readiness recognize one of the three
+Undine sisters, who forgot amid the delights of the evening assembly,
+that their furlough was out at ten o’clock? The same would apply, no
+doubt, to many others who lived under the influence of wicked Nichus or
+evil disposed fairies.
+
+Poor Druidesses! If you had at least survived as fairies! If they had
+met you only in the air travelling simply by the aid of your magic wand!
+{406}But in proportion as Christianity increased, your power necessarily
+decreased.
+
+[Illustration: 426]
+
+The day came at last, when they dared transform you into fortune
+tellers, and finally into accursed witches! Then your enchantress’ wand
+became that atrocious broomstick upon which you travelled through
+the air on your way to the witches’ Sabbath! Oh misery! Oh
+{407}wretchedness! What a fatal overthrow of all earthly glory and
+grandeur!
+
+When the women thus saw their power of ruling men by prophetic
+inspiration slip away from them, they one fine day determined to change
+their tactics, their ways and manners, and, I am sorry to have to say
+it, almost their sex! They assumed the noisy and truculent manners of
+their brothers and husbands and affected violent exercises, riding on
+horseback, wrestling, and even fighting in battles. This was the age of
+bullying women, of _Strong Women_ in fact.
+
+When they were young ladies they would admit no lover who could not
+prove his affections by the most perilous adventures and impossible
+enterprises. Such was the case with the famous Lady of Kynast.
+
+She owned a large domain and on this domain a ruined old tower which
+stood on the summit of a steep, high rock, surrounded on all sides by a
+deep abyss.
+
+Rich, young, and beautiful, eagerly sought for by a number of admirers,
+she did not think, in her desire to keep them from becoming too
+pressing, of undertaking an endless piece of embroidery like Penelope.
+She did not embroider; in fact, she looked with contempt, and almost
+with disgust, upon every kind of work that was done by women. {408}She
+told her lovers that she was betrothed to Ky-nast--this was the name of
+the old tower--and that any one who thought of winning her good will,
+would first have to compete with her betrothed. To do this, nothing
+was required but to climb up the rock and the tower, and after having
+reached the battlements, to make a complete round, not on foot, however,
+and assisted by the hands and knees, but on horseback, without other
+assistance than the bridle.
+
+The flock of lovers took flight instantly; only two remained. They were
+two brothers, bereft of reason by the strength of their passion.
+
+After having cast lots, the first one attempted the task and at first
+he was successful. But that was all. He had no sooner reached the
+crenelated top of the old tower, unaccompanied by his less active
+courser, than he was seized with vertigo and fell instantly into the
+abyss.
+
+The second brother, in his turn, climbed up to the top and actually
+succeeded in riding some length along the battlements; but soon his
+horse, feeling the stones slipping from under its hoofs, and the whole
+tower rocking under the weight, refused to go on. To return was as
+impossible as to proceed.{409}
+
+[Illustration: 429]
+
+{411}The knight, determined to carry through the undertaking in which he
+was engaged, encouraged his horse with his voice and with his spurs,
+but the poor animal remained immovable, apparently wedged in between
+the large stones of the tower. At last, knight and horse disappeared
+together; the abyss swallowed up their bleeding, mangled remains.
+
+The Lady of Kynast could not disguise her delight and her pride as
+she received the congratulations of her noble neighbors; all the great
+ladies thought of having a Kynast, or a similar trap, in which they
+might catch’ and try their lovers.
+
+No other claimants, however, appeared to woo this fair lady, who was so
+well protected by her betrothed. The poor damsel felt rather aggrieved
+by this neglect. She was by no means satisfied with having sacrificed
+only two young men to her pride; she was gradually becoming soured and
+ill-tempered, when at last a third lover presented himself and asked
+leave to attempt the trial.
+
+She did not know who it was, and this surprised her; for how could he
+have fallen in love with her? He might possibly have seen her on her
+balcony, or at some royal feast; perhaps he was only allured by her
+great reputation. However, there was nothing to lose by accepting his
+offer. At best, he was only one more victim to be added to the list;
+that was all. At that time women were ferocious.
+
+For some days a thick, heavy fog had shrouded {412}the castle and
+the old tower from top to bottom, so as to make the ascent utterly
+impossible.
+
+The simple laws of hospitality, required, therefore, that the lady
+should offer her castle to the newly arrived knight.
+
+The latter was handsome and of fine figure; his features beamed with
+bravery and intelligence; his white, delicate hands, exquisitely shaped,
+proved sufficiently that he was of noble descent; and his large retinue
+bespoke his high rank and large fortune. During three days he spent
+almost all his time with the young lady, but as yet he had not dared say
+a word of his love. She, however, felt herself gradually conquered by a
+feeling which had, until now, been unknown to her heart.
+
+When the dense veil of mist was at length torn aside, and the Kynast
+shone forth in its full splendor, she was on the point of telling the
+knight that she would not insist on the trial in his case; but what
+would her good friends, the noble ladies of the neighborhood, have said?
+
+When the moment came, the Lady of Kynast felt her heart fail her. She
+shut herself in, she wept, she cried, and although little given to
+prayers generally, she besought God to do a miracle in behalf of her
+knight. She could, however, hope very little from such a miracle, for in
+the meantime, loud clamors had been heard below, and as {413}she surely
+thought the spectators were bewailing the death of her last lover, she
+fainted away.
+
+[Illustration: 433]
+
+{415} Cries of joy and of triumph roused her again; the knight had
+successfully accomplished the task. Quite overcome, she rushes to meet
+him, and in her intense excitement and the depth of her passion, she
+forgets that all eyes are upon her, and breathlessly cries out: “My hand
+is yours.”
+
+But he draws himself up to his full height, and, haughtily and harshly
+he replies with a withering smile:--
+
+“Have I ever asked you for your hand? I only came to avenge my two
+brothers, whom you have killed, and I have done it, for I do not love
+you, and you love me! Very well! Now you can die of your love, or of
+your shame, as you like it! Farewell, I am going back to Margaret, my
+darling, my wife!”
+
+The same evening the wretched lady had herself hoisted up to the top
+of the tower, from whence she wished, as she said, to watch the setting
+sun.
+
+But before the sun had sunk below the horizon, she had rejoined her
+victims at the foot of the ruined old tower.
+
+Thus the Kynast obtained possession of his betrothed.
+
+The story might furnish an admirable plot for a grand opera. But, upon
+reflection, I think it would {416}suit a circus better, for there are in
+it three first-class parts for horses.
+
+The Lady of Kynast was a strong minded woman, rather than a really
+strong woman; but there were others, who really distinguished themselves
+by extraordinary physical strength. It would seem that the habit of
+taking violent exercise had finally developed their muscles and sinews
+to such a degree, that few men could be found strong enough to overcome
+them in a wrestling match, or in armed combat.
+
+Such was the noble Brunehilt, queen of Isenstein, in Norway.
+
+_Soothsayers, Godmothers, Fairies, Strong Women, and Serpent Women_ are
+not the only women of this class which we ought to mention here perhaps.
+We might also speak of the _Swan Women_, who floated on the water in
+the dim morning mist, clothed in a cloak of eider down; and the _Forest
+Woman_, who was honored every year by the burning of a spindle full of
+hemp, to keep her from doing any harm; and the _Water Sneezers,_ to whom
+you had to say three times “God bless you!” in order to save their souls
+from purgatory; and the little _Moss Gatherers_, who could not escape
+from their enemies, the Forest Woman and the Wild Huntsman, unless a
+benevolent charcoal burner would mark some trees with three crosses,
+behind {417}which they could conceal themselves. But we must make haste
+to conclude.
+
+However, as the great _Wild Huntsman_ has accidentally been mentioned,
+we do not think it would be fair to leave him out and pass him over in
+silence.
+
+[Illustration: 437]
+
+He is the Lord Hackelberg. Most imprudently he had begged God to allow
+him to exchange his place in heaven for the right to hunt upon earth for
+all time to come. To punish him, God granted {418}his prayer, and ever
+since he has been hunting, with horns blowing and dogs barking, without
+respite or repose. He hunts continually, day and night, to-day as
+yesterday; he must hunt to-morrow as he does to-day, and yet he must
+hunt the same deer, which forever escapes from him, and ever will
+escape.
+
+Which of the two is most to be pitied, the everlasting huntsman, or the
+everlasting game?
+
+How many others could claim a right to be mentioned here as well as he?
+
+These are the people who are _condemned to remain standing forever_, and
+those who are _condemned to dance forever,_ another variety of bewitched
+people.
+
+You do not think my material is all used up? By no means! In the first
+place, I might have told you all about mythological animals; of Thor’s
+_buck-goat_, which enjoyed the same privilege as the boar of the
+Walhalla, of daily satisfying the powerful appetite of its master and
+his guests, and yet being replaced in all its bodily fullness, provided
+only care had been taken to put all the bones aside.
+
+I might have gone back to give a fuller account of that famous
+Iormungandur, the great sea serpent, which still exists in our
+days--who dares doubt it? The crew of an English vessel, passengers,
+{419}officers, and sailors, have unanimously testified in a legally
+drawn up deposition that they have met it quite recently in the Northern
+seas. What more evidence do you want?
+
+And the _Kraken_, that most marvelous of all cetaceans, which could
+easily be mistaken for a habitable island, and on which imprudent
+navigators once really landed, erecting their tents and saying mass,
+without its ever stirring, until they hoisted anchors, when the animal
+for the first time gave signs of life?
+
+And the _Griffins_, those perfect symbols of avarice, who are all the
+time busily engaged in dragging forth from underground vast heaps of
+gold and precious stones, merely in order to guard and defend them
+ever afterwards, at the peril of their lives, although the gold and
+the jewels are of no use to any one? And Sleipner, Odin’s _eight-legged
+horse_, and the dog _Garm_, etc?
+
+Passing on to another variety of zoological marvels, I might have
+mentioned the _Salmon,_ whose scaly skin wicked Loki assumed as a
+disguise in order to escape from the wrath of the gods after Balder’s
+death. And that marvelous _Sturgeon_ in the Rhine, which the French
+legends have put to good profit. Let us pause a moment in contemplation
+of this wonderful fish.
+
+A young, noble lady determined, in order to save {420}her honor, to
+destroy her beauty, the grandest, most heroic, and most calamitous
+sacrifice that can possibly be made. Hence, when the moment for action
+arrived, her courage failed her. But if she could not bear the idea
+of becoming ugly, she could at least mutilate herself. So she puts her
+dagger upon the ledge of a window which overlooked the Rhine, seizes a
+hatchet, and with a single blow cuts off her hand, which falls into
+the river, and then with the bleeding stump terrifies her infamous
+persecutor. Here the sturgeon makes its appearance. This providential
+sturgeon has seen the hand drop into the river; it swallows it with
+well-known voracity, but in the anticipation of restoring it, seven
+years later, uninjured to the true owner, and thus to prove her
+superhuman virtue. And this really happened seven years after the
+occurrence in Rome, in the presence of the Pope and his assembled
+Cardinals.
+
+At first sight it does not appear quite clear, how the sturgeon could
+have passed from the waters of the Rhine into those of the Tiber, but in
+this kind of stories there is no use in trying to comprehend everything.
+
+The noble lady and the sturgeon have furnished the theme for the
+famous novel, “La Manekine,” and later, in the Middle Ages, for a
+great dramatic mystery on the French stage. {421}Before concluding this
+chapter, I may be allowed to say a word about the _World of the Dead_,
+which sends in certain consecrated nights its representatives to some of
+the churches, or to silent dinners, and about the _World of Ghosts_,
+the annals of which have been collected, and the laws of which have been
+explained by Jung Stilling and Kerner.
+
+[Illustration: 441]
+
+These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men, walk, run, and even
+jump, but they have no power over material objects; they cannot move
+a table, a chair, or even a straw. All their united efforts would
+not succeed in causing the light of a candle {422}to flicker. We can
+therefore feel perfectly easy with regard to these ghosts; they cannot
+injure our furniture, nor draw the knot of our cravat inconveniently
+tight, if they should take a fancy to make an end of us.
+
+Nor can I keep altogether silence as to the _World of Shadows_, still
+dimmer and less perceptible than the World of Ghosts. I shall therefore
+content myself with a single instance, which we owe to a Dutch legend.
+The master bell-ringer of the city of Haarlem, caught at a tavern by his
+wife escaped with such extraordinary rapidity that his shadow was unable
+to follow him, and remained hanging on the wall--a fact duly certified
+by the signature and seal of the reigning burgomaster, the aldermen, and
+other notables of said town.
+
+In spite of such overwhelming evidence one might be disposed to doubt
+the authenticity of this remarkable occurrence, which Hoffmann, I
+believe, has used in one of his Tales; but had not long before Hoffmann,
+and long before the master bell-ringer of Haarlem even, the god Fô left
+his shadow in some town of Hindustan, instead of his card? We try in
+vain to find anything new under the sun; all our most famous myths and
+all our most amusing anecdotes have travelled all over India before they
+reached us.
+
+I might also tell you.... but he who tells {423}everything, says too
+much. Let us here pause once more, and for the last time. Farewell,
+reader, and may Heaven keep you sound in body and soul.{424}
+
+[Illustration: 443]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Rhine, by X. B. Saintine
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diff --git a/44430-0.zip b/44430-0.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Rhine, by X. B. Saintine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Myths of the Rhine
+
+Author: X. B. Saintine
+
+Illustrator: Gustave Dor�
+
+Translator: M. Schele De Vere
+
+Release Date: December 14, 2013 [EBook #44430]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYTHS OF THE RHINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MYTHS OF THE RHINE
+
+Translated from the French of X. B. Saintine
+
+By Prof. M. Schele De Vere, LL. D.
+
+Illustrated by Gustave Dor�
+
+Scribner, Armstrong, and Company
+
+1874
+
+
+
+
+DESCRIPTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+I.
+
+Primitive Times.--The First Settlers on the Rhine.--Masters going to
+School.--Sanskrit and Breton.--An Idle God.--Microscopic Deities.--Tree
+Worship.--Birth-Trees and Death-Trees.....001
+
+II.
+
+The Druids and their Creed.--Esus.--The Holy Oak.--The Pforzheim Lime
+Tree.--A Rival Plant.--The Mistletoe and the Anguinufh.--The Oracle
+at Do-dona.--Immaculate Horses.--The Druidesses.--A late
+Elector.--Philanthropic Institution of Human Sacrifices.--Second
+Druidical. Epoch.....025
+
+III.
+
+A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.--The Two Banks of the
+Rhine.--Druid Stones.--Weddings and Burials.--Night Service.--A Demigod
+Glacier.--Social Duels.--A Countrywoman of Aspasia.--Boudoir of a Celtic
+Lady.--The Bard's Story.--Teutons and Titans.--Earthquake.....053
+
+IV.
+
+The Roman Gods invade Germany.--Drusus and the Dru-idess.--Ogmius,
+the Hercules of Gaul.--Great Philological Discovery concerning
+Tent�tes.--Transformations of every kind.--Irmensul.--The Rhine
+deified.--The Gods cross the River.--Druids of the Third Epoch.....089
+
+V.
+
+The World before and since Odin.--Birth of Ymer.--The Giants of the
+Frost.--A Log split in Two.--The First Man and the First Woman.--The
+Ash Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.--Thor's Three Jewels.--Freyr's Enchanted
+Sword.--A Souvenir of the National Guard of Belleville.--The Story of
+Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.--Honey and Blood.--Invocation.....119
+
+VI.
+
+Short Biographies.--A Clairvoyant among the Gods.--A Bright God.--Tyr
+and the Wolf Fenris.--The Hospital at the Walhalla.--Why was Odin
+one-eyed.--The Three Norns.--Mimer the Sage.--A Goddess the Mother
+of Four Oxen.--The Love Affairs of Heimdall--The God with the Golden
+Teeth.....151
+
+VII.
+
+Heaven and Hell.--The Valkyrias.--Amusements in Walhalla.--Pork and Wild
+Boar.--A Frozen Hell.--Balder's Death.--Frigg's Devotion.--The Iron Tree
+Forest.--The Twilight of the Gods.--Iduna's Apples.--The Fall of Heaven
+and the End of the World.--Reflections on that Event.--The Little
+Fellow still alive.....17
+
+VIII.
+
+How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time
+between one World and another.--How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.--How
+Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the
+Indians.--How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God
+Buddha.--About Mahabarata and Ramavana.--Chronology.--The World's
+Age.--Comparative Tables.--Quotations.--Supporting Evidence.--A
+Cenotaph.....209
+
+IX.
+
+Confederation of all the Northern Gods.--Freedom of
+Religion.--Christianity.--Miserere mei!--Homeric Enumeration.--Prussian,
+Slavic, and Finnish Deities.--The God of Cherries and the God of
+Bees.--A Silver Woman.--Ilmarinnen's Wedding Song.--A Skeleton
+God.--Yaga-Baba's Pestle and Mortar.--Preparation for Battle.--The
+Little Chapel on the Hill.--The Signal for the Attack.--Jesus and
+Mary.....215
+
+X.
+
+Marietta and the Sweet-briar.--Esus and Jesus.--Amalgam.--A
+Neophyte.--Prohibition to eat Horseflesh.--Bishops in
+Arms.--Interruption.--Come Home, my Good Friend!--Prussia and the
+Myths of the Middle Ages.--Tybilinus, the Black God.--The little Blue
+Flower.....243
+
+XI.
+
+Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.--Sylphs, their Amusements
+and Domestic Arrangements.--Little Queen Mab.--Will-o'-the-
+Wisps.--White Elves and Black Elves.--True Causes of Natural
+Somnambulism.--The Wind's Betrothed.--Fire-damp.--Master
+Haemmerling.--The Last of the Gnomes.....261
+
+XII.
+
+Elementary Spirits of the Water.--Petrarch at Cologne.--Divine Judgment
+by Water.--Nixen and Undines.--A Furlough till Ten o'clock.--The
+White footed Undine.--Mysteries on the Rhine.--The Court of the Great
+Nichus.--Nixcobt, the Messenger of the Dead.--His Funny Tricks.--I go in
+Search of an Undine.....281
+
+XIII.
+
+Familiar Spirits.--Butzemann.--The Good Frau Holle.--Kobolds.--A Kobold
+in the Cook's Employ.--Zot-terais and the Little White Ladies.--The
+Killecroffs, the Devil's Children.--White Angels.--Granted Wishes, a
+Fable.....307
+
+XIV.
+
+Giants and Dwarfs.--Duel between Ephesim and Gromme-lund.--Court Dwarfs
+and Little Dwarfs.--Ymer's Sons.--The Invisible Reapers.--Story of the
+Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragaat.--How the Giants came to serve the
+Dwarfs.....333
+
+XV.
+
+Wizards and the Bewitched.--The Journey of Asa-Thor and his
+Companions.--The Inn with the Five Passages.--Skrymner.--A Lost Glove
+found again.--Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.--Combat between
+Thor and the King's Nurse.--Frederick Barbarossa and the
+Kyffh�user.--Teutonia! Teutonia!--What became of the Ancient
+Gods.--Venus and the good Knight Tannh�user.--Jupiter on Rabbit
+Island.--A Modern God.....369
+
+XVI.
+
+Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women, and Serpent
+Women.--Children's Myths.--Godmothers.--Fairies.--The Magic Wand and the
+Broomstick.--The Lady of Kynast.--The World of the Dead, the World of
+Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.--Myths of Animals.....397
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+   Father Rhine....................................................003
+
+   The impassive historian ........................................004
+
+   Vast forests as old as the world ...............................005
+
+   The first pioneers..............................................007
+
+   The Celts were a people from India..............................009
+
+   What happy people scholars are..................................010
+
+   A horrible custom...............................................019
+
+   Dead man's trees................................................022
+
+   The Druids now appear for the first time in Germany.............023
+
+   Their creed must be judged by their rites.......................027
+
+   The other chieftains were generally polygamists.................031
+
+   Courts of justice were always held under an elm tree............032
+
+   Attempt to murder the mayor ....................................033
+
+   Mistletoe an officinal and sacred plant.........................035
+
+   Gauls...........................................................037
+
+   Serpents' knots.................................................039
+
+   Prophetic trembling and neighing................................041
+
+   A Druid teacher ................................................044
+
+   The Germans were in full flight ................................046
+
+   The bloody knife of the Druids .................................052
+
+   I turn my steps from the sacred precincts.......................055
+
+   Who are these other soldiers?...................................057
+
+   These laborers seem to suffer from some restraint...............058
+
+   I look around for a resting-place ..............................059
+
+   A shepherd......................................................060
+
+   The guard of a sword, which had been driven into the ground.....061
+
+   The shepherd,--as mournful as ever..............................063
+
+   Herds of swine are wallowing ...................................066
+
+   A young wife bearing the burden of united household.............067
+
+   Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty ..................068
+
+   Such were the ways of our fathers: rejoice in facing death......069
+
+   The Druidical altars............................................070
+
+   As there is no window I peep through the trap-door..............072
+
+   One of the chief men of the country ............................075
+
+   She was a young Ionian girl, a country-woman of Aspasia.........080
+
+   The boudoir of a Celtic lady....................................082
+
+   The Druid-bard..................................................085
+
+   Death of Druids.................................................091
+
+   A Druidess endowed with the gift of prophecy ...................093
+
+   The victorious march of the Romans .............................094
+
+   Her deities personified nothing but vices ......................096
+
+   The Hercules--so called.........................................098
+
+   Mercury, the son of Jupiter ....................................099
+
+   "O Varus, Varus, bring me back my legions!".....................103
+
+   Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances.................105
+
+   They made him a king, the King of German rivers.................106
+
+   He had already allowed Jupiter to cross.........................107
+
+   The vines began to adorn the banks of the river.................108
+
+   Once more caresses had their hoped-for effect...................109
+
+   He did his best to help everybody across........................110
+
+   Fnvolous and ill-mannered deities...............................110
+
+   The dauntless pirates will end by wearing white night-caps......113
+
+   The great Northern Tempest .....................................115
+
+   The German Druids gave way......................................118
+
+   Iormungondur, the great sea serpent.............................121
+
+   The giant Ymer has been born....................................123
+
+   The first men had been born with a telescope in their pocket?...127
+
+   Ymer was the first to succumb...................................128
+
+   After the giants came the turn of land and sea monsters.........129
+
+   The new creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance........132
+
+   Deer, eland, and aurochs were bounding in herds.................133
+
+   Incessantly a tiny squirrel comes and goes......................136
+
+   A vulture perching upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree.....137
+
+   Thor's weighty hammer Mjo�ner...................................139
+
+   The good Freyr seated at Odin's table...........................141
+
+   Portrait of Freyr...............................................142
+
+   Bragi and the beautiful Freya ..................................147
+
+   Return of the eagle with the three precious vessels.............150
+
+   Balder, the bright god..........................................153
+
+   The wolf Fenris.................................................156
+
+   Converse with each other by significative glances...............159
+
+   They were the Norns.............................................160
+
+   He took counsel with the Norns..................................162
+
+   "To Egir, the seas and navigation"..............................164
+
+   Gefione took her four sons and changed them into oxen...........165
+
+   Jarl, the noble.................................................171
+
+   The Valkyrias ..................................................175
+
+   Beautiful nymphs of carnage.....................................176
+
+   A very mammoth of a boar........................................180
+
+   Feast in Scandinavian Paradise..................................181
+
+   Hela, the pale goddess..........................................185
+
+   "Balder, fair Balder, is going to die"..........................189
+
+   Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself.................191
+
+   Balder is amused by the game....................................192
+
+   When the mother told her pitiful tale the iron trees wept.......197
+
+   The three sacred cocks announcing the Twilight of Greatness.....202
+
+   The death of the gods...........................................208
+
+   My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph...............211
+
+   I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped.............214
+
+   The two religions face to face..................................217
+
+   Ovid reciting his "Metamorphoses"...............................219
+
+   Druidic worship suspended by the Romans.........................220
+
+   "Miserere mei, Jesu"............................................222
+
+   Perkunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos...............................224
+
+   Puscatus,--a kind-hearted god ..................................226
+
+   Monstrous reptiles accompany the gods to Germany................227
+
+   He let his heavy mace fall upon a little town...................238
+
+   The blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen...................................239
+
+   Marietta appeared in their midst................................245
+
+   "Do you think I am a man to be taken in ?"......................251
+
+   Horse-head, a la mode...........................................253
+
+   The Undines mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads.............258
+
+   Have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken...................259
+
+   The Olympus of the North........................................263
+
+   Able to see without being seen .................................266
+
+   Dance of the white fairies .....................................269
+
+   The black fairies personify Nightmare ..........................271
+
+   An important personage with a will of his own ..................272
+
+   Enormous toads are posted about.as watchmen.....................279
+
+   Elementary spirits of the water.................................283
+
+   Imaginary music ................................................288
+
+   The nix with the harp ..........................................289
+
+   Schoolmaster's son who had fallen in love with one of them......291
+
+   He thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters.............294
+
+   He rose suddenly and fled to another room ......................295
+
+   The steward whispered some words in her ear ....................297
+
+   Niord, the Scandinavian god ....................................299
+
+   This creature is Nixcobt........................................300
+
+   The Vintner is hanged, and Nixcobt laughs heartily..............302
+
+   Four Prussian soldiers watching the water ......................305
+
+   The Zotterais protected sheep ..................................309
+
+   The master has nothing to do....................................315
+
+   Prefer to remember the Kobold a cheerful household companion....317
+
+   The Zotterais as fond of stables as the Kobolds of kitchens.....319
+
+   They are naturally easily tired ................................321
+
+   The Killecroffs are children of the Devil ......................322
+
+   His nurse has to be reinforced by two goats and a cow...........324
+
+   The great Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther ..........................326
+
+   The fall of Killecroff .........................................331
+
+   Giants and dwarfs...............................................335
+
+   The last of the giants..........................................337
+
+   Grommelund and Ephesim .........................................339
+
+   The humiliated giant............................................340
+
+   Our good little dwarfs .........................................341
+
+   He stood at first with his mouth wide open .................... 346
+
+   A long and deep sigh of satisfaction............................348
+
+   Flight of the conspirators......................................353
+
+   Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious cavity........354
+
+   They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth...........355
+
+   In his hand he held not a club but a lantern....................357
+
+   Kreiss compelled to leave his position by torrents of tears.....359
+
+   The last two held each a long thorn in their hands..............361
+
+   Kreiss entering the great meeting hall..........................363
+
+   Putskuchen was in love..........................................365
+
+   Ouadragant vanquished...........................................367
+
+   The passing of the wizard ......................................371
+
+   Venus and Tannh�user............................................390
+
+   His ex-colleague Jupiter .......................................396
+
+   The author pursues the subject .................................399
+
+   The conscientious collector of myths............................401
+
+   The Druidess transformed into an accursed witch.................406
+
+   To return was as impossible as to proceed.......................409
+
+   She had rejoined her victims ...................................413
+
+   He is the Lord Hackelberg.......................................417
+
+   These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men.................421
+
+   Farewell........................................................423
+
+
+
+[Illustration: 023]
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+{003}_Primitive Times.--The First Settlers on the Rhine.--Masters
+going to School.--Sanskrit and Breton.--Ax Idle God.--Microscopic
+Deities.--Tree Worship.--Birth-Trees and Death-Trees._ The Rhine is born
+in Switzerland, in the Canton of Grisons; it skirts France and passes
+through it, and after a long and magnificent career it finally loses
+itself in the countless canals of Holland; and yet the Rhine is
+essentially a German river.
+
+{004}Already in the earliest ages, long before towns were built on its
+banks, it saw all the Germanic races dwell here in tents, watch their
+flocks, and fight their interminable battles, although the clash of
+arms and the blast of trumpets never for a moment aroused the impassive
+historian from his deep slumbers.
+
+[Illustration: 024]
+
+His silence, long continued into later centuries, does not prevent us
+from supposing, however, that the Rhine was already at that time the
+great high-{005}road on which the Germanic races wandered to and fro,
+and other races came to their native land. It was the Rhine that brought
+to them commerce and civilization; but on the Rhine came also invasions
+of a very different kind. We can allude here only to those religious
+invasions which are connected with our subject.
+
+[Illustration: 025]
+
+In the earliest ages the South of Europe alone was inhabited, while the
+Northern part was covered with vast forests, as old as the world, and as
+yet{006}unbroken by the footsteps of men. Dark, dismal solitudes,
+consisting of ancient woods or wretched morasses, where trees struggled
+painfully for existence and only the strongest survived when they
+reached the light and the sun; densely wooded deserts, in which vast
+herds of wild beasts pursued each other incessantly, while in the deep
+shadow of impenetrable foliage flocks of timid, trembling birds sought
+a refuge against hosts of voracious birds of prey. Thus, even while Man
+was yet absent, War was already reigning supreme here, and in these vast
+regions the Great Destroyer seemed to revel in it, as if it had been a
+feast, a necessity, a glory!
+
+Had never human eye yet looked upon these magnificent but unknown
+regions?
+
+Then, one fine day a host of savages appeared here and settled down with
+their flocks. After them came another host of more warlike and better
+armed men, who drove out the first comers and took possession of the
+tilled ground.
+
+After them another race, and then still another. Thus it went on for
+years and for centuries, and all these waves of immigration came down
+from the extreme North, marking each halting place by a bloody battle,
+while the conquered people, driven by the sharp edge of the sword to
+seek new homes, by turns pursued and pursuing, went and peopled those
+wild unsettled countries which afterwards be{007}came known as Belgium
+and France, as Bretagne and England. Continuing their march from thence
+southward, from the Rhine to the Mediterranean, they spread right and
+left, east and west, and crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps, making
+themselves masters on one side of Iberia, and on the other side of the
+plains of Lombardy, thus changing from fugitives into conquerors.
+
+[Illustration: 027]
+
+These conquered conquerors, driven from their own homes, and now driving
+other nations from their homes, these first pioneers who laid open one
+unknown country after another, were all children of one great family and
+all bore the same name of _Celts_.
+
+But where was the first source from which this {008}flood of families,
+of peoples, of nations, broke forth, that now overflowed Europe and in
+successive waves spread over the greater part of the Old World? Whence
+came these vast multitudes of Northern visitors, unexpected and unknown,
+who broke the mournful silence that had so long reigned in Europe? Were
+the frozen regions of the North pole, at that early time, really so
+fertile in men? We call upon men of science to answer our question. The
+question is a serious one, perhaps an indiscreet one, for who can
+be appealed to on such a difficult point? History? It did not exist.
+Monuments, written or sculptured? The Celts had never dreamt yet of
+writings or of carvings. Does this universal silence put it out of the
+power of our learned men to give a reply? Must they confess that they
+are unable to do so? By no means. Learned men never condescend to make
+such confessions. The Celts have left as a monument, a language, a
+dialect, still largely used in certain parts of ancient Bretagne as well
+as in the Principality of Wales.
+
+Illustrious academicians, mostly Germans, did not hesitate to go to
+school once more in order to learn Breton. The self-denial of which
+science is capable, deserves our admiration.
+
+After long labors, devoted to the separation of what belonged to the
+primitive language from subsequent additions, our great scholars found
+them{009}selves once more face to face with Sanskrit, the sacred idiom
+of the Brahmins, the ancestor of the old German tongue, and of the old
+Celtic tongue, and thus of the Breton.
+
+[Illustration: 029]
+
+The matter was decided, scientifically and categorically, and no appeal
+allowed. The Celts were a people from India. Europeans are all descended
+from Indians, driven from home by some powerful pressure, a political or
+religious revolution, or one of those fearful famines which periodically
+devastate {010}that immense and inexhaustible storehouse of nations.
+
+[Illustration: 030]
+
+At first, we good people, artists, poets, or authors, who generally
+claim to possess some little knowledge, were rather surprised at such
+a decision. But the wise men had said so; Bengal and Bretagne had to
+fraternize; the Brahmins of Benares speak Breton and the Bretons of
+Bretagne speak Sanskrit. Bretagne is Indian and India is Breton.
+
+Comparative Philology has taught the children of our day, that two
+syllables which are identical {011}in the idioms of two different races,
+prove the connection between two nations; hybridism means kinship.
+
+What happy people scholars are! They can converse with people who have
+been dead these three thousand years, and the grave has no secrets for
+them! A single word bequeathed to us by an extinct people, enables them
+to reconstruct that whole race.
+
+But I am bound to ask them another question, a question of much greater
+importance to myself. What were the religious convictions of these first
+inhabitants of Europe? I am answered by Mr. Simon Pelloutier, a minister
+of the Reformed Church in Berlin, of French descent, who has studied the
+primitive creed of the Celts most thoroughly and successfully. He tells
+us that these people, before they had Druids, worshipped, or rather held
+in honor the sun, the moon, and the stars, a kind of Sabaism, which,
+however, did not exclude the belief in a God, who was the creator, but
+not the ruler, of all things.
+
+This god appears to me to have been very imperfect; he was heavy,
+sleepy, and shapeless, having neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; he
+was incapable of feeling pity or anger, and the prayers and vows of men
+were unable to reach him. Invisible, intangible, and incomprehensible,
+he was floating in space, which he filled, and which he {012}animated
+without bestowing a thought upon it; omnipotent and yet utterly
+inactive, creating islands and continents, and causing the sun and the
+stars to give light by his mere approach, this divine idler had created
+the world, but declined taking the trouble of governing his creation.
+
+To whom had he confided the control over the stars in heaven? Mr.
+Pelloutier himself never could find out. As to the government of the
+earth, he had entrusted it to an infinite number of inferior deities,
+gods and sub-gods, of very small stature. They were as shapeless and as
+invisible as he was, but vastly more active, and endowed with all the
+energy which he had disdained to bestow upon himself. By their numbers
+and by their collective force they made up for their individual
+feebleness--and they must have been feeble indeed, since their extremely
+small size permitted a thousand of them to find a comfortable shelter
+under the leaf of a walnut tree!
+
+Besides, they presided over the different departments which were
+assigned to them, not by hundreds, but by myriads, nay, by millions
+of myriads. Thus they rushed forth in vast hosts, stirring the air in
+lively currents, causing the rivers and brooks to flow onwards, watching
+over fields and forests, penetrating the soil to great depths, creeping
+in through every crack and crevice, and breaking out {013}again through
+the craters of volcanoes. They formed a belt from the Rhine to the
+Taunus mountains, dazzling the whole region for a moment by a shower of
+sparks, and falling back upon the plain in the form of columns of black
+smoke.
+
+Science has, moreover, established this incontestable principle, that
+motion can only be produced in two ways here, below: either by the acts
+of living beings, or by the contact of these microscopic deities.
+
+Whenever the waters rose or broke forth in cataracts, whenever the
+leaves trembled in the wind, or the flowers bent before a storm, it was
+these diminutive gods who, invisible and yet ever active, forced the
+waters to come down in torrents, drove the tempest through the branches,
+bent the flowers down to the ground, and chased the dust of the
+highroads in lofty columns up to the clouds. It was they who caused the
+golden hair of the maid to fall down upon her shoulders as she went to
+the well, who shook the earthenware pitcher she carried on her shoulder,
+who crackled in the fire on the hearth, and who roared in the storm, or
+the eruptions of fiery mountains.
+
+When I think of this little world of tiny insect gods, who passed
+through the air in swarms, coming and going, turning to the left and to
+the right, struggling and striving above and beneath (I ask {014}their
+pardon for comparing these deities to humble insects, born in the
+mud and subject to infirmity and death like ourselves), I cannot help
+thinking of the beautiful lines by Lamartine, in which he so graphically
+describes life in Nature.
+
+     "Chaque fois que nos yeux, p�n�trant dans ces ombres,
+     De la nuit des rameaux �clairaient les dais sombres,
+     Nous trouvions sous ces lits de feuille o� dort l'�t�,
+     Des myst�res d'amour et de f�condit�.
+
+     Chaque fois que nos pieds tombaient dans la verdure
+     Les herbes nous montaient jusques � la ceinture,
+     Des flots d'air embaum� se r�pandaient sur nous,
+     Des nuages ail�s partaient de nos genoux;
+     Insectes, papillons, essaims nageants de mouches,
+     Oui d'un �ther vivant semblaient former les couches,
+     Ils' montaient en colonne, en tourbillon flottant,
+     Comblaient l'air, nous cachaient l'un � l'autre un instant,
+     Comme dans les chemins la vague de poussi�re
+     Se l�ve sous les pas et retombe en arri�re.
+
+     Ils roulaient; et sur l'eau, sur les pr�s, sur le foin,
+     Ces poussi�res de vie allaient tomber plus loin;
+     Et chacune semblait, d'existence ravie,
+     Epuiser le bonheur dans sa goutte de vie,
+     Et l'air qu'ils animaient de leurs fr�missements
+     N'�tait que m�lodie et que bourdonnements."
+
+Such were the gods known to the first ingenuous dwellers on the banks
+of the Rhine--gods worthy of a society but just beginning. And still, I
+venture to make a suggestion, which Mr. Simon Pelloutier, my guide up to
+this point, has unfortunately neglected to make. It is this: I feel as
+if {015}there was hidden beneath this primitive and apparently puerile
+mythology a hideous monster, writhing in fearful threatenings and bitter
+mockery. This god Chaos, so careless and reckless, gifted with the power
+of creation but not with love for his work, seems to me nothing else
+but Matter, organizing itself. I have called these countless inferior
+deities microscopic. I should have called them molecular, for they are
+atoms, the monads of our science. There is evidently here a germ, not
+of a religious creed so much as of a philosophic system, a shadow of
+the materialism of a former civilization that is now degraded and nearly
+lost.
+
+At first I doubted the correctness of the opinions of our learned men;
+but I begin to believe in them; yes, these early Celts had come, to us
+from distant India, from that ancient, decayed country, and in their
+knapsacks they had brought with them, by an accident, this fragment
+of their symbolic cosmogony, the sad meaning of which was, no doubt, a
+mystery to them also.
+
+After some years, perhaps after some centuries, --for time does not
+count for much in those questions,--the Celts became weary of this
+selfish Deity, which was lost in the contemplation of its own being and
+dwelt in the centre of a cold and empty heaven, and they desired to
+establish some relations between him and themselves. Unable to appeal to
+{016}the Creator, they appealed to Creation, and asked for a mediator,
+who should hear their complaints or accept their thank-offerings and
+transmit them to the Supreme Power.
+
+We have already seen that they turned first to sun and moon; but they
+were ill rewarded for their efforts. These heavenly bodies were either
+too far removed from their clients to hear their complaints, or they
+were too busy with their own daily duties; at all events they shared
+with their common master in his indifference towards men.
+
+Our pious friends were offended by this want of consideration, and
+thought of looking for other intercessors, who might be less busy; whom
+they might not only see with their eyes but touch with their hands,
+and who would remain as much as possible in the same place, so as to be
+always on hand when they were needed.
+
+They appealed to rivers and mountains; but the rivers had nothing
+permanent but their banks, and went their way like the sun and moon;
+while the mountains, besides being the home of wolves, bears, and
+serpents, and thus enjoying an evil reputation, were continually hid by
+snow and rain from the eyes of the petitioners.
+
+At last they turned to the trees, and as it always happens, they now
+found out that they ought to have commenced where they ended. {017}A
+tree was an excellent mediator; standing between heaven and earth, it
+clung to the latter by its roots, while its trunk, shaped like an arrow,
+feathered with verdure, rose upwards as if to touch the sky.
+
+The worship of trees was probably the first effect of sedentary life
+adopted by the Celts after their long, more or less forced wanderings;
+in a few years it prevailed on both sides of the river Rhine.
+
+There was no lack of trees; every man had his own. As he could not carry
+it away with him, he became accustomed to live by its side.
+
+Man could lean his hut against the trunk; the flock could sleep in its
+shade.
+
+The birds came to it in numbers. If they were singing, it was a sign of
+joy to come; if they built their nests there, it was an invitation to
+marry.
+
+The fruit-bearing tree suggested comfort, abundance, and enjoyment; it
+spoke of harvest feasts and cider-making, when friends gathered around
+it, holding in their hands large horns filled to overflowing with
+foaming drink.
+
+Soon it became customary to plant at the birth of a child a tree which
+was to become a companion and a counsellor for life.
+
+Thus in the course of time a copse represented a family.
+
+The worship bestowed upon the tree consisted {018}in pruning it, in
+making it grow straight, in freeing its bark from parasitical growth
+and in keeping the roots free from ants, rats, snakes and all dangerous
+enemies. Such continuous care naturally led in the course of time to an
+improvement in cultivation.
+
+The tree worshippers, however, did more than this. On certain hallowed
+days they hung bouquets of herbs and of flowers on its branches, they
+brought food and drink, and thus fetichism crept in gradually. Alas!
+That men have never been able to keep from extremes!
+
+When the wind whispered in the leaves, the devout owner listened
+attentively, trying anxiously to interpret the mystic language of his
+cedar or his pear tree, and often a regular conversation ensued.
+
+It was a bad omen when a rising storm shook the tree fiercely; if the
+tempest was strong enough to break a branch, the event foretold a great
+calamity, and if it was struck by lightning, the owner was warned of
+his approaching death. The latter was resigned; he felt quite proud
+at having at last compelled his indolent god to reveal himself to his
+devout worshipper.
+
+When a child died, it was buried under its own tree, a mere sapling..
+But it was not so when a man died.{019}
+
+[Illustration: 039]
+
+The Celts used various and strange means for the purpose of disposing of
+the remains of their {021}deceased friends. In some countries they were
+burnt, and their own tree furnished the fuel for the funeral pile; in
+other countries the _Todtenbaum_ (Tree of the Dead), hollowed out with
+an axe, became the owner's coffin. This coffin was interred, unless
+it was intrusted to the current of the river, to be carried God knows
+where! Finally, in certain localities there existed a custom--a horrible
+custom!--of exposing the body to the voracity of birds of prey, and the
+place of exposure was the top of the very tree which had been planted at
+the birth of the deceased, and which in this case, quite exceptionally,
+was not cut down.
+
+Now, observe, that in these four distinct methods by which human remains
+were restored to the four elements of air and water, earth and fire, we
+meet again the four favorite ways of burial still practiced in India,
+as of old, by the followers of Brahma, Buddha, and Zoroaster. The
+fire-worshippers of Bombay are as familiar with them as the dervishes
+who drown children in the Ganges. Thus we have here four proofs, instead
+of one, of the Indian origin of our Celts. For my part at least, I
+confess I am convinced by this quadruple evidence.
+
+It is to be presumed that the use of Dead Men's Trees and of posthumous
+drownings continued for centuries in ancient Gaul as well as in ancient
+Germany. About 1560 some Dutch laborers found, {022}in examining a part
+of the Zuyder Zee, at a great depth, several trunks of trees which
+were marvelously well preserved and nearly petrified. Each one of these
+trunks had been occupied by a man, and contained some half-petrified
+fragments. It was evident that they had been carried down, trunk and
+man, by the Rhine, the Ganges of Germany.
+
+[Illustration: 042]
+
+As recently as 1837 such _Todtenbaume_ or Dead Men's Trees, well
+preserved by the peculiar nature of the soil, have been discovered in
+England, near Solby in Yorkshire, and still more recently, in 1848, on
+Mount Lupfen in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
+
+In face of such well authenticated evidence of Dead Men's Trees having
+been confided to the current of rivers or the bosom of the earth, it
+seems superfluous to ask for additional proof in support of the fact
+that cremation was practiced all over ancient Europe. Nor do I consider
+myself, as a collector of myths, bound to prove everything. I {023}do
+not mean to speak, therefore, any further of Birthday Trees, of Dead
+Men's Trees, and of Fetich Trees,--which we shall moreover meet again
+presently,--and hasten on to other myths of far greater importance.
+
+The Druids now appear for the first time in Gaul and in Germany.
+
+[Illustration: 043]
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+{027}_The Druids and their Creed.--Esus.--The Holy Oak.--The Pforzheim
+Lime Tree.--A Rival Plant.--The Mistletoe and the Ansfuinum.--The
+Oracle at Dodona.--Immaculate Horses.--The Druidesses.--A late
+Elector.--Philanthropic Institution of Human Sacrifices.--Second
+Druidical Epoch_.
+
+The Druids were the first to bring to the Gauls as well as to the
+Germans religious truths, but their creed can be appreciated from no
+dogma of theirs; it must be judged by their rites.
+
+The first question is: Whence did the Druids {028}come? Were they
+disciples of the Magi, and did they come from Persia? Such an origin has
+been claimed for them: or had they been initiated by Isis in her
+ancient mysteries, and did they come from Egypt? This view also has its
+adherents. Or, finally, had they been driven towards Western Europe
+by one of the last waves of immigration, which left India under the
+pressure of some new calamity? Many think so.
+
+As it seems to be difficult to decide between these three suggestions,
+it might be worth while to try and reconcile them with each other. It is
+a long way from India to Germany and to Gaul, and there might have been
+many stopping places between the country from which they started and
+their future home.
+
+The Druids, like all other Celts, might very well have started from
+India, and choosing not the most direct way might have reached Europe
+only after making many a long halt in Persia and in Egypt.
+
+'If that can be admitted, then there is no difficulty in assuming that
+the first Celts might very well have taken with them from the banks of
+the Indus and the Ganges only a few fragments of a sickly materialism
+taught by false teachers outside of the temple, while the Druids might
+have been initiated within the temple itself, thus learning to know the
+true nature of the Deity.
+
+Their creed was founded upon a triple basis--one {029}God; the
+immortality of the soul; and rewards and punishments in a future life.
+
+These sound doctrines, which are as old as the world and form the
+foundation of all human morality, had ever been maintained by their wise
+men.
+
+At a later period the Greeks, proud as they were of their Platonic
+philosophy, had not hesitated to acknowledge that they had obtained the
+first germ of it from the Celts, the Galati, and consequently from the
+Druids. One of the Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, openly
+admits that these same Celts had been orthodox in their religion, at
+least as far as their dogmas were concerned.
+
+By what name was the Supreme Being known to the Druids? They called it
+_Esus_, which means the Lord, or they gave it the simple designation
+of _Teut_ (God). Through this Teut the German races became afterwards
+Teutons, the sons and followers of Teut, and even in our day they call
+themselves in their own language Teutsche or _Deutsche_.
+
+Three marvelously brief maxims contain almost the whole catechism of the
+Druids: Serve God; Abstain from evil; Be brave!
+
+The Druids, being warriors as well as priests, displayed in the
+performance of their warlike priesthood all the energy, the severity,
+and the authority which must needs accompany such a strange combination
+of powers. {030}Holding all the power of the state in their hands, and
+speaking in the name of God, commanding the army, controlling the public
+treasury, and acting not only as judges but also as physicians, they
+punished heresy and rebellion, and ended lawsuits as well as diseases,
+by the death of the person most interested.
+
+Their laws, liberal and philanthropic in spite of their apparent
+severity, allowed a jury consisting of notables, to judge grave
+crimes; this fact of a jury suggests naturally the idea of extenuating
+circumstances, and thus the criminal, escaping more readily than
+the patient, frequently got off with a fine, if he was rich, or with
+banishment if he was poor.
+
+Nevertheless all the efforts of the Druids did not succeed in thoroughly
+eradicating Tree worship; they were thus led to adopt one tree, to the
+exclusion of all others, which should rally around it the scattered
+adoration of all the nations. This official tree, a kind of green altar,
+on which God manifested himself to his priests, was an oak, a strong,
+vigorous oak, the king of the forests.
+
+Thus the holy oak became known and honored; pious worshippers came by
+night, with torches in their hands, in long processions to present their
+offerings.
+
+This usage soon became general among all Celtic nations. Around these
+oaks the Druids formed sacred precincts within which they lived with
+their families, for they were married; but they could have {031}only one
+wife, while the other chieftains were generally polygamists.
+
+[Illustration: 051]
+
+But the oak, although thus enjoying preeminence over all other trees,
+was by no means exclusively worshipped everywhere. Perhaps from
+religious antagonism, or perhaps merely from local usage, some
+provinces of Gaul and of Italy preferred the beech and the elm. In Gaul
+especially, the elm prevailed over the oak, and even Christian France
+still continued for a long time to plant an elm tree before every newly
+built church, so as to draw God's blessing the more surely upon it; and
+down to the end of the Middle Ages courts of justice were always held
+under an elm tree. Hence the curious {032}French proverb, which did not
+always have the mocking sense in which it is used nowadays, wait for
+me under the elm tree! (Attendez-moi sous forme) What was then a
+formal summons to appear before a judge has now come to mean: Wait till
+doomsday.
+
+[Illustration: 052]
+
+The ash tree, also, had its worshippers among the dwellers in high
+northern latitudes, and it was under the dense branches of an enormous
+ash tree that terrible Odin and his following of deities appeared in a
+dark cloud.
+
+Thus Tree worship appeared once more. It has ever since continued to
+flourish more or less in Germany, and even now exists to a certain
+extent. But it is not the oaks, nor the beech, nor the elm, nor the ash
+tree, which in our day receives the worship of the young especially--but
+the lime tree. The admirers of the lime tree carry their fervor to
+fanaticism and their fanaticism to murder. I had {033}been unwilling to
+believe this.
+
+[Illustration: 053]
+
+But this morning I opened my newspaper and there I found an article,
+dated December 30, 1860, and stating that a young man from Pforzheim, in
+the Palatinate, attempted to murder the mayor of his town by means of
+a revolver, the four barrels of which were loaded with as many leaden
+balls. When he was arrested, he declared that he had personally nothing
+to say against the burgomaster, but that the latter {034}had recently
+ordered certain lime trees to be cut down, that _the good people of
+Pforzheim idolized these trees_, and that he had determined to punish
+him for such profanation.
+
+The paper added: "This young man belongs to an honorable family, his
+antecedents are excellent, and he has never shown the slightest symptom
+of mental derangement."
+
+How, then does it come about that the lime tree should in our day, in
+the nineteenth century, call forth sentiments of such extreme violence?
+The reason is that Young Germany has proclaimed it to be the Tree of
+Love, because _its leaves are shaped like hearts_.
+
+If I were not afraid of getting myself into trouble, having a natural
+horror of all firearms, and especially of four barrelled revolvers,
+I should mention here, that anatomists protest against this pretended
+resemblance of the leaf to the heart. In reality it looks much more
+like the ace of hearts, as it terminates below in a sharp point--but
+superstition prevails over anatomy, and teaches us once more that
+science ought not to meddle with things pertaining to love.
+
+The Druids' Oak, although less tempting to gallant comparisons, finally
+excited almost equal fanaticism. Processions and sacrifices became
+well nigh endless; young maidens adorned it with garlands of flowers,
+{035}interspersed with bracelets and necklaces, while warriors suspended
+in its branches the most precious spoil they brought home from their
+battles. If a storm arose, the other trees of the forest seemed in good
+faith, humbly to bow down before their chief.
+
+[Illustration: 055]
+
+And yet it had an enemy, a fierce, relentless enemy. An abject, little
+plant, unknown and miserable in appearance, came unceremoniously and
+made its home on its sacred branches and even on its august summit;
+there it lived on its life's blood, feeding on its sap, absorbing its
+substance, threatening {036}to impede its natural growth, and finally
+carrying the impudence so far as to conceal the glossy leaves of the
+noble godlike tree under its own lustreless and viscous foliage. This
+hostile and impious plant was the Mistletoe, the mistletoe of the oak
+(_Guythil_).
+
+Other people, less intelligent and less sagacious than the Druids, would
+have freed the tree from this unwelcome and obnoxious visitor, by simply
+climbing up and cutting off the parasite by means of a pruning bill.
+This would have been irreverent as well as impolitic. What would the
+people have thought? The people would most assuredly have reasoned, that
+the sacred tree had been rendered powerless, being unable to rid itself
+of its vermin.
+
+The Druids did much better. They treated the mistletoe very much as we,
+in our day, treat a formidable member of the opposition; they gave it a
+place in the sanctuary. The mistletoe was proclaimed to be an official
+and sacred plant, and became an essential part of their worship. When it
+was to be detached from the tree, this was not done stealthily and by a
+mean iron bill-hook, but in the presence of all, amid public rejoicings
+and accompanied by solemn chants. The instrument was a golden reaping
+hook, and with it the _Guythil_ was carefully cut off at the base and
+gathered in {037}linen veils. These veils became henceforth sacred, and
+were not allowed to be used for ordinary purposes.
+
+The Teutons who lived on the Rhine, obtained from the mistletoe a kind
+of glue, which they looked upon as a panacea against the sterility of
+women, the ravages of diseases, the effects of witchcraft,--and also as
+a means to catch birds.
+
+[Illustration: 057]
+
+The Gauls, on the other hand, dried it carefully and put the dust into
+pretty little scent-bags, which they presented to each other as New
+Year's Gifts on the first day of the year. Hence, in t some provinces
+of France, the cry is still heard, "Aguilanneuf" (_au gui l'an neuf_),
+"Mistletoe for New Year!"
+
+Modern science treats mistletoe simply as a purgative, and thus attempts
+to prove that our ancestors showed their affection to each other by
+exchanging presents of violent purgatives.
+
+The introduction of this parasite plant into the {038}sanctuary became,
+however, very soon a public benefit. For the oak-mistletoe obtained ere
+long considerable commercial value, and at once counterfeiters (for even
+under the Druids there existed such men) went to work and gathered it
+from other trees also, from apple trees and pear trees, from nut trees
+and lime trees, from beeches, elms, and even larches. The consequence
+was, that owners of orchards as well as owners of forests, rejoiced
+in the trick, at which the Druids discreetly winked; for they took
+advantage of the lesson.
+
+[Illustration: 058]
+
+At one time venomous reptiles had become so numerous in the regions
+of the Rhine, that they caused continually serious accidents among the
+{039}people, the majority of whom lived all day long in the open air,
+and did not always sleep under shelter. During their winter sleep, these
+reptiles rolled themselves up into vast balls, and became apparently
+glued to each other by a kind of viscous ooze. In this state they were
+called by the Celts _Serpents Eggs_, or rather _Serpents' Knots_, while
+the Romans called them _anguimim_.
+
+These strange balls were used medicinally by the Druids like the
+mistletoe; they employed them even in their religious ceremonies, and
+soon they became so rare, that only the wealthiest people could procure
+them, by paying their weight in gold. If the Druids had really at first
+been misled so as to adopt superstitious customs, which they repented of
+in their hearts, they soon found means to make these same superstitious
+rites beneficial to the people.
+
+Unfortunately serpents' knots, oaks, and their parasites, did not long
+satisfy a people ever desirous of new things. It is a well-known fact
+that innovations, however small may have been their first beginning, are
+sure to go on enlarging and increasing from day to day.
+
+The old party of Tree worshippers, still numerous and very active as all
+old parties are, complained of the suppression of their companion-trees,
+the ancient family oracles, for the purpose of favoring {040}one single
+oak tree,--a tree which yet was not able, in spite of all the privileges
+it enjoyed, to put them into communication with _Estes_, the god of
+heaven.
+
+This complaint was certainly not unfounded;--it had to be answered.
+
+The Druids consisted of three classes:--
+
+The Druids proper (_Eubages_, they were called in Gaul) were
+philosophers as well as scholars, perhaps even magicians, for magic was
+at that time nothing more than the outward form of science. They were
+charged with the maintenance of the principles of morality, and had to
+study the secrets of nature. The Prophets, on the other hand, knew how
+to interpret in the slightest breath of wind, the language of the holy
+oak, which spoke to them in the rustling of its leaves, in the soughing
+of the branches, in the low cracking heard within the trunk, and even in
+the earlier or later appearance of the foliage. There were, finally, the
+Bards, poets bound to the altar.
+
+While the bards were singing around the oak, the prophets caused it to
+render its oracles. These oracles soon increased largely not only in
+Europe, but also in Asia Minor, where a Celtic colony, according to
+Herodotus, established in the land they had conquered the oracle of
+Dodona. Early Greece worshipped an oak tree, which Strabo, however,
+assures {041}us was a beech. There is no disputing about trees any more
+than about colors; but Homer calls it an oak, and an oak it must remain
+for us.
+
+[Illustration: 061]
+
+This new movement, grafted upon the simple worship of the Druids, did
+not stop here. After having for some time been accustomed to converse
+with Teut by means of a tree, the Celts were naturally surprised at
+seeing that, while trees could speak, living creatures remained silent,
+and were apparently deprived of the power of foretelling the future.
+Certain chieftains, especially, felt aggrieved, {042}upon setting out on
+a great campaign, that they were not allowed to carry the holy oak
+along with them, and in their intense devotion, fell upon the idea
+of consulting the nervous trembling of their horses and their sudden
+neighing in moments of surprise or terror,--for in order to be of
+prophetic nature the movements of the animals had to be involuntary and
+spontaneous. As this creed began to spread gradually, every man who was
+setting out on a journey or a warlike expedition mounted his horse in
+the firm conviction that he would be able to consult his four-footed
+prophet at any time during his absence from home, provided he was able
+to submit the omens to the learned interpretations of a soothsayer.
+
+The Druid priests were not long in becoming seriously alarmed at these
+travelling oracles, liable as they naturally were to contradict each
+other.
+
+As they had before chosen a single tree to be the sacred tree, so they
+now accepted as genuine omens only the symptoms noticed in certain
+horses which were bred within the sacred precincts and under their own
+eyes.
+
+These horses, of immaculate whiteness and raised at public expense, were
+not employed for any work, and never had to submit to saddle or bridle.
+Wild and untamed, they roamed with fluttering manes in perfect liberty
+through the lofty forests. The freedom {043}of their movements gave
+naturally a safer character to their omens, and thus these prophetic
+horses, which formed almost a part of the druidical clergy, enjoyed for
+a long time the highest authority in all Celtic countries, when suddenly
+one fine day new rivals arose.
+
+Other living creatures entered into competition with them, and these
+rivals of the horses were--shall I say it?--were women. These women
+discovered, all of a sudden, that they also were endowed, and in the
+very highest degree, with the gifts of second sight, of inspiration,
+intuition, and divination.
+
+When public opinion appealed to the Druids to give their views on this
+claim, they admitted, according to the statement of Tacitus, that women
+had something more instinctive and more divine in them than men, nay,
+even than horses. Their sensitive organization predisposed them to
+receive the gift of prophecy, and hence "women indeed act more readily
+from natural impulse, without reflection, than from thought or reason."
+
+This last explanation, improper in the highest degree, does not come
+from Tacitus, nor from myself, God forbid! It is the exclusive property
+of the aforementioned Mr. Simon Pelloutier. Let every one be responsible
+for his own work!
+
+The Druids treated the women just as they had {044}treated the horses,
+the mistletoe, and the trees. They acknowledged as true prophetesses
+only those who were already under the direct influence of the holy place
+and the sacred oak; that is to say, their wives and their daughters.
+
+The principle of centralization of power is evidently not of modern
+origin.
+
+[Illustration: 064]
+
+Thus, there were now Druidesses, as there had been Druids before. The
+latter became the teachers of the young men; they taught their pupils
+the motions of the stars, the shape and extent of the earth, the divers
+products of nature, the history of their ancestors written in the form
+of poems which the bards recited; in fact, they taught them everything
+except reading and writing. Memory was as yet sufficient for all things.
+The priestesses, on the other hand, opened schools for the young girls;
+they taught them to sing and to sew, they initiated them into religious
+ceremonies and confided to them the knowledge of simples; nor was
+poetry neglected, as they had to learn by heart certain poems which were
+specially composed for their benefit. These verses, of somewhat doubtful
+{045}lyrical character, probably taught them how to make bread, how to
+brew beer, and other small details of the kitchen and the house.
+
+The Druidesses practiced also medicine. This threefold prerogative of
+being physicians, prophets, and preceptors, finally raised them so high
+in the estimation of the nation, that when the priests of Teut were
+compelled to abandon their sanctuaries, they did not hesitate to confide
+them to their guardianship. They even presided in their own right, at
+certain ceremonies.
+
+If one of them excelled by the frequency, the lucidity, and the
+reliability of her inspirations, as was the case at different times with
+the illustrious Aurinia, Velleda, and Ganna, whom the Roman emperors
+even deigned to consult through their ambassadors, the proud Druids
+placed her with humble submission, at the head of their own college of
+priests. During this female dictatorship, she became the arbiter of the
+destiny of nations, decided on peace and war, and controlled all the
+movements of great armies.
+
+Caesar tells us that he once asked one of his German captives, why
+Ariovistus, their chieftain, had never yet dared to meet him in battle,
+and was told in reply, that the Druidesses, after a careful examination
+of the eddies and whirlpools of the Rhine, had forbid his engaging in
+action till the {046}time of the new moon. As a matter of course, the
+shrewd general profited by this information, and when the new moon
+appeared, the Germans were in full flight.
+
+[Illustration: 066]
+
+But the Rhine has not yet given its oracles, and the time has not yet
+come, when Ganna Velleda, and Aurinia condescend to grant audiences to
+Roman ambassadors.
+
+We only wished to trace in a few outlines the future development of this
+institution of Druidesses, which we shall meet again in the days of its
+decline. {047}In the mean time, however, their influence and their power
+were daily growing. Were the Teutons at last satisfied? By no means. In
+spite of all the skill displayed by their diviners and the Druid-esses,
+they came to the conclusion, that neither the trembling foliage of the
+holy oak, nor the sudden starts, the wild leaps, and the more or less
+prolonged, loud neighings of the horses, afforded them sufficient
+excitement and perfectly reliable revelations. It occurred to them next,
+to consult animals, not in their outward manifestations, but in their
+still quivering entrails. This new ceremony could not fail to give to
+their religious worship a more serious aspect, and a certain savor of
+murder, which no doubt had its charms for a warlike people.
+
+The Druids yielded once more, but they felt discouraged. What had become
+of that grand philosophic religion, which was content with prayer and
+meditation, and which they once--too fondly, perhaps--had hoped to be
+able to adapt to the nature of these barbarians?
+
+They first consented to slay at the foot of the sacred oak, so long kept
+free from blood, a number of noxious beasts, like wolves, lynxes, and
+bears; but the turn of domestic animals came ere long, and they began
+to sacrifice sheep, goats, and finally man's best companion in war,
+the horse. Not even the spotless white horses, heretofore looked upon
+{048}with such profound and superstitious reverence, were spared any
+longer.
+
+And at each step forward in this bloody career, the Druids, always
+resisting, and always compelled to yield, made their last and their very
+last concession, vainly hoping that they might thus retain for a little
+while longer the power, which they felt was fast slipping from their
+grasp.
+
+Encouraged by success, the reformers finally came to the question,
+whether the most acceptable offering to be presented to God, was not the
+blood of man? Is not man, of all created beings, the most noble and the
+most perfect? Perhaps they were inclined to carry the argument still
+farther, and to reason that among all men the most worthy to be chosen
+and the most likely to be acceptable to God, were the Druids themselves?
+But they took care not to ask too much at once. They held this final
+consequence of a great principle in reserve, requiring for the present
+nothing more than a common victim, anything that might come in the way,
+provided it was a human being.
+
+It might have been expected, that when this abominable demand was made
+to hallow murder by committing it in the name of Heaven, the descendants
+and heirs of the ancient sages would have remembered their noble
+ancestors who had put an end to the first and quite inoffensive
+superstitions {049}of the early Celts. They ought to have veiled their
+faces, drawn back with horror, and recovering for once their former
+energy, appealed by means of the holy oak, the spotless horses, the
+soothsayers and the Druidesses, nay of heaven and earth itself, to
+the whole nation, calling upon them to anathematize the infamous
+petitioners. But they did no such thing. On the contrary they hastened
+to legalize such savage bloodshed by their holy consent. One might
+almost be led to suspect that they had themselves, underhand, suggested
+the horrible idea.
+
+O ye hypocritical priests, ye false philosophers, ye tigers disguised as
+shepherds of the people!.... But we must check our indignation. For
+who knows, but they may have been swayed not so much by an instinct
+of cruelty as by a lofty political, or even philanthropic principle?
+Philanthropic? Yes, indeed; we will explain.
+
+Among the Celts human life counted for little; it was lavished in
+battles, it was cast away in duels. At the time when the Gauls held
+large national assemblies, they tried to secure punctual attendance by
+simply putting to death the man who was the last to come; he paid for
+all the tardy ones. I do not mean to propose such a plan at the present
+day; but after all it was an infallible and economical measure. {050}The
+Teutons, on the other hand, bloodless in their national assemblies,
+after a battle in which they had been victorious, delighted in
+massacring all their prisoners.
+
+These massacres ceased from the time when the Druids claimed for
+themselves the exclusive right of human sacrifices.
+
+The good Esus, having become bloodthirsty, demanded all the captives
+to be slain in expiation at his altar, and woe to him who dared to
+anticipate him in his wrath. He was excluded from the sacred precincts;
+he was declared an impious, sacrilegious person, who could no longer
+take his place among the citizens; and he ran great risk of being forced
+to offer his own life in compensation for that which by his fault was
+wanting at the holocaust.
+
+When this custom became once fully established, the prisoners of war
+were all delivered up to the high-priest, who chose from among them one
+or more to be slain as an offering. The victim was generally one of the
+captive chieftains, and he was slain together with his war horse, so
+as to add to the impressiveness of the ceremony and to reconcile the
+spectators by the abundance of blood that was shed to the small number
+of victims.
+
+After having carefully examined the opened bodies of man and animal,
+the sacrificing priest, his {051}beard and clothes saturated with blood,
+raised his bloody right hand to heaven and, reeking with murder and
+breathing carnage, he proclaimed that his god was satisfied. The
+remainder of the prisoners were kept for another day, but that other day
+never came.
+
+Thus a new office had been created: that of a sacrificing priest. On
+both banks of the Rhine, in Germany as well as in Gaul, the Druids
+reserved this office for themselves; in other Celtic countries, in
+Scandinavia and among the Scythians, women performed the terrible duty;
+we all remember as a proof of it, Iphigenia of Tauris.
+
+Whatever we may think of this bloody innovation, it certainly benefited
+the prisoners, but the Druids obtained from it, after all, the greatest
+advantage. Their power, which had been seriously undermined, step by
+step, was once more firmly established. The opposition, which had paid
+no attention to their remonstrances or their prayers, shrunk from their
+knives.
+
+From this moment begins the Second Period of the Druids.
+
+The bloody knife of the Druids remained long all powerful, but we need
+not follow its later fate. C�sar had conquered and pacified Gaul,
+and the successors of Augustus fulminated their Imperial {052}decrees
+against the Druids, as slayers of men, while the same knife continued to
+shed the blood of the Germans.
+
+[Illustration: 072]
+
+[Illustration: 075]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+{055}_A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.--The two Banks of the
+Rhine.--Druid Stones.--Weddings and Burials.--Xight Service.--A Dentigod
+Glacier.--Social Duels. A Countrywoman of Aspasia.--Boudoir of a Celtic
+Lady.--The Bard's Story.--Teutons and Titans.--Earthquake._
+
+Any one who has ever travelled in my company, must know that I am apt
+to stray from my way, or at least to choose the longest route. I have
+a fancy to-day, to turn my eyes and my steps away from those sacred
+precincts of the Druids, which {056}had become slaughter-houses and in
+which the hand that blessed was also the hand that killed.
+
+I desire to breathe an air less filled with the perfumes, or rather the
+fetid odor of sacrifices. Up there, on that hill-top, where the setting
+sun lights up the bright summit, I shall breathe more freely.
+
+Here I am.
+
+Beneath me the Rhine spreads out its two banks, not united yet by any
+bridge, and even without a ferry to bring the one nearer to the other.
+
+But on both sides, half hid under dense willow thickets and gigantic
+reeds, there lie, in many a shallow little bay, large numbers of tiny
+barks. These cunning looking boats belong to harmless fishermen in the
+daytime; but at night they are filled with robbers and corsairs, who
+form in bands, cross over to the other side in search of booty, and even
+venture, if needs be, out into the Northern Sea. Just now nothing stirs;
+the fishermen have gone home, the corsairs have not come forth. I look
+farther out.
+
+On the left bank there are some Gallic Celts encamped, with blue eyes,
+white skin, and abundant golden tresses. Almost naked, their principal
+garment seems to be that immense shield, almost as long as their body,
+which shelters them on the march as well as when they are at rest, and
+which protects {057}them against the sun and the enemy alike. All of a
+sudden I hear them, with lips held close to one of the edges of their
+shields, utter sharp cries, which are taken up and repeated, from
+distance to distance, all the way down the river. To these cries, which
+no doubt represent their telegraphic system, there comes an answer from
+far sounding trumpets.
+
+[Illustration: 077]
+
+Who are these other soldiers with the black hair and the bronzed
+complexions? Carefully arrayed in symmetrical lines they advance
+steadily, clad in brilliant armor, and carrying banners surmounted by
+golden eagles with half open wings. Has C�sar really succeeded, after
+ten years' warfare, in making himself master of Gaul as far as the banks
+of the Rhine? I cannot doubt it; for at their {058}approach, the Gauls
+lower their lance-heads, in token of their peaceful disposition, and
+allow them to pass.
+
+[Illustration: 078]
+
+When they reach the river, the small Roman army pauses; under the
+protection of this armed force a few men, dressed in simple tunics, with
+no arms but tablets, a style, and ropes for measuring the ground, go to
+work preparing a plan, perhaps for a bridge, perhaps for a town.
+
+German sentinels, take care!
+
+From the height of my hill I look down upon a {059}narrow strip of land
+on the right bank of the river, and here I see several groups of men,
+scattered here and there in the woods and on the plain, who work under
+the superintendence of a Druid. Some are digging up the roots of trees
+which overshadow and impoverish the ground; others draw long furrows
+with the iron of their ploughs. These laborers seem all to suffer from
+some restraint which impedes their movements, but of which at this
+distance I can discover no cause.
+
+In order to meditate on this strange sight, I look around for a resting
+place. Half way up the hill I notice a small stone bench. As I draw
+nearer, the object grows in size and rises to such a height, that I
+should need a ladder if I wished to take possession of my seat.
+
+[Illustration: 079]
+
+This apparent bench is a monument, a Druidical monument, and consists of
+two upright stones, on which rests a third, horizontal stone. In France,
+in England, and in Germany there are still found {060}such Druidical
+altars, cromlechs or dolmens; these menhyrs astonished already Alexander
+of Macedonia when he marched through Scythia. In Bretagne, at Carnac,
+some of these stones, consisting of a single rock, rise by the wayside,
+as if to tell the traveller the story of the past, or they range
+themselves before his eyes in long lines, forming on the ground endless
+circles of emblematic meaning, as it is supposed. But the traveller can
+no longer understand their language. Was this an altar, or was it an
+idol, or perhaps only a simple monument raised over a grave. If they
+were altars, Carnac would be Olympus; if they were tombstones, it would
+be a cemetery.
+
+[Illustration: 080]
+
+I was going all around the mystic three stones to examine them more
+closely, when I noticed close by a flock of sheep, and then a shepherd.
+
+This shepherd, covered with a ragged _sagum_, had on his feet leather
+sandals, a half open wound on his forehead, which had not yet had
+time to close, enhanced the fierceness of his appearance. His burning
+{061}glances fell now upon the Druidical stone and now upon another
+object which I had not noticed before. This was the guard of a sword
+which had been driven into the ground.
+
+Could it be that this stone resting upon two supports, were new
+concessions made by the politic Druids?
+
+[Illustration: 081]
+
+As according to their spiritualistic views God could not render himself
+visible in a shape resembling our own, they had represented him as well
+as they could by a symbol. It appeared thus that human sacrifices were
+already no longer sufficient to maintain their creed.
+
+While I was examining with growing curiosity this strange keeper of
+sheep, fair, with bare neck and bare feet, was busy watching on the same
+side of the hill another flock, and at the same time gathering herbs
+for medicinal purposes. When she was about to leave, she offered the
+shepherd to attend to his wound, sword handle, and this {062}but he
+refused haughtily; she ran away laughing, and threw a flower into his
+face.
+
+He did not pick up that flower; he did not salute that pretty girl as
+she left him. He looked at her with disdain.
+
+Ah! I can doubt it no longer; this unhappy man is like the wood-cutter
+in the forest, and the laborers in the field, one of those prisoners
+taken in war, whom the Druids have spared, and now render useful. His
+closely shorn hair, his open wound, and the heavy wooden yoke which he
+has to carry on his neck, all betray his sad fate. He has made no reply
+to the half pitiful, half coquettish advances of the pretty gatherer of
+simples, because she has only awakened in his heart painful memories of
+his distant love, or of his wife, whom he is never to see again! He has
+cast glances of fierce hatred and burning revenge at the Druidical altar
+and the handle of the sword, because both of these objects point out the
+place of bloody sacrifices. Does he think he is himself destined to be
+slain? or was perhaps the warrior whom they slew yesterday, a man of his
+own tribe, his best friend, his own brother?
+
+But I have taken refuge here in order to escape from these painful
+thoughts of blood and murder. I propose to seek new objects of interest.
+
+Farther down, nearly at the foot of the hill, I {063}see a few huts, or
+rather a few low, almost crushed roofs, which seem hardly to rise from
+the ground. Are they houses, or stables, or caves?
+
+On the left bank Gauls and Romans have alike disappeared in the mists
+rising from the river. On the right bank the wood-cutters and the
+field-laborors are resting upon their axes or their ploughs, and seem to
+ask the sun if the day is not drawing to an end.
+
+[Illustration: 083]
+
+A breeze is springing up, the shepherd gathers his flock and, as
+mournful as ever, he slowly takes {064}the footpath that leads down the
+hill towards the village.
+
+I follow him without knowing what mysterious power draws me in that
+direction.
+
+Perhaps some Druid magician holds me under a potent spell, which enables
+me to forget who I am, whence I come, and even to what century I belong,
+and to witness these strange scenes, which, well nigh forgotten by all
+living beings, I alone am permitted to watch? Let me try, at all events,
+to profit by this rare piece of good fortune.
+
+I reach the low village and find it occupied by a colony of Salic
+Franks, who live scattered all along the Rhine. With their eyes fixed
+upon the left bank, they are just now far more occupied with the
+invasion of Germany by the Romans, than with the thought of invading
+Gaul themselves.--I feel suddenly a deep interest in these people. What
+Frenchman of this nineteenth century can feel sure that the blood in his
+veins is not the same that once gave life and strength to these terrible
+warriors from the North, Franks or Gauls? We are all natives of one or
+the other bank of this great river Rhine, and feel towards each
+other, whether we live on the right or the left bank, very much like
+school-boys whose friendship is cemented by many a battle royal.
+
+Being a Frenchman, I feel that I am about to {065}pay a visit to my
+paternal ancestors--for the Franks have given us our name. No wonder
+that I feel deeply moved.
+
+I examine the low huts of the village, if village it can be called, and
+find that they are separated from each other by commons and by fields,
+and that they finally lose themselves in the open country. Where now
+these scattered huts are standing, there may be one of these days a
+Mayence or a Cologne, and yet they will occupy no larger space with all
+their suburbs included.
+
+On both sides of the road extend orchards, fenced in with reeds and all
+aglow with blooming apple trees; dark, sombre pine forests and swamps,
+the greenish waters of which are confined within slight dams; here and
+there the live rock crops out from the ground and interrupts the road,
+or huge trees are lying across, recently cut down and but just deprived
+of their branches. In the open pasture grounds huge buffaloes are lying
+about snorting and panting with fatigue, for they have worked all day in
+the plough; the neighing of horses is heard from one end of the country
+to the other, and gradually dies out as the sun sinks below the horizon;
+lean heifers, with long, spiral horns, push here and there their heads
+through the fence of the orchards to have a last bite at the tender
+foliage of the reeds, and small oxen of an {066}inferior breed return to
+their quarters at the same time with the sheep, quite content to browse
+on the grass by the wayside, while herds of swine are wallowing in the
+mire of the low grounds.
+
+[Illustration: 086]
+
+The landscape resembles parts of Bretagne and of Normandy; but these
+provinces have no such huts. To see a human habitation, you have to rise
+high above the fences and hedges and then look down upon the ground.
+
+At a place where two roads meet, the cracking of a whip is heard;
+hogs, sheep, and small oxen are driven aside to make way for a kind of
+procession, consisting of grave and solemn men and women, who almost all
+wear a look of consternation.
+
+It is a wedding.
+
+Two young people have just had their union blessed by the priests under
+the sacred oak. The bride is dressed in black, and wears a wreath of
+dark leaves on her head; she walks in the midst {067}of her friends,
+bent double, as if weighed down by overwhelming thoughts. A matron, who
+walks on her left, holds before her eyes a white cloth; it is a shroud,
+the shroud in which she will be buried one of these days. On her right,
+a Druid intones a chant, in which he enumerates, in solemn rhythm, all
+the troubles and all the anxieties which await her in wedded life.
+
+[Illustration: 087]
+
+"From this day, young wife, thou alone wilt have to bear all the burden
+of your united household.
+
+"You will have to attend the baking oven, to provide fuel, and to go
+in search of food; you will have to prepare the resinous torch and the
+lamp.
+
+"You will wash the linen at the fountain, and you will make up all the
+clothing;
+
+"You will attend to the cow, and even to the horse if your husband
+requires it;
+
+"Always full of respect, you will wait upon him, standing behind him, at
+his meals;
+
+"If he chooses to take more wives, you will receive your new companions
+with sweetness; {068}"If needs be, you will even offer to nurse the
+children of these favorites, and all from obedience to your karl
+(master);
+
+"If he is angry against you and strikes you, you will pray to Esus, the
+only God, but you will never blame your husband, who cannot do wrong.
+
+"If he expresses a wish to take you with him to war, you will accompany
+him to carry his baggage, to keep his arms in good condition, and to
+nurse him if he should be sick or wounded.
+
+"Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty. Be happy, my child!"
+
+[Illustration: 088]
+
+When I heard this dolorous wedding song, which in some parts of France
+is to this day addressed to brides by local minstrels, when I saw this
+winding-sheet, {069}the mournful costumes and the whole funereal wedding
+procession, I felt overcome with sadness. Just then, cries and joyous
+acclamations were heard at some little distance.
+
+Another procession came from the opposite direction to the cross-roads;
+there all the faces were smiling and full of joyousness.
+
+This was a funeral.
+
+[Illustration: 089]
+
+Such were the ways of our fathers; they rejoiced in facing death, which
+relieves man from all his sufferings; they had nothing but tears for man
+when he entered upon his trials.
+
+In the meantime the twilight had passed into darkness. Small lights,
+looking like will-o'-the-wisps, were flitting to and fro in field and
+forest, going in all directions. Devout worshippers, carrying torches
+or lanterns in their hands, were going to consecrated places, to hold
+public worship or to recite private prayers. {070}Some, and these were
+the majority, go in the direction of the oak forests, where the Druids
+are found; others, concealing the light of their lanterns as well as
+they can, go hither and thither, towards the copses of beeches and pine
+trees, or towards the river, or towards the hill, which was but just
+now shining brightly in the sunlight, but is now concealed in utter
+darkness.
+
+[Illustration: 090]
+
+What are they going to do? They are going to worship the Rhine, the
+wells, the water-courses, the trees, the Druidical {071}altars, and the
+sword-guards. For no creed yet but has had its schisms.
+
+Orthodox or not, German or Gallic, the Franks have always shown a
+preference for nocturnal worship; they divide the year into moons,
+and count the moons not by days but by nights. And yet they have been
+suspected of worshipping the sun! And I had nearly fallen into the same
+error! How well it was that I came to see for myself!
+
+As I am just now more interested in watching manners than in studying
+mythology, I pursue my investigations, especially as I know very well
+that we must know the lives which people lead in order to be able fully
+to appreciate the objects of their worship.
+
+While all these small lights are flashing, like shooting stars, here
+and there through the landscape, certain specially bright lights seem
+to become stationary and permanent. These are the lighted-up windows of
+human habitations. I called the latter just now stables, or caves, and
+excepting a few of them, I must still call them such.
+
+They are dug out of the ground, damp and dark; their ceiling is on a
+level with the surface of the earth, and their roof consists of layers
+of turf, or of dry thatch covered with moss. The only door resembles the
+lid of a snuff-box, and is set in the roof on a level with the ground.
+The dwelling {072}has no light but such as enters through these
+trapdoors; consequently they are utterly dark during the whole rainy
+season and during winter, that is to say, for three fourths of the year!
+Darkness reigns supreme here; that darkness which is the enemy of all
+healthfulness, of enjoyment, of every comfort. No windows! No glass! O
+divine Apollo,--
+
+"Thou of the silver bow, god of Claros, hear!"
+
+[Illustration: 092]
+
+I never had any objection to the doctrine which made of you, the
+brilliant personification of the sun, a first class divinity; but I
+think like honors ought to have been bestowed upon the unknown man who
+first invented windows and window-panes, the {073}first glazier in fine.
+He ought at least to have been made a demigod, and if he had to remain a
+simple mortal, they ought surely to have remembered his name! Alas! that
+high honors are as unfairly distributed in heaven as upon earth!
+
+As there is no window, I peep through the trapdoor to see how these
+subterranean dwellings look inside. The aspect is far from being as
+wretched as I had expected. I find that the walls are hung with mattings
+and the floor is beaten hard; by the side of the smoking lamp which
+is suspended from the main beam of the ceiling, there are hanging, on
+hooks, a hindquarter of venison, baskets filled with provisions, and
+implements for fishing and hunting. Besides, I notice long strings of
+medicinal herbs, such as we see in the shops of herb-doctors, and among
+these plants the mistletoe occupies, as a matter of course, the place of
+honor.
+
+In another underground hut there appear actually some traces of luxury.
+Here the walls are incrusted with pebbles from the Rhine, of many colors
+and skillfully arranged; here and there weapons are arranged in various
+shapes; javelins with sharp hooks; framees, such as the ancient Franks
+were using; hatchets of stone or iron; "morning stars," with sharp
+points, were pleasantly mingled with huge bucklers; large leather
+quivers and long arrows feathered at one end and with jagged teeth
+{074}at the other. At first sight it looks as if for the purpose of
+softening somewhat the threatening aspect of these panoplies, the Celtic
+lady of the house had added some of her jewels to these weapons. But it
+is not so; these gold chains, these necklaces set with onyx and rubies,
+are worn by the grim warriors on the day of battle, quite as much in the
+nature of ornaments as for the purpose of protection. One of our
+sober, I may say, most sober historians, ascribes to this custom of
+our forefathers, the Franks, the gorget, worn still by officers in some
+European armies. Here also I see straw mats, but here they are trod
+under foot; they are used as carpets, not as hangings.
+
+The deep and spacious dwelling contains, besides the large room which
+alone I can see through my dormer-window, a number of other rooms on
+all sides, or rather of other caves, which are all connected with each
+other. I am evidently before the palace of one of the chief men of the
+country.
+
+In the first hut, into which I had looked, I had found the people at
+table, drinking a beverage made from grain and herbs--cerevisia--in
+horns of wild bulls, and talking about business--for our ancestors
+talked about business at dinner, just as we do. The conversation turned
+about exchanges of rams, a great fishing expedition to be undertaken
+jointly, an invasion to be made into the territory on the other{075}
+
+{077}bank of the river, and most eagerly, about the approaching
+elections. For Montesquieu tells us that municipal and even
+constitutional government existed alike among the early Germans.
+
+In the other dwelling, the one adorned with panoplies, they were talking
+neither of elections, nor of fishing, but they were likewise at table.
+Here they drank not only cerevisia in the _horns of the brave_, but also
+hydromel and hippocras in leathern tankards or human skulls, as white
+as ivory, adorned with silver and naturally shaped like cups. God be
+thanked that this custom has not been bequeathed to us by the Franks!
+
+On that evening they were celebrating the welcome given to a young
+warrior who had already made himself known by great exploits and who
+belonged to a neighboring, friendly tribe.
+
+When the meal was ended, and what a meal it was!--I shall be careful
+not to give the bill of fare, since the mere recital would cause an
+indigestion,--they thought of prolonging the entertainment given to
+their illustrious guest. But what could they do? The young Frankish
+ladies were not familiar yet with the piano, and the noble game of
+billiards had not yet been invented. They proposed riddles to be
+guessed, but this did not seem to afford much amusement to the young
+man. Then came a game with bones; but he nearly fell {078}asleep. As the
+duty of hospitality required that they should make every possible
+effort to entertain their guest, a great man among the Cheruski or the
+Marcomanni, they proposed the _handkerchief_; this, seemed to arouse his
+attention.
+
+The handkerchief game was at that time very popular; it was a kind of
+company duel. Two kind-hearted adversaries, having no other motive but
+to amuse themselves and to entertain the company, would seize with their
+left hand one end of a handkerchief, and with their right hand a table
+knife or a hunting knife, it did not matter which, provided the weapon
+was sharp and very pointed. For our good ancestors did not know foils
+with cork buttons or other arms of courtesy. Imbued with the strange
+idea that to fight, man against man, or a thousand against a thousand,
+was the greatest happiness upon earth, they delighted in occasionally
+cutting each other's throat, even if they were the best friends in the
+world.
+
+The spectators formed a ring around the combatants. After they had taken
+a solemn oath, by the rims of their bucklers, by the shoulders of
+their horses, and by the points of their swords, that they cherished no
+feeling of animosity against each other, a signal was given and the game
+commenced. For some time I saw how the handkerchief was stretched out,
+twisted and then suddenly {079}turned around and around rapidly. Light
+red lines had already begun to mark the skin of the two adversaries; the
+blood was trickling down their arms, but these wounds were such trifles
+that the spectators took no notice of them and uttered not a single
+exclamation.
+
+All of a sudden I heard three hurrahs in rapid succession; the welcomed
+guest, whom all had been striving to honor to the utmost of their
+capacity, had fallen down with his adversary's knife still sticking in
+his breast. He was dead.
+
+They had not been able to think of any better way to make him spend a
+pleasant evening. The good old times had a hospitality of their own!
+
+This pleasant handkerchief game has survived, only slightly modified,
+in several countries of northern Europe. The handkerchief is generally
+wrapped around a rapier, so as to shorten the length of the blade. In
+the taverns of Holland the game is considered conducive to health; a
+knife wound gives a man a chance to escape apoplexy; it serves as a
+timely bleeding.
+
+I had run away in horror. For an hour I wandered about, casting a
+furtive glance down a trapdoor here and there, and almost everywhere
+I saw men and women, horses and cattle, enjoying their rest, lying
+pell-mell on the same litter.
+
+In one of these hovels I thought I recognized {080}the young girl whom
+I had seen on the hill; her attitude of repose gave a peculiar charm to
+her supple and delicate limbs, and by the feeble flickering light of the
+lamp, she suggested the idea of a sleeping nymph.
+
+[Illustration: 100]
+
+She was a young Ionian girl, a countrywoman of Aspasia; captured in war,
+she had been sold as a slave in twenty markets, developing in spite of
+such treatment, one grace and one beauty after another. On the banks of
+the Ilyssus, they would have erected an altar in her honor, on the banks
+of the Rhine they made her keep a herd of swine. {081}She was not the
+only one of her sex, however, whom I saw during that fantastic night.
+
+The sound of a shrill fife, mingling with the sweeter notes of a harp,
+attracted my attention. I went toward the spot from which the music
+came.
+
+In a little room decked with flowers, a young woman was engaged in her
+toilet.
+
+I ought to have fled once more,--this time from bashfulness or a sense
+of propriety,--but a conscientious historian is bound to overcome every
+difficulty, in order to ascertain the exact truth. It was a great piece
+of good luck, surely, to be able to report as an eye-witness, what might
+be seen in the boudoir of a Celtic lady.
+
+My friend was sitting, half undressed, on a stool, with her hair
+loosened, and holding in her hand a metal mirror. An old woman, a
+servant or her mother, I cannot tell which--and yet it seemed to me as
+if I had seen both these women, as well as the beautiful swine-herd,
+somewhere before; when that was, however, I could not possibly tell--the
+old woman held the whole rich abundance of the young lady's hair in
+both her hands and rubbed it with a horrid mixture of tallow, ashes, and
+plaster. Thanks to this wretched pomatum, the beautiful hair gradually
+changed from pale blonde to intense red, and thus enabled the owner
+to comply with a fashion, which I do not presume to criticise, but
+{082}simply record here. Then she washed and combed it carefully,
+plaited it cunningly, and at last rubbed the shoulders and the neck of
+the beauty with melted butter, while she washed the face and the hands
+with foaming beer.
+
+[Illustration: 102]
+
+After the demands of cleanliness had thus been satisfied, she placed
+before her mistress a slight collation, which was promptly served and
+promptly dispatched. While she was thus attending to her toilet and
+disposing of a bird's meal, there was a cyclopean feast going on in an
+adjoining room; loud and violent voices were heard, everybody seemed
+{083}to talk at once, and in such high tones that even the shrill fife
+could no longer be distinguished--for it was from this hall that the
+sound of music proceeded, which had attracted me to the dwelling.
+
+The old woman evidently thought the feast was drawing to an end, for she
+hastened to finish her mistress's toilet: She opened a wooden box and
+drew from it a pair of pretty red boots, which she put on the feet of
+the young beauty; then she threw over her white dress a purple scarf,
+which she fastened on the left shoulder with a long thorn from a
+sloe-tree. After that she tied a narrow scarlet ribbon around her head,
+handed her a collar and bracelets made of small berries, which in form
+and color were strikingly like corals, and finally, as the finishing
+touch, she daubed her cheeks with red by means of a cosmetic which I
+suspect consisted largely of brickdust. When the young Frankish beauty
+found that there was enough red--scarlet, crimson, purple, and pink--on
+her person from head to foot, she uttered a cry of triumph, especially
+when her husband, who entered her room, followed by his guests, seemed
+to be quite dazzled by the resplendent charms of his lovely wife, whom
+he had just _bought_.
+
+To buy a woman was a familiar expression in Germany at that time, as
+it is now,--_Ein weib kaufen_. It must be borne in mind, however, that
+{084}in those days the bride brought no dower; on the contrary, the
+husband paid her family a certain sum as compensation. We have inherited
+many of our usages from our Celtic forefathers; but as to this custom,
+we have not thought proper to keep it up.
+
+I at once recognized the husband, although he was now all smiles in his
+face, and let us hope, all smiles in his heart also. He was the chief
+personage in the wedding procession, whom I had seen two hours before,
+looking so grave and solemn, so sad and mournful.
+
+According to Druidical regulations, the bride has first of all waited
+upon him at table, humbly standing behind him like the other house
+slaves; then, towards the middle of the repast, she had gone to her
+room in order to exchange her girlish costume for the dress of a married
+woman--a woman who has the right to follow the fashions and to dress
+herself up in red from the heels of her feet to the end of her hair.
+
+Now she receives her master _at home_; here she is mistress, and
+mistress she will remain. This was the rule among the Franks; for in
+spite of the lachrymose anthems of the bards and in spite of the sombre
+ceremonies of the wedding, the women became almost invariably the
+masters at home, a usage which, contrary to that of dowerless girls,
+may possibly have crossed the Rhine. {085}Thinking it over, I found that
+during my nocturnal excursion into the land of my forefathers, I had
+been present--as a witness only, be it understood--at three successive
+entertainments; a feast of welcome, a business dinner, and a wedding
+dinner. Although they had not been calculated to satisfy my appetite,
+they had, at all events, made me extremely hungry. I was thinking,
+therefore, of retracing my steps and looking for a lodging, when I
+saw the Druid-bard, who had not disdained taking a seat at the nuptial
+feast, coming slowly and solemnly to the centre of the room, all the
+while drawing a few accords from, a kind of harp, which consisted of a
+closely bent bow with three strings instead of one.
+
+[Illustration: 105]
+
+He was getting ready to charm the company with the recital of one of
+those long and mysterious poems which recount the history of the Celts.
+I delay my departure.
+
+It has been said, and not without a show of reason, that the history of
+our Gallic or Germanic ancestors ought to be for us a subject of deep
+interest; but bold minds have in vain tried to raise {086}up once more
+the old oak tree, to trim it and to let air and light enter within its
+canopy of leaves. The birds that once sang in its branches have left no
+trace behind them of their songs, and nothing has reached us from those
+sacred precincts but a few faint echoes.
+
+I certainly have reason to praise my good fortune! What all these great
+scholars, these learned men, have not been able to accomplish by dint
+of energy and perseverance and aided by all their knowledge of Latin,
+Greek, and Sanskrit, I (I, the man whom you know) am enabled to do!
+Thanks to the bard's long recital, I am able to fill up this blank,--the
+first, the only man in the history of mankind, who can throw light upon
+the impenetrable darkness of those ages!
+
+The bard began. I listened, all attention and eagerness, trying to catch
+every sound and to impress every word upon my excellent memory.
+
+In a pompous introduction he told us all about the first arrival of the
+Celts in Europe, the coming of the Druids as apostles of the true
+faith; he told us how a great colony of Salic Franks, Gauls, under the
+collective name of Pelasgi, all children of Teut, or Teutons, had
+first planted a sacred oak at Dodona. On this point I was already well
+informed. He then alluded to the building up of Athens, due as much to
+the Teutons as to the {087}Greeks of Cecrops; he boasted, that when the
+Greeks were led astray by their corrupt imagination and wished to
+raise altars to Saturn, Jupiter, and all those false gods whom they had
+borrowed from the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, the Teutons rose in the
+name of outraged human reason, and proclaimed the only one God, breaking
+down all the false altars. Hence, he said, that formidable struggle,
+still so well known as the battle of the gods of Olympus against the
+_Teutons_ or _Titans_....
+
+I held my breath. What? Those terrible giants, those colossal men, whom
+Jupiter himself feared and who piled Ossa upon Pelion, or Pelion upon
+Ossa--they were Celts? They were the ancestors of the brave French?
+
+O Titans, O my brothers, with what delight I listened to the sacred
+words of the bard, so that I might repeat them to you and rejoice with
+you in our glorious descent!
+
+By special grace I understood the Germano-Celtic words of the bard
+without difficulty. But the poem was flowing on interminably; I began
+to mistrust my memory. Centuries succeeded centuries, events followed
+events, and they were as close to each other and as numerous as grains
+in a bag of wheat. The continuous exertion of all my faculties began to
+tell upon me. The most illustrious {088}heroes of Gaul and of Germany
+appeared to me soon only like the faint forms seen by means of a magic
+lantern; Sigovesus and Bellovesus, the descendants of the great king
+Ambigat; Brennus, Btlgius, and Lutharius, sons or sons-in-law of that
+other great king Cambaules, began to turn around and arouad in my head,
+holding each other by the hand and performing an old British dance to
+the music of an old Breton instrument. Ariovistus played on the biniou.
+Then the sounds of the biniou, the shrill tones of the fife and the
+Druid harp were broken in upon by a terrible noise of countless church
+bells; the air shook all of a sudden, the earth trembled, everything
+around me fell to the ground with a great crash, the Druid, the house of
+the wedding, the trap-door, the hamlet, the trees, the hill, the Rhine
+and its banks, the heaven and the stars, all disappeared at the same
+moment, and I awoke in my arm-chair, surrounded by my poor books, which
+had just fallen from my knees.
+
+The dinner bell was still ringing.
+
+[Illustration: 111]
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+{091}_The Roman Gods invade Germany.--Drusus and the Druidess.--Ogmius,
+the Hercules of Gaul.--Great Philological Discovery concerning Teut at
+es.--Transformations of every kind.--Irmexsul.--The Rhine deified.--The
+Gods cross the River.--Druids of the Third Epoch._
+
+You may rest assured, I did not merely dream of that bold transformation
+of Teutons into Titans; one of the most learned and most reliable
+authors in my library, assures me of the fact. These great scholars are
+sometimes very clever men.
+
+According to this authority, the Celts were very much taller than the
+Greeks, and this fact had naturally suggested to the latter the idea
+of speaking of them as giants. The Celtic Pelasgi, who were warlike
+shepherds like all the men of their race, usually watched their flocks
+as they were {092}grazing on the high mountains, and it was these
+mountains which the myth accused them of piling up, one upon another,
+to scale the heavens. You will say, What mad follies of poets! I grant
+this; but after these mad poets came men like Hesiod and Homer, who
+changed the idle dream into stern reality, and upon this rock a new
+religion was founded, and with it, a new civilization.
+
+Now the day has come when these same gods of Greece, having become the
+gods of great Rome, will pursue the Titans, or Teutons, to the very
+heart of Germany.
+
+It is well known that C�sar, after having conquered Gaul, had promptly
+crossed the Rhine, rather for the purpose of making a reconnaissance
+on the opposite bank of the river, than with any view to conquest.
+His successor went farther into Germany. Drusus, the adopted son of
+Augustus, and his lieutenant, reached the banks of the river Elbe,
+pursuing the Franks, the Teutons, the Burgundians, the Cheruski, the
+Marcomanni, all those children of the same great family, who had been
+overcome, put to flight, but never subjugated. All of a sudden, at the
+very moment when he is about to cross the river, there comes forth from
+the dark, dense forest, not a new army of barbarians, bristling with
+spears and halberts, but a woman, a tall, haughty looking woman, with
+long disheveled hair{093}
+
+[Illustration: 113]
+
+{094}
+
+[Illustration: 114]
+
+{095}flowing down upon her bare shoulders, and on her brow a crown of
+simple oak branches.
+
+She steps across his path and with uplifted finger orders him in an
+imperious voice to turn back and to go to his camp to prepare for death.
+
+It was a Druidess, endowed in the highest degree with the gift of
+prophecy; so it would seem at least, for Drusus had hardly entered the
+Roman camp, when he fell from his horse and expired.
+
+Not all the Druidesses, however, succeeded in making the Roman generals
+go back, by a word or a gesture; nor did all the Roman generals fall
+from their horses and die. After fifty-five years of strangely varying
+fortunes, the Genius of Rome was victorious, and must needs have been
+victorious, for it led the whole world by its power. It brought with
+it also its gods, which in spite of their numbers, or rather perhaps
+because they were so numerous, met on the banks of the Rhine with a more
+determined resistance than its soldiers.
+
+Rome had a magnificent mission to fulfill. Her glorious duty upon earth
+was to restore the unity of all the great human families, and to
+improve their condition by bringing them in contact with each other--by
+fraternity, in fine. To attain this end, she had generally employed War
+as her principal instrument; Religion had been a subsidiary agent only,
+a weapon which she kept concealed, {096}but which she used with great
+efficacy to secure the permanency of her conquests.
+
+Unfortunately, Roman gods were as liable to corruption, and to fearful
+corruption, as the great men of the Empire. Nations rise step by step
+on the grand ladder of civilization; when they have reached the top they
+must keep up their activity, without which no life and no progress can
+be maintained, and thus the moment comes when they are forced to descend
+again, till at last they sink into sensual degradation, into erudite,
+refined, voluptuous barbarism--the very bottom of the ladder.
+
+[Illustration: 116]
+
+Rome had begun by raising altars to all the virtues; now her deities
+personified nothing but vices. How could they expect to introduce
+them and make them acceptable to these coarse Germans, among whom
+prostitution, adultery, and theft were hardly known by name, who allowed
+a woman {097}to claim hospitality at the house of any _Karl_, to rest
+under his roof, and even to share his couch, without fearing slander, if
+he had but put a naked sword between her and himself, and who had
+never known and could not know the use of locks and keys? Were they not
+accustomed to hang their most valuable possessions upon the branches
+of a consecrated tree in the open camp, or to place them on top of a
+druidical stone or beneath it, as they chose--knowing that there they
+were perfectly safe? When they had taken this simple precaution, they
+could go to bed and sleep quietly, and there was no need for putting a
+sentinel on guard.
+
+Already, in the days of C�sar, the Romans had employed a very ingenious
+and cunning device, in order to win over the simple Gauls. They
+had pretended to find their gods, their own peculiar gods, already
+established in the country from olden times. Thus there existed in Gaul
+a statue which the Etrusci had erected in honor of _Ogmius_, or rather
+_Ogma_. The Greek Lucian mentions it in these words:--
+
+"It is a decrepit old man; his skin is black; this form of a man,
+however, wears the attributes of Hercules, the lion's skin and the club.
+
+"I thought at first," Lucian adds, "that the Celts had invented this odd
+figure in order to laugh at {098}the gods of Greece; but this so-called
+Hercules, who is of very great antiquity, drags after him a multitude of
+men, whom he leads by golden chains which he holds in his mouth, while
+they are fastened to the ears of his victims."
+
+[Illustration: 118]
+
+This _Ogmius_ was evidently a typical representation of Druidism itself;
+_Ogma_, in Celtic languages, means both science and eloquence. What
+has Hercules to do with all this? Nevertheless the Romans insisted upon
+calling him by that name.
+
+Nor did they stop here. {099}When they found all the nations they had
+conquered were continually speaking of a certain _Teutates_,
+they at once declared that they recognized in this popular person their
+own god Mercury. It was he and no other! It was Mercury, the son of
+Jupiter and the nymph Ma'ia. There was a striking resemblance, an
+unmistakable analogy! No one could misapprehend the thing for an
+instant!
+
+[Illustration: 119]
+
+Oh, my good Romans, I don't mean to blame you now for all the trouble
+you gave me when I was at college! I will forget all that--But what
+could make you conceive this stupid idea, of naturalizing among us your
+Mercury, the god of eloquence, if {100}you choose, but above all the
+ever ready pimp of Jupiter, the god of trade and of thieves, and of
+naturalizing him in a land where trade, love, and thieves are so little
+known! In subservience to this Roman notion, some of our modern writers
+have been clever enough to prove that there were really many points of
+resemblance between Mercury and Teutates--but I, I openly deny it! Once
+more, philology shall come to my assistance, to overturn their doctrine.
+It was only this morning, while shaving, that I made a philologie
+discovery of the very highest importance, in which the public will take
+the most lively interest, and, I doubt not, the French Acadamy also.
+
+The word _Teut_, as the reader no doubt knows perfectly well, means
+_God; Tat_ in ancient Celtic and in modern Breton may be accurately
+rendered as _father_--so an old Breton woman assures me, who brought me
+up when I was a child. Add to _Tat_ the termination _Es_, the diminutive
+form of _Esus_, the _Lord_, connect the three monosyllables, and you
+have _Teut-Tat-Es_, God, Father, and Lord!
+
+Where--I appeal to all the famous historians so graphically described
+by Rabelais--where do you find a trace of Mercury in Teutates now? He is
+beyond all doubt the great divinity of the Celts, but you found it more
+convenient to follow the interested views of the Roman writers. And yet
+{101}even if they were innocent of any design upon your credulity, might
+they not have been mistaken themselves? Are you not aware that Plutarch,
+conscientious Plutarch himself, after having witnessed the Feast of
+Tabernacles in Palestine, tells us gravely that the Jews worshipped
+Bacchus? You were not aware of it, come, confess it frankly! For I will
+confess to you, that I was not aware of it, myself, ten minutes ago;
+but Dr. Rosahl has just told me so. The good doctor is delighted at
+my discovery of the true meaning of _Teut-Tat-Es_; he thinks no
+etymological question of such importance 'was ever more satisfactorily
+put and answered in the same breath. He advises me strongly to write a
+memoir on the subject, which he will undertake to bring to the notice of
+learned societies, and only suggests the expediency of leaving out any
+allusion to my old Breton nurse; but I am too conscientious a writer
+ever to omit quoting my authorities.
+
+Now, since I have mentioned Rabelais, let us "return to our lambs," that
+is, to our Teutons.
+
+After the Roman conquest, the same transformation of native deities
+into classic gods continued in Germany. The sacred oak was changed into
+Jupiter, whom it represented symbolically; the Druidical altars became
+either Apollo or Diana; sometimes they were made to represent deities
+of inferior rank, nymphs, anything in fact. But these numerous
+{102}metamorphoses, made rather hastily, led to a curious mistake.
+
+The conquerors had met on the banks of the Weser a huge monolith,
+cut with an axe by simple and ignorant stone-carvers. It was called
+_Irmensul_. Like the Celtic Teutates, this Irmensul also attracted
+at certain fixed times an immense concourse of people. The Romans,
+appreciating the martial spirit of the natives, did not hesitate to
+declare that this was Mars, their god of war. Thereupon they paid it
+all possible honor, consecrating their weapons to the new deity, and
+offering countless propitiatory sacrifices.
+
+Now, who was this Irmensul?
+
+When Varus had invaded Germany, during the reign of Augustus, at
+the head of three legions, Arminius, a chieftain of the Cheruski (a
+Brunswicker, we would say nowadays), had surprised him, and completely
+surrounded his army in the marshes of Teutoburg, on the banks of the
+Weser. Every man of this army, whether a Roman or a warrior of the
+allied tribes wearing Roman livery, had perished by the sword. For eight
+days the bloody waters of the Weser had carried down more than thirty
+thousand dead bodies.
+
+When the news of this disaster reached Augustus, he thought that Gaul
+was lost, Italy in danger, and Rome herself imperilled. Mad with grief,
+he would {103}rise, for a month afterwards, night after night, and in
+his terror wander through his vast palace, crying out: "O Varus, Varus,
+bring me back my legions!"
+
+[Illustration: 123]
+
+Well, the Irmensul was nothing more than a triumphal column erected
+in honor of Arminius and his Cheruski. _Irmen_ is the same as the
+name _Herman or Armin_ (Arminius), and _sul_ means column. The Romans,
+however, did not know this, and they paid dearly for their ignorance.
+If they had known better they would not have committed the egregious
+blunder of kneeling down and worshipping the man who had destroyed the
+three legions of Varus. It is very evident that they were as ignorant of
+German as of Celtic. {104}It ought not to surprise us, however, to
+see the soldiers of the imperial people change stones into gods, as
+Deucalion had changed them into men. Before the days of Homer, and for
+a long time after him, Jupiter was in Seleucia modestly represented by
+a fragment of rock and Cybele by a black stone. In Cyprus, the Venus of
+Paphos was nothing but a triangular or quadrangular pyramid, nor can I
+imagine what importance could be attached to three or four angles in
+a body, which was soon to assume the softest and most fascinating
+outlines. First the poets had come and sung of Cybele, the kind goddess,
+of Jupiter the omnipotent, and of Venus, the soul of the world and the
+queen of beauty. Inspired by their voice and the bold conceptions of
+their fancy, the sculptors had next employed the chisel upon these
+stones and these pyramids, and there had sprung forth from these
+shapeless masses the Lord of Gods, armed with his lightning, the
+beautiful Cytherea, armed with the most powerful weapons of all womanly
+graces. Oh, poets and sculptors, you have upset everything in religion!
+You are responsible for the loss of that austere simplicity which once
+characterized the faith of men! Miserable cutters of stone, reckless
+counters of syllables, you, and you alone, have substituted symbols
+for truth! Still, I do not condemn you; although I have stood up
+to {105}defend the Druids of the earliest days, I am far from being
+insensible to the charms of art and of poetry; besides, what right have
+I, who speak of gods and myths, to pass sentence on those who have been
+the real creators of Mythology?
+
+[Illustration: 125]
+
+While the conquerors of the Teutons, in the pride of their cleverness,
+were committing blunder after blunder, and fell into the pits they had
+dug for others, the real gods of Rome stayed on the banks of the Rhine,
+where they had already been accepted by the Gauls. They were impatient
+enough to see Germany also erect them temples and statues, but the Rhine
+with uplifted waves barred the passage.
+
+Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances {106}of former days,
+when he had been compelled to appear in the triumphal processions of
+Germanicus, as a conquered river, loaded with chains, while the rabble
+and riffraff of Rome had insulted him to his face and covered him from
+head to foot with the mud of the Tiber.
+
+The remembrance of his former humiliation seemed to revive his wrath
+at this day, and he unfolded his whole strength to take his revenge. In
+vain had the Olympians tried repeatedly to cross at different points;
+everywhere, from the Alps to the Northern Sea, they found him
+furious, roaring and rushing, full of threats in his green waters and
+besprinkling the banks with white foam.
+
+[Illustration: 126]
+
+At last they bribed him to espouse the cause of the Empire: they made
+him a king, the king of German rivers. A king more or less mattered very
+little to a people who made and unmade kings at will.
+
+The Rhine was evidently flattered by the distinction; and he laid aside
+his long cherished wrath.
+
+He had already allowed Jupiter to cross, taking {107}him perhaps for
+Esus; he now carefully examined the passports and certificates of good
+conduct of several other gods, and left the way open for Apollo and
+Minerva, Diana and some deities of fair repute; but when he saw Bacchus,
+his anger was rekindled. What? Were not the Germans mad and quarrelsome
+enough, when they had only taken too much beer? How could he consent to
+allow their passions to be aroused by potent wine? He was king, and as
+such bound to keep this scourge from his people.
+
+[Illustration: 127]
+
+The gods whom he had allowed to cross endeavored to plead for the son of
+Semele,--but he remained inexorable. His severity relaxed, however, when
+the vines planted by order of the Emperor {108}Probus in parts of the
+Rheingau, began to adorn the banks of the river with their verdure--he
+was overcome, when he had once tasted the juice of the grape. He
+consented to let Bacchus pass from bank to bank, but only at the time of
+the vintage.
+
+[Illustration: 0128]
+
+Once admitted, Bacchus soon brought into the land the whole crowd of
+gods and goddesses, who made up his following and who enjoyed no great
+reputation in Rome and in Greece. The Rhine {109}became angry once more,
+but once more caresses and unexpected honors had their hoped-for effect.
+He was already a king; he now became a god.
+
+[Illustration: 129]
+
+Henceforth Father Rhine conceived a strong affection for his former
+adversaries. When he saw that the German bank had adopted the customs
+and the religion of the conquerors as fully as the Celtic bank, he
+abandoned completely his restrictive policy and did his best to help
+everybody across. Thus Jupiter was no sooner installed in Germany, than
+he summoned his Corybantes; Bacchus his Bacchantes and his Maenads,
+Diana {110}her hunting nymphs, Venus her whole court of lascivious
+priestesses; the Dryads and the Hamadryads, the Naiads and the Tritons,
+the Fauns and the S il vans, all came one by one. It was a perfect
+invasion.
+
+[Illustration: 130]
+
+Germany, grave and solemn as she was, felt not a little troubled by this
+wholesale irruption of frivolous {111}and ill-mannered deities, who so
+little agreed with her austere habits. The young, it is true, were more
+easily Romanized and readily caught at this poetical personification of
+all the forces of Nature; but the old, the chieftains, and above all the
+Druids, backed by a nearly unanimous people, asked each other what could
+be the meaning of this sudden enthusiasm for new gods, this half mad
+devotion to celestial clowns?
+
+No one, however, dared to raise a hand; the Teutons had lost their
+former energy, they were enfeebled, unnerved and exhausted by their long
+but useless resistance. Hence, like true cowards, they appeared in the
+pagan temples, in order to conciliate the good-will of the conquerors,
+and then, to pacify their consciences, they hastened to some dark forest
+and there with anxious eyes and disturbed minds, they offered in fear
+and trembling their fervent worship to the sacred oak.
+
+The Roman gods were soon to encounter far more formidable adversaries
+elsewhere.
+
+Far beyond Germany, as we find it described and limited by geographers,
+there lived a host of nations, scattered over a vast territory, and
+extending as far East as the shores of the Caspian Sea. The Romans
+had never penetrated far into these unknown depths, which sent forth
+incessantly new armies of soldiers whom they classed indiscriminately
+{112}under the vague and collective name of Hyperboreans. Such were
+the Huns, the Scythians, the Goths, the Slaves (Poles, Danes, Swedes,
+Russians, and Norwegians), all of them robbers and pirates. Some, under
+the name of Cimbrians, had joined the Teutons t and with them invaded
+Gaul and even Italy, till they encountered the armies of Marius; others,
+were about to cross the Pyrenees and to fall upon Spain. Among them all,
+the Scandinavians were by far the most powerful, intrepid soldiers and
+fearless sailors, who were soon to darken the waters of the Rhine
+with their countless vessels, and to make Charlemagne shed tears as he
+thought of the days to come.
+
+Ere long these dauntless pirates will actually enter the Loire, then
+even the Seine; they will besiege Paris, and finally, thanks to the
+able statesmanship of King Charles, whom they call the Simple, they will
+become. Christians, after a fashion, and under the name of Normans take
+possession of one of the fairest provinces of France. Then they will
+cultivate the soil which they had heretofore robbed of its produce, they
+will drink beer instead of cider, they will peacefully devote themselves
+to lawsuits and cattle-raising, and will end by wearing white cotton
+night-caps--after having destroyed Rome and conquered England twice.
+
+The Scandinavians, of Celtic origin like the {113}Gauls and the Germans,
+led at first both nomadic and sedentary lives and were rather barbarous
+than unpolished; but they built cities and erected temples, in which
+they worshipped Odin the One-Eyed.
+
+[Illustration: 133]
+
+If the harvest failed, or whenever the first warmth of spring aroused
+in them their innate fondness of vagabondage and war, they took to their
+boats or mounted their horses, and the stupefied nations {114}of Europe
+watched the horizon and listened along the river courses, to distinguish
+whether this great Northern tempest, this storm of iron and fire, of
+blood and of tears, was rushing down upon them by land or by sea.
+
+After having crossed Germany in all directions, some of these bands,
+or rather some remnants of such bands, settled from inclination or from
+necessity, in certain portions of the country, especially on the islands
+in the Main, the Weser, and the Neckar. Their priests soon made numerous
+converts among the neighbors to the faith of Odin. The Germans paid
+little heed to the difference between Odin and Teut. The two names
+designated, for them, one and the same god, the one god of the Celts.
+
+The increasing influence of these Druids of the third epoch led,
+however, naturally to some opposition. The German priests accused them
+of being too profuse in the shedding of blood, and of having given their
+god Odin a companion in a certain god Thor, fond of overcoming giants,
+and of having thus destroyed the true nature of the original creed,
+which knew but one God.
+
+A schism was about to divide the Druidical church, when the arrival of
+the Roman deities brought the two opposite parties once more together.
+Each yielded somewhat; {115}they came to an understanding and finally
+joined hands in a conspiracy.
+
+[Illustration: 135]
+
+{117}The Scandinavian Druids, forsaking the prudent reserve which they
+had so far scrupulously observed, declared that, in order to triumph
+over the Roman Olympians, Odin had not only the assistance of his
+all-powerful son Thor, but could, if he chose, summon an escort of gods
+at least as imposing in numbers as that of Jupiter himself.
+
+The German Druids veiled their faces, but the people and the whole party
+which was opposed to Jupiter the wicked, and to Venus the shameless,
+joyfully accepted the proposition. However cruel the Scandinavian ritual
+appeared with its increased number of victims who had to be offered to
+the new gods, it seemed to them better still to worship Terror than to
+worship disgraceful Voluptuousness. They acknowledged Odin and his son
+Thor, and impatiently waited for the arrival of the others.
+
+The German Druids gave way, hoping perhaps that the two hosts of deities
+would erelong fall out among themselves and soon destroy each other.
+
+Father Rhine, in his equal affection for all his brother gods, was
+far too good-natured to take this admission of new deities amiss, and
+promptly went northward, to the most hyperborean regions of snow and
+ice, in search of the newly chosen gods.
+
+The two parties soon met face to face. {118}It is our solemn duty to
+explain fully the whole curious system of Scandinavian gods. We shall
+see that here, as in all that we shall have to add, legends, myths, and
+traditions abound in such numbers that they can be had for the asking.
+
+[Illustration: 141]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+{121}_The World before and since Odin.--Birth of Ymer.--The Giants of
+the Frost.--A Log split in Two.--The First Man and the First Woman--The
+Tree Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.--Thor's Three Jewels. Freyr's Enchanted
+Swoj'd.--A Souvenir of the National Guard of Bellville.--The Story of
+Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.--Honey and Blood.--Invocation._
+
+The world was not born.
+
+Thick mists, unbroken by light, unbounded in limit, filled space.
+
+After a long period of darkness, silence, and perfect repose, a faint
+light is seen, vague and uncertain, hardly deserving the name; something
+is moving unsteadily in this night. The giant Ymer has been born
+spontaneously out of the mixture {122}and assimilation of these closely
+compressed mists, which sudden and severe frost has condensated.
+
+At that time men of science had not yet discussed the question of
+spontaneous generation; not one academy made mention of the subject.
+
+Ymer, the sole inhabitant, the Robinson Crusoe of this world of
+darkness, became tired of his solitude. Guessing how he had been born
+himself, he gathered the mists that surrounded him, piled them one upon
+the other, shaped them into a form resembling his own, and once more the
+North wind came and solidified the mists. As he was a giant, he
+created giants; he also created mountains, no doubt for the purpose of
+furnishing seats for these giants, for the highest among them did not
+reach up to their belts. This does not mean, that these mountains were
+less high than they are nowadays, but the sons of Ymer were of such size
+that without bending down a little, they could not have rested their
+elbows on the summit of Chimborazo, and what is more marvelous still,
+Ymer himself not only was taller than every one of his sons, but taller
+than all of his sons together, standing one upon the shoulders of the
+other! When he stretched himself out full length, the Alps might have
+served him as a pillow, while his feet would have rested on {123}Mount
+Caucasus.
+
+[Illustration: 143]
+
+{125}In order to produce such giants and such mountains, he had, of
+course, to consume large quantities of the material furnished by the
+chaos of mists; the remainder of this gaseous substance, trembling in
+vacant space and losing its balance, fell back into the depths of the
+valleys, and formed the ocean.
+
+Some few animals began soon to stir in the waters, and on the shores
+of that vast sea; sphinxes and dragons, hydras and griffins, kraken
+and leviathans, all creatures of a low order, but in their proportions
+adapted to this colossal world, this world of the infinitely great, and
+no doubt related in some manner to the antediluvian families of mammoths
+and pterodactyls, of ichthyosauri and plesiosauri.
+
+A god of the first race, a creator without being created, Ymer naturally
+did not possess that skill and that cleverness which can only be
+acquired by long experience. However strange, therefore, it may appear,
+however inexplicable, the fact is, that this world, fresh with new
+life and freed from the original mists, was nevertheless covered with
+darkness. The only light which existed was an occasional phosphorescence
+of the sea or a few flashes of electric light, such as an aurora
+borealis sends forth; and this faint glimmer alone illumined the pathway
+of those vast creatures, those monstrous {126}reptiles, who, dazzled for
+an instant, plunged back into the lowest depths of the waters, casting
+up huge waves and tall columns of spray.
+
+It must have been a peculiarly curious sight, certainly, to see those
+Giants of the Frost, as they were called, wandering, through the
+darkness across the boundless plains and along endless shores, under a
+sky without light, looking for each other from one end of the world to
+the other. To be sure, they could accomplish the journey in a few long
+strides, and if they were peculiarly anxious to see each other, face
+to face, they had only to wait for the chance of a momentary flash or a
+faint twilight glimmer.
+
+The sight was no doubt curious, but there was no one to behold it.
+
+This state of things could not last long. With a new god a new world
+also came into existence. This new god was very different from the
+first, it was Light itself, condensed at the southern extremity of the
+heavens, far from this earth inhabited by giants.
+
+One fine day--an unlucky day for them, however--these giants noticed
+that the sky above their heads was suddenly assuming a faint pinkish
+hue, then violet, and finally purple. At this they rejoiced. But
+suddenly a ball of fire appeared, and they were terrified. It was Odin,
+Odin followed {127}by his celestial family, which consisted at least of
+a dozen principal deities!
+
+[Illustration: 147]
+
+But no! no! I take it back! I rebel! No one can come in contact
+with these ancient myths, without knocking against some principle of
+astronomy. Astronomers find only seven principal deities in Scandinavian
+mythology, when they are called upon to transform them into planets, and
+twelve, when the question is about the signs of the Zodiac. That seems
+to me to make mythology a. little too easy. Does it not look as if the
+first men had been born with a telescope and a compass in their pocket,
+and as if they had erected an observatory long before they thought of
+building huts for themselves?
+
+Fortunately I am not bound to follow their footsteps.
+
+Certain historians of high authority have found out that Odin lived
+upon earth before he came to dwell in heaven. He was an illustrious
+conqueror, {128}very expert at killing men, one of those scourges of
+God, who fall upon nations in order to break them to pieces. As a matter
+of course, these nations deified him after his death.
+
+[Illustration: 148]
+
+I see nothing astronomical in all this.
+
+Hence, I return to my own method, and propose to describe him, as he
+appeared to his Druids, his Scalds, and his worshippers.
+
+[Illustration: 149]
+
+He arrived from the southern countries, no doubt from the Orient,
+bringing with him the sun, as an indispensable auxiliary in the
+great task{129} which {131}he had undertaken, to reform this dark and
+ice-covered world: "For there was a time," says the Edda, the bible of
+the Scandinavians, "when the sun, the moon, and the stars did not know
+the place they were to occupy. It was then the gods assembled and agreed
+as to the post which was to be assigned to each one of them."
+
+When the installation of the heavenly bodies had thus been agreed upon,
+Odin followed the example of all the Hercules of Egypt and of Greece,
+and began his benevolent career by freeing the earth of all the monsters
+by which it was infested. Ymer was the first to succumb to his blows,
+and after him, the other giants of the frost, "a race of evildoers,"
+adds the Edda. Evildoers? Whom did they aggrieve, I wonder? The
+complainants must have been the kraken, the griffins, and the serpents.
+
+The world had hardly come into existence and already the right of the
+stronger had established the doctrine: _V� victis!_
+
+Of all the giants of the frost a single one escaped. He must have been a
+married man, for his descendants became after a while so numerous as
+to trouble the Ases, that is to say, Odin and his companions, the other
+gods.
+
+After the giants, came the turn of land and sea monsters, who were
+almost as formidable as they themselves. In the general destruction two
+monsters {132}only survived: the wolf Fenris, with his fearful jaws,
+which enabled him to crush mountains and even to injure the sun, and the
+serpent Iormungandur, the great sea serpent of world-wide renown. Both
+these monsters were one day to aid the giants of the frost in avenging
+themselves on their conqueror.
+
+[Illustration: 152]
+
+Odin thought he had now nothing more to fear, and returned to the realms
+of light, there to enjoy his glory in peace and to revel in the delights
+of Walhalla.
+
+{133}One morning he came down to see how the world was coming on since
+he had reorganized it, and he found to his great joy, that the new
+creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance. Grass was growing in
+the plains, on the slopes of hills, and even at the bottom of the rivers
+and the sea; here and there trees of varied forms and shapes arose
+and gave variety to the monotonous horizon; some, crowding together in
+groups on the mountain side, seemed to whisper confidentially to each
+other, as the breeze was lightly agitating their foliage, while others
+stood together in countless hosts, stretching away over hill and dale
+as far as eye could reach, but silent and immovable, like an army which
+remains motionless, while the chiefs are deliberating.
+
+[Illustration: 153]
+
+Behind the green curtain of forests, deer, eland, and aurochs were
+bounding in herds, now and then showing their beautiful horns or
+their dark bushy brows at the opening of some clearing; goats were
+{134}climbing about on the rocks and venturing close to the brink of
+precipices; birds were singing in the groves, now swinging playfully on
+the supple branches of willows, and now darting suddenly on swift wings
+through the air; fish were gliding silently under the surface of the
+waters, which reflected their silvery sheen or broke in soft ripples,
+while butterflies and insects were sporting and buzzing around beautiful
+flowers.
+
+Odin smiled; the artist was pleased with his work.
+
+But were animals, impelled by natural instincts only and exclusively
+occupied with the desire to satisfy their coarse wants, were such
+animals worthy to be the sole owners of such a charming abode?
+
+It occurred to him to invent a being which, without participating in the
+divine essence, might still rise high above all other creatures. This
+time the divine artist wanted a spectator, to witness his work, to
+appreciate it intelligently, and afterwards to profit by it for some
+good purpose.
+
+He was meditating on it during a walk on the sea-shore, when a piece of
+wood, a fragment of a huge branch of a tree which the wind had broken
+off, attracted his attention. It had evidently fallen into a river,
+which had carried it out into the high sea, and there it had been beaten
+and bruised by {135}ebb and tide. He drew this poor shapeless stick of
+wood towards him, split it in two and made out of it a man and a woman.
+
+"Do you hear? Do you understand?" Asks the Edda, at this point.
+
+Now, what is this intended to convey to us? That man, exposed to the
+caprices of the elements, is nothing but a poor plaything in the hands
+of Fate? Very well, let us admit this explanation. But can the sacred
+book of the Scandinavians really presume to teach us that the origin of
+mankind must be looked for in two sticks of wood? We cannot but think
+that that would be a sorry jest, alike unworthy of the general solemnity
+of the Edda and of the mysterious majesty of ancient cosmogonies.
+
+Besides, we ought not to forget that all the Northern nations attributed
+a divine character to trees; if in Germany the oak was held sacred, the
+hyperboreans held the ash tree in great respect, and the question is
+only whether our first father was made of the wood of an ash tree, an
+oak, or a willow.
+
+This leads us naturally to the consideration of the ash _Ygdrasil_ and
+its curious population of gods, birds, and quadrupeds.
+
+The branches of this marvelous tree spread over the whole surface of the
+earth; its top supported {136}the Walhalla and rose is to the uppermost
+heavens, while its roots penetrated to the very bottom of hell. Under
+its shadow dwell Odin and his Ases, when the government of the world
+requires his presence, or some important question has to be decided.
+
+[Illustration: 156]
+
+Two swift winged ravens are incessantly flying to and fro in the
+Universe, to see what is going on; then they come and perch, one on his
+left and one on his right shoulder, and whisper into his ear the news
+of the day. A squirrel, as swift in its movements as the two ravens,
+is perpetually running up and down the tree. If you doubt my word, hear
+what the poet says:--
+
+     .... The fearful Odin Was seated beneath the ancient ash,
+     The sacred tree whose immortal brow
+     Rises and touches the vault of heaven.
+     {137}On the top an eagle with eager eyes,
+     With piercing eyes, with ever open eyes,
+     Takes in the whole Universe in a single glance.
+     Odin receives his swift messages.
+     Incessantly a tiny squirrel
+     Comes and goes; the god's voice cheers it onward.
+     All at once it dashes from the trunk to the top
+     And in an instant it returns again
+     From the top to the trunk. Odin, when it comes,
+     Turns an attentive ear to the squirrel.....
+
+But the poet does not tell the whole story.
+
+[Illustration: 157]
+
+To act as a check upon the reports of the eagle, the ravens, and the
+squirrel, a vulture is perching {138}upon the loftiest top of the sacred
+tree, who looks over all the horizons of the earth and the universe,
+watching for the slightest stir and giving notice of any important event
+by his cries or the flapping of his wings.
+
+Still other animals, however, inhabit the great ash tree Ygdrasil. Some
+of these play a sinister part in the great menagerie; they are hideous
+reptiles, half concealed in the slimy marshes into which one of the
+roots of the tree finds its way, and ever striving to pour their
+venom into the mire; beneath another root a dragon is crouching, who
+constantly gnaws at it, and four starving deer, rushing through its
+branches, forever devour its foliage.
+
+"Do you hear? Do you understand?" asks the Edda once more.
+
+For the present we do not presume to interpret these descriptions,
+and before we attempt to penetrate into these dark mysteries, we will
+mention the principal chiefs among the Ases.
+
+The mystic marriage of Odin and Frigg resulted in the god Thor, who
+is held in equal veneration with his father. As his duty is to carry
+thunder and lightning, it is he who shakes the earth whenever he drives
+through the clouds in his car drawn by two goats and producing a noise
+represented by the words: "_Pumerle pump! Ptimerle pump! Pliz! Pluz!
+Schmi! Schmur! Tarantara! Tarantara!_". {139}This onomatopoetic
+translation of the flashing of lightning and the rolling of thunder,
+is not my own; it comes directly from Dr. Martin Luther, the great
+Reformer.
+
+Thor is also engaged in pursuing and destroying the giants of the
+mountains, degenerate children of the giants of the frost, in size at
+least. At a later period we shall meet with giants of still smaller
+dimensions. Alas! that here below everything that is great and strong
+has a tendency to decrease steadily!
+
+[Illustration: 159]
+
+For this war against the giants Odin has bestowed upon his son three
+precious objects, which in the inventory of the Ases appear under the
+name of _Thor's Three Jewels._ The first is his weighty hammer.
+
+_Mjo�ner_ (some people call it his club), which goes forth by itself to
+meet giants and crushes their heads. One of the commentators upon the
+Edda professes to see in the giants of the mountains nothing but the
+mountains themselves, and in the hammer Mjo�ner, nothing but lightning,
+which generally strikes their summit. We must evidently {140}put as
+little faith in commentators as in astronomers.
+
+The second of Thor's jewels was a pair of iron gloves. As soon as he
+puts them on, his spear no sooner reaches the point at which it is
+aimed, than it returns to his hand, precisely as the falcon comes back
+to the keeper's gauntlet, after having destroyed its victim.
+
+The third jewel of Thor is his war belt; when he puts it on, his
+strength is twice as great as before; in fact, he becomes irresistible
+and would overthrow the great Odin himself. But Odin has nothing to fear
+on his part, for in spite of his brutal and passionate temper, Thor is
+always an obedient and submissive son.
+
+Asa-Thor, that is to say, the Lord Thor, was most highly respected
+among men as the redhaired master of thunder and lightning, and as
+the destroyer of giants; and he was also greatly feared as an active,
+blustering god, of a troublesome, turbulent temper and of somewhat
+eccentric manners.
+
+Another weapon, at least as marvelous as Asa-Thor's famous hammer, was
+the sword of the god Freyr. This sword was endowed with an intelligence
+very rarely to be met with among swords, and punctually obeyed the
+orders of its master. Even in his absence, it went promptly and
+faithfully {141}to carry out his orders, striking here and there at a
+given point, or making terrible havoc in the midst of a battle, without
+a hand at the hilt to direct its mortal blows.
+
+[Illustration: 161]
+
+The good Freyr, as pacific a god as ever lived, was quite indifferent
+to battles and fights; hence he gave his orders quietly to his faithful
+sword, while he remained comfortably seated at Odin's table, enjoying
+his strong beer and the rarest wines.
+
+I cannot help wishing that they might have known the art of
+manufacturing guns after this system, at the time when I was a
+lieutenant in the Belleville National Guard. It would have been so
+pleasant to see a rifle move gravely to and fro, quite alone, in front
+of the City Hall and the Guard House; or to meet a patrol of four
+{142}guns, accompanied by a corporal, but a flesh and blood corporal to
+cry out: Who is there?
+
+[Illustration: 162]
+
+In the meantime the happy owners of these improved weapons might have
+been sitting, not at Odin's table, but at the nearest coffee house or
+restaurant, {143}drinking beer or wine just like the Scandinavian gods.
+
+Unfortunately our manufacturers of arms have not yet reached that degree
+of skill, which our forefathers seem to have possessed, and thus I have
+never yet been able to enjoy such a sight.
+
+The happy owner of this magic weapon, Freyr, presided over the general
+administration of the clouds; it was he who made fine weather or rain,
+a very troublesome office, which must have exposed him to countless
+petitions and most contradictory prayers.
+
+His sister Freya, afterwards called Frigg, was Odin's wife and the
+most honored goddess on earth as well as in heaven. She inspired and
+protected lovers, and very different from her sister in Greece, this
+Northern Venus enjoyed an unsullied reputation.
+
+They say that once, when her husband had gone away on a long journey,
+she was so deeply grieved at his absence, that her tears ran day and
+night incessantly; these tears, however, differed from those of mortal
+beings; "they were all drops of gold which fell into her bosom,"--and
+hence the Northern people call the precious metal to this day _Freyas
+tears_.
+
+One only among all the dwellers in Walhalla had been able to give her
+some comfort by singing {144}his sweetest songs; this was the god Bragi,
+the god of poetry and beautiful words.
+
+A tradition which deserves to be mentioned here, accounts for the manner
+in which he obtained this precious gift of eloquence and the art of
+poetry.
+
+In the early days of the world, when the creating god had concentrated,
+so to say, all the active powers of humanity in a few individuals,
+and when a long life permitted these favored beings to carry on their
+studies till they reached a happy end, there lived on earth a wise man
+who possessed an art unknown, not among men only, but among the gods
+themselves. This was the art of perpetuating thoughts by word-painting,
+of reproducing them in outward forms, not to the eye by colors, but
+to the ear by sounds. This sage was called Kvasir. He had invented the
+_Runes_, the art of poetry, and the no less precious art of reproducing
+words and fixing them in writing. He cut his runes on beech tablets; if
+he had gone a step farther, he would have invented printing long before
+Guttenberg.
+
+Kvasir was then the sole owner of the art of Poetry.
+
+Two wicked dwarfs prowling about in search of treasures, took it into
+their heads, that the treasure of Poetry was better than any other, and
+forthwith determined to obtain possession of it. They killed Kvasir,
+into whose dwelling they had crept by {145}stealth, and as they were
+masters in magic, like all the dwarfs of those days, they carefully
+collected his blood, and mixing it, in different proportions, with
+honey, put it into three vessels, which they closed hermetically. These
+three vessels contained respectively Logic, Eloquence, and Poetry. To
+keep them safe till the day on which they should be used, they buried
+them in the depths of a cave which was inaccessible to men and unknown
+to the gods themselves. But one of those travelling agents, who under
+the form of ravens, were continually wandering over the world in Odin's
+employ, had been a silent witness of the transactions, the murder, the
+mixing, and the hiding of the three vessels. He returned instantly to
+the ash Ygdrasil and reported it all to his master. The god gave his
+orders, which the squirrel, no doubt, at once carried to the eagle, and
+the latter, who was continually on the watch on the top of the sacred
+tree, left his post for a few moments in charge of the vulture, and flew
+with rapid wings to the cave, from whence he returned laden with the
+three precious vessels. It is to be supposed that he carried one in his
+beak, and the two others, one in each of his claws.
+
+He placed the mysterious vessels at Odin's feet and at once returned to
+relieve the vulture and to resume his watch.
+
+Odin opened first the vessel which contained {146}Poetry and tasted the
+contents. From that moment he never spoke otherwise than in verse.
+He also tasted Logic, and henceforth he spoke and reasoned with such
+extreme accuracy, that he found no one to agree with him any longer; he
+tasted Eloquence, and as soon as he opened his lips, he might have been
+mistaken for one of our own most eminent lawyers. Gold chains seemed to
+come out from his lips, as was the case with Ogmius, with which he bound
+the ears and hearts of all his hearers.
+
+Whilst he was thus enjoying himself, Bragi his son, and Saga his
+daughter, who were sitting by him, felt their mouths water and looked
+imploringly at him.
+
+Setting aside the terror with which the Druids have surrounded Odin, he
+seems to have been occasionally good-natured, and certainly always acted
+like a kind father. He offered the vessel with Poetry first to Saga,
+courteously giving her the preference on account of her sex. She barely
+touched it with her lips. When Bragi's turn came, he eagerly swallowed
+as much as he could, and without taking time to gather breath, he began
+a grand triumphal chant in honor of the feasts, the loves, the wars, and
+the greatness of the gods, the stars of the firmament, paradise, hell,
+and the ash Ygdrasil. {147}
+
+[Illustration: 167]
+
+{149}In well chosen cadences he imitated the clanking of cups, the
+cooing of doves and of lovers, the tumult of battles, the harmonies of
+the celestial spheres, and all this with such energy, such fire and
+such grace by turns, that Odin was enchanted, and having become a master
+himself about five minutes ago, on the spot changed his name of the
+Long-bearded God, which he had borne so far, to that of the God of
+Poetry. Moreover, he entrusted to his keeping the threefold treasure
+which had been taken from Kvasir's murderers.
+
+This was that god Bragi who alone succeeded in comforting the beautiful
+and inconsolable Freya in her great grief.
+
+Through him the Druids were instructed in the art of verse; to him is
+due that terrible Scandinavian poetry, which contains, according to
+Ozanam, quite as much blood as honey.
+
+As to Saga, she became the goddess of Tradition. "The heart of history
+is in tradition," says a master, a sage, and a poet.
+
+Good goddess Saga, your lips, I know, never touched the vessel
+containing Eloquence, nor that which held Logic, far from it! And still
+I count upon you to support me in carrying out my work, which I have
+perhaps imprudently begun; for I begin to be overwhelmed with materials,
+the subject is a very grave one, and, in spite of the good advice of my
+learned doctor and the assistance of my two charming lady-companions,
+time and strength threaten not to suffice. Therefore I beseech you as
+well as my readers, to grant me a short repose, before I proceed any
+farther on my journey through Odin's fantastic world.
+
+[Illustration: 170]
+
+[Illustration: 173]
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+{153}Short Biographies.--_A Clairvoyant among the Gods.--A Bright
+God.--Tyr and the Wolf Fenris.--The Hospital at the Walhalla.--Why was
+Odin one-eyed?--The Three Norns.--Mimer the Sage.--A Goddess the Mother
+of Four Oxen.--The Love Affairs of Heimdall, the God with the Golden
+Teeth._
+
+We have no intention of giving here a complete list of the numerous
+deities of the North. We will only mention Hermode, Odin's messenger and
+man of business; Forseti, the peacemaker; Widar, the god of silence,
+a dumb person who only walks on air, as if he were afraid to hear
+the noise of his own footsteps; Vali, the skilfull archer; Uller, the
+excellent skater, who taught the giant Tialff his art, in spite of what
+the poet Klopstock says to the contrary; Hoder, a mysterious deity,
+whose name must never be uttered by any one in heaven or on earth. Why
+not? Odin alone knows the reason.
+
+Let us also mention Heimdall, with the golden teeth. A son of Odin, he
+had nine mothers--eight more than had ever been known before him. He
+is the guardian of Walhalla, and his duty is to watch lest the giants
+should one fine day attempt to storm the heavenly abode by means of the
+Bifrost bridge, that is, the rainbow. But the gods can sleep in peace;
+neither the eagle nor the ravens on the ash Ygdrasil can surpass
+Heimdall in vigilance. The senses of sight and hearing are in him
+developed to a perfectly marvelous degree; he can hear the grass grow in
+the meadows and the wool grow on the back of the sheep. From one end of
+the world he sees a fly pass through the air at the other end, and, more
+than that, he sees distinctly the different joints in its feet and the
+black or brown spots with which its wings are {155}dotted. In the midst
+of the darkest night and at the bottom of the sea where it is deepest,
+he sees an atom moving and watches the marriage of monads. There is
+nothing in the whole universe hid from him.
+
+But why should this god Heimdall have golden teeth, after a fashion of
+some of the natives of Sunda? Odin alone knows the reason.
+
+Among all these gods Balder is the most richly endowed, the best, the
+handsomest and the most virtuous--Balder, the Bright God, by eminence.
+Although the son of Odin and Frigg, he might be taken for a son of
+Freya, on account of his strong resemblance to Love itself, not to the
+turbulent, passionate, and capricious Love of the Greeks, but to Love
+in the widest and noblest sense of the word,--Love, in fine, in its
+Christian meaning. Balder represents that universal goodness, loyalty,
+affection, and harmony, which binds all beings to each other; Bragi, the
+poet is his brother; Forseti, the peacemaker, is his son. But we shall
+but too soon have to return to him on a most melancholy occasion.
+
+In spite of our desire to close this already too numerous list, we
+cannot well pass over in silence that poor Tyr, the very type of
+intrepidity and loyalty, who fell a victim to his own prowess and to his
+imprudent confidence in the other gods. {156}The latter, having one day
+met the wolf Fenris, invited him to enjoy a good meal with them. The
+wolf, always voraciously hungry, listened to the proposal. Then the
+Ases, pretending to fear that he might play them an ugly trick on the
+way home, insisted upon leading him by a chain around his neck, pledging
+their word as gods, however, that they would set him free upon going to
+table.
+
+[Illustration: 176]
+
+Fenris, suspicious as all wolves, in fact, as all wicked creatures are,
+consented to be bound, but made it a condition that as a proof of the
+good faith of the Ases, one of them should put his hand into his mouth.
+Tyr agreed to do so without hesitation, not expecting that personages of
+such lofty position could possibly be faithless. The gods, {157}however,
+did behave faithlessly and kept Fenris a prisoner, whereupon the wolf
+claimed the fulfillment of the pledge, and when Tyr put his hand into
+his mouth, coolly bit it off up to the wrist. Hence that particular
+joint has ever since been called _the wolf's joint_, in memory of this
+inartistic amputation.
+
+Thus the gods had a one-handed brother among them, after having long
+been presided over by a one-eyed god. But Tyr and Odin were by no means
+the only gods who labored under such an infirmity. Heimdall with the
+golden teeth must evidently have had a set of false teeth; Widar, the
+god of silence, was dumb, and Hoder, that mysterious being whose name
+must not be pronounced by any one, was blind. There was also a certain
+god, called Herblinde, who was not only blind but--actually dead! We
+poor mortals generally imagine that death includes blindness as a matter
+of course, but it was not so, apparently, among these mystic personages.
+Herblinde, for instance, was quite blind, although he was quite dead
+also, and yet he attended the meetings of the gods and even had a vote
+in their counsels. Do you understand that? I do not, I am sure.
+
+And this grand council, this hospital of the Walhalla, which counted
+among its members a onehanded and a dumb god, a toothless and two blind
+{158}gods, was, as I said, presided over by one-eyed Odin! This fact
+recalls forcibly the old proverb: Among the blind the one-eyed is king.
+
+But why had Odin but one eye?
+
+Fortunately I am able, for once, to give an answer to this question.
+
+Astronomers have naturally found a reply to this Why? in their
+imperturbable system of sidereal interpretations. Odin was the sun-god;
+the sun was the eye of Nature, Nature had but one eye--consequently
+Odin was bound to be born one-eyed!.... Now you see why your daughter is
+deaf-mute.
+
+The Edda, however, gives a different account of the matter, and I feel
+bound to adopt this explanation, as it is founded upon a knowledge of
+the most secret mysteries.
+
+Odin had two eyes when he was born, and the sun was nothing more than
+his travelling companion, when he came from the far East, to revive and
+warm the earth which had so long been in the hands of' the giants of the
+frost.
+
+Several centuries after he had created man, he was one day walking up
+and down in the lower parts of his great ash tree Ygdrasil, and thinking
+of the greatly increased responsibility which rested upon him since he
+had added the government of the earth to that of heaven, and since the
+earth {159}had begun to be peopled with a multitude of races. He was
+asking himself whether the knowledge of all things had been revealed
+to him fully enough to enable him satisfactorily to fill, his two great
+offices. He had quaffed ample draughts by turns from the three vessels
+of Kvasir, but Eloquence, Poetry, and even Logic do not supply Wisdom.
+
+[Illustration: 179]
+
+As he passed by a large tank fed by a purling brook, he saw three
+beautiful swans swimming merrily about in it, who after having examined
+him with half thoughtful, half mocking attention, twisted their long
+flexible necks in strange contortions and then seemed to converse with
+each other by significative glances.
+
+He spoke to them and asked them if they possessed the secret of Wisdom.
+
+The swans suddenly plunged beneath the surface, {160}and in their place
+there appeared three beautiful women, representing three different
+stages of life.
+
+They were the Norns.
+
+[Illustration: 180]
+
+The first, called Urda, knew the Past; the second, called Verandi, saw
+the Present unfold itself before her eyes, hour by hour and minute by
+minute, and when to-day had become yesterday, her older sister gathered
+up the departed day and entered it on her record. Finally Skulda, the
+third, the Norn of the Future, enjoyed the privilege of beholding with
+her far-seeing eyes the germs of all future events and of being able to
+foretell with unerring accuracy the date and the consequences of their
+occurrence.
+
+Let us pause here a moment to notice a remark communicated to me by the
+amiable and learned {161}Dr. Rosalh, which may not be without interest
+to some of my readers.
+
+It will be remembered that the Romans had at first pretended to
+recognize in these three Norns their own three Fates, probably because
+they were three and because they were women; at least I can see no other
+reason. Urda, Verandi, and Skulda were as beautiful and as graceful
+as the three Parc�--Alecto, Lachesis, and Atropos--were ugly. Besides,
+their duties were entirely different. The Norns knew the fate of men,
+but they were utterly unable to lengthen human life. Such at least is
+the opinion of the great Holinshed in his Chronicles. Warburton sees
+in them nothing more than Valkyrias, but, what is far more astonishing,
+Shakespeare chose these three beautiful prophetic virgins, to furnish
+the three hideous, unclean, and toothless witches, the weird sisters,
+who called out to Macbeth, "All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king
+hereafter!"
+
+Shakespeare had evidently taken the curse denounced by the Church
+against the ancient deities in its literal meaning.
+
+Odin had a better opinion of the three sisters; he conversed for some
+time with them, and afterwards came frequently back to visit them. It
+was thus and by their aid that he gained experience.
+
+But even Experience, added to the precious gifts {162}of Eloquence,
+Poetry, and Logic, is not able to supply Wisdom.
+
+[Illustration: 182]
+
+He took counsel with the Norns, and in his anxiety to possess this most
+precious of all gifts, he expressed his willingness to exchange for it,
+if needs be, his treasures of poetry and of eloquence, his magic armor
+which made him safe against all danger, his horse Sleipner, which had
+eight legs and crossed the air with the rapidity of lightning, his eagle
+and his vulture, his squirrel and his two {163}ravens. Then he went to
+Mimer, the wisest man in existence, the successor of old Kvasir, and
+attended his lectures like the most humble and zealous of students. When
+he had mastered the subject, and felt that he had acquired Wisdom at
+last, he paid the philosopher liberally by giving him one of his own
+eyes, in order thus to show him the high value he set upon the service
+which had been rendered to him by Mimer.
+
+This was the reason why Odin was one-eyed. The truth is far too
+honorable to the god to be hid under idle astronomical pretexts.
+
+Now, what use did he make of his wisdom?
+
+He began by regulating the government of heaven. The Ases had until now
+lived very much as they chose; he now gave to each of them a duty to
+perform: to Niord the management of rivers and of fishing; to Egir, the
+seas and navigation; and so to others, requiring regularity and accuracy
+of all, but sternly prohibiting the display of extreme zeal, just as
+Talleyrand used to do with his diplomatic apprentices.
+
+Then he turned to the earth.
+
+Here men had multiplied incessantly, and with their numbers their wants
+had increased, and alas! with these, their vices also! In order to
+satisfy the wants and to repress the vices, they had established among
+them that great, primitive law which {164}constitutes the whole code of
+laws among barbarians--the right of the stronger.
+
+[Illustration: 184]
+
+"TO EGIR, THE SEAS AND NAVIGATION."
+
+The most fertile pastures, the rocks and grottoes best fitted for
+dwellings and safe retreats, the forests that were richest in game and
+the springs that were most frequented by the flocks, all were taken by
+force and possession maintained by the strength of the sword.
+
+Wise Odin felt that violence gave no right and that theft could not
+give a title to possession. He {165}determined to establish the right of
+property, and to give it, for greater efficiency, a religious character
+which would make it sacred in the eyes of nations.
+
+One of his daughters, Gefione, was sent by him to one of the most
+powerful chiefs of Scandinavia. She presented herself before his tent,
+with presents in her hands. In return she asked only for a span of land.
+The chief gave her a vast but uncultivated territory.
+
+[Illustration: 185]
+
+Next she went, with secret purposes in her mind and always inspired by
+Odin, to a distant country, into the mountains, where giants dwelt. Here
+she married one of these giants, the most powerful of them all, to whom
+she bore four sons. The strong are apt to be gentle. Gefione took her
+four sons, changed them into oxen, and by words of gentle persuasion
+induced her husband to harness them himself to a plough. A river marked
+the boundary of the field, on the other side stood an altar. Thus was
+the first piece of property inaugurated, {166}by purchase, by labor, and
+under the protection of the gods. The first owner, the gigantic husband,
+represented Force submitting to Right, and the four oxen represented the
+hard-working family, improving the soil and enriching it with the sweat
+of their brow.
+
+Soon people began to imitate Gefione's example, and in all directions
+land was measured and laid out; stones were put up to mark the boundary
+lines of each legal possession, and these stones were held sacred.
+
+In order to encourage men in these efforts, the Ases made it a point
+every morning to show their bright, shining heads above the horizon and
+thus to cheer them by their presence and the interest they took in their
+labors.
+
+The god Thor even came once to pay a visit to his sister Gefione, and
+then cast a few flashes of lightning upon each one of the newly acquired
+pieces of land, to render them sacred. Hence the old, deeply rooted
+notion that lightning hallows all it touches. Afterwards, and as late as
+the fifteenth century, it was deemed sufficient at Bonn, at Cologne, and
+at Mayence, to cast Thor's hammer upon the piece of land that had become
+a fief, in order to establish an absolute right of proprietorship.
+
+But the right of property alone did not suffice to render human society
+stable and flourishing,--{167}the nations of the earth longed for a
+hierarchy of rank and race; at least the divine pupil of the wise Mimer
+decided it should be so. The means he employed to found such a hierarchy
+and the system itself appear curious and odd enough to us, who are no
+gods, but, unsuitable as they look now, they were successful at the
+time.
+
+By his order Heimdall, the god with the false teeth, abandoned his post
+as guardian of the Wal-halla for nine days, and after a long journey
+across the country, knocked at the door of a wretched tumbledown hut,
+where the _Great-grandmother_ lived. Here he remained three days and
+three nights.
+
+The Great-grandmother brought a male child into the world,
+black-skinned, broad-shouldered, with hard horny hands, and powerful
+arms. They called it _Thrall_, the serf.
+
+Thrall's natural inclination led him to prefer the hard work in mines
+and in the wilderness; he was fond of the society of domestic
+animals and even slept with them in their stables. His sons became
+cattle-raisers, miners, or charcoal-burners.
+
+Heimdall had continued his journey. He next stopped at the
+_Grandmother's_ house, a small, simple cottage, but lacking in nothing
+that was useful.
+
+Here he remained three days and three nights.
+
+The Grandmother gave birth to a son, who was called _Karl_, the free
+man. {168}Karl was fond of driving oxen under the yoke, of working in
+wood and in iron, of building boats and houses, and of trading. From him
+are descended our workmen and artisans, our merchants and builders.
+
+Turning his face towards the south, Heimdall next went to a beautiful
+mansion, surrounded by magnificent gardens and reflected in the blue
+waters of a large lake. As the god had only to show his golden teeth
+in order to be welcomed by every woman he saw, the mistress of this
+mansion, the _Mother_, also received him with great delight and tried
+to do him honor. Dressed in her most costly robes she put an embroidered
+cloth upon a table of polished wood and offered him in silver dishes
+all the varieties of fish and game, in which the lake and the park near
+the house abounded. The Mother did everything to keep the god as long
+as possible at her house, but, as at the Grandmother's and at the
+Great-grandmother's, so he remained here only three days and three
+nights.
+
+A son appeared to console the Mother for the departure of her
+illustrious guest; this child had at its birth already rosy cheeks,
+long hair, and a haughty look. When he was still a child, he was fond of
+brandishing his spear and of bending his bow; at fifteen he swam across
+the blue waters of the lake, or plunged on an unbroken horse into
+{169}the depths of the forest, riding as fast as the wind. They called
+him Jarl, the noble.
+
+Some years later Heimdall paid another visit to this country; delighted
+with the prowess of Jarl, he acknowledged him as his son and taught
+him the language of birds, which the gods alone understand and fluently
+speak. He taught him also the science of Runes, of runes of victory
+which are engraven on the blades of swords; runes of love to be traced
+upon drinking horns or the thumbnail; runes of the sea, with which the
+prow and the rudder of ships are decorated--in all cases precautionary
+measures by which alone ill fortune can be kept at bay.
+
+Besides these gifts of knowledge, he bestowed upon him an inalienable,
+hereditary domain. This was the first entailed estate ever known in
+Europe.
+
+Jarl, says the Edda, was a man of _eight-horse power_. Could we express
+it better in the noble railway Anglo-Saxon of our day, or does
+our modern English really go back to the old Scandinavian, as this
+coincidence would seem to prove?
+
+Jarl's descendants are the great chieftains, the barons, princes,
+kings, and Druids, who have all inherited great power from their divine
+ancestor with the golden teeth. They alone are his legitimate
+and acknowledged children; the descendants of the grandmother and
+great-grandmother are illegitimate. {170}Still, whether acknowledged by
+the law or not, they all form a close chain, a single family, they all
+spring from the same god! Thus the humblest among them saw his rights
+secured for the future.
+
+I must confess that, the more carefully I examine these barbarians,
+whether they were gods or men, the more I am surprised to discover
+beneath the outward cloak of their fables so many correct ideas of order
+and of justice. These fables had, of course, their day and then passed
+away. Up to the present time, it is true, there is not much of the day
+gone; perhaps also Odin may be blamed for having invented, before the
+world was a few hundred years old, both the Middle Ages and the Feudal
+System. But it would be wrong to blame him, for it must be acknowledged,
+that in spite of the violence of their manners and the bloody nature
+of their worship, a certain civilization had at last appeared among
+the Scandinavians. It may be called brutal, I grant; it may be called
+aggressive even, but it was after all an improvement, and it has held
+its own in the North, under snow and ice, like the vigorous plants of
+our Alps. How comes it that the Germans and the Franks, more favored by
+climate and by contact with highly civilized nations, remained so long
+inferior to the Scandinavians in this respect? Perhaps they were more
+liable to be invaded than the Sons of the North; the Scandinavians
+invaded the continent {171}in all directions, but no one ever dreamt of
+invading their country.
+
+After having thus established the right of property and a certain social
+hierarchy, Odin had next instituted marriage with the symbolic ring, and
+finally courts of justice.
+
+But, since he had given to man an immortal soul, and since he held out
+to him reward or punishment in another world according to his deserts,
+Odin had been compelled to establish the first high tribunals in that
+other world.
+
+[Illustration: 191]
+
+We must, therefore, find our way to Walhalla and even to Hell, if the
+reader is disposed to follow us to that place.
+
+[Illustration: 195]
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+{175}Heaven and Hell.--_The Valkyrias.--Amusements in Walhalla.--Pork
+and Wild Boar.--A Frozen Hell.--Balder's Death.--Frigg's Devotion.--The
+Iron Tree Forest.--The Twilight of the Gods.--Idunas' Apples.--The Fall
+of Heaven and the End of the World.--Reflections on that Event.--The
+Little Fellow still alive._
+
+When the warriors were preparing for battle, a number of blue-eyed young
+maidens, mounted on {176}bright, shining horses, passed through their
+ranks, animating them with word and gesture, and whispering into their
+ears warlike songs to be soon changed into triumphal chants for those
+who fell on the battlefield, mortally wounded.
+
+[Illustration: 196]
+
+These maidens were the Valkyrias, those Valkyrias whom ever since the
+poets and painters of the Ossianic school have reproduced in a thousand
+forms. Nor must it be forgotten that this remarkable school, which the
+Scotchman Macpherson revived {177}towards the end of the eighteenth
+century, counted among its most ardent admirers two enthusiastic
+Frenchmen, whose names were Napoleon and Lamartine.
+
+These Valkyrias, beautiful nymphs of carnage as they were, delighted in
+the clash of arms, the shedding of blood, and the dying groans of the
+wounded, even in the odors exhaled by the dying,--a taste which seems
+little suited to fair, blue-eyed maidens. These unnatural tastes were,
+however, justified to a certain extent, by the peculiar mission which
+they had to fulfill, a mission of kindness and tender compassion. They
+walked to and fro on the battlefield, not to carry off the dead, but to
+gather the souls of those who had fallen. Of the _Seola_ (such was the
+sweet name of the Soul among the nations of Germanic or Scandinavian
+race), they rapidly asked these questions:--
+
+"Seola, did you belong to a free man or to a slave?
+
+"Seola, did your master honor the gods and the priests of those gods?
+
+"Did he keep his pledged word?
+
+"Did he die like a brave man, with his face to the enemy and not a fear
+in his heart?
+
+"Seola, did he ever fight against the men of his own blood and his own
+race?"
+
+The human soul, as soon as it escapes from the {178}wretched bondage of
+this earth, no longer possesses the sad power of being able to tell a
+falsehood; Seola, therefore, answered these questions truthfully, even
+though it were to its own condemnation. In the latter case the Valkyrias
+left it to the black Alfs, a kind of demons who belonged to hell; but
+if the Seola had belonged to a brave and loyal warrior, the Valkyria
+instantly unfolded her white wines and took it to Walhalla, the home of
+the gods and the paradise of heroes.
+
+This paradise, exclusively intended for free men, was still open to
+slaves also, if they had fallen by the side of their masters, or if they
+had thrown themselves voluntarily into the fire of the funeral pile for
+the purpose of continuing their service in the future life.
+
+Let us see whether the delights of Walhalla were sufficiently attractive
+to warrant such selfimmolation.
+
+The one great enjoyment of all who dwell in Walhalla was combat and
+strife. That is a matter of taste, but did they not carry combat and
+strife a little too far? They fought there for hours and hours, with
+eagerness, with fury, even piercing each other and cutting each other to
+pieces to their hearts' delight. It is true, that as soon as the dinner
+hour came the blood ceased to flow, the wounds closed their gaping lips,
+the {179}limbs that had been lopped off by the swords returned to their
+place, the broken heads and exposed entrails were restored without the
+surgeon's aid, not leaving a scar behind, and the heroes went arm in arm
+to dinner, looking forward with joy to a repetition of the same merry
+sport as soon as the meal should be finished.
+
+The fare at this table of gods and heroes does not seem to have been
+peculiarly wholesome; at all events it was not very varied.
+
+The pork-butchers' business was at that time uncommonly flourishing both
+in heaven and on earth. Tacitus tells us that among the races of the
+North, as far as the borders of the Baltic Sea, chieftains and matrons
+alike loved to wear suspended around their neck a small image of a pig
+as an emblem of abundance and fecundity. Rich and poor, all looked
+upon pork as the main supply of their pantry. The pig, however, was not
+deemed worthy to appear on Odin's table, and its place was taken by the
+boar: the gods lived upon wild boar, men upon domestic pig, that was the
+whole difference.
+
+I am often tempted to eat pork, and I am occasionally enabled to taste
+wild boar; but I must solemnly confess, swearing if needs be by my
+stomach, that in my opinion, the gods and the heroes had by no means the
+best of it. It may {180}be, however, that wild boars here below are not
+quite equal to heavenly boars.
+
+[Illustration: 200]
+
+However that may be, there appeared every morning upon the edge of one
+of the marvelous forests to be found in Walhalla, an enormous colossal
+boar, a very mammoth of a boar. The {181}heroes proceeded to hunt it,
+accompanied at times by Thor, by Vali, the skillful archer, or by Tyr,
+the one-handed god, who nevertheless wielded his sword with power and
+accuracy. Then the monster was killed, cut up and roasted, and all dined
+together.
+
+[Illustration: 201]
+
+The next day there appeared on the edge of the marvelous forest another
+wild boar, quite as fat and quite as enormous, in fact in every respect
+as attractive as the boar of the day before--some think it was always
+the same animal, come to life again. Then a new hunt and a new dinner
+upon roasted wild boar. Surely we poor people might become disgusted for
+the rest of our lives, one would imagine,--and those were immortal gods!
+What taste!
+
+But there is worse behind yet. The Scandinavian {182}paradise was by
+no means the only one where the pork-butcher was thus glorified. In a
+neighboring paradise, which the Finns had established, we are told by
+a learned writer, the rivers were flowing with beer and hydromel, the
+mountains consisted of lard and the hills of half salted pork.
+
+To help them in digesting their solid food, the Scandinavian gods drank,
+like those of Finland, great quantities of beer and hydromel; but they
+had in addition, an abundance of wine which they quaffed from gold cups.
+Wine! In this one word thoughtful historians have discovered a whole
+revelation.
+
+Now would it ever have occurred to Odin, in his hyperborean lands, where
+the vine did not exist and could not possibly live, to bring the fruit
+of the vine to his paradise? Did he know grapes? And when had he learnt
+to know them? But as I do not wish to interrupt my story, I reserve the
+discussion of this great and important question, with several others
+of the same kind, for another chapter, in which I hope to be able to
+develop my views fully and scientifically.
+
+Besides wine, beer, and hydromel, the blessed people in Walhalla had
+an additional precious beverage of their own, which it may safely be
+presumed, no mortal on earth has ever tasted. This {183}ambrosia of a
+novel nature was obtained by the gods and heroes themselves, on certain
+favorable days, from the white substance of the moon. Yes, from the
+moon! Did they quaff it in full draughts or did they inhale it through
+calumets? We do not know, but the nations of the earth saw in these
+periodical bleedings of the moon the reason for her divers phases and
+her gradual diminution. When she became reduced to a mere crescent,
+fright was seen on all faces and oppressed all hearts. Were the great
+people up there forgetting themselves in their celestial orgies, and
+would they drink up the moon to the last drop?
+
+It must be borne in mind that they, like the Germans, saw in the moon
+nothing but a transparent leathern bottle, filled with sweetened milk,
+and phosphorescent.
+
+Let us return now. To hunt the boar, to breakfast on wild boar, to dine
+on the same dish, day after day, to drink beer and wine, and from time
+to time that mulled egg which the moon furnished, to fight morning
+and evening, to die and come to life again, merely for the purpose of
+fighting again--these were the amusements of that delightful place. Upon
+my word, it took Scandinavians to be content with such pleasures.
+
+If Odin's paradise appears to us but little attractive, his hell, on the
+other hand, seems to have been {184}far from terrible, especially if we
+compare it with the hell of some of our great poets, such as Dante and
+Milton.
+
+The hell of the Scandinavians occupied the lowest depths of the world
+and consisted of two parts, _Nastrond_ and _Niflheim_. The latter is
+a kind of dismal vestibule shrouded in darkness, in which are seen
+wandering about the mournful seolas of those who have been neither good
+nor bad, neither heroes nor scoundrels, and of all who have not fallen
+by the sword. To die on one's bed or in an armchair, was a wrong in
+Odin's eyes, a grievous wrong, though not exactly a crime, since he
+punished it only with a temporary detention in those damp, low places,
+where darkness, silence, and weariness seemed to combine for their
+punishment. The dwellers in Niflheim had scarcely any amusement except
+their reciprocal yawns, and from time to time a flash of dim light which
+reached there when the little black Alfs came in or went out, busily
+engaged in conveying a load of souls.
+
+The great criminals were thrown into Nastrond, the real hell. What
+is very remarkable is, that here there were no braziers and burning
+gridirons to be seen, no furnaces and masses of flames as in all the
+other hells. This was a hell of ice; it froze here hard enough to split
+iron, and the damned shivered with cold. Dante mentions something of
+{185}the kind in his great work, but between the Florentine and the
+Scandinavian there can be no doubt who borrowed from the other.
+
+It was quite natural after all that in these win-tery regions of
+Scandinavia, where cold is the greatest evil to be dreaded, intense,
+continued, eternal cold should have become the terror and the punishment
+of the criminal. The idea of a hell of fire, so far from keeping them
+from the fatal slope, might very well have tempted some chilly scoundrel
+to commit a great crime.
+
+[Illustration: 205]
+
+The poor wretches who were shivering in Nastrond {186}with stiffened
+hands and eyes full of frozen tears, felt their tortures increased
+whenever Hela, the pale goddess, the queen of that place, Death itself,
+cast upon them a glance from her lack-lustre eyes.
+
+Yes, it was Hela who reigned over this frightful iceberg; her palace is
+called Misery, her gate the Precipice, her reception room Grief, her bed
+Disease, her table Famine, and her throne Malediction!
+
+The body of this terrible queen is party-colored, half white and half
+blue, and her breath is perfumed with that horrible cadaverous odor in
+which the Valkyrias delight.
+
+But after all, the names seem to be worse than the sufferings
+themselves; for excessive cold paralyzes pain itself, and there is
+nothing here to compare with those classic places where lava-baths,
+rolling rocks, flaming wheels, horses of red-hot iron, boiling pitch,
+fiery arrows and the snake whips of the Eumenides made up an infernal
+stock of tortures which might well tempt the imagination of the greatest
+of poets.
+
+In Nastrond there were no demons and no Eumenides; to be sure, there was
+a Bigvor and a Sisvor, furies if you will have it so, watching at the
+gates of hell, with the help of Gaun, the formidable dog, but all three
+are forbidden to enter within. {187}The place of missing monsters is
+occupied by some of those whom Odin spared on the occasion of his first
+campaign against the giant sons of Ymer, and by the wolf Fenris, whom
+the Ases had treacherously captured. There are also two other wolves,
+convicted of having made an attempt upon the life of the Sun, and all of
+these monsters are firmly chained and appear rather as sufferers than as
+tormentors.
+
+One of these days, their iron chains will be loosened; one of these days
+heaven will turn cold and hell will melt, and--then, woe to the gods!
+
+Listen! The moment is drawing near when all these mysteries are to
+be solved. The hour is coming when _you shall hear, when you shall
+understand!_ But before uttering these last words, final and at the same
+time fatal words, we must mention an event which at that moment
+occurred in the open assembly of the gods, filling heaven and earth with
+amazement, with pity and horror.
+
+It must be acknowledged that so far the heavenly personages have
+appeared to be rather kindhearted and mild. Odin, in spite of his Druids
+and their demands for bloody sacrifices, seems to have been full of good
+intentions. The god Thor, with all his somewhat brutal ways, rendered
+great services to mankind; and the same hammer, which protected them
+against the giants, afterwards served, {188}without the aid of
+geometry, to mark the boundary lines of their respective properties.
+The golden-teethed god, Heimdall, gave most undoubted evidence of his
+devotion to the human race and of his self-denial in his visits to the
+Grandmother and the Great-grandmother, and so did the other gods. But we
+had good reasons for not going through the whole list of the Ases. For
+there is one whom we keep in reserve so that he may appear at the right
+hour, and that is Loki, the god of evil and the genius of destruction.
+
+Surpassing Odin himself in his magic skill, fair of form and features,
+a smile on his lips--thin lips, however, the Edda adds--and apparently
+possessed of the most jovial temper so as to make him a most agreeable
+person, Loki is in reality a compound of the most hideous vices. He
+is the representative of hatred and cruelty, of envy, hypocrisy, and
+perversity. In fact, he is our Satan, before the fall. If he had been
+king of hell, Miflheim and Nastrond would both have been filled with
+more tortures and more horrors than all the other hells which are known
+to men.
+
+And yet he was the god upon whom the dwellers in Walhalla counted for
+their entertainment, and whom they had surnamed the Clown!
+
+One day an ancient prophetess returns to life, rises in her grave, and
+utters a terrible cry: "Balder, {189}fair Balder, is going to die!"
+With these words she falls back again upon her mournful couch and dies
+again--forever.
+
+[Illustration: 209]
+
+In the meantime this cry has been heard even at the top of the ash
+Ygdrasil. The Ases are troubled and amazed; they meet, they look at
+each other, thoroughly frightened, for on the life of Balder depends the
+existence of all the other gods. Moreover, {190}Balder the Bright is
+the glory of heaven and the love of the earth. Can Balder die, the most
+charming and the purest as well as the most beautiful of all the sons of
+Odin? He, who was so beautiful that Hela herself could not help smiling
+when she looked at him--he, so pure that no falsehood could be uttered
+in his presence and that a vessel containing an adulterated liquid would
+break instantly at his approach--he, so charming that all the gods love
+him as their favorite child, and that men have surnamed him Hope? No,
+no! Balder shall not die, said the Ases.
+
+His distressed mother Frigg, Odin's wife, shows her apprehensions by
+her intense anguish, and her sobs scarcely allow her to speak. She tells
+those who try to laugh at the sudden alarm of all who have heard the
+warning of the prophetess, that for several nights already she has
+been repeatedly, persistently warned in her dreams of the death of her
+well-beloved son. She would not believe it, she adds, but now she does
+believe.
+
+The divine sybil Vola, whose predictions have never proved untrue, and
+Skulda, the Norn of the Future, are 'summoned to appear. They consult
+with each other and this is their decision:--
+
+"Balder is in danger; Balder will die unless all earthly substances that
+can inflict death, are rendered powerless." {191}Frigg descends to the
+earth and speaks to volcanoes and water-spouts, to frost and hail, and
+they promise to spare her son. Among the aquatic powers, from the ocean
+to the smallest brook, among the stones, from the mightiest rock to the
+pebble, and among the metals, from gold to iron, there is none that does
+not swear the same oath. The plants also promise, from the oak to the
+smallest shrub and down to the humblest grass.
+
+[Illustration: 211]
+
+Triumphantly she returns to heaven to announce the good news. Everybody
+is overjoyed. They celebrate the happy result of her journey by a family
+dinner, at which Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself by his
+merry jokes. He had never appeared in better spirits; had never seemed
+to sympathize more warmly with the happy court.
+
+When the feast was ended and the last cups were drained in honor of
+Balder, some one proposed for the general amusement to try how far all
+these substances, vegetable or mineral, will be faithful to the oath
+they have sworn, when brought face to face with Balder. {192}Beginning
+with the most inoffensive of them all, they throw at him a clod of
+earth; the clod of earth breaks into a cloud of dust before it touches
+him. Then they pour a pitcher of water over him and the water forms a
+cascade above him without wetting even his garments. They try to strike
+him with a hazel wand; the wand, slipping from the hand that holds
+it, breaks in two. Balder is amused by the game and encourages the
+bystanders to renew their attacks.
+
+[Illustration: 212]
+
+The skillful Uller shoots at him a pointless arrow, aiming, from
+excessive caution, only at his shoulder. The arrow passes at a distance
+of twenty feet from its aim and continues its flight through {193}the
+air, like a bird in search of its prey beyond the clouds.
+
+Ten other assailants meet the same fate, trying their luck with a
+fragment of rock and a heavy branch in the shape of a club. But the
+fragment was of stone and remembered the promise given to Frigg, and the
+club was cut from a tree and the tree remembered the promise given to
+Frigg.
+
+Encouraged by so many reassuring trials, Freyr desired to try his magic
+sword, but for once the faithful sword was deaf to his orders. Thor
+brandished his hammer, but the hammer suddenly reversed its action and
+well nigh made him fall back upon his heels. Freyr's sword and Thor's
+hammer were both of iron and the iron remembered the promise given to
+Frigg.
+
+Loki took care not to appear.
+
+The sport was over, as it seemed, when suddenly the blind god Hoder,
+Balder's own brother, was seen to advance, feeling his way, towards the
+bright god. Hoder held in his hand a small bunch of leaves, a bit of
+grass, at least it appeared such after the fearful instruments that had
+just been brought into play.
+
+Immense laughter, a laughter such as the gods of Homer were in the habit
+of enjoying, broke out at the sight; Loki laughed till his sides shook
+and Hoder himself shared the general hilarity. {194}But he drew
+nearer and nearer, shaking his bit of verdure in the air; then, almost
+tottering and having learnt from the bystanders in what direction he
+would have to turn, he threw the slender twig against Balder, using his
+full force, which was prodigious.
+
+He hit Balder full in the chest and the god fell instantly. That bright
+light which was always shining around him became extinct; he closed his
+eyes, and lowered his beautiful brow deprived of its glory.....Balder
+was dead!
+
+He had been struck by a bit of mistletoe. Frigg had addressed her
+prayers to the oak tree, but she had not thought of the mistletoe which
+grows on the oak tree; the mistletoe had given no promise to Frigg. Must
+we look here for a symbolic meaning? Did this mean, that the Druidical
+mistletoe was soon to triumph over the gods of Scandinavia? This could
+not be so, for at the time to which we have come, there was no trace
+left of the wise worship of the Druids of the first epoch; the Druids of
+the second epoch were fast losing their power, and the Scandinavian gods
+were daily increasing in popularity, even beyond the banks of the Rhine.
+
+But we ought not to interrupt this account of Balder's death, which
+is as poetical and as touching as the most famous fables of Greece.
+{195}When blind Hoder, whose name must not be uttered, you remember,
+hears the cries of despair which break out all around him, and encircle
+him on all sides with maledictions, he is troubled and seriously
+distressed. Then, all of a sudden joining in the distressed cries of the
+Ases, he falls utterly overcome upon his brother's body and denounces
+Loki as the author of this calamity. Loki has reproached him for being
+the only one who took no part in the amusements by which they thought to
+honor Balder, and he it was who had not only given him the fatal
+plant but who had also directed his arm. Loki was jealous of all the
+perfections of Balder and he hated him as much as the other gods loved
+him.
+
+They look for Loki, but he has disappeared. No doubt he has tried to
+escape from the vengeance of the Ases by seeking refuge in the mountains
+among the giants, his natural allies, or perhaps in the deep sea, with
+the serpent Iormungandur.
+
+And whilst they thus lament, inquire, and investigate, Balder's soul is
+carried off by the black Alfs to Niflheim, the dark vestibule of hell.
+
+Odin still cherished hopes that his dead son might be restored to him.
+Upon his order Her-mode, the messenger of the gods, mounts his horse
+Sleipner and goes to see Hela, but neither promises nor threats can move
+the dread goddess. Fate has {196}decided, and Fate is above the gods, as
+the gods are above men.
+
+Then Frigg herself goes to see the pale goddess. Frigg weeps and the
+merciless goddess is unable to keep her heart from softening when she
+sees the tears of such a mother. She says to her:--
+
+"Let all created beings--mind, I say, all created beings!--give a tear
+to Balder, a tear such as you have' shed in my presence, and Balder
+shall be restored to you!"
+
+Frigg was unwilling to trust any one but herself with the effort to
+realize such hopes. Once more she went over the world, gathering around
+her all the races of men, one after the other, and as she mentioned the
+name of Balder, tears flowed from all eyes.
+
+For three months she visited all the forests and all the mountains,
+the seas and the lakes and the animals that live in the waters and the
+mountains; and seas and lakes and mountains wept. She went even to the
+abode of the giants, the enemies of the gods, and her grief made the
+giants also weep; every tree wept and every rock wept.
+
+Frigg thought her task was accomplished, and was filled with joy; but
+she heard that in the far East of Midgard there lived an old woman in
+the heart of a forest of iron trees. As she lived alone there, far
+from any beaten track, she had never {197}become known to the intrepid
+traveller. Now, however, Frigg sought her out by steep paths, cut up
+with gullies and fierce torrents, and at last found her. When the mother
+told her pitiful tale, the iron trees wept, but the old woman would not
+weep.
+
+[Illustration: 217]
+
+{198}They called her Thorck, and her heart was ten times as hard as her
+name.
+
+"What do I care for your Balder?" she cried; "what do I care whether he
+is dead or alive? You have other sons; I have not one left me. Once I
+had four, and all four were my pride, my delight. They were so fair!
+They were so tall! Your son Thor killed every one of them. I wept much
+at that time. Now, it is all over. Look for tears elsewhere, I have no
+tears to give to other people's sorrows!"
+
+Frigg bowed down before her, begged her, conjured her, and even fell on
+her knees before her; but the old woman was inflexible. Balder had to
+remain a prisoner with Hela.
+
+Some interpreters of Scandinavian runes have been of the opinion that
+the bereaved mother in the forest of iron trees was none other than
+Loki himself, changed into an old woman. That thought, however, is
+inadmissible. The Ases were beyond the reach of Hela, and Loki's refusal
+would not have rendered void the unanimous vote of all Nature, when
+tears of pity and sympathy alone were to be given as votes. It is much
+more plausible to suppose, that Loki had induced Thorck to refuse by his
+counsels and by his enchantments; through him the heart of the old woman
+had' become iron as well as the trees of the forest in {199}which she
+lived. Thus Loki had twice caused the death of Balder!
+
+It was at this time that a strange, almost incredible report was for the
+first time heard among men. The Druids whispered it cautiously into
+the ears of the initiated, and voices were said to utter it in the air
+during the night. This report, a terrible secret, a most unexpected
+revelation, stated that the gods were about to die! Thor would die,
+after seeing lightning become extinct in his hands; Odin himself would
+die, and so would the others. The fate of each one of them was depending
+on the fate of this fragile world over which they ruled, and this world
+had to perish because Balder had perished.
+
+What? Should the Universe change back into chaos? Was there no
+all-powerful will that could arrest the process of destruction before
+it was too late? But where could such omnipotent will be found, now that
+the gods were no longer to be in existence?
+
+Listen! listen to these verses from the Edda!
+
+"Who is the most ancient among the gods?
+
+"Alfader, that is, the universal father. He has always been and will
+ever be; he governs all things, both big and small; he has made the
+heavens, the earth and the gods. Odin created man, but Al-fader gave
+him his immortal soul!" {200}Thus we come back to the pure essence of
+an only god, who is ever the same, whether his name be Teut, Esus, or
+Jehovah; the other gods are nothing but emanations proceeding from him,
+living symbols intended to live for a few thousand centuries--that is
+all.
+
+"Do you hear? Do you understand now?
+
+"Do you understand why the great ash tree Ygdrasil is continually
+gnawed at its root by a dragon? Why four famished stags feed upon its
+foliage? You understand? Well!
+
+"But by what sign shall we recognize the approaching end of the
+gods--that which the Edda calls their _twilight?_
+
+"The most important among all the sacred books of the North, a volume
+containing the prophecies of the divine sybil Vola, the _Voluspa,_ will
+tell you.
+
+"When the fatal moment draws near, their voice will cease to be able
+to utter the accustomed chants, and the luminous brightness radiating
+from their bodies will fade away little by little.
+
+"When they leave their bath, their bodies will not dry at once, as they
+do now, but remain moist; drops of water will continually drip from
+them, and they will in this respect become like unto mortal men.
+
+"In order to overcome these first symptoms of {201}indisposition, the
+wife of the god Bragi, Iduna, will give them certain apples to eat,
+which she keeps in reserve. These apples will have the effect of
+strengthening them and of restoring to them a kind of fictitious youth
+for a few thousand years perhaps.
+
+"One day, however, their eyes will begin to wink; the next morning, upon
+awaking, their eyelids will be found closed, and then they will turn red
+and blear.
+
+"At table, when proceeding to their usual libations, their slightly
+tremulous hands will be unable to hold their cups steadily; some of the
+wine or the hydromel will escape and their garments will remain stained.
+
+"Woe to them if a grain of dust adheres to these stained garments!
+
+"Woe to them still more, if the wreaths of flowers or of jewels begin to
+fade and to wither on their brows!
+
+"Finally, when the sweet perfumes which now are exhaled from their
+bodies, change into acrid and sickening odors, there will be nothing
+left for them but to make their last will."
+
+I am well convinced that this last phrase has been stealthily introduced
+into the Voluspa by some kind of criminal and fraudulent trick. The
+rest, however, is a faithful translation of the original {202}text, as
+taken from the best authenticated editions.
+
+[Illustration: 222]
+
+"Then," the prophecy continues, "then three sacred cocks, dwelling
+in the three principal worlds, will crow and reply to each other,
+announcing the _Twilight of Greatness._
+
+"Then, everything on earth will be in disorder and confusion; families
+will be at variance with {203}each other, the claims of blood will no
+longer be acknowledged, and brothers will be arrayed against brothers.
+
+"Adultery and incest, robbery and murder, will prevail among men, and
+the age will be an age of barbarism, an age of the sword, an age of
+tempests, an age of wolves!
+
+"The wolves will be ready to devour the sun. Three long winters, with
+no summers between them, will cover the earth with snow and ice; the
+branches of the trees will give way under the immense burden; the sun
+will be darkened more and more; the moon will dissolve into vapor and
+the stars will go out; the mountains, shaking in their foundations, will
+be tossed to and fro like reeds in a river; the earth will reject all
+the plants, the trees, and the rocks which it now bears; the waters will
+cast the fish upon the shore and with them their algae, their corals,
+and even the bodies of shipwrecked men, hideous skeletons, whose
+rattling bones will chime in grimly with the warning of the rising
+flood.
+
+"Then the sea will grow dark, and upon its waters there will be seen
+floating that monstrous ship made of the nails of dead men. At the
+rudder, Ymer, the giant, will stand, having been recalled to life for
+a time, in order to assist Loki in scaling the heavens by the way of
+Bifrost, the {204}rainbow, at the head of the other Giants of the Frost.
+
+"Then Surtur the Black will arrive from the southern regions, from the
+realm of fire, with all of his malignant demons, bearing torches and
+ready to set heaven and earth on fire.
+
+"Then Hela, the pale goddess of death, will set free her prisoners, the
+wolf Fenris first of all, and march at the head of these monsters to
+assist the powers of the South.
+
+"Then the gods will take up their arms; Odin will gather them around
+him, and with them the heroes from Walhalla; and the last battle will be
+fought."
+
+But Vola's prophecy has to be fulfilled; the gods must perish, and the
+world with them.
+
+Freyr dies in the flames of Surtur the Black; Thor succumbs to
+the deadly embrace and the poisonous bites of the great serpent
+Iormungandur; but, before dying, he kills it. Odin is torn to pieces by
+the wolf Fenris.
+
+During the struggle, the heavens have been scaled and the genii of fire
+enter on horseback through the breach, while the giants shake the ash
+Ygdrasil, which writhes uttering long sighs, and at last falls with
+the heavenly vault which it has been upholding. The conquerors and the
+conquered alike are crushed under the ruins, and the world {205}being
+set on fire by Surtur the Black, vanishes in smoke.
+
+Thus the night of the gods has to succeed to the twilight of the gods.
+
+"O you, spirits of the mountains, do you know whether anything will
+continue to exist?" asks the Voluspa, at the end of these mournful
+prophecies.
+
+It must be admitted that this sombre and terrible conception is not
+without a certain poetic grandeur, a certain savage heroism, which we
+cannot help admiring. In these verses the Edda is in no way inferior to
+the most brilliant pictures drawn by Dante or by Milton, and more than
+once it approaches nearly to the Apocalypse. Thus, as the inspired
+Apostle saw a new heaven and a new earth, the Edda also announces the
+coming of a time, when a new earth, more favored and more perfect than
+ours, shall succeed the old earth.
+
+"When the earth is thus broken to pieces and devoured by fire, what
+shall happen next?
+
+"There will come forth from the sea another earth, more beautiful and
+more perfect.
+
+"And will any of the gods survive?
+
+"Balder will be revived and come forth from the place of departed
+spirits, to rule over the new world under the guidance of the
+imperishable Al-fader. {206}Then will be the reign of Justice."
+
+The mythology of the Scandinavians embraces, as we have shown, among
+its symbols all the great phenomena of Nature, the continual struggle
+between the two opposite principles, creation and destruction. Being,
+besides, more complicated and more intelligent than the mythology of the
+Gauls and the Germans, it deserved to fill a large space in our work,
+and such a space we have accorded it cheerfully.
+
+But why was it that the civilization introduced by Odin contributed as
+little as the philosophy of the Druids to the real well-being and the
+improvement of mankind? I think I see the reason.
+
+In the eyes of the German as well as of the Scandinavian, God was only
+just and rigid. The rule of the God of Love had not yet begun.
+Perhaps Balder was to inaugurate it in that other world which the Edda
+announced.
+
+Do you hear? Do you understand?
+
+Amid all the incidents which were to mark the general conflagration,
+there is one which particularly recalls to our mind a great historical
+event. Alexander of Macedonia once questioned certain Celtic ambassadors
+and was told by them, that what they feared most upon earth, was the
+falling down of the sky.
+
+This apparently lofty answer filled the young {207}conqueror with
+admiration, and it is still admired by modern students of history. It
+was, however, in reality nothing more than a simple, na�ve rendering of
+one of their articles of faith; for all their prophetic books threatened
+them with the destruction of the heavens.
+
+Another detail, the complete destruction of this globe of ours, after
+a series of fearful catastrophes, recalls to me, not exactly a great
+historical fact, but a simple game of my childhood, which may have
+been symbolic, nay, which may have come down to us from the Edda. This,
+however, I state with great hesitation.
+
+Did you ever know one of the merriest games, which was once very much
+the fashion in city and country alike, when a firebrand, a burning
+stick, or a bunch of straw set on fire, was quickly passed from hand
+to hand? To prevent its going out, while you held it, you were bound to
+pass it as quickly as possible to your neighbor, repeating at the same
+time the expressive words: "_The little fellow is still alive_." Your
+neighbor passed it to his neighbor and thus it travelled all around,
+always accompanied by the same, constant burden: "The little fellow is
+still alive!" This game was transformed during the Middle Ages, in
+the North, and especially in Bretagne, into the Torch Dance, as I have
+mentioned before. {208}Now I imagine that this game, in some way or
+other, prefigured the universal conflagration that was to come, and _the
+little fellow_ was the world.
+
+[Illustration: 228]
+
+But we must make haste to reach our great scientific discussion.
+
+[Illustration: 231]
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+{211}_How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time
+between one World and another.--How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.--How
+Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the
+Indians.--How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God
+Buddha.--About Mahabarata and Ramayana.--Chronology.--The World's
+Age.--Comparative Tables.--Quotations.--Supporting Evidence.--A
+Cenotaph._
+
+My reader has had a lucky escape.
+
+Determined as I was to fathom in this chapter the true origin of the
+Scandinavian religion, and inspired by the zeal of a recent convert, I
+had collected and compared every document that could aid me in proving
+the Oriental descent of the priests of Odin as well as of the other
+Druids. I {212}thought it was a beautiful doctrine, and especially an
+entirely new one.
+
+When I finished my chapter, which I thought was exceedingly well done,
+I read it to Doctor Rosahl, expecting, I must confess, to be warmly
+congratulated.
+
+"Why, my dear sir," he said, when I had finished, "you have made great
+efforts to prove a thing which has been established long since. All the
+master minds of France and Germany, to say nothing of other nations,
+agree on that subject. I mean men like Fauriel, Lassen, Lenormand,
+Ampere, Eichhoff, Saint-Marc Girardin, Marmier, Klaproth, Ozanam, the
+two R�musats, the two Thierrys, the two Humboldts, the two Grimms, not
+to mention twenty others.
+
+"Why will you come to their assistance after they have won the victory?
+Do you merely wish to display your scholarship?"
+
+I indignantly denied the charge, and seizing my manuscript with both
+hands, I resolutely threw it into the fire.
+
+A remnant of paternal weakness induced me, however, to retain the
+summary of that famous chapter, and I have inserted it here in its
+regular place, so that it might bear evidence of my wasted labor. As the
+_corpus delicti_ is no longer in existence, this summary may stand there
+like an inscription {213}on an empty tomb, to honor the memory of the
+deceased.
+
+My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph.
+
+I--a scholar! Great God! Let the reader not be disturbed. My purpose
+in writing this work was nothing more than to try and collect along the
+banks of the Rhine all the curious myths which have survived the ancient
+creeds of Europe; for they have all come to the great river. There the
+traveller finds piled up, after the manner of alluvial layers, all the
+ancient fables, all the marvelous and often childish tales to which
+the credulity and lively imagination of our forefathers gave a ready
+welcome. With the exception of a very few cases, in which the grave
+nature of the subject lifts me necessarily into higher regions, I wish
+mainly to tell you once more _Grandmamma's Tales_. That is what we are
+going to do next. The Edda itself has no other meaning, for _Edda_ means
+the same as our _grandmother_.
+
+No, I am too great a lover of tales of a tub ever to have claimed the
+reputation of being a scholar; but at times I like to glean a little
+where scholars have reaped. I have been shown the best spots, and I
+pilfer as well as I can--that is all.
+
+An ignoramus and a pilferer, I resemble a bee which might fly into a
+botanical garden and, utterly {214}unacquainted with the Latin names
+of flowers, carry off joyously a rich harvest, without pretending to be
+able to make academic honey.
+
+[Illustration: 234]
+
+[Illustration: 237]
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+{217}_Confederation of all the Northern Gods.--Freedom of
+Religion.--Christianity.--Miserere mei!--Homeric Enumeration.--Prussian,
+Slavic, and Finnish Deities.--The God of Cherries and the God
+of Bees.--A Silver Woman.--Ilmarinnen's Wedding Song.--A Skeleton
+God.--Yaga-Babc�s Pestle and Mortar.--Preparation for Battle.--The
+Little Chapel on the Hill.--The Signal for the Attack.--Jesus and Mary._
+
+It is high time for us to return to the banks of the Rhine, where the
+two religions of Jupiter and Odin were about to meet face to face.
+{218}At that time the terrible prophecies of the Edda were far from
+being near their fulfillment; Odin had a long period of omnipotence yet
+before him.
+
+To the great surprise of the adversaries, the Romans, so far from
+showing any alarm at his approach, received him and his retinue of
+deities as old acquaintances.
+
+According to their unchanging policy they would see in him nothing but a
+Jupiter, and in fierce Thor another gallant Mars, somewhat sobered by a
+long residence in northern countries and excessive use of beer.
+
+The Romans looked, in fact, upon all of these Scandinavian gods and
+goddesses simply as upon myths of their own that came back to them once
+more.
+
+The poets hallowed these claims and the historians tried to justify
+them. According to some, Odin the Conqueror, a member of the family of
+Ases, had first given to some of his conquests the name of Asia (which
+might very well be so), and then receded before the Roman armies to cold
+hyperborean regions. Here he had adopted the gods of his new conquerors,
+hoping that they would, in return, make him victorious--which seems to
+me in the highest degree improbable. According to others, the poet Ovid,
+when Augustus had banished him to Scythia, had learnt the language of
+the barbarians, {219}among whom he was living, and finding them willing
+and eager to listen to him, had recited before them his "Metamorphoses."
+This was all that was needed to induce the Scythians to make for
+themselves gods after the model of the Roman gods.
+
+[Illustration: 239]
+
+Tacitus, Plutarch, Strabo, and a host of the most illustrious writers
+never hesitated to give currency to such childish stories, ignoring
+entirely the date of the Scandinavian religion.
+
+As Rome, however, permitted no human sacrifices, the priests of Odin
+and of Teut had at first withdrawn far from the beaten track, into the
+depths of dark old forests. There they could live quietly, practice
+without restraint the religion of their forefathers, and kill their men
+in perfect security. At least such were their hopes. The Roman soldiers,
+however, who handled the woodman's axe {220}as readily as the sword, and
+the spade as well as the spear, soon made big holes in these venerable
+forests, murdered the murderers, and overthrew their blood-stained
+altars.
+
+[Illustration: 240]
+
+{221}Occasionally it happened that the brave legionaries who were
+employed in these hazardous enterprises, did not reappear. The
+proconsuls, whose duty it was to keep Germany in order, would have liked
+to inflict severe punishment; but just then the great reaction began to
+set in, from the North against the South.
+
+Whilst Rome was making efforts to establish her power in Germany,
+certain German tribes, Franks and Burgundians, invaded France and began
+to settle down in some of the conquered Roman provinces. The proconsuls
+thought it both prudent and wise not to raise the question of religion;
+and for a long time a truce was tacitly agreed upon between all the
+different creeds, though not without some misgivings on both sides. Odin
+had his altars by the side of those of Jupiter; a temple in honor of
+Thor stood facing a temple dedicated to Mars, and if Bacchus, Diana, and
+Apollo had their sacred days, Bragi, Frigg, and Freya had theirs also.
+
+In spite of this general toleration, the parties watched each other
+carefully.
+
+Sooner or later a holy war had to break out; in certain regions it had
+already begun, when fishermen of the Rhine busily drawing in their nets,
+heard, for the first time, a still small voice coming down upon them on
+the waters of the river, which whispered the names of Jesus and Mary.
+{222}The same voice and the same names were simultaneously heard again
+and again before Strasbourg, Mayence, and Cologne. It was Christianity
+that was approaching.
+
+[Illustration: 242]
+
+These wondrous words, which now the river only {223}murmured, had soon
+after been forced by some mystic power from the lips of the Druidesses
+in their prophetic exaltation and from the priests of Jupiter, as they
+consulted their auguries.
+
+There was a Druid, who, in the act of sacrificing, was suddenly seized
+with inspiration, and dropping the bloody knife felt impelled to cry
+out: _Miserere mei, Jesus!_ and yet Latin had until then been an unknown
+tongue among the Druids!
+
+The nations stood expectant, waiting for the revelation of a new faith.
+
+Soon a number of fugitives from Tolbiac, returning to the Rhine,
+produced consternation in all hearts by the announcement that Clovis,
+the king of the Franks, who had long been suspected of a secret
+understanding with Rome, had gone over to the god of the Christians, and
+that the god of the Christians was at that moment advancing at the head
+of ten legions of destroying angels.
+
+When this news came, the rival religions laid aside their jealousy,
+and terrified by a common danger, joined hands to resist the invader.
+A general appeal was made not only by the followers of Odin to those of
+Jupiter, but also to the Northern gods, the Finnish gods, the Russian
+gods, and the Slavic gods. The danger was threatening to all alike, and
+they responded to the appeal and came to the Rhine. {224}We cannot so
+rapidly pass over this vast Olympian assembly of gods, a poet's dream,
+it may be, but a traditional dream, full of strange and striking
+splendor, which completes in a most unexpected manner the limited
+description we have tried to give of Northern Myths.
+
+[Illustration: 244]
+
+At this grand meeting there appeared in the first place a goodly number
+of Borussian or Prussian gods, among whom stood first and foremost
+Percunos, the divine leader of the heavenly bodies; Pikollos, whose
+face was as pale as Hela's and whose duty was, like hers, to preside
+over hell; exacting, however, from men nothing but prayers accompanied
+by beating hearts, he cared nothing whether he was feared or beloved. A
+third god, Potrympos, had the appearance of a youth, with smiling lips
+and with a wreath of wheat ears and flowers on his brow; this was the
+god of War. Of War? And what meant the smile on his lips and the wheat
+ears on his brow? They indicated that he was also the god of public
+supplies and even of love.
+
+It seems that, in ancient Prussia, War was the purveyor-general and
+supplied everything.
+
+In the retinue of this great trio, we find Antrympos, the god of seas
+and lakes; Poculos, the god of the air and of storms; then, after these
+gods ending in _os_, came other deities ending in _us_; Pilvitus, the
+god of riches, Auchwitus, the god of the sick, and Marcopulus, the god
+of the nobles. The latter was the terror of the common people, whom he
+held under an iron yoke. In order to {226}conciliate his good will, they
+prayed to Puscatus, another god in us, but a kindhearted god. He
+lived under an elder tree, and the price he exacted in return for his
+mediation was the modest gift of a piece of bread and a _schoppen_ of
+beer.
+
+[Illustration: 246]
+
+Although their priests were called Crives or Waidelottes, their
+ceremonies were, nevertheless, mere imitations of those of the Druids.
+The Borussians honored particularly the famous oak of Remowe, to which
+Percunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos paid a daily visit. To these same gods
+they offered their prisoners of war; but they were not sacrificed by
+means of a knife after the German {227}Or the Scandinavian manner. They
+destroyed them by fire or they gave them to be devoured to enormous
+serpents who lived upon the altar and for the altar.
+
+[Illustration: 247]
+
+Now all these gods have come to Germany accompanied by their monstrous
+reptiles, by griffins fearful to behold, and by demons summoned
+from hell, all called upon to take part in the impending struggle.
+{228}Almost at the same time with the Prussian gods arrived also the
+Scythian gods and those of the Sarmatians, the former in chariots,
+according to the manner of travelling which prevailed among those
+nations. They also bowed low, like their people, before the all-powerful
+Tahiti, the great representative of their religion, Fire. The Scythians
+had evidently derived very little profit from hearing Ovid read his
+"Metamorphoses."
+
+The others were but few in numbers; their representatives were their
+chief triad: Perun, their Jupiter Tonans; Rujewit, who controlled the
+clouds; and Sujatowist, the judge of the dead. These three brought in
+their train only Trizbog and the Tassanis, that is, the plague and the
+furies. Their other gods, unable to do anything for success in war, had
+wisely stayed at home.
+
+Can I neglect mentioning the names and attributes of these inoffensive
+local deities, whom the fierce Sarmatians worshipped. They were:--
+
+Kirnis, who causes the cherries to ripen;
+
+Sardona, who watches over the nut trees;
+
+Auste�a, who presides over the education of bees;
+
+The sweet Kolna, who sees to the marriage of flowers.
+
+There were also gods or goddesses of corn, of the kneading-tub and the
+wash-tub, the god of flies and the god of butterflies; we must confess
+that {229}these deities could hardly have been very useful on the banks
+of the Rhine.
+
+But Odin and Jupiter could count upon more efficient and more reliable
+allies in the gods of Finland.
+
+The gods bear almost always the impress of the character of their
+followers and of those over whom they rule, and what other nation has
+ever given such proofs of undaunted courage as the Finns or Finlanders?
+Pirates on the Baltic, as the Scandinavians were pirates on the ocean,
+they shared with them the booty that could be gotten in all the Northern
+seas. They had originally come from the high table-lands of Asia,
+together with their brethren the Turks, the Mongols, and the Tartars;
+their first appearance was made under the name of Ugorians, Ogres, and
+surely the Ogres have made a lasting and a terrible impression on bur
+popular tales!
+
+The Finns consisted almost exclusively of sailors and soldiers, of
+miners and blacksmiths. To smelt iron and to fashion it into anchors
+for their ships, into lances, swords, and spears, was their principal
+occupation. Hence they paid special reverence to Rauta-Rekhi, the
+personification of iron; to Wulangoinen, the father of iron, and to
+Ruojuota, the nurse of iron. They worshipped in like manner with special
+zeal three sombre virgins, whose powerful breasts were running over
+with a dark milk, {230}which turned into iron as it cooled off, as water
+turns into ice when it cools off.
+
+Their principal gods, besides these whom I have mentioned, were again
+three, and, as usual, three brothers.
+
+The oldest, Vainamoinen, of hoary age, created celestial and terrestial
+fire, that is to say, the sun and the volcanoes.
+
+The second, Ukko, has to provide them with fire, so as to prevent the
+earth from returning to the condition of an immense icicle, and the sun
+to the form of a heap of extinct embers. Living in the clouds he now
+blows upon the sun and now upon the volcanoes so as to keep up the blaze
+in both, and encourages them with his voice, the thunder.
+
+Ilmarinnen, the third, a very industrious and most skillful workman, has
+forged the earth and the seven heavens by which it is surrounded; hence
+he is called the _Eternal Blacksmith_. He spends his life at the forge,
+making sometimes stars of all sizes and at other times spare moons.
+He has even made a silver woman, not for himself, however, but for a
+younger brother, whose manifold and incessant occupations left him no
+time to take the necessary steps for a suitable marriage. This woman
+of fine metal, well-made, beautiful, charming, and of the sweetest
+disposition, had but one single defect,--no {231}one could come near her
+without being chilled to the marrow of his bones.
+
+However, the most skillful blacksmith cannot be expected to make a
+perfect woman at the first trial.
+
+When the question of his own marriage was mooted, Ilmarinnen preferred
+taking a ready made wife, and, according to the usage which prevailed
+among the Finns as well as among the Germans, he bought one.
+
+For the sake of enjoying some relief after such a long enumeration of
+deities, now entirely out of fashion, I feel strongly tempted to insert
+here _a saga_, a Finnish legend, which treats of this very marriage of
+Ilmarinnen, the blacksmith, and was composed by his own sister. In this
+wedding-song, which is full of the sweetest and chastest sentiments,
+she exhibits the domestic life of these artisan-gods, who sometimes were
+disposed to beat their wives,--at least the saga suggests the occurrence
+of such events.
+
+Ilmarinnen has just been married and becomes impatient, he actually
+swears at not seeing his young bride come to him in great haste. Listen
+to what is sung to him, with an accompaniment on a small Kantele
+guitar, by his sister, the hostess of Pohjola, in order to calm him the
+better:--
+
+"O husband, brother of my brothers, you have {232}already waited long
+for the coming of this happy day; wait patiently a little longer. Your
+well beloved will not tarry long. She finishes her toilet; but you know
+it is far to the fountain to which she has to go for water.
+
+"O husband, brother of my brothers, be patient! She has just put on her
+robe, but she has only put on one sleeve. You would surely not have her
+appear before you with one sleeve empty?
+
+"O husband, she has just arranged her hair; a beautiful belt encircles
+her waist, but she has a shoe only on one foot; she must needs have time
+to put on the other shoe also.
+
+"Husband,.... here she is coming,.... but she has put on only one
+glove,.... give her time to put on the other!"
+
+When the young bride appears at last, the good hostess of Pohjola is
+suddenly deeply concerned for her:--
+
+"O wife, O purchased maid, O dove that has been sold! My sister, my
+poem, my green branch, how many tears you will shed!
+
+"Your family were very eager to have the money paid down for you in the
+hollow of a shield.
+
+"Poor ignorant girl, you thought you were leaving the paternal roof for
+a few hours, for a day, perhaps! Alas! You have surrendered forever, you
+have a master now!" {233}And then turning once more to Ilmarinnen, she
+adds:--
+
+"O husband, brother of my brothers, do not teach this child, the slave,
+whip in hand, the way she must walk.
+
+"Do not make her cry under the rod or under the stick; teach her gently,
+in a soft voice, with closed doors.
+
+"The first year by words, the second year by a frown, the third year by
+gently pressing her foot. Be patient!
+
+"If, after three years, she is unwilling to learn, O husband, brother of
+my brothers, take a few slender reeds, take a little broom-sedge,
+chastise her, but with a rod covered with wool.
+
+"If she still resists, well; cut a twig in the woods, a willow branch,
+not too stout, and hide it beneath your garment. Let no one guess what
+is going to happen.
+
+"Above all, do not strike her hands nor her face; for her brother might
+well ask you: Has a wolf bitten her? Her father might well say to you:
+Has a bear torn her thus?"
+
+Does not this Saga, with all its harsh allusions, breathe a most
+touching tenderness? It seems that the most delicate sentiments
+were preserved intact amid the coarsest manners and the most violent
+passions. What was your name, O na�ve muse of {234}Finland, who inspired
+the good hostess of Pohjola? Were you not perhaps a daughter of those
+beautiful Indian gandharvas, who said,--
+
+"The elephant is led by a rope, the horse by a bridle, and a woman by
+her heart."
+
+And does it not remind us of our humble and simple-minded neighbors,
+when we hear how this Eternal Blacksmith, this first-class god who has
+made heaven and earth, who buys a wife and beats her, expresses his fear
+of the reproaches of his brother-in-law and his father-in-law?
+
+After this pause we must go on describing the other armies of gods
+who had hastened to the banks of the Rhine in order to resist a common
+enemy.
+
+By the side of the heavenly representatives of Scythia and Sarmatia,
+of Prussia and Finland, we find other gods belonging to the different
+Slavonic races. But why should we repeat here a complete list of all
+this multitude of allies, whose curious names the most retentive memory
+could not possibly retain?
+
+Suffice it to say that the Lithuanians, the Moravians, the Silesians,
+Bohemians, and Russians were represented at this meeting by their most
+formidable deities. There was Ilia, the great archer, whose arrows hit
+the mark after having passed through a thickness of nine fir trees;
+Radgost, the {235}merciless destroyer; Flintz, the skeleton god, who
+bore a lion's head on his shoulders and drove a chariot of flames;
+and the giant Yaga-Baba, whose head reached high above the loftiest
+mountains. When a warrior was seized with fear before he beheld the
+enemy, he immediately took him from the ranks and brayed him in a wooden
+mortar with an iron pestle.
+
+All four of them brought in their retinue whole battalions of Strygi
+or blood-suckers, of voracious Trolls, Marowitzes, and Kikimoras, who
+smothered their victims; of Polkrans and Leschyes, the latter a kind of
+dwarf satyrs, who could at will change into giants, and the former half
+men and half dogs, singing and barking alternately. Their songs,
+as fearful as their barkings, spread terror around them, and they
+themselves killed at a hundred yards' distance by the venom of their
+breath.
+
+Such were the allies whom the Roman and Scandinavian gods arrayed
+against Christianity.
+
+When the new comers had been properly organized, Jupiter's eagle rose
+above the clouds, uttered three piercing cries, turning to the three
+points of the horizon, and at once from the East, from the West, and
+from the South, there came forth the gods of Rome and Greece, abandoning
+their mysterious retreats. There was Neptune with his Tritons, his
+Harpies, and his marine monsters; and {236}there was Pluto with his
+Fates, his Furies, and his whole host from hell.
+
+Odin struck his buckler, and from the far North came not only the gods
+and the Valkyrias, with the heroes of Walhalla, but even the adversaries
+of the Ases,--Hela, the wolf Fenris, the Giants of the Frost with Loki
+at their head,--and all enlisted under him to take part in the immense
+slaughter.
+
+Never had the armies of a Darius, an Alexander, an Attila, or a
+Charlemagne, presented a more imposing and more terrible aspect; nor has
+the world ever seen the like since.
+
+When the Sibyls and the Norns, the augurs and the witches had been
+consulted, the march began.
+
+A few miles from the other side of the river, in the direction of
+Argentoratum (Strasbourg), about half way up the slope of a gentle hill,
+there stood a little chapel which had not been quite finished.
+
+The Sibyls and Druidesses had pointed out this building as the end of
+the first day's march, not doubting but that the god of the Christians
+would appear at the head of his legions, to defend his temple.
+
+The Confederates were advancing silently under cover of the night
+in order to surprise the enemy, whom they thought fully prepared for
+resistance. Odin was in command of the right wing of the {237}army,
+Jupiter of the left. The Scythian, Sarma-tian, Borussian, and Finnish
+deities under the orders of Tahiti, Perun, Percunos, Wainamoinen, and
+Radgost, commanded the centre.
+
+As soon as they came in sight of the hill, they noticed a very peculiar
+twinkling light, which shone out from the deep darkness, and was
+surrounded below by a circle of light.
+
+Immediately the three light-footed messengers of the Roman, Slavonic,
+and Scandinavian gods, Mercury, Algis, and Hermode, were sent out to
+reconnoitre, accompanied by the Eumenides, the Valkyrias, and a small
+detachment of Lapithes and Centaurs. When they returned they reported
+that the light proceeded from the flaming swords of ten thousand
+destroying angels. They were quite sure of it.
+
+Some of the allies immediately rushed forth, as is the usage in all epic
+battles, to challenge the chiefs of the angels to single combat. But
+Jupiter and Odin, thinking that all these private contests can only
+jeopardize the success of the great battle, compelled them to obey
+orders.
+
+Thor, who had been one of the first to rush forth, was so much
+disappointed, that in his anger he let his heavy mace fall upon a little
+town that was on their route, and that might possibly have impeded the
+progress of the army. The mace {238}instantly returned to the hand of
+the owner, and then fell and returned again and again.
+
+[Illustration: 258]
+
+The barking of Cerberus, the three-headed dog, of his brother dog Garm,
+and the howlings of the Strygi, the Kikimoras, and the Polkrans.
+
+This was by no means all of the concert.
+
+Mars, Odin, Potrympos, and the other war-gods now drew their swords,
+which produced a fearful grating sound as they came out of their
+sheaths; next Jupiter sounds his thunder among the Romans, and after him
+thunder Perun among the Slaves, Ukko among the Finns, and Thor among
+the Scandinavians. The repeated crash of thunder. And thanks to this
+incident, the plain had been cleared and levelled at the same time, and
+the signal for the attack was given at once. The Corybantes beat their
+drums in muffled tones; the chants of the Bards and the Skalds responded
+from the right and the left wing, although their harps were soon drowned
+in the bleat of the trumpets, the furious {239}lightning mingles with
+the rumbling of the chariots of Tabiti, of Flintz, the skeleton god,
+and of Pocu-los and Stribog, the gods of waterspouts and of Northern
+tempests; the Egipans, the Cyclops, the blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen, begin
+to push immense masses of rock before them, brandishing entire oak trees
+as spears; while the Giants of the Frost with fearful clamor, which is
+taken up by the whole army of invaders, follow them, led by the equally
+gigantic Yaga-Baba, the terrible conductor of such an infernal concert,
+who marks the time by beating with his iron pestle upon his wooden
+mortar.
+
+[Illustration: 259]
+
+All these fearful noises, all these echoing explosions, seem to confound
+heaven and earth; the {240}horizon trembles and shakes, the mountains
+start and stagger.
+
+But the holy hill stands unmoved.
+
+The light which at first shone only at the base has gradually risen as
+high as the summit, and the little chapel now shines brightly like a
+brilliant constellation.
+
+Surprised at seeing no enemy appear, the army of the pagan gods makes a
+halt.
+
+Suddenly, O miracle! lifted up as if by a gust of wind from on high,
+the little chapel vanishes, and in its place is seen a simple altar
+surmounted by a cross.
+
+Before this altar stands a young maid, showing neither ornament nor
+weapon of defense,--a Virgin barefooted, with a child in her arms.
+
+She comes down the hill, a smile on her lips; the brilliant light still
+encircles her brow and the brow of the infant; she comes straight up to
+the allied gods, who begin to look at each other in utter consternation.
+
+She draws nearer, and all of a sudden an irresistible panic seizes
+Jupiter and Odin, Mars and Thor, Wainomoinen and Perun, together with
+the Eumenides, the Tassanis, the Cyclops, and the Giants, and all turn
+back towards the river, cross it in fearful disorder, and crush each
+other in their desperate flight, while their own temples and {241}their
+own statues fall to pieces in the universal destruction.
+
+Some of these were buried in the Rhine, where we shall hereafter find
+them once more; the remainder reached in sad condition their northern
+homes, abandoning almost the whole of Germany to Jesus and Mary.
+
+It is but right to notice that in all the traditions which speak of this
+struggle between the gods and the rising religion of Christ, no mention
+is ever made of the Teut and the Esus of the Celts, the Alfader of the
+Scandinavians, the Jumala of the Finns, and the Bog of the Slaves,--nor
+is the Unknown God of the Romans ever mentioned. The reason is that
+each one of these grand deities, like the Indra of the Indian heaven,
+contained all the others and represented to the mind the idea of the
+only one eternal God.
+
+This grand but vain effort of the pagan gods was made, according to
+tradition, about the year 510 of the Christian era. In the course of the
+same year King Clovis determined to erect a temple in honor of Christ
+which should be worthy of Him, and laid the foundation of the Minster
+at Strasbourg, perhaps with a design to replace the little chapel, which
+had disappeared in so miraculous a manner.
+
+[Illustration: 265]
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+{245}_Marietta and the Sweet-briar.--Esus and Jesus.--A malgam--
+A Neophyte.--Prohibition to eat Horse-flesh.--Bishops in
+Arms.--Interruption.--Come Home, my Good Friend!--Prussia and the Myths
+of the Middle Ages.--Tybilimts, the Black God.--The little Blue Flower._
+
+All who know me and esteem me will testify to my great natural modesty.
+Even when I have {246}to do with fables, I would not venture to
+invent the smallest thing; I am incapable of committing such a crime.
+Nevertheless, some of my incredulous readers, when they see the
+marvelous nature of the poem, in which the triumph of Jesus and Mary
+over the allied pagan gods was celebrated, might possibly fancy it to be
+a product of my imagination. In self-defense I feel bound to quote here
+one of the countless traditions which allude to this great event. I once
+more borrow from the Muse of the Finns.
+
+"There lived in those days a virgin who was so pure, so pure and chaste,
+that her eyes had never seen anything but the eyes of her sisters, that
+her hands had never yet touched a being in creation for the purpose of
+caressing it.
+
+"She lived alone in her chamber, in company with her distaff, and
+ignorant of what happened even within the narrow circle of shadows which
+the sun traced around her house, and the image of a man was as foreign
+to her eyes as it was to her mind. Her thoughts and her eyes had alike
+kept their chastity perfect.
+
+"She was called Marietta.
+
+"One day, on a fine spring morning, Marietta felt a vague and
+incomprehensible desire to enjoy the beauties of Nature. Her heart rose
+within her with strange emotion. {247}"Impelled rather by a desire of
+her own than by a command from on high, she opened her door and hastened
+to a meadow inclosed with a hedge, which was near the house.
+
+"In this hedge a sweet-briar was in bloom. She drew near to inhale the
+fragrance; she touched the flower, and that was all that was needed.
+Marietta became a mother, and when her son was born she felt by the
+boundless pride that filled her heart, that she had given birth to a
+god.
+
+"In the mean time the other gods of her own country and of the adjoining
+countries had been warned by their prophetesses that this child, born
+of a virgin and a flower, would one day drive them out of heaven; they
+assembled, fully armed and determined that mother and child must both
+die so as to prevent the threatened catastrophe.
+
+"At the moment when they were holding their secret councils, Marietta
+appeared in their midst holding her infant in her arms, and all these
+gods, who had until now wielded such absolute power, fled in dismay to
+the far North, and the icy gates of the North Pole closed behind them."
+
+This is the story of Marietta and her child Jesus.
+
+It would certainly seem as if this na�ve account, well known among the
+ancient legends of Finland, was nothing less than a slight sketch of
+that great epic poem which we have laid before our readers. {248}We have
+only filled out the details by the aid of similar documents.
+
+Henceforth Christianity enjoyed the results of that great day at
+Argentoratum. At a later period the conquered gods, it is true, showed
+once more signs of resistance on isolated points, but from the first,
+this triumph of Mary and Jesus, and perhaps also the victories obtained
+by King Clovis, changed the first dawn of Christianity in Germany into a
+kind of purifying conflagration, which spread rapidly from the Rhine to
+the Weser and from the Weser to the Danube.
+
+Curious circumstances sometimes came to its assistance. Thus, many
+Teutons had been taught by their Druid teachers to acknowledge but one
+single God, and this primitive doctrine naturally reconciled them to
+the new creed. But, more than that, the particular god whom they thus
+acknowledged, was called _Esus_, almost Jesus! Others had followed the
+example of the Slaves and worshipped the handle of their swords, which
+bore the form of a cross; they naturally recognized in the Christian
+cross a familiar emblem of protection and safety. Even baptism was in
+no way distasteful to the followers of Odin. They readily adopted, it in
+memory of the regular and regenerative ablutions with water which their
+ancient creed prescribed. Odin had said to them in the Runic chapter of
+the {248}Edda: "If I wish a man never to perish in combat, _I sprinkle
+him with water soon after his birth?_"
+
+Finally, this just man, put to death by wicked men, this risen Christ,
+reminded them forcibly of their own god Balder. Evidently the predicted
+time had come. Balder, the ancient prisoner of Niflheim, was about to
+renew the world; in his new shape, the Bright God was no longer the son
+of Frigg; he was now Mary's son and his name was Jesus.
+
+This disposition, however, although plainly shown in many parts of
+Germany, was by no means unanimous.
+
+At the table of King Clovis, the bishops, and Saint Reni himself, were
+compelled to sit by the side of Scandinavian Druids. When they intoned
+their Benedicite, the latter never failed to pour out their libations
+in honor of Asa-Thor and Asa-Freyr. In spite of all the heroic and
+indefatigable efforts of the priests, polytheism survived even among the
+new converts, who would walk devoutly in the processions of Christian
+worship, while they carried their idols and their fetishes under their
+arms, and who never failed to make the sign of the cross when
+they passed a tree or a spring that had been held sacred by their
+forefathers. What could be done to make them sincere and orthodox
+Christians? {250}Liberty, in the sense in which we understand it now,
+and have good reason to understand it, would have appeared to a Teuton
+or a Slave as a beautiful woman, with a wooden yoke around her neck and
+all her limbs in chains. Germany had her laws, as well as every other
+Northern country her written or unwritten laws, but the dignity of a
+freeborn man consisted mainly in disregarding these laws. The free man
+left his country, to engage in war wherever he chose, and his family,
+to live in any country he might prefer. It was the same thing with
+religious matters; he reserved to himself his independent judgment,
+the right to worship as he chose and the privilege of combining such
+articles of creed as pleased him.
+
+This curious freedom of religion, this curious amalgamation of creeds,
+produced the strange result, that the neophytes especially remained half
+pagan and half Christian, and preferred generally to "ride on the fence"
+between the two creeds.
+
+In the Nibelungen Lied, which we look upon as nothing more than a great
+epic poem of the Scandinavians, pagan at first but Christianized at
+a later period, men are represented as going devoutly to church after
+having consulted the Nix of the river as to their future fate. This is,
+no doubt, a true picture of the Germany of the early Christian days.
+{251}Some looked upon baptism, with its magnificent and pompous
+ceremonies, as a pleasure; others submitted to it for a consideration.
+Ozanam, who is exceedingly well informed about everything that refers
+to this curious period of transition in point of religion, tells the
+following anecdote:--
+
+[Illustration: 271]
+
+One day there was a crowd of candidates for baptism; each one of them
+was, as usual, dressed in white, as emblematic of purity. This symbolic
+dress, made of a suitable material, was a present from the Church to
+the neophyte, which he had carefully to preserve as an evidence of his
+conversion.
+
+Now, on that day, all the available robes had been given away, when one
+more candidate for baptism presented himself; the priest found at last a
+robe of light color, but unfortunately in wretched condition.
+
+"What do you mean?" exclaimed the neophyte, angrily drawing back; "have
+I not a right to claim a white robe as well as the others, and one of
+fine wool?" and looking furiously at the priest he added: "Do you think
+I am a man to be taken {252}in? This is the twentieth time that I am
+baptized, and I have never been offered such rags before!"
+
+The na�ve candor of this good Teuton could make me almost believe that
+he misunderstood the nature of the ceremony altogether, and looked upon
+it only as a gratuitous distribution of wearing apparel.
+
+Other more painful mistakes were made when the Christian missionaries,
+crossing rivers and seas at the risk of their lives, went to the
+uttermost confines of Germany, and there encountered half savage nations
+who were still worshipping the Scandinavian gods.
+
+The patient zeal, the gentleness, and the eloquence of these holy men,
+succeeded finally in overcoming the convictions of these barbarians, and
+in introducing among them not only the Gospel, but also the worship of
+saints. The people received baptism, and not only welcomed the saints
+with great eagerness and enthusiasm, but in their desire to do them all
+the honor in their power, they hastened to turn every one of them into
+a god! They erected altars to these new gods, and on these altars they
+offered them human sacrifices.
+
+These same missionaries had been instructed to prohibit the use of
+horseflesh among the new converts; but they found it very difficult
+to overcome a custom which at that time was very general. {253}We can
+hardly, at the present day, understand the importance which the Church
+attached to this abstinence, since now-a-days the best of people are
+perfectly willing to allow their horses to be taken from their stables
+for the purpose of being served up at table!
+
+[Illustration: 273]
+
+The most serious difficulty in all such critical periods is this, that
+while the true and faithful clergymen by their prodigious labors and
+admirable self-devotion succeeded in converting and disciplining
+great multitudes, false priests appeared among them, taking forcible
+possession of parishes and bishoprics, often without waiting till they
+became vacant. Pepin of Heristal and Charles Martel, his son, had just
+compelled the pagan Saxons to take refuge behind the Weser. When the
+war was over and they proceeded to dismiss the commanders of {254}this
+numerous army till the beginning of another campaign, as was the custom
+in those days, the majority among them claimed, as a reward for services
+rendered, the right to exchange the sword for the crozier and the helmet
+for the mitre. They evidently thought that the profession was an easy
+one to practice and rich in rewards.
+
+Pepin and Charles resisted, but they had to give way.
+
+To the great disgust of the newly converted populations and to the great
+injury of the holy cause, which they professed to have served, these
+warrior-priests brought with them into the Church the manners of
+the camp and the fortress. They surrounded themselves with squires,
+falconers, and riding-masters, with horses and hounds; they hawked, they
+hunted, they lived high, giving themselves up to all kinds of excesses,
+and drawing the sword against any one who should venture to reproach
+them.
+
+When war began once more, they almost all returned to arms, without,
+on that account renouncing their ecclesiastic duties. Gerold, Bishop of
+Mayence, perished in a battle against the Saxons; his son succeeded
+him on the episcopal throne, and had hardly been consecrated when
+he proceeded to avenge his father. He rushes into battle, challenges
+Gerold's murderer, kills him, and quietly returns to {255}Mayence for
+the purpose of officiating there at Mass and of returning thanks to God
+for his success.
+
+Such acts of violence and such worldly enjoyments were incomprehensible
+to the faithful; gradually the Church of the Apostles began to fear
+the Church of the Soldiers. The Saxons, having vastly increased their
+numbers by an alliance with the Scythians and Scandinavians, appeared
+once more in the field.
+
+"But," exclaims the reader, whom I fancy I hear at this distance, "but
+this is history, church history moreover, and you told us you would tell
+us all about gods!"
+
+I confess I did, sir; and that is the reason why I have traced out, on
+this historical ground, the narrowest and shortest possible path, on
+which I can safely return to my own domain.
+
+"Well, then, let us return, my good friend."
+
+I beg your pardon, sir, but before we return, allow me at least
+to glorify three men, who were called upon at that time to save
+Christianity, and with it civilization, by the pen, the word, and the
+sword. These equally great and equally heroic men are now three of our
+saints.
+
+"Saints again!"
+
+Yes, sir, the first is Pope Gregory, the second Saint Boniface the
+missionary, and the third the Emperor Charlemagne. Do not be afraid; I
+shall {256}do no more than mention them, for fear of going again out
+of my way and of speaking of forbidden subjects, against which you have
+warned me. Allow me, however, to add that if the struggle which the
+great Emperor undertook, was a long and ter-tible one, it was also
+glorious far beyond all. Was it not marvelous, I ask you, to see
+this nation of Franks, which but just now consisted of a mixture of
+barbarians, go forth under the command of their young king, to become
+the protector of Rome, of civilization, and of Christianity? The mace
+had become a shield, the siege-ram a wall and a rampart.
+
+"Of course! Everybody knows that!"
+
+But, did you know this, sir: When the Saxons, conquered for the tenth
+time, had received baptism, together with their king Witikind, when the
+Rhine, also baptized, had become a French river and a Christian river,
+when the whole of Germany bowed low before the cross, one of the nations
+of that country, the Borussians (Pruszi, or Prussians), refused to give
+up their old gods, and continued to refuse for several centuries to
+come? And yet it was so. The proscribed gods, finding a refuge on the
+banks of the Oder and the Spree, paid frequent visits, as was quite
+natural, to their former followers. It was thus that the old pagan creed
+was long preserved in the remote regions of Germany. You see, sir, I
+have returned to my subject. {257}Let us rapidly conclude this first
+part of our task, so as to reach at last the modern gods, who were as
+popular as the others, and in their way neither less strange nor less
+curious.
+
+During the time of the Middle Ages, Germany had been filling up with
+towns and castles, feudal dungeons bearing aloft a helmet and a
+cross. The cross arose wherever two streets met in a city and at every
+cross-road in the country; the most beautiful cathedrals in the world
+and the most magnificent monasteries were reflected in her broad river;
+and still, in field and forest, in city and country, and along the banks
+of the Rhine, the false gods were worshipped in secret.
+
+As the church taught that they were to be looked upon as demons, the
+people dared not treat them badly. Demons are not guests to be turned
+out rudely.
+
+"From the eighth century of our Christian era," says one of our erudite
+authorities, "the Saxons and Sarmatians heard the Christian missionaries
+speak so continually of the formidable power of Satan, that they thought
+it best to worship him secretly in order to disarm his wrath and perhaps
+to win his favor. They called him the Black God or _Tybilinus_; the
+Germans call him, even now, _Dibel or Teufel_."
+
+This Black God now became for all the German {258}nations the army
+leader of their proscribed gods, an army which was presently to be
+largely increased.
+
+The princes and knights, followed by their vassals, departed in large
+numbers, on the Crusades, but they brought back from the Crusades,
+together with holy relics, traditions of Gnomes, Peris, and Undines.
+
+[Illustration: 278]
+
+The Rhine, disgusted at the loss of his royal dignity, and determined to
+take his vengeance on the warrior-bishops, received these last arrivals
+as he had those who came before. In his healing waters the Undines
+mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads; the Gnomes found shelter under
+the rocks, where they were hospitably received by the Dwarfs, and in the
+evening twilight the Nymphs, the Elves, and the Dryads danced once more
+merrily in company with Sylphs, Fairies, and Peris.
+
+No doubt Christian Germany looked afterwards at all this more in the
+light of food for the imagination than of trouble for the conscience,
+but in that happy land, where people believe and dream {259}at the same
+time, and where the words of the poet are as true as the Gospel, the
+imagination easily gets the better of conscience. Thus the search after
+the little blue flower led many a learned man astray, far off into half
+satanic paths. Besides, it lies in the nature of the German mind, which
+has always a tendency towards idealism, its magnetic pole, to oppose to
+the orthodox religion another more secret and more mysterious creed.
+
+[Illustration: 279]
+
+This was the case already in the fourteenth and {260}fifteenth century;
+it is the case still in this, the nineteenth century, especially among
+the country people, who have passed through the age of witchcraft in
+which the Black God ruled supreme, and, completely modifying their pagan
+notions, have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken, the mountain of
+the Witches' Sabbath.
+
+Let us now see what the dwellers on the banks of the Rhine have done
+with all their old gods and demi-gods of every denomination.
+
+[Illustration: 283]
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+{263}Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.--_Sylphs,
+their Amusements and Domestic Arrangements.--Little Queen Mab.
+--Will-o'-the-Wisps.--White Elves and Black Elves.--True Causes of
+Natural Somnambulism.--The Wind's Betrothed.--Fire-damp.--Master
+Haemmerling.--The Last of the Gnomes._
+
+The reader is requested to recall what I have said before, that in
+Germany manners, customs, and creeds, matters of prejudice as well as
+matters of art, and even of science, may have a beginning, {264}but
+never have an end. In that ancient home of mysticism and of philosophy,
+everything is permanently rooted, everything is made for eternity, like
+those old oak trees of the Hercynia of antiquity: when the parent tree
+is cut down, and has no longer a trunk to bear boughs and branches,
+it sends forth new shoots from the roots. Druidism also has become
+permanent there. We have seen it fight against the gods of the Romans;
+it fought in like manner against Christianity under Witikind; it was
+kept alive, though in concealment, by the first iconoclasts or image
+breakers, and when that whole vast country was at last conquered and
+became wholly devoted to Catholicism, it broke forth once more quite
+unexpectedly in the first days of the Reformation. Luther was a Druid
+still.
+
+Thanks to this tenacity of life which characterizes creeds, and thanks
+to the prolific nature of that soil, whatever seems to have disappeared,
+rises again, under new forms, and whatever has perished is recalled to
+life in some way or other. Let us prove this.
+
+Among all those gods which we have mentioned before, none surely would
+seem to have been more readily forgotten, swept away by the wind, which
+they claimed to render useless, or buried in the dust with which they
+seemed to compete, than those tiny, microscopic deities, called Monads.
+{265}And yet this was by no means the case. Did they not, in fact,
+represent the elementary spirits? And the worship of the elements
+continued in spite of all other creeds which tried to suppress it
+forever.
+
+Only these atomic deities, still quite small, exceedingly small, had
+increased in the most astonishing manner, when compared with their
+original diminutiveness. They had even assumed a form and a body, a
+visible body and a shape by no means void of grace.
+
+They had become Alps or Alfs, better known afterwards under their
+Eastern designation of Sylphs.
+
+It happened occasionally that a belated traveller, a peasant or a
+charcoal burner, returning homeward from a wedding towards the beginning
+of night, would be fortunate enough to meet at a clearing in the woods
+or on the banks of a brook with a band of little goblins, who were
+making merry in the dim twilight.
+
+These were Sylphs, a little people flying in swarms through the air,
+making their nest in a flower or building one with a few bits of grass
+at the foot of a broom-sedge, and going out only in the evening to pay
+visits and as good neighbors to perform their social duties.
+
+If the traveller, the peasant, or the charcoal burner {266}had walked
+softly on the fine sand of the brook or on a grass-grown path on which
+his steps could not be heard, and if he had then stopped in time so as
+to be able to see without being seen, he might witness their gambols and
+ascertain the secrets of their private life, without running any risk.
+
+[Illustration: 286]
+
+Have you, dear reader, have you heard Mercutio, in Shakespeare's "Romeo
+and Juliet," relate how Queen Mab came, and say:--{267}
+
+     "Oh, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.....
+     Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs,
+     The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
+     The traces of the smallest spider's web,
+     The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
+     Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
+     Her wagoner, a small, gray-coated gnat!"
+
+Well, the peasant, the traveller, or the charcoal burner, enjoyed a
+sight which was by no means less curious.
+
+Some of his Sylphs, suspending a thread of gossamer from one blade of
+grass to another, made a delightful swing for their amusement, or took a
+spiders web to supply them with a hammock. Others danced wildly about
+in the air, beating their tiny wings with harmonious accuracy and
+furnishing thus an orchestra for the aerial ball.
+
+Not far from them some little sylph ladies, no doubt excellent
+housekeepers, were washing their linen in the beams of the moon, or
+preparing a feast.
+
+The provisions consisted of a mixture of honey with the nectar of
+flowers, a few drops of milk which the hanging udders of young heifers
+had left on the high grass, and a few pearls of that precious dew which
+aromatic plants secrete; this mixture was used as a seasoning for some
+butterfly-eggs beaten up white as snow.
+
+If during the repast darkness fell upon them and {268}suddenly
+covered the guests with its sombre cloak, other hobgoblins, the
+Will-o'-the-Wisps, with wings of fire, came and took seats at the
+hospitable table, paying for their entertainment by diffusing a pleasant
+light all over the place.
+
+The principal occupation of these elves consisted in walking before
+the wanderer who had lost his way so as to lead him back again into the
+right path.
+
+Such were some of the harmless spirits of Air and Fire. Everything
+has, however, been changed in these two elements. The Will-o'-the-Wisps
+especially, angry at the reports of wicked people, that they are nothing
+more than the products of burning hydrogen, or at best phosphorus in
+a volatile form floating above damp places, have conceived a veritable
+hatred against men and now only appear when they wish to tempt
+travellers into marshes and deep ravines.
+
+As to the Sylphs, they also seem to have heard similar stories which
+have been told about them, or they may have been irritated by the
+chemist Liebig, who in his "Treatise on the Composition of the Air,"
+absolutely denies their existence, having found in his apparatus neither
+Sylphs nor Sylphides.
+
+They have changed into faithless Elves, hostile to men, like the other
+Gnomes.{269}
+
+[Illustration: 289]
+
+{271}The Fairies of our day are divided into two formidable classes.
+
+The White Fairies are damsels who wander about on meadows and in woods,
+like the Willis of the Slaves, and lie in wait for inexperienced young
+men, whom they persuade to join in their dances and keep dancing, till
+they lose their breath and generally fall to the ground never to rise
+again. German stories are full of such wicked tricks. The place where
+they perform their diabolic dances, becomes quite silvery under their
+feet. The shepherds can thus at once recognize the place where they have
+been, and are sure to hasten away at once with their flocks.
+
+[Illustration: 291]
+
+The Black Fairies personify Nightmare and Somnambulism, but only Natural
+Somnambulism, it must be borne in mind. {272}When men fall into this
+state, the Black Elf directs all the motions of the sleeper; he lives in
+him, thinks and acts for him, makes him get upon the furniture and climb
+upon roofs, and keeps him from falling, unless... Poor sleeper, he allowed
+them breath enough to swell the sails of a vessel or to chase the clouds
+from one end of the heavens to another.
+
+Among the Celts all magicians had been able to command the winds and
+the tempests at will; even now certain men in Norway and in Lapland will
+sell you, for a small price, the wind you desire to carry you home.
+
+Careful! The Black Fairies are treacherous and cruel; the Fairy who
+controls you for the moment may at any moment take a fancy to throw you
+from your height.
+
+[Illustration: 292]
+
+The Alfs, who have thus become Elves or Fairies, are of course not the
+only Spirits of the Air; their fragile and delicate structure would
+never have al{272}In Germany, on the contrary, the wind was looked upon
+as an elementary power. It was not deified, as in Rome, where there was
+a whole windy family of gods, like Eurus, �olus, Boreas, and Favonius,
+but it was an important personage, with a will of his own and
+independent action. The poets did their part to give importance to
+_Master Wind._
+
+I have in my hand a ballad, which will enable the reader to judge for
+himself:--
+
+"Gretchen, the pretty miller's daughter, was courted by the son of the
+king. Her father, the miller, knowing that kings' sons are not apt to
+marry, had chosen her a husband, a young flour merchant from Rotterdam.
+
+"The Dutchman was on his way up the Rhine; that very evening he was
+expected to arrive, to make his proposals.
+
+"Gretchen called upon Master Wind to help her; he came in by the window,
+but not without breaking a number of panes.
+
+"'What do you wish me to do?'
+
+"'A man wants to marry me, against my will; he is coming in a sail boat;
+contrive it so that he cannot land at Bingen.'
+
+"The wind blew, and blew so well that the boat, instead of coming up to
+Bingen, was driven back again as far as Rotterdam. {274}"At Rotterdam
+also it could not make land; it was driven into the North Sea, and there
+the Dutchman is perhaps still sailing about at this day.
+
+"But Master Wind had made his conditions before he went to work blowing
+so well; and the pretty miller's daughter had agreed to them without
+hearing them, for all around her the furniture, the doors, and the
+blinds were shaking and rattling furiously, thanks to her visitor. Thus
+it came about that poor Gretchen found herself betrothed to Master Wind,
+which made her very sad, for now she had less hope than ever of marrying
+the king's son.
+
+"However, Master Wind was as gallant towards his fair betrothed as he
+could be. Every morning, when she opened her window, he would throw
+her in beautiful bouquets of flowers which he had torn off in the
+neighboring gardens.
+
+"If any young man of the village, whom she had rejected, passed without
+saluting her, Master Wind was promptly at hand to carry off his hat
+and send it up in the air so high, that soon it looked no bigger than a
+lark. It was well for him that Master Wind did not, with the hat, take
+his head off at the same time.
+
+"One day (when Master Wind must have been asleep), the king's son came
+to the mill, made his {275}way without difficulty to Gretchen's chamber,
+and forthwith desired to kiss her. Gretchen did not object. But at once,
+and although out of doors all was quiet, the tables and chairs performed
+a wild dance, and the doors and windows began to slam as if they had
+been mad.
+
+"Gretchen herself began to twirl around and around in the most
+unaccountable manner; her hair was loosened by an invisible hand and
+whisked about her head with strange rustling and dismal whistling.
+
+"Terrified by the sight of a tempest in a close room, the prince
+cried:--
+
+"'Ah! accursed one, you are the betrothed of Master Wind!'
+
+"And at the same moment a terrible gust of wind carried off the king's
+son, the miller's daughter, and the mill, and no one ever saw or heard
+anything more of them.
+
+"Perhaps they went to join the Dutchman, who was all the time sailing
+about in the North Sea, or the hat, which was still on its way in the
+clouds."
+
+The legend does not tell us whether it was before or after this
+occurrence that Master Wind married Mistress Rain.
+
+So much for the Spirits of the Air.
+
+As for the Spirits of the Fire, it must be remembered {276}that the
+Will-o'-the-Wisps were by no means their only representatives. There
+were also Salamanders, too well known to be described here; and St.
+Elmo Fires, near relations of the Will-o'-the-Wisps. But we must pause
+a moment to speak of the formidable Fire-damp, the miner's terror. The
+remarkable feature about it is that it plays so insignificant a part in
+the popular German myths, although it has destroyed so many victims in
+all mountainous countries, and above all in the Hartz mountains.
+
+This subterranean lightning, far more fatal than that of the upper
+regions, is known to the people of the Rhine simply as a tall monk, whom
+they call Master Haemmerling.
+
+Master Haemmerling visits the mines from time to time in the guise of a
+harmless amateur, or of an inspector, who is not fond of being hurried.
+However, on Fridays especially, he is subject to violent attacks of
+anger. If a laborer handles his pickaxe awkwardly, or if he is insolent
+to his master, or the master harsh to him and requiring too much, he is,
+quick as a flash of lightning, between them when they are as yet half
+way under ground. Then he suddenly draws his long legs together, and
+between his two knees crushes their heads with as little hesitation and
+ceremony as a mother would show in destroying between her two thumbs the
+{277}little hateful insect that has troubled her darling child.
+
+Nothing more need be said of the elementary spirits of Air and Fire;
+but as we have followed Master Haemmerling into the lower depths of
+the mountains, we might just as well remain there a while and make the
+acquaintance of the Gnomes, the Spirits of the Earth.
+
+Can you see, through the dense air which fills these immense caverns,
+the long, gigantic stalactites, reaching from the ceiling to the
+floor and strongly impregnated with iron? They are the columns of this
+subterranean palace, and around these stalactites, peaceful, slumbering
+waters form a kind of little lakes, the shores of which look as if they
+were covered with rust.
+
+Here and there, in the damp low grounds, half choked with ore and slag
+of various kinds, dark reeds are growing in the shape of lizards; like
+lizards they bend backwards, moving their heads from side to side and
+showing thus the diamond eye which shines brilliantly at the extreme
+end.
+
+These dark depths seem to teem with fantastic creatures; close by a
+heap of grains of gold, stands immovable a watchful, silent guardian,
+a griffin; a pack of black dogs, also guardians of the treasures hid in
+this world of precious metals and {278}stones, are roaming incessantly
+along the ceiling. On the sloping sides, dwarfs not larger than
+grasshoppers, and jumping about like peas in the sieve of the winnower,
+are gathering right and left the tiny gold and silver spangles which
+are left at their disposal, while enormous toads are posted about as
+watchmen.
+
+Finally, far back in the remotest part of these abysses the kings of
+this empire are moving about; these thick-set men, with stout limbs and
+monstrous heads, are the Gnomes.
+
+But people hardly believe in Gnomes any longer; the hard-working miners
+who ought to come every day in contact with them, deny their existence,
+and they have gradually passed into the class of fabulous beings.
+
+Still, I am told that as recently as last year, a pretty peasant girl
+from the neighborhood of Hamburg appeared on a certain evening at a
+ball, with a large ruby on her finger. She professed to have received
+this gem from an Earth Spirit, who had appeared to her at the entrance
+to the Faunus mines.
+
+The gossips of the village were not satisfied, however, with the
+account, and suspected the Gnome to have been an English Gnome, who
+was travelling abroad for his health and courting pretty girls for his
+amusement. This conviction {279}was so strong that the poor girl had to
+leave the country in disgrace.
+
+This is the last Gnome that has been mentioned in that part of Germany.
+
+[Illustration: 299]
+
+[Illustration: 303]
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+{283}Elementary Spirits of the Water.--_Petrarch at Cologne.--Divine
+Judgment by Water.--Nixen and Undines.--A Furlough till Ten
+o'clock.--The White-footed Undine.--Mysteries on the Rhine.--The Court
+of the Great Nichus.--Nix-COBT, the Messenger of the Dead.--His Funny
+Tricks.--I go in Search of an Undine._
+
+"After leaving Aix-la-Chapelle, I had stopped at Cologne, on the left
+bank of the Rhine, which I then found completely covered with several
+rows of women, a countless and charming multitude....
+
+"Adorned with flowers or aromatic herbs, the sleeves {284}pushed up above
+the elbow, they dipped their soft white hands and arms into the river,
+murmuring certain mysterious words which I could not understand.
+
+"I questioned some people. They told me it was an ancient custom of the
+country. Thanks to these ablutions and certain prayers which accompanied
+them, the river carried down with it all the diseases, which would
+otherwise have attacked them during the coming year. I answered,
+smilingly: 'How happy the people of the Rhine must be if the kind river
+thus takes all their sufferings to distant countries! The Po or the
+Tiber have never been able to do as much for us.'"
+
+These are the words which Petrarch wrote in one of his familiar letters,
+written on St. John's Eve.
+
+This letter, as precious by its date as by its contents, proves beyond
+all question, that in the fourteenth century the Rhine was popularly
+worshipped and adored on the very days on which the summer solstice is
+celebrated by bonfires after the manner of the old fire worshippers.
+
+Unfortunately the Christians ended by appealing to the elements, to Fire
+or Water, as to a judicial authority.
+
+The popular notion that the elements were perfectly pure and would hence
+instinctively reject every impure substance, led naturally to ordeals
+{285}by water. The accused was undressed; his hands and feet were tied
+crosswise, the right hand to the left foot and the right foot to the
+left hand, and thus bound he was thrown into a river or any watercourse
+that was deep enough. If he floated, he was guilty and instantly burnt;
+if he sank and remained for some time at the bottom of the water, he was
+considered innocent--but he was drowned.
+
+Heinrich Heine, at least, tells us that this was the infallible result
+of justice in the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages ended in Germany but
+yesterday.
+
+There was also a trial by bread and cheese (_exorcismus panis hordeacei,
+vel casei, ad probationem veri_), but bread and cheese are not elements.
+Let us return to the elementary spirits of Water.
+
+During the great religious reaction which took place after the days
+of Charlemagne, all the mythological gods of rivers and streams
+had gradually returned, more or less successfully, to their former
+occupations. The great Nix or Nichus, upon whom devolved the rule over
+all the rivers of Germany, was no other than the ancient Niord, a
+very important deity and a kind of Northern Neptune. This very weighty
+discovery is due to the learned Mallet.
+
+No doubt this god Niord was one of those who, on their disastrous flight
+from Argentoratum, had {286}fallen into the Rhine. They thought that he
+was drowned, but he had only taken refuge in one of the lowest, almost
+unfathomable depths of the river. From this safe retreat the great
+Nichus had defied the decrees of Councils and the anathemas of the
+Christians hurled against all elementary spirits alike; there he had
+summoned the subaltern deities of sources, ponds, lakes, and smaller
+streams, the nymphs of the banks, and the hideous, scaly monsters which
+swarmed at the bottom of the river. Organizing all these into a people,
+an escort, and an army, he had come forth and invaded at the head of his
+host the banks of the Neckar and the Main, the Moselle and the Meuse,
+the great tributaries of the Rhine, and governed the inhabitants of the
+banks by terror. More than once he had extended his ravages far beyond
+the plains, overthrowing churches that had but just been completed, and
+drowning in his waters all the deserters from the altars of Odin.
+
+Niord was a wicked god, who had a fearful temper. He held his subjects,
+to whatever class they might belong, completely under his yoke, treating
+them capriciously and cruelly, and making of the Rhine a hell of waters.
+
+It is to this dark and damp kingdom of the great Nichus that we have to
+go in order to make the acquaintance, not of his great dignitaries, but
+{287}of the very humblest and lowest of his subjects, the Nixen and the
+male and female Undines, a race of anathematized demons, who make up, by
+themselves, almost the whole population of this realm beneath the waters
+of the Rhine.
+
+What! Must we really count our beautiful Lore, the charming fairy
+Lorelei, you who preferred death to the punishment of making all men
+fall in love with you, much as you loved men in general, must we count
+you among the demons, evildoing and accursed sprites? No! How public
+opinion has stoutly held its own in defiance of all the decrees of the
+Church. Nixen, like the Fairies, are by common consent divided into two
+classes: Nixen proper, who are former pagan deities and not too much to
+be dreaded, and female Nixen, almost always harmless and at times even
+useful.
+
+It is these latter only of whom we shall hereafter speak as Undines.
+
+The Nixen of the first class are ever ready to assume any disguise that
+may aid them in attaining their purpose. Some of them roam about in
+deserted places near the banks of rivers; others have at times
+appeared in the neighboring towns, pretending to be foreign ladies of
+distinction, or artists, generally great performers on the harp. Here
+they have begun intrigues with credulous lovers or unlucky admirers.
+Others appear at village {288}celebrations, mingling in the dance with
+such energy, that their partners are intoxicated, carried away, and,
+losing their heads, think they continue to hear the sound of harps and
+violins, while they are already far away, led on by imaginary music, and
+only return to consciousness on the banks of the river, at the moment
+when they are about to sink helpless into the waters of the Rhine.
+
+[Illustration: 308]
+
+One important point, however, must not be overlooked. To protect
+one's self against the allurements of these accursed fairies, a bit of
+horehound or marjoram is sufficient. We hope all who propose visiting
+the Rhine will be careful always to keep such an herb on their person.
+Before they take out their passports they ought always to pay a visit to
+an herbalist.
+
+The second class of Nixen, the only one in which we are interested, the
+Undines, are, as far as I have been able to learn, the restless souls of
+{289}poor girls who, driven to despair by love, have thrown themselves
+into the Rhine. Unfortunately German lovers, not very courageous at
+best, are but too apt to seek relief in suicide.
+
+[Illustration: 309]
+
+According to the somewhat uncertain information for which I am indebted
+to my authorities or to my intercourse with the Rosahl family, the
+Undines {290}are born as human beings and very inferior in power to
+the genuine Nixen. They live under the water exactly the same time they
+would have lived on earth, if they had not voluntarily put an end
+to their existence. They are thus granted a kind of exceptional
+resurrection and have here a preliminary purgatory, in which they but
+too frequently expiate, if not the sin of their love, at least that of
+their death.
+
+In the lowest depths of the river, at the bottom of vast, submerged
+grottoes, a secret tribunal, presided over by the great Nichus, holds
+its solemn meetings. Here they are disciplined with the utmost severity,
+as is abundantly proven by a great number of terrible stories, such as
+the account of the three Undines of Sinzheim, which the two brothers
+Grimm report in their great work.
+
+Three young girls of marvelous beauty, three sisters, appeared every
+evening at the social meetings of Epfenbach, near Sinzheim and took
+their seats among the linen-spinners. They brought new songs and merry
+stories which no one had heard before. Where did they come from? No one
+knew, and no one dared to ask for fear of appearing suspicious. They
+were the delight of these meetings, but as soon as the clock struck ten
+they rose, and neither prayers nor supplications could induce them to
+stay a moment longer. {291}One evening the schoolmaster's son, who had
+fallen in love with one of them, undertook to prevent their departure
+at the usual hour; he put back the wooden clock, which usually gave them
+warning.
+
+[Illustration: 311]
+
+The next day some people from Sinzheim, who were walking by the side
+of the lake, heard groans rising from the depths of the lake, while the
+surface was stained by three large spots of blood. From that time the
+three sisters were never seen again at the evening assemblies, and
+the school{292}master's son faded away gradually. He died very soon
+afterwards.
+
+These three sisters, so gentle, so lovely and laborious, had in nothing
+betrayed a connection with the spirits of the lower world. The only
+thing was, that people remembered how the hems of their garments had
+frequently been wet, a sure sign by which Undines can be recognized.
+Otherwise they seem to have been very much like other girls, and the
+severity of the great Nichus appears hardly reasonable.
+
+As to this hour of ten o'clock, however, military rules cannot be more
+rigorous than his.
+
+It must, on the other hand, not be imagined that all Undines are as
+gentle and resigned as these three sisters. There are some who bitterly
+resent having been abandoned by their lovers, and try to revenge
+themselves; these seem to partake to some degree of the character of
+the Nixen, or rather,--why should we not say so at once and quite
+candidly?--they remain faithful to their instincts as women.
+
+As a proof of this statement I will quote a short but perfect little
+drama, which Miss Margaret Rosahl has, at my request, copied from
+Busching's voluminous collection.
+
+Count Herman von Filsen, whose estates lay on the right bank of the
+Rhine, between Oslerspey {293}and Brauback, was about to marry the rich
+heiress of the castle of Rheins, on the other bank. His messenger had
+started to carry the letters of invitation to all the guests, but a
+sudden rise of the waters had nearly prevented his crossing a small
+stream. In trying to get over, his horse stumbled, and was drowned. The
+messenger, however, did not lose courage, but went on his way on foot.
+Everywhere he found the brooks swollen into streams, and the torrent
+seemed to press him more and more closely, describing curves and
+zigzags, with countless cataracts, barring him the way on all sides and
+making the usual path impassable.
+
+By the aid of a huge stick and jumping from rock to rock, the poor, half
+bewildered man kept on, walking well-nigh at hap-hazard, till he found
+himself near the Rhine, into which the swollen torrent, rushing after
+him with sudden fury, seemed determined to push him.
+
+Fortunately a small boat was lying quite near the shore: he loosened it,
+took the oars, and returned to Filsen.
+
+When he reached the castle he said to the Count: "Sir, a Nix has barred
+me the way."
+
+The Count did not believe in Nixen. He sent out another messenger. But
+the same adventure befell him.
+
+The wedding day had been fixed and the Count {294}went on, although he
+feared his friends and followers would be few in number.
+
+One morning, as he crossed the river from the right bank to the left,
+in order to pay a visit to his lady love, a sudden tempest broke out. He
+thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters, bending over the
+bow of the boat and trying to draw it down into the abyss beneath
+the waters. Thereupon he became thoughtful, sent for his steward,
+and ordered him to find out what had become of a certain girl of the
+neighborhood, Gott-friede from Braubach.
+
+[Illustration: 314]
+
+{295}"I met her a few days ago," replied the steward, "as she was going
+to St. Marks Chapel, and I offered her holy water. Gottfriede asked me
+about your approaching wedding. She was very well, and seemed to be in
+good spirits."
+
+"Go and see if you can find her," said the Count, "and bring me word."
+
+[Illustration: 315]
+
+During the wedding feast Hermann von Filsen appeared joyous and
+attentive to his bride, the new Countess, but the effort to appear so
+caused his perspiration to break out profusely, especially when all of
+a sudden a small woman's foot, white and delicate, appeared to his eyes,
+and to his only, on the ceiling of the dinner-hall.
+
+He felt a chill in all his limbs. He rose suddenly {296}and fled to
+another room, followed by his wife, his mother, and all the guests, who
+thought he had been seized with sudden illness.
+
+In this room he saw, and he alone again saw, a white hand raise a
+curtain and with the forefinger beckon him to follow.
+
+Long time ago Hermann had heard, without paying any attention at that
+time to the statement, that such a small white foot and a small white
+hand indicated the presence of an Undine and the coming of an inevitable
+calamity.
+
+Now he believed it.
+
+The bishop, who had performed the marriage ceremony, was at the dinner.
+Hermann went straight up to him, knelt down, and confessed aloud, and
+with many tears, that a young girl named Gottfriede, fairer and better
+than all her sisters, had loved him dearly, and that he had returned
+her love and then abandoned her. Gottfriede had sought oblivion of her
+sufferings in the river, and now was bent upon revenge.
+
+"Bless me, father, for I am going to die!"
+
+The bishop, before uttering the words of absolution, demanded first that
+the Count should abjure his impious faith in such supernatural beings,
+of whom the Church knew nothing.
+
+"How can I refuse to believe what I see? There she is! Looking as pale
+as she was this morning {297}at the bow of the boat. Her hair, full of
+green grass, is hanging in disorder all over her shoulders; she looks at
+me with a tearful smile."
+
+"Nothing but visions!" replies the bishop. "Your eyes deceive you."
+
+"But it is not only by the eye that I am aware of her presence, I hear
+her voice; she is calling me? Forgive me, Gottfriede!"
+
+[Illustration: 317]
+
+"You are out of your mind! These are the devil's snares! And who tells
+you that the girl has ceased to live? That she has committed a crime?
+Thanks be to God, Gottfriede came to me, she confessed to me penitently,
+and now she is in a convent!" At this moment the assembly, already
+deeply excited, was somewhat startled by the entrance of the steward,
+who looked terrified, went up to the Count's mother, and whispered some
+words into her ear. She could not repress a cry.
+
+"Dead!" she said.
+
+"Yes, she is dead, and I also must die!" cried Hermann in accents of
+despair.
+
+The young bride, offended at this avowal of a previous attachment, had
+at first stood aloof; now, consulting her own heart alone, she thought
+of contesting {298}the right of this invisible rival, and with open arms
+drew near the Count; but he pushed her aside rudely.
+
+The bishop began his exorcisms. While he was repeating the prescribed
+words, the Count asked:--
+
+"What do you want of me, Gottfriede? Forgive me and we will all pray
+for you. You are seeping and kissing me by turns, but your kisses are
+nothing but bitterness and sorrow to me, since I have given my name to
+another, since another is my--"
+
+He could not complete the sentence. Uttering a sharp cry he fell at full
+length to the ground, and on his neck appeared a long, bluish mark, such
+as is seen in strangled persons.
+
+The great Nichus is, as we have seen, the master, the despot, the
+_Wassermann_, par excellence, of all this watery, dark world, peopled
+by Nixen and Undines. His authority is, moreover, by no means limited
+to the exercise of judicial functions; his will, constantly under the
+influence of an ill-regulated appetite, is law for everybody; the male
+Nixen are his Court, and his harem is kept full by the fairest among
+those women who become his own by suicide. This greenish-complexioned
+Sardanapalus is said to celebrate incredibly monstrous orgies with his
+drowned Odalisques.
+
+He is, in reality, Niord, the Scandinavian god, {299}and this Niord
+again is, originally, one of those old Roman emperors, who were deified,
+and whose portraits Petronius has left us drawn in mud and blood.
+
+[Illustration: 319]
+
+His principal agent, and the Jack-of-all-trades of the whole community,
+Nixcobt, the messenger of the dead, has to maintain communication
+between the people who live on the river, and those who live in it.
+He is perhaps the most eccentric of all the mythical personages of the
+Rhine.
+
+When morning is about to dawn and the mountain tops are beginning to
+glow in a faint subdued light, a kind of low, thickset man of the most
+hideous appearance, may occasionally be seen gliding along the houses of
+a town, keeping carefully in the shade, or slipping down the hill-side
+between the long rows of grapes, which are almost as high as he is. His
+terrible head turns upon his slender neck as upon a pivot, and thus he
+can see and examine everything without stopping for a moment. His bare
+shoulders, his elbows, knees, and cheekbones are covered with scales;
+small pins appear {300}at intervals at his ankles; his round glamous
+eyes have a bright red point in the centre; his teeth and hair are
+green, and his enormous mouth, split wide open and shaped like the mouth
+of a fish, wears a fixed smile, which strikes terror in the beholder.
+This creature is Nixcobt.
+
+[Illustration: 320]
+
+With daybreak he is back in the river to inquire if its mournful
+population has been added to over night by some victim, suicide or not.
+He takes down a description of each one, draws up a report, inquires as
+to what induced them to seek refuge in the new world, and offers them
+his services for the purpose of letting the friends and parents
+know, {301}whom they may have left behind, ignorant of their fate and
+inconsolable at their loss.
+
+Then he amuses the great Nichus with all his stories and all the clever
+tricks he has been playing during his nocturnal visits to the people in
+the villages and towns on the river.
+
+These merry tricks of Master Nixcobt form even in our day an ever
+welcome staple of amusement to the young spinners during the long winter
+nights, accompanied as they are by the cheerful hum of the swiftly
+turning wheels.
+
+One day Nixcobt calls upon the tax collector of a little town on the
+Rhine, whom he finds in great consternation. His wife has left his house
+and he does not know what has become of her. To console him Nixcobt
+tells him that she is dead, having drowned herself, and as a proof of
+it, he shows him a letter which he has with his own hands taken from the
+pockets of the deceased.
+
+The husband, whose tears had been flowing freely, dries them quickly,
+becomes furious, and looks at his children with fierce glances. He is
+jealous of their dead mother. Nixcobt laughs and goes to some one else.
+
+That some one else, an honest vintner of the Rheingau, has the night
+before killed his friend in an excess of passion and then thrown the
+body into the Rhine, together with the knife with which {302}he had
+committed the murder. This knife Nix-cobt now presents to him, for he
+takes delight in restoring lost objects of this kind.
+
+While the murderer stands petrified at the sight of the still bloody
+knife, the Gnome hastens to the Mayor to report to him the whole matter.
+
+An inquiry is held, the vintner is found, holding the bloody knife in
+his hand, he is hanged and Nixcobt laughs heartily.
+
+One night a notary of Badenheim, near Mayence, hears in his sleep a
+voice saying:--
+
+"John Harnisch, the great Nichus is courting your wife, who has been
+changed into an Undine three months ago; she will not listen to him, and
+{303}he wants you to tell him how he must manage to please her."
+
+The notary thought it was a bad dream, uttered a sigh as he thought of
+his deceased wife, and fell asleep once more. But a chilly hand resting
+upon his breast waked him once more, and the voice said:--
+
+"John Harnisch, speak, speak promptly and be sincere, or you shall never
+sleep again."
+
+John Harnisch resisted for some time longer, but a red flame dimly
+lighted up his alcove and he saw a row of green teeth and scaly cheek
+bones. Thoroughly frightened, he said what he could.
+
+"Thanks!" cries Nixcobt, and breaks out into a far sounding laugh.
+
+We might fill folios with all the lugubrious jokes of this messenger
+of the dead, but we will abstain. Besides, Nixcobt has lost all respect
+now-a-days. He is no longer seen gliding along the houses in towns or
+slipping through the rows in the vineyards.
+
+We might in like manner tell a vast number of interesting stories and
+quote endless _Lieder_ and ballads, which treat of Nixen and Undines.
+For there are, besides, Undines of rivers and Undines of lakes, and
+there are even some in the ocean; in Germany all watercourses, down to
+the tiniest rills, have their Undines. {304}Only day before yesterday
+I was walking on the banks of the Rhine; only yesterday on those of
+the Moselle, This morning, wandering about at haphazard I encountered a
+brook, a mere rill, which attracted me by its sweet murmurs. I followed
+it, followed it for two hours. I happened to have nothing else to do.
+
+My tiny rill, a mere infant so near its source, was turning and twisting
+in the thick grass and seemed to try and walk on all fours as little
+children do. Farther down it had become a little girl, having increased
+in size and bulk; it now wandered hither and thither, carelessly,
+capriciously, leaping merrily over the rocks and carrying off here
+a flower and there a flower that grew on its banks, no doubt for the
+purpose of making a bouquet. Still farther on, I witnessed its marriage
+with a big brook that had come down all the way from the mountains; it
+was a young woman now, a wife, and walked soberly through the plain,
+like a prudent stream, bearing already boats on its surface and
+preparing to join an elder sister, the Moselle. Soon I had to cross
+it on a bridge; on this same bridge four Prussian soldiers were busy
+watching the water as it flowed by, no doubt in the hope of catching
+a fair Undine as she was stealthily slipping down the river. As for
+myself, I had in vain traced the unknown little river from its birth
+all {305}along its banks, under the thick shelter of willows and alder
+bushes; neither day before yesterday on the Rhine, nor yesterday on the
+Moselle, nor today, did I ever find a trace of a Nymph, a Nix, or an
+Undine!
+
+What must be my conclusion?
+
+A thief who had been brought before a police court and was there
+confronted with two persons who had seen him steal, said:--
+
+"These men claim that they have seen me, but I, I could bring twenty
+other witnesses who would swear that they have not seen me!"
+
+"What does that prove?" asked the judge of the court.
+
+[Illustration: 325]
+
+I saw nothing. "What does that prove?" as the wise judge said to the
+thief.
+
+[Illustration: 329]
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+{309}Familiar Spirits.--_Butzemann.--The Good Frau Holle.--Ko-bolds.--A
+Kobold in the Cook's Employ.--Zotterais and the Little White
+Ladies.--The Killecroffs, the Devil's Children.--White Angels.--Granted
+Wishes, a Fable._
+
+France, which is skeptic to the core, has no idea of the importance of
+certain visible or invisible spirits, who eagerly seek the society of
+man, sleeping {310}under his roof, or in certain cases becoming members
+of his family, in the strictest sense of the word. Besides, they render
+efficient services to a good housekeeper; they may do great harm if they
+are made angry, and they give at times most useful advice.
+
+These hobgoblins, little known outside of Germany and England, frequent
+also the French provinces watered by the Meuse, the Moselle, and the
+Rhine, and are sometimes brought to Paris by cooks from Alsace and
+coachmen from Lorraine.
+
+Let us rapidly glance, not at all, but at some of the best authenticated
+among these familiar spirits.
+
+Evening has come, the night is dark, and master and mistress are fast
+asleep. A servant with a candle in her hand and gaping to her heart's
+content, goes once more over the house, looking in all the corners and
+out of the way places and putting everything in order. All of a sudden a
+door is swiftly opened and closed again right in her face and her light
+is blown out. You will say a window has been left open and the draught
+has done all this.
+
+By no means! It is the _Butzemann_.
+
+Some merry companions are assembled in the large dining-room of the
+hotel and celebrate there a feast of grapes in memory of the divine
+Dionysius. The night advances and there they are still, {311}glass
+in hand, singing, drinking.... Silence! all of a sudden singing and
+drinking comes to an end; the glasses halt half way in the midst of a
+toast; the heavy eyes open wide, the trembling knees grow strong
+once more. Every one of the guests hastens home. Three times a hairy,
+ill-shapen creature has come and knocked with its wings against the
+window. You will say it was a bat.
+
+By no means! It is the _Butzemann!_
+
+The family is gathering around the warm porcelain stove, where they can
+safely defy cold winter. The men are smoking, a pot of beer by their
+side; the women are knitting and talking of the approaching wedding
+of the eldest daughter. Oh misery! Away back in the fireplace, a great
+noise is heard; a bright light shines. Coals and sparks are scattered
+all around, and some have fallen upon the dress of the betrothed. What
+is the matter? You will say again, it was a knot in the wood, perhaps a
+chestnut that had been overlooked in the ashes and has burst now.
+
+By no means! it is the _Butzemann!_
+
+The Butzemann, a prophetic family spirit, warns you of coming danger
+and bids you prepare for an approaching misfortune. Never undertake
+a journey, never get married if a clear sign has made you aware that
+Butzemann has put his veto upon your journey or your marriage. The only
+difficulty {312}you will have is to distinguish between Butzemann and a
+puff of wind, a bat, or an exploding chestnut.
+
+It is much easier to recognize _Frau Holle_, as her presence is always
+announced by unmistakable indications. She has assumed the task of
+overlooking the poor country girls at their work. But it has never been
+found out why this benevolent fairy of work-people does not live in some
+great industrial city, or some beautiful country district, where the
+signs of active life are abundant and the whirring of wheels or the
+stamping of machinery is heard; where the spinners sing, and the
+washerwomen beat time at the limpid stream. She prefers, with
+unaccountable perverseness, to live in dismal swamps, beside faithless
+Will-o'-the-Wisps and low Nixen!
+
+No one has ever dared examine this question so closely as to ascertain
+the precise truth.
+
+Some have dropped timid hints that Frau Holle, now occupying a very
+humble position and rated among the familiar spirits only, was once upon
+a time a high and mighty personage, but they have had nothing more to
+say of her past glory, as is the case with poor ladies who have been
+"unfortunate." Others, with more boldness or more knowledge, have
+recognized in her the goddess Frigg, Odin's wife. Dear Frau Holle! what
+a coming down! what poor creatures we are, after all. {313}As soon as
+the cross was planted on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, Frigg,
+under the name of Hertha (Mother Earth), had taken refuge on an island
+in the ocean, where she lived invisible and alone in the heart of a
+sacred forest, which was constantly invaded by the waves of the sea.
+
+A priest, who had remained faithful to the old religion, alone knew the
+hour and the minute when the goddess would deign once more to appear to
+men. At the given moment he drew forth, on the marshy island, a chariot
+wrapped in veils. Hertha got in, and for some days travelled through the
+world, diffusing all around her good will and consolation. Then all wars
+were suspended; not only the sword went back into its sheath, but all
+irons, all defensive and offensive weapons and even the iron shoes of
+the ploughs, had to be kept carefully concealed. Hertha invited the
+world to enjoy peace and repose.
+
+Now let us see in what respect Frau Holle or Holla reminds us of the
+good goddess.
+
+At certain periods of the year, especially at Christmas, Frau Holle
+leaves her marshy island in order to inspect the world. All who work in
+linen, spinning, weaving, embroidery, or starching, are by turns visited
+by the good lady. Their idleness and their carelessness are severely
+punished. If one fine morning Annie finds her wheel {314}or Kate her
+loom covered with green slime, if Bertha notices her work torn in the
+place which she repaired only the night before, or if the water has over
+night turned greasy and looks discolored, the poor girls may be sure
+that Frau Holle has been on her round of inspection.
+
+If she is pleased, on the other hand, the ribbon around the distaff
+holds a pretty marshflower, a lily, an iris, or a gladiolus; on the lace
+cushion or on the seamstress's work a little golden needle is stuck, and
+on the heap of specially well washed and well folded linen lies a cake
+of perfumed soap, which fills the whole house with its sweet odor.
+
+Sometimes Frau Holle finds her way mysteriously to a garret, where a
+poor woman is lying sick with fever, the result of overwork. Then she
+finishes herself the work that had been begun, and when she leaves she
+puts a few florins under the pillow of the sleeping sufferer.
+
+Blessings be upon you, good Dame Holle! Even if you were really once a
+goddess of the first rank, you need not blush at your present condition.
+Still, we cannot help asking, with a slight tremor of fear, how it can
+have come about, that the noble Frigg, the all powerful Hertha,
+should have been reduced to play the lady patroness of washerwomen and
+seamstresses? How has this island in the ocean, with its sacred forest,
+become a wretched {315}marsh, fetid and ill reputed? There is but one
+answer to such a question: Frigg has been unfortunate.
+
+But the spinners and seamstresses, the clear-starchers and embroiderers
+are not the only ones who are honored by kind attentions from the
+supernatural world. The brothers Grimm say:--
+
+[Illustration: 335]
+
+"In certain parts of the world, every person--man, woman, or child--has
+his own goblin to do menial service; he carries water, cuts wood, and
+fetches beer." During all this time the master has nothing to do but to
+set still and to see the work done.
+
+This goblin is evidently the _Genius loci_ of the ancients.
+
+Among all these goblins, however, one is by far the most famous in
+Germany, and at the same time the oddest, of whom the most extraordinary
+stories are told. They call him _Kobold._
+
+During the night the Kobold sets everything to {316}rights in the
+kitchen; he cleans the glasses, the plates, the pans, and wages war
+against the spiders and the mice. For all these attentions he asks only
+a little food, specially prepared for him, for he would never dream to
+ask for a share of his master's dinner.
+
+Although he seems to be specially devoted to the cook's department, the
+Kobold is first of all attached to the house. If the cook is dismissed,
+or if the master moves, he nevertheless remains in his old home, quite
+ready to offer his services to the new comers. If the cook goes, she
+says to her who takes her place:--
+
+"Do not forget to put a little panada on the kneading trough for the
+Kobold, or he might play you some ugly tricks. Be careful, for he is not
+always in good humor."
+
+If the Kobold, or in his place the cat, eats the panada, the new cook is
+sure to say:--
+
+"Chim has been here; I see we shall be good friends."
+
+But if Chim has left the dainty untouched, or has merely tasted it, she
+is troubled.
+
+"Perhaps he wants it made with the yolk of an egg? Or perhaps I had not
+put enough butter to it?"
+
+Although the Kobold is almost always invisible, he is at all times
+ready for a chat. {317}What are we to make of these strange beings, the
+servants of our servants, who are even more faithful than the latter to
+the house which they have once made their home, who do not, as we are
+told is the case in some countries, insist so strongly upon certain
+privileges that it becomes uncertain whether the servants are not
+themselves masters and those who think themselves to be masters are in
+reality servants? They generally do nothing but kindness. Nevertheless
+they keep out of sight, thus shunning all public return for their
+benevolent services. What are we to make of such servants? Martin Luther
+answers in his "Table Talk."
+
+[Illustration: 337]
+
+"For many years," he says, "a servant had a familiar spirit who sat down
+by her on the hearth, where she had made a little place for him, and
+they talked to each other during the long winter evenings. One day she
+asked Heinzchen (Chim, Heinzchen, and Kurt Chimgen are the pet names by
+which German and Alsatian cooks generally call their Ko-bolds) to let
+her see him in his natural shape. At first Heinzchen refused. {318}but
+at last, as she insisted, he told her to go down into the cellar, where
+he would show himself to her." "She took a candle," he goes on to say,
+"and went into the cellar, where the Kobold appeared to her in the
+likeness of a child of hers who had died some years before." Whether
+he vanished then, leaving her in amazement and terror, or whether he
+resumed the shape in which she had been accustomed to see him, we are
+not told. It is a grim story upon which we do not care to dwell, for we
+prefer to remember the Kobold as a cheerful household companion. It is
+pleasant to think of those quaint little creatures, whose world is the
+kitchen, and to imagine the joy they feel in sharing the busy, bustling
+life that goes on there daily. Be sure they know every nook and corner
+about,--every stew-pan and ladle, and are learned in the steamy scents
+and fragrant savors which are the atmosphere of their home. At night
+when the fires are out, and the family is asleep, they have a life of
+their own. They are on the best possible terms with the cat, which they
+permit to share their food, and with which they no doubt waltz when in a
+gamesome mood. Happy Kobolds.
+
+According to general belief the Kobolds belong as much to the race
+of men as to the world of spirits; they retain the size and shape of
+infants, and that knife which so often is noticed in the form {319}of
+a caudal appendage, is nothing less than the instrument with which they
+have been put to death.
+
+There exist, however, quite a number of troublesome hobgoblins, who turn
+the house upside down and deprive the people to whom they bear a grudge
+of all peace and sleep, till they well nigh drive them mad. But these
+creatures ought, in my opinion, not be mixed up with the Kobolds. The
+latter are almost invariably gentle and inoffensive; if they sometimes
+become angry, they act just like children; they break and smash things,
+but they are easily pacified by the sight of some little tit-bit, as for
+instance, a panada made with butter and eggs.
+
+[Illustration: 339]
+
+The Zotterais and the Little White Ladies seem, in their habits at
+least, to come nearer to Kobolds. Very useful and easily satisfied, the
+Zotterais are as fond of stables as the Kobolds are of kitchens;
+they curry the horses, nurse {320}them when they are sick, and
+keep everything in excellent order in their racks as well as in the
+harness-room.
+
+The Little White Ladies, on the other hand, are more delicate in their
+instincts and often quite fastidious; they like only blood horses, Arab
+or Turkish horses, and hence the popular idea that they have originated
+in the East.
+
+They slip into the stables of wealthy people, while the grooms are
+asleep; here they light a small candle, which they always keep about
+them, and then proceed to business.
+
+In the morning, when the head, coachman makes his round to see that
+everything is right, he sometimes finds a drop of wax on the smooth
+coat of a sorrel or an Isabel colored horse, and then he says to the
+grooms:--
+
+"You have not had much to do to-day, my friends, with your horses; I see
+the little lady has been here."
+
+The Zotterais are of unmistakable German origin, for they take care of
+horses without regard to race and without the help of a wax candle. They
+have, of course, harder work to do and are more apt to become soiled
+or to have accidents; but, nevertheless, they accomplish their purpose.
+They are naturally easily tired, and hence they require a knot to be
+made in the mane of a horse, where {321}they can suspend themselves and
+rest. There is not a peasant on the banks of the Rhine or the Meuse, who
+would neglect this duty, and I have myself often seen them attend to it
+carefully.
+
+[Illustration: 341]
+
+Formerly the Zotterais also protected sheep against ticks and kept their
+wool from getting tangled; they even derived their name from Zotte,
+which means a flock of wool. In those days, it must be presumed, from
+the habits of those benevolent little people, the fleeces must have been
+whiter and better kept than they are now-a-days; but sheep raisers had
+the unlucky idea, produced probably by avarice, that not a particle of
+wool should be left on ram or ewe, and thus deprived their tiny friends
+of all means to rest and recover breath when hard at work. The Zotterais
+looked upon this neglect of what was due to them as an insult, and
+abandoned the flocks of sheep for the horses in the stables. Besides,
+they found it impossible to live on good terms with the shepherds' dogs.
+
+We must finally mention the most important and most extraordinary of all
+familiar spirits, whom we must needs include among these favored beings,
+{322}as he represents nothing less than the son of the house, the child
+of the family.
+
+This is the _Killecroff or Suppositus._ The last mentioned name is
+given to him because this so-called son of the house is in reality a
+changeling, a supposed child, which has been put into the place of the
+real child.
+
+[Illustration: 342]
+
+Who has taken the legitimate child from its cradle in order to put into
+its place a _Killecroff_, and who is the real father of the latter?
+
+Both of these questions are met by one and the same answer. The Devil!
+We have so far carefully avoided touching on matters of witchcraft; but
+unfortunately they are as well known on the banks of the Rhine as on
+those of the Thames and the Seine. The _Killecroffs_, however, children
+of the Devil and begotten according to popular belief during the orgies
+of the Witches' Sabbath, have been really in existence upon earth;
+_suppositi_ or not, they have played their part in the world's history
+and occasionally even left behind them illustrious descendants. {323}In
+the same way as the Swedish king Vilkins and Merov�us, king of the
+Franks, boasted of being the sons of a sea-god, the dynasty of the
+Jagellons in Poland were proud of their original descent from the Devil,
+no doubt through Killecroffs, and actually bore in their arms certain
+emblems of hell.
+
+How can a real Killecroff be recognized, since he has been, improperly
+enough, counted in among the Kobolds?
+
+[Illustration: 343]
+
+From his first appearance in the world, the Killecroff excites the
+astonishment, and sometimes the {324}admiration of his reputed parents.
+He sucks so heartily and with such an appetite that his nurse has to be
+reinforced by two goats and a cow, like the renowned Gargantua.
+
+When he is weaned a new marvel appears: he swallows his soup by the
+tureen, "as much as two peasants and two threshers in the barn would
+take," says a celebrated writer in speaking of this subject.
+
+He grows up and keeps everything in commotion around him; he provokes
+quarrels not only among the servants, but even between his parents. If
+some untoward event occurs he roars with laughter, on a day of rejoicing
+he sheds tears and moans piteously. He takes a stick or a spit and rides
+on it in his room, from morning till evening, climbing on every
+chair and table, breaking everything that comes in his way, injuring
+himself--also quite as readily, provoking cats, dogs, and even the
+parrot on his perch, till they all mew and bark and scream. Then he runs
+to the stable and sticks a pin into the croup of a horse to see it kick,
+and then breaks open the doors and locks by the aid of a huge stick
+of wood; next he rushes into the garden, playing the part of a tempest
+there, destroying, uprooting, and breaking everything.
+
+In the poultry yard he wrings the hens' necks and walks over the young
+chickens; in the kitchen {325}he loves to take up the tops of pots and
+pans and to season the dishes according to his fancy with salt, pepper,
+dust, ashes, oil, vinegar, mustard, sand, or sawdust, and never leaves
+without having turned on the water everywhere.
+
+If a visitor arrives, he takes possession of him and stands between his
+legs, and walks on his toes, pulls the buttons off his waistcoat, and
+draws the strings out of his shoes; he troubles and annoys him in every
+way, he pinches and scratches, he worries and tortures him. When his
+mother cautiously observes that he must not trouble the gentleman he
+obeys like a good child and leaves the gentleman alone, but not without
+having first broken his watch-chain, taken his cane, and hid his
+spectacles; the cane he drops accidentally into the well; as for the
+spectacles, he forgets where he has put them. When the poor visitor,
+quite overcome and exhausted, at last rises to go, he stumbles and falls
+down the stairs, thanks to a string which his playful young friend, the
+Killecroff, has stretched across the top step.
+
+The Killecroffs are generally the delight of their parents; fortunately
+they do not live long.
+
+The great man whom I have quoted before, told the Duke of Anhalt
+frankly, that if he were a sovereign like the duke, he would run the
+risk and become a murderer in such a case, by ordering {326}every such
+son of the devil to be thrown into the Moldau!
+
+This great man, who believed so firmly in Killecroffs, who believed
+likewise in Butzemann, in Ko-bolds, in Nixen and Undines, who saw the
+Devil in every fly that came to drink his ink or to perch on his nose,
+was again Dr. Martin Luther.
+
+[Illustration: 346]
+
+The great Reformer, who was so valiant in combating the superstitions of
+the Papists, seems to have taken very little trouble to get rid of his
+own.
+
+But among the many delusions, in which he apparently delighted, there
+was one, a really charming {327}one, which arose from the Christian
+religion itself, and which, it seems to me, I cannot well pass over in
+silence when speaking of familiar spirits.
+
+I mean Guardian Angels.
+
+A most erudite and clever academician, Mr. Alfred Maury, tells us in
+his charming book on "Magic and Astrology," that according to Egyptian
+doctrines a special star foretold the arrival of every man in this
+world. In proof of this statement, he refers us to Horapollon, in his
+"Treatise on Hieroglyphics."
+
+We infinitely prefer taking Mr. Maury's own evidence; and he adds: "This
+creed exists still in some remote districts among rural populations, and
+especially in Germany."
+
+It may be that in certain portions of Germany every man may still have
+faith in his star; we are willing to believe it, since he says so; but
+almost everywhere the star has been superseded by a Guardian Angel,
+the White Angel, as they call him, a far more tempting personage, and
+infinitely more intimate and sympathetic. The White Angel is much more
+than the _Genius loci_; it is in fact the _Genius personalis_.
+
+Without entering here upon a serious discussion, on the subject of
+Guardian Angels, whom the modern Church is disposed to ignore, we shall
+prefer {328}inserting here, as a complement to our chapter on Familiar
+Spirits, a legend, which we were fortunate enough to obtain directly
+from very truthful and very beautiful lips:--
+
+"A white figure appeared before the young girl as she awoke.
+
+"'I am your Guardian Angel!'
+
+"'Then you will grant me the wishes which I shall mention?'
+
+"'I shall carry them to God's throne. You may count upon my assistance.
+What are your wishes?' "'O White Angel, I am tired of continually
+turning the spindle, and my fingers are getting to be so hard by
+constant work, that yesterday, at the dance, my partner might have
+imagined he was holding a wooden hand.'
+
+"'Your partner was that fine looking gentleman from Hesse? Did he not
+tell you that he adored your blue eyes and fair hair, and that he would
+make you a baroness, if you would go home with him?'
+
+"'White Angel, make me a baroness.'
+
+"The evening of that day a young peasant came and asked Louisa's mother
+for her daughter's hand. The mother said, Yes.
+
+"'White Angel, deliver me from this boor. I want to be a baroness!'
+
+"But the mother, who was a widow, had energy {329}enough for two. The
+White Angel did not appear again; Louisa had to yield, and went on
+turning her spindle.
+
+"One day her husband, who was a hard-working man, had over-exerted
+himself and was taken ill. Louisa had seen her gentleman again.
+
+"'White Angel, he loves me still. He has sworn he would marry me if I
+were a widow.'.... She dared not say more. Her husband recovered his
+health completely. The White Angel still turned a deaf ear to her
+wishes. She lost all hope of ever becoming a baroness.
+
+"Some years later Louisa was the mother of two beautiful children;
+she was fond of her husband, whose labor procured for her all that she
+needed, and when she thought of him and her two darlings, the spindle
+felt quite soft to her fingers.
+
+"One evening, when she was only half asleep, lying by her husband's
+side, with one of her hands in his, and the youngest of her babies at
+her bosom, the white figure appeared once more and she heard a gentle
+voice whispering something into her ear. It was the voice of the White
+Angel.
+
+"What did it say?
+
+"It told her a fable.
+
+"'A little fish was merrily swimming about in the water and looking
+seriously at a pretty blackcap which first circled around and around in
+the air {330}and then alighted softly on a branch of a willow which grew
+close to the bank of the river.
+
+"'"Oh," said the little fish, "how happy that bird is. It can rise up
+to the heavens and go high up to the sun to warm itself in its rays. Why
+cannot I do the same?"
+
+"'The blackcap was looking at the fish at the same time, and said:--
+
+"'"Oh! how happy that fish is! The element in which it lives furnishes
+it at the same time with food; it has nothing to do but to glide along.
+How I should like to sport in the fresh, transparent water!"
+
+"'At that moment, a kite pounced upon the poor little fish, while a
+scamp of a schoolboy threw a stone at the bird; the blackcap fell into
+the water, the fresh, transparent water, and for a moment struggled in
+it before it died, while the little fish, carried aloft, could go up
+on high to the sun and warm itself in its rays. Their wishes had been
+granted.'
+
+"'Louisa,' continued the gentle voice, 'our duty as Guardian Angels is
+far more frequently to thwart wishes than to satisfy them.'
+
+"This was the moral of the fable.
+
+"Louisa pressed her husband's hand warmly, kissed her last born,
+and said: 'Thank you, White Angel, thank you.'" {331}I am certainly
+delighted to think, that if the poor Germans have Killecroffs among
+their familiar spirits, they have at least also White Angels.
+
+[Illustration: 351]
+
+[Illustration: 355]
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+{335}Giants and Dwarfs.--_Duel between Efthesim and Grommelund.--Court
+Dwarfs and Little Dwarfs.--Ymer's Solis.--The Invisible Reapers.--Story
+of the Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragant.--How the Giants came to
+serve the Dwarfs._
+
+If legendary tradition is only a distant vibration of the bell of
+history, where must we go and look for traces of the real existence of
+giants? Must we believe the Edda or Holy writ itself? Afterwards the
+great fossil skeletons of mammoths, mastodons, and other antediluvian
+animals only revived the {336}memory of gigantic men. The Apocryphal
+Books tell us that in the days of Enoch, a number of angels, amounting
+to two hundred, had conceived a desire for the daughters of men and came
+down to Mount Hermon in order to be near them. Some of the principal
+ones are even mentioned by name; there were Urakabaramiel, Sanyaza,
+Tamiel, and Akibiel. Is it a wonder, then, that credulous people should
+have believed that devils also, who after all are but fallen angels,
+have acted in the same way towards the descendants of Eve. The
+Killecroffs, we have seen, were the offspring of a union between
+devils and earthborn women; in like manner giants were the offspring
+of marriages between women and angels. Women are evidently capable of
+setting heaven, earth, and hell on fire.
+
+Germany, which was the last part of Europe to enter the great Catholic
+Church, and was to be the first to leave it again at the time of the
+Reformation, kept up the belief in giants longer than any other country.
+Perhaps this was one of the results of the right of free inquiry.
+
+The giant Einheer lived in the days of Charlemagne and even served
+in his army. Several centuries later there were gigantic burgraves
+(Burggra-fen), living all along the banks of the Rhine. They have a well
+known story there of a young and ingenious giant's daughter, who had
+been jealously {337}guarded in her father's castle, and when she got
+out into the fields for the first time in her life, brought back in her
+apron a peasant with his plough and his two horses, whom she had picked
+up on the way. She showed them to her father as being all three little
+animals of very curious shape.
+
+[Illustration: 357]
+
+After a while, however, the giants became smaller and smaller, until
+there were only a few left in the highest mountains, in dark forests,
+and in the romances of chivalry. After that they disappeared altogether.
+
+The report is, however, that a single couple, man and wife, are kept
+alive by magic art in an isolated part of the Hartz Mountains, to serve
+as a specimen of the lost race. {338}At first the giants had produced
+universal terror. The god Thor was blessed because he had driven them,
+armed as he was with his famous iron mace, all across the Hercynian
+forest. But as people became better acquainted with them, their fears
+subsided. They turned out to be far from cruel, to eat human flesh only
+in cases of dire necessity, and to act generally not only kindly, but
+even like simpletons--a misfortune common to most men, who are too
+fully developed in length or in breadth. This latter weakness is well
+supported by a popular German tale.
+
+An old duke of Bavaria had at his court a dwarf, called Ephesim, and a
+giant, called Grommelund. The latter laughed at the dwarf, and Ephesim
+threatened to box his ears. Grommelund laughed only the more heartily
+and challenged Ephesim to carry out his threat. The dwarf accepted
+the challenge, and the duke, having been a witness of the whole scene,
+ordered at once that a field for single combat should be prepared.
+
+Everybody expected to do as the giant did and laugh at the pigmy; as the
+poor little fellow was hardly two feet high and would have had to climb
+a long way before reaching the giant's ears. But it turned out very
+differently.
+
+The dwarf began by walking all around the giant as if to take his
+measure. The good-natured giant, {339}standing up immovable, looks down
+upon him and laughs till his sides shake; but while he is holding his
+hands to his sides, the dwarf unties his shoestrings and then worries
+him by kicking and pinching his calves.
+
+[Illustration: 359]
+
+Grommelund laughs more loudly than ever, thanks to the tickling, takes
+a few strides, steps on his loose shoestrings, nearly stumbles, and at
+last, with a thoughtful presence of mind, characteristic of his race, he
+stoops down to tie the strings.
+
+Ephesim has foreseen this, he avails himself of the opportunity, and
+slaps the giant's cheek with his little hand, so heartily that the sound
+reaches the ears of the duke and the lords of his court, who applaud
+Ephesim's skill enthusiastically.
+
+The poor giant, humiliated and overcome, left the town, it is said, and
+sought refuge in the mountains, where he died of shame.
+
+The people were thus beginning to have a very humble opinion of giants,
+when a rumor was spread that they had entered the service of the dwarfs;
+{340}not of court dwarfs, but of little dwarfs, who are so small that,
+by their size, the others appear as giants.
+
+[Illustration: 360]
+
+These little dwarfs appear in the popular tales of Germany, under
+different names, as _Wichtelman-ner, Metallarii, or Homunculi_, and
+evidently, at one time, were found in great numbers throughout all the
+mountainous parts of the North. In Bretagne they were also known as
+_Couribes, Parulpiquets or Cornicouets_, but as they are ugly and evil
+disposed, I presume they are not of the same race with our good little
+dwarfs. These latter appear in the evening at the foot of large oak
+trees, or in old ruins, where they come by the {341}thousand out
+of every crack and crevice and gambol and frolic, but vanish at the
+smallest noise.
+
+[Illustration: 361]
+
+{343}As to their origin there are different opinions entertained. One
+theory alone is worthy of belief, because it is mentioned already in the
+Edda.
+
+According to the Scandinavian Bible, when Odin had killed the giant
+Ymer, his decaying body produced an innumerable quantity of small
+worms. By a law of natural order which had already become operative with
+insects, each worm changed into a chrysalis, and out of each chrysalis
+came forth a little man, resembling, with a few trifling differences,
+the race of full sized men, whom Odin had created.
+
+Like ourselves, they also are subject to all the infirmities of age,
+to disease and death; like ourselves, they are at times capable of
+reasoning with fairness. Skillful metallurgists, they are at work in the
+mines, where we have already met them; they are not without imagination,
+and even know what piety is.
+
+What religion do they profess?
+
+For a long time, we are told, the majority, having been converted to
+Christianity, were under its benign influence, in a far higher degree
+than we, for they did not carry on war among themselves, and all
+authors, legends, and ballads agree, that they were gentle and peaceful,
+loving each other, {344}kindly disposed towards others, laborious,
+and very obliging. Hence they were universally known as the _Peaceful
+People_,--das stille Volk.
+
+"In ancient times," says Wyss, "men lived in the valleys, and around
+their dwellings, in the cavities of the rocks, dwelt the little dwarf
+people, keeping always on very good terms with them, and helping them
+even at times in their work in the fields. They took great delight in
+doing good in this way; for generally they were very busy mining in the
+mountains, and digging in the ground to collect the tiny particles of
+gold and silver that could be obtained."
+
+Sometimes field laborers coming out to plant or to weed, found their
+work already done, and heard the dwarfs, hid behind the bushes, break
+out into loud laughter, when they showed their amazement.
+
+It happened one day, early in the morning, that some peasants in passing
+a cornfield, saw that the stalks were falling in long rows, as if by
+their own will; they were most cunningly cut off below, and now they
+were ranging themselves, also to all appearance by their own act, in
+long sheaves. The peasants had no doubt that the good little dwarfs
+were there, working away stealthily, but of the tiny workmen not a trace
+could be seen.
+
+The dwarfs possessed, in common with all these {345}mysterious races,
+the power of making themselves invisible. They had nothing to do, for
+that purpose, but merely to draw a little hood over their ears, which
+formed part of their costume.
+
+Our countrymen, seeing that the wheat was not ripe enough to be cut,
+became exceedingly angry against these injudicious friends, and arming
+themselves with twigs, went to work striking right and left in the hope
+of hurting one or the other by chance. They really heard some faint
+cries of distress in the furrows, and soon the first rows of wheat
+which had been left standing were thrown into violent disorder, thus
+testifying to the flight of the little ones.
+
+Several of the dwarfs became even visible, as the twigs suddenly tore
+the hoods from their heads. Thereupon the men became furious and tried
+to strike all the harder; but suddenly a violent storm broke forth
+and the hail came down in torrents, cutting the whole standing crop to
+pieces and sparing only the rows that had been reaped.
+
+The rude countrymen now saw clearly that the Quiet People had foreseen
+the hailstorm and anticipated the harvest on that account. They repented
+their brutality, but the dwarfs, disgusted by their ingratitude, never
+again appeared in that region of country. Similar occurrences took place
+in other countries. {346}Now let us see, by what perseverance, by what
+skill, and especially by what audacious conceptions these tiny beings,
+not much more than a few inches high, succeeded in making themselves
+masters of the giants.
+
+[Illustration: 366]
+
+They were running about quite bewildered, pushing and jostling each
+other in their anxiety to regain their little mole-hill, he stood at
+first with his mouth {347}wide open, lost in amazement. Then, to amuse
+himself in true lordly fashion, he crushed a few dozen with his foot.
+
+But he was not without curiosity, and hence he tried in the next place
+to find out something about their manners. The moment was not very well
+chosen, it must be confessed. Men do not usually choose a city that has
+just been taken by storm and given up to pillage, for the purpose of
+studying the manners and customs of its citizens. But we have seen
+before this, that giants are not remarkably bright.
+
+Our giant, whose name I have never been able to ascertain and whom I
+will call for convenience sake, _Quadragant_ ("Quadragant was rather
+colossal," I once read in "Amadis of Gaul;" our giant was really
+colossal, for he measured thirty feet in height), our giant, I say,
+stretched himself out at full length and fixed his eyes upon the hole
+out of which he had pulled the oak tree. He heard a low humming noise
+underground, but he could see nothing.
+
+He thought he would wait patiently, and in waiting he fell quietly
+asleep, turning over so as to lie on his back, his usual position when
+he was sleeping.
+
+After a few hours' sound and heavy sleep, such as all giants are said to
+enjoy, he awoke. Finding {348}that the sun had in the mean time followed
+his example and gone to sleep, he remembered that it was supper time,
+and as he thought of the delights in store for him he uttered a long and
+deep sigh of satisfaction. But something that his long drawn breath had
+brought up, suddenly jumped out of his mouth.
+
+[Illustration: 368]
+
+This something was one of the dwarfs; and this dwarf, the boldest and
+most intelligent among them all, was called Kreiss.
+
+But in order to make it clear how Kreiss happened to be almost in the
+giant's throat, which was {349}of course only accidentally his home for
+a time, we must go back and see what had happened while Quadragant was
+asleep.
+
+When the little pigmies found their tree uprooted and their people
+scattered in all directions, escaping through every crack and crevice in
+the soil, they had rushed into a long subterranean passage, excavated
+in days long gone by, by their forefathers. Here they had uttered their
+well known cries of distress, resembling the chirp of crickets, and thus
+they had finally reached the ruins of an old castle, inhabited by vast
+numbers of their people, and chosen as the place of meeting of the
+General Council of the dwarfs.
+
+Kreiss happened to have arrived the night before, as one of a numerous
+deputation, and he at once suggested the propriety of burying the dead
+with all due honors, before anything else was done. After that, they
+might go to work stopping up all the holes and openings made by the
+tearing up of the sapling, and filling the excavation which it had
+produced, so that the rain might not come and inundate their long
+gallery, which was their only safe means of communication.
+
+The two resolutions offered by Kreiss were carried by acclamation, and
+all, loaded with brush and with stakes, went immediately to work. There
+were some ten thousand of them. {350}They thought the giant had left,
+but they found him lying full length on the ground and snoring most
+fiercely. Their first impulse was to escape, but Kreiss held them back.
+He had conceived a bold plan; he proposed to capture the giant. Were
+they not already provided with ropes and with stakes? Was there not
+strength in numbers? They immediately went to work, and in less than an
+hour the murderer, unable as he was to make the slightest motion, was
+bound to the soil which he had soaked with their blood.
+
+"What do you say?.... Yes, sir, you are undoubtedly right. This looks
+very much like the manner in which Gulliver was treated in the island
+of Lilliput. How can we help that? Besides, we must remember that there
+have been dwarfs in Germany from time immemorial. If Jonathan Swift
+undertook to transfer them to imaginary countries, whose business is
+that and who is liable to be charged with plagiarism, I ask you?"
+
+We will not stop to discuss this trifling matter, which is of little
+importance. We have weightier matters than that in hand.
+
+When the work was done and with the excitement of the efforts the first
+enthusiasm also had somewhat passed away, the question arose what was
+to be done with their capture. They looked at each other in great
+perplexity. {351}The dwarfs are kind hearted people, who have a great
+horror of blood. Besides, it would have been more difficult even, to
+dispose of the giant after death than to kill him. Still, if they did
+not kill Quadragant he would, as soon as he was awake, go to work and
+cry for help lustily; then the other giants would, no doubt, hasten to
+his assistance. The disgrace inflicted upon one of their brethren would
+in all probability render them furious, and they would proceed at once
+to uproot all the trees and to pursue the poor little people of dwarfs
+down into the very bowels of the earth.
+
+While these and similar observations were passing in the crowd from one
+group to another, Kreiss remained silent and thoughtful, supporting his
+head in his hand and his hand on his elbow.
+
+In the mean time the crowd passed from simple talk to grumbling and from
+grumbling to threats. There was nothing left but to undo what was done
+as promptly as possible, to abandon this ridiculous enterprise and
+to restore the giant to liberty in the same way in which he had
+been deprived of it--during his sleep. If he should awake before the
+operation was over, why, then they might try to appease his wrath by
+handing over to him the authors of this fatal project.
+
+Ah! one can see at a glance, that these dwarfs, small as they were,
+were nevertheless men, and {352}that it is better not to venture upon
+attacking giants!
+
+They were utterly discouraged and demoralized. Calm in spite of all this
+excitement around him, Kreiss was still meditating, apparently quite
+unmindful of all the invectives that were hurled at him and the little
+hands that were threatening him. But when some of them actually began to
+loosen the ropes, he suddenly dropped his hands from his elbow and his
+brow, and turning sharply upon his aggressors, he said:--
+
+"I acknowledge my mistake and I am ready to atone for it. Go,--my seven
+brothers and myself, we will alone set the giant free again. If he
+awakes, he shall have to do with us and with us only. Go!"
+
+The former conspirators were well content to accept the proposition, and
+without bestowing a thought upon their murdered brethren, they escaped
+as fast as they could. In the dim twilight of the last hour of the day
+one might have seen them running nimbly through the tall grass and under
+the cupolas of mushroom, arousing in their hurry the beetles and moths,
+or even mounting upon their backs in order to reach by their aid all the
+more quickly their safe retreat in the ruins of the old castle.
+
+When all were gone save Kreiss and his seven {353}brothers, he said
+to them: "Now that we are alone, we alone shall reap the glory of the
+enterprise! So far from regretting what I have done, I mean on the
+contrary, to enlarge our project in a manner which shall redound to the
+eternal glory of our race."
+
+[Illustration: 373]
+
+The dwarfs are not only skillful metallurgists, but they are also most
+expert carpenters and builders.
+
+Hence the good people of the Rheingau are {354}convinced that they have
+built all those ruins of solid old castles, in which they are still
+living and which they have so cunningly repaired and propped up that
+they will last forever.
+
+[Illustration: 374]
+
+Now Quadragant was sleeping with his mouth wide open, as all large
+people are apt to' do. Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious
+cavity, armed with a long spear which was equally sharp and pointed at
+both ends. He took care to rest at first most cautiously only upon
+the projections of the teeth, which formed, so to say, a double row of
+parallel battlements. By such assistance he passed from one end of the
+abyss to the other, without troubling the slumbers of the giant by the
+{355}slightest awkwardness in his movements. For a case of emergency
+Kreiss held his spear firmly in his hands, ready to fasten it so between
+the two jaws as to prevent their closing upon him.
+
+[Illustration: 375]
+
+His brothers were in the meantime busily engaged in preparing posts,
+pins, and rafters, which they handed to him as he needed them. One of
+them even went with him to assist him.
+
+They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth, and strengthened
+the piles by beams, which secured them to each other. The work was by
+no means an easy one, for in the mouth of the giant it was as dark as
+night, and there reigned in it a heat equal to that of an oven. Moreover
+Quadragant had dined that day on a deer and several {356}hares, and
+as he liked his game high, like every good judge of fine dinners, the
+perfumes of his breath increased the inconvenience caused by the heat
+and the darkness.
+
+Kreiss's brother was all of a sudden taken ill, and had to leave to join
+the others outside. They, however, continued work on the scaffolding,
+and watched the giant carefully.
+
+Quadragant was absolutely in the hands of the eight dwarf brothers.
+
+They had passed up a lantern to Kreiss, which he hung upon one of
+the transverse beams, and he now continued his work alone resolutely,
+although he was every now and then compelled to stop his nose.
+
+His work was at last completed, and he was just about to leave this
+damp, pestiferous abyss, when the giant awoke, and his first sigh
+carried off the brave pigmy, as a gust of wind would have carried off
+a dry leaf from a branch, and hurled him senseless into space. He fell
+heavily upon the chest of the colossus.
+
+As soon as he recovered from the shock, he looked around carefully, and
+saw, to his great satisfaction, that the bonds which held the giant
+were beyond doubt strong enough to hold him a prisoner. Then he crept
+cautiously all along the neck as far as his ear, and by its aid climbed
+up the chin, after having crossed the cheek in its whole {357}length.
+When he had found a convenient restingplace, he drew himself up to his
+full height, and raising his feeble voice as loud as he could, he said
+to the giant:--
+
+"Murderer of our brethren, you are our prisoner, and you must die!
+Commend your soul to God."
+
+[Illustration: 377]
+
+The giant tried to see the tiny being who was speaking to him so boldly,
+and cast down his eyes. At first he could distinguish nothing but a
+feeble glimmering light at the extremity of his nose; but the nose
+itself completely concealed the speaker.
+
+Kreiss then advanced a few steps from the chin towards the mouth of the
+colossus, and the latter now perceived a kind of little man, dressed in
+a cloak of mouse skin, which he grandly wrapped around him, as Hercules
+did with the skin of the Nemean lion.
+
+In his hand, however, he held not a club, but a lantern, in which a
+firefly did service as candle.
+
+Thanks to this phosphorescent sheen, which seemed to surround Kreiss
+as with a halo, Quadragant could examine him at leisure, and he asked
+himself how such an embryo could have flown out of his mouth, and how
+he, Quadragant, could have become his prisoner? {358}The contemptuous
+glance which he threw at the dwarf made Kreiss aware of what he was
+discussing in his mind.
+
+"You think you are not captured yet," he said. "Very well, try to get up
+and walk, if you can!" Quadragant did try, and found that he was firmly
+fastened to the ground by ropes and chains, by each single hair of his
+head, by every hair on his body. He tried to speak to the pigmy, and he
+could not, by any effort of his, move his jaws in the slightest way.
+
+"As to the manner of your death," Kreiss went on, "if the wolves and the
+vultures do not hasten your end, hunger will do the work."
+
+At this thought of dying of hunger, a mode of death which he had always
+looked upon as the most terrible of all, Quadragant's heart gave way,
+and he began to cry piteously. Two torrents of tears flowed down his
+cheeks, and after turning around the prominence of his lips, ran over
+from his chin.
+
+Kreiss was compelled to leave his position, so as to avoid the double
+current.
+
+Although quite firm in his resolution, he was naturally kind-hearted.
+These many tears of such unwonted size finally touched 'him, but his
+sympathy made him only the more determined to render his vengeance as
+useful as it was complete. {359}"Listen to me, giant. You can buy your
+life, if you choose." Quadragant's tears ceased to flow. Here was life
+offered to him, and with that life he saw first of all a good supper
+in store for him, and if his mouth had not been held so tight by the
+scaffolding erected in it by Kreiss, his big face would have grinned
+from ear to ear.
+
+[Illustration: 379]
+
+"But," continued the dwarf, "you will Tiave to devote your life and
+your liberty, if we restore both to you, to the service of our decimated
+people; do you hear? You must understand me clearly; you will not be our
+protector, but our servant; you will unhesitatingly perform every kind
+of work which may be required of you for our safety or our comfort.
+First of all you will replant that oak tree, {360}under which the dwarfs
+of this district were living in peace, and you will water it every
+morning until it has taken root again. Now, close your eyes, if you mean
+to accept our conditions!"
+
+Quadragant opened and shut his eyes quickly ten times in succession.
+
+Kreiss made with his lamp a kind of telegraphic signal; his brothers,
+all seven dressed in garments of mouse skin or mole skin, and carrying
+each one a lantern with a firefly inside, climbed in an instant upon the
+face of the giant, which now looked quite brightly illuminated.
+
+Three of them took their station on his forehead; two others by the side
+of each eye. The last two held each a long thorn in their hands, which
+they seemed to use as a dagger.
+
+Kreiss, who had remained at his place, said again to the giant:--
+
+"If, after you have been set free, you dare utter a sound to call for
+help, you lose both of your eyes instantly. Mind the warning!"
+
+Armed with his double pointed spear, he then went once more into
+Quadragant's mouth, and loosened one of the transverse beams which
+formed the ceiling. The giant assisted him with his tongue in the work
+of demolition; then, after drawing a long sigh of relief, he closed his
+mouth and crushed between his formidable jaws all the timber, posts,
+{361}and beams, as if they had been a bundle of matches, and swallowed
+the whole in anticipation of his supper.
+
+[Illustration: 381]
+
+After that he swore an oath which binds the giants as firmly as the
+invocation of the Styx pledged the s of Greece.
+
+"By the earth, which is my mother, by the mountains, which are her
+bones, by the woods and forests, which are her hair, by the brooks, the
+streams, and the rivers, which are the blood of her veins, I, {302}the
+giant Quadragant, declare that I am the slave of the dwarfs."
+
+At sunrise Quadragant was up again, carrying his new masters between
+his fingers, which he twisted together in the shape of a cradle. In
+less than five minutes he reached, in obedience to their orders, the
+old castle in ruins, where a 'solemn meeting was held, not only by the
+fugitives of the day before, but also by the principal representatives
+of all the dwarfs of that part of Germany.
+
+When the sentinels announced the arrival of the giant, all thought their
+last hour had come and endeavored to escape, hoping to find a refuge in
+the lowest depths of the old building. Kreiss, however, had ordered the
+giant to put him down in front of the cellars of the castle, and now
+entered the great Meeting Hall, assuming like all great conquerors, an
+air of extreme modesty.
+
+Then he informed them that the giant was their slave!
+
+They at once threw themselves at his feet and expressed their desire to
+proclaim him Emperor of the Dwarfs.
+
+Kreiss, however, having heard of a recent experiment of that kind,
+was far from believing such sudden enthusiasm to be either deep or
+permanent.
+
+
+[Illustration: 383]
+
+From that day the giant abandoned his {363}old name of Quadragant, and
+assumed that of _Ptitskuchen,_ which at that time meant Friend of
+the Dwarfs, but which, translated into modern German, represents our
+_omelette soufflee_.
+
+[Illustration: 385]
+
+{365}At first all went well; but at the end of three weeks Putskuchen
+looked sad and melancholy; Putskuchen only took half a dozen meals a
+day; Putskuchen was slowly fading away; Putskuchen was in love, in love
+with a young giantess, who taunted him with having become the servant of
+these wretched pygmies and reproached him with his poverty. The unhappy
+creature fell off more and more, the _omelette soufflee_ fell down flat,
+and Putskuchen was a mere lath of thirty feet in length.
+
+Kreiss had always felt a certain tenderness for him, and hence, after
+having asked the consent of all the other chieftains, he placed in the
+giant's hands a large heap of gold scales such as the dwarfs were in the
+habit of collecting in the neighboring mountains.
+
+It was enough to buy three wives, instead of one.
+
+The fact had no sooner become known than all {366}the happy giant
+fathers of the country desired him as a son-in-law, and when they saw
+how liberally his services had been rewarded by his new masters, they
+were all eager to become the serfs of the dwarfs.
+
+Thus, thanks to Kreiss, the giants gradually came all, one by one, and
+entered the service of the dwarfs.
+
+Certain skeptics have maintained that the whole story is symbolic.
+
+According to their interpretation the giant fastened to the ground and
+muzzled by the dwarfs, is the people, the people always kept down
+and always held in subjection, in spite of its gigantic strength. The
+dwarfs, who lived under the oak, the sacred tree of all nations of
+Celtic origin, are the priests.
+
+We say: Shame upon people, who would change a legend into an apologue
+and our friend Kreiss into a Druid!
+
+When the dwarfs became reconciled again to men, they compelled the
+giants to execute for them great works of public utility, such as
+bridges and highroads, which were afterwards generally ascribed to the
+Romans.
+
+The belief in little dwarfs continues to this day to exist in most of
+the Northern countries. They still live in myriads in the subterranean
+regions {367}and in the rocks in Westphalia, in Sweden, and in Norway,
+and they are still hard at work amassing vast treasures.
+
+[Illustration: 387]
+
+[Illustration: 391]
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+{371}Wizards and the Bewitched.--_The Journey of A sa-Thor and his
+Companions.--The Inn with the Five Passages.--Skryinner.--A Lost Glove
+found again.--Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.--Combat between
+Thor and the King's Nurse.--FREDERICH BARBAROSSA AND THE
+KYFFHAUSER.--Teutonia! Teutonia!--What became of the Ancient
+Gods.--Venus and the good Knight Tannhauser.--Jupiter on Rabbit
+Island.--A Modern God._
+
+Hear! hear! New and greater marvels still! But, unfortunately, we shall
+be under the sad necessity of returning to our giants once more, much as
+we have already spoken of them, from giant Ymer down to Quadragant, and
+there may be too much even of the best things in this world. But let
+the reader take courage; this time my giants are not real giants; or at
+least they are giants of a very peculiar species. But instead of losing
+time with limitations and explanations, let us begin our story.
+
+It was in the days when the Scandinavian gods were still in the full
+enjoyment of their power.
+
+One fine day the god Thor, curious to see certain distant lands of
+which they had told him most marvelous stories, set out on his travels,
+accompanied by Raska, Tialff, and Loki. Leaving Sweden and Norway
+behind, they arrived at the sea-shore and crossed over by swimming. A
+mere trifle, of course, for people of their kind. On the opposite shore
+they found a vast plain, and as night was approaching and they began to
+feel that rest would be acceptable, they looked out for a shelter. In
+this vast and deserted plain they see but one single building; a huge,
+ill-shapen, and abandoned house, {373}rather broad than high and of
+altogether exceptional appearance. It has neither doors nor windows,
+nor even a roof; but the night fog may possibly conceal a part of the
+edifice. The travellers enter and find a square, low vestibule, and at
+the end of it five long passages; each of the travellers takes one of
+these passages, looking for a door or a bed in the dark. As they find
+neither bed nor chamber, they resign themselves and lie down on the
+floor, with their backs to the wall.
+
+But even the walls seem to be elastic, and so does the floor; perhaps
+a layer of straw or of moss was spread over them and gave them the
+softness of felt, rather coarse, to be sure, but not unpleasant. The
+travellers felt that they could sleep there comfortably and warm. So
+they did.
+
+At daybreak Thor rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms and proposed to
+take a turn in the country, to stretch his legs and to shake off the
+heaviness of sleep. Through the white mists which were still hanging on
+the tops of high hills he thought he saw a huge mass of disheveled hair,
+and then he discovered in the centre of that head two eyes. At first
+he thought this head and these eyes were simply a rock covered with
+shrubbery and two small pools of water shining in the rays of the
+rising sun. But soon the disheveled head began to move, bent down to
+the ground, and turned now {374}to one side and now to another. In the
+meantime the mists had risen and Thor found that he was standing before
+a giant of such enormous size that those whom he was generally engaged
+in hunting down would not have reached to his knee.
+
+The giant advanced toward him, always looking here and there, and still
+with his eyes fixed on the ground, as if he were looking for something
+he had lost.
+
+Thor, who was easily incensed by the sight of a giant, went straight up
+to meet him and said in an arrogant tone:--
+
+"What are you doing here? What is your name? Who are you?"
+
+"My name is Skrymner," replied the other. "Did you not know? As for me,
+I have no need to ask you any such question; you are the god Thor, one
+of those under sized gods who live with Odin on the ash tree Ygdrasil.
+Have you seen my glove? I have lost my glove; yes! yesterday," he
+added in the most indifferent manner possible, and as if he were solely
+occupied with his search.
+
+"I have found nothing of the kind," replied Thor, who was always in bad
+humor, and now regretted that he did not have his hammer at hand.
+
+"And do you travel quite alone?" asked Skrymner. {375}"I have three
+companions."
+
+"I do not see them."
+
+"They are all three still asleep in that house there, in which we have
+spent the night."
+
+And with his finger he pointed at the house, which they had used as an
+inn for the night.
+
+Skrymner looked both surprised and delighted. "My glove!" he cried,
+"that is my glove! I have found it." He hastened to pick up this
+apparent house with its five long passages, and took it up, but not
+before he had shaken it, holding it close to the ground, and showing
+thus that he was not without a feeling of humanity.
+
+Loki, Tialft, and Raska tumbled out upon the grass, rather terrified
+by their sudden ascension and the sudden somerset which they had been
+forced to make. But as soon as they had recovered from their first
+surprise, and especially from the discovery that they had spent the
+night in a glove, they thought of continuing their journey.
+
+The country was unknown to them, but Skrymner offered to act as guide
+and even to carry their baggage. So much obliging kindness and courtesy
+drove all aggressive thoughts out of Thor's mind, especially as he now
+had his hammer.
+
+At the first stopping place, and just when they were getting ready for
+breakfast, the giant left them, although only after having pointed out
+to {376}them the road they ought to take. Thor, however, found he was
+unable to open the knapsack in which they carried their provisions; all
+the strings and small chains by which it was fastened, were in knots.
+They had to proceed on their journey without having had any breakfast, a
+necessity which is most disagreeable to travellers, and even to gods.
+
+As hour after hour passed and the plain remained deserted and sterile,
+their hunger became tormenting. They listened with all their might,
+hoping they might hear the roaring of a bear or the lowing of a cow,
+determined as they were to dine upon the one or the other; but the dull
+rumbling of a storm and the distant roll of thunder was all they heard.
+
+Thor was furious at the idea that any one should venture to thunder
+without having obtained permission from him, the god of thunder, and
+rushed forward. Following the direction of the noise, he reached a rocky
+defile, overshadowed by a few oak trees, where he found Skrymner lying
+at full length between two hills and snoring furiously. This snoring it
+was which the travellers had taken for the roaring of a storm.
+
+"No doubt," said Thor to himself, "the wretch is at work digesting the
+provisions of which he has robbed us. No doubt it was he who tied all
+those knots in the strings of our knapsack, in order to {377}conceal his
+theft; but he shall pay for it dear! Besides, did he not speak of me as
+an undersized god?"
+
+With these words he seized his hammer and threw it at the head of the
+sleeping giant, who did not stir, but only passed his hand over his brow
+as if a dead leaf falling from a tree had tickled him a little.
+
+Thor went up closer and struck him once more on the back of his head,
+directly on the cerebellum, which in giants is unusually developed.
+
+This time the sleeper opened one eye, closed it again, and after having
+scratched himself at the place where he had been struck, he fell asleep
+again.
+
+Brutal by nature and doubly so when fasting, Thor had become perfectly
+furious when he found himself thus mysteriously powerless. Fully
+determined the next time to make an end, once for all, of his adversary,
+he put on his invisible belt, which had the gift of doubling his
+strength, seized his hammer with both hands and threw it with such
+amazing force at the giant, that it sank up to the handle into one of
+his cheeks and Thor had no small trouble in getting it to come back to
+him.
+
+This time Skrymner was fully roused; he opened both of his eyes, raised
+his hand to his cheek, and exclaimed that it was impossible to sleep
+comfortably {378}in that place, as a fly had just stung him in the
+cheek.
+
+Then, perceiving his assailant, who stood right before him, he asked him
+good-naturedly, how he happened to be there, and whether he had lost
+his way. In the meantime the other travellers are also coming up and
+Skrymner offers to show them the way to the great city of Utgard, where
+he promises they will find a good inn, a good table, a warm reception,
+and not only enough for their wants but all that their heart can desire.
+
+Thor does not know what to think. Overcome and confounded, he follows
+the footsteps of his guide, without being able to form any idea except
+the one: to avenge himself in a signal manner for all his humiliations.
+
+The city of Utgard is of incredible size, the city walls, the houses,
+the trees, the furniture, all are gigantic. Our travellers could easily
+pass between the legs of the little children they met in the streets,
+as we modern people pass under the triumphal arches of the ancients. You
+see, now we are no longer in Lilliput, we have reached the island of the
+giants with Gulliver. Gulliver might very well be the offspring of some
+Scandinavian legend.
+
+The king received Thor and, his friends, laughing heartily at their
+small size, and the seats they are offered are three times as high as
+they are. {379}After a host of adventures in which our men, that is to
+say, our gods, are continually victimized, Thor in his rage challenges
+the giants to single combat. The king accepts the challenge and
+offers to back his nurse, a toothless old woman, against the god. Thor
+consents, eager as he is to vent his wrath on somebody, and determines
+to pitch His Majesty's nurse out of the window. But by all his efforts
+he hardly succeeds in lifting her slightly off the ground, and he
+himself, exhausted by the struggle, sinks on his knees.
+
+On the next day our travellers came to the conclusion that they had
+travelled far enough. Skrymner again showed the way, with his usual
+courtesy, and when they were well out of the town he took the god Thor
+aside and said to him: "So far you have only known my name and nothing
+of myself, now you ought to know that I am Skrym-ner, the wizard. You
+ought, therefore, not to mind anything that has happened to you during
+these last days. You thought you were striking me three times with your
+hammer, but in reality you were striking the impenetrable rocks, on
+which I was apparently sleeping. As to the nurse, you have given proof
+there of such strength as I should not even have expected from the great
+Thor, when you lifted her from the ground; for the toothless old woman
+is none other but Death, yes Death, {380}whom I had compelled to
+come and take part in our games. The rest was all enchantment, mere
+delusions! I wanted to see if the power of the art of Magic was equal to
+that of the gods. Farewell, Asa-Thor, and a pleasant journey to you."
+
+More enraged than ever, Asa-Thor was about to throw himself upon him;
+but the pretended giant had fled in the shape of a bird. Then Thor
+turned back towards the city of Utgard, determined to destroy it
+utterly, but before his eyes it dissolved into a column of smoke.
+
+Well, I promised you some of Mother Goose's stories--have I kept word?
+And do not imagine that this story of Thor and the giants' city is of
+doubtful origin--you will find it in chapters 23, 24, 25, and 26 of the
+sacred book called Edda.
+
+Of magicians and wizards I could say much, but the road is long and I
+am in haste to reach the end. And who does not know the story of the
+prowess of Merlin and of the Maugis?
+
+In all the ancient traditions of the North there are found innumerable
+tales of wizards, witchcraft, and ghosts. Now rocks are changed into
+palaces, and now brutes into men and men into brutes; and the same
+fantastic but always epic element prevails largely in all the old
+romances of chivalry as well as in the great poems of Ariosto and Tasso.
+{381}In almost all countries we find that epic poetry is closely allied
+to religious sentiments and through these to the marvelous; for it has
+always found a first home in temples and a first use for temples. Thus
+it was in India with the Mahabarata, and in Greece with the myths of
+Hercules and of Orpheus. It could not be otherwise with the Gallic or
+German bards, nor with the Scandinavian skalds, all of whose grand poems
+are most unfortunately unknown at present.
+
+But a feature more peculiarly German than the wizards, are the
+bewitched, often called the Sleepers. In these Germany incorporates, as
+it were, the loftiest of her patriotic aspirations, the saddest of her
+disappointments, the most persistent of her hopes. They represent not
+only her old faith, that could never be completely eradicated, but
+also her old favorites, a Hermann and a Siegfried, the hero of the
+Nibelungen, a Theodoric and a Charlemagne, a Witikind and a Frederick
+Barbarossa, a William Tell and a Charles V. Her heroes, her beloved,
+her glory--she has not allowed them to fall into oblivion and be severed
+from the present; she will not admit that they are dead, they are but
+asleep. Witikind under the Siegberg in Westphalia, Charlemagne in the
+lowest rooms of his old castle at Nuremberg. There--and not, as might
+have been imagined, in Aix-la-Chapelle--the mighty old {382}Emperor
+rests majestically, surrounded by his brave champions, ready to awake
+again whenever God shall be pleased to tell him that the moment has
+come.
+
+As for Frederick Barbarossa, he sleeps in the Kyffhauser, one of the
+porphyry and granite mountains of the Taunus, and so do others; there is
+no denying the fact, for they have been seen!
+
+A few years after his disappearance from this world, Frederick showed
+himself upon the summit of one of these mountains, whenever the sound of
+a musical instrument was heard in the valley. Knowing his love of music,
+the Philharmonic Societies of Erfurth and of other towns to this day,
+are fond of serenading the old warrior.
+
+It is said that one evening, when the clock at Tilleda struck midnight,
+certain musicians who had ascended the Kyffhauser, suddenly saw the
+mountain open and a number of women adorned with jewels and carrying
+torches, came out of the opening. They beckoned to them, the men
+followed, continuing to play on their instruments and thus they came
+where the Emperor was. The latter ordered a good supper to be served,
+and when they were ready to leave again, the fair ladies of the court
+escorted them back, with their torches in their hands, and at the last
+moment gave to each of them a poplar branch. The poor musicians had
+{383}hoped for better things from the Emperor's generosity, and when
+they reached the foot of the mountain, they threw their branches into
+the road, very indignant at having been so badly treated. Only one among
+the number kept his branch, and when he reached home, carefully stuck it
+by the side of the consecrated bunch of box which hung over the head of
+his bed. Immediately, O marvel! each leaf of the poplar branch changed
+into a gold ducat. When the others heard of this, they hastened to look
+for their branches, but they never found them again.
+
+On another occasion a shepherd--others say a miner--met on the
+Kyffh�user a monk with a white beard, who unceremoniously and just as
+if he had asked him to come and see his next door neighbor, told him
+to come with him and see the Emperor Barbarossa, who wanted to speak
+to him. At first the poor shepherd was dumb-founded; then he began to
+tremble in all his limbs. The monk, however, reassured him and led him
+into a narrow, dark valley, and then, striking the ground three times
+with his rod, he said: "Open! open! open!"
+
+Thereupon a great noise arose beneath the feet of the monk and the
+shepherd; the earth seemed to quake and then a large opening became
+visible. They found they were in a long gallery, lighted up {384}by a
+single lamp and closed at the other end by folding doors of brass. The
+monk, who no doubt was a magician, knocked three times at the door with
+his rod, saying again: "Open! open! open!" and the brass doors turned
+upon their hinges, producing the same noise which they had heard before
+underground.
+
+They were now in a grotto, whose ceiling and walls, blackened by the
+smoke of an immense number of torches, seemed to be hung with black as
+a sign of mourning. It might have been taken for a mortuary chapel, only
+there was no coffin or catafalque visible. The shepherd had, in the
+mean time, begun to tremble once more, but the monk repeated his summons
+before a silver door, which thereupon opened in the same manner as the
+brass door.
+
+In a magnificent room lighted but dimly and in such a manner that it
+was impossible to tell where the light came from, they saw the Emperor
+Frederick, seated upon a golden throne, with a golden crown on his
+head; as they entered he gently inclined his head, contracting his bushy
+eyebrows. His long red beard had grown through the table before him and
+fell down to the ground.
+
+Turning, not without visible effort, towards the shepherd, he spoke to
+him for some time on different subjects and recommended to him to repeat
+{385}what he heard to his friends at home. His voice was feeble, but it
+grew strong and sonorous as soon as he alluded to the glory of Germany.
+Then he said:--
+
+"Are the ravens still flying over the mountains?"
+
+"Yes!" replied the shepherd.
+
+"Are the dead trees still hanging over the abysses of the Kyffh�user as
+in former days?"
+
+"Who could uproot them, unless it be a great storm?"
+
+"Has no one spoken to you of the reappearance of the old woman?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Well then, I must sleep another hundred years!"
+
+He made a sign to the shepherd that he could go, and then fell asleep,
+murmuring the name of a woman which died on his lips.
+
+For among these great Sleepers of Germany there is also a woman, but a
+woman rather of symbolic than real existence. What is the difference?
+Tradition gives the following account of her:--
+
+When Witikind was beaten by Charlemagne at Engter, a poor old woman,
+unable to follow him in his flight, uttered lamentable cries and thus
+added to the panic among the defeated army. When the {386}soldiers
+obeyed Witikind's orders and stopped for a moment in the heat of their
+flight, they threw a mass of sand and rock upon the old woman. They did
+not expect that she would die when thus buried alive; their commander
+had told them: "She will come back!"
+
+This old woman, who is to come back, is Teutonia, and it was her name
+that Frederick Barbarossa was murmuring to himself as he fell asleep
+for another century.
+
+When the old woman shall have succeeded in extricating herself from
+this mass of sand and rock which weighs her down, then and then only
+the great day will come. The heroes who now are held captive in their
+mountains and subterranean grottoes, will shake off the torpor of their
+long sleep; they will reappear among their people, the dead trees will
+bear new foliage to proclaim their return by a miracle, and the cry of:
+Teutonia! Teutonia! will resound in a thousand valleys, and the birds
+even will repeat the name!
+
+They say that when this long wished for day does come, Germany will be
+freed of all her difficulties, and will boast of having but one
+creed, one law, and one heart; she will be glorious and free, one and
+indivisible!
+
+We must wait for the birds to tell us so, before we believe it. {387}At
+that time Teutonia and her emperors were alike asleep. They mention a
+peasant woman from Mayence, who on her way home became so exhausted and
+unable to bear the heat of the sun, that she had to seek shelter in an
+isolated house, standing by the wayside in the midst of a plantation of
+young trees. It was a dwelling of a skillful magician. She asked him for
+leave to rest there a few moments. As he was in the midst of some of
+his most abstruse calculations, he only replied by nodding his head, and
+glanced with his eye at a bench in the most distant part of the room.
+She went and sat down, but only on the edge, hardly knowing if she was
+allowed to do so or not; every moment she got up to ask her host if she
+disturbed him, and if she had not better leave him, tired and exhausted
+as she was. She told him that she would much rather endure the heat and
+the fatigue, than be a burden to him, she begged him not to mind her and
+to go on just as if she were not there, and a host of similar phrases.
+
+Annoyed by her incessant, idle talk, the magician suddenly turned round
+and fixedly looked her full in the face. Immediately she fell asleep.
+(There was no doubt some knowledge of magnetism already in the world
+at that time, but as yet only of magic magnetism). When the good woman
+awoke, {388}she was alone; her host had left her. To her great regret
+she was compelled to leave without being able to thank him for his
+hospitality in her usual profuse manner, and to beg him to excuse her
+falling asleep, when he did her the honor of keeping her company.
+
+As she left the house, she was not a little surprised to see around the
+house, not a copse of young trees, but a number of tall pine trees and
+noble oaks, but she thought it possible she might have left by another
+door than that by which she had entered.
+
+When she at last reached her village, new surprises were in store for
+her. Of all the good people whom she met on her way or whom she saw
+standing in the doors of their houses, she could not recognize a single
+one; she had to look a long time before she found her own house, and
+when she reached it at last, it was inhabited by strange people, who in
+spite of her protestations, pushed her out and treated her as mad.
+
+Then followed a lawsuit, the result of which was to prove, that instead
+of sleeping an hour or so on that bench, as she believed, she had been
+asleep there a hundred years. Thus the young saplings had had time to
+grow up into large trees and her house to change masters. The
+strangers who were now living in it and who had turned her out so
+{389}unceremoniously, were nothing less than her great grandchildren.
+
+I hope, however, the matter was settled amicably.
+
+The Germans have, with that perseverance which characterizes the nation,
+preserved all that could be preserved of their ancient gods as well as
+of their former heroes; they do not like to lose anything, only they
+did not embalm their favorites, but used enchantment. Let us, however,
+notice at once for the honor of the gods, that they were never condemned
+to sleep indefinitely. Not one of them is found among the great
+Sleepers, such as Charlemagne, Witikind, Frederick I., William Tell, or
+the peasant woman, from the neighborhood of Mayence. It is true, they
+were exiled to certain remote districts, which they were not allowed to
+leave, but they could at least move about and continue their former mode
+of life there, after a fashion.
+
+It is not so very long since certain charcoal burners protested that
+they had seen Asa-Thor, for want of giants to combat, hurl his hammer
+against the tallest trees, which he broke and uprooted.
+
+They had also seen the enchanted hunt of Diana, whose deep-mouthed dogs
+bark at night and disturb the slumbers of honest people in {390}Bohemian
+villages. Who has not heard of the intrigues of old Venus, not with
+her former, classic lover, the god Mars, but with the good knight
+Tannh�user? If we are to believe Heinrich
+
+Heine, even Jupiter has been recently discovered again in one of the
+Norwegian islands.
+
+[Illustration: 410]
+
+It would be the height of imprudence, of course, to undertake an account
+of the discovery, after such a master. I shall, therefore, be content to
+present a mere summary of this remarkable tradition.
+
+There is an island in the Northern seas, which is bordered by icebergs
+and arid mountains: the valleys are dim and dark with heavy mists, the
+mountain tops are covered with snow for nine months of the year.
+
+Here, one dismal morning, some travellers landed, driven by a tempest
+much more than by their own free will. They were mostly savants, members
+of great academies from Stockholm and St. Petersburg, who had undertaken
+a voyage of discovery to the polar regions. The arid, almost {391}bare
+soil did not promise a pleasant resting place, but the mountain slopes
+towards the south produced fine grass and dwarf gooseberry bushes, and
+the immense number of holes in the ground, together with distinct traces
+of debris left at the openings, proved that the island was at all
+events inhabited by countless numbers of rabbits. Of other animal life,
+however, no trace could be found.
+
+Rabbits seemed to be the only inhabitants of the island, and that was
+tempting enough for poor sailors who had for some time been put on salt
+rations.
+
+Our savants prepared, therefore, a large number of traps and snares,
+when suddenly a fierce tempest of snow and hail broke out, and compelled
+them instantly to seek refuge in a spacious cave which opened in that
+direction.
+
+They were not a little surprised to find here an old man, bald, hollow
+cheeked, and pale, whose body was emaciated and decrepit and who was
+hardly clothed in spite of the rigor of the climate. But beneath all
+these signs of extreme old age, and great destitution, the stranger
+displayed an air of authority, and on his serene and lofty brow such
+supernatural majesty, that the travellers were filled with respect and
+reverence, and well-nigh trembled at his appearance. {392}An eagle of
+the largest variety, but so reduced that he looked the mere skeleton
+of a bird, and with faded and disheveled plumage, sat in a corner, the
+picture of misery, with his dull eyes and his drooping wings. He was the
+old man's sole companion.
+
+The two hermits, having no other means of subsistence, lived by hunting,
+and the old man found in addition, means to carry on a modest traffic
+in the furs of the only game that the island contained; he laid up large
+supplies of the small peltry and exchanged it for luxuries.....
+
+But my pen refuses to go on. I cannot reconcile it to my principles as
+an author nor to my conscience as an honest student of genuine myths, to
+repeat here a story, which is altogether apocryphal, and which belongs
+much less to tradition than to mystification.
+
+Now, this old man was Jupiter, and as I think it over, I come to the
+conclusion that Mr. Heine, who laughs at the most serious things, has
+skillfully concealed his irony under the cloak of an interesting story,
+for the mere purpose of telling us that the Chief of the Gods, dread
+Jupiter, has become--a dealer in rabbit skins!
+
+I cannot follow his example.
+
+Without wandering from my subject, for I am still speaking of false
+gods, I will substitute for {393}this necessarily much curtailed
+account, another story which I can warrant as authentic.
+
+"In Persia," we are told by Count Gobineau, in a recently published
+book of great merit, "the _Soufys,_ that is to say the savants and
+philosophers, reject all dogmatic religion and believe in the reunion of
+the soul with God in trances only. When this union is complete, the soul
+is transformed and becomes itself a participant in the nature of the
+uncreated essence, and Man is God." Human folly is always a disease
+produced by human pride.
+
+France, also, has produced a few gods of that kind; I do not mean to
+mention them, however, as belonging to the myths of the Rhine, which
+have special reference to Germany only. But among the Germans, also,
+there is a school of philosophers who without going as far as the
+Persians go, are utterly incredulous, and disregarding trances
+and immortal souls alike, have finally denied the existence of God
+altogether and made themselves gods. This shows how anxious savants as
+well as ignorant men are, in that beautiful country, to people the earth
+with deities of every kind!
+
+It is the history of one of these earth-born gods which I propose to
+give here, before I close this long chapter. Alas! he is dead now, and
+that is a great pity; but he did live once; on that essential point
+there is no lack of evidence. I could even, {394}like the Thuringian
+peasants when speaking of Frederick Barbarossa, say: "I have seen him!"
+
+In the year 1800 there was born in D�sseldorf, in Prussia, a child in a
+Jewish family recently converted to Christianity. This child might well
+have been looked upon as of supernatural origin, so entirely different
+was it, from its earliest days, from all that had ever been seen before.
+Martin Luther no doubt, if the child had been one of his own, would have
+pronounced him to be a Killecroff.
+
+He was not only noisy and troublesome, but he was also a pedant; he
+snubbed professors and listened to the advice of very young children.
+When his parents scolded him, he only laughed at them; when a grave
+event disturbed a neighbor's household, he laughed; when the French took
+his native city, he laughed; in fine he was always laughing.
+
+However, as he grew up, he gorged himself with logic, with mathematics,
+with Greek and Latin and Hebrew and all kinds of good things besides.
+He became even a philosopher before he was of age, but his philosophy
+consisted mainly in a sarcastic laugh. When they spoke to him of the
+position he might occupy in D�sseldorf, and of the wealth he might
+acquire, his only answer was a grimace.
+
+A rabbi spread out before him heaps of gold, {395}promising to give him
+that and more, if he would be his slave only for a few years; he refused
+to listen to him. As he was a vain man, the demon of Fame endeavored to
+tempt him, but he laughed in his face.
+
+At last the devil, a real devil, I am sure (his name was George William
+Frederick Schlegel) whispered into his ear: "Would you like to be a
+god?"
+
+This time our young philosopher did not laugh. He became a god, and,
+from official jealousy, proceeded to deny the great God in Heaven until
+he lost all human sentiments. He lived alone, friendless, childless,
+without a family and giving up even his mother country, finding that
+everything had to be done over again in this world, which he had not
+created.
+
+After leaving Germany he came to France, and here in France he laughed
+louder and bitterer than ever. In France they did not believe in his
+divinity; they did not worship him, but they loved him as if he had been
+a simple mortal; in France he made friends and he became like other men
+once more. Finally, as he was after all bad only in his wit, he became
+voluntarily a convert as he saw the evil fruit of his teachings. He
+took a wife to himself with the sanction of the Church, and he died
+a believer. {396}This ex-god was called Heinrich Heine, that Heinrich
+Heine, who laughed so bitterly at his ex-colleague, Jupiter, and spoke of
+him as a dealer in rabbit skins.
+
+[Illustration: 416]
+
+[Illustration: 419]
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+{399}Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women and Serpent
+Women.--_Children's Myths.--Godmothers.--Fairies.--The Magic Wand and
+the Broomstick.--The Lady of Kynast.--The World of the Dead,' the World
+of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.--Myths of Animals._
+
+Well? Have you seen enough of the gods and demigods of Germany, of the
+Nixen and goblins, the Kobolds, the giants, and the dwarfs? Have I shown
+you enough of this vast storehouse of human folly? I must confess, it
+makes me melancholy to speak of all this, and I feel an urgent desire to
+"shut up shop."
+
+The conscientious collector of myths, who has more material than he can
+manage, and sees new myths continually rising before him, is not unlike
+those learned physicians who spend their lives among crowds of insane
+people. A fever of imitation seizes them and soon they begin to wander
+like their patients.
+
+Perhaps I have reached that point myself without becoming aware of it.
+The reader must judge for himself.
+
+My mind, filled with myths, symbols, and eccentricities, is ready to ask
+for mercy, and still I feel it, there are some things yet to be done.
+For instance, I recollect having promised to give a completion of the
+history of the Druidesses, that is to say, of women, those myth-like
+beings by eminence! That kind of instinctive sense, that delicacy of
+almost intuitive perceptions which distinguished them from the other
+sex in its material coarseness, could not fail to give them easily the
+advantage over men. In Celtic lands as in Scandinavia they were the
+models of all virtues, the oracles of the house. They were occasionally
+beaten, {401}it is true, but they were also grandly honored, and in
+Germany especially people burnt incense before them, long before they
+smoked tobacco in their presence.
+
+[Illustration: 421]
+
+{403}At the time when Christianity came, the women played a prominent
+and truly glorious part there; all the historians bear witness. Between
+the fourth and the sixth century Fritigill, Queen of the Marcomanni,
+Clotilda, Queen of France, and Bertha. Queen of England, had compelled
+their husbands to bow down before the Cross, and not by witchcraft, as
+the pagans wickedly maintained, but simply by persuasion. Other women,
+who belonged to noble families or to the common people at large, a
+Krimhild, a Thekla, and a Liobat, assisted the missionaries in their
+dangerous enterprise and actually helped them in cutting down the sacred
+oak trees.
+
+What had become, during these long continued persecutions, of you, fair
+Gann, noble Aurinia, majestic Velleda, and of your sisters, the other
+Druidesses?
+
+They were wandering about in dark forests, proscribed and weeping over
+their departed glory; they concealed themselves in remote places where
+the agents of the civil power but rarely appeared. Sometimes, of an
+evening, they would venture forth, approach a belated traveller on a
+cross-road, and {404}hold with him mysterious converse. Sometimes,
+also, the inhabitants of a village, or even of a larger place, would go
+secretly to their well chosen hiding places to consult them on the good
+or evil chances of their prospects in life, or on an epidemic that was
+attacking their cattle. Some people, and among them not unfrequently
+recent converts, who were still strongly imbued with their former creed,
+would ask them to name their new-born infants and thus to bring them
+good luck. Hence they were at first known as _Godmothers_, and at a
+later time as _Fairies_.
+
+It was naturally supposed that like the ancient fairies of the East,
+these women also derived their power from the stars, for why else should
+they have been met so constantly on the mountain slopes, when the moon
+was shining brightly, or slipping suddenly from behind a rock or a tree,
+where will-o'-the-wisps and fireflies alone were in the habit of being
+about?
+
+Among these fairies many were kind and naturally benevolent; others, no
+doubt embittered by their fate, appeared irascible and ill disposed. Woe
+to the men, or even the cattle upon whom they cast an evil eye!
+
+This evil influence could be averted only by the assistance of another
+fairy, a good one in this case, who relieved you more or less promptly
+by means {405}of a talisman, a constellated stone, or certain words
+possessed of magic power.
+
+Now, if we add to these godmothers, to these godchildren, to good and
+bad fairies, the terrible Ogres, whose very name filled the people of
+those days with terror, you will know all the mysterious personages
+which appear in the myths of children and which we have all known in our
+early days.
+
+If we were to examine these legends and traditions more carefully, we
+should no doubt easily find "Bluebeard" again among the old burggraves
+of the Rhine, as "Puss in Boots" has already been discovered there. "The
+Sleeping Beauty" might very well be the peasant woman who had slept a
+century under the influence of magic magnetism, and why should not our
+little dwarf Kreiss and his brothers have furnished the first idea
+of little Tom Thumb, with Quadragant to play the part of the ogre? In
+"Cinderella" we might with the same readiness recognize one of the three
+Undine sisters, who forgot amid the delights of the evening assembly,
+that their furlough was out at ten o'clock? The same would apply, no
+doubt, to many others who lived under the influence of wicked Nichus or
+evil disposed fairies.
+
+Poor Druidesses! If you had at least survived as fairies! If they had
+met you only in the air travelling simply by the aid of your magic wand!
+{406}But in proportion as Christianity increased, your power necessarily
+decreased.
+
+[Illustration: 426]
+
+The day came at last, when they dared transform you into fortune
+tellers, and finally into accursed witches! Then your enchantress' wand
+became that atrocious broomstick upon which you travelled through
+the air on your way to the witches' Sabbath! Oh misery! Oh
+{407}wretchedness! What a fatal overthrow of all earthly glory and
+grandeur!
+
+When the women thus saw their power of ruling men by prophetic
+inspiration slip away from them, they one fine day determined to change
+their tactics, their ways and manners, and, I am sorry to have to say
+it, almost their sex! They assumed the noisy and truculent manners of
+their brothers and husbands and affected violent exercises, riding on
+horseback, wrestling, and even fighting in battles. This was the age of
+bullying women, of _Strong Women_ in fact.
+
+When they were young ladies they would admit no lover who could not
+prove his affections by the most perilous adventures and impossible
+enterprises. Such was the case with the famous Lady of Kynast.
+
+She owned a large domain and on this domain a ruined old tower which
+stood on the summit of a steep, high rock, surrounded on all sides by a
+deep abyss.
+
+Rich, young, and beautiful, eagerly sought for by a number of admirers,
+she did not think, in her desire to keep them from becoming too
+pressing, of undertaking an endless piece of embroidery like Penelope.
+She did not embroider; in fact, she looked with contempt, and almost
+with disgust, upon every kind of work that was done by women. {408}She
+told her lovers that she was betrothed to Ky-nast--this was the name of
+the old tower--and that any one who thought of winning her good will,
+would first have to compete with her betrothed. To do this, nothing
+was required but to climb up the rock and the tower, and after having
+reached the battlements, to make a complete round, not on foot, however,
+and assisted by the hands and knees, but on horseback, without other
+assistance than the bridle.
+
+The flock of lovers took flight instantly; only two remained. They were
+two brothers, bereft of reason by the strength of their passion.
+
+After having cast lots, the first one attempted the task and at first
+he was successful. But that was all. He had no sooner reached the
+crenelated top of the old tower, unaccompanied by his less active
+courser, than he was seized with vertigo and fell instantly into the
+abyss.
+
+The second brother, in his turn, climbed up to the top and actually
+succeeded in riding some length along the battlements; but soon his
+horse, feeling the stones slipping from under its hoofs, and the whole
+tower rocking under the weight, refused to go on. To return was as
+impossible as to proceed.{409}
+
+[Illustration: 429]
+
+{411}The knight, determined to carry through the undertaking in which he
+was engaged, encouraged his horse with his voice and with his spurs,
+but the poor animal remained immovable, apparently wedged in between
+the large stones of the tower. At last, knight and horse disappeared
+together; the abyss swallowed up their bleeding, mangled remains.
+
+The Lady of Kynast could not disguise her delight and her pride as
+she received the congratulations of her noble neighbors; all the great
+ladies thought of having a Kynast, or a similar trap, in which they
+might catch' and try their lovers.
+
+No other claimants, however, appeared to woo this fair lady, who was so
+well protected by her betrothed. The poor damsel felt rather aggrieved
+by this neglect. She was by no means satisfied with having sacrificed
+only two young men to her pride; she was gradually becoming soured and
+ill-tempered, when at last a third lover presented himself and asked
+leave to attempt the trial.
+
+She did not know who it was, and this surprised her; for how could he
+have fallen in love with her? He might possibly have seen her on her
+balcony, or at some royal feast; perhaps he was only allured by her
+great reputation. However, there was nothing to lose by accepting his
+offer. At best, he was only one more victim to be added to the list;
+that was all. At that time women were ferocious.
+
+For some days a thick, heavy fog had shrouded {412}the castle and
+the old tower from top to bottom, so as to make the ascent utterly
+impossible.
+
+The simple laws of hospitality, required, therefore, that the lady
+should offer her castle to the newly arrived knight.
+
+The latter was handsome and of fine figure; his features beamed with
+bravery and intelligence; his white, delicate hands, exquisitely shaped,
+proved sufficiently that he was of noble descent; and his large retinue
+bespoke his high rank and large fortune. During three days he spent
+almost all his time with the young lady, but as yet he had not dared say
+a word of his love. She, however, felt herself gradually conquered by a
+feeling which had, until now, been unknown to her heart.
+
+When the dense veil of mist was at length torn aside, and the Kynast
+shone forth in its full splendor, she was on the point of telling the
+knight that she would not insist on the trial in his case; but what
+would her good friends, the noble ladies of the neighborhood, have said?
+
+When the moment came, the Lady of Kynast felt her heart fail her. She
+shut herself in, she wept, she cried, and although little given to
+prayers generally, she besought God to do a miracle in behalf of her
+knight. She could, however, hope very little from such a miracle, for in
+the meantime, loud clamors had been heard below, and as {413}she surely
+thought the spectators were bewailing the death of her last lover, she
+fainted away.
+
+[Illustration: 433]
+
+{415} Cries of joy and of triumph roused her again; the knight had
+successfully accomplished the task. Quite overcome, she rushes to meet
+him, and in her intense excitement and the depth of her passion, she
+forgets that all eyes are upon her, and breathlessly cries out: "My hand
+is yours."
+
+But he draws himself up to his full height, and, haughtily and harshly
+he replies with a withering smile:--
+
+"Have I ever asked you for your hand? I only came to avenge my two
+brothers, whom you have killed, and I have done it, for I do not love
+you, and you love me! Very well! Now you can die of your love, or of
+your shame, as you like it! Farewell, I am going back to Margaret, my
+darling, my wife!"
+
+The same evening the wretched lady had herself hoisted up to the top
+of the tower, from whence she wished, as she said, to watch the setting
+sun.
+
+But before the sun had sunk below the horizon, she had rejoined her
+victims at the foot of the ruined old tower.
+
+Thus the Kynast obtained possession of his betrothed.
+
+The story might furnish an admirable plot for a grand opera. But, upon
+reflection, I think it would {416}suit a circus better, for there are in
+it three first-class parts for horses.
+
+The Lady of Kynast was a strong minded woman, rather than a really
+strong woman; but there were others, who really distinguished themselves
+by extraordinary physical strength. It would seem that the habit of
+taking violent exercise had finally developed their muscles and sinews
+to such a degree, that few men could be found strong enough to overcome
+them in a wrestling match, or in armed combat.
+
+Such was the noble Brunehilt, queen of Isenstein, in Norway.
+
+_Soothsayers, Godmothers, Fairies, Strong Women, and Serpent Women_ are
+not the only women of this class which we ought to mention here perhaps.
+We might also speak of the _Swan Women_, who floated on the water in
+the dim morning mist, clothed in a cloak of eider down; and the _Forest
+Woman_, who was honored every year by the burning of a spindle full of
+hemp, to keep her from doing any harm; and the _Water Sneezers,_ to whom
+you had to say three times "God bless you!" in order to save their souls
+from purgatory; and the little _Moss Gatherers_, who could not escape
+from their enemies, the Forest Woman and the Wild Huntsman, unless a
+benevolent charcoal burner would mark some trees with three crosses,
+behind {417}which they could conceal themselves. But we must make haste
+to conclude.
+
+However, as the great _Wild Huntsman_ has accidentally been mentioned,
+we do not think it would be fair to leave him out and pass him over in
+silence.
+
+[Illustration: 437]
+
+He is the Lord Hackelberg. Most imprudently he had begged God to allow
+him to exchange his place in heaven for the right to hunt upon earth for
+all time to come. To punish him, God granted {418}his prayer, and ever
+since he has been hunting, with horns blowing and dogs barking, without
+respite or repose. He hunts continually, day and night, to-day as
+yesterday; he must hunt to-morrow as he does to-day, and yet he must
+hunt the same deer, which forever escapes from him, and ever will
+escape.
+
+Which of the two is most to be pitied, the everlasting huntsman, or the
+everlasting game?
+
+How many others could claim a right to be mentioned here as well as he?
+
+These are the people who are _condemned to remain standing forever_, and
+those who are _condemned to dance forever,_ another variety of bewitched
+people.
+
+You do not think my material is all used up? By no means! In the first
+place, I might have told you all about mythological animals; of Thor's
+_buck-goat_, which enjoyed the same privilege as the boar of the
+Walhalla, of daily satisfying the powerful appetite of its master and
+his guests, and yet being replaced in all its bodily fullness, provided
+only care had been taken to put all the bones aside.
+
+I might have gone back to give a fuller account of that famous
+Iormungandur, the great sea serpent, which still exists in our
+days--who dares doubt it? The crew of an English vessel, passengers,
+{419}officers, and sailors, have unanimously testified in a legally
+drawn up deposition that they have met it quite recently in the Northern
+seas. What more evidence do you want?
+
+And the _Kraken_, that most marvelous of all cetaceans, which could
+easily be mistaken for a habitable island, and on which imprudent
+navigators once really landed, erecting their tents and saying mass,
+without its ever stirring, until they hoisted anchors, when the animal
+for the first time gave signs of life?
+
+And the _Griffins_, those perfect symbols of avarice, who are all the
+time busily engaged in dragging forth from underground vast heaps of
+gold and precious stones, merely in order to guard and defend them
+ever afterwards, at the peril of their lives, although the gold and
+the jewels are of no use to any one? And Sleipner, Odin's _eight-legged
+horse_, and the dog _Garm_, etc?
+
+Passing on to another variety of zoological marvels, I might have
+mentioned the _Salmon,_ whose scaly skin wicked Loki assumed as a
+disguise in order to escape from the wrath of the gods after Balder's
+death. And that marvelous _Sturgeon_ in the Rhine, which the French
+legends have put to good profit. Let us pause a moment in contemplation
+of this wonderful fish.
+
+A young, noble lady determined, in order to save {420}her honor, to
+destroy her beauty, the grandest, most heroic, and most calamitous
+sacrifice that can possibly be made. Hence, when the moment for action
+arrived, her courage failed her. But if she could not bear the idea
+of becoming ugly, she could at least mutilate herself. So she puts her
+dagger upon the ledge of a window which overlooked the Rhine, seizes a
+hatchet, and with a single blow cuts off her hand, which falls into
+the river, and then with the bleeding stump terrifies her infamous
+persecutor. Here the sturgeon makes its appearance. This providential
+sturgeon has seen the hand drop into the river; it swallows it with
+well-known voracity, but in the anticipation of restoring it, seven
+years later, uninjured to the true owner, and thus to prove her
+superhuman virtue. And this really happened seven years after the
+occurrence in Rome, in the presence of the Pope and his assembled
+Cardinals.
+
+At first sight it does not appear quite clear, how the sturgeon could
+have passed from the waters of the Rhine into those of the Tiber, but in
+this kind of stories there is no use in trying to comprehend everything.
+
+The noble lady and the sturgeon have furnished the theme for the
+famous novel, "La Manekine," and later, in the Middle Ages, for a
+great dramatic mystery on the French stage. {421}Before concluding this
+chapter, I may be allowed to say a word about the _World of the Dead_,
+which sends in certain consecrated nights its representatives to some of
+the churches, or to silent dinners, and about the _World of Ghosts_,
+the annals of which have been collected, and the laws of which have been
+explained by Jung Stilling and Kerner.
+
+[Illustration: 441]
+
+These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men, walk, run, and even
+jump, but they have no power over material objects; they cannot move
+a table, a chair, or even a straw. All their united efforts would
+not succeed in causing the light of a candle {422}to flicker. We can
+therefore feel perfectly easy with regard to these ghosts; they cannot
+injure our furniture, nor draw the knot of our cravat inconveniently
+tight, if they should take a fancy to make an end of us.
+
+Nor can I keep altogether silence as to the _World of Shadows_, still
+dimmer and less perceptible than the World of Ghosts. I shall therefore
+content myself with a single instance, which we owe to a Dutch legend.
+The master bell-ringer of the city of Haarlem, caught at a tavern by his
+wife escaped with such extraordinary rapidity that his shadow was unable
+to follow him, and remained hanging on the wall--a fact duly certified
+by the signature and seal of the reigning burgomaster, the aldermen, and
+other notables of said town.
+
+In spite of such overwhelming evidence one might be disposed to doubt
+the authenticity of this remarkable occurrence, which Hoffmann, I
+believe, has used in one of his Tales; but had not long before Hoffmann,
+and long before the master bell-ringer of Haarlem even, the god F� left
+his shadow in some town of Hindustan, instead of his card? We try in
+vain to find anything new under the sun; all our most famous myths and
+all our most amusing anecdotes have travelled all over India before they
+reached us.
+
+I might also tell you.... but he who tells {423}everything, says too
+much. Let us here pause once more, and for the last time. Farewell,
+reader, and may Heaven keep you sound in body and soul.{424}
+
+[Illustration: 443]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Rhine, by X. B. Saintine
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      Myths of the Rhine, by Prof. M. Schele de Vere, LL. D.
+    </title>
+    <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
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+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Rhine, by X. B. Saintine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Myths of the Rhine
+
+Author: X. B. Saintine
+
+Illustrator: Gustave Doré
+
+Translator: M. Schele De Vere
+
+Release Date: December 14, 2013 [EBook #44430]
+Last Updated: December 14, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYTHS OF THE RHINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      MYTHS OF THE RHINE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      Translated from the French of X. B. Saintine
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By Prof. M. Schele De Vere, LL. D.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      Illustrated by Gustave Doré
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h5>
+      Scribner, Armstrong, and Company <br /> <br /> 1874
+    </h5>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/009m.jpg" alt="009m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> DESCRIPTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_LIST"> LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> I. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> II. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> III. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> IV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> V. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> VIII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> IX. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> X. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XIV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DESCRIPTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Primitive Times.&mdash;The First Settlers on the Rhine.&mdash;Masters
+      going to School.&mdash;Sanskrit and Breton.&mdash;An Idle God.&mdash;Microscopic
+      Deities.&mdash;Tree Worship.&mdash;Birth-Trees and Death-Trees..<a
+      href="#link003">...003</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Druids and their Creed.&mdash;Esus.&mdash;The Holy Oak.&mdash;The
+      Pforzheim Lime Tree.&mdash;A Rival Plant.&mdash;The Mistletoe and the
+      Anguinufh.&mdash;The Oracle at Do-dona.&mdash;Immaculate Horses.&mdash;The
+      Druidesses.&mdash;A late Elector.&mdash;Philanthropic Institution of Human
+      Sacrifices.&mdash;Second Druidical. Epoch..<a href="#link027">...027</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.&mdash;The Two Banks of the Rhine.&mdash;Druid
+      Stones.&mdash;Weddings and Burials.&mdash;Night Service.&mdash;A Demigod
+      Glacier.&mdash;Social Duels.&mdash;A Countrywoman of Aspasia.&mdash;Boudoir
+      of a Celtic Lady.&mdash;The Bard&rsquo;s Story.&mdash;Teutons and Titans.&mdash;Earthquake..<a
+      href="#link055">...055</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Roman Gods invade Germany.&mdash;Drusus and the Dru-idess.&mdash;Ogmius,
+      the Hercules of Gaul.&mdash;Great Philological Discovery concerning
+      Tentâtes.&mdash;Transformations of every kind.&mdash;Irmensul.&mdash;The
+      Rhine deified.&mdash;The Gods cross the River.&mdash;Druids of the Third
+      Epoch..<a href="#link091">...091</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The World before and since Odin.&mdash;Birth of Ymer.&mdash;The Giants of
+      the Frost.&mdash;A Log split in Two.&mdash;The First Man and the First
+      Woman.&mdash;The Ash Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.&mdash;Thor&rsquo;s Three
+      Jewels.&mdash;Freyr&rsquo;s Enchanted Sword.&mdash;A Souvenir of the
+      National Guard of Belleville.&mdash;The Story of Kvasir and the Two
+      Dwarfs.&mdash;Honey and Blood.&mdash;Invocation..<a href="#link121">...121</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Short Biographies.&mdash;A Clairvoyant among the Gods.&mdash;A Bright God.&mdash;Tyr
+      and the Wolf Fenris.&mdash;The Hospital at the Walhalla.&mdash;Why was
+      Odin one-eyed.&mdash;The Three Norns.&mdash;Mimer the Sage.&mdash;A
+      Goddess the Mother of Four Oxen.&mdash;The Love Affairs of Heimdall&mdash;The
+      God with the Golden Teeth..<a href="#link153">...153</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Heaven and Hell.&mdash;The Valkyrias.&mdash;Amusements in Walhalla.&mdash;Pork
+      and Wild Boar.&mdash;A Frozen Hell.&mdash;Balder&rsquo;s Death.&mdash;Frigg&rsquo;s
+      Devotion.&mdash;The Iron Tree Forest.&mdash;The Twilight of the Gods.&mdash;Iduna&rsquo;s
+      Apples.&mdash;The Fall of Heaven and the End of the World.&mdash;Reflections
+      on that Event.&mdash;The Little Fellow still alive..<a href="#link175">...175</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VIII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time between
+      one World and another.&mdash;How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.&mdash;How
+      Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the Indians.&mdash;How
+      Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God Buddha.&mdash;About
+      Mahabarata and Ramavana.&mdash;Chronology.&mdash;The World&rsquo;s Age.&mdash;Comparative
+      Tables.&mdash;Quotations.&mdash;Supporting Evidence.&mdash;A Cenotaph..<a
+      href="#link211">...211</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IX.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Confederation of all the Northern Gods.&mdash;Freedom of Religion.&mdash;Christianity.&mdash;Miserere
+      mei!&mdash;Homeric Enumeration.&mdash;Prussian, Slavic, and Finnish
+      Deities.&mdash;The God of Cherries and the God of Bees.&mdash;A Silver
+      Woman.&mdash;Ilmarinnen&rsquo;s Wedding Song.&mdash;A Skeleton God.&mdash;Yaga-Baba&rsquo;s
+      Pestle and Mortar.&mdash;Preparation for Battle.&mdash;The Little Chapel
+      on the Hill.&mdash;The Signal for the Attack.&mdash;Jesus and Mary..<a
+      href="#link217">...217</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      X.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Marietta and the Sweet-briar.&mdash;Esus and Jesus.&mdash;Amalgam.&mdash;A
+      Neophyte.&mdash;Prohibition to eat Horseflesh.&mdash;Bishops in Arms.&mdash;Interruption.&mdash;Come
+      Home, my Good Friend!&mdash;Prussia and the Myths of the Middle Ages.&mdash;Tybilinus,
+      the Black God.&mdash;The little Blue Flower..<a href="#link245">...245</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.&mdash;Sylphs, their Amusements
+      and Domestic Arrangements.&mdash;Little Queen Mab.&mdash;Will-o&rsquo;-the-
+      Wisps.&mdash;White Elves and Black Elves.&mdash;True Causes of Natural
+      Somnambulism.&mdash;The Wind&rsquo;s Betrothed.&mdash;Fire-damp.&mdash;Master
+      Haemmerling.&mdash;The Last of the Gnomes..<a href="#link263">...263</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Elementary Spirits of the Water.&mdash;Petrarch at Cologne.&mdash;Divine
+      Judgment by Water.&mdash;Nixen and Undines.&mdash;A Furlough till Ten o&rsquo;clock.&mdash;The
+      White footed Undine.&mdash;Mysteries on the Rhine.&mdash;The Court of the
+      Great Nichus.&mdash;Nixcobt, the Messenger of the Dead.&mdash;His Funny
+      Tricks.&mdash;I go in Search of an Undine..<a href="#link283">...283</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XIII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Familiar Spirits.&mdash;Butzemann.&mdash;The Good Frau Holle.&mdash;Kobolds.&mdash;A
+      Kobold in the Cook&rsquo;s Employ.&mdash;Zot-terais and the Little White
+      Ladies.&mdash;The Killecroffs, the Devil&rsquo;s Children.&mdash;White
+      Angels.&mdash;Granted Wishes, a Fable..<a href="#link309">...309</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XIV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Giants and Dwarfs.&mdash;Duel between Ephesim and Gromme-lund.&mdash;Court
+      Dwarfs and Little Dwarfs.&mdash;Ymer&rsquo;s Sons.&mdash;The Invisible
+      Reapers.&mdash;Story of the Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragaat.&mdash;How
+      the Giants came to serve the Dwarfs..<a href="#link335">...335</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Wizards and the Bewitched.&mdash;The Journey of Asa-Thor and his
+      Companions.&mdash;The Inn with the Five Passages.&mdash;Skrymner.&mdash;A
+      Lost Glove found again.&mdash;Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.&mdash;Combat
+      between Thor and the King&rsquo;s Nurse.&mdash;Frederick Barbarossa and
+      the Kyffhâuser.&mdash;Teutonia! Teutonia!&mdash;What became of the Ancient
+      Gods.&mdash;Venus and the good Knight Tannhâuser.&mdash;Jupiter on Rabbit
+      Island.&mdash;A Modern God..<a href="#link371">...371</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XVI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women, and Serpent Women.&mdash;Children&rsquo;s
+      Myths.&mdash;Godmothers.&mdash;Fairies.&mdash;The Magic Wand and the
+      Broomstick.&mdash;The Lady of Kynast.&mdash;The World of the Dead, the
+      World of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.&mdash;Myths of Animals..<a
+      href="#link399">...399</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_LIST" id="link2H_LIST"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Father Rhine.................................................<a href="#link003">...003</a>
+
+The impassive historian .....................................<a href="#link004">...004</a>
+
+Vast forests as old as the world ............................<a href="#link005">...005</a>
+
+The first pioneers...........................................<a href="#link007">...007</a>
+
+The Celts were a people from India...........................<a href="#link009">...009</a>
+
+What happy people scholars are...............................<a href="#link010">...010</a>
+
+A horrible custom............................................<a href="#link019">...019</a>
+
+Dead man&rsquo;s trees.............................................<a
+      href="#link022">...022</a>
+
+The Druids now appear for the first time in Germany..........<a href="#link023">...023</a>
+
+The other chieftains were generally polygamists..............<a href="#link031">...031</a>
+
+Courts of justice were always held under an elm tree.........<a href="#link032">...032</a>
+
+Attempt to murder the mayor .................................<a href="#link033">...033</a>
+
+Mistletoe an officinal and sacred plant......................<a href="#link035">...035</a>
+
+Gauls........................................................<a href="#link037">...037</a>
+
+Serpents&rsquo; knots..............................................<a
+      href="#link038">...038</a>
+
+Prophetic trembling and neighing.............................<a href="#link041">...041</a>
+
+A Druid teacher .............................................<a href="#link044">...044</a>
+
+The Germans were in full flight .............................<a href="#link046">...046</a>
+
+The bloody knife of the Druids ..............................<a href="#link052">...052</a>
+
+I turn my steps from the sacred precincts....................<a href="#link055">...055</a>
+
+Who are these other soldiers?................................<a href="#link057">...057</a>
+
+These laborers seem to suffer from some restraint............<a href="#link058">...058</a>
+
+I look around for a resting-place ...........................<a href="#link059">...059</a>
+
+A shepherd...................................................<a href="#link060">...060</a>
+
+The guard of a sword, which had been driven into the ground..<a href="#link061">...061</a>
+
+The shepherd,&mdash;as mournful as ever............................<a
+      href="#link063">...063</a>
+
+Herds of swine are wallowing ................................<a href="#link066">...066</a>
+
+A young wife bearing the burden of united household..........<a href="#link067">...067</a>
+
+Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty ...............<a href="#link068">...068</a>
+
+Such were the ways of our fathers: rejoice in facing death...<a href="#link069">...069</a>
+
+The Druidical altars.........................................<a href="#link070">...070</a>
+
+As there is no window I peep through the trap-door...........<a href="#link072">...072</a>
+
+One of the chief men of the country .........................<a href="#link075">...075</a>
+
+She was a young Ionian girl, a country-woman of Aspasia......<a href="#link080">...080</a>
+
+The boudoir of a Celtic lady.................................<a href="#link082">...082</a>
+
+The Druid-bard...............................................<a href="#link085">...085</a>
+
+Death of Druids..............................................<a href="#link091">...091</a>
+
+A Druidess endowed with the gift of prophecy ................<a href="#link093">...093</a>
+
+The victorious march of the Romans ..........................<a href="#link094">...094</a>
+
+Her deities personified nothing but vices ...................<a href="#link096">...096</a>
+
+The Hercules&mdash;so called.......................................<a
+      href="#link098">...098</a>
+
+Mercury, the son of Jupiter .................................<a href="#link099">...099</a>
+
+&ldquo;O Varus, Varus, bring me back my legions!&rdquo;..................<a
+      href="#link103">...103</a>
+
+Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances..............<a href="#link105">...105</a>
+
+They made him a king, the King of German rivers..............<a href="#link106">...106</a>
+
+He had already allowed Jupiter to cross......................<a href="#link107">...107</a>
+
+The vines began to adorn the banks of the river..............<a href="#link108">...108</a>
+
+Once more caresses had their hoped-for effect................<a href="#link109">...109</a>
+
+He did his best to help everybody across.....................<a href="#link110">...110</a>
+
+Fnvolous and ill-mannered deities............................<a href="#link110">...110</a>
+
+The dauntless pirates will end by wearing white night-caps...<a href="#link113">...113</a>
+
+The great Northern Tempest ..................................<a href="#link115">...115</a>
+
+The German Druids gave way...................................<a href="#link117">...117</a>
+
+Iormungondur, the great sea serpent..........................<a href="#link118">...118</a>
+
+The giant Ymer has been born.................................<a href="#link123">...123</a>
+
+The first men had been born with a telescope in their pocket?<a href="#link127">...127</a>
+
+Ymer was the first to succumb................................<a href="#link128">...128</a>
+
+After the giants came the turn of land and sea monsters......<a href="#link129">...129</a>
+
+The new creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance.....<a href="#link132">...132</a>
+
+Deer, eland, and aurochs were bounding in herds..............<a href="#link133">...133</a>
+
+Incessantly a tiny squirrel comes and goes...................<a href="#link136">...136</a>
+
+A vulture perching upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree..<a href="#link137">...137</a>
+
+Thor&rsquo;s weighty hammer Mjoïner................................<a
+      href="#link139">...139</a>
+
+The good Freyr seated at Odin&rsquo;s table........................<a
+      href="#link141">...141</a>
+
+Portrait of Freyr............................................<a href="#link142">...142</a>
+
+Bragi and the beautiful Freya ...............................<a href="#link147">...147</a>
+
+Return of the eagle with the three precious vessels..........<a href="#link149">...149</a>
+
+Balder, the bright god.......................................<a href="#link151">...151</a>
+
+The wolf Fenris..............................................<a href="#link156">...156</a>
+
+Converse with each other by significative glances............<a href="#link159">...159</a>
+
+They were the Norns..........................................<a href="#link160">...160</a>
+
+He took counsel with the Norns...............................<a href="#link162">...162</a>
+
+&ldquo;To Egir, the seas and navigation&rdquo;...........................<a
+      href="#link164">...164</a>
+
+Gefione took her four sons and changed them into oxen........<a href="#link165">...165</a>
+
+Jarl, the noble..............................................<a href="#link171">...171</a>
+
+The Valkyrias ...............................................<a href="#link175">...175</a>
+
+Beautiful nymphs of carnage..................................<a href="#link176">...176</a>
+
+A very mammoth of a boar.....................................<a href="#link180">...180</a>
+
+Feast in Scandinavian Paradise...............................<a href="#link181">...181</a>
+
+Hela, the pale goddess.......................................<a href="#link185">...185</a>
+
+&ldquo;Balder, fair Balder, is going to die&rdquo;.......................<a
+      href="#link189">...189</a>
+
+Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself..............<a href="#link191">...191</a>
+
+Balder is amused by the game.................................<a href="#link192">...192</a>
+
+When the mother told her pitiful tale the iron trees wept....<a href="#link197">...197</a>
+
+The three sacred cocks announcing the Twilight of Greatness..<a href="#link202">...202</a>
+
+The death of the gods........................................<a href="#link208">...208</a>
+
+My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph............<a href="#link211">...211</a>
+
+I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped..........<a href="#link214">...214</a>
+
+The two religions face to face...............................<a href="#link217">...217</a>
+
+Ovid reciting his &ldquo;Metamorphoses&rdquo;............................<a
+      href="#link219">...219</a>
+
+Druidic worship suspended by the Romans......................<a href="#link220">...220</a>
+
+&ldquo;Miserere mei, Jesu&rdquo;.........................................<a
+      href="#link222">...222</a>
+
+Perkunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos............................<a href="#link224">...224</a>
+
+Puscatus,&mdash;a kind-hearted god ................................<a
+      href="#link226">...226</a>
+
+Monstrous reptiles accompany the gods to Germany.............<a href="#link227">...227</a>
+
+He let his heavy mace fall upon a little town................<a href="#link238">...238</a>
+
+The blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen................................<a href="#link239">...239</a>
+
+Marietta appeared in their midst.............................<a href="#link245">...245</a>
+
+&ldquo;Do you think I am a man to be taken in ?&rdquo;...................<a
+      href="#link251">...251</a>
+
+Horse-head, a la mode........................................<a href="#link253">...253</a>
+
+The Undines mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads..........<a href="#link258">...258</a>
+
+Have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken................<a href="#link259">...259</a>
+
+The Olympus of the North.....................................<a href="#link263">...263</a>
+
+Able to see without being seen ..............................<a href="#link266">...266</a>
+
+Dance of the white fairies ..................................<a href="#link269">...269</a>
+
+The black fairies personify Nightmare .......................<a href="#link271">...271</a>
+
+An important personage with a will of his own ...............<a href="#link272">...272</a>
+
+Enormous toads are posted about.as watchmen..................<a href="#link279">...279</a>
+
+Elementary spirits of the water..............................<a href="#link283">...283</a>
+
+Imaginary music .............................................<a href="#link288">...288</a>
+
+The nix with the harp .......................................<a href="#link289">...289</a>
+
+Schoolmaster&rsquo;s son who had fallen in love with one of them...<a
+      href="#link291">...291</a>
+
+He thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters..........<a href="#link294">...294</a>
+
+He rose suddenly and fled to another room ...................<a href="#link295">...295</a>
+
+The steward whispered some words in her ear .................<a href="#link297">...297</a>
+
+Niord, the Scandinavian god .................................<a href="#link299">...299</a>
+
+This creature is Nixcobt.....................................<a href="#link300">...300</a>
+
+The Vintner is hanged, and Nixcobt laughs heartily...........<a href="#link302">...302</a>
+
+Four Prussian soldiers watching the water ...................<a href="#link305">...305</a>
+
+The Zotterais protected sheep ...............................<a href="#link309">...309</a>
+
+The master has nothing to do.................................<a href="#link315">...315</a>
+
+Prefer to remember the Kobold a cheerful household companion.<a href="#link317">...317</a>
+
+The Zotterais as fond of stables as the Kobolds of kitchens..<a href="#link319">...319</a>
+
+They are naturally easily tired .............................<a href="#link321">...321</a>
+
+The Killecroffs are children of the Devil ...................<a href="#link322">...322</a>
+
+His nurse has to be reinforced by two goats and a cow........<a href="#link324">...324</a>
+
+The great Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther .......................<a href="#link326">...326</a>
+
+The fall of Killecroff ......................................<a href="#link331">...331</a>
+
+Giants and dwarfs............................................<a href="#link335">...335</a>
+
+The last of the giants.......................................<a href="#link337">...337</a>
+
+Grommelund and Ephesim ......................................<a href="#link339">...339</a>
+
+The humiliated giant.........................................<a href="#link340">...340</a>
+
+Our good little dwarfs ......................................<a href="#link341">...341</a>
+
+He stood at first with his mouth wide open ..................<a href="#link346">...346</a>
+
+A long and deep sigh of satisfaction.........................<a href="#link348">...348</a>
+
+Flight of the conspirators...................................<a href="#link353">...353</a>
+
+Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious cavity.....<a href="#link354">...354</a>
+
+They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth........<a href="#link355">...355</a>
+
+In his hand he held not a club but a lantern.................<a href="#link357">...357</a>
+
+Kreiss compelled to leave his position by torrents of tears..<a href="#link359">...359</a>
+
+The last two held each a long thorn in their hands...........<a href="#link361">...361</a>
+
+Kreiss entering the great meeting hall.......................<a href="#link363">...363</a>
+
+Putskuchen was in love.......................................<a href="#link364">...364</a>
+
+Ouadragant vanquished........................................<a href="#link367">...367</a>
+
+The passing of the wizard ...................................<a href="#link371">...371</a>
+
+Venus and Tannhàuser.........................................<a href="#link390">...390</a>
+
+His ex-colleague Jupiter ....................................<a href="#link396">...396</a>
+
+The author pursues the subject ..............................<a href="#link399">...399</a>
+
+The conscientious collector of myths.........................<a href="#link401">...401</a>
+
+The Druidess transformed into an accursed witch..............<a href="#link406">...406</a>
+
+To return was as impossible as to proceed....................<a href="#link409">...409</a>
+
+She had rejoined her victims ................................<a href="#link413">...413</a>
+
+He is the Lord Hackelberg....................................<a href="#link417">...417</a>
+
+These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men..............<a href="#link421">...421</a>
+
+Farewell.....................................................<a href="#link423">...423</a>
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[003]</span><a name="link003" id="link003"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/023s.jpg" alt="023s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/023.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/023m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Primitive Times.&mdash;The First Settlers on the Rhine.&mdash;Masters
+      going to School.&mdash;Sanskrit and Breton.&mdash;Ax Idle God.&mdash;Microscopic
+      Deities.&mdash;Tree Worship.&mdash;Birth-Trees and Death-Trees.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he Rhine is born
+      in Switzerland, in the Canton of Grisons; it skirts France and passes
+      through it, and after a long and magnificent career it finally loses
+      itself in the countless canals of Holland; and yet the Rhine is
+      essentially a German river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[004]</span><a name="link004" id="link004"></a>Already
+      in the earliest ages, long before towns were built on its banks, it saw
+      all the Germanic races dwell here in tents, watch their flocks, and fight
+      their interminable battles, although the clash of arms and the blast of
+      trumpets never for a moment aroused the impassive historian from his deep
+      slumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/024s.jpg" alt="024s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/024.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/024m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      His silence, long continued into later centuries, does not prevent us from
+      supposing, however, that the Rhine was already at that time the great
+      high-<span class="pagenum">[005]</span><a name="link005" id="link005"></a>road
+      on which the Germanic races wandered to and fro, and other races came to
+      their native land. It was the Rhine that brought to them commerce and
+      civilization; but on the Rhine came also invasions of a very different
+      kind. We can allude here only to those religious invasions which are
+      connected with our subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/025s.jpg" alt="025s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/025.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/025m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      In the earliest ages the South of Europe alone was inhabited, while the
+      Northern part was covered with vast forests, as old as the world, and as
+      yet<span class="pagenum">[006]</span><a name="link006" id="link006"></a>unbroken
+      by the footsteps of men. Dark, dismal solitudes, consisting of ancient
+      woods or wretched morasses, where trees struggled painfully for existence
+      and only the strongest survived when they reached the light and the sun;
+      densely wooded deserts, in which vast herds of wild beasts pursued each
+      other incessantly, while in the deep shadow of impenetrable foliage flocks
+      of timid, trembling birds sought a refuge against hosts of voracious birds
+      of prey. Thus, even while Man was yet absent, War was already reigning
+      supreme here, and in these vast regions the Great Destroyer seemed to
+      revel in it, as if it had been a feast, a necessity, a glory!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had never human eye yet looked upon these magnificent but unknown regions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, one fine day a host of savages appeared here and settled down with
+      their flocks. After them came another host of more warlike and better
+      armed men, who drove out the first comers and took possession of the
+      tilled ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After them another race, and then still another. Thus it went on for years
+      and for centuries, and all these waves of immigration came down from the
+      extreme North, marking each halting place by a bloody battle, while the
+      conquered people, driven by the sharp edge of the sword to seek new homes,
+      by turns pursued and pursuing, went and peopled those wild unsettled
+      countries which afterwards be<span class="pagenum">[007]</span><a
+      name="link007" id="link007"></a>came known as Belgium and France, as
+      Bretagne and England. Continuing their march from thence southward, from
+      the Rhine to the Mediterranean, they spread right and left, east and west,
+      and crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps, making themselves masters on one
+      side of Iberia, and on the other side of the plains of Lombardy, thus
+      changing from fugitives into conquerors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/027s.jpg" alt="027s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/027.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/027m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These conquered conquerors, driven from their own homes, and now driving
+      other nations from their homes, these first pioneers who laid open one
+      unknown country after another, were all children of one great family and
+      all bore the same name of <i>Celts</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But where was the first source from which this <span class="pagenum">[008]</span><a
+      name="link008" id="link008"></a>flood of families, of peoples, of nations,
+      broke forth, that now overflowed Europe and in successive waves spread
+      over the greater part of the Old World? Whence came these vast multitudes
+      of Northern visitors, unexpected and unknown, who broke the mournful
+      silence that had so long reigned in Europe? Were the frozen regions of the
+      North pole, at that early time, really so fertile in men? We call upon men
+      of science to answer our question. The question is a serious one, perhaps
+      an indiscreet one, for who can be appealed to on such a difficult point?
+      History? It did not exist. Monuments, written or sculptured? The Celts had
+      never dreamt yet of writings or of carvings. Does this universal silence
+      put it out of the power of our learned men to give a reply? Must they
+      confess that they are unable to do so? By no means. Learned men never
+      condescend to make such confessions. The Celts have left as a monument, a
+      language, a dialect, still largely used in certain parts of ancient
+      Bretagne as well as in the Principality of Wales.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Illustrious academicians, mostly Germans, did not hesitate to go to school
+      once more in order to learn Breton. The self-denial of which science is
+      capable, deserves our admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After long labors, devoted to the separation of what belonged to the
+      primitive language from subsequent additions, our great scholars found
+      them<span class="pagenum">[009]</span><a name="link009" id="link009"></a>selves
+      once more face to face with Sanskrit, the sacred idiom of the Brahmins,
+      the ancestor of the old German tongue, and of the old Celtic tongue, and
+      thus of the Breton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/029s.jpg" alt="029s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/029.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/029m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The matter was decided, scientifically and categorically, and no appeal
+      allowed. The Celts were a people from India. Europeans are all descended
+      from Indians, driven from home by some powerful pressure, a political or
+      religious revolution, or one of those fearful famines which periodically
+      devastate <span class="pagenum">[010]</span><a name="link010" id="link010"></a>that
+      immense and inexhaustible storehouse of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/030s.jpg" alt="030s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/030.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/030m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      At first, we good people, artists, poets, or authors, who generally claim
+      to possess some little knowledge, were rather surprised at such a
+      decision. But the wise men had said so; Bengal and Bretagne had to
+      fraternize; the Brahmins of Benares speak Breton and the Bretons of
+      Bretagne speak Sanskrit. Bretagne is Indian and India is Breton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Comparative Philology has taught the children of our day, that two
+      syllables which are identical <span class="pagenum">[011]</span><a
+      name="link011" id="link011"></a>in the idioms of two different races,
+      prove the connection between two nations; hybridism means kinship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What happy people scholars are! They can converse with people who have
+      been dead these three thousand years, and the grave has no secrets for
+      them! A single word bequeathed to us by an extinct people, enables them to
+      reconstruct that whole race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I am bound to ask them another question, a question of much greater
+      importance to myself. What were the religious convictions of these first
+      inhabitants of Europe? I am answered by Mr. Simon Pelloutier, a minister
+      of the Reformed Church in Berlin, of French descent, who has studied the
+      primitive creed of the Celts most thoroughly and successfully. He tells us
+      that these people, before they had Druids, worshipped, or rather held in
+      honor the sun, the moon, and the stars, a kind of Sabaism, which, however,
+      did not exclude the belief in a God, who was the creator, but not the
+      ruler, of all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This god appears to me to have been very imperfect; he was heavy, sleepy,
+      and shapeless, having neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; he was
+      incapable of feeling pity or anger, and the prayers and vows of men were
+      unable to reach him. Invisible, intangible, and incomprehensible, he was
+      floating in space, which he filled, and which he <span class="pagenum">[012]</span><a
+      name="link012" id="link012"></a>animated without bestowing a thought upon
+      it; omnipotent and yet utterly inactive, creating islands and continents,
+      and causing the sun and the stars to give light by his mere approach, this
+      divine idler had created the world, but declined taking the trouble of
+      governing his creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To whom had he confided the control over the stars in heaven? Mr.
+      Pelloutier himself never could find out. As to the government of the
+      earth, he had entrusted it to an infinite number of inferior deities, gods
+      and sub-gods, of very small stature. They were as shapeless and as
+      invisible as he was, but vastly more active, and endowed with all the
+      energy which he had disdained to bestow upon himself. By their numbers and
+      by their collective force they made up for their individual feebleness&mdash;and
+      they must have been feeble indeed, since their extremely small size
+      permitted a thousand of them to find a comfortable shelter under the leaf
+      of a walnut tree!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides, they presided over the different departments which were assigned
+      to them, not by hundreds, but by myriads, nay, by millions of myriads.
+      Thus they rushed forth in vast hosts, stirring the air in lively currents,
+      causing the rivers and brooks to flow onwards, watching over fields and
+      forests, penetrating the soil to great depths, creeping in through every
+      crack and crevice, and breaking out <span class="pagenum">[013]</span><a
+      name="link013" id="link013"></a>again through the craters of volcanoes.
+      They formed a belt from the Rhine to the Taunus mountains, dazzling the
+      whole region for a moment by a shower of sparks, and falling back upon the
+      plain in the form of columns of black smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Science has, moreover, established this incontestable principle, that
+      motion can only be produced in two ways here, below: either by the acts of
+      living beings, or by the contact of these microscopic deities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever the waters rose or broke forth in cataracts, whenever the leaves
+      trembled in the wind, or the flowers bent before a storm, it was these
+      diminutive gods who, invisible and yet ever active, forced the waters to
+      come down in torrents, drove the tempest through the branches, bent the
+      flowers down to the ground, and chased the dust of the highroads in lofty
+      columns up to the clouds. It was they who caused the golden hair of the
+      maid to fall down upon her shoulders as she went to the well, who shook
+      the earthenware pitcher she carried on her shoulder, who crackled in the
+      fire on the hearth, and who roared in the storm, or the eruptions of fiery
+      mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I think of this little world of tiny insect gods, who passed through
+      the air in swarms, coming and going, turning to the left and to the right,
+      struggling and striving above and beneath (I ask <span class="pagenum">[014]</span><a
+      name="link014" id="link014"></a>their pardon for comparing these deities
+      to humble insects, born in the mud and subject to infirmity and death like
+      ourselves), I cannot help thinking of the beautiful lines by Lamartine, in
+      which he so graphically describes life in Nature.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Chaque fois que nos yeux, pénétrant dans ces ombres,
+De la nuit des rameaux éclairaient les dais sombres,
+Nous trouvions sous ces lits de feuille où dort l&rsquo;été,
+Des mystères d&rsquo;amour et de fécondité.
+
+Chaque fois que nos pieds tombaient dans la verdure
+Les herbes nous montaient jusques à la ceinture,
+Des flots d&rsquo;air embaumé se répandaient sur nous,
+Des nuages ailés partaient de nos genoux;
+Insectes, papillons, essaims nageants de mouches,
+Oui d&rsquo;un éther vivant semblaient former les couches,
+Ils&rsquo; montaient en colonne, en tourbillon flottant,
+Comblaient l&rsquo;air, nous cachaient l&rsquo;un à l&rsquo;autre un instant,
+Comme dans les chemins la vague de poussière
+Se lève sous les pas et retombe en arrière.
+
+Ils roulaient; et sur l&rsquo;eau, sur les prés, sur le foin,
+Ces poussières de vie allaient tomber plus loin;
+Et chacune semblait, d&rsquo;existence ravie,
+Epuiser le bonheur dans sa goutte de vie,
+Et l&rsquo;air qu&rsquo;ils animaient de leurs frémissements
+N&rsquo;était que mélodie et que bourdonnements.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Such were the gods known to the first ingenuous dwellers on the banks of
+      the Rhine&mdash;gods worthy of a society but just beginning. And still, I
+      venture to make a suggestion, which Mr. Simon Pelloutier, my guide up to
+      this point, has unfortunately neglected to make. It is this: I feel as if
+      <span class="pagenum">[015]</span><a name="link015" id="link015"></a>there
+      was hidden beneath this primitive and apparently puerile mythology a
+      hideous monster, writhing in fearful threatenings and bitter mockery. This
+      god Chaos, so careless and reckless, gifted with the power of creation but
+      not with love for his work, seems to me nothing else but Matter,
+      organizing itself. I have called these countless inferior deities
+      microscopic. I should have called them molecular, for they are atoms, the
+      monads of our science. There is evidently here a germ, not of a religious
+      creed so much as of a philosophic system, a shadow of the materialism of a
+      former civilization that is now degraded and nearly lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first I doubted the correctness of the opinions of our learned men; but
+      I begin to believe in them; yes, these early Celts had come, to us from
+      distant India, from that ancient, decayed country, and in their knapsacks
+      they had brought with them, by an accident, this fragment of their
+      symbolic cosmogony, the sad meaning of which was, no doubt, a mystery to
+      them also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some years, perhaps after some centuries, &mdash;for time does not
+      count for much in those questions,&mdash;the Celts became weary of this
+      selfish Deity, which was lost in the contemplation of its own being and
+      dwelt in the centre of a cold and empty heaven, and they desired to
+      establish some relations between him and themselves. Unable to appeal to
+      <span class="pagenum">[016]</span><a name="link016" id="link016"></a>the
+      Creator, they appealed to Creation, and asked for a mediator, who should
+      hear their complaints or accept their thank-offerings and transmit them to
+      the Supreme Power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have already seen that they turned first to sun and moon; but they were
+      ill rewarded for their efforts. These heavenly bodies were either too far
+      removed from their clients to hear their complaints, or they were too busy
+      with their own daily duties; at all events they shared with their common
+      master in his indifference towards men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our pious friends were offended by this want of consideration, and thought
+      of looking for other intercessors, who might be less busy; whom they might
+      not only see with their eyes but touch with their hands, and who would
+      remain as much as possible in the same place, so as to be always on hand
+      when they were needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They appealed to rivers and mountains; but the rivers had nothing
+      permanent but their banks, and went their way like the sun and moon; while
+      the mountains, besides being the home of wolves, bears, and serpents, and
+      thus enjoying an evil reputation, were continually hid by snow and rain
+      from the eyes of the petitioners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they turned to the trees, and as it always happens, they now found
+      out that they ought to have commenced where they ended. <span
+      class="pagenum">[017]</span><a name="link017" id="link017"></a>A tree was
+      an excellent mediator; standing between heaven and earth, it clung to the
+      latter by its roots, while its trunk, shaped like an arrow, feathered with
+      verdure, rose upwards as if to touch the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The worship of trees was probably the first effect of sedentary life
+      adopted by the Celts after their long, more or less forced wanderings; in
+      a few years it prevailed on both sides of the river Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no lack of trees; every man had his own. As he could not carry
+      it away with him, he became accustomed to live by its side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Man could lean his hut against the trunk; the flock could sleep in its
+      shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The birds came to it in numbers. If they were singing, it was a sign of
+      joy to come; if they built their nests there, it was an invitation to
+      marry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fruit-bearing tree suggested comfort, abundance, and enjoyment; it
+      spoke of harvest feasts and cider-making, when friends gathered around it,
+      holding in their hands large horns filled to overflowing with foaming
+      drink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon it became customary to plant at the birth of a child a tree which was
+      to become a companion and a counsellor for life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus in the course of time a copse represented a family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The worship bestowed upon the tree consisted <span class="pagenum">[018]</span><a
+      name="link018" id="link018"></a>in pruning it, in making it grow straight,
+      in freeing its bark from parasitical growth and in keeping the roots free
+      from ants, rats, snakes and all dangerous enemies. Such continuous care
+      naturally led in the course of time to an improvement in cultivation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tree worshippers, however, did more than this. On certain hallowed
+      days they hung bouquets of herbs and of flowers on its branches, they
+      brought food and drink, and thus fetichism crept in gradually. Alas! That
+      men have never been able to keep from extremes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the wind whispered in the leaves, the devout owner listened
+      attentively, trying anxiously to interpret the mystic language of his
+      cedar or his pear tree, and often a regular conversation ensued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bad omen when a rising storm shook the tree fiercely; if the
+      tempest was strong enough to break a branch, the event foretold a great
+      calamity, and if it was struck by lightning, the owner was warned of his
+      approaching death. The latter was resigned; he felt quite proud at having
+      at last compelled his indolent god to reveal himself to his devout
+      worshipper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a child died, it was buried under its own tree, a mere sapling.. But
+      it was not so when a man died.<span class="pagenum">[019]</span><a
+      name="link019" id="link019"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/039s.jpg" alt="039s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/039.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/039m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Celts used various and strange means for the purpose of disposing of
+      the remains of their <span class="pagenum">[021]</span><a
+      name="link021" id="link021"></a>deceased friends. In some
+      countries they were burnt, and their own tree furnished the fuel for the
+      funeral pile; in other countries the <i>Todtenbaum</i> (Tree of the Dead),
+      hollowed out with an axe, became the owner&rsquo;s coffin. This coffin was
+      interred, unless it was intrusted to the current of the river, to be
+      carried God knows where! Finally, in certain localities there existed a
+      custom&mdash;a horrible custom!&mdash;of exposing the body to the voracity
+      of birds of prey, and the place of exposure was the top of the very tree
+      which had been planted at the birth of the deceased, and which in this
+      case, quite exceptionally, was not cut down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, observe, that in these four distinct methods by which human remains
+      were restored to the four elements of air and water, earth and fire, we
+      meet again the four favorite ways of burial still practiced in India, as
+      of old, by the followers of Brahma, Buddha, and Zoroaster. The
+      fire-worshippers of Bombay are as familiar with them as the dervishes who
+      drown children in the Ganges. Thus we have here four proofs, instead of
+      one, of the Indian origin of our Celts. For my part at least, I confess I
+      am convinced by this quadruple evidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to be presumed that the use of Dead Men&rsquo;s Trees and of
+      posthumous drownings continued for centuries in ancient Gaul as well as in
+      ancient Germany. About 1560 some Dutch laborers found, <span
+      class="pagenum">[022]</span><a name="link022" id="link022"></a>in
+      examining a part of the Zuyder Zee, at a great depth, several trunks of
+      trees which were marvelously well preserved and nearly petrified. Each one
+      of these trunks had been occupied by a man, and contained some
+      half-petrified fragments. It was evident that they had been carried down,
+      trunk and man, by the Rhine, the Ganges of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/042s.jpg" alt="042s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/042.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/042m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      As recently as 1837 such <i>Todtenbaume</i> or Dead Men&rsquo;s Trees,
+      well preserved by the peculiar nature of the soil, have been discovered in
+      England, near Solby in Yorkshire, and still more recently, in 1848, on
+      Mount Lupfen in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In face of such well authenticated evidence of Dead Men&rsquo;s Trees
+      having been confided to the current of rivers or the bosom of the earth,
+      it seems superfluous to ask for additional proof in support of the fact
+      that cremation was practiced all over ancient Europe. Nor do I consider
+      myself, as a collector of myths, bound to prove everything. I <span
+      class="pagenum">[023]</span><a name="link023" id="link023"></a>do not mean
+      to speak, therefore, any further of Birthday Trees, of Dead Men&rsquo;s
+      Trees, and of Fetich Trees,&mdash;which we shall moreover meet again
+      presently,&mdash;and hasten on to other myths of far greater importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids now appear for the first time in Gaul and in Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/043s.jpg" alt="043s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/043.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/043m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[027]</span><a name="link027" id="link027"></a><i>The
+      Druids and their Creed.&mdash;Esus.&mdash;The Holy Oak.&mdash;The
+      Pforzheim Lime Tree.&mdash;A Rival Plant.&mdash;The Mistletoe and the
+      Ansfuinum.&mdash;The Oracle at Dodona.&mdash;Immaculate Horses.&mdash;The
+      Druidesses.&mdash;A late Elector.&mdash;Philanthropic Institution of Human
+      Sacrifices.&mdash;Second Druidical Epoch</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he Druids were the
+      first to bring to the Gauls as well as to the Germans religious truths,
+      but their creed can be appreciated from no dogma of theirs; it must be
+      judged by their rites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first question is: Whence did the Druids <span class="pagenum">[028]</span><a
+      name="link028" id="link028"></a>come? Were they disciples of the Magi, and
+      did they come from Persia? Such an origin has been claimed for them: or
+      had they been initiated by Isis in her ancient mysteries, and did they
+      come from Egypt? This view also has its adherents. Or, finally, had they
+      been driven towards Western Europe by one of the last waves of
+      immigration, which left India under the pressure of some new calamity?
+      Many think so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it seems to be difficult to decide between these three suggestions, it
+      might be worth while to try and reconcile them with each other. It is a
+      long way from India to Germany and to Gaul, and there might have been many
+      stopping places between the country from which they started and their
+      future home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids, like all other Celts, might very well have started from India,
+      and choosing not the most direct way might have reached Europe only after
+      making many a long halt in Persia and in Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'If that can be admitted, then there is no difficulty in assuming that the
+      first Celts might very well have taken with them from the banks of the
+      Indus and the Ganges only a few fragments of a sickly materialism taught
+      by false teachers outside of the temple, while the Druids might have been
+      initiated within the temple itself, thus learning to know the true nature
+      of the Deity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their creed was founded upon a triple basis&mdash;one <span class="pagenum">[029]</span><a
+      name="link029" id="link029"></a>God; the immortality of the soul; and
+      rewards and punishments in a future life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These sound doctrines, which are as old as the world and form the
+      foundation of all human morality, had ever been maintained by their wise
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a later period the Greeks, proud as they were of their Platonic
+      philosophy, had not hesitated to acknowledge that they had obtained the
+      first germ of it from the Celts, the Galati, and consequently from the
+      Druids. One of the Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, openly
+      admits that these same Celts had been orthodox in their religion, at least
+      as far as their dogmas were concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By what name was the Supreme Being known to the Druids? They called it <i>Esus</i>,
+      which means the Lord, or they gave it the simple designation of <i>Teut</i>
+      (God). Through this Teut the German races became afterwards Teutons, the
+      sons and followers of Teut, and even in our day they call themselves in
+      their own language Teutsche or <i>Deutsche</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three marvelously brief maxims contain almost the whole catechism of the
+      Druids: Serve God; Abstain from evil; Be brave!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids, being warriors as well as priests, displayed in the
+      performance of their warlike priesthood all the energy, the severity, and
+      the authority which must needs accompany such a strange combination of
+      powers. <span class="pagenum">[030]</span><a name="link030" id="link030"></a>Holding
+      all the power of the state in their hands, and speaking in the name of
+      God, commanding the army, controlling the public treasury, and acting not
+      only as judges but also as physicians, they punished heresy and rebellion,
+      and ended lawsuits as well as diseases, by the death of the person most
+      interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their laws, liberal and philanthropic in spite of their apparent severity,
+      allowed a jury consisting of notables, to judge grave crimes; this fact of
+      a jury suggests naturally the idea of extenuating circumstances, and thus
+      the criminal, escaping more readily than the patient, frequently got off
+      with a fine, if he was rich, or with banishment if he was poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless all the efforts of the Druids did not succeed in thoroughly
+      eradicating Tree worship; they were thus led to adopt one tree, to the
+      exclusion of all others, which should rally around it the scattered
+      adoration of all the nations. This official tree, a kind of green altar,
+      on which God manifested himself to his priests, was an oak, a strong,
+      vigorous oak, the king of the forests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the holy oak became known and honored; pious worshippers came by
+      night, with torches in their hands, in long processions to present their
+      offerings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This usage soon became general among all Celtic nations. Around these oaks
+      the Druids formed sacred precincts within which they lived with their
+      families, for they were married; but they could have <span class="pagenum">[031]</span><a
+      name="link031" id="link031"></a>only one wife, while the other chieftains
+      were generally polygamists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/051s.jpg" alt="051s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/051.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/051m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But the oak, although thus enjoying preeminence over all other trees, was
+      by no means exclusively worshipped everywhere. Perhaps from religious
+      antagonism, or perhaps merely from local usage, some provinces of Gaul and
+      of Italy preferred the beech and the elm. In Gaul especially, the elm
+      prevailed over the oak, and even Christian France still continued for a
+      long time to plant an elm tree before every newly built church, so as to
+      draw God&rsquo;s blessing the more surely upon it; and down to the end of
+      the Middle Ages courts of justice were always held under an elm tree.
+      Hence the curious <span class="pagenum">[032]</span><a name="link032"
+      id="link032"></a>French proverb, which did not always have the mocking
+      sense in which it is used nowadays, wait for me under the elm tree!
+      (Attendez-moi sous forme) What was then a formal summons to appear before
+      a judge has now come to mean: Wait till doomsday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/052s.jpg" alt="052s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/052.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/052m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The ash tree, also, had its worshippers among the dwellers in high
+      northern latitudes, and it was under the dense branches of an enormous ash
+      tree that terrible Odin and his following of deities appeared in a dark
+      cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Tree worship appeared once more. It has ever since continued to
+      flourish more or less in Germany, and even now exists to a certain extent.
+      But it is not the oaks, nor the beech, nor the elm, nor the ash tree,
+      which in our day receives the worship of the young especially&mdash;but
+      the lime tree. The admirers of the lime tree carry their fervor to
+      fanaticism and their fanaticism to murder. I had <span class="pagenum">[033]</span><a
+      name="link033" id="link033"></a>been unwilling to believe this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/053s.jpg" alt="053s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/053.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/053m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But this morning I opened my newspaper and there I found an article, dated
+      December 30, 1860, and stating that a young man from Pforzheim, in the
+      Palatinate, attempted to murder the mayor of his town by means of a
+      revolver, the four barrels of which were loaded with as many leaden balls.
+      When he was arrested, he declared that he had personally nothing to say
+      against the burgomaster, but that the latter <span class="pagenum">[034]</span><a
+      name="link034" id="link034"></a>had recently ordered certain lime trees to
+      be cut down, that <i>the good people of Pforzheim idolized these trees</i>,
+      and that he had determined to punish him for such profanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The paper added: &ldquo;This young man belongs to an honorable family, his
+      antecedents are excellent, and he has never shown the slightest symptom of
+      mental derangement.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How, then does it come about that the lime tree should in our day, in the
+      nineteenth century, call forth sentiments of such extreme violence? The
+      reason is that Young Germany has proclaimed it to be the Tree of Love,
+      because <i>its leaves are shaped like hearts</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I were not afraid of getting myself into trouble, having a natural
+      horror of all firearms, and especially of four barrelled revolvers, I
+      should mention here, that anatomists protest against this pretended
+      resemblance of the leaf to the heart. In reality it looks much more like
+      the ace of hearts, as it terminates below in a sharp point&mdash;but
+      superstition prevails over anatomy, and teaches us once more that science
+      ought not to meddle with things pertaining to love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids&rsquo; Oak, although less tempting to gallant comparisons,
+      finally excited almost equal fanaticism. Processions and sacrifices became
+      well nigh endless; young maidens adorned it with garlands of flowers,
+      <span class="pagenum">[035]</span><a name="link035" id="link035"></a>interspersed
+      with bracelets and necklaces, while warriors suspended in its branches the
+      most precious spoil they brought home from their battles. If a storm
+      arose, the other trees of the forest seemed in good faith, humbly to bow
+      down before their chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/055s.jpg" alt="055s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/055.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/055m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      And yet it had an enemy, a fierce, relentless enemy. An abject, little
+      plant, unknown and miserable in appearance, came unceremoniously and made
+      its home on its sacred branches and even on its august summit; there it
+      lived on its life&rsquo;s blood, feeding on its sap, absorbing its
+      substance, threatening <span class="pagenum">[036]</span><a
+      name="link036" id="link036"></a>to impede its natural growth, and
+      finally carrying the impudence so far as to conceal the glossy leaves of
+      the noble godlike tree under its own lustreless and viscous foliage. This
+      hostile and impious plant was the Mistletoe, the mistletoe of the oak (<i>Guythil</i>).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other people, less intelligent and less sagacious than the Druids, would
+      have freed the tree from this unwelcome and obnoxious visitor, by simply
+      climbing up and cutting off the parasite by means of a pruning bill. This
+      would have been irreverent as well as impolitic. What would the people
+      have thought? The people would most assuredly have reasoned, that the
+      sacred tree had been rendered powerless, being unable to rid itself of its
+      vermin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids did much better. They treated the mistletoe very much as we, in
+      our day, treat a formidable member of the opposition; they gave it a place
+      in the sanctuary. The mistletoe was proclaimed to be an official and
+      sacred plant, and became an essential part of their worship. When it was
+      to be detached from the tree, this was not done stealthily and by a mean
+      iron bill-hook, but in the presence of all, amid public rejoicings and
+      accompanied by solemn chants. The instrument was a golden reaping hook,
+      and with it the <i>Guythil</i> was carefully cut off at the base and
+      gathered in <span class="pagenum">[037]</span><a name="link037"
+      id="link037"></a>linen veils. These veils became henceforth sacred,
+      and were not allowed to be used for ordinary purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Teutons who lived on the Rhine, obtained from the mistletoe a kind of
+      glue, which they looked upon as a panacea against the sterility of women,
+      the ravages of diseases, the effects of witchcraft,&mdash;and also as a
+      means to catch birds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/057s.jpg" alt="057s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/057.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/057m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Gauls, on the other hand, dried it carefully and put the dust into
+      pretty little scent-bags, which they presented to each other as New Year&rsquo;s
+      Gifts on the first day of the year. Hence, in t some provinces of France,
+      the cry is still heard, &ldquo;Aguilanneuf&rdquo; (<i>au gui l&rsquo;an
+      neuf</i>), &ldquo;Mistletoe for New Year!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Modern science treats mistletoe simply as a purgative, and thus attempts
+      to prove that our ancestors showed their affection to each other by
+      exchanging presents of violent purgatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The introduction of this parasite plant into the <span class="pagenum">[038]</span><a
+      name="link038" id="link038"></a>sanctuary became, however, very soon a
+      public benefit. For the oak-mistletoe obtained ere long considerable
+      commercial value, and at once counterfeiters (for even under the Druids
+      there existed such men) went to work and gathered it from other trees
+      also, from apple trees and pear trees, from nut trees and lime trees, from
+      beeches, elms, and even larches. The consequence was, that owners of
+      orchards as well as owners of forests, rejoiced in the trick, at which the
+      Druids discreetly winked; for they took advantage of the lesson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/058s.jpg" alt="058s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/058.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/058m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      At one time venomous reptiles had become so numerous in the regions of the
+      Rhine, that they caused continually serious accidents among the <span
+      class="pagenum">[039]</span><a name="link039" id="link039"></a>people, the
+      majority of whom lived all day long in the open air, and did not always
+      sleep under shelter. During their winter sleep, these reptiles rolled
+      themselves up into vast balls, and became apparently glued to each other
+      by a kind of viscous ooze. In this state they were called by the Celts <i>Serpents
+      Eggs</i>, or rather <i>Serpents&rsquo; Knots</i>, while the Romans called
+      them <i>anguimim</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These strange balls were used medicinally by the Druids like the
+      mistletoe; they employed them even in their religious ceremonies, and soon
+      they became so rare, that only the wealthiest people could procure them,
+      by paying their weight in gold. If the Druids had really at first been
+      misled so as to adopt superstitious customs, which they repented of in
+      their hearts, they soon found means to make these same superstitious rites
+      beneficial to the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately serpents&rsquo; knots, oaks, and their parasites, did not
+      long satisfy a people ever desirous of new things. It is a well-known fact
+      that innovations, however small may have been their first beginning, are
+      sure to go on enlarging and increasing from day to day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old party of Tree worshippers, still numerous and very active as all
+      old parties are, complained of the suppression of their companion-trees,
+      the ancient family oracles, for the purpose of favoring <span
+      class="pagenum">[040]</span><a name="link040" id="link040"></a>one single
+      oak tree,&mdash;a tree which yet was not able, in spite of all the
+      privileges it enjoyed, to put them into communication with <i>Estes</i>,
+      the god of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This complaint was certainly not unfounded;&mdash;it had to be answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids consisted of three classes:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids proper (<i>Eubages</i>, they were called in Gaul) were
+      philosophers as well as scholars, perhaps even magicians, for magic was at
+      that time nothing more than the outward form of science. They were charged
+      with the maintenance of the principles of morality, and had to study the
+      secrets of nature. The Prophets, on the other hand, knew how to interpret
+      in the slightest breath of wind, the language of the holy oak, which spoke
+      to them in the rustling of its leaves, in the soughing of the branches, in
+      the low cracking heard within the trunk, and even in the earlier or later
+      appearance of the foliage. There were, finally, the Bards, poets bound to
+      the altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the bards were singing around the oak, the prophets caused it to
+      render its oracles. These oracles soon increased largely not only in
+      Europe, but also in Asia Minor, where a Celtic colony, according to
+      Herodotus, established in the land they had conquered the oracle of
+      Dodona. Early Greece worshipped an oak tree, which Strabo, however,
+      assures <span class="pagenum">[041]</span><a name="link041" id="link041"></a>us
+      was a beech. There is no disputing about trees any more than about colors;
+      but Homer calls it an oak, and an oak it must remain for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/061s.jpg" alt="061s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/061.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/061m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This new movement, grafted upon the simple worship of the Druids, did not
+      stop here. After having for some time been accustomed to converse with
+      Teut by means of a tree, the Celts were naturally surprised at seeing
+      that, while trees could speak, living creatures remained silent, and were
+      apparently deprived of the power of foretelling the future. Certain
+      chieftains, especially, felt aggrieved, <span class="pagenum">[042]</span><a
+      name="link042" id="link042"></a>upon setting out on a great campaign, that
+      they were not allowed to carry the holy oak along with them, and in their
+      intense devotion, fell upon the idea of consulting the nervous trembling
+      of their horses and their sudden neighing in moments of surprise or
+      terror,&mdash;for in order to be of prophetic nature the movements of the
+      animals had to be involuntary and spontaneous. As this creed began to
+      spread gradually, every man who was setting out on a journey or a warlike
+      expedition mounted his horse in the firm conviction that he would be able
+      to consult his four-footed prophet at any time during his absence from
+      home, provided he was able to submit the omens to the learned
+      interpretations of a soothsayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druid priests were not long in becoming seriously alarmed at these
+      travelling oracles, liable as they naturally were to contradict each
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they had before chosen a single tree to be the sacred tree, so they now
+      accepted as genuine omens only the symptoms noticed in certain horses
+      which were bred within the sacred precincts and under their own eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These horses, of immaculate whiteness and raised at public expense, were
+      not employed for any work, and never had to submit to saddle or bridle.
+      Wild and untamed, they roamed with fluttering manes in perfect liberty
+      through the lofty forests. The freedom <span class="pagenum">[043]</span><a
+      name="link043" id="link043"></a>of their movements gave naturally a safer
+      character to their omens, and thus these prophetic horses, which formed
+      almost a part of the druidical clergy, enjoyed for a long time the highest
+      authority in all Celtic countries, when suddenly one fine day new rivals
+      arose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other living creatures entered into competition with them, and these
+      rivals of the horses were&mdash;shall I say it?&mdash;were women. These
+      women discovered, all of a sudden, that they also were endowed, and in the
+      very highest degree, with the gifts of second sight, of inspiration,
+      intuition, and divination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When public opinion appealed to the Druids to give their views on this
+      claim, they admitted, according to the statement of Tacitus, that women
+      had something more instinctive and more divine in them than men, nay, even
+      than horses. Their sensitive organization predisposed them to receive the
+      gift of prophecy, and hence &ldquo;women indeed act more readily from
+      natural impulse, without reflection, than from thought or reason.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last explanation, improper in the highest degree, does not come from
+      Tacitus, nor from myself, God forbid! It is the exclusive property of the
+      aforementioned Mr. Simon Pelloutier. Let every one be responsible for his
+      own work!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids treated the women just as they had <span class="pagenum">[044]</span><a
+      name="link044" id="link044"></a>treated the horses, the mistletoe, and the
+      trees. They acknowledged as true prophetesses only those who were already
+      under the direct influence of the holy place and the sacred oak; that is
+      to say, their wives and their daughters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The principle of centralization of power is evidently not of modern
+      origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:15%;">
+      <img src="images/064s.jpg" alt="064s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/064.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/064m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Thus, there were now Druidesses, as there had been Druids before. The
+      latter became the teachers of the young men; they taught their pupils the
+      motions of the stars, the shape and extent of the earth, the divers
+      products of nature, the history of their ancestors written in the form of
+      poems which the bards recited; in fact, they taught them everything except
+      reading and writing. Memory was as yet sufficient for all things. The
+      priestesses, on the other hand, opened schools for the young girls; they
+      taught them to sing and to sew, they initiated them into religious
+      ceremonies and confided to them the knowledge of simples; nor was poetry
+      neglected, as they had to learn by heart certain poems which were
+      specially composed for their benefit. These verses, of somewhat doubtful
+      <span class="pagenum">[045]</span><a name="link045" id="link045"></a>lyrical
+      character, probably taught them how to make bread, how to brew beer, and
+      other small details of the kitchen and the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druidesses practiced also medicine. This threefold prerogative of
+      being physicians, prophets, and preceptors, finally raised them so high in
+      the estimation of the nation, that when the priests of Teut were compelled
+      to abandon their sanctuaries, they did not hesitate to confide them to
+      their guardianship. They even presided in their own right, at certain
+      ceremonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If one of them excelled by the frequency, the lucidity, and the
+      reliability of her inspirations, as was the case at different times with
+      the illustrious Aurinia, Velleda, and Ganna, whom the Roman emperors even
+      deigned to consult through their ambassadors, the proud Druids placed her
+      with humble submission, at the head of their own college of priests.
+      During this female dictatorship, she became the arbiter of the destiny of
+      nations, decided on peace and war, and controlled all the movements of
+      great armies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caesar tells us that he once asked one of his German captives, why
+      Ariovistus, their chieftain, had never yet dared to meet him in battle,
+      and was told in reply, that the Druidesses, after a careful examination of
+      the eddies and whirlpools of the Rhine, had forbid his engaging in action
+      till the <span class="pagenum">[046]</span><a name="link046" id="link046"></a>time
+      of the new moon. As a matter of course, the shrewd general profited by
+      this information, and when the new moon appeared, the Germans were in full
+      flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/066s.jpg" alt="066s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/066.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/066m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But the Rhine has not yet given its oracles, and the time has not yet
+      come, when Ganna Velleda, and Aurinia condescend to grant audiences to
+      Roman ambassadors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We only wished to trace in a few outlines the future development of this
+      institution of Druidesses, which we shall meet again in the days of its
+      decline. <span class="pagenum">[047]</span><a name="link047" id="link047"></a>In
+      the mean time, however, their influence and their power were daily
+      growing. Were the Teutons at last satisfied? By no means. In spite of all
+      the skill displayed by their diviners and the Druid-esses, they came to
+      the conclusion, that neither the trembling foliage of the holy oak, nor
+      the sudden starts, the wild leaps, and the more or less prolonged, loud
+      neighings of the horses, afforded them sufficient excitement and perfectly
+      reliable revelations. It occurred to them next, to consult animals, not in
+      their outward manifestations, but in their still quivering entrails. This
+      new ceremony could not fail to give to their religious worship a more
+      serious aspect, and a certain savor of murder, which no doubt had its
+      charms for a warlike people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids yielded once more, but they felt discouraged. What had become
+      of that grand philosophic religion, which was content with prayer and
+      meditation, and which they once&mdash;too fondly, perhaps&mdash;had hoped
+      to be able to adapt to the nature of these barbarians?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They first consented to slay at the foot of the sacred oak, so long kept
+      free from blood, a number of noxious beasts, like wolves, lynxes, and
+      bears; but the turn of domestic animals came ere long, and they began to
+      sacrifice sheep, goats, and finally man&rsquo;s best companion in war, the
+      horse. Not even the spotless white horses, heretofore looked upon <span
+      class="pagenum">[048]</span><a name="link048" id="link048"></a>with such
+      profound and superstitious reverence, were spared any longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at each step forward in this bloody career, the Druids, always
+      resisting, and always compelled to yield, made their last and their very
+      last concession, vainly hoping that they might thus retain for a little
+      while longer the power, which they felt was fast slipping from their
+      grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Encouraged by success, the reformers finally came to the question, whether
+      the most acceptable offering to be presented to God, was not the blood of
+      man? Is not man, of all created beings, the most noble and the most
+      perfect? Perhaps they were inclined to carry the argument still farther,
+      and to reason that among all men the most worthy to be chosen and the most
+      likely to be acceptable to God, were the Druids themselves? But they took
+      care not to ask too much at once. They held this final consequence of a
+      great principle in reserve, requiring for the present nothing more than a
+      common victim, anything that might come in the way, provided it was a
+      human being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might have been expected, that when this abominable demand was made to
+      hallow murder by committing it in the name of Heaven, the descendants and
+      heirs of the ancient sages would have remembered their noble ancestors who
+      had put an end to the first and quite inoffensive superstitions <span
+      class="pagenum">[049]</span><a name="link049" id="link049"></a>of the
+      early Celts. They ought to have veiled their faces, drawn back with
+      horror, and recovering for once their former energy, appealed by means of
+      the holy oak, the spotless horses, the soothsayers and the Druidesses, nay
+      of heaven and earth itself, to the whole nation, calling upon them to
+      anathematize the infamous petitioners. But they did no such thing. On the
+      contrary they hastened to legalize such savage bloodshed by their holy
+      consent. One might almost be led to suspect that they had themselves,
+      underhand, suggested the horrible idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O ye hypocritical priests, ye false philosophers, ye tigers disguised as
+      shepherds of the people!.... But we must check our indignation. For who
+      knows, but they may have been swayed not so much by an instinct of cruelty
+      as by a lofty political, or even philanthropic principle? Philanthropic?
+      Yes, indeed; we will explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the Celts human life counted for little; it was lavished in battles,
+      it was cast away in duels. At the time when the Gauls held large national
+      assemblies, they tried to secure punctual attendance by simply putting to
+      death the man who was the last to come; he paid for all the tardy ones. I
+      do not mean to propose such a plan at the present day; but after all it
+      was an infallible and economical measure. <span class="pagenum">[050]</span><a
+      name="link050" id="link050"></a>The Teutons, on the other hand, bloodless
+      in their national assemblies, after a battle in which they had been
+      victorious, delighted in massacring all their prisoners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These massacres ceased from the time when the Druids claimed for
+      themselves the exclusive right of human sacrifices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good Esus, having become bloodthirsty, demanded all the captives to be
+      slain in expiation at his altar, and woe to him who dared to anticipate
+      him in his wrath. He was excluded from the sacred precincts; he was
+      declared an impious, sacrilegious person, who could no longer take his
+      place among the citizens; and he ran great risk of being forced to offer
+      his own life in compensation for that which by his fault was wanting at
+      the holocaust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this custom became once fully established, the prisoners of war were
+      all delivered up to the high-priest, who chose from among them one or more
+      to be slain as an offering. The victim was generally one of the captive
+      chieftains, and he was slain together with his war horse, so as to add to
+      the impressiveness of the ceremony and to reconcile the spectators by the
+      abundance of blood that was shed to the small number of victims.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having carefully examined the opened bodies of man and animal, the
+      sacrificing priest, his <span class="pagenum">[051]</span><a
+      name="link051" id="link051"></a>beard and clothes saturated with
+      blood, raised his bloody right hand to heaven and, reeking with murder and
+      breathing carnage, he proclaimed that his god was satisfied. The remainder
+      of the prisoners were kept for another day, but that other day never came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus a new office had been created: that of a sacrificing priest. On both
+      banks of the Rhine, in Germany as well as in Gaul, the Druids reserved
+      this office for themselves; in other Celtic countries, in Scandinavia and
+      among the Scythians, women performed the terrible duty; we all remember as
+      a proof of it, Iphigenia of Tauris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever we may think of this bloody innovation, it certainly benefited
+      the prisoners, but the Druids obtained from it, after all, the greatest
+      advantage. Their power, which had been seriously undermined, step by step,
+      was once more firmly established. The opposition, which had paid no
+      attention to their remonstrances or their prayers, shrunk from their
+      knives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this moment begins the Second Period of the Druids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bloody knife of the Druids remained long all powerful, but we need not
+      follow its later fate. Cæsar had conquered and pacified Gaul, and the
+      successors of Augustus fulminated their Imperial <span class="pagenum">[052]</span><a
+      name="link052" id="link052"></a>decrees against the Druids, as slayers of
+      men, while the same knife continued to shed the blood of the Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/072s.jpg" alt="072s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/072.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/072m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/075s.jpg" alt="075s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/075.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/075m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[055]</span><a name="link055" id="link055"></a><i>A
+      Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.&mdash;The two Banks of the Rhine.&mdash;Druid
+      Stones.&mdash;Weddings and Burials.&mdash;Xight Service.&mdash;A Dentigod
+      Glacier.&mdash;Social Duels. A Countrywoman of Aspasia.&mdash;Boudoir of a
+      Celtic Lady.&mdash;The Bard&rsquo;s Story.&mdash;Teutons and Titans.&mdash;Earthquake.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ny one who has
+      ever travelled in my company, must know that I am apt to stray from my
+      way, or at least to choose the longest route. I have a fancy to-day, to
+      turn my eyes and my steps away from those sacred precincts of the Druids,
+      which <span class="pagenum">[056]</span><a name="link056"
+      id="link056"></a>had become slaughter-houses and in which the hand
+      that blessed was also the hand that killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I desire to breathe an air less filled with the perfumes, or rather the
+      fetid odor of sacrifices. Up there, on that hill-top, where the setting
+      sun lights up the bright summit, I shall breathe more freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here I am.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath me the Rhine spreads out its two banks, not united yet by any
+      bridge, and even without a ferry to bring the one nearer to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on both sides, half hid under dense willow thickets and gigantic
+      reeds, there lie, in many a shallow little bay, large numbers of tiny
+      barks. These cunning looking boats belong to harmless fishermen in the
+      daytime; but at night they are filled with robbers and corsairs, who form
+      in bands, cross over to the other side in search of booty, and even
+      venture, if needs be, out into the Northern Sea. Just now nothing stirs;
+      the fishermen have gone home, the corsairs have not come forth. I look
+      farther out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the left bank there are some Gallic Celts encamped, with blue eyes,
+      white skin, and abundant golden tresses. Almost naked, their principal
+      garment seems to be that immense shield, almost as long as their body,
+      which shelters them on the march as well as when they are at rest, and
+      which protects <span class="pagenum">[057]</span><a name="link057"
+      id="link057"></a>them against the sun and the enemy alike. All of a
+      sudden I hear them, with lips held close to one of the edges of their
+      shields, utter sharp cries, which are taken up and repeated, from distance
+      to distance, all the way down the river. To these cries, which no doubt
+      represent their telegraphic system, there comes an answer from far
+      sounding trumpets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/077s.jpg" alt="077s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/077.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/077m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Who are these other soldiers with the black hair and the bronzed
+      complexions? Carefully arrayed in symmetrical lines they advance steadily,
+      clad in brilliant armor, and carrying banners surmounted by golden eagles
+      with half open wings. Has Cæsar really succeeded, after ten years&rsquo;
+      warfare, in making himself master of Gaul as far as the banks of the
+      Rhine? I cannot doubt it; for at their <span class="pagenum">[058]</span><a
+      name="link058" id="link058"></a>approach, the Gauls lower their
+      lance-heads, in token of their peaceful disposition, and allow them to
+      pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/078s.jpg" alt="078s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/078.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/078m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      When they reach the river, the small Roman army pauses; under the
+      protection of this armed force a few men, dressed in simple tunics, with
+      no arms but tablets, a style, and ropes for measuring the ground, go to
+      work preparing a plan, perhaps for a bridge, perhaps for a town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      German sentinels, take care!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the height of my hill I look down upon a <span class="pagenum">[059]</span><a
+      name="link059" id="link059"></a>narrow strip of land on the right bank of
+      the river, and here I see several groups of men, scattered here and there
+      in the woods and on the plain, who work under the superintendence of a
+      Druid. Some are digging up the roots of trees which overshadow and
+      impoverish the ground; others draw long furrows with the iron of their
+      ploughs. These laborers seem all to suffer from some restraint which
+      impedes their movements, but of which at this distance I can discover no
+      cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to meditate on this strange sight, I look around for a resting
+      place. Half way up the hill I notice a small stone bench. As I draw
+      nearer, the object grows in size and rises to such a height, that I should
+      need a ladder if I wished to take possession of my seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/079s.jpg" alt="079s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/079.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/079m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This apparent bench is a monument, a Druidical monument, and consists of
+      two upright stones, on which rests a third, horizontal stone. In France,
+      in England, and in Germany there are still found <span class="pagenum">[060]</span><a
+      name="link060" id="link060"></a>such Druidical altars, cromlechs or
+      dolmens; these menhyrs astonished already Alexander of Macedonia when he
+      marched through Scythia. In Bretagne, at Carnac, some of these stones,
+      consisting of a single rock, rise by the wayside, as if to tell the
+      traveller the story of the past, or they range themselves before his eyes
+      in long lines, forming on the ground endless circles of emblematic
+      meaning, as it is supposed. But the traveller can no longer understand
+      their language. Was this an altar, or was it an idol, or perhaps only a
+      simple monument raised over a grave. If they were altars, Carnac would be
+      Olympus; if they were tombstones, it would be a cemetery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:15%;">
+      <img src="images/080s.jpg" alt="080s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/080.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/080m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      I was going all around the mystic three stones to examine them more
+      closely, when I noticed close by a flock of sheep, and then a shepherd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This shepherd, covered with a ragged <i>sagum</i>, had on his feet leather
+      sandals, a half open wound on his forehead, which had not yet had time to
+      close, enhanced the fierceness of his appearance. His burning <span
+      class="pagenum">[061]</span><a name="link061" id="link061"></a>glances
+      fell now upon the Druidical stone and now upon another object which I had
+      not noticed before. This was the guard of a sword which had been driven
+      into the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could it be that this stone resting upon two supports, were new
+      concessions made by the politic Druids?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/081s.jpg" alt="081s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/081.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/081m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      As according to their spiritualistic views God could not render himself
+      visible in a shape resembling our own, they had represented him as well as
+      they could by a symbol. It appeared thus that human sacrifices were
+      already no longer sufficient to maintain their creed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I was examining with growing curiosity this strange keeper of sheep,
+      fair, with bare neck and bare feet, was busy watching on the same side of
+      the hill another flock, and at the same time gathering herbs for medicinal
+      purposes. When she was about to leave, she offered the shepherd to attend
+      to his wound, sword handle, and this <span class="pagenum">[062]</span><a
+      name="link062" id="link062"></a>but he refused haughtily; she ran away
+      laughing, and threw a flower into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not pick up that flower; he did not salute that pretty girl as she
+      left him. He looked at her with disdain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! I can doubt it no longer; this unhappy man is like the wood-cutter in
+      the forest, and the laborers in the field, one of those prisoners taken in
+      war, whom the Druids have spared, and now render useful. His closely shorn
+      hair, his open wound, and the heavy wooden yoke which he has to carry on
+      his neck, all betray his sad fate. He has made no reply to the half
+      pitiful, half coquettish advances of the pretty gatherer of simples,
+      because she has only awakened in his heart painful memories of his distant
+      love, or of his wife, whom he is never to see again! He has cast glances
+      of fierce hatred and burning revenge at the Druidical altar and the handle
+      of the sword, because both of these objects point out the place of bloody
+      sacrifices. Does he think he is himself destined to be slain? or was
+      perhaps the warrior whom they slew yesterday, a man of his own tribe, his
+      best friend, his own brother?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I have taken refuge here in order to escape from these painful
+      thoughts of blood and murder. I propose to seek new objects of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farther down, nearly at the foot of the hill, I <span class="pagenum">[063]</span><a
+      name="link063" id="link063"></a>see a few huts, or rather a few low,
+      almost crushed roofs, which seem hardly to rise from the ground. Are they
+      houses, or stables, or caves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the left bank Gauls and Romans have alike disappeared in the mists
+      rising from the river. On the right bank the wood-cutters and the
+      field-laborors are resting upon their axes or their ploughs, and seem to
+      ask the sun if the day is not drawing to an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/083s.jpg" alt="083s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/083.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/083m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      A breeze is springing up, the shepherd gathers his flock and, as mournful
+      as ever, he slowly takes <span class="pagenum">[064]</span><a
+      name="link064" id="link064"></a>the footpath that leads down the hill
+      towards the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I follow him without knowing what mysterious power draws me in that
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps some Druid magician holds me under a potent spell, which enables
+      me to forget who I am, whence I come, and even to what century I belong,
+      and to witness these strange scenes, which, well nigh forgotten by all
+      living beings, I alone am permitted to watch? Let me try, at all events,
+      to profit by this rare piece of good fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I reach the low village and find it occupied by a colony of Salic Franks,
+      who live scattered all along the Rhine. With their eyes fixed upon the
+      left bank, they are just now far more occupied with the invasion of
+      Germany by the Romans, than with the thought of invading Gaul themselves.&mdash;I
+      feel suddenly a deep interest in these people. What Frenchman of this
+      nineteenth century can feel sure that the blood in his veins is not the
+      same that once gave life and strength to these terrible warriors from the
+      North, Franks or Gauls? We are all natives of one or the other bank of
+      this great river Rhine, and feel towards each other, whether we live on
+      the right or the left bank, very much like school-boys whose friendship is
+      cemented by many a battle royal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being a Frenchman, I feel that I am about to <span class="pagenum">[065]</span><a
+      name="link065" id="link065"></a>pay a visit to my paternal ancestors&mdash;for
+      the Franks have given us our name. No wonder that I feel deeply moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I examine the low huts of the village, if village it can be called, and
+      find that they are separated from each other by commons and by fields, and
+      that they finally lose themselves in the open country. Where now these
+      scattered huts are standing, there may be one of these days a Mayence or a
+      Cologne, and yet they will occupy no larger space with all their suburbs
+      included.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On both sides of the road extend orchards, fenced in with reeds and all
+      aglow with blooming apple trees; dark, sombre pine forests and swamps, the
+      greenish waters of which are confined within slight dams; here and there
+      the live rock crops out from the ground and interrupts the road, or huge
+      trees are lying across, recently cut down and but just deprived of their
+      branches. In the open pasture grounds huge buffaloes are lying about
+      snorting and panting with fatigue, for they have worked all day in the
+      plough; the neighing of horses is heard from one end of the country to the
+      other, and gradually dies out as the sun sinks below the horizon; lean
+      heifers, with long, spiral horns, push here and there their heads through
+      the fence of the orchards to have a last bite at the tender foliage of the
+      reeds, and small oxen of an <span class="pagenum">[066]</span><a
+      name="link066" id="link066"></a>inferior breed return to their quarters at
+      the same time with the sheep, quite content to browse on the grass by the
+      wayside, while herds of swine are wallowing in the mire of the low
+      grounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/086s.jpg" alt="086s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/086.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/086m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The landscape resembles parts of Bretagne and of Normandy; but these
+      provinces have no such huts. To see a human habitation, you have to rise
+      high above the fences and hedges and then look down upon the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a place where two roads meet, the cracking of a whip is heard; hogs,
+      sheep, and small oxen are driven aside to make way for a kind of
+      procession, consisting of grave and solemn men and women, who almost all
+      wear a look of consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a wedding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two young people have just had their union blessed by the priests under
+      the sacred oak. The bride is dressed in black, and wears a wreath of dark
+      leaves on her head; she walks in the midst <span class="pagenum">[067]</span><a
+      name="link067" id="link067"></a>of her friends, bent double, as if weighed
+      down by overwhelming thoughts. A matron, who walks on her left, holds
+      before her eyes a white cloth; it is a shroud, the shroud in which she
+      will be buried one of these days. On her right, a Druid intones a chant,
+      in which he enumerates, in solemn rhythm, all the troubles and all the
+      anxieties which await her in wedded life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/087s.jpg" alt="087s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/087.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/087m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From this day, young wife, thou alone wilt have to bear all the
+      burden of your united household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will have to attend the baking oven, to provide fuel, and to go
+      in search of food; you will have to prepare the resinous torch and the
+      lamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will wash the linen at the fountain, and you will make up all
+      the clothing;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will attend to the cow, and even to the horse if your husband
+      requires it;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always full of respect, you will wait upon him, standing behind
+      him, at his meals;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he chooses to take more wives, you will receive your new
+      companions with sweetness; <span class="pagenum">[068]</span><a
+      name="link068" id="link068"></a>"If needs be, you will even offer
+      to nurse the children of these favorites, and all from obedience to your
+      karl (master);
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he is angry against you and strikes you, you will pray to Esus,
+      the only God, but you will never blame your husband, who cannot do wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he expresses a wish to take you with him to war, you will
+      accompany him to carry his baggage, to keep his arms in good condition,
+      and to nurse him if he should be sick or wounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty. Be happy, my child!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/088s.jpg" alt="088s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/088.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/088m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      When I heard this dolorous wedding song, which in some parts of France is
+      to this day addressed to brides by local minstrels, when I saw this
+      winding-sheet, <span class="pagenum">[069]</span><a name="link069"
+      id="link069"></a>the mournful costumes and the whole funereal wedding
+      procession, I felt overcome with sadness. Just then, cries and joyous
+      acclamations were heard at some little distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another procession came from the opposite direction to the cross-roads;
+      there all the faces were smiling and full of joyousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a funeral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/089s.jpg" alt="089s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/089.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/089m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Such were the ways of our fathers; they rejoiced in facing death, which
+      relieves man from all his sufferings; they had nothing but tears for man
+      when he entered upon his trials.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime the twilight had passed into darkness. Small lights,
+      looking like will-o&rsquo;-the-wisps, were flitting to and fro in field
+      and forest, going in all directions. Devout worshippers, carrying torches
+      or lanterns in their hands, were going to consecrated places, to hold
+      public worship or to recite private prayers. <span class="pagenum">[070]</span><a
+      name="link070" id="link070"></a>Some, and these were the majority, go in
+      the direction of the oak forests, where the Druids are found; others,
+      concealing the light of their lanterns as well as they can, go hither and
+      thither, towards the copses of beeches and pine trees, or towards the
+      river, or towards the hill, which was but just now shining brightly in the
+      sunlight, but is now concealed in utter darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/090s.jpg" alt="090s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/090.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/090m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      What are they going to do? They are going to worship the Rhine, the wells,
+      the water-courses, the trees, the Druidical <span class="pagenum">[071]</span><a
+      name="link071" id="link071"></a>altars, and the sword-guards. For no creed
+      yet but has had its schisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Orthodox or not, German or Gallic, the Franks have always shown a
+      preference for nocturnal worship; they divide the year into moons, and
+      count the moons not by days but by nights. And yet they have been
+      suspected of worshipping the sun! And I had nearly fallen into the same
+      error! How well it was that I came to see for myself!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I am just now more interested in watching manners than in studying
+      mythology, I pursue my investigations, especially as I know very well that
+      we must know the lives which people lead in order to be able fully to
+      appreciate the objects of their worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While all these small lights are flashing, like shooting stars, here and
+      there through the landscape, certain specially bright lights seem to
+      become stationary and permanent. These are the lighted-up windows of human
+      habitations. I called the latter just now stables, or caves, and excepting
+      a few of them, I must still call them such.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are dug out of the ground, damp and dark; their ceiling is on a level
+      with the surface of the earth, and their roof consists of layers of turf,
+      or of dry thatch covered with moss. The only door resembles the lid of a
+      snuff-box, and is set in the roof on a level with the ground. The dwelling
+      <span class="pagenum">[072]</span><a name="link072" id="link072"></a>has
+      no light but such as enters through these trapdoors; consequently they are
+      utterly dark during the whole rainy season and during winter, that is to
+      say, for three fourths of the year! Darkness reigns supreme here; that
+      darkness which is the enemy of all healthfulness, of enjoyment, of every
+      comfort. No windows! No glass! O divine Apollo,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou of the silver bow, god of Claros, hear!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/092s.jpg" alt="092s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/092.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/092m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      I never had any objection to the doctrine which made of you, the brilliant
+      personification of the sun, a first class divinity; but I think like
+      honors ought to have been bestowed upon the unknown man who first invented
+      windows and window-panes, the <span class="pagenum">[073]</span><a
+      name="link073" id="link073"></a>first glazier in fine. He ought at least
+      to have been made a demigod, and if he had to remain a simple mortal, they
+      ought surely to have remembered his name! Alas! that high honors are as
+      unfairly distributed in heaven as upon earth!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As there is no window, I peep through the trapdoor to see how these
+      subterranean dwellings look inside. The aspect is far from being as
+      wretched as I had expected. I find that the walls are hung with mattings
+      and the floor is beaten hard; by the side of the smoking lamp which is
+      suspended from the main beam of the ceiling, there are hanging, on hooks,
+      a hindquarter of venison, baskets filled with provisions, and implements
+      for fishing and hunting. Besides, I notice long strings of medicinal
+      herbs, such as we see in the shops of herb-doctors, and among these plants
+      the mistletoe occupies, as a matter of course, the place of honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another underground hut there appear actually some traces of luxury.
+      Here the walls are incrusted with pebbles from the Rhine, of many colors
+      and skillfully arranged; here and there weapons are arranged in various
+      shapes; javelins with sharp hooks; framees, such as the ancient Franks
+      were using; hatchets of stone or iron; &ldquo;morning stars,&rdquo; with
+      sharp points, were pleasantly mingled with huge bucklers; large leather
+      quivers and long arrows feathered at one end and with jagged teeth <span
+      class="pagenum">[074]</span><a name="link074" id="link074"></a>at the
+      other. At first sight it looks as if for the purpose of softening somewhat
+      the threatening aspect of these panoplies, the Celtic lady of the house
+      had added some of her jewels to these weapons. But it is not so; these
+      gold chains, these necklaces set with onyx and rubies, are worn by the
+      grim warriors on the day of battle, quite as much in the nature of
+      ornaments as for the purpose of protection. One of our sober, I may say,
+      most sober historians, ascribes to this custom of our forefathers, the
+      Franks, the gorget, worn still by officers in some European armies. Here
+      also I see straw mats, but here they are trod under foot; they are used as
+      carpets, not as hangings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deep and spacious dwelling contains, besides the large room which
+      alone I can see through my dormer-window, a number of other rooms on all
+      sides, or rather of other caves, which are all connected with each other.
+      I am evidently before the palace of one of the chief men of the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first hut, into which I had looked, I had found the people at
+      table, drinking a beverage made from grain and herbs&mdash;cerevisia&mdash;in
+      horns of wild bulls, and talking about business&mdash;for our ancestors
+      talked about business at dinner, just as we do. The conversation turned
+      about exchanges of rams, a great fishing expedition to be undertaken
+      jointly, an invasion to be made into the territory on the other<span
+      class="pagenum">[075]</span><a name="link075" id="link075"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/095s.jpg" alt="095s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/095.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/095m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[077]</span><a name="link077" id="link077"></a>bank
+      of the river, and most eagerly, about the approaching elections. For
+      Montesquieu tells us that municipal and even constitutional government
+      existed alike among the early Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the other dwelling, the one adorned with panoplies, they were talking
+      neither of elections, nor of fishing, but they were likewise at table.
+      Here they drank not only cerevisia in the <i>horns of the brave</i>, but
+      also hydromel and hippocras in leathern tankards or human skulls, as white
+      as ivory, adorned with silver and naturally shaped like cups. God be
+      thanked that this custom has not been bequeathed to us by the Franks!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that evening they were celebrating the welcome given to a young warrior
+      who had already made himself known by great exploits and who belonged to a
+      neighboring, friendly tribe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the meal was ended, and what a meal it was!&mdash;I shall be careful
+      not to give the bill of fare, since the mere recital would cause an
+      indigestion,&mdash;they thought of prolonging the entertainment given to
+      their illustrious guest. But what could they do? The young Frankish ladies
+      were not familiar yet with the piano, and the noble game of billiards had
+      not yet been invented. They proposed riddles to be guessed, but this did
+      not seem to afford much amusement to the young man. Then came a game with
+      bones; but he nearly fell <span class="pagenum">[078]</span><a
+      name="link078" id="link078"></a>asleep. As the duty of hospitality
+      required that they should make every possible effort to entertain their
+      guest, a great man among the Cheruski or the Marcomanni, they proposed the
+      <i>handkerchief</i>; this, seemed to arouse his attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The handkerchief game was at that time very popular; it was a kind of
+      company duel. Two kind-hearted adversaries, having no other motive but to
+      amuse themselves and to entertain the company, would seize with their left
+      hand one end of a handkerchief, and with their right hand a table knife or
+      a hunting knife, it did not matter which, provided the weapon was sharp
+      and very pointed. For our good ancestors did not know foils with cork
+      buttons or other arms of courtesy. Imbued with the strange idea that to
+      fight, man against man, or a thousand against a thousand, was the greatest
+      happiness upon earth, they delighted in occasionally cutting each other&rsquo;s
+      throat, even if they were the best friends in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spectators formed a ring around the combatants. After they had taken a
+      solemn oath, by the rims of their bucklers, by the shoulders of their
+      horses, and by the points of their swords, that they cherished no feeling
+      of animosity against each other, a signal was given and the game
+      commenced. For some time I saw how the handkerchief was stretched out,
+      twisted and then suddenly <span class="pagenum">[079]</span><a
+      name="link079" id="link079"></a>turned around and around rapidly. Light
+      red lines had already begun to mark the skin of the two adversaries; the
+      blood was trickling down their arms, but these wounds were such trifles
+      that the spectators took no notice of them and uttered not a single
+      exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of a sudden I heard three hurrahs in rapid succession; the welcomed
+      guest, whom all had been striving to honor to the utmost of their
+      capacity, had fallen down with his adversary&rsquo;s knife still sticking
+      in his breast. He was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not been able to think of any better way to make him spend a
+      pleasant evening. The good old times had a hospitality of their own!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This pleasant handkerchief game has survived, only slightly modified, in
+      several countries of northern Europe. The handkerchief is generally
+      wrapped around a rapier, so as to shorten the length of the blade. In the
+      taverns of Holland the game is considered conducive to health; a knife
+      wound gives a man a chance to escape apoplexy; it serves as a timely
+      bleeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had run away in horror. For an hour I wandered about, casting a furtive
+      glance down a trapdoor here and there, and almost everywhere I saw men and
+      women, horses and cattle, enjoying their rest, lying pell-mell on the same
+      litter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one of these hovels I thought I recognized <span class="pagenum">[080]</span><a
+      name="link080" id="link080"></a>the young girl whom I had seen on the
+      hill; her attitude of repose gave a peculiar charm to her supple and
+      delicate limbs, and by the feeble flickering light of the lamp, she
+      suggested the idea of a sleeping nymph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0033" id="linkimage-0033"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/100s.jpg" alt="100s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/100.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/100m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      She was a young Ionian girl, a countrywoman of Aspasia; captured in war,
+      she had been sold as a slave in twenty markets, developing in spite of
+      such treatment, one grace and one beauty after another. On the banks of
+      the Ilyssus, they would have erected an altar in her honor, on the banks
+      of the Rhine they made her keep a herd of swine. <span class="pagenum">[081]</span><a
+      name="link081" id="link081"></a>She was not the only one of her sex,
+      however, whom I saw during that fantastic night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of a shrill fife, mingling with the sweeter notes of a harp,
+      attracted my attention. I went toward the spot from which the music came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little room decked with flowers, a young woman was engaged in her
+      toilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I ought to have fled once more,&mdash;this time from bashfulness or a
+      sense of propriety,&mdash;but a conscientious historian is bound to
+      overcome every difficulty, in order to ascertain the exact truth. It was a
+      great piece of good luck, surely, to be able to report as an eye-witness,
+      what might be seen in the boudoir of a Celtic lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My friend was sitting, half undressed, on a stool, with her hair loosened,
+      and holding in her hand a metal mirror. An old woman, a servant or her
+      mother, I cannot tell which&mdash;and yet it seemed to me as if I had seen
+      both these women, as well as the beautiful swine-herd, somewhere before;
+      when that was, however, I could not possibly tell&mdash;the old woman held
+      the whole rich abundance of the young lady&rsquo;s hair in both her hands
+      and rubbed it with a horrid mixture of tallow, ashes, and plaster. Thanks
+      to this wretched pomatum, the beautiful hair gradually changed from pale
+      blonde to intense red, and thus enabled the owner to comply with a
+      fashion, which I do not presume to criticise, but <span class="pagenum">[082]</span><a
+      name="link082" id="link082"></a>simply record here. Then she washed and
+      combed it carefully, plaited it cunningly, and at last rubbed the
+      shoulders and the neck of the beauty with melted butter, while she washed
+      the face and the hands with foaming beer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/102s.jpg" alt="102s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/102.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/102m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      After the demands of cleanliness had thus been satisfied, she placed
+      before her mistress a slight collation, which was promptly served and
+      promptly dispatched. While she was thus attending to her toilet and
+      disposing of a bird&rsquo;s meal, there was a cyclopean feast going on in
+      an adjoining room; loud and violent voices were heard, everybody seemed
+      <span class="pagenum">[083]</span><a name="link083" id="link083"></a>to
+      talk at once, and in such high tones that even the shrill fife could no
+      longer be distinguished&mdash;for it was from this hall that the sound of
+      music proceeded, which had attracted me to the dwelling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman evidently thought the feast was drawing to an end, for she
+      hastened to finish her mistress&rsquo;s toilet: She opened a wooden box
+      and drew from it a pair of pretty red boots, which she put on the feet of
+      the young beauty; then she threw over her white dress a purple scarf,
+      which she fastened on the left shoulder with a long thorn from a
+      sloe-tree. After that she tied a narrow scarlet ribbon around her head,
+      handed her a collar and bracelets made of small berries, which in form and
+      color were strikingly like corals, and finally, as the finishing touch,
+      she daubed her cheeks with red by means of a cosmetic which I suspect
+      consisted largely of brickdust. When the young Frankish beauty found that
+      there was enough red&mdash;scarlet, crimson, purple, and pink&mdash;on her
+      person from head to foot, she uttered a cry of triumph, especially when
+      her husband, who entered her room, followed by his guests, seemed to be
+      quite dazzled by the resplendent charms of his lovely wife, whom he had
+      just <i>bought</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To buy a woman was a familiar expression in Germany at that time, as it is
+      now,&mdash;<i>Ein weib kaufen</i>. It must be borne in mind, however, that
+      <span class="pagenum">[084]</span><a name="link084" id="link084"></a>in
+      those days the bride brought no dower; on the contrary, the husband paid
+      her family a certain sum as compensation. We have inherited many of our
+      usages from our Celtic forefathers; but as to this custom, we have not
+      thought proper to keep it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I at once recognized the husband, although he was now all smiles in his
+      face, and let us hope, all smiles in his heart also. He was the chief
+      personage in the wedding procession, whom I had seen two hours before,
+      looking so grave and solemn, so sad and mournful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to Druidical regulations, the bride has first of all waited upon
+      him at table, humbly standing behind him like the other house slaves;
+      then, towards the middle of the repast, she had gone to her room in order
+      to exchange her girlish costume for the dress of a married woman&mdash;a
+      woman who has the right to follow the fashions and to dress herself up in
+      red from the heels of her feet to the end of her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now she receives her master <i>at home</i>; here she is mistress, and
+      mistress she will remain. This was the rule among the Franks; for in spite
+      of the lachrymose anthems of the bards and in spite of the sombre
+      ceremonies of the wedding, the women became almost invariably the masters
+      at home, a usage which, contrary to that of dowerless girls, may possibly
+      have crossed the Rhine. <span class="pagenum">[085]</span><a
+      name="link085" id="link085"></a>Thinking it over, I found that
+      during my nocturnal excursion into the land of my forefathers, I had been
+      present&mdash;as a witness only, be it understood&mdash;at three
+      successive entertainments; a feast of welcome, a business dinner, and a
+      wedding dinner. Although they had not been calculated to satisfy my
+      appetite, they had, at all events, made me extremely hungry. I was
+      thinking, therefore, of retracing my steps and looking for a lodging, when
+      I saw the Druid-bard, who had not disdained taking a seat at the nuptial
+      feast, coming slowly and solemnly to the centre of the room, all the while
+      drawing a few accords from, a kind of harp, which consisted of a closely
+      bent bow with three strings instead of one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/105s.jpg" alt="105s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/105.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/105m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      He was getting ready to charm the company with the recital of one of those
+      long and mysterious poems which recount the history of the Celts. I delay
+      my departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has been said, and not without a show of reason, that the history of
+      our Gallic or Germanic ancestors ought to be for us a subject of deep
+      interest; but bold minds have in vain tried to raise <span class="pagenum">[086]</span><a
+      name="link086" id="link086"></a>up once more the old oak tree, to trim it
+      and to let air and light enter within its canopy of leaves. The birds that
+      once sang in its branches have left no trace behind them of their songs,
+      and nothing has reached us from those sacred precincts but a few faint
+      echoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I certainly have reason to praise my good fortune! What all these great
+      scholars, these learned men, have not been able to accomplish by dint of
+      energy and perseverance and aided by all their knowledge of Latin, Greek,
+      and Sanskrit, I (I, the man whom you know) am enabled to do! Thanks to the
+      bard&rsquo;s long recital, I am able to fill up this blank,&mdash;the
+      first, the only man in the history of mankind, who can throw light upon
+      the impenetrable darkness of those ages!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bard began. I listened, all attention and eagerness, trying to catch
+      every sound and to impress every word upon my excellent memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a pompous introduction he told us all about the first arrival of the
+      Celts in Europe, the coming of the Druids as apostles of the true faith;
+      he told us how a great colony of Salic Franks, Gauls, under the collective
+      name of Pelasgi, all children of Teut, or Teutons, had first planted a
+      sacred oak at Dodona. On this point I was already well informed. He then
+      alluded to the building up of Athens, due as much to the Teutons as to the
+      <span class="pagenum">[087]</span><a name="link087" id="link087"></a>Greeks
+      of Cecrops; he boasted, that when the Greeks were led astray by their
+      corrupt imagination and wished to raise altars to Saturn, Jupiter, and all
+      those false gods whom they had borrowed from the Egyptians and the
+      Phoenicians, the Teutons rose in the name of outraged human reason, and
+      proclaimed the only one God, breaking down all the false altars. Hence, he
+      said, that formidable struggle, still so well known as the battle of the
+      gods of Olympus against the <i>Teutons</i> or <i>Titans</i>....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I held my breath. What? Those terrible giants, those colossal men, whom
+      Jupiter himself feared and who piled Ossa upon Pelion, or Pelion upon Ossa&mdash;they
+      were Celts? They were the ancestors of the brave French?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Titans, O my brothers, with what delight I listened to the sacred words
+      of the bard, so that I might repeat them to you and rejoice with you in
+      our glorious descent!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By special grace I understood the Germano-Celtic words of the bard without
+      difficulty. But the poem was flowing on interminably; I began to mistrust
+      my memory. Centuries succeeded centuries, events followed events, and they
+      were as close to each other and as numerous as grains in a bag of wheat.
+      The continuous exertion of all my faculties began to tell upon me. The
+      most illustrious <span class="pagenum">[088]</span><a name="link088"
+      id="link088"></a>heroes of Gaul and of Germany appeared to me soon
+      only like the faint forms seen by means of a magic lantern; Sigovesus and
+      Bellovesus, the descendants of the great king Ambigat; Brennus, Btlgius,
+      and Lutharius, sons or sons-in-law of that other great king Cambaules,
+      began to turn around and arouad in my head, holding each other by the hand
+      and performing an old British dance to the music of an old Breton
+      instrument. Ariovistus played on the biniou. Then the sounds of the
+      biniou, the shrill tones of the fife and the Druid harp were broken in
+      upon by a terrible noise of countless church bells; the air shook all of a
+      sudden, the earth trembled, everything around me fell to the ground with a
+      great crash, the Druid, the house of the wedding, the trap-door, the
+      hamlet, the trees, the hill, the Rhine and its banks, the heaven and the
+      stars, all disappeared at the same moment, and I awoke in my arm-chair,
+      surrounded by my poor books, which had just fallen from my knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner bell was still ringing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0036" id="linkimage-0036"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/111s.jpg" alt="111s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/111.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/111m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[091]</span><a name="link091" id="link091"></a><i>The
+      Roman Gods invade Germany.&mdash;Drusus and the Druidess.&mdash;Ogmius,
+      the Hercules of Gaul.&mdash;Great Philological Discovery concerning Teut
+      at es.&mdash;Transformations of every kind.&mdash;Irmexsul.&mdash;The
+      Rhine deified.&mdash;The Gods cross the River.&mdash;Druids of the Third
+      Epoch.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou may rest
+      assured, I did not merely dream of that bold transformation of Teutons
+      into Titans; one of the most learned and most reliable authors in my
+      library, assures me of the fact. These great scholars are sometimes very
+      clever men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to this authority, the Celts were very much taller than the
+      Greeks, and this fact had naturally suggested to the latter the idea of
+      speaking of them as giants. The Celtic Pelasgi, who were warlike shepherds
+      like all the men of their race, usually watched their flocks as they were
+      <span class="pagenum">[092]</span><a name="link092" id="link092"></a>grazing
+      on the high mountains, and it was these mountains which the myth accused
+      them of piling up, one upon another, to scale the heavens. You will say,
+      What mad follies of poets! I grant this; but after these mad poets came
+      men like Hesiod and Homer, who changed the idle dream into stern reality,
+      and upon this rock a new religion was founded, and with it, a new
+      civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the day has come when these same gods of Greece, having become the
+      gods of great Rome, will pursue the Titans, or Teutons, to the very heart
+      of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is well known that Cæsar, after having conquered Gaul, had promptly
+      crossed the Rhine, rather for the purpose of making a reconnaissance on
+      the opposite bank of the river, than with any view to conquest. His
+      successor went farther into Germany. Drusus, the adopted son of Augustus,
+      and his lieutenant, reached the banks of the river Elbe, pursuing the
+      Franks, the Teutons, the Burgundians, the Cheruski, the Marcomanni, all
+      those children of the same great family, who had been overcome, put to
+      flight, but never subjugated. All of a sudden, at the very moment when he
+      is about to cross the river, there comes forth from the dark, dense
+      forest, not a new army of barbarians, bristling with spears and halberts,
+      but a woman, a tall, haughty looking woman, with long disheveled hair<span
+      class="pagenum">[093]</span><a name="link093" id="link093"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0037" id="linkimage-0037"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/113s.jpg" alt="113s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/113.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/113m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[094]</span><a name="link094" id="link094"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0038" id="linkimage-0038"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/114s.jpg" alt="114s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/114.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/114m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[095]</span><a name="link095" id="link095"></a>flowing
+      down upon her bare shoulders, and on her brow a crown of simple oak
+      branches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She steps across his path and with uplifted finger orders him in an
+      imperious voice to turn back and to go to his camp to prepare for death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a Druidess, endowed in the highest degree with the gift of
+      prophecy; so it would seem at least, for Drusus had hardly entered the
+      Roman camp, when he fell from his horse and expired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not all the Druidesses, however, succeeded in making the Roman generals go
+      back, by a word or a gesture; nor did all the Roman generals fall from
+      their horses and die. After fifty-five years of strangely varying
+      fortunes, the Genius of Rome was victorious, and must needs have been
+      victorious, for it led the whole world by its power. It brought with it
+      also its gods, which in spite of their numbers, or rather perhaps because
+      they were so numerous, met on the banks of the Rhine with a more
+      determined resistance than its soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rome had a magnificent mission to fulfill. Her glorious duty upon earth
+      was to restore the unity of all the great human families, and to improve
+      their condition by bringing them in contact with each other&mdash;by
+      fraternity, in fine. To attain this end, she had generally employed War as
+      her principal instrument; Religion had been a subsidiary agent only, a
+      weapon which she kept concealed, <span class="pagenum">[096]</span><a
+      name="link096" id="link096"></a>but which she used with great efficacy to
+      secure the permanency of her conquests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately, Roman gods were as liable to corruption, and to fearful
+      corruption, as the great men of the Empire. Nations rise step by step on
+      the grand ladder of civilization; when they have reached the top they must
+      keep up their activity, without which no life and no progress can be
+      maintained, and thus the moment comes when they are forced to descend
+      again, till at last they sink into sensual degradation, into erudite,
+      refined, voluptuous barbarism&mdash;the very bottom of the ladder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0039" id="linkimage-0039"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/116s.jpg" alt="116s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/116.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/116m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Rome had begun by raising altars to all the virtues; now her deities
+      personified nothing but vices. How could they expect to introduce them and
+      make them acceptable to these coarse Germans, among whom prostitution,
+      adultery, and theft were hardly known by name, who allowed a woman <span
+      class="pagenum">[097]</span><a name="link097" id="link097"></a>to claim
+      hospitality at the house of any <i>Karl</i>, to rest under his roof, and
+      even to share his couch, without fearing slander, if he had but put a
+      naked sword between her and himself, and who had never known and could not
+      know the use of locks and keys? Were they not accustomed to hang their
+      most valuable possessions upon the branches of a consecrated tree in the
+      open camp, or to place them on top of a druidical stone or beneath it, as
+      they chose&mdash;knowing that there they were perfectly safe? When they
+      had taken this simple precaution, they could go to bed and sleep quietly,
+      and there was no need for putting a sentinel on guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already, in the days of Cæsar, the Romans had employed a very ingenious
+      and cunning device, in order to win over the simple Gauls. They had
+      pretended to find their gods, their own peculiar gods, already established
+      in the country from olden times. Thus there existed in Gaul a statue which
+      the Etrusci had erected in honor of <i>Ogmius</i>, or rather <i>Ogma</i>.
+      The Greek Lucian mentions it in these words:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a decrepit old man; his skin is black; this form of a man,
+      however, wears the attributes of Hercules, the lion&rsquo;s skin and the
+      club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought at first,&rdquo; Lucian adds, &ldquo;that the Celts had
+      invented this odd figure in order to laugh at <span class="pagenum">[098]</span><a
+      name="link098" id="link098"></a>the gods of Greece; but this so-called
+      Hercules, who is of very great antiquity, drags after him a multitude of
+      men, whom he leads by golden chains which he holds in his mouth, while
+      they are fastened to the ears of his victims.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0040" id="linkimage-0040"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/118s.jpg" alt="118s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/118.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/118m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This <i>Ogmius</i> was evidently a typical representation of Druidism
+      itself; <i>Ogma</i>, in Celtic languages, means both science and
+      eloquence. What has Hercules to do with all this? Nevertheless the Romans
+      insisted upon calling him by that name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor did they stop here. <span class="pagenum">[099]</span><a
+      name="link099" id="link099"></a>When they found all the nations
+      they had conquered were continually speaking of a certain <i>Teutates</i>,
+      they at once declared that they recognized in this popular person their
+      own god Mercury. It was he and no other! It was Mercury, the son of
+      Jupiter and the nymph Ma&rsquo;ia. There was a striking resemblance, an
+      unmistakable analogy! No one could misapprehend the thing for an instant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0041" id="linkimage-0041"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/119s.jpg" alt="119s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/119.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/119m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Oh, my good Romans, I don&rsquo;t mean to blame you now for all the
+      trouble you gave me when I was at college! I will forget all that&mdash;But
+      what could make you conceive this stupid idea, of naturalizing among us
+      your Mercury, the god of eloquence, if <span class="pagenum">[100]</span><a
+      name="link100" id="link100"></a>you choose, but above all the ever ready
+      pimp of Jupiter, the god of trade and of thieves, and of naturalizing him
+      in a land where trade, love, and thieves are so little known! In
+      subservience to this Roman notion, some of our modern writers have been
+      clever enough to prove that there were really many points of resemblance
+      between Mercury and Teutates&mdash;but I, I openly deny it! Once more,
+      philology shall come to my assistance, to overturn their doctrine. It was
+      only this morning, while shaving, that I made a philologie discovery of
+      the very highest importance, in which the public will take the most lively
+      interest, and, I doubt not, the French Acadamy also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The word <i>Teut</i>, as the reader no doubt knows perfectly well, means
+      <i>God; Tat</i> in ancient Celtic and in modern Breton may be accurately
+      rendered as <i>father</i>&mdash;so an old Breton woman assures me, who
+      brought me up when I was a child. Add to <i>Tat</i> the termination <i>Es</i>,
+      the diminutive form of <i>Esus</i>, the <i>Lord</i>, connect the three
+      monosyllables, and you have <i>Teut-Tat-Es</i>, God, Father, and Lord!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where&mdash;I appeal to all the famous historians so graphically described
+      by Rabelais&mdash;where do you find a trace of Mercury in Teutates now? He
+      is beyond all doubt the great divinity of the Celts, but you found it more
+      convenient to follow the interested views of the Roman writers. And yet
+      <span class="pagenum">[101]</span><a name="link101" id="link101"></a>even
+      if they were innocent of any design upon your credulity, might they not
+      have been mistaken themselves? Are you not aware that Plutarch,
+      conscientious Plutarch himself, after having witnessed the Feast of
+      Tabernacles in Palestine, tells us gravely that the Jews worshipped
+      Bacchus? You were not aware of it, come, confess it frankly! For I will
+      confess to you, that I was not aware of it, myself, ten minutes ago; but
+      Dr. Rosahl has just told me so. The good doctor is delighted at my
+      discovery of the true meaning of <i>Teut-Tat-Es</i>; he thinks no
+      etymological question of such importance &lsquo;was ever more
+      satisfactorily put and answered in the same breath. He advises me strongly
+      to write a memoir on the subject, which he will undertake to bring to the
+      notice of learned societies, and only suggests the expediency of leaving
+      out any allusion to my old Breton nurse; but I am too conscientious a
+      writer ever to omit quoting my authorities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, since I have mentioned Rabelais, let us &ldquo;return to our lambs,&rdquo;
+      that is, to our Teutons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the Roman conquest, the same transformation of native deities into
+      classic gods continued in Germany. The sacred oak was changed into
+      Jupiter, whom it represented symbolically; the Druidical altars became
+      either Apollo or Diana; sometimes they were made to represent deities of
+      inferior rank, nymphs, anything in fact. But these numerous <span
+      class="pagenum">[102]</span><a name="link102" id="link102"></a>metamorphoses,
+      made rather hastily, led to a curious mistake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conquerors had met on the banks of the Weser a huge monolith, cut with
+      an axe by simple and ignorant stone-carvers. It was called <i>Irmensul</i>.
+      Like the Celtic Teutates, this Irmensul also attracted at certain fixed
+      times an immense concourse of people. The Romans, appreciating the martial
+      spirit of the natives, did not hesitate to declare that this was Mars,
+      their god of war. Thereupon they paid it all possible honor, consecrating
+      their weapons to the new deity, and offering countless propitiatory
+      sacrifices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, who was this Irmensul?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Varus had invaded Germany, during the reign of Augustus, at the head
+      of three legions, Arminius, a chieftain of the Cheruski (a Brunswicker, we
+      would say nowadays), had surprised him, and completely surrounded his army
+      in the marshes of Teutoburg, on the banks of the Weser. Every man of this
+      army, whether a Roman or a warrior of the allied tribes wearing Roman
+      livery, had perished by the sword. For eight days the bloody waters of the
+      Weser had carried down more than thirty thousand dead bodies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the news of this disaster reached Augustus, he thought that Gaul was
+      lost, Italy in danger, and Rome herself imperilled. Mad with grief, he
+      would <span class="pagenum">[103]</span><a name="link103" id="link103"></a>rise,
+      for a month afterwards, night after night, and in his terror wander
+      through his vast palace, crying out: &ldquo;O Varus, Varus, bring me back
+      my legions!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0042" id="linkimage-0042"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/123s.jpg" alt="123s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/123.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/123m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Well, the Irmensul was nothing more than a triumphal column erected in
+      honor of Arminius and his Cheruski. <i>Irmen</i> is the same as the name
+      <i>Herman or Armin</i> (Arminius), and <i>sul</i> means column. The
+      Romans, however, did not know this, and they paid dearly for their
+      ignorance. If they had known better they would not have committed the
+      egregious blunder of kneeling down and worshipping the man who had
+      destroyed the three legions of Varus. It is very evident that they were as
+      ignorant of German as of Celtic. <span class="pagenum">[104]</span><a
+      name="link104" id="link104"></a>It ought not to surprise us, however, to
+      see the soldiers of the imperial people change stones into gods, as
+      Deucalion had changed them into men. Before the days of Homer, and for a
+      long time after him, Jupiter was in Seleucia modestly represented by a
+      fragment of rock and Cybele by a black stone. In Cyprus, the Venus of
+      Paphos was nothing but a triangular or quadrangular pyramid, nor can I
+      imagine what importance could be attached to three or four angles in a
+      body, which was soon to assume the softest and most fascinating outlines.
+      First the poets had come and sung of Cybele, the kind goddess, of Jupiter
+      the omnipotent, and of Venus, the soul of the world and the queen of
+      beauty. Inspired by their voice and the bold conceptions of their fancy,
+      the sculptors had next employed the chisel upon these stones and these
+      pyramids, and there had sprung forth from these shapeless masses the Lord
+      of Gods, armed with his lightning, the beautiful Cytherea, armed with the
+      most powerful weapons of all womanly graces. Oh, poets and sculptors, you
+      have upset everything in religion! You are responsible for the loss of
+      that austere simplicity which once characterized the faith of men!
+      Miserable cutters of stone, reckless counters of syllables, you, and you
+      alone, have substituted symbols for truth! Still, I do not condemn you;
+      although I have stood up to <span class="pagenum">[105]</span><a
+      name="link105" id="link105"></a>defend the Druids of the earliest days, I
+      am far from being insensible to the charms of art and of poetry; besides,
+      what right have I, who speak of gods and myths, to pass sentence on those
+      who have been the real creators of Mythology?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0043" id="linkimage-0043"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/125s.jpg" alt="125s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/125.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/125m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      While the conquerors of the Teutons, in the pride of their cleverness,
+      were committing blunder after blunder, and fell into the pits they had dug
+      for others, the real gods of Rome stayed on the banks of the Rhine, where
+      they had already been accepted by the Gauls. They were impatient enough to
+      see Germany also erect them temples and statues, but the Rhine with
+      uplifted waves barred the passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances <span class="pagenum">[106]</span><a
+      name="link106" id="link106"></a>of former days, when he had been compelled
+      to appear in the triumphal processions of Germanicus, as a conquered
+      river, loaded with chains, while the rabble and riffraff of Rome had
+      insulted him to his face and covered him from head to foot with the mud of
+      the Tiber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The remembrance of his former humiliation seemed to revive his wrath at
+      this day, and he unfolded his whole strength to take his revenge. In vain
+      had the Olympians tried repeatedly to cross at different points;
+      everywhere, from the Alps to the Northern Sea, they found him furious,
+      roaring and rushing, full of threats in his green waters and besprinkling
+      the banks with white foam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0044" id="linkimage-0044"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/126s.jpg" alt="126s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/126.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/126m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      At last they bribed him to espouse the cause of the Empire: they made him
+      a king, the king of German rivers. A king more or less mattered very
+      little to a people who made and unmade kings at will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rhine was evidently flattered by the distinction; and he laid aside
+      his long cherished wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had already allowed Jupiter to cross, taking <span class="pagenum">[107]</span><a
+      name="link107" id="link107"></a>him perhaps for Esus; he now carefully
+      examined the passports and certificates of good conduct of several other
+      gods, and left the way open for Apollo and Minerva, Diana and some deities
+      of fair repute; but when he saw Bacchus, his anger was rekindled. What?
+      Were not the Germans mad and quarrelsome enough, when they had only taken
+      too much beer? How could he consent to allow their passions to be aroused
+      by potent wine? He was king, and as such bound to keep this scourge from
+      his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0045" id="linkimage-0045"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/127s.jpg" alt="127s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/127.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/127m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The gods whom he had allowed to cross endeavored to plead for the son of
+      Semele,&mdash;but he remained inexorable. His severity relaxed, however,
+      when the vines planted by order of the Emperor <span class="pagenum">[108]</span><a
+      name="link108" id="link108"></a>Probus in parts of the Rheingau, began to
+      adorn the banks of the river with their verdure&mdash;he was overcome,
+      when he had once tasted the juice of the grape. He consented to let
+      Bacchus pass from bank to bank, but only at the time of the vintage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0046" id="linkimage-0046"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/128s.jpg" alt="128s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/128.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/128m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Once admitted, Bacchus soon brought into the land the whole crowd of gods
+      and goddesses, who made up his following and who enjoyed no great
+      reputation in Rome and in Greece. The Rhine <span class="pagenum">[109]</span><a
+      name="link109" id="link109"></a>became angry once more, but once more
+      caresses and unexpected honors had their hoped-for effect. He was already
+      a king; he now became a god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0047" id="linkimage-0047"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/129s.jpg" alt="129s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/129.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/129m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Henceforth Father Rhine conceived a strong affection for his former
+      adversaries. When he saw that the German bank had adopted the customs and
+      the religion of the conquerors as fully as the Celtic bank, he abandoned
+      completely his restrictive policy and did his best to help everybody
+      across. Thus Jupiter was no sooner installed in Germany, than he summoned
+      his Corybantes; Bacchus his Bacchantes and his Maenads, Diana <span
+      class="pagenum">[110]</span><a name="link110" id="link110"></a>her hunting
+      nymphs, Venus her whole court of lascivious priestesses; the Dryads and
+      the Hamadryads, the Naiads and the Tritons, the Fauns and the S il vans,
+      all came one by one. It was a perfect invasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0048" id="linkimage-0048"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/130s.jpg" alt="130s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/130.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/130m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Germany, grave and solemn as she was, felt not a little troubled by this
+      wholesale irruption of frivolous <span class="pagenum">[111]</span><a
+      name="link111" id="link111"></a>and ill-mannered deities, who so little
+      agreed with her austere habits. The young, it is true, were more easily
+      Romanized and readily caught at this poetical personification of all the
+      forces of Nature; but the old, the chieftains, and above all the Druids,
+      backed by a nearly unanimous people, asked each other what could be the
+      meaning of this sudden enthusiasm for new gods, this half mad devotion to
+      celestial clowns?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one, however, dared to raise a hand; the Teutons had lost their former
+      energy, they were enfeebled, unnerved and exhausted by their long but
+      useless resistance. Hence, like true cowards, they appeared in the pagan
+      temples, in order to conciliate the good-will of the conquerors, and then,
+      to pacify their consciences, they hastened to some dark forest and there
+      with anxious eyes and disturbed minds, they offered in fear and trembling
+      their fervent worship to the sacred oak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Roman gods were soon to encounter far more formidable adversaries
+      elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Far beyond Germany, as we find it described and limited by geographers,
+      there lived a host of nations, scattered over a vast territory, and
+      extending as far East as the shores of the Caspian Sea. The Romans had
+      never penetrated far into these unknown depths, which sent forth
+      incessantly new armies of soldiers whom they classed indiscriminately
+      <span class="pagenum">[112]</span><a name="link112" id="link112"></a>under
+      the vague and collective name of Hyperboreans. Such were the Huns, the
+      Scythians, the Goths, the Slaves (Poles, Danes, Swedes, Russians, and
+      Norwegians), all of them robbers and pirates. Some, under the name of
+      Cimbrians, had joined the Teutons t and with them invaded Gaul and even
+      Italy, till they encountered the armies of Marius; others, were about to
+      cross the Pyrenees and to fall upon Spain. Among them all, the
+      Scandinavians were by far the most powerful, intrepid soldiers and
+      fearless sailors, who were soon to darken the waters of the Rhine with
+      their countless vessels, and to make Charlemagne shed tears as he thought
+      of the days to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ere long these dauntless pirates will actually enter the Loire, then even
+      the Seine; they will besiege Paris, and finally, thanks to the able
+      statesmanship of King Charles, whom they call the Simple, they will
+      become. Christians, after a fashion, and under the name of Normans take
+      possession of one of the fairest provinces of France. Then they will
+      cultivate the soil which they had heretofore robbed of its produce, they
+      will drink beer instead of cider, they will peacefully devote themselves
+      to lawsuits and cattle-raising, and will end by wearing white cotton
+      night-caps&mdash;after having destroyed Rome and conquered England twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scandinavians, of Celtic origin like the <span class="pagenum">[113]</span><a
+      name="link113" id="link113"></a>Gauls and the Germans, led at first both
+      nomadic and sedentary lives and were rather barbarous than unpolished; but
+      they built cities and erected temples, in which they worshipped Odin the
+      One-Eyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0049" id="linkimage-0049"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/133s.jpg" alt="133s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/133.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/133m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      If the harvest failed, or whenever the first warmth of spring aroused in
+      them their innate fondness of vagabondage and war, they took to their
+      boats or mounted their horses, and the stupefied nations <span
+      class="pagenum">[114]</span><a name="link114" id="link114"></a>of Europe
+      watched the horizon and listened along the river courses, to distinguish
+      whether this great Northern tempest, this storm of iron and fire, of blood
+      and of tears, was rushing down upon them by land or by sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having crossed Germany in all directions, some of these bands, or
+      rather some remnants of such bands, settled from inclination or from
+      necessity, in certain portions of the country, especially on the islands
+      in the Main, the Weser, and the Neckar. Their priests soon made numerous
+      converts among the neighbors to the faith of Odin. The Germans paid little
+      heed to the difference between Odin and Teut. The two names designated,
+      for them, one and the same god, the one god of the Celts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The increasing influence of these Druids of the third epoch led, however,
+      naturally to some opposition. The German priests accused them of being too
+      profuse in the shedding of blood, and of having given their god Odin a
+      companion in a certain god Thor, fond of overcoming giants, and of having
+      thus destroyed the true nature of the original creed, which knew but one
+      God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A schism was about to divide the Druidical church, when the arrival of the
+      Roman deities brought the two opposite parties once more together. Each
+      yielded somewhat; <span class="pagenum">[115]</span><a name="link115"
+      id="link115"></a>they came to an understanding and finally joined
+      hands in a conspiracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0050" id="linkimage-0050"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/135s.jpg" alt="135s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/135.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/135m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[117]</span><a name="link117" id="link117"></a>The
+      Scandinavian Druids, forsaking the prudent reserve which they had so far
+      scrupulously observed, declared that, in order to triumph over the Roman
+      Olympians, Odin had not only the assistance of his all-powerful son Thor,
+      but could, if he chose, summon an escort of gods at least as imposing in
+      numbers as that of Jupiter himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German Druids veiled their faces, but the people and the whole party
+      which was opposed to Jupiter the wicked, and to Venus the shameless,
+      joyfully accepted the proposition. However cruel the Scandinavian ritual
+      appeared with its increased number of victims who had to be offered to the
+      new gods, it seemed to them better still to worship Terror than to worship
+      disgraceful Voluptuousness. They acknowledged Odin and his son Thor, and
+      impatiently waited for the arrival of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German Druids gave way, hoping perhaps that the two hosts of deities
+      would erelong fall out among themselves and soon destroy each other.
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/138s.jpg" alt="138s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/138.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/138m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Father Rhine, in his equal affection for all his brother gods, was far too
+      good-natured to take this admission of new deities amiss, and promptly
+      went northward, to the most hyperborean regions of snow and ice, in search
+      of the newly chosen gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two parties soon met face to face. <span class="pagenum">[118]</span><a
+      name="link118" id="link118"></a>It is our solemn duty to explain fully the
+      whole curious system of Scandinavian gods. We shall see that here, as in
+      all that we shall have to add, legends, myths, and traditions abound in
+      such numbers that they can be had for the asking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0051" id="linkimage-0051"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/141s.jpg" alt="141s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/141.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/141m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[121]</span><a name="link121" id="link121"></a><i>The
+      World before and since Odin.&mdash;Birth of Ymer.&mdash;The Giants of the
+      Frost.&mdash;A Log split in Two.&mdash;The First Man and the First Woman&mdash;The
+      Tree Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.&mdash;Thor&rsquo;s Three Jewels. Freyr&rsquo;s
+      Enchanted Swoj&rsquo;d.&mdash;A Souvenir of the National Guard of
+      Bellville.&mdash;The Story of Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.&mdash;Honey and
+      Blood.&mdash;Invocation.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he world was not
+      born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thick mists, unbroken by light, unbounded in limit, filled space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a long period of darkness, silence, and perfect repose, a faint
+      light is seen, vague and uncertain, hardly deserving the name; something
+      is moving unsteadily in this night. The giant Ymer has been born
+      spontaneously out of the mixture <span class="pagenum">[122]</span><a
+      name="link122" id="link122"></a>and assimilation of these closely
+      compressed mists, which sudden and severe frost has condensated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that time men of science had not yet discussed the question of
+      spontaneous generation; not one academy made mention of the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ymer, the sole inhabitant, the Robinson Crusoe of this world of darkness,
+      became tired of his solitude. Guessing how he had been born himself, he
+      gathered the mists that surrounded him, piled them one upon the other,
+      shaped them into a form resembling his own, and once more the North wind
+      came and solidified the mists. As he was a giant, he created giants; he
+      also created mountains, no doubt for the purpose of furnishing seats for
+      these giants, for the highest among them did not reach up to their belts.
+      This does not mean, that these mountains were less high than they are
+      nowadays, but the sons of Ymer were of such size that without bending down
+      a little, they could not have rested their elbows on the summit of
+      Chimborazo, and what is more marvelous still, Ymer himself not only was
+      taller than every one of his sons, but taller than all of his sons
+      together, standing one upon the shoulders of the other! When he stretched
+      himself out full length, the Alps might have served him as a pillow, while
+      his feet would have rested on <span class="pagenum">[123]</span><a
+      name="link123" id="link123"></a>Mount Caucasus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0052" id="linkimage-0052"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/143s.jpg" alt="143s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/143.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/143m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[125]</span><a name="link125" id="link125"></a>In
+      order to produce such giants and such mountains, he had, of course, to
+      consume large quantities of the material furnished by the chaos of mists;
+      the remainder of this gaseous substance, trembling in vacant space and
+      losing its balance, fell back into the depths of the valleys, and formed
+      the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some few animals began soon to stir in the waters, and on the shores of
+      that vast sea; sphinxes and dragons, hydras and griffins, kraken and
+      leviathans, all creatures of a low order, but in their proportions adapted
+      to this colossal world, this world of the infinitely great, and no doubt
+      related in some manner to the antediluvian families of mammoths and
+      pterodactyls, of ichthyosauri and plesiosauri.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A god of the first race, a creator without being created, Ymer naturally
+      did not possess that skill and that cleverness which can only be acquired
+      by long experience. However strange, therefore, it may appear, however
+      inexplicable, the fact is, that this world, fresh with new life and freed
+      from the original mists, was nevertheless covered with darkness. The only
+      light which existed was an occasional phosphorescence of the sea or a few
+      flashes of electric light, such as an aurora borealis sends forth; and
+      this faint glimmer alone illumined the pathway of those vast creatures,
+      those monstrous <span class="pagenum">[126]</span><a name="link126"
+      id="link126"></a>reptiles, who, dazzled for an instant, plunged back
+      into the lowest depths of the waters, casting up huge waves and tall
+      columns of spray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must have been a peculiarly curious sight, certainly, to see those
+      Giants of the Frost, as they were called, wandering, through the darkness
+      across the boundless plains and along endless shores, under a sky without
+      light, looking for each other from one end of the world to the other. To
+      be sure, they could accomplish the journey in a few long strides, and if
+      they were peculiarly anxious to see each other, face to face, they had
+      only to wait for the chance of a momentary flash or a faint twilight
+      glimmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight was no doubt curious, but there was no one to behold it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This state of things could not last long. With a new god a new world also
+      came into existence. This new god was very different from the first, it
+      was Light itself, condensed at the southern extremity of the heavens, far
+      from this earth inhabited by giants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One fine day&mdash;an unlucky day for them, however&mdash;these giants
+      noticed that the sky above their heads was suddenly assuming a faint
+      pinkish hue, then violet, and finally purple. At this they rejoiced. But
+      suddenly a ball of fire appeared, and they were terrified. It was Odin,
+      Odin followed <span class="pagenum">[127]</span><a name="link127"
+      id="link127"></a>by his celestial family, which consisted at least of
+      a dozen principal deities!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0053" id="linkimage-0053"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/147s.jpg" alt="147s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/147.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/147m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But no! no! I take it back! I rebel! No one can come in contact with these
+      ancient myths, without knocking against some principle of astronomy.
+      Astronomers find only seven principal deities in Scandinavian mythology,
+      when they are called upon to transform them into planets, and twelve, when
+      the question is about the signs of the Zodiac. That seems to me to make
+      mythology a. little too easy. Does it not look as if the first men had
+      been born with a telescope and a compass in their pocket, and as if they
+      had erected an observatory long before they thought of building huts for
+      themselves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately I am not bound to follow their footsteps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certain historians of high authority have found out that Odin lived upon
+      earth before he came to dwell in heaven. He was an illustrious conqueror,
+      <span class="pagenum">[128]</span><a name="link128" id="link128"></a>very
+      expert at killing men, one of those scourges of God, who fall upon nations
+      in order to break them to pieces. As a matter of course, these nations
+      deified him after his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0054" id="linkimage-0054"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/148s.jpg" alt="148s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/148.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/148m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      I see nothing astronomical in all this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence, I return to my own method, and propose to describe him, as he
+      appeared to his Druids, his Scalds, and his worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[129]</span><a name="link129" id="link129"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0055" id="linkimage-0055"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/149s.jpg" alt="149s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/149.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/149m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      He arrived from the southern countries, no doubt from the Orient, bringing
+      with him the sun, as an indispensable auxiliary in the great taskwhich he
+      had undertaken, to reform this dark and ice-covered world: &ldquo;For
+      there was a time,&rdquo; says the Edda, the bible of the Scandinavians,
+      &ldquo;when the sun, the moon, and the stars did not know the place they
+      were to occupy.<span class="pagenum">[131]</span><a name="link131"
+      id="link131"></a> It was then the gods assembled and agreed as to the post
+      which was to be assigned to each one of them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the installation of the heavenly bodies had thus been agreed upon,
+      Odin followed the example of all the Hercules of Egypt and of Greece, and
+      began his benevolent career by freeing the earth of all the monsters by
+      which it was infested. Ymer was the first to succumb to his blows, and
+      after him, the other giants of the frost, &ldquo;a race of evildoers,&rdquo;
+      adds the Edda. Evildoers? Whom did they aggrieve, I wonder? The
+      complainants must have been the kraken, the griffins, and the serpents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world had hardly come into existence and already the right of the
+      stronger had established the doctrine: <i>Væ victis!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the giants of the frost a single one escaped. He must have been a
+      married man, for his descendants became after a while so numerous as to
+      trouble the Ases, that is to say, Odin and his companions, the other gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the giants, came the turn of land and sea monsters, who were almost
+      as formidable as they themselves. In the general destruction two monsters
+      <span class="pagenum">[132]</span><a name="link132" id="link132"></a>only
+      survived: the wolf Fenris, with his fearful jaws, which enabled him to
+      crush mountains and even to injure the sun, and the serpent Iormungandur,
+      the great sea serpent of world-wide renown. Both these monsters were one
+      day to aid the giants of the frost in avenging themselves on their
+      conqueror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0056" id="linkimage-0056"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/152s.jpg" alt="152s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/152.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/152m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Odin thought he had now nothing more to fear, and returned to the realms
+      of light, there to enjoy his glory in peace and to revel in the delights
+      of Walhalla.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[133]</span><a name="link133" id="link133"></a>One
+      morning he came down to see how the world was coming on since he had
+      reorganized it, and he found to his great joy, that the new creation was
+      assuming a more pleasing appearance. Grass was growing in the plains, on
+      the slopes of hills, and even at the bottom of the rivers and the sea;
+      here and there trees of varied forms and shapes arose and gave variety to
+      the monotonous horizon; some, crowding together in groups on the mountain
+      side, seemed to whisper confidentially to each other, as the breeze was
+      lightly agitating their foliage, while others stood together in countless
+      hosts, stretching away over hill and dale as far as eye could reach, but
+      silent and immovable, like an army which remains motionless, while the
+      chiefs are deliberating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0057" id="linkimage-0057"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/153s.jpg" alt="153s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/153.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/153m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Behind the green curtain of forests, deer, eland, and aurochs were
+      bounding in herds, now and then showing their beautiful horns or their
+      dark bushy brows at the opening of some clearing; goats were <span
+      class="pagenum">[134]</span><a name="link134" id="link134"></a>climbing
+      about on the rocks and venturing close to the brink of precipices; birds
+      were singing in the groves, now swinging playfully on the supple branches
+      of willows, and now darting suddenly on swift wings through the air; fish
+      were gliding silently under the surface of the waters, which reflected
+      their silvery sheen or broke in soft ripples, while butterflies and
+      insects were sporting and buzzing around beautiful flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin smiled; the artist was pleased with his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But were animals, impelled by natural instincts only and exclusively
+      occupied with the desire to satisfy their coarse wants, were such animals
+      worthy to be the sole owners of such a charming abode?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It occurred to him to invent a being which, without participating in the
+      divine essence, might still rise high above all other creatures. This time
+      the divine artist wanted a spectator, to witness his work, to appreciate
+      it intelligently, and afterwards to profit by it for some good purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was meditating on it during a walk on the sea-shore, when a piece of
+      wood, a fragment of a huge branch of a tree which the wind had broken off,
+      attracted his attention. It had evidently fallen into a river, which had
+      carried it out into the high sea, and there it had been beaten and bruised
+      by <span class="pagenum">[135]</span><a name="link135" id="link135"></a>ebb
+      and tide. He drew this poor shapeless stick of wood towards him, split it
+      in two and made out of it a man and a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear? Do you understand?&rdquo; Asks the Edda, at this
+      point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, what is this intended to convey to us? That man, exposed to the
+      caprices of the elements, is nothing but a poor plaything in the hands of
+      Fate? Very well, let us admit this explanation. But can the sacred book of
+      the Scandinavians really presume to teach us that the origin of mankind
+      must be looked for in two sticks of wood? We cannot but think that that
+      would be a sorry jest, alike unworthy of the general solemnity of the Edda
+      and of the mysterious majesty of ancient cosmogonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides, we ought not to forget that all the Northern nations attributed a
+      divine character to trees; if in Germany the oak was held sacred, the
+      hyperboreans held the ash tree in great respect, and the question is only
+      whether our first father was made of the wood of an ash tree, an oak, or a
+      willow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This leads us naturally to the consideration of the ash <i>Ygdrasil</i>
+      and its curious population of gods, birds, and quadrupeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The branches of this marvelous tree spread over the whole surface of the
+      earth; its top supported <span class="pagenum">[136]</span><a
+      name="link136" id="link136"></a>the Walhalla and rose is to the uppermost
+      heavens, while its roots penetrated to the very bottom of hell. Under its
+      shadow dwell Odin and his Ases, when the government of the world requires
+      his presence, or some important question has to be decided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0058" id="linkimage-0058"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/156s.jpg" alt="156s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/156.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/156m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Two swift winged ravens are incessantly flying to and fro in the Universe,
+      to see what is going on; then they come and perch, one on his left and one
+      on his right shoulder, and whisper into his ear the news of the day. A
+      squirrel, as swift in its movements as the two ravens, is perpetually
+      running up and down the tree. If you doubt my word, hear what the poet
+      says:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+.... The fearful Odin Was seated beneath the ancient ash,
+The sacred tree whose immortal brow
+Rises and touches the vault of heaven.
+<span class="pagenum">[137]</span><a name="link137" id="link137"></a>On the top an eagle with eager eyes,
+With piercing eyes, with ever open eyes,
+Takes in the whole Universe in a single glance.
+Odin receives his swift messages.
+Incessantly a tiny squirrel
+Comes and goes; the god&rsquo;s voice cheers it onward.
+All at once it dashes from the trunk to the top
+And in an instant it returns again
+From the top to the trunk. Odin, when it comes,
+Turns an attentive ear to the squirrel.....
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the poet does not tell the whole story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0059" id="linkimage-0059"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/157s.jpg" alt="157s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/157.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/157m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      To act as a check upon the reports of the eagle, the ravens, and the
+      squirrel, a vulture is perching <span class="pagenum">[138]</span><a
+      name="link138" id="link138"></a>upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree,
+      who looks over all the horizons of the earth and the universe, watching
+      for the slightest stir and giving notice of any important event by his
+      cries or the flapping of his wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still other animals, however, inhabit the great ash tree Ygdrasil. Some of
+      these play a sinister part in the great menagerie; they are hideous
+      reptiles, half concealed in the slimy marshes into which one of the roots
+      of the tree finds its way, and ever striving to pour their venom into the
+      mire; beneath another root a dragon is crouching, who constantly gnaws at
+      it, and four starving deer, rushing through its branches, forever devour
+      its foliage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear? Do you understand?&rdquo; asks the Edda once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the present we do not presume to interpret these descriptions, and
+      before we attempt to penetrate into these dark mysteries, we will mention
+      the principal chiefs among the Ases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mystic marriage of Odin and Frigg resulted in the god Thor, who is
+      held in equal veneration with his father. As his duty is to carry thunder
+      and lightning, it is he who shakes the earth whenever he drives through
+      the clouds in his car drawn by two goats and producing a noise represented
+      by the words: &ldquo;<i>Pumerle pump! Ptimerle pump! Pliz! Pluz! Schmi!
+      Schmur! Tarantara! Tarantara!</i>&rdquo;. <span class="pagenum">[139]</span><a
+      name="link139" id="link139"></a>This onomatopoetic translation of the
+      flashing of lightning and the rolling of thunder, is not my own; it comes
+      directly from Dr. Martin Luther, the great Reformer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor is also engaged in pursuing and destroying the giants of the
+      mountains, degenerate children of the giants of the frost, in size at
+      least. At a later period we shall meet with giants of still smaller
+      dimensions. Alas! that here below everything that is great and strong has
+      a tendency to decrease steadily!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0060" id="linkimage-0060"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/159s.jpg" alt="159s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/159.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/159m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      For this war against the giants Odin has bestowed upon his son three
+      precious objects, which in the inventory of the Ases appear under the name
+      of <i>Thor&rsquo;s Three Jewels.</i> The first is his weighty hammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Mjoïner</i> (some people call it his club), which goes forth by itself
+      to meet giants and crushes their heads. One of the commentators upon the
+      Edda professes to see in the giants of the mountains nothing but the
+      mountains themselves, and in the hammer Mjoïner, nothing but lightning,
+      which generally strikes their summit. We must evidently <span
+      class="pagenum">[140]</span><a name="link140" id="link140"></a>put as
+      little faith in commentators as in astronomers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second of Thor&rsquo;s jewels was a pair of iron gloves. As soon as he
+      puts them on, his spear no sooner reaches the point at which it is aimed,
+      than it returns to his hand, precisely as the falcon comes back to the
+      keeper&rsquo;s gauntlet, after having destroyed its victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third jewel of Thor is his war belt; when he puts it on, his strength
+      is twice as great as before; in fact, he becomes irresistible and would
+      overthrow the great Odin himself. But Odin has nothing to fear on his
+      part, for in spite of his brutal and passionate temper, Thor is always an
+      obedient and submissive son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asa-Thor, that is to say, the Lord Thor, was most highly respected among
+      men as the redhaired master of thunder and lightning, and as the destroyer
+      of giants; and he was also greatly feared as an active, blustering god, of
+      a troublesome, turbulent temper and of somewhat eccentric manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another weapon, at least as marvelous as Asa-Thor&rsquo;s famous hammer,
+      was the sword of the god Freyr. This sword was endowed with an
+      intelligence very rarely to be met with among swords, and punctually
+      obeyed the orders of its master. Even in his absence, it went promptly and
+      faithfully <span class="pagenum">[141]</span><a name="link141" id="link141"></a>to
+      carry out his orders, striking here and there at a given point, or making
+      terrible havoc in the midst of a battle, without a hand at the hilt to
+      direct its mortal blows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0061" id="linkimage-0061"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/161s.jpg" alt="161s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/161.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/161m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The good Freyr, as pacific a god as ever lived, was quite indifferent to
+      battles and fights; hence he gave his orders quietly to his faithful
+      sword, while he remained comfortably seated at Odin&rsquo;s table,
+      enjoying his strong beer and the rarest wines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot help wishing that they might have known the art of manufacturing
+      guns after this system, at the time when I was a lieutenant in the
+      Belleville National Guard. It would have been so pleasant to see a rifle
+      move gravely to and fro, quite alone, in front of the City Hall and the
+      Guard House; or to meet a patrol of four <span class="pagenum">[142]</span><a
+      name="link142" id="link142"></a>guns, accompanied by a corporal, but a
+      flesh and blood corporal to cry out: Who is there?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0062" id="linkimage-0062"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/162s.jpg" alt="162s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/162.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/162m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime the happy owners of these improved weapons might have been
+      sitting, not at Odin&rsquo;s table, but at the nearest coffee house or
+      restaurant, <span class="pagenum">[143]</span><a name="link143"
+      id="link143"></a>drinking beer or wine just like the Scandinavian
+      gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately our manufacturers of arms have not yet reached that degree
+      of skill, which our forefathers seem to have possessed, and thus I have
+      never yet been able to enjoy such a sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The happy owner of this magic weapon, Freyr, presided over the general
+      administration of the clouds; it was he who made fine weather or rain, a
+      very troublesome office, which must have exposed him to countless
+      petitions and most contradictory prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His sister Freya, afterwards called Frigg, was Odin&rsquo;s wife and the
+      most honored goddess on earth as well as in heaven. She inspired and
+      protected lovers, and very different from her sister in Greece, this
+      Northern Venus enjoyed an unsullied reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They say that once, when her husband had gone away on a long journey, she
+      was so deeply grieved at his absence, that her tears ran day and night
+      incessantly; these tears, however, differed from those of mortal beings;
+      &ldquo;they were all drops of gold which fell into her bosom,&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      hence the Northern people call the precious metal to this day <i>Freyas
+      tears</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One only among all the dwellers in Walhalla had been able to give her some
+      comfort by singing <span class="pagenum">[144]</span><a name="link144"
+      id="link144"></a>his sweetest songs; this was the god Bragi, the god
+      of poetry and beautiful words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tradition which deserves to be mentioned here, accounts for the manner
+      in which he obtained this precious gift of eloquence and the art of
+      poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the early days of the world, when the creating god had concentrated, so
+      to say, all the active powers of humanity in a few individuals, and when a
+      long life permitted these favored beings to carry on their studies till
+      they reached a happy end, there lived on earth a wise man who possessed an
+      art unknown, not among men only, but among the gods themselves. This was
+      the art of perpetuating thoughts by word-painting, of reproducing them in
+      outward forms, not to the eye by colors, but to the ear by sounds. This
+      sage was called Kvasir. He had invented the <i>Runes</i>, the art of
+      poetry, and the no less precious art of reproducing words and fixing them
+      in writing. He cut his runes on beech tablets; if he had gone a step
+      farther, he would have invented printing long before Guttenberg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kvasir was then the sole owner of the art of Poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two wicked dwarfs prowling about in search of treasures, took it into
+      their heads, that the treasure of Poetry was better than any other, and
+      forthwith determined to obtain possession of it. They killed Kvasir, into
+      whose dwelling they had crept by <span class="pagenum">[145]</span><a
+      name="link145" id="link145"></a>stealth, and as they were masters in
+      magic, like all the dwarfs of those days, they carefully collected his
+      blood, and mixing it, in different proportions, with honey, put it into
+      three vessels, which they closed hermetically. These three vessels
+      contained respectively Logic, Eloquence, and Poetry. To keep them safe
+      till the day on which they should be used, they buried them in the depths
+      of a cave which was inaccessible to men and unknown to the gods
+      themselves. But one of those travelling agents, who under the form of
+      ravens, were continually wandering over the world in Odin&rsquo;s employ,
+      had been a silent witness of the transactions, the murder, the mixing, and
+      the hiding of the three vessels. He returned instantly to the ash Ygdrasil
+      and reported it all to his master. The god gave his orders, which the
+      squirrel, no doubt, at once carried to the eagle, and the latter, who was
+      continually on the watch on the top of the sacred tree, left his post for
+      a few moments in charge of the vulture, and flew with rapid wings to the
+      cave, from whence he returned laden with the three precious vessels. It is
+      to be supposed that he carried one in his beak, and the two others, one in
+      each of his claws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He placed the mysterious vessels at Odin&rsquo;s feet and at once returned
+      to relieve the vulture and to resume his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin opened first the vessel which contained <span class="pagenum">[146]</span><a
+      name="link146" id="link146"></a>Poetry and tasted the contents. From that
+      moment he never spoke otherwise than in verse. He also tasted Logic, and
+      henceforth he spoke and reasoned with such extreme accuracy, that he found
+      no one to agree with him any longer; he tasted Eloquence, and as soon as
+      he opened his lips, he might have been mistaken for one of our own most
+      eminent lawyers. Gold chains seemed to come out from his lips, as was the
+      case with Ogmius, with which he bound the ears and hearts of all his
+      hearers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst he was thus enjoying himself, Bragi his son, and Saga his daughter,
+      who were sitting by him, felt their mouths water and looked imploringly at
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Setting aside the terror with which the Druids have surrounded Odin, he
+      seems to have been occasionally good-natured, and certainly always acted
+      like a kind father. He offered the vessel with Poetry first to Saga,
+      courteously giving her the preference on account of her sex. She barely
+      touched it with her lips. When Bragi&rsquo;s turn came, he eagerly
+      swallowed as much as he could, and without taking time to gather breath,
+      he began a grand triumphal chant in honor of the feasts, the loves, the
+      wars, and the greatness of the gods, the stars of the firmament, paradise,
+      hell, and the ash Ygdrasil. <span class="pagenum">[147]</span><a
+      name="link147" id="link147"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0063" id="linkimage-0063"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/167s.jpg" alt="167s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/167.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/167m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[149]</span><a name="link149" id="link149"></a>In
+      well chosen cadences he imitated the clanking of cups, the cooing of doves
+      and of lovers, the tumult of battles, the harmonies of the celestial
+      spheres, and all this with such energy, such fire and such grace by turns,
+      that Odin was enchanted, and having become a master himself about five
+      minutes ago, on the spot changed his name of the Long-bearded God, which
+      he had borne so far, to that of the God of Poetry. Moreover, he entrusted
+      to his keeping the threefold treasure which had been taken from Kvasir&rsquo;s
+      murderers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was that god Bragi who alone succeeded in comforting the beautiful
+      and inconsolable Freya in her great grief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through him the Druids were instructed in the art of verse; to him is due
+      that terrible Scandinavian poetry, which contains, according to Ozanam,
+      quite as much blood as honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to Saga, she became the goddess of Tradition. &ldquo;The heart of
+      history is in tradition,&rdquo; says a master, a sage, and a poet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good goddess Saga, your lips, I know, never touched the vessel containing
+      Eloquence, nor that which held Logic, far from it! And still I count upon
+      you to support me in carrying out my work, which I have perhaps
+      imprudently begun; for I begin to be overwhelmed with materials, the
+      subject is a very grave one, and, in spite of the good advice of my
+      learned doctor and the assistance of my two charming lady-companions, time
+      and strength threaten not to suffice. Therefore I beseech you as well as
+      my readers, to grant me a short repose, before I proceed any farther on my
+      journey through Odin&rsquo;s fantastic world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[150]</span><a name="link150" id="link150"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0064" id="linkimage-0064"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/170s.jpg" alt="170s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/170.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/170m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[151]</span><a name="link151" id="link151"></a>
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0065" id="linkimage-0065"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/173s.jpg" alt="173s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/173.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/173m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Short<span class="pagenum">[153]</span><a name="link153" id="link153"></a>
+      Biographies.&mdash;<i>A Clairvoyant among the Gods.&mdash;A Bright God.&mdash;Tyr
+      and the Wolf Fenris.&mdash;The Hospital at the Walhalla.&mdash;Why was
+      Odin one-eyed?&mdash;The Three Norns.&mdash;Mimer the Sage.&mdash;A
+      Goddess the Mother of Four Oxen.&mdash;The Love Affairs of Heimdall, the
+      God with the Golden Teeth.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e have no
+      intention of giving here a complete list of the numerous deities of the
+      North. We will only mention Hermode, Odin&rsquo;s messenger and man of
+      business; Forseti, the peacemaker; Widar, the god of silence, a dumb
+      person who only walks on air, as if he were afraid to hear the noise of
+      his own footsteps; Vali, the skilfull archer; Uller, the excellent skater,
+      who taught the giant Tialff his art, in spite of what the poet Klopstock
+      says to the contrary; Hoder, a mysterious deity, whose name must never be
+      uttered by any one in heaven or on earth. Why not? Odin alone knows the
+      reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us also mention Heimdall, with the golden teeth. A son of Odin, he had
+      nine mothers&mdash;eight more than had ever been known before him. He is
+      the guardian of Walhalla, and his duty is to watch lest the giants should
+      one fine day attempt to storm the heavenly abode by means of the Bifrost
+      bridge, that is, the rainbow. But the gods can sleep in peace; neither the
+      eagle nor the ravens on the ash Ygdrasil can surpass Heimdall in
+      vigilance. The senses of sight and hearing are in him developed to a
+      perfectly marvelous degree; he can hear the grass grow in the meadows and
+      the wool grow on the back of the sheep. From one end of the world he sees
+      a fly pass through the air at the other end, and, more than that, he sees
+      distinctly the different joints in its feet and the black or brown spots
+      with which its wings are <span class="pagenum">[155]</span><a
+      name="link155" id="link155"></a>dotted. In the midst of the darkest night
+      and at the bottom of the sea where it is deepest, he sees an atom moving
+      and watches the marriage of monads. There is nothing in the whole universe
+      hid from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why should this god Heimdall have golden teeth, after a fashion of
+      some of the natives of Sunda? Odin alone knows the reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among all these gods Balder is the most richly endowed, the best, the
+      handsomest and the most virtuous&mdash;Balder, the Bright God, by
+      eminence. Although the son of Odin and Frigg, he might be taken for a son
+      of Freya, on account of his strong resemblance to Love itself, not to the
+      turbulent, passionate, and capricious Love of the Greeks, but to Love in
+      the widest and noblest sense of the word,&mdash;Love, in fine, in its
+      Christian meaning. Balder represents that universal goodness, loyalty,
+      affection, and harmony, which binds all beings to each other; Bragi, the
+      poet is his brother; Forseti, the peacemaker, is his son. But we shall but
+      too soon have to return to him on a most melancholy occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of our desire to close this already too numerous list, we cannot
+      well pass over in silence that poor Tyr, the very type of intrepidity and
+      loyalty, who fell a victim to his own prowess and to his imprudent
+      confidence in the other gods. <span class="pagenum">[156]</span><a
+      name="link156" id="link156"></a>The latter, having one day met the wolf
+      Fenris, invited him to enjoy a good meal with them. The wolf, always
+      voraciously hungry, listened to the proposal. Then the Ases, pretending to
+      fear that he might play them an ugly trick on the way home, insisted upon
+      leading him by a chain around his neck, pledging their word as gods,
+      however, that they would set him free upon going to table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0066" id="linkimage-0066"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/176s.jpg" alt="176s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/176.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/176m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Fenris, suspicious as all wolves, in fact, as all wicked creatures are,
+      consented to be bound, but made it a condition that as a proof of the good
+      faith of the Ases, one of them should put his hand into his mouth. Tyr
+      agreed to do so without hesitation, not expecting that personages of such
+      lofty position could possibly be faithless. The gods, <span class="pagenum">[157]</span><a
+      name="link157" id="link157"></a>however, did behave faithlessly and kept
+      Fenris a prisoner, whereupon the wolf claimed the fulfillment of the
+      pledge, and when Tyr put his hand into his mouth, coolly bit it off up to
+      the wrist. Hence that particular joint has ever since been called <i>the
+      wolf&rsquo;s joint</i>, in memory of this inartistic amputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the gods had a one-handed brother among them, after having long been
+      presided over by a one-eyed god. But Tyr and Odin were by no means the
+      only gods who labored under such an infirmity. Heimdall with the golden
+      teeth must evidently have had a set of false teeth; Widar, the god of
+      silence, was dumb, and Hoder, that mysterious being whose name must not be
+      pronounced by any one, was blind. There was also a certain god, called
+      Herblinde, who was not only blind but&mdash;actually dead! We poor mortals
+      generally imagine that death includes blindness as a matter of course, but
+      it was not so, apparently, among these mystic personages. Herblinde, for
+      instance, was quite blind, although he was quite dead also, and yet he
+      attended the meetings of the gods and even had a vote in their counsels.
+      Do you understand that? I do not, I am sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this grand council, this hospital of the Walhalla, which counted among
+      its members a onehanded and a dumb god, a toothless and two blind <span
+      class="pagenum">[158]</span><a name="link158" id="link158"></a>gods, was,
+      as I said, presided over by one-eyed Odin! This fact recalls forcibly the
+      old proverb: Among the blind the one-eyed is king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why had Odin but one eye?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately I am able, for once, to give an answer to this question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Astronomers have naturally found a reply to this Why? in their
+      imperturbable system of sidereal interpretations. Odin was the sun-god;
+      the sun was the eye of Nature, Nature had but one eye&mdash;consequently
+      Odin was bound to be born one-eyed!.... Now you see why your daughter is
+      deaf-mute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Edda, however, gives a different account of the matter, and I feel
+      bound to adopt this explanation, as it is founded upon a knowledge of the
+      most secret mysteries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin had two eyes when he was born, and the sun was nothing more than his
+      travelling companion, when he came from the far East, to revive and warm
+      the earth which had so long been in the hands of&rsquo; the giants of the
+      frost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several centuries after he had created man, he was one day walking up and
+      down in the lower parts of his great ash tree Ygdrasil, and thinking of
+      the greatly increased responsibility which rested upon him since he had
+      added the government of the earth to that of heaven, and since the earth
+      <span class="pagenum">[159]</span><a name="link159" id="link159"></a>had
+      begun to be peopled with a multitude of races. He was asking himself
+      whether the knowledge of all things had been revealed to him fully enough
+      to enable him satisfactorily to fill, his two great offices. He had
+      quaffed ample draughts by turns from the three vessels of Kvasir, but
+      Eloquence, Poetry, and even Logic do not supply Wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0067" id="linkimage-0067"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/179s.jpg" alt="179s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/179.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/179m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      As he passed by a large tank fed by a purling brook, he saw three
+      beautiful swans swimming merrily about in it, who after having examined
+      him with half thoughtful, half mocking attention, twisted their long
+      flexible necks in strange contortions and then seemed to converse with
+      each other by significative glances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke to them and asked them if they possessed the secret of Wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The swans suddenly plunged beneath the surface, <span class="pagenum">[160]</span><a
+      name="link160" id="link160"></a>and in their place there appeared three
+      beautiful women, representing three different stages of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were the Norns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0068" id="linkimage-0068"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/180s.jpg" alt="180s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/180.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/180m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The first, called Urda, knew the Past; the second, called Verandi, saw the
+      Present unfold itself before her eyes, hour by hour and minute by minute,
+      and when to-day had become yesterday, her older sister gathered up the
+      departed day and entered it on her record. Finally Skulda, the third, the
+      Norn of the Future, enjoyed the privilege of beholding with her far-seeing
+      eyes the germs of all future events and of being able to foretell with
+      unerring accuracy the date and the consequences of their occurrence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us pause here a moment to notice a remark communicated to me by the
+      amiable and learned <span class="pagenum">[161]</span><a name="link161"
+      id="link161"></a>Dr. Rosalh, which may not be without interest to some
+      of my readers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that the Romans had at first pretended to recognize
+      in these three Norns their own three Fates, probably because they were
+      three and because they were women; at least I can see no other reason.
+      Urda, Verandi, and Skulda were as beautiful and as graceful as the three
+      Parcæ&mdash;Alecto, Lachesis, and Atropos&mdash;were ugly. Besides, their
+      duties were entirely different. The Norns knew the fate of men, but they
+      were utterly unable to lengthen human life. Such at least is the opinion
+      of the great Holinshed in his Chronicles. Warburton sees in them nothing
+      more than Valkyrias, but, what is far more astonishing, Shakespeare chose
+      these three beautiful prophetic virgins, to furnish the three hideous,
+      unclean, and toothless witches, the weird sisters, who called out to
+      Macbeth, &ldquo;All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare had evidently taken the curse denounced by the Church against
+      the ancient deities in its literal meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin had a better opinion of the three sisters; he conversed for some time
+      with them, and afterwards came frequently back to visit them. It was thus
+      and by their aid that he gained experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even Experience, added to the precious gifts <span class="pagenum">[162]</span><a
+      name="link162" id="link162"></a>of Eloquence, Poetry, and Logic, is not
+      able to supply Wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0069" id="linkimage-0069"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/182s.jpg" alt="182s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/182.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/182m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      He took counsel with the Norns, and in his anxiety to possess this most
+      precious of all gifts, he expressed his willingness to exchange for it, if
+      needs be, his treasures of poetry and of eloquence, his magic armor which
+      made him safe against all danger, his horse Sleipner, which had eight legs
+      and crossed the air with the rapidity of lightning, his eagle and his
+      vulture, his squirrel and his two <span class="pagenum">[163]</span><a
+      name="link163" id="link163"></a>ravens. Then he went to Mimer, the wisest
+      man in existence, the successor of old Kvasir, and attended his lectures
+      like the most humble and zealous of students. When he had mastered the
+      subject, and felt that he had acquired Wisdom at last, he paid the
+      philosopher liberally by giving him one of his own eyes, in order thus to
+      show him the high value he set upon the service which had been rendered to
+      him by Mimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the reason why Odin was one-eyed. The truth is far too honorable
+      to the god to be hid under idle astronomical pretexts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, what use did he make of his wisdom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began by regulating the government of heaven. The Ases had until now
+      lived very much as they chose; he now gave to each of them a duty to
+      perform: to Niord the management of rivers and of fishing; to Egir, the
+      seas and navigation; and so to others, requiring regularity and accuracy
+      of all, but sternly prohibiting the display of extreme zeal, just as
+      Talleyrand used to do with his diplomatic apprentices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned to the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here men had multiplied incessantly, and with their numbers their wants
+      had increased, and alas! with these, their vices also! In order to satisfy
+      the wants and to repress the vices, they had established among them that
+      great, primitive law which <span class="pagenum">[164]</span><a
+      name="link164" id="link164"></a>constitutes the whole code of laws among
+      barbarians&mdash;the right of the stronger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0070" id="linkimage-0070"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/184s.jpg" alt="184s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/184.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/184m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;TO EGIR, THE SEAS AND NAVIGATION.&rdquo;
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The most fertile pastures, the rocks and grottoes best fitted for
+      dwellings and safe retreats, the forests that were richest in game and the
+      springs that were most frequented by the flocks, all were taken by force
+      and possession maintained by the strength of the sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wise Odin felt that violence gave no right and that theft could not give a
+      title to possession. He <span class="pagenum">[165]</span><a
+      name="link165" id="link165"></a>determined to establish the right
+      of property, and to give it, for greater efficiency, a religious character
+      which would make it sacred in the eyes of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of his daughters, Gefione, was sent by him to one of the most powerful
+      chiefs of Scandinavia. She presented herself before his tent, with
+      presents in her hands. In return she asked only for a span of land. The
+      chief gave her a vast but uncultivated territory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0071" id="linkimage-0071"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/185s.jpg" alt="185s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/185.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/185m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Next she went, with secret purposes in her mind and always inspired by
+      Odin, to a distant country, into the mountains, where giants dwelt. Here
+      she married one of these giants, the most powerful of them all, to whom
+      she bore four sons. The strong are apt to be gentle. Gefione took her four
+      sons, changed them into oxen, and by words of gentle persuasion induced
+      her husband to harness them himself to a plough. A river marked the
+      boundary of the field, on the other side stood an altar. Thus was the
+      first piece of property inaugurated, <span class="pagenum">[166]</span><a
+      name="link166" id="link166"></a>by purchase, by labor, and under the
+      protection of the gods. The first owner, the gigantic husband, represented
+      Force submitting to Right, and the four oxen represented the hard-working
+      family, improving the soil and enriching it with the sweat of their brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon people began to imitate Gefione&rsquo;s example, and in all
+      directions land was measured and laid out; stones were put up to mark the
+      boundary lines of each legal possession, and these stones were held
+      sacred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to encourage men in these efforts, the Ases made it a point every
+      morning to show their bright, shining heads above the horizon and thus to
+      cheer them by their presence and the interest they took in their labors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god Thor even came once to pay a visit to his sister Gefione, and then
+      cast a few flashes of lightning upon each one of the newly acquired pieces
+      of land, to render them sacred. Hence the old, deeply rooted notion that
+      lightning hallows all it touches. Afterwards, and as late as the fifteenth
+      century, it was deemed sufficient at Bonn, at Cologne, and at Mayence, to
+      cast Thor&rsquo;s hammer upon the piece of land that had become a fief, in
+      order to establish an absolute right of proprietorship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the right of property alone did not suffice to render human society
+      stable and flourishing,&mdash;<span class="pagenum">[167]</span><a
+      name="link167" id="link167"></a>the nations of the earth longed for a
+      hierarchy of rank and race; at least the divine pupil of the wise Mimer
+      decided it should be so. The means he employed to found such a hierarchy
+      and the system itself appear curious and odd enough to us, who are no
+      gods, but, unsuitable as they look now, they were successful at the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By his order Heimdall, the god with the false teeth, abandoned his post as
+      guardian of the Wal-halla for nine days, and after a long journey across
+      the country, knocked at the door of a wretched tumbledown hut, where the
+      <i>Great-grandmother</i> lived. Here he remained three days and three
+      nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Great-grandmother brought a male child into the world, black-skinned,
+      broad-shouldered, with hard horny hands, and powerful arms. They called it
+      <i>Thrall</i>, the serf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thrall&rsquo;s natural inclination led him to prefer the hard work in
+      mines and in the wilderness; he was fond of the society of domestic
+      animals and even slept with them in their stables. His sons became
+      cattle-raisers, miners, or charcoal-burners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heimdall had continued his journey. He next stopped at the <i>Grandmother&rsquo;s</i>
+      house, a small, simple cottage, but lacking in nothing that was useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he remained three days and three nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Grandmother gave birth to a son, who was called <i>Karl</i>, the free
+      man. <span class="pagenum">[168]</span><a name="link168" id="link168"></a>Karl
+      was fond of driving oxen under the yoke, of working in wood and in iron,
+      of building boats and houses, and of trading. From him are descended our
+      workmen and artisans, our merchants and builders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning his face towards the south, Heimdall next went to a beautiful
+      mansion, surrounded by magnificent gardens and reflected in the blue
+      waters of a large lake. As the god had only to show his golden teeth in
+      order to be welcomed by every woman he saw, the mistress of this mansion,
+      the <i>Mother</i>, also received him with great delight and tried to do
+      him honor. Dressed in her most costly robes she put an embroidered cloth
+      upon a table of polished wood and offered him in silver dishes all the
+      varieties of fish and game, in which the lake and the park near the house
+      abounded. The Mother did everything to keep the god as long as possible at
+      her house, but, as at the Grandmother&rsquo;s and at the Great-grandmother&rsquo;s,
+      so he remained here only three days and three nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A son appeared to console the Mother for the departure of her illustrious
+      guest; this child had at its birth already rosy cheeks, long hair, and a
+      haughty look. When he was still a child, he was fond of brandishing his
+      spear and of bending his bow; at fifteen he swam across the blue waters of
+      the lake, or plunged on an unbroken horse into <span class="pagenum">[169]</span><a
+      name="link169" id="link169"></a>the depths of the forest, riding as fast
+      as the wind. They called him Jarl, the noble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some years later Heimdall paid another visit to this country; delighted
+      with the prowess of Jarl, he acknowledged him as his son and taught him
+      the language of birds, which the gods alone understand and fluently speak.
+      He taught him also the science of Runes, of runes of victory which are
+      engraven on the blades of swords; runes of love to be traced upon drinking
+      horns or the thumbnail; runes of the sea, with which the prow and the
+      rudder of ships are decorated&mdash;in all cases precautionary measures by
+      which alone ill fortune can be kept at bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides these gifts of knowledge, he bestowed upon him an inalienable,
+      hereditary domain. This was the first entailed estate ever known in
+      Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jarl, says the Edda, was a man of <i>eight-horse power</i>. Could we
+      express it better in the noble railway Anglo-Saxon of our day, or does our
+      modern English really go back to the old Scandinavian, as this coincidence
+      would seem to prove?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jarl&rsquo;s descendants are the great chieftains, the barons, princes,
+      kings, and Druids, who have all inherited great power from their divine
+      ancestor with the golden teeth. They alone are his legitimate and
+      acknowledged children; the descendants of the grandmother and
+      great-grandmother are illegitimate. <span class="pagenum">[170]</span><a
+      name="link170" id="link170"></a>Still, whether acknowledged by the
+      law or not, they all form a close chain, a single family, they all spring
+      from the same god! Thus the humblest among them saw his rights secured for
+      the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must confess that, the more carefully I examine these barbarians,
+      whether they were gods or men, the more I am surprised to discover beneath
+      the outward cloak of their fables so many correct ideas of order and of
+      justice. These fables had, of course, their day and then passed away. Up
+      to the present time, it is true, there is not much of the day gone;
+      perhaps also Odin may be blamed for having invented, before the world was
+      a few hundred years old, both the Middle Ages and the Feudal System. But
+      it would be wrong to blame him, for it must be acknowledged, that in spite
+      of the violence of their manners and the bloody nature of their worship, a
+      certain civilization had at last appeared among the Scandinavians. It may
+      be called brutal, I grant; it may be called aggressive even, but it was
+      after all an improvement, and it has held its own in the North, under snow
+      and ice, like the vigorous plants of our Alps. How comes it that the
+      Germans and the Franks, more favored by climate and by contact with highly
+      civilized nations, remained so long inferior to the Scandinavians in this
+      respect? Perhaps they were more liable to be invaded than the Sons of the
+      North; the Scandinavians invaded the continent <span class="pagenum">[171]</span><a
+      name="link171" id="link171"></a>in all directions, but no one ever dreamt
+      of invading their country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having thus established the right of property and a certain social
+      hierarchy, Odin had next instituted marriage with the symbolic ring, and
+      finally courts of justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, since he had given to man an immortal soul, and since he held out to
+      him reward or punishment in another world according to his deserts, Odin
+      had been compelled to establish the first high tribunals in that other
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0072" id="linkimage-0072"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/191s.jpg" alt="191s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/191.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/191m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      We must, therefore, find our way to Walhalla and even to Hell, if the
+      reader is disposed to follow us to that place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[175]</span><a name="link175" id="link175"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0073" id="linkimage-0073"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/195s.jpg" alt="195s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/195.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/195m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Heaven and Hell.&mdash;<i>The Valkyrias.&mdash;Amusements in Walhalla.&mdash;Pork
+      and Wild Boar.&mdash;A Frozen Hell.&mdash;Balder&rsquo;s Death.&mdash;Frigg&rsquo;s
+      Devotion.&mdash;The Iron Tree Forest.&mdash;The Twilight of the Gods.&mdash;Idunas&rsquo;
+      Apples.&mdash;The Fall of Heaven and the End of the World.&mdash;Reflections
+      on that Event.&mdash;The Little Fellow still alive.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen the warriors
+      were preparing for battle, a number of blue-eyed young maidens, mounted on
+      <span class="pagenum">[176]</span><a name="link176" id="link176"></a>bright,
+      shining horses, passed through their ranks, animating them with word and
+      gesture, and whispering into their ears warlike songs to be soon changed
+      into triumphal chants for those who fell on the battlefield, mortally
+      wounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0074" id="linkimage-0074"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/196s.jpg" alt="196s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/196.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/196m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These maidens were the Valkyrias, those Valkyrias whom ever since the
+      poets and painters of the Ossianic school have reproduced in a thousand
+      forms. Nor must it be forgotten that this remarkable school, which the
+      Scotchman Macpherson revived <span class="pagenum">[177]</span><a
+      name="link177" id="link177"></a>towards the end of the eighteenth century,
+      counted among its most ardent admirers two enthusiastic Frenchmen, whose
+      names were Napoleon and Lamartine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These Valkyrias, beautiful nymphs of carnage as they were, delighted in
+      the clash of arms, the shedding of blood, and the dying groans of the
+      wounded, even in the odors exhaled by the dying,&mdash;a taste which seems
+      little suited to fair, blue-eyed maidens. These unnatural tastes were,
+      however, justified to a certain extent, by the peculiar mission which they
+      had to fulfill, a mission of kindness and tender compassion. They walked
+      to and fro on the battlefield, not to carry off the dead, but to gather
+      the souls of those who had fallen. Of the <i>Seola</i> (such was the sweet
+      name of the Soul among the nations of Germanic or Scandinavian race), they
+      rapidly asked these questions:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seola, did you belong to a free man or to a slave?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seola, did your master honor the gods and the priests of those
+      gods?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he keep his pledged word?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he die like a brave man, with his face to the enemy and not a
+      fear in his heart?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seola, did he ever fight against the men of his own blood and his
+      own race?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The human soul, as soon as it escapes from the <span class="pagenum">[178]</span><a
+      name="link178" id="link178"></a>wretched bondage of this earth, no longer
+      possesses the sad power of being able to tell a falsehood; Seola,
+      therefore, answered these questions truthfully, even though it were to its
+      own condemnation. In the latter case the Valkyrias left it to the black
+      Alfs, a kind of demons who belonged to hell; but if the Seola had belonged
+      to a brave and loyal warrior, the Valkyria instantly unfolded her white
+      wines and took it to Walhalla, the home of the gods and the paradise of
+      heroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This paradise, exclusively intended for free men, was still open to slaves
+      also, if they had fallen by the side of their masters, or if they had
+      thrown themselves voluntarily into the fire of the funeral pile for the
+      purpose of continuing their service in the future life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us see whether the delights of Walhalla were sufficiently attractive
+      to warrant such selfimmolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The one great enjoyment of all who dwell in Walhalla was combat and
+      strife. That is a matter of taste, but did they not carry combat and
+      strife a little too far? They fought there for hours and hours, with
+      eagerness, with fury, even piercing each other and cutting each other to
+      pieces to their hearts&rsquo; delight. It is true, that as soon as the
+      dinner hour came the blood ceased to flow, the wounds closed their gaping
+      lips, the <span class="pagenum">[179]</span><a name="link179" id="link179"></a>limbs
+      that had been lopped off by the swords returned to their place, the broken
+      heads and exposed entrails were restored without the surgeon&rsquo;s aid,
+      not leaving a scar behind, and the heroes went arm in arm to dinner,
+      looking forward with joy to a repetition of the same merry sport as soon
+      as the meal should be finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fare at this table of gods and heroes does not seem to have been
+      peculiarly wholesome; at all events it was not very varied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pork-butchers&rsquo; business was at that time uncommonly flourishing
+      both in heaven and on earth. Tacitus tells us that among the races of the
+      North, as far as the borders of the Baltic Sea, chieftains and matrons
+      alike loved to wear suspended around their neck a small image of a pig as
+      an emblem of abundance and fecundity. Rich and poor, all looked upon pork
+      as the main supply of their pantry. The pig, however, was not deemed
+      worthy to appear on Odin&rsquo;s table, and its place was taken by the
+      boar: the gods lived upon wild boar, men upon domestic pig, that was the
+      whole difference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am often tempted to eat pork, and I am occasionally enabled to taste
+      wild boar; but I must solemnly confess, swearing if needs be by my
+      stomach, that in my opinion, the gods and the heroes had by no means the
+      best of it. It may <span class="pagenum">[180]</span><a name="link180"
+      id="link180"></a>be, however, that wild boars here below are not quite
+      equal to heavenly boars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0075" id="linkimage-0075"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/200s.jpg" alt="200s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/200.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/200m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      However that may be, there appeared every morning upon the edge of one of
+      the marvelous forests to be found in Walhalla, an enormous colossal boar,
+      a very mammoth of a boar. The <span class="pagenum">[181]</span><a
+      name="link181" id="link181"></a>heroes proceeded to hunt it, accompanied
+      at times by Thor, by Vali, the skillful archer, or by Tyr, the one-handed
+      god, who nevertheless wielded his sword with power and accuracy. Then the
+      monster was killed, cut up and roasted, and all dined together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0076" id="linkimage-0076"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/201s.jpg" alt="201s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/201.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/201m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The next day there appeared on the edge of the marvelous forest another
+      wild boar, quite as fat and quite as enormous, in fact in every respect as
+      attractive as the boar of the day before&mdash;some think it was always
+      the same animal, come to life again. Then a new hunt and a new dinner upon
+      roasted wild boar. Surely we poor people might become disgusted for the
+      rest of our lives, one would imagine,&mdash;and those were immortal gods!
+      What taste!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is worse behind yet. The Scandinavian <span class="pagenum">[182]</span><a
+      name="link182" id="link182"></a>paradise was by no means the only one
+      where the pork-butcher was thus glorified. In a neighboring paradise,
+      which the Finns had established, we are told by a learned writer, the
+      rivers were flowing with beer and hydromel, the mountains consisted of
+      lard and the hills of half salted pork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To help them in digesting their solid food, the Scandinavian gods drank,
+      like those of Finland, great quantities of beer and hydromel; but they had
+      in addition, an abundance of wine which they quaffed from gold cups. Wine!
+      In this one word thoughtful historians have discovered a whole revelation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now would it ever have occurred to Odin, in his hyperborean lands, where
+      the vine did not exist and could not possibly live, to bring the fruit of
+      the vine to his paradise? Did he know grapes? And when had he learnt to
+      know them? But as I do not wish to interrupt my story, I reserve the
+      discussion of this great and important question, with several others of
+      the same kind, for another chapter, in which I hope to be able to develop
+      my views fully and scientifically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides wine, beer, and hydromel, the blessed people in Walhalla had an
+      additional precious beverage of their own, which it may safely be
+      presumed, no mortal on earth has ever tasted. This <span class="pagenum">[183]</span><a
+      name="link183" id="link183"></a>ambrosia of a novel nature was obtained by
+      the gods and heroes themselves, on certain favorable days, from the white
+      substance of the moon. Yes, from the moon! Did they quaff it in full
+      draughts or did they inhale it through calumets? We do not know, but the
+      nations of the earth saw in these periodical bleedings of the moon the
+      reason for her divers phases and her gradual diminution. When she became
+      reduced to a mere crescent, fright was seen on all faces and oppressed all
+      hearts. Were the great people up there forgetting themselves in their
+      celestial orgies, and would they drink up the moon to the last drop?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be borne in mind that they, like the Germans, saw in the moon
+      nothing but a transparent leathern bottle, filled with sweetened milk, and
+      phosphorescent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us return now. To hunt the boar, to breakfast on wild boar, to dine on
+      the same dish, day after day, to drink beer and wine, and from time to
+      time that mulled egg which the moon furnished, to fight morning and
+      evening, to die and come to life again, merely for the purpose of fighting
+      again&mdash;these were the amusements of that delightful place. Upon my
+      word, it took Scandinavians to be content with such pleasures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Odin&rsquo;s paradise appears to us but little attractive, his hell, on
+      the other hand, seems to have been <span class="pagenum">[184]</span><a
+      name="link184" id="link184"></a>far from terrible, especially if we
+      compare it with the hell of some of our great poets, such as Dante and
+      Milton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hell of the Scandinavians occupied the lowest depths of the world and
+      consisted of two parts, <i>Nastrond</i> and <i>Niflheim</i>. The latter is
+      a kind of dismal vestibule shrouded in darkness, in which are seen
+      wandering about the mournful seolas of those who have been neither good
+      nor bad, neither heroes nor scoundrels, and of all who have not fallen by
+      the sword. To die on one&rsquo;s bed or in an armchair, was a wrong in
+      Odin&rsquo;s eyes, a grievous wrong, though not exactly a crime, since he
+      punished it only with a temporary detention in those damp, low places,
+      where darkness, silence, and weariness seemed to combine for their
+      punishment. The dwellers in Niflheim had scarcely any amusement except
+      their reciprocal yawns, and from time to time a flash of dim light which
+      reached there when the little black Alfs came in or went out, busily
+      engaged in conveying a load of souls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great criminals were thrown into Nastrond, the real hell. What is very
+      remarkable is, that here there were no braziers and burning gridirons to
+      be seen, no furnaces and masses of flames as in all the other hells. This
+      was a hell of ice; it froze here hard enough to split iron, and the damned
+      shivered with cold. Dante mentions something of <span class="pagenum">[185]</span><a
+      name="link185" id="link185"></a>the kind in his great work, but between
+      the Florentine and the Scandinavian there can be no doubt who borrowed
+      from the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite natural after all that in these win-tery regions of
+      Scandinavia, where cold is the greatest evil to be dreaded, intense,
+      continued, eternal cold should have become the terror and the punishment
+      of the criminal. The idea of a hell of fire, so far from keeping them from
+      the fatal slope, might very well have tempted some chilly scoundrel to
+      commit a great crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0077" id="linkimage-0077"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/205s.jpg" alt="205s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/205.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/205m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The poor wretches who were shivering in Nastrond <span class="pagenum">[186]</span><a
+      name="link186" id="link186"></a>with stiffened hands and eyes full of
+      frozen tears, felt their tortures increased whenever Hela, the pale
+      goddess, the queen of that place, Death itself, cast upon them a glance
+      from her lack-lustre eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, it was Hela who reigned over this frightful iceberg; her palace is
+      called Misery, her gate the Precipice, her reception room Grief, her bed
+      Disease, her table Famine, and her throne Malediction!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The body of this terrible queen is party-colored, half white and half
+      blue, and her breath is perfumed with that horrible cadaverous odor in
+      which the Valkyrias delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after all, the names seem to be worse than the sufferings themselves;
+      for excessive cold paralyzes pain itself, and there is nothing here to
+      compare with those classic places where lava-baths, rolling rocks, flaming
+      wheels, horses of red-hot iron, boiling pitch, fiery arrows and the snake
+      whips of the Eumenides made up an infernal stock of tortures which might
+      well tempt the imagination of the greatest of poets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Nastrond there were no demons and no Eumenides; to be sure, there was a
+      Bigvor and a Sisvor, furies if you will have it so, watching at the gates
+      of hell, with the help of Gaun, the formidable dog, but all three are
+      forbidden to enter within. <span class="pagenum">[187]</span><a
+      name="link187" id="link187"></a>The place of missing monsters is occupied
+      by some of those whom Odin spared on the occasion of his first campaign
+      against the giant sons of Ymer, and by the wolf Fenris, whom the Ases had
+      treacherously captured. There are also two other wolves, convicted of
+      having made an attempt upon the life of the Sun, and all of these monsters
+      are firmly chained and appear rather as sufferers than as tormentors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of these days, their iron chains will be loosened; one of these days
+      heaven will turn cold and hell will melt, and&mdash;then, woe to the gods!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Listen! The moment is drawing near when all these mysteries are to be
+      solved. The hour is coming when <i>you shall hear, when you shall
+      understand!</i> But before uttering these last words, final and at the
+      same time fatal words, we must mention an event which at that moment
+      occurred in the open assembly of the gods, filling heaven and earth with
+      amazement, with pity and horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be acknowledged that so far the heavenly personages have appeared
+      to be rather kindhearted and mild. Odin, in spite of his Druids and their
+      demands for bloody sacrifices, seems to have been full of good intentions.
+      The god Thor, with all his somewhat brutal ways, rendered great services
+      to mankind; and the same hammer, which protected them against the giants,
+      afterwards served, <span class="pagenum">[188]</span><a name="link188"
+      id="link188"></a>without the aid of geometry, to mark the boundary
+      lines of their respective properties. The golden-teethed god, Heimdall,
+      gave most undoubted evidence of his devotion to the human race and of his
+      self-denial in his visits to the Grandmother and the Great-grandmother,
+      and so did the other gods. But we had good reasons for not going through
+      the whole list of the Ases. For there is one whom we keep in reserve so
+      that he may appear at the right hour, and that is Loki, the god of evil
+      and the genius of destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surpassing Odin himself in his magic skill, fair of form and features, a
+      smile on his lips&mdash;thin lips, however, the Edda adds&mdash;and
+      apparently possessed of the most jovial temper so as to make him a most
+      agreeable person, Loki is in reality a compound of the most hideous vices.
+      He is the representative of hatred and cruelty, of envy, hypocrisy, and
+      perversity. In fact, he is our Satan, before the fall. If he had been king
+      of hell, Miflheim and Nastrond would both have been filled with more
+      tortures and more horrors than all the other hells which are known to men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet he was the god upon whom the dwellers in Walhalla counted for
+      their entertainment, and whom they had surnamed the Clown!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day an ancient prophetess returns to life, rises in her grave, and
+      utters a terrible cry: &ldquo;Balder, <span class="pagenum">[189]</span><a
+      name="link189" id="link189"></a>fair Balder, is going to die!&rdquo; With
+      these words she falls back again upon her mournful couch and dies again&mdash;forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0078" id="linkimage-0078"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/209s.jpg" alt="209s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/209.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/209m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime this cry has been heard even at the top of the ash
+      Ygdrasil. The Ases are troubled and amazed; they meet, they look at each
+      other, thoroughly frightened, for on the life of Balder depends the
+      existence of all the other gods. Moreover, <span class="pagenum">[190]</span><a
+      name="link190" id="link190"></a>Balder the Bright is the glory of heaven
+      and the love of the earth. Can Balder die, the most charming and the
+      purest as well as the most beautiful of all the sons of Odin? He, who was
+      so beautiful that Hela herself could not help smiling when she looked at
+      him&mdash;he, so pure that no falsehood could be uttered in his presence
+      and that a vessel containing an adulterated liquid would break instantly
+      at his approach&mdash;he, so charming that all the gods love him as their
+      favorite child, and that men have surnamed him Hope? No, no! Balder shall
+      not die, said the Ases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His distressed mother Frigg, Odin&rsquo;s wife, shows her apprehensions by
+      her intense anguish, and her sobs scarcely allow her to speak. She tells
+      those who try to laugh at the sudden alarm of all who have heard the
+      warning of the prophetess, that for several nights already she has been
+      repeatedly, persistently warned in her dreams of the death of her
+      well-beloved son. She would not believe it, she adds, but now she does
+      believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The divine sybil Vola, whose predictions have never proved untrue, and
+      Skulda, the Norn of the Future, are &lsquo;summoned to appear. They
+      consult with each other and this is their decision:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balder is in danger; Balder will die unless all earthly substances
+      that can inflict death, are rendered powerless.&rdquo; <span
+      class="pagenum">[191]</span><a name="link191" id="link191"></a>Frigg
+      descends to the earth and speaks to volcanoes and water-spouts, to frost
+      and hail, and they promise to spare her son. Among the aquatic powers,
+      from the ocean to the smallest brook, among the stones, from the mightiest
+      rock to the pebble, and among the metals, from gold to iron, there is none
+      that does not swear the same oath. The plants also promise, from the oak
+      to the smallest shrub and down to the humblest grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0079" id="linkimage-0079"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/211s.jpg" alt="211s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/211.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/211m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Triumphantly she returns to heaven to announce the good news. Everybody is
+      overjoyed. They celebrate the happy result of her journey by a family
+      dinner, at which Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself by his
+      merry jokes. He had never appeared in better spirits; had never seemed to
+      sympathize more warmly with the happy court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the feast was ended and the last cups were drained in honor of
+      Balder, some one proposed for the general amusement to try how far all
+      these substances, vegetable or mineral, will be faithful to the oath they
+      have sworn, when brought face to face with Balder. <span class="pagenum">[192]</span><a
+      name="link192" id="link192"></a>Beginning with the most inoffensive of
+      them all, they throw at him a clod of earth; the clod of earth breaks into
+      a cloud of dust before it touches him. Then they pour a pitcher of water
+      over him and the water forms a cascade above him without wetting even his
+      garments. They try to strike him with a hazel wand; the wand, slipping
+      from the hand that holds it, breaks in two. Balder is amused by the game
+      and encourages the bystanders to renew their attacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0080" id="linkimage-0080"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/212s.jpg" alt="212s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/212.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/212m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The skillful Uller shoots at him a pointless arrow, aiming, from excessive
+      caution, only at his shoulder. The arrow passes at a distance of twenty
+      feet from its aim and continues its flight through <span class="pagenum">[193]</span><a
+      name="link193" id="link193"></a>the air, like a bird in search of its prey
+      beyond the clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten other assailants meet the same fate, trying their luck with a fragment
+      of rock and a heavy branch in the shape of a club. But the fragment was of
+      stone and remembered the promise given to Frigg, and the club was cut from
+      a tree and the tree remembered the promise given to Frigg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Encouraged by so many reassuring trials, Freyr desired to try his magic
+      sword, but for once the faithful sword was deaf to his orders. Thor
+      brandished his hammer, but the hammer suddenly reversed its action and
+      well nigh made him fall back upon his heels. Freyr&rsquo;s sword and Thor&rsquo;s
+      hammer were both of iron and the iron remembered the promise given to
+      Frigg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loki took care not to appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sport was over, as it seemed, when suddenly the blind god Hoder,
+      Balder&rsquo;s own brother, was seen to advance, feeling his way, towards
+      the bright god. Hoder held in his hand a small bunch of leaves, a bit of
+      grass, at least it appeared such after the fearful instruments that had
+      just been brought into play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immense laughter, a laughter such as the gods of Homer were in the habit
+      of enjoying, broke out at the sight; Loki laughed till his sides shook and
+      Hoder himself shared the general hilarity. <span class="pagenum">[194]</span><a
+      name="link194" id="link194"></a>But he drew nearer and nearer, shaking his
+      bit of verdure in the air; then, almost tottering and having learnt from
+      the bystanders in what direction he would have to turn, he threw the
+      slender twig against Balder, using his full force, which was prodigious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hit Balder full in the chest and the god fell instantly. That bright
+      light which was always shining around him became extinct; he closed his
+      eyes, and lowered his beautiful brow deprived of its glory.....Balder was
+      dead!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been struck by a bit of mistletoe. Frigg had addressed her prayers
+      to the oak tree, but she had not thought of the mistletoe which grows on
+      the oak tree; the mistletoe had given no promise to Frigg. Must we look
+      here for a symbolic meaning? Did this mean, that the Druidical mistletoe
+      was soon to triumph over the gods of Scandinavia? This could not be so,
+      for at the time to which we have come, there was no trace left of the wise
+      worship of the Druids of the first epoch; the Druids of the second epoch
+      were fast losing their power, and the Scandinavian gods were daily
+      increasing in popularity, even beyond the banks of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we ought not to interrupt this account of Balder&rsquo;s death, which
+      is as poetical and as touching as the most famous fables of Greece. <span
+      class="pagenum">[195]</span><a name="link195" id="link195"></a>When blind
+      Hoder, whose name must not be uttered, you remember, hears the cries of
+      despair which break out all around him, and encircle him on all sides with
+      maledictions, he is troubled and seriously distressed. Then, all of a
+      sudden joining in the distressed cries of the Ases, he falls utterly
+      overcome upon his brother&rsquo;s body and denounces Loki as the author of
+      this calamity. Loki has reproached him for being the only one who took no
+      part in the amusements by which they thought to honor Balder, and he it
+      was who had not only given him the fatal plant but who had also directed
+      his arm. Loki was jealous of all the perfections of Balder and he hated
+      him as much as the other gods loved him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They look for Loki, but he has disappeared. No doubt he has tried to
+      escape from the vengeance of the Ases by seeking refuge in the mountains
+      among the giants, his natural allies, or perhaps in the deep sea, with the
+      serpent Iormungandur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And whilst they thus lament, inquire, and investigate, Balder&rsquo;s soul
+      is carried off by the black Alfs to Niflheim, the dark vestibule of hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin still cherished hopes that his dead son might be restored to him.
+      Upon his order Her-mode, the messenger of the gods, mounts his horse
+      Sleipner and goes to see Hela, but neither promises nor threats can move
+      the dread goddess. Fate has <span class="pagenum">[196]</span><a
+      name="link196" id="link196"></a>decided, and Fate is above the gods, as
+      the gods are above men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Frigg herself goes to see the pale goddess. Frigg weeps and the
+      merciless goddess is unable to keep her heart from softening when she sees
+      the tears of such a mother. She says to her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let all created beings&mdash;mind, I say, all created beings!&mdash;give
+      a tear to Balder, a tear such as you have&rsquo; shed in my presence, and
+      Balder shall be restored to you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Frigg was unwilling to trust any one but herself with the effort to
+      realize such hopes. Once more she went over the world, gathering around
+      her all the races of men, one after the other, and as she mentioned the
+      name of Balder, tears flowed from all eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three months she visited all the forests and all the mountains, the
+      seas and the lakes and the animals that live in the waters and the
+      mountains; and seas and lakes and mountains wept. She went even to the
+      abode of the giants, the enemies of the gods, and her grief made the
+      giants also weep; every tree wept and every rock wept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Frigg thought her task was accomplished, and was filled with joy; but she
+      heard that in the far East of Midgard there lived an old woman in the
+      heart of a forest of iron trees. As she lived alone there, far from any
+      beaten track, she had never <span class="pagenum">[197]</span><a
+      name="link197" id="link197"></a>become known to the intrepid traveller.
+      Now, however, Frigg sought her out by steep paths, cut up with gullies and
+      fierce torrents, and at last found her. When the mother told her pitiful
+      tale, the iron trees wept, but the old woman would not weep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0081" id="linkimage-0081"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/217s.jpg" alt="217s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/217.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/217m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[198]</span><a name="link198" id="link198"></a>They
+      called her Thorck, and her heart was ten times as hard as her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I care for your Balder?&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;what do I
+      care whether he is dead or alive? You have other sons; I have not one left
+      me. Once I had four, and all four were my pride, my delight. They were so
+      fair! They were so tall! Your son Thor killed every one of them. I wept
+      much at that time. Now, it is all over. Look for tears elsewhere, I have
+      no tears to give to other people&rsquo;s sorrows!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Frigg bowed down before her, begged her, conjured her, and even fell on
+      her knees before her; but the old woman was inflexible. Balder had to
+      remain a prisoner with Hela.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some interpreters of Scandinavian runes have been of the opinion that the
+      bereaved mother in the forest of iron trees was none other than Loki
+      himself, changed into an old woman. That thought, however, is
+      inadmissible. The Ases were beyond the reach of Hela, and Loki&rsquo;s
+      refusal would not have rendered void the unanimous vote of all Nature,
+      when tears of pity and sympathy alone were to be given as votes. It is
+      much more plausible to suppose, that Loki had induced Thorck to refuse by
+      his counsels and by his enchantments; through him the heart of the old
+      woman had&rsquo; become iron as well as the trees of the forest in <span
+      class="pagenum">[199]</span><a name="link199" id="link199"></a>which she
+      lived. Thus Loki had twice caused the death of Balder!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this time that a strange, almost incredible report was for the
+      first time heard among men. The Druids whispered it cautiously into the
+      ears of the initiated, and voices were said to utter it in the air during
+      the night. This report, a terrible secret, a most unexpected revelation,
+      stated that the gods were about to die! Thor would die, after seeing
+      lightning become extinct in his hands; Odin himself would die, and so
+      would the others. The fate of each one of them was depending on the fate
+      of this fragile world over which they ruled, and this world had to perish
+      because Balder had perished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What? Should the Universe change back into chaos? Was there no
+      all-powerful will that could arrest the process of destruction before it
+      was too late? But where could such omnipotent will be found, now that the
+      gods were no longer to be in existence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Listen! listen to these verses from the Edda!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is the most ancient among the gods?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alfader, that is, the universal father. He has always been and will
+      ever be; he governs all things, both big and small; he has made the
+      heavens, the earth and the gods. Odin created man, but Al-fader gave him
+      his immortal soul!&rdquo; <span class="pagenum">[200]</span><a
+      name="link200" id="link200"></a>Thus we come back to the pure
+      essence of an only god, who is ever the same, whether his name be Teut,
+      Esus, or Jehovah; the other gods are nothing but emanations proceeding
+      from him, living symbols intended to live for a few thousand centuries&mdash;that
+      is all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear? Do you understand now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you understand why the great ash tree Ygdrasil is continually
+      gnawed at its root by a dragon? Why four famished stags feed upon its
+      foliage? You understand? Well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But by what sign shall we recognize the approaching end of the gods&mdash;that
+      which the Edda calls their <i>twilight?</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The most important among all the sacred books of the North, a
+      volume containing the prophecies of the divine sybil Vola, the <i>Voluspa,</i>
+      will tell you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the fatal moment draws near, their voice will cease to be able
+      to utter the accustomed chants, and the luminous brightness radiating from
+      their bodies will fade away little by little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When they leave their bath, their bodies will not dry at once, as
+      they do now, but remain moist; drops of water will continually drip from
+      them, and they will in this respect become like unto mortal men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In order to overcome these first symptoms of <span class="pagenum">[201]</span><a
+      name="link201" id="link201"></a>indisposition, the wife of the god Bragi,
+      Iduna, will give them certain apples to eat, which she keeps in reserve.
+      These apples will have the effect of strengthening them and of restoring
+      to them a kind of fictitious youth for a few thousand years perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day, however, their eyes will begin to wink; the next morning,
+      upon awaking, their eyelids will be found closed, and then they will turn
+      red and blear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At table, when proceeding to their usual libations, their slightly
+      tremulous hands will be unable to hold their cups steadily; some of the
+      wine or the hydromel will escape and their garments will remain stained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woe to them if a grain of dust adheres to these stained garments!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woe to them still more, if the wreaths of flowers or of jewels
+      begin to fade and to wither on their brows!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Finally, when the sweet perfumes which now are exhaled from their
+      bodies, change into acrid and sickening odors, there will be nothing left
+      for them but to make their last will.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am well convinced that this last phrase has been stealthily introduced
+      into the Voluspa by some kind of criminal and fraudulent trick. The rest,
+      however, is a faithful translation of the original <span class="pagenum">[202]</span><a
+      name="link202" id="link202"></a>text, as taken from the best authenticated
+      editions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0082" id="linkimage-0082"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/222s.jpg" alt="222s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/222.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/222m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; the prophecy continues, &ldquo;then three sacred
+      cocks, dwelling in the three principal worlds, will crow and reply to each
+      other, announcing the <i>Twilight of Greatness.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, everything on earth will be in disorder and confusion;
+      families will be at variance with <span class="pagenum">[203]</span><a
+      name="link203" id="link203"></a>each other, the claims of blood will no
+      longer be acknowledged, and brothers will be arrayed against brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adultery and incest, robbery and murder, will prevail among men,
+      and the age will be an age of barbarism, an age of the sword, an age of
+      tempests, an age of wolves!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wolves will be ready to devour the sun. Three long winters,
+      with no summers between them, will cover the earth with snow and ice; the
+      branches of the trees will give way under the immense burden; the sun will
+      be darkened more and more; the moon will dissolve into vapor and the stars
+      will go out; the mountains, shaking in their foundations, will be tossed
+      to and fro like reeds in a river; the earth will reject all the plants,
+      the trees, and the rocks which it now bears; the waters will cast the fish
+      upon the shore and with them their algae, their corals, and even the
+      bodies of shipwrecked men, hideous skeletons, whose rattling bones will
+      chime in grimly with the warning of the rising flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the sea will grow dark, and upon its waters there will be seen
+      floating that monstrous ship made of the nails of dead men. At the rudder,
+      Ymer, the giant, will stand, having been recalled to life for a time, in
+      order to assist Loki in scaling the heavens by the way of Bifrost, the
+      <span class="pagenum">[204]</span><a name="link204" id="link204"></a>rainbow,
+      at the head of the other Giants of the Frost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Surtur the Black will arrive from the southern regions, from
+      the realm of fire, with all of his malignant demons, bearing torches and
+      ready to set heaven and earth on fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Hela, the pale goddess of death, will set free her prisoners,
+      the wolf Fenris first of all, and march at the head of these monsters to
+      assist the powers of the South.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the gods will take up their arms; Odin will gather them around
+      him, and with them the heroes from Walhalla; and the last battle will be
+      fought.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Vola&rsquo;s prophecy has to be fulfilled; the gods must perish, and
+      the world with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Freyr dies in the flames of Surtur the Black; Thor succumbs to the deadly
+      embrace and the poisonous bites of the great serpent Iormungandur; but,
+      before dying, he kills it. Odin is torn to pieces by the wolf Fenris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the struggle, the heavens have been scaled and the genii of fire
+      enter on horseback through the breach, while the giants shake the ash
+      Ygdrasil, which writhes uttering long sighs, and at last falls with the
+      heavenly vault which it has been upholding. The conquerors and the
+      conquered alike are crushed under the ruins, and the world <span
+      class="pagenum">[205]</span><a name="link205" id="link205"></a>being set
+      on fire by Surtur the Black, vanishes in smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the night of the gods has to succeed to the twilight of the gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O you, spirits of the mountains, do you know whether anything will
+      continue to exist?&rdquo; asks the Voluspa, at the end of these mournful
+      prophecies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be admitted that this sombre and terrible conception is not
+      without a certain poetic grandeur, a certain savage heroism, which we
+      cannot help admiring. In these verses the Edda is in no way inferior to
+      the most brilliant pictures drawn by Dante or by Milton, and more than
+      once it approaches nearly to the Apocalypse. Thus, as the inspired Apostle
+      saw a new heaven and a new earth, the Edda also announces the coming of a
+      time, when a new earth, more favored and more perfect than ours, shall
+      succeed the old earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the earth is thus broken to pieces and devoured by fire, what
+      shall happen next?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will come forth from the sea another earth, more beautiful
+      and more perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And will any of the gods survive?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balder will be revived and come forth from the place of departed
+      spirits, to rule over the new world under the guidance of the imperishable
+      Al-fader. <span class="pagenum">[206]</span><a name="link206" id="link206"></a>Then
+      will be the reign of Justice.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mythology of the Scandinavians embraces, as we have shown, among its
+      symbols all the great phenomena of Nature, the continual struggle between
+      the two opposite principles, creation and destruction. Being, besides,
+      more complicated and more intelligent than the mythology of the Gauls and
+      the Germans, it deserved to fill a large space in our work, and such a
+      space we have accorded it cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why was it that the civilization introduced by Odin contributed as
+      little as the philosophy of the Druids to the real well-being and the
+      improvement of mankind? I think I see the reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the eyes of the German as well as of the Scandinavian, God was only
+      just and rigid. The rule of the God of Love had not yet begun. Perhaps
+      Balder was to inaugurate it in that other world which the Edda announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you hear? Do you understand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amid all the incidents which were to mark the general conflagration, there
+      is one which particularly recalls to our mind a great historical event.
+      Alexander of Macedonia once questioned certain Celtic ambassadors and was
+      told by them, that what they feared most upon earth, was the falling down
+      of the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This apparently lofty answer filled the young <span class="pagenum">[207]</span><a
+      name="link207" id="link207"></a>conqueror with admiration, and it is still
+      admired by modern students of history. It was, however, in reality nothing
+      more than a simple, naïve rendering of one of their articles of faith; for
+      all their prophetic books threatened them with the destruction of the
+      heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another detail, the complete destruction of this globe of ours, after a
+      series of fearful catastrophes, recalls to me, not exactly a great
+      historical fact, but a simple game of my childhood, which may have been
+      symbolic, nay, which may have come down to us from the Edda. This,
+      however, I state with great hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did you ever know one of the merriest games, which was once very much the
+      fashion in city and country alike, when a firebrand, a burning stick, or a
+      bunch of straw set on fire, was quickly passed from hand to hand? To
+      prevent its going out, while you held it, you were bound to pass it as
+      quickly as possible to your neighbor, repeating at the same time the
+      expressive words: &ldquo;<i>The little fellow is still alive</i>.&rdquo;
+      Your neighbor passed it to his neighbor and thus it travelled all around,
+      always accompanied by the same, constant burden: &ldquo;The little fellow
+      is still alive!&rdquo; This game was transformed during the Middle Ages,
+      in the North, and especially in Bretagne, into the Torch Dance, as I have
+      mentioned before. <span class="pagenum">[208]</span><a name="link208"
+      id="link208"></a>Now I imagine that this game, in some way or other,
+      prefigured the universal conflagration that was to come, and <i>the little
+      fellow</i> was the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0083" id="linkimage-0083"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/228s.jpg" alt="228s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/228.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/228m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But we must make haste to reach our great scientific discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[211]</span><a name="link211" id="link211"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0084" id="linkimage-0084"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/231s.jpg" alt="231s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/231.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/231m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time
+      between one World and another.&mdash;How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.&mdash;How
+      Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the Indians.&mdash;How
+      Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God Buddha.&mdash;About
+      Mahabarata and Ramayana.&mdash;Chronology.&mdash;The World&rsquo;s Age.&mdash;Comparative
+      Tables.&mdash;Quotations.&mdash;Supporting Evidence.&mdash;A Cenotaph.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>y reader has had a
+      lucky escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Determined as I was to fathom in this chapter the true origin of the
+      Scandinavian religion, and inspired by the zeal of a recent convert, I had
+      collected and compared every document that could aid me in proving the
+      Oriental descent of the priests of Odin as well as of the other Druids. I
+      <span class="pagenum">[212]</span><a name="link212" id="link212"></a>thought
+      it was a beautiful doctrine, and especially an entirely new one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I finished my chapter, which I thought was exceedingly well done, I
+      read it to Doctor Rosahl, expecting, I must confess, to be warmly
+      congratulated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, my dear sir,&rdquo; he said, when I had finished, &ldquo;you
+      have made great efforts to prove a thing which has been established long
+      since. All the master minds of France and Germany, to say nothing of other
+      nations, agree on that subject. I mean men like Fauriel, Lassen,
+      Lenormand, Ampere, Eichhoff, Saint-Marc Girardin, Marmier, Klaproth,
+      Ozanam, the two Rémusats, the two Thierrys, the two Humboldts, the two
+      Grimms, not to mention twenty others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why will you come to their assistance after they have won the
+      victory? Do you merely wish to display your scholarship?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I indignantly denied the charge, and seizing my manuscript with both
+      hands, I resolutely threw it into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A remnant of paternal weakness induced me, however, to retain the summary
+      of that famous chapter, and I have inserted it here in its regular place,
+      so that it might bear evidence of my wasted labor. As the <i>corpus
+      delicti</i> is no longer in existence, this summary may stand there like
+      an inscription <span class="pagenum">[213]</span><a name="link213"
+      id="link213"></a>on an empty tomb, to honor the memory of the
+      deceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&mdash;a scholar! Great God! Let the reader not be disturbed. My purpose
+      in writing this work was nothing more than to try and collect along the
+      banks of the Rhine all the curious myths which have survived the ancient
+      creeds of Europe; for they have all come to the great river. There the
+      traveller finds piled up, after the manner of alluvial layers, all the
+      ancient fables, all the marvelous and often childish tales to which the
+      credulity and lively imagination of our forefathers gave a ready welcome.
+      With the exception of a very few cases, in which the grave nature of the
+      subject lifts me necessarily into higher regions, I wish mainly to tell
+      you once more <i>Grandmamma&rsquo;s Tales</i>. That is what we are going
+      to do next. The Edda itself has no other meaning, for <i>Edda</i> means
+      the same as our <i>grandmother</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, I am too great a lover of tales of a tub ever to have claimed the
+      reputation of being a scholar; but at times I like to glean a little where
+      scholars have reaped. I have been shown the best spots, and I pilfer as
+      well as I can&mdash;that is all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ignoramus and a pilferer, I resemble a bee which might fly into a
+      botanical garden and, utterly <span class="pagenum">[214]</span><a
+      name="link214" id="link214"></a>unacquainted with the Latin names of
+      flowers, carry off joyously a rich harvest, without pretending to be able
+      to make academic honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0085" id="linkimage-0085"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/234s.jpg" alt="234s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/234.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/234m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[217]</span><a name="link217" id="link217"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0086" id="linkimage-0086"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/237s.jpg" alt="237s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/237.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/237m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confederation of all the Northern Gods.&mdash;Freedom of Religion.&mdash;Christianity.&mdash;Miserere
+      mei!&mdash;Homeric Enumeration.&mdash;Prussian, Slavic, and Finnish
+      Deities.&mdash;The God of Cherries and the God of Bees.&mdash;A Silver
+      Woman.&mdash;Ilmarinnen&rsquo;s Wedding Song.&mdash;A Skeleton God.&mdash;Yaga-Babcûs
+      Pestle and Mortar.&mdash;Preparation for Battle.&mdash;The Little Chapel
+      on the Hill.&mdash;The Signal for the Attack.&mdash;Jesus and Mary.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is high time for
+      us to return to the banks of the Rhine, where the two religions of Jupiter
+      and Odin were about to meet face to face. <span class="pagenum">[218]</span><a
+      name="link218" id="link218"></a>At that time the terrible prophecies of
+      the Edda were far from being near their fulfillment; Odin had a long
+      period of omnipotence yet before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the great surprise of the adversaries, the Romans, so far from showing
+      any alarm at his approach, received him and his retinue of deities as old
+      acquaintances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to their unchanging policy they would see in him nothing but a
+      Jupiter, and in fierce Thor another gallant Mars, somewhat sobered by a
+      long residence in northern countries and excessive use of beer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Romans looked, in fact, upon all of these Scandinavian gods and
+      goddesses simply as upon myths of their own that came back to them once
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poets hallowed these claims and the historians tried to justify them.
+      According to some, Odin the Conqueror, a member of the family of Ases, had
+      first given to some of his conquests the name of Asia (which might very
+      well be so), and then receded before the Roman armies to cold hyperborean
+      regions. Here he had adopted the gods of his new conquerors, hoping that
+      they would, in return, make him victorious&mdash;which seems to me in the
+      highest degree improbable. According to others, the poet Ovid, when
+      Augustus had banished him to Scythia, had learnt the language of the
+      barbarians, <span class="pagenum">[219]</span><a name="link219"
+      id="link219"></a>among whom he was living, and finding them willing
+      and eager to listen to him, had recited before them his &ldquo;Metamorphoses.&rdquo;
+      This was all that was needed to induce the Scythians to make for
+      themselves gods after the model of the Roman gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0087" id="linkimage-0087"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/239s.jpg" alt="239s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/239.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/239m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Tacitus, Plutarch, Strabo, and a host of the most illustrious writers
+      never hesitated to give currency to such childish stories, ignoring
+      entirely the date of the Scandinavian religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Rome, however, permitted no human sacrifices, the priests of Odin and
+      of Teut had at first withdrawn far from the beaten track, into the depths
+      of dark old forests. There they could live quietly, practice without
+      restraint the religion of their forefathers, and kill their men in perfect
+      security. At least such were their hopes. The Roman soldiers, however, who
+      handled the woodman&rsquo;s axe <span class="pagenum">[220]</span><a
+      name="link220" id="link220"></a>as readily as the sword, and the spade as
+      well as the spear, soon made big holes in these venerable forests,
+      murdered the murderers, and overthrew their blood-stained altars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0088" id="linkimage-0088"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/240s.jpg" alt="240s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/240.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/240m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[221]</span><a name="link221" id="link221"></a>Occasionally
+      it happened that the brave legionaries who were employed in these
+      hazardous enterprises, did not reappear. The proconsuls, whose duty it was
+      to keep Germany in order, would have liked to inflict severe punishment;
+      but just then the great reaction began to set in, from the North against
+      the South.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst Rome was making efforts to establish her power in Germany, certain
+      German tribes, Franks and Burgundians, invaded France and began to settle
+      down in some of the conquered Roman provinces. The proconsuls thought it
+      both prudent and wise not to raise the question of religion; and for a
+      long time a truce was tacitly agreed upon between all the different
+      creeds, though not without some misgivings on both sides. Odin had his
+      altars by the side of those of Jupiter; a temple in honor of Thor stood
+      facing a temple dedicated to Mars, and if Bacchus, Diana, and Apollo had
+      their sacred days, Bragi, Frigg, and Freya had theirs also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of this general toleration, the parties watched each other
+      carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sooner or later a holy war had to break out; in certain regions it had
+      already begun, when fishermen of the Rhine busily drawing in their nets,
+      heard, for the first time, a still small voice coming down upon them on
+      the waters of the river, which whispered the names of Jesus and Mary.
+      <span class="pagenum">[222]</span><a name="link222" id="link222"></a>The
+      same voice and the same names were simultaneously heard again and again
+      before Strasbourg, Mayence, and Cologne. It was Christianity that was
+      approaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0089" id="linkimage-0089"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/242s.jpg" alt="242s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/242.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/242m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These wondrous words, which now the river only <span class="pagenum">[223]</span><a
+      name="link223" id="link223"></a>murmured, had soon after been forced by
+      some mystic power from the lips of the Druidesses in their prophetic
+      exaltation and from the priests of Jupiter, as they consulted their
+      auguries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a Druid, who, in the act of sacrificing, was suddenly seized
+      with inspiration, and dropping the bloody knife felt impelled to cry out:
+      <i>Miserere mei, Jesus!</i> and yet Latin had until then been an unknown
+      tongue among the Druids!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nations stood expectant, waiting for the revelation of a new faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon a number of fugitives from Tolbiac, returning to the Rhine, produced
+      consternation in all hearts by the announcement that Clovis, the king of
+      the Franks, who had long been suspected of a secret understanding with
+      Rome, had gone over to the god of the Christians, and that the god of the
+      Christians was at that moment advancing at the head of ten legions of
+      destroying angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this news came, the rival religions laid aside their jealousy, and
+      terrified by a common danger, joined hands to resist the invader. A
+      general appeal was made not only by the followers of Odin to those of
+      Jupiter, but also to the Northern gods, the Finnish gods, the Russian
+      gods, and the Slavic gods. The danger was threatening to all alike, and
+      they responded to the appeal and came to the Rhine. <span class="pagenum">[224]</span><a
+      name="link224" id="link224"></a>We cannot so rapidly pass over this vast
+      Olympian assembly of gods, a poet&rsquo;s dream, it may be, but a
+      traditional dream, full of strange and striking splendor, which completes
+      in a most unexpected manner the limited description we have tried to give
+      of Northern Myths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0090" id="linkimage-0090"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/244s.jpg" alt="244s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/244.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/244m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      At this grand meeting there appeared in the first place a goodly number of
+      Borussian or Prussian gods, among whom stood first and foremost Percunos,
+      the divine leader of the heavenly bodies; Pikollos, whose face was as pale
+      as Hela&rsquo;s and whose duty was, like hers, to preside over hell;
+      exacting, however, from men nothing but prayers accompanied by beating
+      hearts, he cared nothing whether he was feared or beloved. A third god,
+      Potrympos, had the appearance of a youth, with smiling lips and with a
+      wreath of wheat ears and flowers on his brow; this was the god of War. Of
+      War? And what meant the smile on his lips and the wheat ears on his brow?
+      They indicated that he was also the god of public supplies and even of
+      love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems that, in ancient Prussia, War was the purveyor-general and
+      supplied everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the retinue of this great trio, we find Antrympos, the god of seas and
+      lakes; Poculos, the god of the air and of storms; then, after these gods
+      ending in <i>os</i>, came other deities ending in <i>us</i>; Pilvitus, the
+      god of riches, Auchwitus, the god of the sick, and Marcopulus, the god of
+      the nobles. The latter was the terror of the common people, whom he held
+      under an iron yoke. In order to <span class="pagenum">[226]</span><a
+      name="link226" id="link226"></a>conciliate his good will, they prayed to
+      Puscatus, another god in us, but a kindhearted god. He lived under an
+      elder tree, and the price he exacted in return for his mediation was the
+      modest gift of a piece of bread and a <i>schoppen</i> of beer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0091" id="linkimage-0091"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/246s.jpg" alt="246s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/246.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/246m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Although their priests were called Crives or Waidelottes, their ceremonies
+      were, nevertheless, mere imitations of those of the Druids. The Borussians
+      honored particularly the famous oak of Remowe, to which Percunos,
+      Pikollos, and Potrympos paid a daily visit. To these same gods they
+      offered their prisoners of war; but they were not sacrificed by means of a
+      knife after the German <span class="pagenum">[227]</span><a
+      name="link227" id="link227"></a>Or the Scandinavian manner. They
+      destroyed them by fire or they gave them to be devoured to enormous
+      serpents who lived upon the altar and for the altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0092" id="linkimage-0092"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/247s.jpg" alt="247s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/247.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/247m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Now all these gods have come to Germany accompanied by their monstrous
+      reptiles, by griffins fearful to behold, and by demons summoned from hell,
+      all called upon to take part in the impending struggle. <span
+      class="pagenum">[228]</span><a name="link228" id="link228"></a>Almost at
+      the same time with the Prussian gods arrived also the Scythian gods and
+      those of the Sarmatians, the former in chariots, according to the manner
+      of travelling which prevailed among those nations. They also bowed low,
+      like their people, before the all-powerful Tahiti, the great
+      representative of their religion, Fire. The Scythians had evidently
+      derived very little profit from hearing Ovid read his &ldquo;Metamorphoses.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others were but few in numbers; their representatives were their chief
+      triad: Perun, their Jupiter Tonans; Rujewit, who controlled the clouds;
+      and Sujatowist, the judge of the dead. These three brought in their train
+      only Trizbog and the Tassanis, that is, the plague and the furies. Their
+      other gods, unable to do anything for success in war, had wisely stayed at
+      home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can I neglect mentioning the names and attributes of these inoffensive
+      local deities, whom the fierce Sarmatians worshipped. They were:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kirnis, who causes the cherries to ripen;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sardona, who watches over the nut trees;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Austeïa, who presides over the education of bees;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sweet Kolna, who sees to the marriage of flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were also gods or goddesses of corn, of the kneading-tub and the
+      wash-tub, the god of flies and the god of butterflies; we must confess
+      that <span class="pagenum">[229]</span><a name="link229" id="link229"></a>these
+      deities could hardly have been very useful on the banks of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Odin and Jupiter could count upon more efficient and more reliable
+      allies in the gods of Finland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gods bear almost always the impress of the character of their
+      followers and of those over whom they rule, and what other nation has ever
+      given such proofs of undaunted courage as the Finns or Finlanders? Pirates
+      on the Baltic, as the Scandinavians were pirates on the ocean, they shared
+      with them the booty that could be gotten in all the Northern seas. They
+      had originally come from the high table-lands of Asia, together with their
+      brethren the Turks, the Mongols, and the Tartars; their first appearance
+      was made under the name of Ugorians, Ogres, and surely the Ogres have made
+      a lasting and a terrible impression on bur popular tales!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Finns consisted almost exclusively of sailors and soldiers, of miners
+      and blacksmiths. To smelt iron and to fashion it into anchors for their
+      ships, into lances, swords, and spears, was their principal occupation.
+      Hence they paid special reverence to Rauta-Rekhi, the personification of
+      iron; to Wulangoinen, the father of iron, and to Ruojuota, the nurse of
+      iron. They worshipped in like manner with special zeal three sombre
+      virgins, whose powerful breasts were running over with a dark milk, <span
+      class="pagenum">[230]</span><a name="link230" id="link230"></a>which
+      turned into iron as it cooled off, as water turns into ice when it cools
+      off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their principal gods, besides these whom I have mentioned, were again
+      three, and, as usual, three brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The oldest, Vainamoinen, of hoary age, created celestial and terrestial
+      fire, that is to say, the sun and the volcanoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second, Ukko, has to provide them with fire, so as to prevent the
+      earth from returning to the condition of an immense icicle, and the sun to
+      the form of a heap of extinct embers. Living in the clouds he now blows
+      upon the sun and now upon the volcanoes so as to keep up the blaze in
+      both, and encourages them with his voice, the thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ilmarinnen, the third, a very industrious and most skillful workman, has
+      forged the earth and the seven heavens by which it is surrounded; hence he
+      is called the <i>Eternal Blacksmith</i>. He spends his life at the forge,
+      making sometimes stars of all sizes and at other times spare moons. He has
+      even made a silver woman, not for himself, however, but for a younger
+      brother, whose manifold and incessant occupations left him no time to take
+      the necessary steps for a suitable marriage. This woman of fine metal,
+      well-made, beautiful, charming, and of the sweetest disposition, had but
+      one single defect,&mdash;no <span class="pagenum">[231]</span><a
+      name="link231" id="link231"></a>one could come near her without being
+      chilled to the marrow of his bones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the most skillful blacksmith cannot be expected to make a perfect
+      woman at the first trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the question of his own marriage was mooted, Ilmarinnen preferred
+      taking a ready made wife, and, according to the usage which prevailed
+      among the Finns as well as among the Germans, he bought one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the sake of enjoying some relief after such a long enumeration of
+      deities, now entirely out of fashion, I feel strongly tempted to insert
+      here <i>a saga</i>, a Finnish legend, which treats of this very marriage
+      of Ilmarinnen, the blacksmith, and was composed by his own sister. In this
+      wedding-song, which is full of the sweetest and chastest sentiments, she
+      exhibits the domestic life of these artisan-gods, who sometimes were
+      disposed to beat their wives,&mdash;at least the saga suggests the
+      occurrence of such events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ilmarinnen has just been married and becomes impatient, he actually swears
+      at not seeing his young bride come to him in great haste. Listen to what
+      is sung to him, with an accompaniment on a small Kantele guitar, by his
+      sister, the hostess of Pohjola, in order to calm him the better:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O husband, brother of my brothers, you have <span class="pagenum">[232]</span><a
+      name="link232" id="link232"></a>already waited long for the coming of this
+      happy day; wait patiently a little longer. Your well beloved will not
+      tarry long. She finishes her toilet; but you know it is far to the
+      fountain to which she has to go for water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O husband, brother of my brothers, be patient! She has just put on
+      her robe, but she has only put on one sleeve. You would surely not have
+      her appear before you with one sleeve empty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O husband, she has just arranged her hair; a beautiful belt
+      encircles her waist, but she has a shoe only on one foot; she must needs
+      have time to put on the other shoe also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Husband,.... here she is coming,.... but she has put on only one
+      glove,.... give her time to put on the other!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the young bride appears at last, the good hostess of Pohjola is
+      suddenly deeply concerned for her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O wife, O purchased maid, O dove that has been sold! My sister, my
+      poem, my green branch, how many tears you will shed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your family were very eager to have the money paid down for you in
+      the hollow of a shield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor ignorant girl, you thought you were leaving the paternal roof
+      for a few hours, for a day, perhaps! Alas! You have surrendered forever,
+      you have a master now!&rdquo; <span class="pagenum">[233]</span><a
+      name="link233" id="link233"></a>And then turning once more to
+      Ilmarinnen, she adds:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O husband, brother of my brothers, do not teach this child, the
+      slave, whip in hand, the way she must walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not make her cry under the rod or under the stick; teach her
+      gently, in a soft voice, with closed doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first year by words, the second year by a frown, the third year
+      by gently pressing her foot. Be patient!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If, after three years, she is unwilling to learn, O husband,
+      brother of my brothers, take a few slender reeds, take a little
+      broom-sedge, chastise her, but with a rod covered with wool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she still resists, well; cut a twig in the woods, a willow
+      branch, not too stout, and hide it beneath your garment. Let no one guess
+      what is going to happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Above all, do not strike her hands nor her face; for her brother
+      might well ask you: Has a wolf bitten her? Her father might well say to
+      you: Has a bear torn her thus?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does not this Saga, with all its harsh allusions, breathe a most touching
+      tenderness? It seems that the most delicate sentiments were preserved
+      intact amid the coarsest manners and the most violent passions. What was
+      your name, O naïve muse of <span class="pagenum">[234]</span><a
+      name="link234" id="link234"></a>Finland, who inspired the good hostess of
+      Pohjola? Were you not perhaps a daughter of those beautiful Indian
+      gandharvas, who said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The elephant is led by a rope, the horse by a bridle, and a woman
+      by her heart.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And does it not remind us of our humble and simple-minded neighbors, when
+      we hear how this Eternal Blacksmith, this first-class god who has made
+      heaven and earth, who buys a wife and beats her, expresses his fear of the
+      reproaches of his brother-in-law and his father-in-law?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this pause we must go on describing the other armies of gods who had
+      hastened to the banks of the Rhine in order to resist a common enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the side of the heavenly representatives of Scythia and Sarmatia, of
+      Prussia and Finland, we find other gods belonging to the different
+      Slavonic races. But why should we repeat here a complete list of all this
+      multitude of allies, whose curious names the most retentive memory could
+      not possibly retain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suffice it to say that the Lithuanians, the Moravians, the Silesians,
+      Bohemians, and Russians were represented at this meeting by their most
+      formidable deities. There was Ilia, the great archer, whose arrows hit the
+      mark after having passed through a thickness of nine fir trees; Radgost,
+      the <span class="pagenum">[235]</span><a name="link235" id="link235"></a>merciless
+      destroyer; Flintz, the skeleton god, who bore a lion&rsquo;s head on his
+      shoulders and drove a chariot of flames; and the giant Yaga-Baba, whose
+      head reached high above the loftiest mountains. When a warrior was seized
+      with fear before he beheld the enemy, he immediately took him from the
+      ranks and brayed him in a wooden mortar with an iron pestle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All four of them brought in their retinue whole battalions of Strygi or
+      blood-suckers, of voracious Trolls, Marowitzes, and Kikimoras, who
+      smothered their victims; of Polkrans and Leschyes, the latter a kind of
+      dwarf satyrs, who could at will change into giants, and the former half
+      men and half dogs, singing and barking alternately. Their songs, as
+      fearful as their barkings, spread terror around them, and they themselves
+      killed at a hundred yards&rsquo; distance by the venom of their breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the allies whom the Roman and Scandinavian gods arrayed against
+      Christianity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the new comers had been properly organized, Jupiter&rsquo;s eagle
+      rose above the clouds, uttered three piercing cries, turning to the three
+      points of the horizon, and at once from the East, from the West, and from
+      the South, there came forth the gods of Rome and Greece, abandoning their
+      mysterious retreats. There was Neptune with his Tritons, his Harpies, and
+      his marine monsters; and <span class="pagenum">[236]</span><a
+      name="link236" id="link236"></a>there was Pluto with his Fates, his
+      Furies, and his whole host from hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin struck his buckler, and from the far North came not only the gods and
+      the Valkyrias, with the heroes of Walhalla, but even the adversaries of
+      the Ases,&mdash;Hela, the wolf Fenris, the Giants of the Frost with Loki
+      at their head,&mdash;and all enlisted under him to take part in the
+      immense slaughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had the armies of a Darius, an Alexander, an Attila, or a
+      Charlemagne, presented a more imposing and more terrible aspect; nor has
+      the world ever seen the like since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Sibyls and the Norns, the augurs and the witches had been
+      consulted, the march began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few miles from the other side of the river, in the direction of
+      Argentoratum (Strasbourg), about half way up the slope of a gentle hill,
+      there stood a little chapel which had not been quite finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sibyls and Druidesses had pointed out this building as the end of the
+      first day&rsquo;s march, not doubting but that the god of the Christians
+      would appear at the head of his legions, to defend his temple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Confederates were advancing silently under cover of the night in order
+      to surprise the enemy, whom they thought fully prepared for resistance.
+      Odin was in command of the right wing of the <span class="pagenum">[237]</span><a
+      name="link237" id="link237"></a>army, Jupiter of the left. The Scythian,
+      Sarma-tian, Borussian, and Finnish deities under the orders of Tahiti,
+      Perun, Percunos, Wainamoinen, and Radgost, commanded the centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as they came in sight of the hill, they noticed a very peculiar
+      twinkling light, which shone out from the deep darkness, and was
+      surrounded below by a circle of light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately the three light-footed messengers of the Roman, Slavonic, and
+      Scandinavian gods, Mercury, Algis, and Hermode, were sent out to
+      reconnoitre, accompanied by the Eumenides, the Valkyrias, and a small
+      detachment of Lapithes and Centaurs. When they returned they reported that
+      the light proceeded from the flaming swords of ten thousand destroying
+      angels. They were quite sure of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the allies immediately rushed forth, as is the usage in all epic
+      battles, to challenge the chiefs of the angels to single combat. But
+      Jupiter and Odin, thinking that all these private contests can only
+      jeopardize the success of the great battle, compelled them to obey orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor, who had been one of the first to rush forth, was so much
+      disappointed, that in his anger he let his heavy mace fall upon a little
+      town that was on their route, and that might possibly have impeded the
+      progress of the army. The mace <span class="pagenum">[238]</span><a
+      name="link238" id="link238"></a>instantly returned to the hand of the
+      owner, and then fell and returned again and again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0093" id="linkimage-0093"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/258s.jpg" alt="258s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/258.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/258m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The barking of Cerberus, the three-headed dog, of his brother dog Garm,
+      and the howlings of the Strygi, the Kikimoras, and the Polkrans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was by no means all of the concert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mars, Odin, Potrympos, and the other war-gods now drew their swords, which
+      produced a fearful grating sound as they came out of their sheaths; next
+      Jupiter sounds his thunder among the Romans, and after him thunder Perun
+      among the Slaves, Ukko among the Finns, and Thor among the Scandinavians.
+      The repeated crash of thunder. And thanks to this incident, the plain had
+      been cleared and levelled at the same time, and the signal for the attack
+      was given at once. The Corybantes beat their drums in muffled tones; the
+      chants of the Bards and the Skalds responded from the right and the left
+      wing, although their harps were soon drowned in the bleat of the trumpets,
+      the furious <span class="pagenum">[239]</span><a name="link239"
+      id="link239"></a>lightning mingles with the rumbling of the chariots
+      of Tabiti, of Flintz, the skeleton god, and of Pocu-los and Stribog, the
+      gods of waterspouts and of Northern tempests; the Egipans, the Cyclops,
+      the blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen, begin to push immense masses of rock before
+      them, brandishing entire oak trees as spears; while the Giants of the
+      Frost with fearful clamor, which is taken up by the whole army of
+      invaders, follow them, led by the equally gigantic Yaga-Baba, the terrible
+      conductor of such an infernal concert, who marks the time by beating with
+      his iron pestle upon his wooden mortar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0094" id="linkimage-0094"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/259s.jpg" alt="259s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/259.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/259m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      All these fearful noises, all these echoing explosions, seem to confound
+      heaven and earth; the <span class="pagenum">[240]</span><a
+      name="link240" id="link240"></a>horizon trembles and shakes, the
+      mountains start and stagger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the holy hill stands unmoved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light which at first shone only at the base has gradually risen as
+      high as the summit, and the little chapel now shines brightly like a
+      brilliant constellation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surprised at seeing no enemy appear, the army of the pagan gods makes a
+      halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, O miracle! lifted up as if by a gust of wind from on high, the
+      little chapel vanishes, and in its place is seen a simple altar surmounted
+      by a cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before this altar stands a young maid, showing neither ornament nor weapon
+      of defense,&mdash;a Virgin barefooted, with a child in her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She comes down the hill, a smile on her lips; the brilliant light still
+      encircles her brow and the brow of the infant; she comes straight up to
+      the allied gods, who begin to look at each other in utter consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She draws nearer, and all of a sudden an irresistible panic seizes Jupiter
+      and Odin, Mars and Thor, Wainomoinen and Perun, together with the
+      Eumenides, the Tassanis, the Cyclops, and the Giants, and all turn back
+      towards the river, cross it in fearful disorder, and crush each other in
+      their desperate flight, while their own temples and <span class="pagenum">[241]</span><a
+      name="link241" id="link241"></a>their own statues fall to pieces in the
+      universal destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of these were buried in the Rhine, where we shall hereafter find them
+      once more; the remainder reached in sad condition their northern homes,
+      abandoning almost the whole of Germany to Jesus and Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is but right to notice that in all the traditions which speak of this
+      struggle between the gods and the rising religion of Christ, no mention is
+      ever made of the Teut and the Esus of the Celts, the Alfader of the
+      Scandinavians, the Jumala of the Finns, and the Bog of the Slaves,&mdash;nor
+      is the Unknown God of the Romans ever mentioned. The reason is that each
+      one of these grand deities, like the Indra of the Indian heaven, contained
+      all the others and represented to the mind the idea of the only one
+      eternal God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This grand but vain effort of the pagan gods was made, according to
+      tradition, about the year 510 of the Christian era. In the course of the
+      same year King Clovis determined to erect a temple in honor of Christ
+      which should be worthy of Him, and laid the foundation of the Minster at
+      Strasbourg, perhaps with a design to replace the little chapel, which had
+      disappeared in so miraculous a manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[245]</span><a name="link245" id="link245"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0095" id="linkimage-0095"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/265s.jpg" alt="265s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/265.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/265m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Marietta and the Sweet-briar.&mdash;Esus and Jesus.&mdash;A malgam&mdash;
+      A Neophyte.&mdash;Prohibition to eat Horse-flesh.&mdash;Bishops in Arms.&mdash;Interruption.&mdash;Come
+      Home, my Good Friend!&mdash;Prussia and the Myths of the Middle Ages.&mdash;Tybilimts,
+      the Black God.&mdash;The little Blue Flower.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ll who know me and
+      esteem me will testify to my great natural modesty. Even when I have <span
+      class="pagenum">[246]</span><a name="link246" id="link246"></a>to
+      do with fables, I would not venture to invent the smallest thing; I am
+      incapable of committing such a crime. Nevertheless, some of my incredulous
+      readers, when they see the marvelous nature of the poem, in which the
+      triumph of Jesus and Mary over the allied pagan gods was celebrated, might
+      possibly fancy it to be a product of my imagination. In self-defense I
+      feel bound to quote here one of the countless traditions which allude to
+      this great event. I once more borrow from the Muse of the Finns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There lived in those days a virgin who was so pure, so pure and
+      chaste, that her eyes had never seen anything but the eyes of her sisters,
+      that her hands had never yet touched a being in creation for the purpose
+      of caressing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She lived alone in her chamber, in company with her distaff, and
+      ignorant of what happened even within the narrow circle of shadows which
+      the sun traced around her house, and the image of a man was as foreign to
+      her eyes as it was to her mind. Her thoughts and her eyes had alike kept
+      their chastity perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was called Marietta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day, on a fine spring morning, Marietta felt a vague and
+      incomprehensible desire to enjoy the beauties of Nature. Her heart rose
+      within her with strange emotion. <span class="pagenum">[247]</span><a
+      name="link247" id="link247"></a>"Impelled rather by a desire of her own
+      than by a command from on high, she opened her door and hastened to a
+      meadow inclosed with a hedge, which was near the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this hedge a sweet-briar was in bloom. She drew near to inhale
+      the fragrance; she touched the flower, and that was all that was needed.
+      Marietta became a mother, and when her son was born she felt by the
+      boundless pride that filled her heart, that she had given birth to a god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the mean time the other gods of her own country and of the
+      adjoining countries had been warned by their prophetesses that this child,
+      born of a virgin and a flower, would one day drive them out of heaven;
+      they assembled, fully armed and determined that mother and child must both
+      die so as to prevent the threatened catastrophe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the moment when they were holding their secret councils,
+      Marietta appeared in their midst holding her infant in her arms, and all
+      these gods, who had until now wielded such absolute power, fled in dismay
+      to the far North, and the icy gates of the North Pole closed behind them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the story of Marietta and her child Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would certainly seem as if this naïve account, well known among the
+      ancient legends of Finland, was nothing less than a slight sketch of that
+      great epic poem which we have laid before our readers. <span
+      class="pagenum">[248]</span><a name="link248" id="link248"></a>We have
+      only filled out the details by the aid of similar documents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henceforth Christianity enjoyed the results of that great day at
+      Argentoratum. At a later period the conquered gods, it is true, showed
+      once more signs of resistance on isolated points, but from the first, this
+      triumph of Mary and Jesus, and perhaps also the victories obtained by King
+      Clovis, changed the first dawn of Christianity in Germany into a kind of
+      purifying conflagration, which spread rapidly from the Rhine to the Weser
+      and from the Weser to the Danube.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Curious circumstances sometimes came to its assistance. Thus, many Teutons
+      had been taught by their Druid teachers to acknowledge but one single God,
+      and this primitive doctrine naturally reconciled them to the new creed.
+      But, more than that, the particular god whom they thus acknowledged, was
+      called <i>Esus</i>, almost Jesus! Others had followed the example of the
+      Slaves and worshipped the handle of their swords, which bore the form of a
+      cross; they naturally recognized in the Christian cross a familiar emblem
+      of protection and safety. Even baptism was in no way distasteful to the
+      followers of Odin. They readily adopted, it in memory of the regular and
+      regenerative ablutions with water which their ancient creed prescribed.
+      Odin had said to them in the Runic chapter of the Edda: &ldquo;If I wish a
+      man never to perish in combat, <i>I sprinkle him with water soon after his
+      birth?</i>&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, this just man, put to death by wicked men, this risen Christ,
+      reminded them forcibly of their own god Balder. Evidently the predicted
+      time had come. Balder, the ancient prisoner of Niflheim, was about to
+      renew the world; in his new shape, the Bright God was no longer the son of
+      Frigg; he was now Mary&rsquo;s son and his name was Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This disposition, however, although plainly shown in many parts of
+      Germany, was by no means unanimous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the table of King Clovis, the bishops, and Saint Reni himself, were
+      compelled to sit by the side of Scandinavian Druids. When they intoned
+      their Benedicite, the latter never failed to pour out their libations in
+      honor of Asa-Thor and Asa-Freyr. In spite of all the heroic and
+      indefatigable efforts of the priests, polytheism survived even among the
+      new converts, who would walk devoutly in the processions of Christian
+      worship, while they carried their idols and their fetishes under their
+      arms, and who never failed to make the sign of the cross when they passed
+      a tree or a spring that had been held sacred by their forefathers. What
+      could be done to make them sincere and orthodox Christians? <span
+      class="pagenum">[250]</span><a name="link250" id="link250"></a>Liberty, in
+      the sense in which we understand it now, and have good reason to
+      understand it, would have appeared to a Teuton or a Slave as a beautiful
+      woman, with a wooden yoke around her neck and all her limbs in chains.
+      Germany had her laws, as well as every other Northern country her written
+      or unwritten laws, but the dignity of a freeborn man consisted mainly in
+      disregarding these laws. The free man left his country, to engage in war
+      wherever he chose, and his family, to live in any country he might prefer.
+      It was the same thing with religious matters; he reserved to himself his
+      independent judgment, the right to worship as he chose and the privilege
+      of combining such articles of creed as pleased him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This curious freedom of religion, this curious amalgamation of creeds,
+      produced the strange result, that the neophytes especially remained half
+      pagan and half Christian, and preferred generally to &ldquo;ride on the
+      fence&rdquo; between the two creeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Nibelungen Lied, which we look upon as nothing more than a great
+      epic poem of the Scandinavians, pagan at first but Christianized at a
+      later period, men are represented as going devoutly to church after having
+      consulted the Nix of the river as to their future fate. This is, no doubt,
+      a true picture of the Germany of the early Christian days. <span
+      class="pagenum">[251]</span><a name="link251" id="link251"></a>Some looked
+      upon baptism, with its magnificent and pompous ceremonies, as a pleasure;
+      others submitted to it for a consideration. Ozanam, who is exceedingly
+      well informed about everything that refers to this curious period of
+      transition in point of religion, tells the following anecdote:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0096" id="linkimage-0096"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/271s.jpg" alt="271s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/271.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/271m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      One day there was a crowd of candidates for baptism; each one of them was,
+      as usual, dressed in white, as emblematic of purity. This symbolic dress,
+      made of a suitable material, was a present from the Church to the
+      neophyte, which he had carefully to preserve as an evidence of his
+      conversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, on that day, all the available robes had been given away, when one
+      more candidate for baptism presented himself; the priest found at last a
+      robe of light color, but unfortunately in wretched condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; exclaimed the neophyte, angrily drawing
+      back; &ldquo;have I not a right to claim a white robe as well as the
+      others, and one of fine wool?&rdquo; and looking furiously at the priest
+      he added: &ldquo;Do you think I am a man to be taken <span class="pagenum">[252]</span><a
+      name="link252" id="link252"></a>in? This is the twentieth time
+      that I am baptized, and I have never been offered such rags before!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The naïve candor of this good Teuton could make me almost believe that he
+      misunderstood the nature of the ceremony altogether, and looked upon it
+      only as a gratuitous distribution of wearing apparel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other more painful mistakes were made when the Christian missionaries,
+      crossing rivers and seas at the risk of their lives, went to the uttermost
+      confines of Germany, and there encountered half savage nations who were
+      still worshipping the Scandinavian gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The patient zeal, the gentleness, and the eloquence of these holy men,
+      succeeded finally in overcoming the convictions of these barbarians, and
+      in introducing among them not only the Gospel, but also the worship of
+      saints. The people received baptism, and not only welcomed the saints with
+      great eagerness and enthusiasm, but in their desire to do them all the
+      honor in their power, they hastened to turn every one of them into a god!
+      They erected altars to these new gods, and on these altars they offered
+      them human sacrifices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These same missionaries had been instructed to prohibit the use of
+      horseflesh among the new converts; but they found it very difficult to
+      overcome a custom which at that time was very general. <span
+      class="pagenum">[253]</span><a name="link253" id="link253"></a>We can
+      hardly, at the present day, understand the importance which the Church
+      attached to this abstinence, since now-a-days the best of people are
+      perfectly willing to allow their horses to be taken from their stables for
+      the purpose of being served up at table!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0097" id="linkimage-0097"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/273s.jpg" alt="273s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/273.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/273m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The most serious difficulty in all such critical periods is this, that
+      while the true and faithful clergymen by their prodigious labors and
+      admirable self-devotion succeeded in converting and disciplining great
+      multitudes, false priests appeared among them, taking forcible possession
+      of parishes and bishoprics, often without waiting till they became vacant.
+      Pepin of Heristal and Charles Martel, his son, had just compelled the
+      pagan Saxons to take refuge behind the Weser. When the war was over and
+      they proceeded to dismiss the commanders of <span class="pagenum">[254]</span><a
+      name="link254" id="link254"></a>this numerous army till the beginning of
+      another campaign, as was the custom in those days, the majority among them
+      claimed, as a reward for services rendered, the right to exchange the
+      sword for the crozier and the helmet for the mitre. They evidently thought
+      that the profession was an easy one to practice and rich in rewards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pepin and Charles resisted, but they had to give way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the great disgust of the newly converted populations and to the great
+      injury of the holy cause, which they professed to have served, these
+      warrior-priests brought with them into the Church the manners of the camp
+      and the fortress. They surrounded themselves with squires, falconers, and
+      riding-masters, with horses and hounds; they hawked, they hunted, they
+      lived high, giving themselves up to all kinds of excesses, and drawing the
+      sword against any one who should venture to reproach them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When war began once more, they almost all returned to arms, without, on
+      that account renouncing their ecclesiastic duties. Gerold, Bishop of
+      Mayence, perished in a battle against the Saxons; his son succeeded him on
+      the episcopal throne, and had hardly been consecrated when he proceeded to
+      avenge his father. He rushes into battle, challenges Gerold&rsquo;s
+      murderer, kills him, and quietly returns to <span class="pagenum">[255]</span><a
+      name="link255" id="link255"></a>Mayence for the purpose of officiating
+      there at Mass and of returning thanks to God for his success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such acts of violence and such worldly enjoyments were incomprehensible to
+      the faithful; gradually the Church of the Apostles began to fear the
+      Church of the Soldiers. The Saxons, having vastly increased their numbers
+      by an alliance with the Scythians and Scandinavians, appeared once more in
+      the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; exclaims the reader, whom I fancy I hear at this
+      distance, &ldquo;but this is history, church history moreover, and you
+      told us you would tell us all about gods!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I confess I did, sir; and that is the reason why I have traced out, on
+      this historical ground, the narrowest and shortest possible path, on which
+      I can safely return to my own domain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, let us return, my good friend.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I beg your pardon, sir, but before we return, allow me at least to glorify
+      three men, who were called upon at that time to save Christianity, and
+      with it civilization, by the pen, the word, and the sword. These equally
+      great and equally heroic men are now three of our saints.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saints again!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, sir, the first is Pope Gregory, the second Saint Boniface the
+      missionary, and the third the Emperor Charlemagne. Do not be afraid; I
+      shall <span class="pagenum">[256]</span><a name="link256" id="link256"></a>do
+      no more than mention them, for fear of going again out of my way and of
+      speaking of forbidden subjects, against which you have warned me. Allow
+      me, however, to add that if the struggle which the great Emperor
+      undertook, was a long and ter-tible one, it was also glorious far beyond
+      all. Was it not marvelous, I ask you, to see this nation of Franks, which
+      but just now consisted of a mixture of barbarians, go forth under the
+      command of their young king, to become the protector of Rome, of
+      civilization, and of Christianity? The mace had become a shield, the
+      siege-ram a wall and a rampart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course! Everybody knows that!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, did you know this, sir: When the Saxons, conquered for the tenth
+      time, had received baptism, together with their king Witikind, when the
+      Rhine, also baptized, had become a French river and a Christian river,
+      when the whole of Germany bowed low before the cross, one of the nations
+      of that country, the Borussians (Pruszi, or Prussians), refused to give up
+      their old gods, and continued to refuse for several centuries to come? And
+      yet it was so. The proscribed gods, finding a refuge on the banks of the
+      Oder and the Spree, paid frequent visits, as was quite natural, to their
+      former followers. It was thus that the old pagan creed was long preserved
+      in the remote regions of Germany. You see, sir, I have returned to my
+      subject. <span class="pagenum">[257]</span><a name="link257" id="link257"></a>Let
+      us rapidly conclude this first part of our task, so as to reach at last
+      the modern gods, who were as popular as the others, and in their way
+      neither less strange nor less curious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the time of the Middle Ages, Germany had been filling up with towns
+      and castles, feudal dungeons bearing aloft a helmet and a cross. The cross
+      arose wherever two streets met in a city and at every cross-road in the
+      country; the most beautiful cathedrals in the world and the most
+      magnificent monasteries were reflected in her broad river; and still, in
+      field and forest, in city and country, and along the banks of the Rhine,
+      the false gods were worshipped in secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the church taught that they were to be looked upon as demons, the
+      people dared not treat them badly. Demons are not guests to be turned out
+      rudely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the eighth century of our Christian era,&rdquo; says one of
+      our erudite authorities, &ldquo;the Saxons and Sarmatians heard the
+      Christian missionaries speak so continually of the formidable power of
+      Satan, that they thought it best to worship him secretly in order to
+      disarm his wrath and perhaps to win his favor. They called him the Black
+      God or <i>Tybilinus</i>; the Germans call him, even now, <i>Dibel or
+      Teufel</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Black God now became for all the German <span class="pagenum">[258]</span><a
+      name="link258" id="link258"></a>nations the army leader of their
+      proscribed gods, an army which was presently to be largely increased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The princes and knights, followed by their vassals, departed in large
+      numbers, on the Crusades, but they brought back from the Crusades,
+      together with holy relics, traditions of Gnomes, Peris, and Undines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0098" id="linkimage-0098"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/278s.jpg" alt="278s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/278.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/278m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Rhine, disgusted at the loss of his royal dignity, and determined to
+      take his vengeance on the warrior-bishops, received these last arrivals as
+      he had those who came before. In his healing waters the Undines mingled
+      with the Tritons and the Naiads; the Gnomes found shelter under the rocks,
+      where they were hospitably received by the Dwarfs, and in the evening
+      twilight the Nymphs, the Elves, and the Dryads danced once more merrily in
+      company with Sylphs, Fairies, and Peris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt Christian Germany looked afterwards at all this more in the light
+      of food for the imagination than of trouble for the conscience, but in
+      that happy land, where people believe and dream <span class="pagenum">[259]</span><a
+      name="link259" id="link259"></a>at the same time, and where the words of
+      the poet are as true as the Gospel, the imagination easily gets the better
+      of conscience. Thus the search after the little blue flower led many a
+      learned man astray, far off into half satanic paths. Besides, it lies in
+      the nature of the German mind, which has always a tendency towards
+      idealism, its magnetic pole, to oppose to the orthodox religion another
+      more secret and more mysterious creed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0099" id="linkimage-0099"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/279s.jpg" alt="279s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/279.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/279m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This was the case already in the fourteenth and <span class="pagenum">[260]</span><a
+      name="link260" id="link260"></a>fifteenth century; it is the case still in
+      this, the nineteenth century, especially among the country people, who
+      have passed through the age of witchcraft in which the Black God ruled
+      supreme, and, completely modifying their pagan notions, have transferred
+      their Olympus to the Brocken, the mountain of the Witches&rsquo; Sabbath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us now see what the dwellers on the banks of the Rhine have done with
+      all their old gods and demi-gods of every denomination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[263]</span><a name="link263" id="link263"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0100" id="linkimage-0100"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/283s.jpg" alt="283s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/283.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/283m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.&mdash;<i>Sylphs, their
+      Amusements and Domestic Arrangements.&mdash;Little Queen Mab. &mdash;Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps.&mdash;White
+      Elves and Black Elves.&mdash;True Causes of Natural Somnambulism.&mdash;The
+      Wind&rsquo;s Betrothed.&mdash;Fire-damp.&mdash;Master Haemmerling.&mdash;The
+      Last of the Gnomes.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he reader is
+      requested to recall what I have said before, that in Germany manners,
+      customs, and creeds, matters of prejudice as well as matters of art, and
+      even of science, may have a beginning, <span class="pagenum">[264]</span><a
+      name="link264" id="link264"></a>but never have an end. In that ancient
+      home of mysticism and of philosophy, everything is permanently rooted,
+      everything is made for eternity, like those old oak trees of the Hercynia
+      of antiquity: when the parent tree is cut down, and has no longer a trunk
+      to bear boughs and branches, it sends forth new shoots from the roots.
+      Druidism also has become permanent there. We have seen it fight against
+      the gods of the Romans; it fought in like manner against Christianity
+      under Witikind; it was kept alive, though in concealment, by the first
+      iconoclasts or image breakers, and when that whole vast country was at
+      last conquered and became wholly devoted to Catholicism, it broke forth
+      once more quite unexpectedly in the first days of the Reformation. Luther
+      was a Druid still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thanks to this tenacity of life which characterizes creeds, and thanks to
+      the prolific nature of that soil, whatever seems to have disappeared,
+      rises again, under new forms, and whatever has perished is recalled to
+      life in some way or other. Let us prove this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among all those gods which we have mentioned before, none surely would
+      seem to have been more readily forgotten, swept away by the wind, which
+      they claimed to render useless, or buried in the dust with which they
+      seemed to compete, than those tiny, microscopic deities, called Monads.
+      <span class="pagenum">[265]</span><a name="link265" id="link265"></a>And
+      yet this was by no means the case. Did they not, in fact, represent the
+      elementary spirits? And the worship of the elements continued in spite of
+      all other creeds which tried to suppress it forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only these atomic deities, still quite small, exceedingly small, had
+      increased in the most astonishing manner, when compared with their
+      original diminutiveness. They had even assumed a form and a body, a
+      visible body and a shape by no means void of grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had become Alps or Alfs, better known afterwards under their Eastern
+      designation of Sylphs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened occasionally that a belated traveller, a peasant or a charcoal
+      burner, returning homeward from a wedding towards the beginning of night,
+      would be fortunate enough to meet at a clearing in the woods or on the
+      banks of a brook with a band of little goblins, who were making merry in
+      the dim twilight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were Sylphs, a little people flying in swarms through the air,
+      making their nest in a flower or building one with a few bits of grass at
+      the foot of a broom-sedge, and going out only in the evening to pay visits
+      and as good neighbors to perform their social duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the traveller, the peasant, or the charcoal burner <span class="pagenum">[266]</span><a
+      name="link266" id="link266"></a>had walked softly on the fine sand of the
+      brook or on a grass-grown path on which his steps could not be heard, and
+      if he had then stopped in time so as to be able to see without being seen,
+      he might witness their gambols and ascertain the secrets of their private
+      life, without running any risk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0101" id="linkimage-0101"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/286s.jpg" alt="286s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/286.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/286m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Have you, dear reader, have you heard Mercutio, in Shakespeare&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Romeo and Juliet,&rdquo; relate how Queen Mab came, and say:&mdash;<span
+      class="pagenum">[267]</span><a name="link267" id="link267"></a>
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Oh, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.....
+Her wagon spokes made of long spinners&rsquo; legs,
+The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
+The traces of the smallest spider&rsquo;s web,
+The collars of the moonshine&rsquo;s watery beams,
+Her whip of cricket&rsquo;s bone, the lash of film,
+Her wagoner, a small, gray-coated gnat!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Well, the peasant, the traveller, or the charcoal burner, enjoyed a sight
+      which was by no means less curious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of his Sylphs, suspending a thread of gossamer from one blade of
+      grass to another, made a delightful swing for their amusement, or took a
+      spiders web to supply them with a hammock. Others danced wildly about in
+      the air, beating their tiny wings with harmonious accuracy and furnishing
+      thus an orchestra for the aerial ball.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not far from them some little sylph ladies, no doubt excellent
+      housekeepers, were washing their linen in the beams of the moon, or
+      preparing a feast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The provisions consisted of a mixture of honey with the nectar of flowers,
+      a few drops of milk which the hanging udders of young heifers had left on
+      the high grass, and a few pearls of that precious dew which aromatic
+      plants secrete; this mixture was used as a seasoning for some
+      butterfly-eggs beaten up white as snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If during the repast darkness fell upon them and <span class="pagenum">[268]</span><a
+      name="link268" id="link268"></a>suddenly covered the guests with its
+      sombre cloak, other hobgoblins, the Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps, with wings of
+      fire, came and took seats at the hospitable table, paying for their
+      entertainment by diffusing a pleasant light all over the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The principal occupation of these elves consisted in walking before the
+      wanderer who had lost his way so as to lead him back again into the right
+      path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were some of the harmless spirits of Air and Fire. Everything has,
+      however, been changed in these two elements. The Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps
+      especially, angry at the reports of wicked people, that they are nothing
+      more than the products of burning hydrogen, or at best phosphorus in a
+      volatile form floating above damp places, have conceived a veritable
+      hatred against men and now only appear when they wish to tempt travellers
+      into marshes and deep ravines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the Sylphs, they also seem to have heard similar stories which have
+      been told about them, or they may have been irritated by the chemist
+      Liebig, who in his &ldquo;Treatise on the Composition of the Air,&rdquo;
+      absolutely denies their existence, having found in his apparatus neither
+      Sylphs nor Sylphides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They have changed into faithless Elves, hostile to men, like the other
+      Gnomes.<span class="pagenum">[269]</span><a name="link269" id="link269"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0102" id="linkimage-0102"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/289s.jpg" alt="289s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/289.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/289m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[271]</span><a name="link271" id="link271"></a>The
+      Fairies of our day are divided into two formidable classes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The White Fairies are damsels who wander about on meadows and in woods,
+      like the Willis of the Slaves, and lie in wait for inexperienced young
+      men, whom they persuade to join in their dances and keep dancing, till
+      they lose their breath and generally fall to the ground never to rise
+      again. German stories are full of such wicked tricks. The place where they
+      perform their diabolic dances, becomes quite silvery under their feet. The
+      shepherds can thus at once recognize the place where they have been, and
+      are sure to hasten away at once with their flocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0103" id="linkimage-0103"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/291s.jpg" alt="291s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/291.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/291m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Black Fairies personify Nightmare and Somnambulism, but only Natural
+      Somnambulism, it must be borne in mind. <span class="pagenum">[272]</span><a
+      name="link272" id="link272"></a>When men fall into this state, the Black
+      Elf directs all the motions of the sleeper; he lives in him, thinks and
+      acts for him, makes him get upon the furniture and climb upon roofs, and
+      keeps him from falling, unless... Poor sleeper, he allowed them breath
+      enough to swell the sails of a vessel or to chase the clouds from one end
+      of the heavens to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the Celts all magicians had been able to command the winds and the
+      tempests at will; even now certain men in Norway and in Lapland will sell
+      you, for a small price, the wind you desire to carry you home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Careful! The Black Fairies are treacherous and cruel; the Fairy who
+      controls you for the moment may at any moment take a fancy to throw you
+      from your height.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0104" id="linkimage-0104"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/292s.jpg" alt="292s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/292.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/292m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Alfs, who have thus become Elves or Fairies, are of course not the
+      only Spirits of the Air; their fragile and delicate structure would never
+      have been inGermany, on the contrary, the wind was looked upon as an
+      elementary power. It was not deified, as in Rome, where there was a whole
+      windy family of gods, like Eurus, Æolus, Boreas, and Favonius, but it was
+      an important personage, with a will of his own and independent action. The
+      poets did their part to give importance to <i>Master Wind.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have in my hand a ballad, which will enable the reader to judge for
+      himself:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gretchen, the pretty miller&rsquo;s daughter, was courted by the
+      son of the king. Her father, the miller, knowing that kings&rsquo; sons
+      are not apt to marry, had chosen her a husband, a young flour merchant
+      from Rotterdam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Dutchman was on his way up the Rhine; that very evening he was
+      expected to arrive, to make his proposals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gretchen called upon Master Wind to help her; he came in by the
+      window, but not without breaking a number of panes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;What do you wish me to do?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;A man wants to marry me, against my will; he is coming in a
+      sail boat; contrive it so that he cannot land at Bingen.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wind blew, and blew so well that the boat, instead of coming up
+      to Bingen, was driven back again as far as Rotterdam. <span class="pagenum">[274]</span><a
+      name="link274" id="link274"></a>"At Rotterdam also it could not make land;
+      it was driven into the North Sea, and there the Dutchman is perhaps still
+      sailing about at this day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Master Wind had made his conditions before he went to work
+      blowing so well; and the pretty miller&rsquo;s daughter had agreed to them
+      without hearing them, for all around her the furniture, the doors, and the
+      blinds were shaking and rattling furiously, thanks to her visitor. Thus it
+      came about that poor Gretchen found herself betrothed to Master Wind,
+      which made her very sad, for now she had less hope than ever of marrying
+      the king&rsquo;s son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However, Master Wind was as gallant towards his fair betrothed as
+      he could be. Every morning, when she opened her window, he would throw her
+      in beautiful bouquets of flowers which he had torn off in the neighboring
+      gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any young man of the village, whom she had rejected, passed
+      without saluting her, Master Wind was promptly at hand to carry off his
+      hat and send it up in the air so high, that soon it looked no bigger than
+      a lark. It was well for him that Master Wind did not, with the hat, take
+      his head off at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day (when Master Wind must have been asleep), the king&rsquo;s
+      son came to the mill, made his <span class="pagenum">[275]</span><a
+      name="link275" id="link275"></a>way without difficulty to Gretchen&rsquo;s
+      chamber, and forthwith desired to kiss her. Gretchen did not object. But
+      at once, and although out of doors all was quiet, the tables and chairs
+      performed a wild dance, and the doors and windows began to slam as if they
+      had been mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gretchen herself began to twirl around and around in the most
+      unaccountable manner; her hair was loosened by an invisible hand and
+      whisked about her head with strange rustling and dismal whistling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrified by the sight of a tempest in a close room, the prince
+      cried:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Ah! accursed one, you are the betrothed of Master Wind!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And at the same moment a terrible gust of wind carried off the king&rsquo;s
+      son, the miller&rsquo;s daughter, and the mill, and no one ever saw or
+      heard anything more of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps they went to join the Dutchman, who was all the time
+      sailing about in the North Sea, or the hat, which was still on its way in
+      the clouds.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legend does not tell us whether it was before or after this occurrence
+      that Master Wind married Mistress Rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the Spirits of the Air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the Spirits of the Fire, it must be remembered <span class="pagenum">[276]</span><a
+      name="link276" id="link276"></a>that the Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps were by
+      no means their only representatives. There were also Salamanders, too well
+      known to be described here; and St. Elmo Fires, near relations of the
+      Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps. But we must pause a moment to speak of the
+      formidable Fire-damp, the miner&rsquo;s terror. The remarkable feature
+      about it is that it plays so insignificant a part in the popular German
+      myths, although it has destroyed so many victims in all mountainous
+      countries, and above all in the Hartz mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This subterranean lightning, far more fatal than that of the upper
+      regions, is known to the people of the Rhine simply as a tall monk, whom
+      they call Master Haemmerling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Master Haemmerling visits the mines from time to time in the guise of a
+      harmless amateur, or of an inspector, who is not fond of being hurried.
+      However, on Fridays especially, he is subject to violent attacks of anger.
+      If a laborer handles his pickaxe awkwardly, or if he is insolent to his
+      master, or the master harsh to him and requiring too much, he is, quick as
+      a flash of lightning, between them when they are as yet half way under
+      ground. Then he suddenly draws his long legs together, and between his two
+      knees crushes their heads with as little hesitation and ceremony as a
+      mother would show in destroying between her two thumbs the <span
+      class="pagenum">[277]</span><a name="link277" id="link277"></a>little
+      hateful insect that has troubled her darling child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing more need be said of the elementary spirits of Air and Fire; but
+      as we have followed Master Haemmerling into the lower depths of the
+      mountains, we might just as well remain there a while and make the
+      acquaintance of the Gnomes, the Spirits of the Earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can you see, through the dense air which fills these immense caverns, the
+      long, gigantic stalactites, reaching from the ceiling to the floor and
+      strongly impregnated with iron? They are the columns of this subterranean
+      palace, and around these stalactites, peaceful, slumbering waters form a
+      kind of little lakes, the shores of which look as if they were covered
+      with rust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here and there, in the damp low grounds, half choked with ore and slag of
+      various kinds, dark reeds are growing in the shape of lizards; like
+      lizards they bend backwards, moving their heads from side to side and
+      showing thus the diamond eye which shines brilliantly at the extreme end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These dark depths seem to teem with fantastic creatures; close by a heap
+      of grains of gold, stands immovable a watchful, silent guardian, a
+      griffin; a pack of black dogs, also guardians of the treasures hid in this
+      world of precious metals and <span class="pagenum">[278]</span><a
+      name="link278" id="link278"></a>stones, are roaming incessantly along the
+      ceiling. On the sloping sides, dwarfs not larger than grasshoppers, and
+      jumping about like peas in the sieve of the winnower, are gathering right
+      and left the tiny gold and silver spangles which are left at their
+      disposal, while enormous toads are posted about as watchmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, far back in the remotest part of these abysses the kings of this
+      empire are moving about; these thick-set men, with stout limbs and
+      monstrous heads, are the Gnomes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But people hardly believe in Gnomes any longer; the hard-working miners
+      who ought to come every day in contact with them, deny their existence,
+      and they have gradually passed into the class of fabulous beings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, I am told that as recently as last year, a pretty peasant girl from
+      the neighborhood of Hamburg appeared on a certain evening at a ball, with
+      a large ruby on her finger. She professed to have received this gem from
+      an Earth Spirit, who had appeared to her at the entrance to the Faunus
+      mines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gossips of the village were not satisfied, however, with the account,
+      and suspected the Gnome to have been an English Gnome, who was travelling
+      abroad for his health and courting pretty girls for his amusement. This
+      conviction <span class="pagenum">[279]</span><a name="link279" id="link279"></a>was
+      so strong that the poor girl had to leave the country in disgrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the last Gnome that has been mentioned in that part of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0105" id="linkimage-0105"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/299s.jpg" alt="299s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/299.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/299m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[283]</span><a name="link283" id="link283"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0106" id="linkimage-0106"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/303s.jpg" alt="303s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/303.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/303m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Elementary Spirits of the Water.&mdash;<i>Petrarch at Cologne.&mdash;Divine
+      Judgment by Water.&mdash;Nixen and Undines.&mdash;A Furlough till Ten o&rsquo;clock.&mdash;The
+      White-footed Undine.&mdash;Mysteries on the Rhine.&mdash;The Court of the
+      Great Nichus.&mdash;Nix-COBT, the Messenger of the Dead.&mdash;His Funny
+      Tricks.&mdash;I go in Search of an Undine.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>fter leaving
+      Aix-la-Chapelle, I had stopped at Cologne, on the left bank of the Rhine,
+      which I then found completely covered with several rows of women, a
+      countless and charming multitude....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adorned with flowers or aromatic herbs, the sleeves <span
+      class="pagenum">[284]</span><a name="link284" id="link284"></a>pushed up
+      above the elbow, they dipped their soft white hands and arms into the
+      river, murmuring certain mysterious words which I could not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I questioned some people. They told me it was an ancient custom of
+      the country. Thanks to these ablutions and certain prayers which
+      accompanied them, the river carried down with it all the diseases, which
+      would otherwise have attacked them during the coming year. I answered,
+      smilingly: &lsquo;How happy the people of the Rhine must be if the kind
+      river thus takes all their sufferings to distant countries! The Po or the
+      Tiber have never been able to do as much for us.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the words which Petrarch wrote in one of his familiar letters,
+      written on St. John&rsquo;s Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter, as precious by its date as by its contents, proves beyond all
+      question, that in the fourteenth century the Rhine was popularly
+      worshipped and adored on the very days on which the summer solstice is
+      celebrated by bonfires after the manner of the old fire worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately the Christians ended by appealing to the elements, to Fire
+      or Water, as to a judicial authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The popular notion that the elements were perfectly pure and would hence
+      instinctively reject every impure substance, led naturally to ordeals
+      <span class="pagenum">[285]</span><a name="link285" id="link285"></a>by
+      water. The accused was undressed; his hands and feet were tied crosswise,
+      the right hand to the left foot and the right foot to the left hand, and
+      thus bound he was thrown into a river or any watercourse that was deep
+      enough. If he floated, he was guilty and instantly burnt; if he sank and
+      remained for some time at the bottom of the water, he was considered
+      innocent&mdash;but he was drowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heinrich Heine, at least, tells us that this was the infallible result of
+      justice in the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages ended in Germany but
+      yesterday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was also a trial by bread and cheese (<i>exorcismus panis hordeacei,
+      vel casei, ad probationem veri</i>), but bread and cheese are not
+      elements. Let us return to the elementary spirits of Water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the great religious reaction which took place after the days of
+      Charlemagne, all the mythological gods of rivers and streams had gradually
+      returned, more or less successfully, to their former occupations. The
+      great Nix or Nichus, upon whom devolved the rule over all the rivers of
+      Germany, was no other than the ancient Niord, a very important deity and a
+      kind of Northern Neptune. This very weighty discovery is due to the
+      learned Mallet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt this god Niord was one of those who, on their disastrous flight
+      from Argentoratum, had <span class="pagenum">[286]</span><a
+      name="link286" id="link286"></a>fallen into the Rhine. They
+      thought that he was drowned, but he had only taken refuge in one of the
+      lowest, almost unfathomable depths of the river. From this safe retreat
+      the great Nichus had defied the decrees of Councils and the anathemas of
+      the Christians hurled against all elementary spirits alike; there he had
+      summoned the subaltern deities of sources, ponds, lakes, and smaller
+      streams, the nymphs of the banks, and the hideous, scaly monsters which
+      swarmed at the bottom of the river. Organizing all these into a people, an
+      escort, and an army, he had come forth and invaded at the head of his host
+      the banks of the Neckar and the Main, the Moselle and the Meuse, the great
+      tributaries of the Rhine, and governed the inhabitants of the banks by
+      terror. More than once he had extended his ravages far beyond the plains,
+      overthrowing churches that had but just been completed, and drowning in
+      his waters all the deserters from the altars of Odin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Niord was a wicked god, who had a fearful temper. He held his subjects, to
+      whatever class they might belong, completely under his yoke, treating them
+      capriciously and cruelly, and making of the Rhine a hell of waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to this dark and damp kingdom of the great Nichus that we have to go
+      in order to make the acquaintance, not of his great dignitaries, but <span
+      class="pagenum">[287]</span><a name="link287" id="link287"></a>of the very
+      humblest and lowest of his subjects, the Nixen and the male and female
+      Undines, a race of anathematized demons, who make up, by themselves,
+      almost the whole population of this realm beneath the waters of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What! Must we really count our beautiful Lore, the charming fairy Lorelei,
+      you who preferred death to the punishment of making all men fall in love
+      with you, much as you loved men in general, must we count you among the
+      demons, evildoing and accursed sprites? No! How public opinion has stoutly
+      held its own in defiance of all the decrees of the Church. Nixen, like the
+      Fairies, are by common consent divided into two classes: Nixen proper, who
+      are former pagan deities and not too much to be dreaded, and female Nixen,
+      almost always harmless and at times even useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is these latter only of whom we shall hereafter speak as Undines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Nixen of the first class are ever ready to assume any disguise that
+      may aid them in attaining their purpose. Some of them roam about in
+      deserted places near the banks of rivers; others have at times appeared in
+      the neighboring towns, pretending to be foreign ladies of distinction, or
+      artists, generally great performers on the harp. Here they have begun
+      intrigues with credulous lovers or unlucky admirers. Others appear at
+      village <span class="pagenum">[288]</span><a name="link288" id="link288"></a>celebrations,
+      mingling in the dance with such energy, that their partners are
+      intoxicated, carried away, and, losing their heads, think they continue to
+      hear the sound of harps and violins, while they are already far away, led
+      on by imaginary music, and only return to consciousness on the banks of
+      the river, at the moment when they are about to sink helpless into the
+      waters of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0107" id="linkimage-0107"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/308s.jpg" alt="308s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/308.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/308m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      One important point, however, must not be overlooked. To protect one&rsquo;s
+      self against the allurements of these accursed fairies, a bit of horehound
+      or marjoram is sufficient. We hope all who propose visiting the Rhine will
+      be careful always to keep such an herb on their person. Before they take
+      out their passports they ought always to pay a visit to an herbalist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second class of Nixen, the only one in which we are interested, the
+      Undines, are, as far as I have been able to learn, the restless souls of
+      <span class="pagenum">[289]</span><a name="link289" id="link289"></a>poor
+      girls who, driven to despair by love, have thrown themselves into the
+      Rhine. Unfortunately German lovers, not very courageous at best, are but
+      too apt to seek relief in suicide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0108" id="linkimage-0108"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/309s.jpg" alt="309s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/309.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/309m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      According to the somewhat uncertain information for which I am indebted to
+      my authorities or to my intercourse with the Rosahl family, the Undines
+      <span class="pagenum">[290]</span><a name="link290" id="link290"></a>are
+      born as human beings and very inferior in power to the genuine Nixen. They
+      live under the water exactly the same time they would have lived on earth,
+      if they had not voluntarily put an end to their existence. They are thus
+      granted a kind of exceptional resurrection and have here a preliminary
+      purgatory, in which they but too frequently expiate, if not the sin of
+      their love, at least that of their death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the lowest depths of the river, at the bottom of vast, submerged
+      grottoes, a secret tribunal, presided over by the great Nichus, holds its
+      solemn meetings. Here they are disciplined with the utmost severity, as is
+      abundantly proven by a great number of terrible stories, such as the
+      account of the three Undines of Sinzheim, which the two brothers Grimm
+      report in their great work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three young girls of marvelous beauty, three sisters, appeared every
+      evening at the social meetings of Epfenbach, near Sinzheim and took their
+      seats among the linen-spinners. They brought new songs and merry stories
+      which no one had heard before. Where did they come from? No one knew, and
+      no one dared to ask for fear of appearing suspicious. They were the
+      delight of these meetings, but as soon as the clock struck ten they rose,
+      and neither prayers nor supplications could induce them to stay a moment
+      longer. <span class="pagenum">[291]</span><a name="link291" id="link291"></a>One
+      evening the schoolmaster&rsquo;s son, who had fallen in love with one of
+      them, undertook to prevent their departure at the usual hour; he put back
+      the wooden clock, which usually gave them warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0109" id="linkimage-0109"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/311s.jpg" alt="311s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/311.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/311m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The next day some people from Sinzheim, who were walking by the side of
+      the lake, heard groans rising from the depths of the lake, while the
+      surface was stained by three large spots of blood. From that time the
+      three sisters were never seen again at the evening assemblies, and the
+      school<span class="pagenum">[292]</span><a name="link292" id="link292"></a>master&rsquo;s
+      son faded away gradually. He died very soon afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These three sisters, so gentle, so lovely and laborious, had in nothing
+      betrayed a connection with the spirits of the lower world. The only thing
+      was, that people remembered how the hems of their garments had frequently
+      been wet, a sure sign by which Undines can be recognized. Otherwise they
+      seem to have been very much like other girls, and the severity of the
+      great Nichus appears hardly reasonable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to this hour of ten o&rsquo;clock, however, military rules cannot be
+      more rigorous than his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must, on the other hand, not be imagined that all Undines are as gentle
+      and resigned as these three sisters. There are some who bitterly resent
+      having been abandoned by their lovers, and try to revenge themselves;
+      these seem to partake to some degree of the character of the Nixen, or
+      rather,&mdash;why should we not say so at once and quite candidly?&mdash;they
+      remain faithful to their instincts as women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a proof of this statement I will quote a short but perfect little
+      drama, which Miss Margaret Rosahl has, at my request, copied from Busching&rsquo;s
+      voluminous collection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Count Herman von Filsen, whose estates lay on the right bank of the Rhine,
+      between Oslerspey <span class="pagenum">[293]</span><a name="link293"
+      id="link293"></a>and Brauback, was about to marry the rich heiress of
+      the castle of Rheins, on the other bank. His messenger had started to
+      carry the letters of invitation to all the guests, but a sudden rise of
+      the waters had nearly prevented his crossing a small stream. In trying to
+      get over, his horse stumbled, and was drowned. The messenger, however, did
+      not lose courage, but went on his way on foot. Everywhere he found the
+      brooks swollen into streams, and the torrent seemed to press him more and
+      more closely, describing curves and zigzags, with countless cataracts,
+      barring him the way on all sides and making the usual path impassable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the aid of a huge stick and jumping from rock to rock, the poor, half
+      bewildered man kept on, walking well-nigh at hap-hazard, till he found
+      himself near the Rhine, into which the swollen torrent, rushing after him
+      with sudden fury, seemed determined to push him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately a small boat was lying quite near the shore: he loosened it,
+      took the oars, and returned to Filsen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he reached the castle he said to the Count: &ldquo;Sir, a Nix has
+      barred me the way.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Count did not believe in Nixen. He sent out another messenger. But the
+      same adventure befell him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wedding day had been fixed and the Count <span class="pagenum">[294]</span><a
+      name="link294" id="link294"></a>went on, although he feared his friends
+      and followers would be few in number.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, as he crossed the river from the right bank to the left, in
+      order to pay a visit to his lady love, a sudden tempest broke out. He
+      thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters, bending over the bow of
+      the boat and trying to draw it down into the abyss beneath the waters.
+      Thereupon he became thoughtful, sent for his steward, and ordered him to
+      find out what had become of a certain girl of the neighborhood,
+      Gott-friede from Braubach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0110" id="linkimage-0110"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/314s.jpg" alt="314s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/314.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/314m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[295]</span><a name="link295" id="link295"></a>"I
+      met her a few days ago,&rdquo; replied the steward, &ldquo;as she was
+      going to St. Marks Chapel, and I offered her holy water. Gottfriede asked
+      me about your approaching wedding. She was very well, and seemed to be in
+      good spirits.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and see if you can find her,&rdquo; said the Count, &ldquo;and
+      bring me word.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0111" id="linkimage-0111"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/315s.jpg" alt="315s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/315.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/315m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      During the wedding feast Hermann von Filsen appeared joyous and attentive
+      to his bride, the new Countess, but the effort to appear so caused his
+      perspiration to break out profusely, especially when all of a sudden a
+      small woman&rsquo;s foot, white and delicate, appeared to his eyes, and to
+      his only, on the ceiling of the dinner-hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt a chill in all his limbs. He rose suddenly <span class="pagenum">[296]</span><a
+      name="link296" id="link296"></a>and fled to another room, followed by his
+      wife, his mother, and all the guests, who thought he had been seized with
+      sudden illness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this room he saw, and he alone again saw, a white hand raise a curtain
+      and with the forefinger beckon him to follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long time ago Hermann had heard, without paying any attention at that time
+      to the statement, that such a small white foot and a small white hand
+      indicated the presence of an Undine and the coming of an inevitable
+      calamity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he believed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop, who had performed the marriage ceremony, was at the dinner.
+      Hermann went straight up to him, knelt down, and confessed aloud, and with
+      many tears, that a young girl named Gottfriede, fairer and better than all
+      her sisters, had loved him dearly, and that he had returned her love and
+      then abandoned her. Gottfriede had sought oblivion of her sufferings in
+      the river, and now was bent upon revenge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless me, father, for I am going to die!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop, before uttering the words of absolution, demanded first that
+      the Count should abjure his impious faith in such supernatural beings, of
+      whom the Church knew nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I refuse to believe what I see? There she is! Looking as
+      pale as she was this morning <span class="pagenum">[297]</span><a
+      name="link297" id="link297"></a>at the bow of the boat. Her hair,
+      full of green grass, is hanging in disorder all over her shoulders; she
+      looks at me with a tearful smile.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing but visions!&rdquo; replies the bishop. &ldquo;Your eyes
+      deceive you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is not only by the eye that I am aware of her presence, I
+      hear her voice; she is calling me? Forgive me, Gottfriede!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0112" id="linkimage-0112"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/317s.jpg" alt="317s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/317.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/317m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are out of your mind! These are the devil&rsquo;s snares! And
+      who tells you that the girl has ceased to live? That she has committed a
+      crime? Thanks be to God, Gottfriede came to me, she confessed to me
+      penitently, and now she is in a convent!&rdquo; At this moment the
+      assembly, already deeply excited, was somewhat startled by the entrance of
+      the steward, who looked terrified, went up to the Count&rsquo;s mother,
+      and whispered some words into her ear. She could not repress a cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she is dead, and I also must die!&rdquo; cried Hermann in
+      accents of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young bride, offended at this avowal of a previous attachment, had at
+      first stood aloof; now, consulting her own heart alone, she thought of
+      contesting <span class="pagenum">[298]</span><a name="link298" id="link298"></a>the
+      right of this invisible rival, and with open arms drew near the Count; but
+      he pushed her aside rudely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop began his exorcisms. While he was repeating the prescribed
+      words, the Count asked:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want of me, Gottfriede? Forgive me and we will all pray
+      for you. You are seeping and kissing me by turns, but your kisses are
+      nothing but bitterness and sorrow to me, since I have given my name to
+      another, since another is my&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not complete the sentence. Uttering a sharp cry he fell at full
+      length to the ground, and on his neck appeared a long, bluish mark, such
+      as is seen in strangled persons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great Nichus is, as we have seen, the master, the despot, the <i>Wassermann</i>,
+      par excellence, of all this watery, dark world, peopled by Nixen and
+      Undines. His authority is, moreover, by no means limited to the exercise
+      of judicial functions; his will, constantly under the influence of an
+      ill-regulated appetite, is law for everybody; the male Nixen are his
+      Court, and his harem is kept full by the fairest among those women who
+      become his own by suicide. This greenish-complexioned Sardanapalus is said
+      to celebrate incredibly monstrous orgies with his drowned Odalisques.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is, in reality, Niord, the Scandinavian god, <span class="pagenum">[299]</span><a
+      name="link299" id="link299"></a>and this Niord again is, originally, one
+      of those old Roman emperors, who were deified, and whose portraits
+      Petronius has left us drawn in mud and blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0113" id="linkimage-0113"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/319s.jpg" alt="319s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/319.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/319m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      His principal agent, and the Jack-of-all-trades of the whole community,
+      Nixcobt, the messenger of the dead, has to maintain communication between
+      the people who live on the river, and those who live in it. He is perhaps
+      the most eccentric of all the mythical personages of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When morning is about to dawn and the mountain tops are beginning to glow
+      in a faint subdued light, a kind of low, thickset man of the most hideous
+      appearance, may occasionally be seen gliding along the houses of a town,
+      keeping carefully in the shade, or slipping down the hill-side between the
+      long rows of grapes, which are almost as high as he is. His terrible head
+      turns upon his slender neck as upon a pivot, and thus he can see and
+      examine everything without stopping for a moment. His bare shoulders, his
+      elbows, knees, and cheekbones are covered with scales; small pins appear
+      <span class="pagenum">[300]</span><a name="link300" id="link300"></a>at
+      intervals at his ankles; his round glamous eyes have a bright red point in
+      the centre; his teeth and hair are green, and his enormous mouth, split
+      wide open and shaped like the mouth of a fish, wears a fixed smile, which
+      strikes terror in the beholder. This creature is Nixcobt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0114" id="linkimage-0114"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/320s.jpg" alt="320s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/320.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/320m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      With daybreak he is back in the river to inquire if its mournful
+      population has been added to over night by some victim, suicide or not. He
+      takes down a description of each one, draws up a report, inquires as to
+      what induced them to seek refuge in the new world, and offers them his
+      services for the purpose of letting the friends and parents know, <span
+      class="pagenum">[301]</span><a name="link301" id="link301"></a>whom they
+      may have left behind, ignorant of their fate and inconsolable at their
+      loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he amuses the great Nichus with all his stories and all the clever
+      tricks he has been playing during his nocturnal visits to the people in
+      the villages and towns on the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These merry tricks of Master Nixcobt form even in our day an ever welcome
+      staple of amusement to the young spinners during the long winter nights,
+      accompanied as they are by the cheerful hum of the swiftly turning wheels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day Nixcobt calls upon the tax collector of a little town on the
+      Rhine, whom he finds in great consternation. His wife has left his house
+      and he does not know what has become of her. To console him Nixcobt tells
+      him that she is dead, having drowned herself, and as a proof of it, he
+      shows him a letter which he has with his own hands taken from the pockets
+      of the deceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The husband, whose tears had been flowing freely, dries them quickly,
+      becomes furious, and looks at his children with fierce glances. He is
+      jealous of their dead mother. Nixcobt laughs and goes to some one else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That some one else, an honest vintner of the Rheingau, has the night
+      before killed his friend in an excess of passion and then thrown the body
+      into the Rhine, together with the knife with which <span class="pagenum">[302]</span><a
+      name="link302" id="link302"></a>he had committed the murder. This knife
+      Nix-cobt now presents to him, for he takes delight in restoring lost
+      objects of this kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the murderer stands petrified at the sight of the still bloody
+      knife, the Gnome hastens to the Mayor to report to him the whole matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An inquiry is held, the vintner is found, holding the bloody knife in his
+      hand, he is hanged and Nixcobt laughs heartily.
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/322s.jpg" alt="322s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/322.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/322m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      One night a notary of Badenheim, near Mayence, hears in his sleep a voice
+      saying:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John Harnisch, the great Nichus is courting your wife, who has been
+      changed into an Undine three months ago; she will not listen to him, and
+      <span class="pagenum">[303]</span><a name="link303" id="link303"></a>he
+      wants you to tell him how he must manage to please her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The notary thought it was a bad dream, uttered a sigh as he thought of his
+      deceased wife, and fell asleep once more. But a chilly hand resting upon
+      his breast waked him once more, and the voice said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John Harnisch, speak, speak promptly and be sincere, or you shall
+      never sleep again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Harnisch resisted for some time longer, but a red flame dimly lighted
+      up his alcove and he saw a row of green teeth and scaly cheek bones.
+      Thoroughly frightened, he said what he could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks!&rdquo; cries Nixcobt, and breaks out into a far sounding
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might fill folios with all the lugubrious jokes of this messenger of
+      the dead, but we will abstain. Besides, Nixcobt has lost all respect
+      now-a-days. He is no longer seen gliding along the houses in towns or
+      slipping through the rows in the vineyards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might in like manner tell a vast number of interesting stories and
+      quote endless <i>Lieder</i> and ballads, which treat of Nixen and Undines.
+      For there are, besides, Undines of rivers and Undines of lakes, and there
+      are even some in the ocean; in Germany all watercourses, down to the
+      tiniest rills, have their Undines. <span class="pagenum">[304]</span><a
+      name="link304" id="link304"></a>Only day before yesterday I was walking on
+      the banks of the Rhine; only yesterday on those of the Moselle, This
+      morning, wandering about at haphazard I encountered a brook, a mere rill,
+      which attracted me by its sweet murmurs. I followed it, followed it for
+      two hours. I happened to have nothing else to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My tiny rill, a mere infant so near its source, was turning and twisting
+      in the thick grass and seemed to try and walk on all fours as little
+      children do. Farther down it had become a little girl, having increased in
+      size and bulk; it now wandered hither and thither, carelessly,
+      capriciously, leaping merrily over the rocks and carrying off here a
+      flower and there a flower that grew on its banks, no doubt for the purpose
+      of making a bouquet. Still farther on, I witnessed its marriage with a big
+      brook that had come down all the way from the mountains; it was a young
+      woman now, a wife, and walked soberly through the plain, like a prudent
+      stream, bearing already boats on its surface and preparing to join an
+      elder sister, the Moselle. Soon I had to cross it on a bridge; on this
+      same bridge four Prussian soldiers were busy watching the water as it
+      flowed by, no doubt in the hope of catching a fair Undine as she was
+      stealthily slipping down the river. As for myself, I had in vain traced
+      the unknown little river from its birth all <span class="pagenum">[305]</span><a
+      name="link305" id="link305"></a>along its banks, under the thick shelter
+      of willows and alder bushes; neither day before yesterday on the Rhine,
+      nor yesterday on the Moselle, nor today, did I ever find a trace of a
+      Nymph, a Nix, or an Undine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What must be my conclusion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thief who had been brought before a police court and was there
+      confronted with two persons who had seen him steal, said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These men claim that they have seen me, but I, I could bring twenty
+      other witnesses who would swear that they have not seen me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that prove?&rdquo; asked the judge of the court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0115" id="linkimage-0115"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/325s.jpg" alt="325s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/325.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/325m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      I saw nothing. &ldquo;What does that prove?&rdquo; as the wise judge said
+      to the thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[309]</span><a name="link309" id="link309"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0116" id="linkimage-0116"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/329s.jpg" alt="329s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/329.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/329m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Familiar Spirits.&mdash;<i>Butzemann.&mdash;The Good Frau Holle.&mdash;Ko-bolds.&mdash;A
+      Kobold in the Cook&rsquo;s Employ.&mdash;Zotterais and the Little White
+      Ladies.&mdash;The Killecroffs, the Devil&rsquo;s Children.&mdash;White
+      Angels.&mdash;Granted Wishes, a Fable.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>rance, which is
+      skeptic to the core, has no idea of the importance of certain visible or
+      invisible spirits, who eagerly seek the society of man, sleeping <span
+      class="pagenum">[310]</span><a name="link310" id="link310"></a>under his
+      roof, or in certain cases becoming members of his family, in the strictest
+      sense of the word. Besides, they render efficient services to a good
+      housekeeper; they may do great harm if they are made angry, and they give
+      at times most useful advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These hobgoblins, little known outside of Germany and England, frequent
+      also the French provinces watered by the Meuse, the Moselle, and the
+      Rhine, and are sometimes brought to Paris by cooks from Alsace and
+      coachmen from Lorraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us rapidly glance, not at all, but at some of the best authenticated
+      among these familiar spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evening has come, the night is dark, and master and mistress are fast
+      asleep. A servant with a candle in her hand and gaping to her heart&rsquo;s
+      content, goes once more over the house, looking in all the corners and out
+      of the way places and putting everything in order. All of a sudden a door
+      is swiftly opened and closed again right in her face and her light is
+      blown out. You will say a window has been left open and the draught has
+      done all this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By no means! It is the <i>Butzemann</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some merry companions are assembled in the large dining-room of the hotel
+      and celebrate there a feast of grapes in memory of the divine Dionysius.
+      The night advances and there they are still, <span class="pagenum">[311]</span><a
+      name="link311" id="link311"></a>glass in hand, singing, drinking....
+      Silence! all of a sudden singing and drinking comes to an end; the glasses
+      halt half way in the midst of a toast; the heavy eyes open wide, the
+      trembling knees grow strong once more. Every one of the guests hastens
+      home. Three times a hairy, ill-shapen creature has come and knocked with
+      its wings against the window. You will say it was a bat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By no means! It is the <i>Butzemann!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The family is gathering around the warm porcelain stove, where they can
+      safely defy cold winter. The men are smoking, a pot of beer by their side;
+      the women are knitting and talking of the approaching wedding of the
+      eldest daughter. Oh misery! Away back in the fireplace, a great noise is
+      heard; a bright light shines. Coals and sparks are scattered all around,
+      and some have fallen upon the dress of the betrothed. What is the matter?
+      You will say again, it was a knot in the wood, perhaps a chestnut that had
+      been overlooked in the ashes and has burst now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By no means! it is the <i>Butzemann!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Butzemann, a prophetic family spirit, warns you of coming danger and
+      bids you prepare for an approaching misfortune. Never undertake a journey,
+      never get married if a clear sign has made you aware that Butzemann has
+      put his veto upon your journey or your marriage. The only difficulty <span
+      class="pagenum">[312]</span><a name="link312" id="link312"></a>you will
+      have is to distinguish between Butzemann and a puff of wind, a bat, or an
+      exploding chestnut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is much easier to recognize <i>Frau Holle</i>, as her presence is
+      always announced by unmistakable indications. She has assumed the task of
+      overlooking the poor country girls at their work. But it has never been
+      found out why this benevolent fairy of work-people does not live in some
+      great industrial city, or some beautiful country district, where the signs
+      of active life are abundant and the whirring of wheels or the stamping of
+      machinery is heard; where the spinners sing, and the washerwomen beat time
+      at the limpid stream. She prefers, with unaccountable perverseness, to
+      live in dismal swamps, beside faithless Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps and low
+      Nixen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one has ever dared examine this question so closely as to ascertain the
+      precise truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some have dropped timid hints that Frau Holle, now occupying a very humble
+      position and rated among the familiar spirits only, was once upon a time a
+      high and mighty personage, but they have had nothing more to say of her
+      past glory, as is the case with poor ladies who have been &ldquo;unfortunate.&rdquo;
+      Others, with more boldness or more knowledge, have recognized in her the
+      goddess Frigg, Odin&rsquo;s wife. Dear Frau Holle! what a coming down!
+      what poor creatures we are, after all. <span class="pagenum">[313]</span><a
+      name="link313" id="link313"></a>As soon as the cross was planted on the
+      banks of the Rhine and the Danube, Frigg, under the name of Hertha (Mother
+      Earth), had taken refuge on an island in the ocean, where she lived
+      invisible and alone in the heart of a sacred forest, which was constantly
+      invaded by the waves of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A priest, who had remained faithful to the old religion, alone knew the
+      hour and the minute when the goddess would deign once more to appear to
+      men. At the given moment he drew forth, on the marshy island, a chariot
+      wrapped in veils. Hertha got in, and for some days travelled through the
+      world, diffusing all around her good will and consolation. Then all wars
+      were suspended; not only the sword went back into its sheath, but all
+      irons, all defensive and offensive weapons and even the iron shoes of the
+      ploughs, had to be kept carefully concealed. Hertha invited the world to
+      enjoy peace and repose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now let us see in what respect Frau Holle or Holla reminds us of the good
+      goddess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At certain periods of the year, especially at Christmas, Frau Holle leaves
+      her marshy island in order to inspect the world. All who work in linen,
+      spinning, weaving, embroidery, or starching, are by turns visited by the
+      good lady. Their idleness and their carelessness are severely punished. If
+      one fine morning Annie finds her wheel <span class="pagenum">[314]</span><a
+      name="link314" id="link314"></a>or Kate her loom covered with green slime,
+      if Bertha notices her work torn in the place which she repaired only the
+      night before, or if the water has over night turned greasy and looks
+      discolored, the poor girls may be sure that Frau Holle has been on her
+      round of inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she is pleased, on the other hand, the ribbon around the distaff holds
+      a pretty marshflower, a lily, an iris, or a gladiolus; on the lace cushion
+      or on the seamstress&rsquo;s work a little golden needle is stuck, and on
+      the heap of specially well washed and well folded linen lies a cake of
+      perfumed soap, which fills the whole house with its sweet odor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes Frau Holle finds her way mysteriously to a garret, where a poor
+      woman is lying sick with fever, the result of overwork. Then she finishes
+      herself the work that had been begun, and when she leaves she puts a few
+      florins under the pillow of the sleeping sufferer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blessings be upon you, good Dame Holle! Even if you were really once a
+      goddess of the first rank, you need not blush at your present condition.
+      Still, we cannot help asking, with a slight tremor of fear, how it can
+      have come about, that the noble Frigg, the all powerful Hertha, should
+      have been reduced to play the lady patroness of washerwomen and
+      seamstresses? How has this island in the ocean, with its sacred forest,
+      become a wretched <span class="pagenum">[315]</span><a name="link315"
+      id="link315"></a>marsh, fetid and ill reputed? There is but one answer
+      to such a question: Frigg has been unfortunate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the spinners and seamstresses, the clear-starchers and embroiderers
+      are not the only ones who are honored by kind attentions from the
+      supernatural world. The brothers Grimm say:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0117" id="linkimage-0117"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/335s.jpg" alt="335s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/335.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/335m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In certain parts of the world, every person&mdash;man, woman, or
+      child&mdash;has his own goblin to do menial service; he carries water,
+      cuts wood, and fetches beer.&rdquo; During all this time the master has
+      nothing to do but to set still and to see the work done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This goblin is evidently the <i>Genius loci</i> of the ancients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among all these goblins, however, one is by far the most famous in
+      Germany, and at the same time the oddest, of whom the most extraordinary
+      stories are told. They call him <i>Kobold.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the night the Kobold sets everything to <span class="pagenum">[316]</span><a
+      name="link316" id="link316"></a>rights in the kitchen; he cleans the
+      glasses, the plates, the pans, and wages war against the spiders and the
+      mice. For all these attentions he asks only a little food, specially
+      prepared for him, for he would never dream to ask for a share of his
+      master&rsquo;s dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although he seems to be specially devoted to the cook&rsquo;s department,
+      the Kobold is first of all attached to the house. If the cook is
+      dismissed, or if the master moves, he nevertheless remains in his old
+      home, quite ready to offer his services to the new comers. If the cook
+      goes, she says to her who takes her place:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not forget to put a little panada on the kneading trough for the
+      Kobold, or he might play you some ugly tricks. Be careful, for he is not
+      always in good humor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the Kobold, or in his place the cat, eats the panada, the new cook is
+      sure to say:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chim has been here; I see we shall be good friends.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if Chim has left the dainty untouched, or has merely tasted it, she is
+      troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he wants it made with the yolk of an egg? Or perhaps I had
+      not put enough butter to it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the Kobold is almost always invisible, he is at all times ready
+      for a chat. <span class="pagenum">[317]</span><a name="link317"
+      id="link317"></a>What are we to make of these strange beings, the
+      servants of our servants, who are even more faithful than the latter to
+      the house which they have once made their home, who do not, as we are told
+      is the case in some countries, insist so strongly upon certain privileges
+      that it becomes uncertain whether the servants are not themselves masters
+      and those who think themselves to be masters are in reality servants? They
+      generally do nothing but kindness. Nevertheless they keep out of sight,
+      thus shunning all public return for their benevolent services. What are we
+      to make of such servants? Martin Luther answers in his &ldquo;Table Talk.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0118" id="linkimage-0118"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/337s.jpg" alt="337s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/337.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/337m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For many years,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;a servant had a familiar
+      spirit who sat down by her on the hearth, where she had made a little
+      place for him, and they talked to each other during the long winter
+      evenings. One day she asked Heinzchen (Chim, Heinzchen, and Kurt Chimgen
+      are the pet names by which German and Alsatian cooks generally call their
+      Ko-bolds) to let her see him in his natural shape. At first Heinzchen
+      refused. <span class="pagenum">[318]</span><a name="link318" id="link318"></a>but
+      at last, as she insisted, he told her to go down into the cellar, where he
+      would show himself to her.&rdquo; &ldquo;She took a candle,&rdquo; he goes
+      on to say, &ldquo;and went into the cellar, where the Kobold appeared to
+      her in the likeness of a child of hers who had died some years before.&rdquo;
+      Whether he vanished then, leaving her in amazement and terror, or whether
+      he resumed the shape in which she had been accustomed to see him, we are
+      not told. It is a grim story upon which we do not care to dwell, for we
+      prefer to remember the Kobold as a cheerful household companion. It is
+      pleasant to think of those quaint little creatures, whose world is the
+      kitchen, and to imagine the joy they feel in sharing the busy, bustling
+      life that goes on there daily. Be sure they know every nook and corner
+      about,&mdash;every stew-pan and ladle, and are learned in the steamy
+      scents and fragrant savors which are the atmosphere of their home. At
+      night when the fires are out, and the family is asleep, they have a life
+      of their own. They are on the best possible terms with the cat, which they
+      permit to share their food, and with which they no doubt waltz when in a
+      gamesome mood. Happy Kobolds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to general belief the Kobolds belong as much to the race of men
+      as to the world of spirits; they retain the size and shape of infants, and
+      that knife which so often is noticed in the form <span class="pagenum">[319]</span><a
+      name="link319" id="link319"></a>of a caudal appendage, is nothing less
+      than the instrument with which they have been put to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There exist, however, quite a number of troublesome hobgoblins, who turn
+      the house upside down and deprive the people to whom they bear a grudge of
+      all peace and sleep, till they well nigh drive them mad. But these
+      creatures ought, in my opinion, not be mixed up with the Kobolds. The
+      latter are almost invariably gentle and inoffensive; if they sometimes
+      become angry, they act just like children; they break and smash things,
+      but they are easily pacified by the sight of some little tit-bit, as for
+      instance, a panada made with butter and eggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0119" id="linkimage-0119"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/339s.jpg" alt="339s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/339.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/339m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Zotterais and the Little White Ladies seem, in their habits at least,
+      to come nearer to Kobolds. Very useful and easily satisfied, the Zotterais
+      are as fond of stables as the Kobolds are of kitchens; they curry the
+      horses, nurse <span class="pagenum">[320]</span><a name="link320"
+      id="link320"></a>them when they are sick, and keep everything in
+      excellent order in their racks as well as in the harness-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Little White Ladies, on the other hand, are more delicate in their
+      instincts and often quite fastidious; they like only blood horses, Arab or
+      Turkish horses, and hence the popular idea that they have originated in
+      the East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They slip into the stables of wealthy people, while the grooms are asleep;
+      here they light a small candle, which they always keep about them, and
+      then proceed to business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning, when the head, coachman makes his round to see that
+      everything is right, he sometimes finds a drop of wax on the smooth coat
+      of a sorrel or an Isabel colored horse, and then he says to the grooms:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not had much to do to-day, my friends, with your horses; I
+      see the little lady has been here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Zotterais are of unmistakable German origin, for they take care of
+      horses without regard to race and without the help of a wax candle. They
+      have, of course, harder work to do and are more apt to become soiled or to
+      have accidents; but, nevertheless, they accomplish their purpose. They are
+      naturally easily tired, and hence they require a knot to be made in the
+      mane of a horse, where <span class="pagenum">[321]</span><a
+      name="link321" id="link321"></a>they can suspend themselves and
+      rest. There is not a peasant on the banks of the Rhine or the Meuse, who
+      would neglect this duty, and I have myself often seen them attend to it
+      carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0120" id="linkimage-0120"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/341s.jpg" alt="341s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/341.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/341m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Formerly the Zotterais also protected sheep against ticks and kept their
+      wool from getting tangled; they even derived their name from Zotte, which
+      means a flock of wool. In those days, it must be presumed, from the habits
+      of those benevolent little people, the fleeces must have been whiter and
+      better kept than they are now-a-days; but sheep raisers had the unlucky
+      idea, produced probably by avarice, that not a particle of wool should be
+      left on ram or ewe, and thus deprived their tiny friends of all means to
+      rest and recover breath when hard at work. The Zotterais looked upon this
+      neglect of what was due to them as an insult, and abandoned the flocks of
+      sheep for the horses in the stables. Besides, they found it impossible to
+      live on good terms with the shepherds&rsquo; dogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must finally mention the most important and most extraordinary of all
+      familiar spirits, whom we must needs include among these favored beings,
+      <span class="pagenum">[322]</span><a name="link322" id="link322"></a>as he
+      represents nothing less than the son of the house, the child of the
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the <i>Killecroff or Suppositus.</i> The last mentioned name is
+      given to him because this so-called son of the house is in reality a
+      changeling, a supposed child, which has been put into the place of the
+      real child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0121" id="linkimage-0121"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/342s.jpg" alt="342s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/342.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/342m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Who has taken the legitimate child from its cradle in order to put into
+      its place a <i>Killecroff</i>, and who is the real father of the latter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both of these questions are met by one and the same answer. The Devil! We
+      have so far carefully avoided touching on matters of witchcraft; but
+      unfortunately they are as well known on the banks of the Rhine as on those
+      of the Thames and the Seine. The <i>Killecroffs</i>, however, children of
+      the Devil and begotten according to popular belief during the orgies of
+      the Witches&rsquo; Sabbath, have been really in existence upon earth; <i>suppositi</i>
+      or not, they have played their part in the world&rsquo;s history and
+      occasionally even left behind them illustrious descendants. <span
+      class="pagenum">[323]</span><a name="link323" id="link323"></a>In the same
+      way as the Swedish king Vilkins and Merovæus, king of the Franks, boasted
+      of being the sons of a sea-god, the dynasty of the Jagellons in Poland
+      were proud of their original descent from the Devil, no doubt through
+      Killecroffs, and actually bore in their arms certain emblems of hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How can a real Killecroff be recognized, since he has been, improperly
+      enough, counted in among the Kobolds?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[324]</span><a name="link324" id="link324"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0122" id="linkimage-0122"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/343s.jpg" alt="343s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/343.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/343m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      From his first appearance in the world, the Killecroff excites the
+      astonishment, and sometimes the admiration of his reputed parents. He
+      sucks so heartily and with such an appetite that his nurse has to be
+      reinforced by two goats and a cow, like the renowned Gargantua.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he is weaned a new marvel appears: he swallows his soup by the
+      tureen, &ldquo;as much as two peasants and two threshers in the barn would
+      take,&rdquo; says a celebrated writer in speaking of this subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He grows up and keeps everything in commotion around him; he provokes
+      quarrels not only among the servants, but even between his parents. If
+      some untoward event occurs he roars with laughter, on a day of rejoicing
+      he sheds tears and moans piteously. He takes a stick or a spit and rides
+      on it in his room, from morning till evening, climbing on every chair and
+      table, breaking everything that comes in his way, injuring himself&mdash;also
+      quite as readily, provoking cats, dogs, and even the parrot on his perch,
+      till they all mew and bark and scream. Then he runs to the stable and
+      sticks a pin into the croup of a horse to see it kick, and then breaks
+      open the doors and locks by the aid of a huge stick of wood; next he
+      rushes into the garden, playing the part of a tempest there, destroying,
+      uprooting, and breaking everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the poultry yard he wrings the hens&rsquo; necks and walks over the
+      young chickens; in the kitchen <span class="pagenum">[325]</span><a
+      name="link325" id="link325"></a>he loves to take up the tops of pots and
+      pans and to season the dishes according to his fancy with salt, pepper,
+      dust, ashes, oil, vinegar, mustard, sand, or sawdust, and never leaves
+      without having turned on the water everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a visitor arrives, he takes possession of him and stands between his
+      legs, and walks on his toes, pulls the buttons off his waistcoat, and
+      draws the strings out of his shoes; he troubles and annoys him in every
+      way, he pinches and scratches, he worries and tortures him. When his
+      mother cautiously observes that he must not trouble the gentleman he obeys
+      like a good child and leaves the gentleman alone, but not without having
+      first broken his watch-chain, taken his cane, and hid his spectacles; the
+      cane he drops accidentally into the well; as for the spectacles, he
+      forgets where he has put them. When the poor visitor, quite overcome and
+      exhausted, at last rises to go, he stumbles and falls down the stairs,
+      thanks to a string which his playful young friend, the Killecroff, has
+      stretched across the top step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Killecroffs are generally the delight of their parents; fortunately
+      they do not live long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great man whom I have quoted before, told the Duke of Anhalt frankly,
+      that if he were a sovereign like the duke, he would run the risk and
+      become a murderer in such a case, by ordering <span class="pagenum">[326]</span><a
+      name="link326" id="link326"></a>every such son of the devil to be thrown
+      into the Moldau!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This great man, who believed so firmly in Killecroffs, who believed
+      likewise in Butzemann, in Ko-bolds, in Nixen and Undines, who saw the
+      Devil in every fly that came to drink his ink or to perch on his nose, was
+      again Dr. Martin Luther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0123" id="linkimage-0123"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/346s.jpg" alt="346s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/346.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/346m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The great Reformer, who was so valiant in combating the superstitions of
+      the Papists, seems to have taken very little trouble to get rid of his
+      own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But among the many delusions, in which he apparently delighted, there was
+      one, a really charming <span class="pagenum">[327]</span><a
+      name="link327" id="link327"></a>one, which arose from the
+      Christian religion itself, and which, it seems to me, I cannot well pass
+      over in silence when speaking of familiar spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I mean Guardian Angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A most erudite and clever academician, Mr. Alfred Maury, tells us in his
+      charming book on &ldquo;Magic and Astrology,&rdquo; that according to
+      Egyptian doctrines a special star foretold the arrival of every man in
+      this world. In proof of this statement, he refers us to Horapollon, in his
+      &ldquo;Treatise on Hieroglyphics.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We infinitely prefer taking Mr. Maury&rsquo;s own evidence; and he adds:
+      &ldquo;This creed exists still in some remote districts among rural
+      populations, and especially in Germany.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be that in certain portions of Germany every man may still have
+      faith in his star; we are willing to believe it, since he says so; but
+      almost everywhere the star has been superseded by a Guardian Angel, the
+      White Angel, as they call him, a far more tempting personage, and
+      infinitely more intimate and sympathetic. The White Angel is much more
+      than the <i>Genius loci</i>; it is in fact the <i>Genius personalis</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without entering here upon a serious discussion, on the subject of
+      Guardian Angels, whom the modern Church is disposed to ignore, we shall
+      prefer <span class="pagenum">[328]</span><a name="link328" id="link328"></a>inserting
+      here, as a complement to our chapter on Familiar Spirits, a legend, which
+      we were fortunate enough to obtain directly from very truthful and very
+      beautiful lips:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A white figure appeared before the young girl as she awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I am your Guardian Angel!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Then you will grant me the wishes which I shall mention?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I shall carry them to God&rsquo;s throne. You may count upon
+      my assistance. What are your wishes?&rsquo; &ldquo;&lsquo;O White Angel, I
+      am tired of continually turning the spindle, and my fingers are getting to
+      be so hard by constant work, that yesterday, at the dance, my partner
+      might have imagined he was holding a wooden hand.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Your partner was that fine looking gentleman from Hesse? Did
+      he not tell you that he adored your blue eyes and fair hair, and that he
+      would make you a baroness, if you would go home with him?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;White Angel, make me a baroness.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The evening of that day a young peasant came and asked Louisa&rsquo;s
+      mother for her daughter&rsquo;s hand. The mother said, Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;White Angel, deliver me from this boor. I want to be a
+      baroness!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the mother, who was a widow, had energy <span class="pagenum">[329]</span><a
+      name="link329" id="link329"></a>enough for two. The White Angel did not
+      appear again; Louisa had to yield, and went on turning her spindle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day her husband, who was a hard-working man, had over-exerted
+      himself and was taken ill. Louisa had seen her gentleman again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;White Angel, he loves me still. He has sworn he would marry
+      me if I were a widow.&rsquo;.... She dared not say more. Her husband
+      recovered his health completely. The White Angel still turned a deaf ear
+      to her wishes. She lost all hope of ever becoming a baroness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some years later Louisa was the mother of two beautiful children;
+      she was fond of her husband, whose labor procured for her all that she
+      needed, and when she thought of him and her two darlings, the spindle felt
+      quite soft to her fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One evening, when she was only half asleep, lying by her husband&rsquo;s
+      side, with one of her hands in his, and the youngest of her babies at her
+      bosom, the white figure appeared once more and she heard a gentle voice
+      whispering something into her ear. It was the voice of the White Angel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did it say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It told her a fable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;A little fish was merrily swimming about in the water and
+      looking seriously at a pretty blackcap which first circled around and
+      around in the air <span class="pagenum">[330]</span><a name="link330"
+      id="link330"></a>and then alighted softly on a branch of a willow which
+      grew close to the bank of the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;"Oh,&rdquo; said the little fish, &ldquo;how happy that bird
+      is. It can rise up to the heavens and go high up to the sun to warm itself
+      in its rays. Why cannot I do the same?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The blackcap was looking at the fish at the same time, and
+      said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;"Oh! how happy that fish is! The element in which it lives
+      furnishes it at the same time with food; it has nothing to do but to glide
+      along. How I should like to sport in the fresh, transparent water!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;At that moment, a kite pounced upon the poor little fish,
+      while a scamp of a schoolboy threw a stone at the bird; the blackcap fell
+      into the water, the fresh, transparent water, and for a moment struggled
+      in it before it died, while the little fish, carried aloft, could go up on
+      high to the sun and warm itself in its rays. Their wishes had been
+      granted.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Louisa,&rsquo; continued the gentle voice, &lsquo;our duty
+      as Guardian Angels is far more frequently to thwart wishes than to satisfy
+      them.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This was the moral of the fable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Louisa pressed her husband&rsquo;s hand warmly, kissed her last
+      born, and said: 'Thank you, White Angel, thank you.&rsquo;&rdquo; <span
+      class="pagenum">[331]</span><a name="link331" id="link331"></a>I am
+      certainly delighted to think, that if the poor Germans have Killecroffs
+      among their familiar spirits, they have at least also White Angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0124" id="linkimage-0124"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/351s.jpg" alt="351s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/351.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/351m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[335]</span><a name="link335" id="link335"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0125" id="linkimage-0125"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/355s.jpg" alt="355s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/355.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/355m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Giants and Dwarfs.&mdash;<i>Duel between Efthesim and Grommelund.&mdash;Court
+      Dwarfs and Little Dwarfs.&mdash;Ymer&rsquo;s Solis.&mdash;The Invisible
+      Reapers.&mdash;Story of the Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragant.&mdash;How
+      the Giants came to serve the Dwarfs.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>f legendary
+      tradition is only a distant vibration of the bell of history, where must
+      we go and look for traces of the real existence of giants? Must we believe
+      the Edda or Holy writ itself? Afterwards the great fossil skeletons of
+      mammoths, mastodons, and other antediluvian animals only revived the <span
+      class="pagenum">[336]</span><a name="link336" id="link336"></a>memory
+      of gigantic men. The Apocryphal Books tell us that in the days of Enoch, a
+      number of angels, amounting to two hundred, had conceived a desire for the
+      daughters of men and came down to Mount Hermon in order to be near them.
+      Some of the principal ones are even mentioned by name; there were
+      Urakabaramiel, Sanyaza, Tamiel, and Akibiel. Is it a wonder, then, that
+      credulous people should have believed that devils also, who after all are
+      but fallen angels, have acted in the same way towards the descendants of
+      Eve. The Killecroffs, we have seen, were the offspring of a union between
+      devils and earthborn women; in like manner giants were the offspring of
+      marriages between women and angels. Women are evidently capable of setting
+      heaven, earth, and hell on fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Germany, which was the last part of Europe to enter the great Catholic
+      Church, and was to be the first to leave it again at the time of the
+      Reformation, kept up the belief in giants longer than any other country.
+      Perhaps this was one of the results of the right of free inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The giant Einheer lived in the days of Charlemagne and even served in his
+      army. Several centuries later there were gigantic burgraves (Burggra-fen),
+      living all along the banks of the Rhine. They have a well known story
+      there of a young and ingenious giant&rsquo;s daughter, who had been
+      jealously <span class="pagenum">[337]</span><a name="link337" id="link337"></a>guarded
+      in her father&rsquo;s castle, and when she got out into the fields for the
+      first time in her life, brought back in her apron a peasant with his
+      plough and his two horses, whom she had picked up on the way. She showed
+      them to her father as being all three little animals of very curious
+      shape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0126" id="linkimage-0126"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/357s.jpg" alt="357s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/357.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/357m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      After a while, however, the giants became smaller and smaller, until there
+      were only a few left in the highest mountains, in dark forests, and in the
+      romances of chivalry. After that they disappeared altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The report is, however, that a single couple, man and wife, are kept alive
+      by magic art in an isolated part of the Hartz Mountains, to serve as a
+      specimen of the lost race. <span class="pagenum">[338]</span><a
+      name="link338" id="link338"></a>At first the giants had produced universal
+      terror. The god Thor was blessed because he had driven them, armed as he
+      was with his famous iron mace, all across the Hercynian forest. But as
+      people became better acquainted with them, their fears subsided. They
+      turned out to be far from cruel, to eat human flesh only in cases of dire
+      necessity, and to act generally not only kindly, but even like simpletons&mdash;a
+      misfortune common to most men, who are too fully developed in length or in
+      breadth. This latter weakness is well supported by a popular German tale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old duke of Bavaria had at his court a dwarf, called Ephesim, and a
+      giant, called Grommelund. The latter laughed at the dwarf, and Ephesim
+      threatened to box his ears. Grommelund laughed only the more heartily and
+      challenged Ephesim to carry out his threat. The dwarf accepted the
+      challenge, and the duke, having been a witness of the whole scene, ordered
+      at once that a field for single combat should be prepared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody expected to do as the giant did and laugh at the pigmy; as the
+      poor little fellow was hardly two feet high and would have had to climb a
+      long way before reaching the giant&rsquo;s ears. But it turned out very
+      differently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dwarf began by walking all around the giant as if to take his measure.
+      The good-natured giant, <span class="pagenum">[339]</span><a
+      name="link339" id="link339"></a>standing up immovable, looks down
+      upon him and laughs till his sides shake; but while he is holding his
+      hands to his sides, the dwarf unties his shoestrings and then worries him
+      by kicking and pinching his calves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0127" id="linkimage-0127"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/359s.jpg" alt="359s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/359.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/359m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Grommelund laughs more loudly than ever, thanks to the tickling, takes a
+      few strides, steps on his loose shoestrings, nearly stumbles, and at last,
+      with a thoughtful presence of mind, characteristic of his race, he stoops
+      down to tie the strings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ephesim has foreseen this, he avails himself of the opportunity, and slaps
+      the giant&rsquo;s cheek with his little hand, so heartily that the sound
+      reaches the ears of the duke and the lords of his court, who applaud
+      Ephesim&rsquo;s skill enthusiastically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor giant, humiliated and overcome, left the town, it is said, and
+      sought refuge in the mountains, where he died of shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people were thus beginning to have a very humble opinion of giants,
+      when a rumor was spread that they had entered the service of the dwarfs;
+      <span class="pagenum">[340]</span><a name="link340" id="link340"></a>not
+      of court dwarfs, but of little dwarfs, who are so small that, by their
+      size, the others appear as giants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0128" id="linkimage-0128"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/360s.jpg" alt="360s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/360.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/360m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These little dwarfs appear in the popular tales of Germany, under
+      different names, as <i>Wichtelman-ner, Metallarii, or Homunculi</i>, and
+      evidently, at one time, were found in great numbers throughout all the
+      mountainous parts of the North. In Bretagne they were also known as <i>Couribes,
+      Parulpiquets or Cornicouets</i>, but as they are ugly and evil disposed, I
+      presume they are not of the same race with our good little dwarfs. These
+      latter appear in the evening at the foot of large oak trees, or in old
+      ruins, where they come by the <span class="pagenum">[341]</span><a
+      name="link341" id="link341"></a>thousand out of every crack and crevice
+      and gambol and frolic, but vanish at the smallest noise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0129" id="linkimage-0129"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/361s.jpg" alt="361s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/361.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/361m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[343]</span><a name="link343" id="link343"></a>As to
+      their origin there are different opinions entertained. One theory alone is
+      worthy of belief, because it is mentioned already in the Edda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to the Scandinavian Bible, when Odin had killed the giant Ymer,
+      his decaying body produced an innumerable quantity of small worms. By a
+      law of natural order which had already become operative with insects, each
+      worm changed into a chrysalis, and out of each chrysalis came forth a
+      little man, resembling, with a few trifling differences, the race of full
+      sized men, whom Odin had created.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like ourselves, they also are subject to all the infirmities of age, to
+      disease and death; like ourselves, they are at times capable of reasoning
+      with fairness. Skillful metallurgists, they are at work in the mines,
+      where we have already met them; they are not without imagination, and even
+      know what piety is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What religion do they profess?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time, we are told, the majority, having been converted to
+      Christianity, were under its benign influence, in a far higher degree than
+      we, for they did not carry on war among themselves, and all authors,
+      legends, and ballads agree, that they were gentle and peaceful, loving
+      each other, <span class="pagenum">[344]</span><a name="link344"
+      id="link344"></a>kindly disposed towards others, laborious, and very
+      obliging. Hence they were universally known as the <i>Peaceful People</i>,&mdash;das
+      stille Volk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In ancient times,&rdquo; says Wyss, &ldquo;men lived in the
+      valleys, and around their dwellings, in the cavities of the rocks, dwelt
+      the little dwarf people, keeping always on very good terms with them, and
+      helping them even at times in their work in the fields. They took great
+      delight in doing good in this way; for generally they were very busy
+      mining in the mountains, and digging in the ground to collect the tiny
+      particles of gold and silver that could be obtained.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes field laborers coming out to plant or to weed, found their work
+      already done, and heard the dwarfs, hid behind the bushes, break out into
+      loud laughter, when they showed their amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened one day, early in the morning, that some peasants in passing a
+      cornfield, saw that the stalks were falling in long rows, as if by their
+      own will; they were most cunningly cut off below, and now they were
+      ranging themselves, also to all appearance by their own act, in long
+      sheaves. The peasants had no doubt that the good little dwarfs were there,
+      working away stealthily, but of the tiny workmen not a trace could be
+      seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dwarfs possessed, in common with all these <span class="pagenum">[345]</span><a
+      name="link345" id="link345"></a>mysterious races, the power of making
+      themselves invisible. They had nothing to do, for that purpose, but merely
+      to draw a little hood over their ears, which formed part of their costume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our countrymen, seeing that the wheat was not ripe enough to be cut,
+      became exceedingly angry against these injudicious friends, and arming
+      themselves with twigs, went to work striking right and left in the hope of
+      hurting one or the other by chance. They really heard some faint cries of
+      distress in the furrows, and soon the first rows of wheat which had been
+      left standing were thrown into violent disorder, thus testifying to the
+      flight of the little ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several of the dwarfs became even visible, as the twigs suddenly tore the
+      hoods from their heads. Thereupon the men became furious and tried to
+      strike all the harder; but suddenly a violent storm broke forth and the
+      hail came down in torrents, cutting the whole standing crop to pieces and
+      sparing only the rows that had been reaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rude countrymen now saw clearly that the Quiet People had foreseen the
+      hailstorm and anticipated the harvest on that account. They repented their
+      brutality, but the dwarfs, disgusted by their ingratitude, never again
+      appeared in that region of country. Similar occurrences took place in
+      other countries. <span class="pagenum">[346]</span><a name="link346"
+      id="link346"></a>Now let us see, by what perseverance, by what skill,
+      and especially by what audacious conceptions these tiny beings, not much
+      more than a few inches high, succeeded in making themselves masters of the
+      giants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0130" id="linkimage-0130"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/366s.jpg" alt="366s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/366.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/366m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      They were running about quite bewildered, pushing and jostling each other
+      in their anxiety to regain their little mole-hill, he stood at first with
+      his mouth <span class="pagenum">[347]</span><a name="link347" id="link347"></a>wide
+      open, lost in amazement. Then, to amuse himself in true lordly fashion, he
+      crushed a few dozen with his foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not without curiosity, and hence he tried in the next place to
+      find out something about their manners. The moment was not very well
+      chosen, it must be confessed. Men do not usually choose a city that has
+      just been taken by storm and given up to pillage, for the purpose of
+      studying the manners and customs of its citizens. But we have seen before
+      this, that giants are not remarkably bright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our giant, whose name I have never been able to ascertain and whom I will
+      call for convenience sake, <i>Quadragant</i> (&ldquo;Quadragant was rather
+      colossal,&rdquo; I once read in &ldquo;Amadis of Gaul;&rdquo; our giant
+      was really colossal, for he measured thirty feet in height), our giant, I
+      say, stretched himself out at full length and fixed his eyes upon the hole
+      out of which he had pulled the oak tree. He heard a low humming noise
+      underground, but he could see nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought he would wait patiently, and in waiting he fell quietly asleep,
+      turning over so as to lie on his back, his usual position when he was
+      sleeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few hours&rsquo; sound and heavy sleep, such as all giants are
+      said to enjoy, he awoke. Finding <span class="pagenum">[348]</span><a
+      name="link348" id="link348"></a>that the sun had in the mean time followed
+      his example and gone to sleep, he remembered that it was supper time, and
+      as he thought of the delights in store for him he uttered a long and deep
+      sigh of satisfaction. But something that his long drawn breath had brought
+      up, suddenly jumped out of his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0131" id="linkimage-0131"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/368s.jpg" alt="368s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/368.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/368m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This something was one of the dwarfs; and this dwarf, the boldest and most
+      intelligent among them all, was called Kreiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in order to make it clear how Kreiss happened to be almost in the
+      giant&rsquo;s throat, which was <span class="pagenum">[349]</span><a
+      name="link349" id="link349"></a>of course only accidentally his home for a
+      time, we must go back and see what had happened while Quadragant was
+      asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the little pigmies found their tree uprooted and their people
+      scattered in all directions, escaping through every crack and crevice in
+      the soil, they had rushed into a long subterranean passage, excavated in
+      days long gone by, by their forefathers. Here they had uttered their well
+      known cries of distress, resembling the chirp of crickets, and thus they
+      had finally reached the ruins of an old castle, inhabited by vast numbers
+      of their people, and chosen as the place of meeting of the General Council
+      of the dwarfs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss happened to have arrived the night before, as one of a numerous
+      deputation, and he at once suggested the propriety of burying the dead
+      with all due honors, before anything else was done. After that, they might
+      go to work stopping up all the holes and openings made by the tearing up
+      of the sapling, and filling the excavation which it had produced, so that
+      the rain might not come and inundate their long gallery, which was their
+      only safe means of communication.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two resolutions offered by Kreiss were carried by acclamation, and
+      all, loaded with brush and with stakes, went immediately to work. There
+      were some ten thousand of them. <span class="pagenum">[350]</span><a
+      name="link350" id="link350"></a>They thought the giant had left, but they
+      found him lying full length on the ground and snoring most fiercely. Their
+      first impulse was to escape, but Kreiss held them back. He had conceived a
+      bold plan; he proposed to capture the giant. Were they not already
+      provided with ropes and with stakes? Was there not strength in numbers?
+      They immediately went to work, and in less than an hour the murderer,
+      unable as he was to make the slightest motion, was bound to the soil which
+      he had soaked with their blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you say?.... Yes, sir, you are undoubtedly right. This
+      looks very much like the manner in which Gulliver was treated in the
+      island of Lilliput. How can we help that? Besides, we must remember that
+      there have been dwarfs in Germany from time immemorial. If Jonathan Swift
+      undertook to transfer them to imaginary countries, whose business is that
+      and who is liable to be charged with plagiarism, I ask you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will not stop to discuss this trifling matter, which is of little
+      importance. We have weightier matters than that in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the work was done and with the excitement of the efforts the first
+      enthusiasm also had somewhat passed away, the question arose what was to
+      be done with their capture. They looked at each other in great perplexity.
+      <span class="pagenum">[351]</span><a name="link351" id="link351"></a>The
+      dwarfs are kind hearted people, who have a great horror of blood. Besides,
+      it would have been more difficult even, to dispose of the giant after
+      death than to kill him. Still, if they did not kill Quadragant he would,
+      as soon as he was awake, go to work and cry for help lustily; then the
+      other giants would, no doubt, hasten to his assistance. The disgrace
+      inflicted upon one of their brethren would in all probability render them
+      furious, and they would proceed at once to uproot all the trees and to
+      pursue the poor little people of dwarfs down into the very bowels of the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While these and similar observations were passing in the crowd from one
+      group to another, Kreiss remained silent and thoughtful, supporting his
+      head in his hand and his hand on his elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time the crowd passed from simple talk to grumbling and from
+      grumbling to threats. There was nothing left but to undo what was done as
+      promptly as possible, to abandon this ridiculous enterprise and to restore
+      the giant to liberty in the same way in which he had been deprived of it&mdash;during
+      his sleep. If he should awake before the operation was over, why, then
+      they might try to appease his wrath by handing over to him the authors of
+      this fatal project.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! one can see at a glance, that these dwarfs, small as they were, were
+      nevertheless men, and <span class="pagenum">[352]</span><a
+      name="link352" id="link352"></a>that it is better not to venture
+      upon attacking giants!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were utterly discouraged and demoralized. Calm in spite of all this
+      excitement around him, Kreiss was still meditating, apparently quite
+      unmindful of all the invectives that were hurled at him and the little
+      hands that were threatening him. But when some of them actually began to
+      loosen the ropes, he suddenly dropped his hands from his elbow and his
+      brow, and turning sharply upon his aggressors, he said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I acknowledge my mistake and I am ready to atone for it. Go,&mdash;my
+      seven brothers and myself, we will alone set the giant free again. If he
+      awakes, he shall have to do with us and with us only. Go!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The former conspirators were well content to accept the proposition, and
+      without bestowing a thought upon their murdered brethren, they escaped as
+      fast as they could. In the dim twilight of the last hour of the day one
+      might have seen them running nimbly through the tall grass and under the
+      cupolas of mushroom, arousing in their hurry the beetles and moths, or
+      even mounting upon their backs in order to reach by their aid all the more
+      quickly their safe retreat in the ruins of the old castle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all were gone save Kreiss and his seven <span class="pagenum">[353]</span><a
+      name="link353" id="link353"></a>brothers, he said to them: &ldquo;Now that
+      we are alone, we alone shall reap the glory of the enterprise! So far from
+      regretting what I have done, I mean on the contrary, to enlarge our
+      project in a manner which shall redound to the eternal glory of our race.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0132" id="linkimage-0132"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/373s.jpg" alt="373s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/373.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/373m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The dwarfs are not only skillful metallurgists, but they are also most
+      expert carpenters and builders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence the good people of the Rheingau are <span class="pagenum">[354]</span><a
+      name="link354" id="link354"></a>convinced that they have built all those
+      ruins of solid old castles, in which they are still living and which they
+      have so cunningly repaired and propped up that they will last forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0133" id="linkimage-0133"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/374s.jpg" alt="374s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/374.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/374m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Now Quadragant was sleeping with his mouth wide open, as all large people
+      are apt to&rsquo; do. Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious
+      cavity, armed with a long spear which was equally sharp and pointed at
+      both ends. He took care to rest at first most cautiously only upon the
+      projections of the teeth, which formed, so to say, a double row of
+      parallel battlements. By such assistance he passed from one end of the
+      abyss to the other, without troubling the slumbers of the giant by the
+      <span class="pagenum">[355]</span><a name="link355" id="link355"></a>slightest
+      awkwardness in his movements. For a case of emergency Kreiss held his
+      spear firmly in his hands, ready to fasten it so between the two jaws as
+      to prevent their closing upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0134" id="linkimage-0134"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/375s.jpg" alt="375s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/375.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/375m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      His brothers were in the meantime busily engaged in preparing posts, pins,
+      and rafters, which they handed to him as he needed them. One of them even
+      went with him to assist him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth, and strengthened
+      the piles by beams, which secured them to each other. The work was by no
+      means an easy one, for in the mouth of the giant it was as dark as night,
+      and there reigned in it a heat equal to that of an oven. Moreover
+      Quadragant had dined that day on a deer and several <span class="pagenum">[356]</span><a
+      name="link356" id="link356"></a>hares, and as he liked his game high, like
+      every good judge of fine dinners, the perfumes of his breath increased the
+      inconvenience caused by the heat and the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss&rsquo;s brother was all of a sudden taken ill, and had to leave to
+      join the others outside. They, however, continued work on the scaffolding,
+      and watched the giant carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quadragant was absolutely in the hands of the eight dwarf brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had passed up a lantern to Kreiss, which he hung upon one of the
+      transverse beams, and he now continued his work alone resolutely, although
+      he was every now and then compelled to stop his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His work was at last completed, and he was just about to leave this damp,
+      pestiferous abyss, when the giant awoke, and his first sigh carried off
+      the brave pigmy, as a gust of wind would have carried off a dry leaf from
+      a branch, and hurled him senseless into space. He fell heavily upon the
+      chest of the colossus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as he recovered from the shock, he looked around carefully, and
+      saw, to his great satisfaction, that the bonds which held the giant were
+      beyond doubt strong enough to hold him a prisoner. Then he crept
+      cautiously all along the neck as far as his ear, and by its aid climbed up
+      the chin, after having crossed the cheek in its whole <span class="pagenum">[357]</span><a
+      name="link357" id="link357"></a>length. When he had found a convenient
+      restingplace, he drew himself up to his full height, and raising his
+      feeble voice as loud as he could, he said to the giant:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Murderer of our brethren, you are our prisoner, and you must die!
+      Commend your soul to God.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0135" id="linkimage-0135"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/377s.jpg" alt="377s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/377.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/377m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The giant tried to see the tiny being who was speaking to him so boldly,
+      and cast down his eyes. At first he could distinguish nothing but a feeble
+      glimmering light at the extremity of his nose; but the nose itself
+      completely concealed the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss then advanced a few steps from the chin towards the mouth of the
+      colossus, and the latter now perceived a kind of little man, dressed in a
+      cloak of mouse skin, which he grandly wrapped around him, as Hercules did
+      with the skin of the Nemean lion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his hand, however, he held not a club, but a lantern, in which a
+      firefly did service as candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thanks to this phosphorescent sheen, which seemed to surround Kreiss as
+      with a halo, Quadragant could examine him at leisure, and he asked himself
+      how such an embryo could have flown out of his mouth, and how he,
+      Quadragant, could have become his prisoner? <span class="pagenum">[358]</span><a
+      name="link358" id="link358"></a>The contemptuous glance which he threw at
+      the dwarf made Kreiss aware of what he was discussing in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think you are not captured yet,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Very
+      well, try to get up and walk, if you can!&rdquo; Quadragant did try, and
+      found that he was firmly fastened to the ground by ropes and chains, by
+      each single hair of his head, by every hair on his body. He tried to speak
+      to the pigmy, and he could not, by any effort of his, move his jaws in the
+      slightest way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to the manner of your death,&rdquo; Kreiss went on, &ldquo;if
+      the wolves and the vultures do not hasten your end, hunger will do the
+      work.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this thought of dying of hunger, a mode of death which he had always
+      looked upon as the most terrible of all, Quadragant&rsquo;s heart gave
+      way, and he began to cry piteously. Two torrents of tears flowed down his
+      cheeks, and after turning around the prominence of his lips, ran over from
+      his chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss was compelled to leave his position, so as to avoid the double
+      current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although quite firm in his resolution, he was naturally kind-hearted.
+      These many tears of such unwonted size finally touched &lsquo;him, but his
+      sympathy made him only the more determined to render his vengeance as
+      useful as it was complete. <span class="pagenum">[359]</span><a
+      name="link359" id="link359"></a>"Listen to me, giant. You can buy your
+      life, if you choose.&rdquo; Quadragant&rsquo;s tears ceased to flow. Here
+      was life offered to him, and with that life he saw first of all a good
+      supper in store for him, and if his mouth had not been held so tight by
+      the scaffolding erected in it by Kreiss, his big face would have grinned
+      from ear to ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0136" id="linkimage-0136"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/379s.jpg" alt="379s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/379.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/379m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; continued the dwarf, &ldquo;you will Tiave to devote
+      your life and your liberty, if we restore both to you, to the service of
+      our decimated people; do you hear? You must understand me clearly; you
+      will not be our protector, but our servant; you will unhesitatingly
+      perform every kind of work which may be required of you for our safety or
+      our comfort. First of all you will replant that oak tree, <span
+      class="pagenum">[360]</span><a name="link360" id="link360"></a>under which
+      the dwarfs of this district were living in peace, and you will water it
+      every morning until it has taken root again. Now, close your eyes, if you
+      mean to accept our conditions!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quadragant opened and shut his eyes quickly ten times in succession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss made with his lamp a kind of telegraphic signal; his brothers, all
+      seven dressed in garments of mouse skin or mole skin, and carrying each
+      one a lantern with a firefly inside, climbed in an instant upon the face
+      of the giant, which now looked quite brightly illuminated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three of them took their station on his forehead; two others by the side
+      of each eye. The last two held each a long thorn in their hands, which
+      they seemed to use as a dagger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss, who had remained at his place, said again to the giant:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If, after you have been set free, you dare utter a sound to call
+      for help, you lose both of your eyes instantly. Mind the warning!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armed with his double pointed spear, he then went once more into
+      Quadragant&rsquo;s mouth, and loosened one of the transverse beams which
+      formed the ceiling. The giant assisted him with his tongue in the work of
+      demolition; then, after drawing a long sigh of relief, he closed his mouth
+      and crushed between his formidable jaws all the timber, posts, <span
+      class="pagenum">[361]</span><a name="link361" id="link361"></a>and beams,
+      as if they had been a bundle of matches, and swallowed the whole in
+      anticipation of his supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0137" id="linkimage-0137"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/381s.jpg" alt="381s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/381.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/381m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      After that he swore an oath which binds the giants as firmly as the
+      invocation of the Styx pledged the s of Greece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the earth, which is my mother, by the mountains, which are her
+      bones, by the woods and forests, which are her hair, by the brooks, the
+      streams, and the rivers, which are the blood of her veins, I, <span
+      class="pagenum">[362]</span><a name="link362" id="link362"></a>the giant
+      Quadragant, declare that I am the slave of the dwarfs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sunrise Quadragant was up again, carrying his new masters between his
+      fingers, which he twisted together in the shape of a cradle. In less than
+      five minutes he reached, in obedience to their orders, the old castle in
+      ruins, where a &lsquo;solemn meeting was held, not only by the fugitives
+      of the day before, but also by the principal representatives of all the
+      dwarfs of that part of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the sentinels announced the arrival of the giant, all thought their
+      last hour had come and endeavored to escape, hoping to find a refuge in
+      the lowest depths of the old building. Kreiss, however, had ordered the
+      giant to put him down in front of the cellars of the castle, and now
+      entered the great Meeting Hall, assuming like all great conquerors, an air
+      of extreme modesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he informed them that the giant was their slave!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They at once threw themselves at his feet and expressed their desire to
+      proclaim him Emperor of the Dwarfs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss, however, having heard of a recent experiment of that kind, was far
+      from believing such sudden enthusiasm to be either deep or permanent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[363]</span><a name="link363" id="link363"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0138" id="linkimage-0138"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/383s.jpg" alt="383s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/383.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/383m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      From that day the giant abandoned his <span class="pagenum">[364]</span><a
+      name="link364" id="link364"></a>old name of Quadragant, and assumed that
+      of <i>Ptitskuchen,</i> which at that time meant Friend of the Dwarfs, but
+      which, translated into modern German, represents our <i>omelette soufflee</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0139" id="linkimage-0139"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/385s.jpg" alt="385s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/385.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/385m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[365]</span><a name="link365" id="link365"></a>At
+      first all went well; but at the end of three weeks Putskuchen looked sad
+      and melancholy; Putskuchen only took half a dozen meals a day; Putskuchen
+      was slowly fading away; Putskuchen was in love, in love with a young
+      giantess, who taunted him with having become the servant of these wretched
+      pygmies and reproached him with his poverty. The unhappy creature fell off
+      more and more, the <i>omelette soufflee</i> fell down flat, and Putskuchen
+      was a mere lath of thirty feet in length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss had always felt a certain tenderness for him, and hence, after
+      having asked the consent of all the other chieftains, he placed in the
+      giant&rsquo;s hands a large heap of gold scales such as the dwarfs were in
+      the habit of collecting in the neighboring mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was enough to buy three wives, instead of one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact had no sooner become known than all <span class="pagenum">[366]</span><a
+      name="link366" id="link366"></a>the happy giant fathers of the country
+      desired him as a son-in-law, and when they saw how liberally his services
+      had been rewarded by his new masters, they were all eager to become the
+      serfs of the dwarfs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, thanks to Kreiss, the giants gradually came all, one by one, and
+      entered the service of the dwarfs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certain skeptics have maintained that the whole story is symbolic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to their interpretation the giant fastened to the ground and
+      muzzled by the dwarfs, is the people, the people always kept down and
+      always held in subjection, in spite of its gigantic strength. The dwarfs,
+      who lived under the oak, the sacred tree of all nations of Celtic origin,
+      are the priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We say: Shame upon people, who would change a legend into an apologue and
+      our friend Kreiss into a Druid!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the dwarfs became reconciled again to men, they compelled the giants
+      to execute for them great works of public utility, such as bridges and
+      highroads, which were afterwards generally ascribed to the Romans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The belief in little dwarfs continues to this day to exist in most of the
+      Northern countries. They still live in myriads in the subterranean regions
+      <span class="pagenum">[367]</span><a name="link367" id="link367"></a>and
+      in the rocks in Westphalia, in Sweden, and in Norway, and they are still
+      hard at work amassing vast treasures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0140" id="linkimage-0140"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/387s.jpg" alt="387s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/387.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/387m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[371]</span><a name="link371" id="link371"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0141" id="linkimage-0141"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/391s.jpg" alt="391s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/391.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/391m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Wizards and the Bewitched.&mdash;<i>The Journey of A sa-Thor and his
+      Companions.&mdash;The Inn with the Five Passages.&mdash;Skryinner.&mdash;A
+      Lost Glove found again.&mdash;Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.&mdash;Combat
+      between Thor and the King&rsquo;s Nurse.&mdash;FREDERICH BARBAROSSA AND
+      THE KYFFHAUSER.&mdash;Teutonia! Teutonia!&mdash;What became of the Ancient
+      Gods.&mdash;Venus and the good Knight Tannhauser.&mdash;Jupiter on Rabbit
+      Island.&mdash;A Modern God.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ear! hear! New and
+      greater marvels still! But, unfortunately, we shall be under the sad
+      necessity of returning to our giants once more, much as we have already
+      spoken of them, from giant Ymer down to Quadragant, and there may be too
+      much even of the best things in this world. But let the reader take
+      courage; this time my giants are not real giants; or at least they are
+      giants of a very peculiar species. But instead of losing time with
+      limitations and explanations, let us begin our story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the Scandinavian gods were still in the full
+      enjoyment of their power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One fine day the god Thor, curious to see certain distant lands of which
+      they had told him most marvelous stories, set out on his travels,
+      accompanied by Raska, Tialff, and Loki. Leaving Sweden and Norway behind,
+      they arrived at the sea-shore and crossed over by swimming. A mere trifle,
+      of course, for people of their kind. On the opposite shore they found a
+      vast plain, and as night was approaching and they began to feel that rest
+      would be acceptable, they looked out for a shelter. In this vast and
+      deserted plain they see but one single building; a huge, ill-shapen, and
+      abandoned house, <span class="pagenum">[373]</span><a name="link373"
+      id="link373"></a>rather broad than high and of altogether exceptional
+      appearance. It has neither doors nor windows, nor even a roof; but the
+      night fog may possibly conceal a part of the edifice. The travellers enter
+      and find a square, low vestibule, and at the end of it five long passages;
+      each of the travellers takes one of these passages, looking for a door or
+      a bed in the dark. As they find neither bed nor chamber, they resign
+      themselves and lie down on the floor, with their backs to the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even the walls seem to be elastic, and so does the floor; perhaps a
+      layer of straw or of moss was spread over them and gave them the softness
+      of felt, rather coarse, to be sure, but not unpleasant. The travellers
+      felt that they could sleep there comfortably and warm. So they did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At daybreak Thor rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms and proposed to take
+      a turn in the country, to stretch his legs and to shake off the heaviness
+      of sleep. Through the white mists which were still hanging on the tops of
+      high hills he thought he saw a huge mass of disheveled hair, and then he
+      discovered in the centre of that head two eyes. At first he thought this
+      head and these eyes were simply a rock covered with shrubbery and two
+      small pools of water shining in the rays of the rising sun. But soon the
+      disheveled head began to move, bent down to the ground, and turned now
+      <span class="pagenum">[374]</span><a name="link374" id="link374"></a>to
+      one side and now to another. In the meantime the mists had risen and Thor
+      found that he was standing before a giant of such enormous size that those
+      whom he was generally engaged in hunting down would not have reached to
+      his knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The giant advanced toward him, always looking here and there, and still
+      with his eyes fixed on the ground, as if he were looking for something he
+      had lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor, who was easily incensed by the sight of a giant, went straight up to
+      meet him and said in an arrogant tone:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing here? What is your name? Who are you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Skrymner,&rdquo; replied the other. &ldquo;Did you not
+      know? As for me, I have no need to ask you any such question; you are the
+      god Thor, one of those under sized gods who live with Odin on the ash tree
+      Ygdrasil. Have you seen my glove? I have lost my glove; yes! yesterday,&rdquo;
+      he added in the most indifferent manner possible, and as if he were solely
+      occupied with his search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have found nothing of the kind,&rdquo; replied Thor, who was
+      always in bad humor, and now regretted that he did not have his hammer at
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you travel quite alone?&rdquo; asked Skrymner. <span
+      class="pagenum">[375]</span><a name="link375" id="link375"></a>"I have
+      three companions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not see them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are all three still asleep in that house there, in which we
+      have spent the night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with his finger he pointed at the house, which they had used as an inn
+      for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Skrymner looked both surprised and delighted. &ldquo;My glove!&rdquo; he
+      cried, &ldquo;that is my glove! I have found it.&rdquo; He hastened to
+      pick up this apparent house with its five long passages, and took it up,
+      but not before he had shaken it, holding it close to the ground, and
+      showing thus that he was not without a feeling of humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loki, Tialft, and Raska tumbled out upon the grass, rather terrified by
+      their sudden ascension and the sudden somerset which they had been forced
+      to make. But as soon as they had recovered from their first surprise, and
+      especially from the discovery that they had spent the night in a glove,
+      they thought of continuing their journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The country was unknown to them, but Skrymner offered to act as guide and
+      even to carry their baggage. So much obliging kindness and courtesy drove
+      all aggressive thoughts out of Thor&rsquo;s mind, especially as he now had
+      his hammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first stopping place, and just when they were getting ready for
+      breakfast, the giant left them, although only after having pointed out to
+      <span class="pagenum">[376]</span><a name="link376" id="link376"></a>them
+      the road they ought to take. Thor, however, found he was unable to open
+      the knapsack in which they carried their provisions; all the strings and
+      small chains by which it was fastened, were in knots. They had to proceed
+      on their journey without having had any breakfast, a necessity which is
+      most disagreeable to travellers, and even to gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As hour after hour passed and the plain remained deserted and sterile,
+      their hunger became tormenting. They listened with all their might, hoping
+      they might hear the roaring of a bear or the lowing of a cow, determined
+      as they were to dine upon the one or the other; but the dull rumbling of a
+      storm and the distant roll of thunder was all they heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor was furious at the idea that any one should venture to thunder
+      without having obtained permission from him, the god of thunder, and
+      rushed forward. Following the direction of the noise, he reached a rocky
+      defile, overshadowed by a few oak trees, where he found Skrymner lying at
+      full length between two hills and snoring furiously. This snoring it was
+      which the travellers had taken for the roaring of a storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; said Thor to himself, &ldquo;the wretch is at work
+      digesting the provisions of which he has robbed us. No doubt it was he who
+      tied all those knots in the strings of our knapsack, in order to <span
+      class="pagenum">[377]</span><a name="link377" id="link377"></a>conceal his
+      theft; but he shall pay for it dear! Besides, did he not speak of me as an
+      undersized god?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words he seized his hammer and threw it at the head of the
+      sleeping giant, who did not stir, but only passed his hand over his brow
+      as if a dead leaf falling from a tree had tickled him a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor went up closer and struck him once more on the back of his head,
+      directly on the cerebellum, which in giants is unusually developed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time the sleeper opened one eye, closed it again, and after having
+      scratched himself at the place where he had been struck, he fell asleep
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brutal by nature and doubly so when fasting, Thor had become perfectly
+      furious when he found himself thus mysteriously powerless. Fully
+      determined the next time to make an end, once for all, of his adversary,
+      he put on his invisible belt, which had the gift of doubling his strength,
+      seized his hammer with both hands and threw it with such amazing force at
+      the giant, that it sank up to the handle into one of his cheeks and Thor
+      had no small trouble in getting it to come back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time Skrymner was fully roused; he opened both of his eyes, raised
+      his hand to his cheek, and exclaimed that it was impossible to sleep
+      comfortably <span class="pagenum">[378]</span><a name="link378"
+      id="link378"></a>in that place, as a fly had just stung him in the
+      cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, perceiving his assailant, who stood right before him, he asked him
+      good-naturedly, how he happened to be there, and whether he had lost his
+      way. In the meantime the other travellers are also coming up and Skrymner
+      offers to show them the way to the great city of Utgard, where he promises
+      they will find a good inn, a good table, a warm reception, and not only
+      enough for their wants but all that their heart can desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor does not know what to think. Overcome and confounded, he follows the
+      footsteps of his guide, without being able to form any idea except the
+      one: to avenge himself in a signal manner for all his humiliations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city of Utgard is of incredible size, the city walls, the houses, the
+      trees, the furniture, all are gigantic. Our travellers could easily pass
+      between the legs of the little children they met in the streets, as we
+      modern people pass under the triumphal arches of the ancients. You see,
+      now we are no longer in Lilliput, we have reached the island of the giants
+      with Gulliver. Gulliver might very well be the offspring of some
+      Scandinavian legend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The king received Thor and, his friends, laughing heartily at their small
+      size, and the seats they are offered are three times as high as they are.
+      <span class="pagenum">[379]</span><a name="link379" id="link379"></a>After
+      a host of adventures in which our men, that is to say, our gods, are
+      continually victimized, Thor in his rage challenges the giants to single
+      combat. The king accepts the challenge and offers to back his nurse, a
+      toothless old woman, against the god. Thor consents, eager as he is to
+      vent his wrath on somebody, and determines to pitch His Majesty&rsquo;s
+      nurse out of the window. But by all his efforts he hardly succeeds in
+      lifting her slightly off the ground, and he himself, exhausted by the
+      struggle, sinks on his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the next day our travellers came to the conclusion that they had
+      travelled far enough. Skrymner again showed the way, with his usual
+      courtesy, and when they were well out of the town he took the god Thor
+      aside and said to him: &ldquo;So far you have only known my name and
+      nothing of myself, now you ought to know that I am Skrym-ner, the wizard.
+      You ought, therefore, not to mind anything that has happened to you during
+      these last days. You thought you were striking me three times with your
+      hammer, but in reality you were striking the impenetrable rocks, on which
+      I was apparently sleeping. As to the nurse, you have given proof there of
+      such strength as I should not even have expected from the great Thor, when
+      you lifted her from the ground; for the toothless old woman is none other
+      but Death, yes Death, <span class="pagenum">[380]</span><a
+      name="link380" id="link380"></a>whom I had compelled to come and
+      take part in our games. The rest was all enchantment, mere delusions! I
+      wanted to see if the power of the art of Magic was equal to that of the
+      gods. Farewell, Asa-Thor, and a pleasant journey to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More enraged than ever, Asa-Thor was about to throw himself upon him; but
+      the pretended giant had fled in the shape of a bird. Then Thor turned back
+      towards the city of Utgard, determined to destroy it utterly, but before
+      his eyes it dissolved into a column of smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I promised you some of Mother Goose&rsquo;s stories&mdash;have I
+      kept word? And do not imagine that this story of Thor and the giants&rsquo;
+      city is of doubtful origin&mdash;you will find it in chapters 23, 24, 25,
+      and 26 of the sacred book called Edda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of magicians and wizards I could say much, but the road is long and I am
+      in haste to reach the end. And who does not know the story of the prowess
+      of Merlin and of the Maugis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the ancient traditions of the North there are found innumerable
+      tales of wizards, witchcraft, and ghosts. Now rocks are changed into
+      palaces, and now brutes into men and men into brutes; and the same
+      fantastic but always epic element prevails largely in all the old romances
+      of chivalry as well as in the great poems of Ariosto and Tasso. <span
+      class="pagenum">[381]</span><a name="link381" id="link381"></a>In almost
+      all countries we find that epic poetry is closely allied to religious
+      sentiments and through these to the marvelous; for it has always found a
+      first home in temples and a first use for temples. Thus it was in India
+      with the Mahabarata, and in Greece with the myths of Hercules and of
+      Orpheus. It could not be otherwise with the Gallic or German bards, nor
+      with the Scandinavian skalds, all of whose grand poems are most
+      unfortunately unknown at present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a feature more peculiarly German than the wizards, are the bewitched,
+      often called the Sleepers. In these Germany incorporates, as it were, the
+      loftiest of her patriotic aspirations, the saddest of her disappointments,
+      the most persistent of her hopes. They represent not only her old faith,
+      that could never be completely eradicated, but also her old favorites, a
+      Hermann and a Siegfried, the hero of the Nibelungen, a Theodoric and a
+      Charlemagne, a Witikind and a Frederick Barbarossa, a William Tell and a
+      Charles V. Her heroes, her beloved, her glory&mdash;she has not allowed
+      them to fall into oblivion and be severed from the present; she will not
+      admit that they are dead, they are but asleep. Witikind under the Siegberg
+      in Westphalia, Charlemagne in the lowest rooms of his old castle at
+      Nuremberg. There&mdash;and not, as might have been imagined, in
+      Aix-la-Chapelle&mdash;the mighty old <span class="pagenum">[382]</span><a
+      name="link382" id="link382"></a>Emperor rests majestically, surrounded by
+      his brave champions, ready to awake again whenever God shall be pleased to
+      tell him that the moment has come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Frederick Barbarossa, he sleeps in the Kyffhauser, one of the
+      porphyry and granite mountains of the Taunus, and so do others; there is
+      no denying the fact, for they have been seen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few years after his disappearance from this world, Frederick showed
+      himself upon the summit of one of these mountains, whenever the sound of a
+      musical instrument was heard in the valley. Knowing his love of music, the
+      Philharmonic Societies of Erfurth and of other towns to this day, are fond
+      of serenading the old warrior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is said that one evening, when the clock at Tilleda struck midnight,
+      certain musicians who had ascended the Kyffhauser, suddenly saw the
+      mountain open and a number of women adorned with jewels and carrying
+      torches, came out of the opening. They beckoned to them, the men followed,
+      continuing to play on their instruments and thus they came where the
+      Emperor was. The latter ordered a good supper to be served, and when they
+      were ready to leave again, the fair ladies of the court escorted them
+      back, with their torches in their hands, and at the last moment gave to
+      each of them a poplar branch. The poor musicians had <span class="pagenum">[383]</span><a
+      name="link383" id="link383"></a>hoped for better things from the Emperor&rsquo;s
+      generosity, and when they reached the foot of the mountain, they threw
+      their branches into the road, very indignant at having been so badly
+      treated. Only one among the number kept his branch, and when he reached
+      home, carefully stuck it by the side of the consecrated bunch of box which
+      hung over the head of his bed. Immediately, O marvel! each leaf of the
+      poplar branch changed into a gold ducat. When the others heard of this,
+      they hastened to look for their branches, but they never found them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On another occasion a shepherd&mdash;others say a miner&mdash;met on the
+      Kyffhäuser a monk with a white beard, who unceremoniously and just as if
+      he had asked him to come and see his next door neighbor, told him to come
+      with him and see the Emperor Barbarossa, who wanted to speak to him. At
+      first the poor shepherd was dumb-founded; then he began to tremble in all
+      his limbs. The monk, however, reassured him and led him into a narrow,
+      dark valley, and then, striking the ground three times with his rod, he
+      said: &ldquo;Open! open! open!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon a great noise arose beneath the feet of the monk and the
+      shepherd; the earth seemed to quake and then a large opening became
+      visible. They found they were in a long gallery, lighted up <span
+      class="pagenum">[384]</span><a name="link384" id="link384"></a>by a single
+      lamp and closed at the other end by folding doors of brass. The monk, who
+      no doubt was a magician, knocked three times at the door with his rod,
+      saying again: &ldquo;Open! open! open!&rdquo; and the brass doors turned
+      upon their hinges, producing the same noise which they had heard before
+      underground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were now in a grotto, whose ceiling and walls, blackened by the smoke
+      of an immense number of torches, seemed to be hung with black as a sign of
+      mourning. It might have been taken for a mortuary chapel, only there was
+      no coffin or catafalque visible. The shepherd had, in the mean time, begun
+      to tremble once more, but the monk repeated his summons before a silver
+      door, which thereupon opened in the same manner as the brass door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a magnificent room lighted but dimly and in such a manner that it was
+      impossible to tell where the light came from, they saw the Emperor
+      Frederick, seated upon a golden throne, with a golden crown on his head;
+      as they entered he gently inclined his head, contracting his bushy
+      eyebrows. His long red beard had grown through the table before him and
+      fell down to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning, not without visible effort, towards the shepherd, he spoke to him
+      for some time on different subjects and recommended to him to repeat <span
+      class="pagenum">[385]</span><a name="link385" id="link385"></a>what he
+      heard to his friends at home. His voice was feeble, but it grew strong and
+      sonorous as soon as he alluded to the glory of Germany. Then he said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are the ravens still flying over the mountains?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; replied the shepherd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are the dead trees still hanging over the abysses of the Kyffhâuser
+      as in former days?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who could uproot them, unless it be a great storm?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has no one spoken to you of the reappearance of the old woman?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, I must sleep another hundred years!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a sign to the shepherd that he could go, and then fell asleep,
+      murmuring the name of a woman which died on his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For among these great Sleepers of Germany there is also a woman, but a
+      woman rather of symbolic than real existence. What is the difference?
+      Tradition gives the following account of her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Witikind was beaten by Charlemagne at Engter, a poor old woman,
+      unable to follow him in his flight, uttered lamentable cries and thus
+      added to the panic among the defeated army. When the <span class="pagenum">[386]</span><a
+      name="link386" id="link386"></a>soldiers obeyed Witikind&rsquo;s orders
+      and stopped for a moment in the heat of their flight, they threw a mass of
+      sand and rock upon the old woman. They did not expect that she would die
+      when thus buried alive; their commander had told them: &ldquo;She will
+      come back!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This old woman, who is to come back, is Teutonia, and it was her name that
+      Frederick Barbarossa was murmuring to himself as he fell asleep for
+      another century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the old woman shall have succeeded in extricating herself from this
+      mass of sand and rock which weighs her down, then and then only the great
+      day will come. The heroes who now are held captive in their mountains and
+      subterranean grottoes, will shake off the torpor of their long sleep; they
+      will reappear among their people, the dead trees will bear new foliage to
+      proclaim their return by a miracle, and the cry of: Teutonia! Teutonia!
+      will resound in a thousand valleys, and the birds even will repeat the
+      name!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They say that when this long wished for day does come, Germany will be
+      freed of all her difficulties, and will boast of having but one creed, one
+      law, and one heart; she will be glorious and free, one and indivisible!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must wait for the birds to tell us so, before we believe it. <span
+      class="pagenum">[387]</span><a name="link387" id="link387"></a>At that
+      time Teutonia and her emperors were alike asleep. They mention a peasant
+      woman from Mayence, who on her way home became so exhausted and unable to
+      bear the heat of the sun, that she had to seek shelter in an isolated
+      house, standing by the wayside in the midst of a plantation of young
+      trees. It was a dwelling of a skillful magician. She asked him for leave
+      to rest there a few moments. As he was in the midst of some of his most
+      abstruse calculations, he only replied by nodding his head, and glanced
+      with his eye at a bench in the most distant part of the room. She went and
+      sat down, but only on the edge, hardly knowing if she was allowed to do so
+      or not; every moment she got up to ask her host if she disturbed him, and
+      if she had not better leave him, tired and exhausted as she was. She told
+      him that she would much rather endure the heat and the fatigue, than be a
+      burden to him, she begged him not to mind her and to go on just as if she
+      were not there, and a host of similar phrases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Annoyed by her incessant, idle talk, the magician suddenly turned round
+      and fixedly looked her full in the face. Immediately she fell asleep.
+      (There was no doubt some knowledge of magnetism already in the world at
+      that time, but as yet only of magic magnetism). When the good woman awoke,
+      <span class="pagenum">[388]</span><a name="link388" id="link388"></a>she
+      was alone; her host had left her. To her great regret she was compelled to
+      leave without being able to thank him for his hospitality in her usual
+      profuse manner, and to beg him to excuse her falling asleep, when he did
+      her the honor of keeping her company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she left the house, she was not a little surprised to see around the
+      house, not a copse of young trees, but a number of tall pine trees and
+      noble oaks, but she thought it possible she might have left by another
+      door than that by which she had entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she at last reached her village, new surprises were in store for her.
+      Of all the good people whom she met on her way or whom she saw standing in
+      the doors of their houses, she could not recognize a single one; she had
+      to look a long time before she found her own house, and when she reached
+      it at last, it was inhabited by strange people, who in spite of her
+      protestations, pushed her out and treated her as mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed a lawsuit, the result of which was to prove, that instead of
+      sleeping an hour or so on that bench, as she believed, she had been asleep
+      there a hundred years. Thus the young saplings had had time to grow up
+      into large trees and her house to change masters. The strangers who were
+      now living in it and who had turned her out so <span class="pagenum">[389]</span><a
+      name="link389" id="link389"></a>unceremoniously, were nothing less than
+      her great grandchildren.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hope, however, the matter was settled amicably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Germans have, with that perseverance which characterizes the nation,
+      preserved all that could be preserved of their ancient gods as well as of
+      their former heroes; they do not like to lose anything, only they did not
+      embalm their favorites, but used enchantment. Let us, however, notice at
+      once for the honor of the gods, that they were never condemned to sleep
+      indefinitely. Not one of them is found among the great Sleepers, such as
+      Charlemagne, Witikind, Frederick I., William Tell, or the peasant woman,
+      from the neighborhood of Mayence. It is true, they were exiled to certain
+      remote districts, which they were not allowed to leave, but they could at
+      least move about and continue their former mode of life there, after a
+      fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not so very long since certain charcoal burners protested that they
+      had seen Asa-Thor, for want of giants to combat, hurl his hammer against
+      the tallest trees, which he broke and uprooted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had also seen the enchanted hunt of Diana, whose deep-mouthed dogs
+      bark at night and disturb the slumbers of honest people in <span
+      class="pagenum">[390]</span><a name="link390" id="link390"></a>Bohemian
+      villages. Who has not heard of the intrigues of old Venus, not with her
+      former, classic lover, the god Mars, but with the good knight Tannhäuser?
+      If we are to believe Heinrich
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heine, even Jupiter has been recently discovered again in one of the
+      Norwegian islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0142" id="linkimage-0142"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/410s.jpg" alt="410s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/410.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/410m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      It would be the height of imprudence, of course, to undertake an account
+      of the discovery, after such a master. I shall, therefore, be content to
+      present a mere summary of this remarkable tradition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is an island in the Northern seas, which is bordered by icebergs and
+      arid mountains: the valleys are dim and dark with heavy mists, the
+      mountain tops are covered with snow for nine months of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, one dismal morning, some travellers landed, driven by a tempest much
+      more than by their own free will. They were mostly savants, members of
+      great academies from Stockholm and St. Petersburg, who had undertaken a
+      voyage of discovery to the polar regions. The arid, almost <span
+      class="pagenum">[391]</span><a name="link391" id="link391"></a>bare soil
+      did not promise a pleasant resting place, but the mountain slopes towards
+      the south produced fine grass and dwarf gooseberry bushes, and the immense
+      number of holes in the ground, together with distinct traces of debris
+      left at the openings, proved that the island was at all events inhabited
+      by countless numbers of rabbits. Of other animal life, however, no trace
+      could be found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rabbits seemed to be the only inhabitants of the island, and that was
+      tempting enough for poor sailors who had for some time been put on salt
+      rations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our savants prepared, therefore, a large number of traps and snares, when
+      suddenly a fierce tempest of snow and hail broke out, and compelled them
+      instantly to seek refuge in a spacious cave which opened in that
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were not a little surprised to find here an old man, bald, hollow
+      cheeked, and pale, whose body was emaciated and decrepit and who was
+      hardly clothed in spite of the rigor of the climate. But beneath all these
+      signs of extreme old age, and great destitution, the stranger displayed an
+      air of authority, and on his serene and lofty brow such supernatural
+      majesty, that the travellers were filled with respect and reverence, and
+      well-nigh trembled at his appearance. <span class="pagenum">[392]</span><a
+      name="link392" id="link392"></a>An eagle of the largest variety, but so
+      reduced that he looked the mere skeleton of a bird, and with faded and
+      disheveled plumage, sat in a corner, the picture of misery, with his dull
+      eyes and his drooping wings. He was the old man&rsquo;s sole companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two hermits, having no other means of subsistence, lived by hunting,
+      and the old man found in addition, means to carry on a modest traffic in
+      the furs of the only game that the island contained; he laid up large
+      supplies of the small peltry and exchanged it for luxuries.....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my pen refuses to go on. I cannot reconcile it to my principles as an
+      author nor to my conscience as an honest student of genuine myths, to
+      repeat here a story, which is altogether apocryphal, and which belongs
+      much less to tradition than to mystification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, this old man was Jupiter, and as I think it over, I come to the
+      conclusion that Mr. Heine, who laughs at the most serious things, has
+      skillfully concealed his irony under the cloak of an interesting story,
+      for the mere purpose of telling us that the Chief of the Gods, dread
+      Jupiter, has become&mdash;a dealer in rabbit skins!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot follow his example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without wandering from my subject, for I am still speaking of false gods,
+      I will substitute for <span class="pagenum">[393]</span><a
+      name="link393" id="link393"></a>this necessarily much curtailed
+      account, another story which I can warrant as authentic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Persia,&rdquo; we are told by Count Gobineau, in a recently
+      published book of great merit, &ldquo;the <i>Soufys,</i> that is to say
+      the savants and philosophers, reject all dogmatic religion and believe in
+      the reunion of the soul with God in trances only. When this union is
+      complete, the soul is transformed and becomes itself a participant in the
+      nature of the uncreated essence, and Man is God.&rdquo; Human folly is
+      always a disease produced by human pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      France, also, has produced a few gods of that kind; I do not mean to
+      mention them, however, as belonging to the myths of the Rhine, which have
+      special reference to Germany only. But among the Germans, also, there is a
+      school of philosophers who without going as far as the Persians go, are
+      utterly incredulous, and disregarding trances and immortal souls alike,
+      have finally denied the existence of God altogether and made themselves
+      gods. This shows how anxious savants as well as ignorant men are, in that
+      beautiful country, to people the earth with deities of every kind!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the history of one of these earth-born gods which I propose to give
+      here, before I close this long chapter. Alas! he is dead now, and that is
+      a great pity; but he did live once; on that essential point there is no
+      lack of evidence. I could even, <span class="pagenum">[394]</span><a
+      name="link394" id="link394"></a>like the Thuringian peasants when speaking
+      of Frederick Barbarossa, say: &ldquo;I have seen him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the year 1800 there was born in Düsseldorf, in Prussia, a child in a
+      Jewish family recently converted to Christianity. This child might well
+      have been looked upon as of supernatural origin, so entirely different was
+      it, from its earliest days, from all that had ever been seen before.
+      Martin Luther no doubt, if the child had been one of his own, would have
+      pronounced him to be a Killecroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not only noisy and troublesome, but he was also a pedant; he
+      snubbed professors and listened to the advice of very young children. When
+      his parents scolded him, he only laughed at them; when a grave event
+      disturbed a neighbor&rsquo;s household, he laughed; when the French took
+      his native city, he laughed; in fine he was always laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, as he grew up, he gorged himself with logic, with mathematics,
+      with Greek and Latin and Hebrew and all kinds of good things besides. He
+      became even a philosopher before he was of age, but his philosophy
+      consisted mainly in a sarcastic laugh. When they spoke to him of the
+      position he might occupy in Düsseldorf, and of the wealth he might
+      acquire, his only answer was a grimace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rabbi spread out before him heaps of gold, <span class="pagenum">[395]</span><a
+      name="link395" id="link395"></a>promising to give him that and more, if he
+      would be his slave only for a few years; he refused to listen to him. As
+      he was a vain man, the demon of Fame endeavored to tempt him, but he
+      laughed in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the devil, a real devil, I am sure (his name was George William
+      Frederick Schlegel) whispered into his ear: &ldquo;Would you like to be a
+      god?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time our young philosopher did not laugh. He became a god, and, from
+      official jealousy, proceeded to deny the great God in Heaven until he lost
+      all human sentiments. He lived alone, friendless, childless, without a
+      family and giving up even his mother country, finding that everything had
+      to be done over again in this world, which he had not created.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After leaving Germany he came to France, and here in France he laughed
+      louder and bitterer than ever. In France they did not believe in his
+      divinity; they did not worship him, but they loved him as if he had been a
+      simple mortal; in France he made friends and he became like other men once
+      more. Finally, as he was after all bad only in his wit, he became
+      voluntarily a convert as he saw the evil fruit of his teachings. He took a
+      wife to himself with the sanction of the Church, and he died a believer.
+      <span class="pagenum">[396]</span><a name="link396" id="link396"></a>This
+      ex-god was called Heinrich Heine, that Heinrich Heine, who laughed so
+      bitterly at his ex-colleague, Jupiter, and spoke of him as a dealer in
+      rabbit skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0143" id="linkimage-0143"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/416s.jpg" alt="416s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/416.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/416m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[399]</span><a name="link399" id="link399"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0144" id="linkimage-0144"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/419s.jpg" alt="419s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/419.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/419m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women and Serpent Women.&mdash;<i>Children&rsquo;s
+      Myths.&mdash;Godmothers.&mdash;Fairies.&mdash;The Magic Wand and the
+      Broomstick.&mdash;The Lady of Kynast.&mdash;The World of the Dead,&rsquo;
+      the World of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.&mdash;Myths of Animals.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ell? Have you seen
+      enough of the gods and demigods of Germany, of the Nixen and goblins, the
+      Kobolds, the giants, and the dwarfs? Have I shown you enough of this vast
+      storehouse of human folly? I must confess, it makes me melancholy to speak
+      of all this, and I feel an urgent desire to &ldquo;shut up shop.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conscientious collector of myths, who has more material than he can
+      manage, and sees new myths continually rising before him, is not unlike
+      those learned physicians who spend their lives among crowds of insane
+      people. A fever of imitation seizes them and soon they begin to wander
+      like their patients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps I have reached that point myself without becoming aware of it. The
+      reader must judge for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mind, filled with myths, symbols, and eccentricities, is ready to ask
+      for mercy, and still I feel it, there are some things yet to be done. For
+      instance, I recollect having promised to give a completion of the history
+      of the Druidesses, that is to say, of women, those myth-like beings by
+      eminence! That kind of instinctive sense, that delicacy of almost
+      intuitive perceptions which distinguished them from the other sex in its
+      material coarseness, could not fail to give them easily the advantage over
+      men. In Celtic lands as in Scandinavia they were the models of all
+      virtues, the oracles of the house. They were occasionally beaten, <span
+      class="pagenum">[401]</span><a name="link401" id="link401"></a>it is true,
+      but they were also grandly honored, and in Germany especially people burnt
+      incense before them, long before they smoked tobacco in their presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0145" id="linkimage-0145"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/421s.jpg" alt="421s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/421.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/421m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[403]</span><a name="link403" id="link403"></a>At
+      the time when Christianity came, the women played a prominent and truly
+      glorious part there; all the historians bear witness. Between the fourth
+      and the sixth century Fritigill, Queen of the Marcomanni, Clotilda, Queen
+      of France, and Bertha. Queen of England, had compelled their husbands to
+      bow down before the Cross, and not by witchcraft, as the pagans wickedly
+      maintained, but simply by persuasion. Other women, who belonged to noble
+      families or to the common people at large, a Krimhild, a Thekla, and a
+      Liobat, assisted the missionaries in their dangerous enterprise and
+      actually helped them in cutting down the sacred oak trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had become, during these long continued persecutions, of you, fair
+      Gann, noble Aurinia, majestic Velleda, and of your sisters, the other
+      Druidesses?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were wandering about in dark forests, proscribed and weeping over
+      their departed glory; they concealed themselves in remote places where the
+      agents of the civil power but rarely appeared. Sometimes, of an evening,
+      they would venture forth, approach a belated traveller on a cross-road,
+      and <span class="pagenum">[404]</span><a name="link404" id="link404"></a>hold
+      with him mysterious converse. Sometimes, also, the inhabitants of a
+      village, or even of a larger place, would go secretly to their well chosen
+      hiding places to consult them on the good or evil chances of their
+      prospects in life, or on an epidemic that was attacking their cattle. Some
+      people, and among them not unfrequently recent converts, who were still
+      strongly imbued with their former creed, would ask them to name their
+      new-born infants and thus to bring them good luck. Hence they were at
+      first known as <i>Godmothers</i>, and at a later time as <i>Fairies</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was naturally supposed that like the ancient fairies of the East, these
+      women also derived their power from the stars, for why else should they
+      have been met so constantly on the mountain slopes, when the moon was
+      shining brightly, or slipping suddenly from behind a rock or a tree, where
+      will-o&rsquo;-the-wisps and fireflies alone were in the habit of being
+      about?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among these fairies many were kind and naturally benevolent; others, no
+      doubt embittered by their fate, appeared irascible and ill disposed. Woe
+      to the men, or even the cattle upon whom they cast an evil eye!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This evil influence could be averted only by the assistance of another
+      fairy, a good one in this case, who relieved you more or less promptly by
+      means <span class="pagenum">[405]</span><a name="link405" id="link405"></a>of
+      a talisman, a constellated stone, or certain words possessed of magic
+      power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, if we add to these godmothers, to these godchildren, to good and bad
+      fairies, the terrible Ogres, whose very name filled the people of those
+      days with terror, you will know all the mysterious personages which appear
+      in the myths of children and which we have all known in our early days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we were to examine these legends and traditions more carefully, we
+      should no doubt easily find &ldquo;Bluebeard&rdquo; again among the old
+      burggraves of the Rhine, as &ldquo;Puss in Boots&rdquo; has already been
+      discovered there. &ldquo;The Sleeping Beauty&rdquo; might very well be the
+      peasant woman who had slept a century under the influence of magic
+      magnetism, and why should not our little dwarf Kreiss and his brothers
+      have furnished the first idea of little Tom Thumb, with Quadragant to play
+      the part of the ogre? In &ldquo;Cinderella&rdquo; we might with the same
+      readiness recognize one of the three Undine sisters, who forgot amid the
+      delights of the evening assembly, that their furlough was out at ten o&rsquo;clock?
+      The same would apply, no doubt, to many others who lived under the
+      influence of wicked Nichus or evil disposed fairies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Druidesses! If you had at least survived as fairies! If they had met
+      you only in the air travelling simply by the aid of your magic wand! <span
+      class="pagenum">[406]</span><a name="link406" id="link406"></a>But in
+      proportion as Christianity increased, your power necessarily decreased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0146" id="linkimage-0146"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/426s.jpg" alt="426s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/426.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/426m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The day came at last, when they dared transform you into fortune tellers,
+      and finally into accursed witches! Then your enchantress&rsquo; wand
+      became that atrocious broomstick upon which you travelled through the air
+      on your way to the witches&rsquo; Sabbath! Oh misery! Oh <span
+      class="pagenum">[407]</span><a name="link407" id="link407"></a>wretchedness!
+      What a fatal overthrow of all earthly glory and grandeur!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the women thus saw their power of ruling men by prophetic inspiration
+      slip away from them, they one fine day determined to change their tactics,
+      their ways and manners, and, I am sorry to have to say it, almost their
+      sex! They assumed the noisy and truculent manners of their brothers and
+      husbands and affected violent exercises, riding on horseback, wrestling,
+      and even fighting in battles. This was the age of bullying women, of <i>Strong
+      Women</i> in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they were young ladies they would admit no lover who could not prove
+      his affections by the most perilous adventures and impossible enterprises.
+      Such was the case with the famous Lady of Kynast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She owned a large domain and on this domain a ruined old tower which stood
+      on the summit of a steep, high rock, surrounded on all sides by a deep
+      abyss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rich, young, and beautiful, eagerly sought for by a number of admirers,
+      she did not think, in her desire to keep them from becoming too pressing,
+      of undertaking an endless piece of embroidery like Penelope. She did not
+      embroider; in fact, she looked with contempt, and almost with disgust,
+      upon every kind of work that was done by women. <span class="pagenum">[408]</span><a
+      name="link408" id="link408"></a>She told her lovers that she was betrothed
+      to Ky-nast&mdash;this was the name of the old tower&mdash;and that any one
+      who thought of winning her good will, would first have to compete with her
+      betrothed. To do this, nothing was required but to climb up the rock and
+      the tower, and after having reached the battlements, to make a complete
+      round, not on foot, however, and assisted by the hands and knees, but on
+      horseback, without other assistance than the bridle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flock of lovers took flight instantly; only two remained. They were
+      two brothers, bereft of reason by the strength of their passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having cast lots, the first one attempted the task and at first he
+      was successful. But that was all. He had no sooner reached the crenelated
+      top of the old tower, unaccompanied by his less active courser, than he
+      was seized with vertigo and fell instantly into the abyss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second brother, in his turn, climbed up to the top and actually
+      succeeded in riding some length along the battlements; but soon his horse,
+      feeling the stones slipping from under its hoofs, and the whole tower
+      rocking under the weight, refused to go on. To return was as impossible as
+      to proceed.<span class="pagenum">[409]</span><a name="link409" id="link409"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0147" id="linkimage-0147"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/429s.jpg" alt="429s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/429.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/429m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[411]</span><a name="link411" id="link411"></a>The
+      knight, determined to carry through the undertaking in which he was
+      engaged, encouraged his horse with his voice and with his spurs, but the
+      poor animal remained immovable, apparently wedged in between the large
+      stones of the tower. At last, knight and horse disappeared together; the
+      abyss swallowed up their bleeding, mangled remains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lady of Kynast could not disguise her delight and her pride as she
+      received the congratulations of her noble neighbors; all the great ladies
+      thought of having a Kynast, or a similar trap, in which they might catch&rsquo;
+      and try their lovers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No other claimants, however, appeared to woo this fair lady, who was so
+      well protected by her betrothed. The poor damsel felt rather aggrieved by
+      this neglect. She was by no means satisfied with having sacrificed only
+      two young men to her pride; she was gradually becoming soured and
+      ill-tempered, when at last a third lover presented himself and asked leave
+      to attempt the trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not know who it was, and this surprised her; for how could he have
+      fallen in love with her? He might possibly have seen her on her balcony,
+      or at some royal feast; perhaps he was only allured by her great
+      reputation. However, there was nothing to lose by accepting his offer. At
+      best, he was only one more victim to be added to the list; that was all.
+      At that time women were ferocious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some days a thick, heavy fog had shrouded <span class="pagenum">[412]</span><a
+      name="link412" id="link412"></a>the castle and the old tower from top to
+      bottom, so as to make the ascent utterly impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The simple laws of hospitality, required, therefore, that the lady should
+      offer her castle to the newly arrived knight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter was handsome and of fine figure; his features beamed with
+      bravery and intelligence; his white, delicate hands, exquisitely shaped,
+      proved sufficiently that he was of noble descent; and his large retinue
+      bespoke his high rank and large fortune. During three days he spent almost
+      all his time with the young lady, but as yet he had not dared say a word
+      of his love. She, however, felt herself gradually conquered by a feeling
+      which had, until now, been unknown to her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the dense veil of mist was at length torn aside, and the Kynast shone
+      forth in its full splendor, she was on the point of telling the knight
+      that she would not insist on the trial in his case; but what would her
+      good friends, the noble ladies of the neighborhood, have said?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the moment came, the Lady of Kynast felt her heart fail her. She shut
+      herself in, she wept, she cried, and although little given to prayers
+      generally, she besought God to do a miracle in behalf of her knight. She
+      could, however, hope very little from such a miracle, for in the meantime,
+      loud clamors had been heard below, and as <span class="pagenum">[413]</span><a
+      name="link413" id="link413"></a>she surely thought the spectators were
+      bewailing the death of her last lover, she fainted away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0148" id="linkimage-0148"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/433s.jpg" alt="433s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/433.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/433m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[415]</span><a name="link415" id="link415"></a>
+      Cries of joy and of triumph roused her again; the knight had successfully
+      accomplished the task. Quite overcome, she rushes to meet him, and in her
+      intense excitement and the depth of her passion, she forgets that all eyes
+      are upon her, and breathlessly cries out: &ldquo;My hand is yours.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he draws himself up to his full height, and, haughtily and harshly he
+      replies with a withering smile:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I ever asked you for your hand? I only came to avenge my two
+      brothers, whom you have killed, and I have done it, for I do not love you,
+      and you love me! Very well! Now you can die of your love, or of your
+      shame, as you like it! Farewell, I am going back to Margaret, my darling,
+      my wife!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same evening the wretched lady had herself hoisted up to the top of
+      the tower, from whence she wished, as she said, to watch the setting sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before the sun had sunk below the horizon, she had rejoined her
+      victims at the foot of the ruined old tower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the Kynast obtained possession of his betrothed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story might furnish an admirable plot for a grand opera. But, upon
+      reflection, I think it would <span class="pagenum">[416]</span><a
+      name="link416" id="link416"></a>suit a circus better, for there are in it
+      three first-class parts for horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lady of Kynast was a strong minded woman, rather than a really strong
+      woman; but there were others, who really distinguished themselves by
+      extraordinary physical strength. It would seem that the habit of taking
+      violent exercise had finally developed their muscles and sinews to such a
+      degree, that few men could be found strong enough to overcome them in a
+      wrestling match, or in armed combat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the noble Brunehilt, queen of Isenstein, in Norway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Soothsayers, Godmothers, Fairies, Strong Women, and Serpent Women</i>
+      are not the only women of this class which we ought to mention here
+      perhaps. We might also speak of the <i>Swan Women</i>, who floated on the
+      water in the dim morning mist, clothed in a cloak of eider down; and the
+      <i>Forest Woman</i>, who was honored every year by the burning of a
+      spindle full of hemp, to keep her from doing any harm; and the <i>Water
+      Sneezers,</i> to whom you had to say three times &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo;
+      in order to save their souls from purgatory; and the little <i>Moss
+      Gatherers</i>, who could not escape from their enemies, the Forest Woman
+      and the Wild Huntsman, unless a benevolent charcoal burner would mark some
+      trees with three crosses, behind <span class="pagenum">[417]</span><a
+      name="link417" id="link417"></a>which they could conceal
+      themselves. But we must make haste to conclude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, as the great <i>Wild Huntsman</i> has accidentally been
+      mentioned, we do not think it would be fair to leave him out and pass him
+      over in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0149" id="linkimage-0149"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/437s.jpg" alt="437s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/437.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/437m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      He is the Lord Hackelberg. Most imprudently he had begged God to allow him
+      to exchange his place in heaven for the right to hunt upon earth for all
+      time to come. To punish him, God granted <span class="pagenum">[418]</span><a
+      name="link418" id="link418"></a>his prayer, and ever since he has been
+      hunting, with horns blowing and dogs barking, without respite or repose.
+      He hunts continually, day and night, to-day as yesterday; he must hunt
+      to-morrow as he does to-day, and yet he must hunt the same deer, which
+      forever escapes from him, and ever will escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which of the two is most to be pitied, the everlasting huntsman, or the
+      everlasting game?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How many others could claim a right to be mentioned here as well as he?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the people who are <i>condemned to remain standing forever</i>,
+      and those who are <i>condemned to dance forever,</i> another variety of
+      bewitched people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You do not think my material is all used up? By no means! In the first
+      place, I might have told you all about mythological animals; of Thor&rsquo;s
+      <i>buck-goat</i>, which enjoyed the same privilege as the boar of the
+      Walhalla, of daily satisfying the powerful appetite of its master and his
+      guests, and yet being replaced in all its bodily fullness, provided only
+      care had been taken to put all the bones aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I might have gone back to give a fuller account of that famous
+      Iormungandur, the great sea serpent, which still exists in our days&mdash;who
+      dares doubt it? The crew of an English vessel, passengers, <span
+      class="pagenum">[419]</span><a name="link419" id="link419"></a>officers,
+      and sailors, have unanimously testified in a legally drawn up deposition
+      that they have met it quite recently in the Northern seas. What more
+      evidence do you want?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the <i>Kraken</i>, that most marvelous of all cetaceans, which could
+      easily be mistaken for a habitable island, and on which imprudent
+      navigators once really landed, erecting their tents and saying mass,
+      without its ever stirring, until they hoisted anchors, when the animal for
+      the first time gave signs of life?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the <i>Griffins</i>, those perfect symbols of avarice, who are all the
+      time busily engaged in dragging forth from underground vast heaps of gold
+      and precious stones, merely in order to guard and defend them ever
+      afterwards, at the peril of their lives, although the gold and the jewels
+      are of no use to any one? And Sleipner, Odin&rsquo;s <i>eight-legged horse</i>,
+      and the dog <i>Garm</i>, etc?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing on to another variety of zoological marvels, I might have
+      mentioned the <i>Salmon,</i> whose scaly skin wicked Loki assumed as a
+      disguise in order to escape from the wrath of the gods after Balder&rsquo;s
+      death. And that marvelous <i>Sturgeon</i> in the Rhine, which the French
+      legends have put to good profit. Let us pause a moment in contemplation of
+      this wonderful fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young, noble lady determined, in order to save <span class="pagenum">[420]</span><a
+      name="link420" id="link420"></a>her honor, to destroy her beauty, the
+      grandest, most heroic, and most calamitous sacrifice that can possibly be
+      made. Hence, when the moment for action arrived, her courage failed her.
+      But if she could not bear the idea of becoming ugly, she could at least
+      mutilate herself. So she puts her dagger upon the ledge of a window which
+      overlooked the Rhine, seizes a hatchet, and with a single blow cuts off
+      her hand, which falls into the river, and then with the bleeding stump
+      terrifies her infamous persecutor. Here the sturgeon makes its appearance.
+      This providential sturgeon has seen the hand drop into the river; it
+      swallows it with well-known voracity, but in the anticipation of restoring
+      it, seven years later, uninjured to the true owner, and thus to prove her
+      superhuman virtue. And this really happened seven years after the
+      occurrence in Rome, in the presence of the Pope and his assembled
+      Cardinals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first sight it does not appear quite clear, how the sturgeon could have
+      passed from the waters of the Rhine into those of the Tiber, but in this
+      kind of stories there is no use in trying to comprehend everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noble lady and the sturgeon have furnished the theme for the famous
+      novel, &ldquo;La Manekine,&rdquo; and later, in the Middle Ages, for a
+      great dramatic mystery on the French stage. <span class="pagenum">[421]</span><a
+      name="link421" id="link421"></a>Before concluding this chapter, I may be
+      allowed to say a word about the <i>World of the Dead</i>, which sends in
+      certain consecrated nights its representatives to some of the churches, or
+      to silent dinners, and about the <i>World of Ghosts</i>, the annals of
+      which have been collected, and the laws of which have been explained by
+      Jung Stilling and Kerner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0150" id="linkimage-0150"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/441s.jpg" alt="441s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/441.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/441m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men, walk, run, and even jump,
+      but they have no power over material objects; they cannot move a table, a
+      chair, or even a straw. All their united efforts would not succeed in
+      causing the light of a candle <span class="pagenum">[422]</span><a
+      name="link422" id="link422"></a>to flicker. We can therefore feel
+      perfectly easy with regard to these ghosts; they cannot injure our
+      furniture, nor draw the knot of our cravat inconveniently tight, if they
+      should take a fancy to make an end of us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor can I keep altogether silence as to the <i>World of Shadows</i>, still
+      dimmer and less perceptible than the World of Ghosts. I shall therefore
+      content myself with a single instance, which we owe to a Dutch legend. The
+      master bell-ringer of the city of Haarlem, caught at a tavern by his wife
+      escaped with such extraordinary rapidity that his shadow was unable to
+      follow him, and remained hanging on the wall&mdash;a fact duly certified
+      by the signature and seal of the reigning burgomaster, the aldermen, and
+      other notables of said town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of such overwhelming evidence one might be disposed to doubt the
+      authenticity of this remarkable occurrence, which Hoffmann, I believe, has
+      used in one of his Tales; but had not long before Hoffmann, and long
+      before the master bell-ringer of Haarlem even, the god Fô left his shadow
+      in some town of Hindustan, instead of his card? We try in vain to find
+      anything new under the sun; all our most famous myths and all our most
+      amusing anecdotes have travelled all over India before they reached us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I might also tell you.... but he who tells <span class="pagenum">[423]</span><a
+      name="link423" id="link423"></a>everything, says too much. Let us here
+      pause once more, and for the last time. Farewell, reader, and may Heaven
+      keep you sound in body and soul.<span class="pagenum">[424]</span><a
+      name="link424" id="link424"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0151" id="linkimage-0151"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/443s.jpg" alt="443s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/443.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/443m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Rhine, by X. B. Saintine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Myths of the Rhine
+
+Author: X. B. Saintine
+
+Illustrator: Gustave Dore
+
+Translator: M. Schele De Vere
+
+Release Date: December 14, 2013 [EBook #44430]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYTHS OF THE RHINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MYTHS OF THE RHINE
+
+Translated from the French of X. B. Saintine
+
+By Prof. M. Schele De Vere, LL. D.
+
+Illustrated by Gustave Dore
+
+Scribner, Armstrong, and Company
+
+1874
+
+
+
+
+DESCRIPTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+I.
+
+Primitive Times.--The First Settlers on the Rhine.--Masters going to
+School.--Sanskrit and Breton.--An Idle God.--Microscopic Deities.--Tree
+Worship.--Birth-Trees and Death-Trees.....001
+
+II.
+
+The Druids and their Creed.--Esus.--The Holy Oak.--The Pforzheim Lime
+Tree.--A Rival Plant.--The Mistletoe and the Anguinufh.--The Oracle
+at Do-dona.--Immaculate Horses.--The Druidesses.--A late
+Elector.--Philanthropic Institution of Human Sacrifices.--Second
+Druidical. Epoch.....025
+
+III.
+
+A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.--The Two Banks of the
+Rhine.--Druid Stones.--Weddings and Burials.--Night Service.--A Demigod
+Glacier.--Social Duels.--A Countrywoman of Aspasia.--Boudoir of a Celtic
+Lady.--The Bard's Story.--Teutons and Titans.--Earthquake.....053
+
+IV.
+
+The Roman Gods invade Germany.--Drusus and the Dru-idess.--Ogmius,
+the Hercules of Gaul.--Great Philological Discovery concerning
+Tentates.--Transformations of every kind.--Irmensul.--The Rhine
+deified.--The Gods cross the River.--Druids of the Third Epoch.....089
+
+V.
+
+The World before and since Odin.--Birth of Ymer.--The Giants of the
+Frost.--A Log split in Two.--The First Man and the First Woman.--The
+Ash Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.--Thor's Three Jewels.--Freyr's Enchanted
+Sword.--A Souvenir of the National Guard of Belleville.--The Story of
+Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.--Honey and Blood.--Invocation.....119
+
+VI.
+
+Short Biographies.--A Clairvoyant among the Gods.--A Bright God.--Tyr
+and the Wolf Fenris.--The Hospital at the Walhalla.--Why was Odin
+one-eyed.--The Three Norns.--Mimer the Sage.--A Goddess the Mother
+of Four Oxen.--The Love Affairs of Heimdall--The God with the Golden
+Teeth.....151
+
+VII.
+
+Heaven and Hell.--The Valkyrias.--Amusements in Walhalla.--Pork and Wild
+Boar.--A Frozen Hell.--Balder's Death.--Frigg's Devotion.--The Iron Tree
+Forest.--The Twilight of the Gods.--Iduna's Apples.--The Fall of Heaven
+and the End of the World.--Reflections on that Event.--The Little
+Fellow still alive.....17
+
+VIII.
+
+How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time
+between one World and another.--How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.--How
+Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the
+Indians.--How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God
+Buddha.--About Mahabarata and Ramavana.--Chronology.--The World's
+Age.--Comparative Tables.--Quotations.--Supporting Evidence.--A
+Cenotaph.....209
+
+IX.
+
+Confederation of all the Northern Gods.--Freedom of
+Religion.--Christianity.--Miserere mei!--Homeric Enumeration.--Prussian,
+Slavic, and Finnish Deities.--The God of Cherries and the God of
+Bees.--A Silver Woman.--Ilmarinnen's Wedding Song.--A Skeleton
+God.--Yaga-Baba's Pestle and Mortar.--Preparation for Battle.--The
+Little Chapel on the Hill.--The Signal for the Attack.--Jesus and
+Mary.....215
+
+X.
+
+Marietta and the Sweet-briar.--Esus and Jesus.--Amalgam.--A
+Neophyte.--Prohibition to eat Horseflesh.--Bishops in
+Arms.--Interruption.--Come Home, my Good Friend!--Prussia and the
+Myths of the Middle Ages.--Tybilinus, the Black God.--The little Blue
+Flower.....243
+
+XI.
+
+Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.--Sylphs, their Amusements
+and Domestic Arrangements.--Little Queen Mab.--Will-o'-the-
+Wisps.--White Elves and Black Elves.--True Causes of Natural
+Somnambulism.--The Wind's Betrothed.--Fire-damp.--Master
+Haemmerling.--The Last of the Gnomes.....261
+
+XII.
+
+Elementary Spirits of the Water.--Petrarch at Cologne.--Divine Judgment
+by Water.--Nixen and Undines.--A Furlough till Ten o'clock.--The
+White footed Undine.--Mysteries on the Rhine.--The Court of the Great
+Nichus.--Nixcobt, the Messenger of the Dead.--His Funny Tricks.--I go in
+Search of an Undine.....281
+
+XIII.
+
+Familiar Spirits.--Butzemann.--The Good Frau Holle.--Kobolds.--A Kobold
+in the Cook's Employ.--Zot-terais and the Little White Ladies.--The
+Killecroffs, the Devil's Children.--White Angels.--Granted Wishes, a
+Fable.....307
+
+XIV.
+
+Giants and Dwarfs.--Duel between Ephesim and Gromme-lund.--Court Dwarfs
+and Little Dwarfs.--Ymer's Sons.--The Invisible Reapers.--Story of the
+Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragaat.--How the Giants came to serve the
+Dwarfs.....333
+
+XV.
+
+Wizards and the Bewitched.--The Journey of Asa-Thor and his
+Companions.--The Inn with the Five Passages.--Skrymner.--A Lost Glove
+found again.--Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.--Combat between
+Thor and the King's Nurse.--Frederick Barbarossa and the
+Kyffhauser.--Teutonia! Teutonia!--What became of the Ancient
+Gods.--Venus and the good Knight Tannhauser.--Jupiter on Rabbit
+Island.--A Modern God.....369
+
+XVI.
+
+Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women, and Serpent
+Women.--Children's Myths.--Godmothers.--Fairies.--The Magic Wand and the
+Broomstick.--The Lady of Kynast.--The World of the Dead, the World of
+Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.--Myths of Animals.....397
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+   Father Rhine....................................................003
+
+   The impassive historian ........................................004
+
+   Vast forests as old as the world ...............................005
+
+   The first pioneers..............................................007
+
+   The Celts were a people from India..............................009
+
+   What happy people scholars are..................................010
+
+   A horrible custom...............................................019
+
+   Dead man's trees................................................022
+
+   The Druids now appear for the first time in Germany.............023
+
+   Their creed must be judged by their rites.......................027
+
+   The other chieftains were generally polygamists.................031
+
+   Courts of justice were always held under an elm tree............032
+
+   Attempt to murder the mayor ....................................033
+
+   Mistletoe an officinal and sacred plant.........................035
+
+   Gauls...........................................................037
+
+   Serpents' knots.................................................039
+
+   Prophetic trembling and neighing................................041
+
+   A Druid teacher ................................................044
+
+   The Germans were in full flight ................................046
+
+   The bloody knife of the Druids .................................052
+
+   I turn my steps from the sacred precincts.......................055
+
+   Who are these other soldiers?...................................057
+
+   These laborers seem to suffer from some restraint...............058
+
+   I look around for a resting-place ..............................059
+
+   A shepherd......................................................060
+
+   The guard of a sword, which had been driven into the ground.....061
+
+   The shepherd,--as mournful as ever..............................063
+
+   Herds of swine are wallowing ...................................066
+
+   A young wife bearing the burden of united household.............067
+
+   Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty ..................068
+
+   Such were the ways of our fathers: rejoice in facing death......069
+
+   The Druidical altars............................................070
+
+   As there is no window I peep through the trap-door..............072
+
+   One of the chief men of the country ............................075
+
+   She was a young Ionian girl, a country-woman of Aspasia.........080
+
+   The boudoir of a Celtic lady....................................082
+
+   The Druid-bard..................................................085
+
+   Death of Druids.................................................091
+
+   A Druidess endowed with the gift of prophecy ...................093
+
+   The victorious march of the Romans .............................094
+
+   Her deities personified nothing but vices ......................096
+
+   The Hercules--so called.........................................098
+
+   Mercury, the son of Jupiter ....................................099
+
+   "O Varus, Varus, bring me back my legions!".....................103
+
+   Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances.................105
+
+   They made him a king, the King of German rivers.................106
+
+   He had already allowed Jupiter to cross.........................107
+
+   The vines began to adorn the banks of the river.................108
+
+   Once more caresses had their hoped-for effect...................109
+
+   He did his best to help everybody across........................110
+
+   Fnvolous and ill-mannered deities...............................110
+
+   The dauntless pirates will end by wearing white night-caps......113
+
+   The great Northern Tempest .....................................115
+
+   The German Druids gave way......................................118
+
+   Iormungondur, the great sea serpent.............................121
+
+   The giant Ymer has been born....................................123
+
+   The first men had been born with a telescope in their pocket?...127
+
+   Ymer was the first to succumb...................................128
+
+   After the giants came the turn of land and sea monsters.........129
+
+   The new creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance........132
+
+   Deer, eland, and aurochs were bounding in herds.................133
+
+   Incessantly a tiny squirrel comes and goes......................136
+
+   A vulture perching upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree.....137
+
+   Thor's weighty hammer Mjoiner...................................139
+
+   The good Freyr seated at Odin's table...........................141
+
+   Portrait of Freyr...............................................142
+
+   Bragi and the beautiful Freya ..................................147
+
+   Return of the eagle with the three precious vessels.............150
+
+   Balder, the bright god..........................................153
+
+   The wolf Fenris.................................................156
+
+   Converse with each other by significative glances...............159
+
+   They were the Norns.............................................160
+
+   He took counsel with the Norns..................................162
+
+   "To Egir, the seas and navigation"..............................164
+
+   Gefione took her four sons and changed them into oxen...........165
+
+   Jarl, the noble.................................................171
+
+   The Valkyrias ..................................................175
+
+   Beautiful nymphs of carnage.....................................176
+
+   A very mammoth of a boar........................................180
+
+   Feast in Scandinavian Paradise..................................181
+
+   Hela, the pale goddess..........................................185
+
+   "Balder, fair Balder, is going to die"..........................189
+
+   Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself.................191
+
+   Balder is amused by the game....................................192
+
+   When the mother told her pitiful tale the iron trees wept.......197
+
+   The three sacred cocks announcing the Twilight of Greatness.....202
+
+   The death of the gods...........................................208
+
+   My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph...............211
+
+   I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped.............214
+
+   The two religions face to face..................................217
+
+   Ovid reciting his "Metamorphoses"...............................219
+
+   Druidic worship suspended by the Romans.........................220
+
+   "Miserere mei, Jesu"............................................222
+
+   Perkunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos...............................224
+
+   Puscatus,--a kind-hearted god ..................................226
+
+   Monstrous reptiles accompany the gods to Germany................227
+
+   He let his heavy mace fall upon a little town...................238
+
+   The blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen...................................239
+
+   Marietta appeared in their midst................................245
+
+   "Do you think I am a man to be taken in ?"......................251
+
+   Horse-head, a la mode...........................................253
+
+   The Undines mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads.............258
+
+   Have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken...................259
+
+   The Olympus of the North........................................263
+
+   Able to see without being seen .................................266
+
+   Dance of the white fairies .....................................269
+
+   The black fairies personify Nightmare ..........................271
+
+   An important personage with a will of his own ..................272
+
+   Enormous toads are posted about.as watchmen.....................279
+
+   Elementary spirits of the water.................................283
+
+   Imaginary music ................................................288
+
+   The nix with the harp ..........................................289
+
+   Schoolmaster's son who had fallen in love with one of them......291
+
+   He thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters.............294
+
+   He rose suddenly and fled to another room ......................295
+
+   The steward whispered some words in her ear ....................297
+
+   Niord, the Scandinavian god ....................................299
+
+   This creature is Nixcobt........................................300
+
+   The Vintner is hanged, and Nixcobt laughs heartily..............302
+
+   Four Prussian soldiers watching the water ......................305
+
+   The Zotterais protected sheep ..................................309
+
+   The master has nothing to do....................................315
+
+   Prefer to remember the Kobold a cheerful household companion....317
+
+   The Zotterais as fond of stables as the Kobolds of kitchens.....319
+
+   They are naturally easily tired ................................321
+
+   The Killecroffs are children of the Devil ......................322
+
+   His nurse has to be reinforced by two goats and a cow...........324
+
+   The great Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther ..........................326
+
+   The fall of Killecroff .........................................331
+
+   Giants and dwarfs...............................................335
+
+   The last of the giants..........................................337
+
+   Grommelund and Ephesim .........................................339
+
+   The humiliated giant............................................340
+
+   Our good little dwarfs .........................................341
+
+   He stood at first with his mouth wide open .................... 346
+
+   A long and deep sigh of satisfaction............................348
+
+   Flight of the conspirators......................................353
+
+   Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious cavity........354
+
+   They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth...........355
+
+   In his hand he held not a club but a lantern....................357
+
+   Kreiss compelled to leave his position by torrents of tears.....359
+
+   The last two held each a long thorn in their hands..............361
+
+   Kreiss entering the great meeting hall..........................363
+
+   Putskuchen was in love..........................................365
+
+   Ouadragant vanquished...........................................367
+
+   The passing of the wizard ......................................371
+
+   Venus and Tannhauser............................................390
+
+   His ex-colleague Jupiter .......................................396
+
+   The author pursues the subject .................................399
+
+   The conscientious collector of myths............................401
+
+   The Druidess transformed into an accursed witch.................406
+
+   To return was as impossible as to proceed.......................409
+
+   She had rejoined her victims ...................................413
+
+   He is the Lord Hackelberg.......................................417
+
+   These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men.................421
+
+   Farewell........................................................423
+
+
+
+[Illustration: 023]
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+{003}_Primitive Times.--The First Settlers on the Rhine.--Masters
+going to School.--Sanskrit and Breton.--Ax Idle God.--Microscopic
+Deities.--Tree Worship.--Birth-Trees and Death-Trees._ The Rhine is born
+in Switzerland, in the Canton of Grisons; it skirts France and passes
+through it, and after a long and magnificent career it finally loses
+itself in the countless canals of Holland; and yet the Rhine is
+essentially a German river.
+
+{004}Already in the earliest ages, long before towns were built on its
+banks, it saw all the Germanic races dwell here in tents, watch their
+flocks, and fight their interminable battles, although the clash of
+arms and the blast of trumpets never for a moment aroused the impassive
+historian from his deep slumbers.
+
+[Illustration: 024]
+
+His silence, long continued into later centuries, does not prevent us
+from supposing, however, that the Rhine was already at that time the
+great high-{005}road on which the Germanic races wandered to and fro,
+and other races came to their native land. It was the Rhine that brought
+to them commerce and civilization; but on the Rhine came also invasions
+of a very different kind. We can allude here only to those religious
+invasions which are connected with our subject.
+
+[Illustration: 025]
+
+In the earliest ages the South of Europe alone was inhabited, while the
+Northern part was covered with vast forests, as old as the world, and as
+yet{006}unbroken by the footsteps of men. Dark, dismal solitudes,
+consisting of ancient woods or wretched morasses, where trees struggled
+painfully for existence and only the strongest survived when they
+reached the light and the sun; densely wooded deserts, in which vast
+herds of wild beasts pursued each other incessantly, while in the deep
+shadow of impenetrable foliage flocks of timid, trembling birds sought
+a refuge against hosts of voracious birds of prey. Thus, even while Man
+was yet absent, War was already reigning supreme here, and in these vast
+regions the Great Destroyer seemed to revel in it, as if it had been a
+feast, a necessity, a glory!
+
+Had never human eye yet looked upon these magnificent but unknown
+regions?
+
+Then, one fine day a host of savages appeared here and settled down with
+their flocks. After them came another host of more warlike and better
+armed men, who drove out the first comers and took possession of the
+tilled ground.
+
+After them another race, and then still another. Thus it went on for
+years and for centuries, and all these waves of immigration came down
+from the extreme North, marking each halting place by a bloody battle,
+while the conquered people, driven by the sharp edge of the sword to
+seek new homes, by turns pursued and pursuing, went and peopled those
+wild unsettled countries which afterwards be{007}came known as Belgium
+and France, as Bretagne and England. Continuing their march from thence
+southward, from the Rhine to the Mediterranean, they spread right and
+left, east and west, and crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps, making
+themselves masters on one side of Iberia, and on the other side of the
+plains of Lombardy, thus changing from fugitives into conquerors.
+
+[Illustration: 027]
+
+These conquered conquerors, driven from their own homes, and now driving
+other nations from their homes, these first pioneers who laid open one
+unknown country after another, were all children of one great family and
+all bore the same name of _Celts_.
+
+But where was the first source from which this {008}flood of families,
+of peoples, of nations, broke forth, that now overflowed Europe and in
+successive waves spread over the greater part of the Old World? Whence
+came these vast multitudes of Northern visitors, unexpected and unknown,
+who broke the mournful silence that had so long reigned in Europe? Were
+the frozen regions of the North pole, at that early time, really so
+fertile in men? We call upon men of science to answer our question. The
+question is a serious one, perhaps an indiscreet one, for who can
+be appealed to on such a difficult point? History? It did not exist.
+Monuments, written or sculptured? The Celts had never dreamt yet of
+writings or of carvings. Does this universal silence put it out of the
+power of our learned men to give a reply? Must they confess that they
+are unable to do so? By no means. Learned men never condescend to make
+such confessions. The Celts have left as a monument, a language, a
+dialect, still largely used in certain parts of ancient Bretagne as well
+as in the Principality of Wales.
+
+Illustrious academicians, mostly Germans, did not hesitate to go to
+school once more in order to learn Breton. The self-denial of which
+science is capable, deserves our admiration.
+
+After long labors, devoted to the separation of what belonged to the
+primitive language from subsequent additions, our great scholars found
+them{009}selves once more face to face with Sanskrit, the sacred idiom
+of the Brahmins, the ancestor of the old German tongue, and of the old
+Celtic tongue, and thus of the Breton.
+
+[Illustration: 029]
+
+The matter was decided, scientifically and categorically, and no appeal
+allowed. The Celts were a people from India. Europeans are all descended
+from Indians, driven from home by some powerful pressure, a political or
+religious revolution, or one of those fearful famines which periodically
+devastate {010}that immense and inexhaustible storehouse of nations.
+
+[Illustration: 030]
+
+At first, we good people, artists, poets, or authors, who generally
+claim to possess some little knowledge, were rather surprised at such
+a decision. But the wise men had said so; Bengal and Bretagne had to
+fraternize; the Brahmins of Benares speak Breton and the Bretons of
+Bretagne speak Sanskrit. Bretagne is Indian and India is Breton.
+
+Comparative Philology has taught the children of our day, that two
+syllables which are identical {011}in the idioms of two different races,
+prove the connection between two nations; hybridism means kinship.
+
+What happy people scholars are! They can converse with people who have
+been dead these three thousand years, and the grave has no secrets for
+them! A single word bequeathed to us by an extinct people, enables them
+to reconstruct that whole race.
+
+But I am bound to ask them another question, a question of much greater
+importance to myself. What were the religious convictions of these first
+inhabitants of Europe? I am answered by Mr. Simon Pelloutier, a minister
+of the Reformed Church in Berlin, of French descent, who has studied the
+primitive creed of the Celts most thoroughly and successfully. He tells
+us that these people, before they had Druids, worshipped, or rather held
+in honor the sun, the moon, and the stars, a kind of Sabaism, which,
+however, did not exclude the belief in a God, who was the creator, but
+not the ruler, of all things.
+
+This god appears to me to have been very imperfect; he was heavy,
+sleepy, and shapeless, having neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; he
+was incapable of feeling pity or anger, and the prayers and vows of men
+were unable to reach him. Invisible, intangible, and incomprehensible,
+he was floating in space, which he filled, and which he {012}animated
+without bestowing a thought upon it; omnipotent and yet utterly
+inactive, creating islands and continents, and causing the sun and the
+stars to give light by his mere approach, this divine idler had created
+the world, but declined taking the trouble of governing his creation.
+
+To whom had he confided the control over the stars in heaven? Mr.
+Pelloutier himself never could find out. As to the government of the
+earth, he had entrusted it to an infinite number of inferior deities,
+gods and sub-gods, of very small stature. They were as shapeless and as
+invisible as he was, but vastly more active, and endowed with all the
+energy which he had disdained to bestow upon himself. By their numbers
+and by their collective force they made up for their individual
+feebleness--and they must have been feeble indeed, since their extremely
+small size permitted a thousand of them to find a comfortable shelter
+under the leaf of a walnut tree!
+
+Besides, they presided over the different departments which were
+assigned to them, not by hundreds, but by myriads, nay, by millions
+of myriads. Thus they rushed forth in vast hosts, stirring the air in
+lively currents, causing the rivers and brooks to flow onwards, watching
+over fields and forests, penetrating the soil to great depths, creeping
+in through every crack and crevice, and breaking out {013}again through
+the craters of volcanoes. They formed a belt from the Rhine to the
+Taunus mountains, dazzling the whole region for a moment by a shower of
+sparks, and falling back upon the plain in the form of columns of black
+smoke.
+
+Science has, moreover, established this incontestable principle, that
+motion can only be produced in two ways here, below: either by the acts
+of living beings, or by the contact of these microscopic deities.
+
+Whenever the waters rose or broke forth in cataracts, whenever the
+leaves trembled in the wind, or the flowers bent before a storm, it was
+these diminutive gods who, invisible and yet ever active, forced the
+waters to come down in torrents, drove the tempest through the branches,
+bent the flowers down to the ground, and chased the dust of the
+highroads in lofty columns up to the clouds. It was they who caused the
+golden hair of the maid to fall down upon her shoulders as she went to
+the well, who shook the earthenware pitcher she carried on her shoulder,
+who crackled in the fire on the hearth, and who roared in the storm, or
+the eruptions of fiery mountains.
+
+When I think of this little world of tiny insect gods, who passed
+through the air in swarms, coming and going, turning to the left and to
+the right, struggling and striving above and beneath (I ask {014}their
+pardon for comparing these deities to humble insects, born in the
+mud and subject to infirmity and death like ourselves), I cannot help
+thinking of the beautiful lines by Lamartine, in which he so graphically
+describes life in Nature.
+
+     "Chaque fois que nos yeux, penetrant dans ces ombres,
+     De la nuit des rameaux eclairaient les dais sombres,
+     Nous trouvions sous ces lits de feuille ou dort l'ete,
+     Des mysteres d'amour et de fecondite.
+
+     Chaque fois que nos pieds tombaient dans la verdure
+     Les herbes nous montaient jusques a la ceinture,
+     Des flots d'air embaume se repandaient sur nous,
+     Des nuages ailes partaient de nos genoux;
+     Insectes, papillons, essaims nageants de mouches,
+     Oui d'un ether vivant semblaient former les couches,
+     Ils' montaient en colonne, en tourbillon flottant,
+     Comblaient l'air, nous cachaient l'un a l'autre un instant,
+     Comme dans les chemins la vague de poussiere
+     Se leve sous les pas et retombe en arriere.
+
+     Ils roulaient; et sur l'eau, sur les pres, sur le foin,
+     Ces poussieres de vie allaient tomber plus loin;
+     Et chacune semblait, d'existence ravie,
+     Epuiser le bonheur dans sa goutte de vie,
+     Et l'air qu'ils animaient de leurs fremissements
+     N'etait que melodie et que bourdonnements."
+
+Such were the gods known to the first ingenuous dwellers on the banks
+of the Rhine--gods worthy of a society but just beginning. And still, I
+venture to make a suggestion, which Mr. Simon Pelloutier, my guide up to
+this point, has unfortunately neglected to make. It is this: I feel as
+if {015}there was hidden beneath this primitive and apparently puerile
+mythology a hideous monster, writhing in fearful threatenings and bitter
+mockery. This god Chaos, so careless and reckless, gifted with the power
+of creation but not with love for his work, seems to me nothing else
+but Matter, organizing itself. I have called these countless inferior
+deities microscopic. I should have called them molecular, for they are
+atoms, the monads of our science. There is evidently here a germ, not
+of a religious creed so much as of a philosophic system, a shadow of
+the materialism of a former civilization that is now degraded and nearly
+lost.
+
+At first I doubted the correctness of the opinions of our learned men;
+but I begin to believe in them; yes, these early Celts had come, to us
+from distant India, from that ancient, decayed country, and in their
+knapsacks they had brought with them, by an accident, this fragment
+of their symbolic cosmogony, the sad meaning of which was, no doubt, a
+mystery to them also.
+
+After some years, perhaps after some centuries, --for time does not
+count for much in those questions,--the Celts became weary of this
+selfish Deity, which was lost in the contemplation of its own being and
+dwelt in the centre of a cold and empty heaven, and they desired to
+establish some relations between him and themselves. Unable to appeal to
+{016}the Creator, they appealed to Creation, and asked for a mediator,
+who should hear their complaints or accept their thank-offerings and
+transmit them to the Supreme Power.
+
+We have already seen that they turned first to sun and moon; but they
+were ill rewarded for their efforts. These heavenly bodies were either
+too far removed from their clients to hear their complaints, or they
+were too busy with their own daily duties; at all events they shared
+with their common master in his indifference towards men.
+
+Our pious friends were offended by this want of consideration, and
+thought of looking for other intercessors, who might be less busy; whom
+they might not only see with their eyes but touch with their hands,
+and who would remain as much as possible in the same place, so as to be
+always on hand when they were needed.
+
+They appealed to rivers and mountains; but the rivers had nothing
+permanent but their banks, and went their way like the sun and moon;
+while the mountains, besides being the home of wolves, bears, and
+serpents, and thus enjoying an evil reputation, were continually hid by
+snow and rain from the eyes of the petitioners.
+
+At last they turned to the trees, and as it always happens, they now
+found out that they ought to have commenced where they ended. {017}A
+tree was an excellent mediator; standing between heaven and earth, it
+clung to the latter by its roots, while its trunk, shaped like an arrow,
+feathered with verdure, rose upwards as if to touch the sky.
+
+The worship of trees was probably the first effect of sedentary life
+adopted by the Celts after their long, more or less forced wanderings;
+in a few years it prevailed on both sides of the river Rhine.
+
+There was no lack of trees; every man had his own. As he could not carry
+it away with him, he became accustomed to live by its side.
+
+Man could lean his hut against the trunk; the flock could sleep in its
+shade.
+
+The birds came to it in numbers. If they were singing, it was a sign of
+joy to come; if they built their nests there, it was an invitation to
+marry.
+
+The fruit-bearing tree suggested comfort, abundance, and enjoyment; it
+spoke of harvest feasts and cider-making, when friends gathered around
+it, holding in their hands large horns filled to overflowing with
+foaming drink.
+
+Soon it became customary to plant at the birth of a child a tree which
+was to become a companion and a counsellor for life.
+
+Thus in the course of time a copse represented a family.
+
+The worship bestowed upon the tree consisted {018}in pruning it, in
+making it grow straight, in freeing its bark from parasitical growth
+and in keeping the roots free from ants, rats, snakes and all dangerous
+enemies. Such continuous care naturally led in the course of time to an
+improvement in cultivation.
+
+The tree worshippers, however, did more than this. On certain hallowed
+days they hung bouquets of herbs and of flowers on its branches, they
+brought food and drink, and thus fetichism crept in gradually. Alas!
+That men have never been able to keep from extremes!
+
+When the wind whispered in the leaves, the devout owner listened
+attentively, trying anxiously to interpret the mystic language of his
+cedar or his pear tree, and often a regular conversation ensued.
+
+It was a bad omen when a rising storm shook the tree fiercely; if the
+tempest was strong enough to break a branch, the event foretold a great
+calamity, and if it was struck by lightning, the owner was warned of
+his approaching death. The latter was resigned; he felt quite proud
+at having at last compelled his indolent god to reveal himself to his
+devout worshipper.
+
+When a child died, it was buried under its own tree, a mere sapling..
+But it was not so when a man died.{019}
+
+[Illustration: 039]
+
+The Celts used various and strange means for the purpose of disposing of
+the remains of their {021}deceased friends. In some countries they were
+burnt, and their own tree furnished the fuel for the funeral pile; in
+other countries the _Todtenbaum_ (Tree of the Dead), hollowed out with
+an axe, became the owner's coffin. This coffin was interred, unless
+it was intrusted to the current of the river, to be carried God knows
+where! Finally, in certain localities there existed a custom--a horrible
+custom!--of exposing the body to the voracity of birds of prey, and the
+place of exposure was the top of the very tree which had been planted at
+the birth of the deceased, and which in this case, quite exceptionally,
+was not cut down.
+
+Now, observe, that in these four distinct methods by which human remains
+were restored to the four elements of air and water, earth and fire, we
+meet again the four favorite ways of burial still practiced in India,
+as of old, by the followers of Brahma, Buddha, and Zoroaster. The
+fire-worshippers of Bombay are as familiar with them as the dervishes
+who drown children in the Ganges. Thus we have here four proofs, instead
+of one, of the Indian origin of our Celts. For my part at least, I
+confess I am convinced by this quadruple evidence.
+
+It is to be presumed that the use of Dead Men's Trees and of posthumous
+drownings continued for centuries in ancient Gaul as well as in ancient
+Germany. About 1560 some Dutch laborers found, {022}in examining a part
+of the Zuyder Zee, at a great depth, several trunks of trees which
+were marvelously well preserved and nearly petrified. Each one of these
+trunks had been occupied by a man, and contained some half-petrified
+fragments. It was evident that they had been carried down, trunk and
+man, by the Rhine, the Ganges of Germany.
+
+[Illustration: 042]
+
+As recently as 1837 such _Todtenbaume_ or Dead Men's Trees, well
+preserved by the peculiar nature of the soil, have been discovered in
+England, near Solby in Yorkshire, and still more recently, in 1848, on
+Mount Lupfen in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
+
+In face of such well authenticated evidence of Dead Men's Trees having
+been confided to the current of rivers or the bosom of the earth, it
+seems superfluous to ask for additional proof in support of the fact
+that cremation was practiced all over ancient Europe. Nor do I consider
+myself, as a collector of myths, bound to prove everything. I {023}do
+not mean to speak, therefore, any further of Birthday Trees, of Dead
+Men's Trees, and of Fetich Trees,--which we shall moreover meet again
+presently,--and hasten on to other myths of far greater importance.
+
+The Druids now appear for the first time in Gaul and in Germany.
+
+[Illustration: 043]
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+{027}_The Druids and their Creed.--Esus.--The Holy Oak.--The Pforzheim
+Lime Tree.--A Rival Plant.--The Mistletoe and the Ansfuinum.--The
+Oracle at Dodona.--Immaculate Horses.--The Druidesses.--A late
+Elector.--Philanthropic Institution of Human Sacrifices.--Second
+Druidical Epoch_.
+
+The Druids were the first to bring to the Gauls as well as to the
+Germans religious truths, but their creed can be appreciated from no
+dogma of theirs; it must be judged by their rites.
+
+The first question is: Whence did the Druids {028}come? Were they
+disciples of the Magi, and did they come from Persia? Such an origin has
+been claimed for them: or had they been initiated by Isis in her
+ancient mysteries, and did they come from Egypt? This view also has its
+adherents. Or, finally, had they been driven towards Western Europe
+by one of the last waves of immigration, which left India under the
+pressure of some new calamity? Many think so.
+
+As it seems to be difficult to decide between these three suggestions,
+it might be worth while to try and reconcile them with each other. It is
+a long way from India to Germany and to Gaul, and there might have been
+many stopping places between the country from which they started and
+their future home.
+
+The Druids, like all other Celts, might very well have started from
+India, and choosing not the most direct way might have reached Europe
+only after making many a long halt in Persia and in Egypt.
+
+'If that can be admitted, then there is no difficulty in assuming that
+the first Celts might very well have taken with them from the banks of
+the Indus and the Ganges only a few fragments of a sickly materialism
+taught by false teachers outside of the temple, while the Druids might
+have been initiated within the temple itself, thus learning to know the
+true nature of the Deity.
+
+Their creed was founded upon a triple basis--one {029}God; the
+immortality of the soul; and rewards and punishments in a future life.
+
+These sound doctrines, which are as old as the world and form the
+foundation of all human morality, had ever been maintained by their wise
+men.
+
+At a later period the Greeks, proud as they were of their Platonic
+philosophy, had not hesitated to acknowledge that they had obtained the
+first germ of it from the Celts, the Galati, and consequently from the
+Druids. One of the Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, openly
+admits that these same Celts had been orthodox in their religion, at
+least as far as their dogmas were concerned.
+
+By what name was the Supreme Being known to the Druids? They called it
+_Esus_, which means the Lord, or they gave it the simple designation
+of _Teut_ (God). Through this Teut the German races became afterwards
+Teutons, the sons and followers of Teut, and even in our day they call
+themselves in their own language Teutsche or _Deutsche_.
+
+Three marvelously brief maxims contain almost the whole catechism of the
+Druids: Serve God; Abstain from evil; Be brave!
+
+The Druids, being warriors as well as priests, displayed in the
+performance of their warlike priesthood all the energy, the severity,
+and the authority which must needs accompany such a strange combination
+of powers. {030}Holding all the power of the state in their hands, and
+speaking in the name of God, commanding the army, controlling the public
+treasury, and acting not only as judges but also as physicians, they
+punished heresy and rebellion, and ended lawsuits as well as diseases,
+by the death of the person most interested.
+
+Their laws, liberal and philanthropic in spite of their apparent
+severity, allowed a jury consisting of notables, to judge grave
+crimes; this fact of a jury suggests naturally the idea of extenuating
+circumstances, and thus the criminal, escaping more readily than
+the patient, frequently got off with a fine, if he was rich, or with
+banishment if he was poor.
+
+Nevertheless all the efforts of the Druids did not succeed in thoroughly
+eradicating Tree worship; they were thus led to adopt one tree, to the
+exclusion of all others, which should rally around it the scattered
+adoration of all the nations. This official tree, a kind of green altar,
+on which God manifested himself to his priests, was an oak, a strong,
+vigorous oak, the king of the forests.
+
+Thus the holy oak became known and honored; pious worshippers came by
+night, with torches in their hands, in long processions to present their
+offerings.
+
+This usage soon became general among all Celtic nations. Around these
+oaks the Druids formed sacred precincts within which they lived with
+their families, for they were married; but they could have {031}only one
+wife, while the other chieftains were generally polygamists.
+
+[Illustration: 051]
+
+But the oak, although thus enjoying preeminence over all other trees,
+was by no means exclusively worshipped everywhere. Perhaps from
+religious antagonism, or perhaps merely from local usage, some
+provinces of Gaul and of Italy preferred the beech and the elm. In Gaul
+especially, the elm prevailed over the oak, and even Christian France
+still continued for a long time to plant an elm tree before every newly
+built church, so as to draw God's blessing the more surely upon it; and
+down to the end of the Middle Ages courts of justice were always held
+under an elm tree. Hence the curious {032}French proverb, which did not
+always have the mocking sense in which it is used nowadays, wait for
+me under the elm tree! (Attendez-moi sous forme) What was then a
+formal summons to appear before a judge has now come to mean: Wait till
+doomsday.
+
+[Illustration: 052]
+
+The ash tree, also, had its worshippers among the dwellers in high
+northern latitudes, and it was under the dense branches of an enormous
+ash tree that terrible Odin and his following of deities appeared in a
+dark cloud.
+
+Thus Tree worship appeared once more. It has ever since continued to
+flourish more or less in Germany, and even now exists to a certain
+extent. But it is not the oaks, nor the beech, nor the elm, nor the ash
+tree, which in our day receives the worship of the young especially--but
+the lime tree. The admirers of the lime tree carry their fervor to
+fanaticism and their fanaticism to murder. I had {033}been unwilling to
+believe this.
+
+[Illustration: 053]
+
+But this morning I opened my newspaper and there I found an article,
+dated December 30, 1860, and stating that a young man from Pforzheim, in
+the Palatinate, attempted to murder the mayor of his town by means of
+a revolver, the four barrels of which were loaded with as many leaden
+balls. When he was arrested, he declared that he had personally nothing
+to say against the burgomaster, but that the latter {034}had recently
+ordered certain lime trees to be cut down, that _the good people of
+Pforzheim idolized these trees_, and that he had determined to punish
+him for such profanation.
+
+The paper added: "This young man belongs to an honorable family, his
+antecedents are excellent, and he has never shown the slightest symptom
+of mental derangement."
+
+How, then does it come about that the lime tree should in our day, in
+the nineteenth century, call forth sentiments of such extreme violence?
+The reason is that Young Germany has proclaimed it to be the Tree of
+Love, because _its leaves are shaped like hearts_.
+
+If I were not afraid of getting myself into trouble, having a natural
+horror of all firearms, and especially of four barrelled revolvers,
+I should mention here, that anatomists protest against this pretended
+resemblance of the leaf to the heart. In reality it looks much more
+like the ace of hearts, as it terminates below in a sharp point--but
+superstition prevails over anatomy, and teaches us once more that
+science ought not to meddle with things pertaining to love.
+
+The Druids' Oak, although less tempting to gallant comparisons, finally
+excited almost equal fanaticism. Processions and sacrifices became
+well nigh endless; young maidens adorned it with garlands of flowers,
+{035}interspersed with bracelets and necklaces, while warriors suspended
+in its branches the most precious spoil they brought home from their
+battles. If a storm arose, the other trees of the forest seemed in good
+faith, humbly to bow down before their chief.
+
+[Illustration: 055]
+
+And yet it had an enemy, a fierce, relentless enemy. An abject, little
+plant, unknown and miserable in appearance, came unceremoniously and
+made its home on its sacred branches and even on its august summit;
+there it lived on its life's blood, feeding on its sap, absorbing its
+substance, threatening {036}to impede its natural growth, and finally
+carrying the impudence so far as to conceal the glossy leaves of the
+noble godlike tree under its own lustreless and viscous foliage. This
+hostile and impious plant was the Mistletoe, the mistletoe of the oak
+(_Guythil_).
+
+Other people, less intelligent and less sagacious than the Druids, would
+have freed the tree from this unwelcome and obnoxious visitor, by simply
+climbing up and cutting off the parasite by means of a pruning bill.
+This would have been irreverent as well as impolitic. What would the
+people have thought? The people would most assuredly have reasoned, that
+the sacred tree had been rendered powerless, being unable to rid itself
+of its vermin.
+
+The Druids did much better. They treated the mistletoe very much as we,
+in our day, treat a formidable member of the opposition; they gave it a
+place in the sanctuary. The mistletoe was proclaimed to be an official
+and sacred plant, and became an essential part of their worship. When it
+was to be detached from the tree, this was not done stealthily and by a
+mean iron bill-hook, but in the presence of all, amid public rejoicings
+and accompanied by solemn chants. The instrument was a golden reaping
+hook, and with it the _Guythil_ was carefully cut off at the base and
+gathered in {037}linen veils. These veils became henceforth sacred, and
+were not allowed to be used for ordinary purposes.
+
+The Teutons who lived on the Rhine, obtained from the mistletoe a kind
+of glue, which they looked upon as a panacea against the sterility of
+women, the ravages of diseases, the effects of witchcraft,--and also as
+a means to catch birds.
+
+[Illustration: 057]
+
+The Gauls, on the other hand, dried it carefully and put the dust into
+pretty little scent-bags, which they presented to each other as New
+Year's Gifts on the first day of the year. Hence, in t some provinces
+of France, the cry is still heard, "Aguilanneuf" (_au gui l'an neuf_),
+"Mistletoe for New Year!"
+
+Modern science treats mistletoe simply as a purgative, and thus attempts
+to prove that our ancestors showed their affection to each other by
+exchanging presents of violent purgatives.
+
+The introduction of this parasite plant into the {038}sanctuary became,
+however, very soon a public benefit. For the oak-mistletoe obtained ere
+long considerable commercial value, and at once counterfeiters (for even
+under the Druids there existed such men) went to work and gathered it
+from other trees also, from apple trees and pear trees, from nut trees
+and lime trees, from beeches, elms, and even larches. The consequence
+was, that owners of orchards as well as owners of forests, rejoiced
+in the trick, at which the Druids discreetly winked; for they took
+advantage of the lesson.
+
+[Illustration: 058]
+
+At one time venomous reptiles had become so numerous in the regions
+of the Rhine, that they caused continually serious accidents among the
+{039}people, the majority of whom lived all day long in the open air,
+and did not always sleep under shelter. During their winter sleep, these
+reptiles rolled themselves up into vast balls, and became apparently
+glued to each other by a kind of viscous ooze. In this state they were
+called by the Celts _Serpents Eggs_, or rather _Serpents' Knots_, while
+the Romans called them _anguimim_.
+
+These strange balls were used medicinally by the Druids like the
+mistletoe; they employed them even in their religious ceremonies, and
+soon they became so rare, that only the wealthiest people could procure
+them, by paying their weight in gold. If the Druids had really at first
+been misled so as to adopt superstitious customs, which they repented of
+in their hearts, they soon found means to make these same superstitious
+rites beneficial to the people.
+
+Unfortunately serpents' knots, oaks, and their parasites, did not long
+satisfy a people ever desirous of new things. It is a well-known fact
+that innovations, however small may have been their first beginning, are
+sure to go on enlarging and increasing from day to day.
+
+The old party of Tree worshippers, still numerous and very active as all
+old parties are, complained of the suppression of their companion-trees,
+the ancient family oracles, for the purpose of favoring {040}one single
+oak tree,--a tree which yet was not able, in spite of all the privileges
+it enjoyed, to put them into communication with _Estes_, the god of
+heaven.
+
+This complaint was certainly not unfounded;--it had to be answered.
+
+The Druids consisted of three classes:--
+
+The Druids proper (_Eubages_, they were called in Gaul) were
+philosophers as well as scholars, perhaps even magicians, for magic was
+at that time nothing more than the outward form of science. They were
+charged with the maintenance of the principles of morality, and had to
+study the secrets of nature. The Prophets, on the other hand, knew how
+to interpret in the slightest breath of wind, the language of the holy
+oak, which spoke to them in the rustling of its leaves, in the soughing
+of the branches, in the low cracking heard within the trunk, and even in
+the earlier or later appearance of the foliage. There were, finally, the
+Bards, poets bound to the altar.
+
+While the bards were singing around the oak, the prophets caused it to
+render its oracles. These oracles soon increased largely not only in
+Europe, but also in Asia Minor, where a Celtic colony, according to
+Herodotus, established in the land they had conquered the oracle of
+Dodona. Early Greece worshipped an oak tree, which Strabo, however,
+assures {041}us was a beech. There is no disputing about trees any more
+than about colors; but Homer calls it an oak, and an oak it must remain
+for us.
+
+[Illustration: 061]
+
+This new movement, grafted upon the simple worship of the Druids, did
+not stop here. After having for some time been accustomed to converse
+with Teut by means of a tree, the Celts were naturally surprised at
+seeing that, while trees could speak, living creatures remained silent,
+and were apparently deprived of the power of foretelling the future.
+Certain chieftains, especially, felt aggrieved, {042}upon setting out on
+a great campaign, that they were not allowed to carry the holy oak
+along with them, and in their intense devotion, fell upon the idea
+of consulting the nervous trembling of their horses and their sudden
+neighing in moments of surprise or terror,--for in order to be of
+prophetic nature the movements of the animals had to be involuntary and
+spontaneous. As this creed began to spread gradually, every man who was
+setting out on a journey or a warlike expedition mounted his horse in
+the firm conviction that he would be able to consult his four-footed
+prophet at any time during his absence from home, provided he was able
+to submit the omens to the learned interpretations of a soothsayer.
+
+The Druid priests were not long in becoming seriously alarmed at these
+travelling oracles, liable as they naturally were to contradict each
+other.
+
+As they had before chosen a single tree to be the sacred tree, so they
+now accepted as genuine omens only the symptoms noticed in certain
+horses which were bred within the sacred precincts and under their own
+eyes.
+
+These horses, of immaculate whiteness and raised at public expense, were
+not employed for any work, and never had to submit to saddle or bridle.
+Wild and untamed, they roamed with fluttering manes in perfect liberty
+through the lofty forests. The freedom {043}of their movements gave
+naturally a safer character to their omens, and thus these prophetic
+horses, which formed almost a part of the druidical clergy, enjoyed for
+a long time the highest authority in all Celtic countries, when suddenly
+one fine day new rivals arose.
+
+Other living creatures entered into competition with them, and these
+rivals of the horses were--shall I say it?--were women. These women
+discovered, all of a sudden, that they also were endowed, and in the
+very highest degree, with the gifts of second sight, of inspiration,
+intuition, and divination.
+
+When public opinion appealed to the Druids to give their views on this
+claim, they admitted, according to the statement of Tacitus, that women
+had something more instinctive and more divine in them than men, nay,
+even than horses. Their sensitive organization predisposed them to
+receive the gift of prophecy, and hence "women indeed act more readily
+from natural impulse, without reflection, than from thought or reason."
+
+This last explanation, improper in the highest degree, does not come
+from Tacitus, nor from myself, God forbid! It is the exclusive property
+of the aforementioned Mr. Simon Pelloutier. Let every one be responsible
+for his own work!
+
+The Druids treated the women just as they had {044}treated the horses,
+the mistletoe, and the trees. They acknowledged as true prophetesses
+only those who were already under the direct influence of the holy place
+and the sacred oak; that is to say, their wives and their daughters.
+
+The principle of centralization of power is evidently not of modern
+origin.
+
+[Illustration: 064]
+
+Thus, there were now Druidesses, as there had been Druids before. The
+latter became the teachers of the young men; they taught their pupils
+the motions of the stars, the shape and extent of the earth, the divers
+products of nature, the history of their ancestors written in the form
+of poems which the bards recited; in fact, they taught them everything
+except reading and writing. Memory was as yet sufficient for all things.
+The priestesses, on the other hand, opened schools for the young girls;
+they taught them to sing and to sew, they initiated them into religious
+ceremonies and confided to them the knowledge of simples; nor was
+poetry neglected, as they had to learn by heart certain poems which were
+specially composed for their benefit. These verses, of somewhat doubtful
+{045}lyrical character, probably taught them how to make bread, how to
+brew beer, and other small details of the kitchen and the house.
+
+The Druidesses practiced also medicine. This threefold prerogative of
+being physicians, prophets, and preceptors, finally raised them so high
+in the estimation of the nation, that when the priests of Teut were
+compelled to abandon their sanctuaries, they did not hesitate to confide
+them to their guardianship. They even presided in their own right, at
+certain ceremonies.
+
+If one of them excelled by the frequency, the lucidity, and the
+reliability of her inspirations, as was the case at different times with
+the illustrious Aurinia, Velleda, and Ganna, whom the Roman emperors
+even deigned to consult through their ambassadors, the proud Druids
+placed her with humble submission, at the head of their own college of
+priests. During this female dictatorship, she became the arbiter of the
+destiny of nations, decided on peace and war, and controlled all the
+movements of great armies.
+
+Caesar tells us that he once asked one of his German captives, why
+Ariovistus, their chieftain, had never yet dared to meet him in battle,
+and was told in reply, that the Druidesses, after a careful examination
+of the eddies and whirlpools of the Rhine, had forbid his engaging in
+action till the {046}time of the new moon. As a matter of course, the
+shrewd general profited by this information, and when the new moon
+appeared, the Germans were in full flight.
+
+[Illustration: 066]
+
+But the Rhine has not yet given its oracles, and the time has not yet
+come, when Ganna Velleda, and Aurinia condescend to grant audiences to
+Roman ambassadors.
+
+We only wished to trace in a few outlines the future development of this
+institution of Druidesses, which we shall meet again in the days of its
+decline. {047}In the mean time, however, their influence and their power
+were daily growing. Were the Teutons at last satisfied? By no means. In
+spite of all the skill displayed by their diviners and the Druid-esses,
+they came to the conclusion, that neither the trembling foliage of the
+holy oak, nor the sudden starts, the wild leaps, and the more or less
+prolonged, loud neighings of the horses, afforded them sufficient
+excitement and perfectly reliable revelations. It occurred to them next,
+to consult animals, not in their outward manifestations, but in their
+still quivering entrails. This new ceremony could not fail to give to
+their religious worship a more serious aspect, and a certain savor of
+murder, which no doubt had its charms for a warlike people.
+
+The Druids yielded once more, but they felt discouraged. What had become
+of that grand philosophic religion, which was content with prayer and
+meditation, and which they once--too fondly, perhaps--had hoped to be
+able to adapt to the nature of these barbarians?
+
+They first consented to slay at the foot of the sacred oak, so long kept
+free from blood, a number of noxious beasts, like wolves, lynxes, and
+bears; but the turn of domestic animals came ere long, and they began
+to sacrifice sheep, goats, and finally man's best companion in war,
+the horse. Not even the spotless white horses, heretofore looked upon
+{048}with such profound and superstitious reverence, were spared any
+longer.
+
+And at each step forward in this bloody career, the Druids, always
+resisting, and always compelled to yield, made their last and their very
+last concession, vainly hoping that they might thus retain for a little
+while longer the power, which they felt was fast slipping from their
+grasp.
+
+Encouraged by success, the reformers finally came to the question,
+whether the most acceptable offering to be presented to God, was not the
+blood of man? Is not man, of all created beings, the most noble and the
+most perfect? Perhaps they were inclined to carry the argument still
+farther, and to reason that among all men the most worthy to be chosen
+and the most likely to be acceptable to God, were the Druids themselves?
+But they took care not to ask too much at once. They held this final
+consequence of a great principle in reserve, requiring for the present
+nothing more than a common victim, anything that might come in the way,
+provided it was a human being.
+
+It might have been expected, that when this abominable demand was made
+to hallow murder by committing it in the name of Heaven, the descendants
+and heirs of the ancient sages would have remembered their noble
+ancestors who had put an end to the first and quite inoffensive
+superstitions {049}of the early Celts. They ought to have veiled their
+faces, drawn back with horror, and recovering for once their former
+energy, appealed by means of the holy oak, the spotless horses, the
+soothsayers and the Druidesses, nay of heaven and earth itself, to
+the whole nation, calling upon them to anathematize the infamous
+petitioners. But they did no such thing. On the contrary they hastened
+to legalize such savage bloodshed by their holy consent. One might
+almost be led to suspect that they had themselves, underhand, suggested
+the horrible idea.
+
+O ye hypocritical priests, ye false philosophers, ye tigers disguised as
+shepherds of the people!.... But we must check our indignation. For
+who knows, but they may have been swayed not so much by an instinct
+of cruelty as by a lofty political, or even philanthropic principle?
+Philanthropic? Yes, indeed; we will explain.
+
+Among the Celts human life counted for little; it was lavished in
+battles, it was cast away in duels. At the time when the Gauls held
+large national assemblies, they tried to secure punctual attendance by
+simply putting to death the man who was the last to come; he paid for
+all the tardy ones. I do not mean to propose such a plan at the present
+day; but after all it was an infallible and economical measure. {050}The
+Teutons, on the other hand, bloodless in their national assemblies,
+after a battle in which they had been victorious, delighted in
+massacring all their prisoners.
+
+These massacres ceased from the time when the Druids claimed for
+themselves the exclusive right of human sacrifices.
+
+The good Esus, having become bloodthirsty, demanded all the captives
+to be slain in expiation at his altar, and woe to him who dared to
+anticipate him in his wrath. He was excluded from the sacred precincts;
+he was declared an impious, sacrilegious person, who could no longer
+take his place among the citizens; and he ran great risk of being forced
+to offer his own life in compensation for that which by his fault was
+wanting at the holocaust.
+
+When this custom became once fully established, the prisoners of war
+were all delivered up to the high-priest, who chose from among them one
+or more to be slain as an offering. The victim was generally one of the
+captive chieftains, and he was slain together with his war horse, so
+as to add to the impressiveness of the ceremony and to reconcile the
+spectators by the abundance of blood that was shed to the small number
+of victims.
+
+After having carefully examined the opened bodies of man and animal,
+the sacrificing priest, his {051}beard and clothes saturated with blood,
+raised his bloody right hand to heaven and, reeking with murder and
+breathing carnage, he proclaimed that his god was satisfied. The
+remainder of the prisoners were kept for another day, but that other day
+never came.
+
+Thus a new office had been created: that of a sacrificing priest. On
+both banks of the Rhine, in Germany as well as in Gaul, the Druids
+reserved this office for themselves; in other Celtic countries, in
+Scandinavia and among the Scythians, women performed the terrible duty;
+we all remember as a proof of it, Iphigenia of Tauris.
+
+Whatever we may think of this bloody innovation, it certainly benefited
+the prisoners, but the Druids obtained from it, after all, the greatest
+advantage. Their power, which had been seriously undermined, step by
+step, was once more firmly established. The opposition, which had paid
+no attention to their remonstrances or their prayers, shrunk from their
+knives.
+
+From this moment begins the Second Period of the Druids.
+
+The bloody knife of the Druids remained long all powerful, but we need
+not follow its later fate. Caesar had conquered and pacified Gaul,
+and the successors of Augustus fulminated their Imperial {052}decrees
+against the Druids, as slayers of men, while the same knife continued to
+shed the blood of the Germans.
+
+[Illustration: 072]
+
+[Illustration: 075]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+{055}_A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.--The two Banks of the
+Rhine.--Druid Stones.--Weddings and Burials.--Xight Service.--A Dentigod
+Glacier.--Social Duels. A Countrywoman of Aspasia.--Boudoir of a Celtic
+Lady.--The Bard's Story.--Teutons and Titans.--Earthquake._
+
+Any one who has ever travelled in my company, must know that I am apt
+to stray from my way, or at least to choose the longest route. I have
+a fancy to-day, to turn my eyes and my steps away from those sacred
+precincts of the Druids, which {056}had become slaughter-houses and in
+which the hand that blessed was also the hand that killed.
+
+I desire to breathe an air less filled with the perfumes, or rather the
+fetid odor of sacrifices. Up there, on that hill-top, where the setting
+sun lights up the bright summit, I shall breathe more freely.
+
+Here I am.
+
+Beneath me the Rhine spreads out its two banks, not united yet by any
+bridge, and even without a ferry to bring the one nearer to the other.
+
+But on both sides, half hid under dense willow thickets and gigantic
+reeds, there lie, in many a shallow little bay, large numbers of tiny
+barks. These cunning looking boats belong to harmless fishermen in the
+daytime; but at night they are filled with robbers and corsairs, who
+form in bands, cross over to the other side in search of booty, and even
+venture, if needs be, out into the Northern Sea. Just now nothing stirs;
+the fishermen have gone home, the corsairs have not come forth. I look
+farther out.
+
+On the left bank there are some Gallic Celts encamped, with blue eyes,
+white skin, and abundant golden tresses. Almost naked, their principal
+garment seems to be that immense shield, almost as long as their body,
+which shelters them on the march as well as when they are at rest, and
+which protects {057}them against the sun and the enemy alike. All of a
+sudden I hear them, with lips held close to one of the edges of their
+shields, utter sharp cries, which are taken up and repeated, from
+distance to distance, all the way down the river. To these cries, which
+no doubt represent their telegraphic system, there comes an answer from
+far sounding trumpets.
+
+[Illustration: 077]
+
+Who are these other soldiers with the black hair and the bronzed
+complexions? Carefully arrayed in symmetrical lines they advance
+steadily, clad in brilliant armor, and carrying banners surmounted by
+golden eagles with half open wings. Has Caesar really succeeded, after
+ten years' warfare, in making himself master of Gaul as far as the banks
+of the Rhine? I cannot doubt it; for at their {058}approach, the Gauls
+lower their lance-heads, in token of their peaceful disposition, and
+allow them to pass.
+
+[Illustration: 078]
+
+When they reach the river, the small Roman army pauses; under the
+protection of this armed force a few men, dressed in simple tunics, with
+no arms but tablets, a style, and ropes for measuring the ground, go to
+work preparing a plan, perhaps for a bridge, perhaps for a town.
+
+German sentinels, take care!
+
+From the height of my hill I look down upon a {059}narrow strip of land
+on the right bank of the river, and here I see several groups of men,
+scattered here and there in the woods and on the plain, who work under
+the superintendence of a Druid. Some are digging up the roots of trees
+which overshadow and impoverish the ground; others draw long furrows
+with the iron of their ploughs. These laborers seem all to suffer from
+some restraint which impedes their movements, but of which at this
+distance I can discover no cause.
+
+In order to meditate on this strange sight, I look around for a resting
+place. Half way up the hill I notice a small stone bench. As I draw
+nearer, the object grows in size and rises to such a height, that I
+should need a ladder if I wished to take possession of my seat.
+
+[Illustration: 079]
+
+This apparent bench is a monument, a Druidical monument, and consists of
+two upright stones, on which rests a third, horizontal stone. In France,
+in England, and in Germany there are still found {060}such Druidical
+altars, cromlechs or dolmens; these menhyrs astonished already Alexander
+of Macedonia when he marched through Scythia. In Bretagne, at Carnac,
+some of these stones, consisting of a single rock, rise by the wayside,
+as if to tell the traveller the story of the past, or they range
+themselves before his eyes in long lines, forming on the ground endless
+circles of emblematic meaning, as it is supposed. But the traveller can
+no longer understand their language. Was this an altar, or was it an
+idol, or perhaps only a simple monument raised over a grave. If they
+were altars, Carnac would be Olympus; if they were tombstones, it would
+be a cemetery.
+
+[Illustration: 080]
+
+I was going all around the mystic three stones to examine them more
+closely, when I noticed close by a flock of sheep, and then a shepherd.
+
+This shepherd, covered with a ragged _sagum_, had on his feet leather
+sandals, a half open wound on his forehead, which had not yet had
+time to close, enhanced the fierceness of his appearance. His burning
+{061}glances fell now upon the Druidical stone and now upon another
+object which I had not noticed before. This was the guard of a sword
+which had been driven into the ground.
+
+Could it be that this stone resting upon two supports, were new
+concessions made by the politic Druids?
+
+[Illustration: 081]
+
+As according to their spiritualistic views God could not render himself
+visible in a shape resembling our own, they had represented him as well
+as they could by a symbol. It appeared thus that human sacrifices were
+already no longer sufficient to maintain their creed.
+
+While I was examining with growing curiosity this strange keeper of
+sheep, fair, with bare neck and bare feet, was busy watching on the same
+side of the hill another flock, and at the same time gathering herbs
+for medicinal purposes. When she was about to leave, she offered the
+shepherd to attend to his wound, sword handle, and this {062}but he
+refused haughtily; she ran away laughing, and threw a flower into his
+face.
+
+He did not pick up that flower; he did not salute that pretty girl as
+she left him. He looked at her with disdain.
+
+Ah! I can doubt it no longer; this unhappy man is like the wood-cutter
+in the forest, and the laborers in the field, one of those prisoners
+taken in war, whom the Druids have spared, and now render useful. His
+closely shorn hair, his open wound, and the heavy wooden yoke which he
+has to carry on his neck, all betray his sad fate. He has made no reply
+to the half pitiful, half coquettish advances of the pretty gatherer of
+simples, because she has only awakened in his heart painful memories of
+his distant love, or of his wife, whom he is never to see again! He has
+cast glances of fierce hatred and burning revenge at the Druidical altar
+and the handle of the sword, because both of these objects point out the
+place of bloody sacrifices. Does he think he is himself destined to be
+slain? or was perhaps the warrior whom they slew yesterday, a man of his
+own tribe, his best friend, his own brother?
+
+But I have taken refuge here in order to escape from these painful
+thoughts of blood and murder. I propose to seek new objects of interest.
+
+Farther down, nearly at the foot of the hill, I {063}see a few huts, or
+rather a few low, almost crushed roofs, which seem hardly to rise from
+the ground. Are they houses, or stables, or caves?
+
+On the left bank Gauls and Romans have alike disappeared in the mists
+rising from the river. On the right bank the wood-cutters and the
+field-laborors are resting upon their axes or their ploughs, and seem to
+ask the sun if the day is not drawing to an end.
+
+[Illustration: 083]
+
+A breeze is springing up, the shepherd gathers his flock and, as
+mournful as ever, he slowly takes {064}the footpath that leads down the
+hill towards the village.
+
+I follow him without knowing what mysterious power draws me in that
+direction.
+
+Perhaps some Druid magician holds me under a potent spell, which enables
+me to forget who I am, whence I come, and even to what century I belong,
+and to witness these strange scenes, which, well nigh forgotten by all
+living beings, I alone am permitted to watch? Let me try, at all events,
+to profit by this rare piece of good fortune.
+
+I reach the low village and find it occupied by a colony of Salic
+Franks, who live scattered all along the Rhine. With their eyes fixed
+upon the left bank, they are just now far more occupied with the
+invasion of Germany by the Romans, than with the thought of invading
+Gaul themselves.--I feel suddenly a deep interest in these people. What
+Frenchman of this nineteenth century can feel sure that the blood in his
+veins is not the same that once gave life and strength to these terrible
+warriors from the North, Franks or Gauls? We are all natives of one or
+the other bank of this great river Rhine, and feel towards each
+other, whether we live on the right or the left bank, very much like
+school-boys whose friendship is cemented by many a battle royal.
+
+Being a Frenchman, I feel that I am about to {065}pay a visit to my
+paternal ancestors--for the Franks have given us our name. No wonder
+that I feel deeply moved.
+
+I examine the low huts of the village, if village it can be called, and
+find that they are separated from each other by commons and by fields,
+and that they finally lose themselves in the open country. Where now
+these scattered huts are standing, there may be one of these days a
+Mayence or a Cologne, and yet they will occupy no larger space with all
+their suburbs included.
+
+On both sides of the road extend orchards, fenced in with reeds and all
+aglow with blooming apple trees; dark, sombre pine forests and swamps,
+the greenish waters of which are confined within slight dams; here and
+there the live rock crops out from the ground and interrupts the road,
+or huge trees are lying across, recently cut down and but just deprived
+of their branches. In the open pasture grounds huge buffaloes are lying
+about snorting and panting with fatigue, for they have worked all day in
+the plough; the neighing of horses is heard from one end of the country
+to the other, and gradually dies out as the sun sinks below the horizon;
+lean heifers, with long, spiral horns, push here and there their heads
+through the fence of the orchards to have a last bite at the tender
+foliage of the reeds, and small oxen of an {066}inferior breed return to
+their quarters at the same time with the sheep, quite content to browse
+on the grass by the wayside, while herds of swine are wallowing in the
+mire of the low grounds.
+
+[Illustration: 086]
+
+The landscape resembles parts of Bretagne and of Normandy; but these
+provinces have no such huts. To see a human habitation, you have to rise
+high above the fences and hedges and then look down upon the ground.
+
+At a place where two roads meet, the cracking of a whip is heard;
+hogs, sheep, and small oxen are driven aside to make way for a kind of
+procession, consisting of grave and solemn men and women, who almost all
+wear a look of consternation.
+
+It is a wedding.
+
+Two young people have just had their union blessed by the priests under
+the sacred oak. The bride is dressed in black, and wears a wreath of
+dark leaves on her head; she walks in the midst {067}of her friends,
+bent double, as if weighed down by overwhelming thoughts. A matron, who
+walks on her left, holds before her eyes a white cloth; it is a shroud,
+the shroud in which she will be buried one of these days. On her right,
+a Druid intones a chant, in which he enumerates, in solemn rhythm, all
+the troubles and all the anxieties which await her in wedded life.
+
+[Illustration: 087]
+
+"From this day, young wife, thou alone wilt have to bear all the burden
+of your united household.
+
+"You will have to attend the baking oven, to provide fuel, and to go
+in search of food; you will have to prepare the resinous torch and the
+lamp.
+
+"You will wash the linen at the fountain, and you will make up all the
+clothing;
+
+"You will attend to the cow, and even to the horse if your husband
+requires it;
+
+"Always full of respect, you will wait upon him, standing behind him, at
+his meals;
+
+"If he chooses to take more wives, you will receive your new companions
+with sweetness; {068}"If needs be, you will even offer to nurse the
+children of these favorites, and all from obedience to your karl
+(master);
+
+"If he is angry against you and strikes you, you will pray to Esus, the
+only God, but you will never blame your husband, who cannot do wrong.
+
+"If he expresses a wish to take you with him to war, you will accompany
+him to carry his baggage, to keep his arms in good condition, and to
+nurse him if he should be sick or wounded.
+
+"Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty. Be happy, my child!"
+
+[Illustration: 088]
+
+When I heard this dolorous wedding song, which in some parts of France
+is to this day addressed to brides by local minstrels, when I saw this
+winding-sheet, {069}the mournful costumes and the whole funereal wedding
+procession, I felt overcome with sadness. Just then, cries and joyous
+acclamations were heard at some little distance.
+
+Another procession came from the opposite direction to the cross-roads;
+there all the faces were smiling and full of joyousness.
+
+This was a funeral.
+
+[Illustration: 089]
+
+Such were the ways of our fathers; they rejoiced in facing death, which
+relieves man from all his sufferings; they had nothing but tears for man
+when he entered upon his trials.
+
+In the meantime the twilight had passed into darkness. Small lights,
+looking like will-o'-the-wisps, were flitting to and fro in field and
+forest, going in all directions. Devout worshippers, carrying torches
+or lanterns in their hands, were going to consecrated places, to hold
+public worship or to recite private prayers. {070}Some, and these were
+the majority, go in the direction of the oak forests, where the Druids
+are found; others, concealing the light of their lanterns as well as
+they can, go hither and thither, towards the copses of beeches and pine
+trees, or towards the river, or towards the hill, which was but just
+now shining brightly in the sunlight, but is now concealed in utter
+darkness.
+
+[Illustration: 090]
+
+What are they going to do? They are going to worship the Rhine, the
+wells, the water-courses, the trees, the Druidical {071}altars, and the
+sword-guards. For no creed yet but has had its schisms.
+
+Orthodox or not, German or Gallic, the Franks have always shown a
+preference for nocturnal worship; they divide the year into moons,
+and count the moons not by days but by nights. And yet they have been
+suspected of worshipping the sun! And I had nearly fallen into the same
+error! How well it was that I came to see for myself!
+
+As I am just now more interested in watching manners than in studying
+mythology, I pursue my investigations, especially as I know very well
+that we must know the lives which people lead in order to be able fully
+to appreciate the objects of their worship.
+
+While all these small lights are flashing, like shooting stars, here
+and there through the landscape, certain specially bright lights seem
+to become stationary and permanent. These are the lighted-up windows of
+human habitations. I called the latter just now stables, or caves, and
+excepting a few of them, I must still call them such.
+
+They are dug out of the ground, damp and dark; their ceiling is on a
+level with the surface of the earth, and their roof consists of layers
+of turf, or of dry thatch covered with moss. The only door resembles the
+lid of a snuff-box, and is set in the roof on a level with the ground.
+The dwelling {072}has no light but such as enters through these
+trapdoors; consequently they are utterly dark during the whole rainy
+season and during winter, that is to say, for three fourths of the year!
+Darkness reigns supreme here; that darkness which is the enemy of all
+healthfulness, of enjoyment, of every comfort. No windows! No glass! O
+divine Apollo,--
+
+"Thou of the silver bow, god of Claros, hear!"
+
+[Illustration: 092]
+
+I never had any objection to the doctrine which made of you, the
+brilliant personification of the sun, a first class divinity; but I
+think like honors ought to have been bestowed upon the unknown man who
+first invented windows and window-panes, the {073}first glazier in fine.
+He ought at least to have been made a demigod, and if he had to remain a
+simple mortal, they ought surely to have remembered his name! Alas! that
+high honors are as unfairly distributed in heaven as upon earth!
+
+As there is no window, I peep through the trapdoor to see how these
+subterranean dwellings look inside. The aspect is far from being as
+wretched as I had expected. I find that the walls are hung with mattings
+and the floor is beaten hard; by the side of the smoking lamp which
+is suspended from the main beam of the ceiling, there are hanging, on
+hooks, a hindquarter of venison, baskets filled with provisions, and
+implements for fishing and hunting. Besides, I notice long strings of
+medicinal herbs, such as we see in the shops of herb-doctors, and among
+these plants the mistletoe occupies, as a matter of course, the place of
+honor.
+
+In another underground hut there appear actually some traces of luxury.
+Here the walls are incrusted with pebbles from the Rhine, of many colors
+and skillfully arranged; here and there weapons are arranged in various
+shapes; javelins with sharp hooks; framees, such as the ancient Franks
+were using; hatchets of stone or iron; "morning stars," with sharp
+points, were pleasantly mingled with huge bucklers; large leather
+quivers and long arrows feathered at one end and with jagged teeth
+{074}at the other. At first sight it looks as if for the purpose of
+softening somewhat the threatening aspect of these panoplies, the Celtic
+lady of the house had added some of her jewels to these weapons. But it
+is not so; these gold chains, these necklaces set with onyx and rubies,
+are worn by the grim warriors on the day of battle, quite as much in the
+nature of ornaments as for the purpose of protection. One of our
+sober, I may say, most sober historians, ascribes to this custom of
+our forefathers, the Franks, the gorget, worn still by officers in some
+European armies. Here also I see straw mats, but here they are trod
+under foot; they are used as carpets, not as hangings.
+
+The deep and spacious dwelling contains, besides the large room which
+alone I can see through my dormer-window, a number of other rooms on
+all sides, or rather of other caves, which are all connected with each
+other. I am evidently before the palace of one of the chief men of the
+country.
+
+In the first hut, into which I had looked, I had found the people at
+table, drinking a beverage made from grain and herbs--cerevisia--in
+horns of wild bulls, and talking about business--for our ancestors
+talked about business at dinner, just as we do. The conversation turned
+about exchanges of rams, a great fishing expedition to be undertaken
+jointly, an invasion to be made into the territory on the other{075}
+
+{077}bank of the river, and most eagerly, about the approaching
+elections. For Montesquieu tells us that municipal and even
+constitutional government existed alike among the early Germans.
+
+In the other dwelling, the one adorned with panoplies, they were talking
+neither of elections, nor of fishing, but they were likewise at table.
+Here they drank not only cerevisia in the _horns of the brave_, but also
+hydromel and hippocras in leathern tankards or human skulls, as white
+as ivory, adorned with silver and naturally shaped like cups. God be
+thanked that this custom has not been bequeathed to us by the Franks!
+
+On that evening they were celebrating the welcome given to a young
+warrior who had already made himself known by great exploits and who
+belonged to a neighboring, friendly tribe.
+
+When the meal was ended, and what a meal it was!--I shall be careful
+not to give the bill of fare, since the mere recital would cause an
+indigestion,--they thought of prolonging the entertainment given to
+their illustrious guest. But what could they do? The young Frankish
+ladies were not familiar yet with the piano, and the noble game of
+billiards had not yet been invented. They proposed riddles to be
+guessed, but this did not seem to afford much amusement to the young
+man. Then came a game with bones; but he nearly fell {078}asleep. As the
+duty of hospitality required that they should make every possible
+effort to entertain their guest, a great man among the Cheruski or the
+Marcomanni, they proposed the _handkerchief_; this, seemed to arouse his
+attention.
+
+The handkerchief game was at that time very popular; it was a kind of
+company duel. Two kind-hearted adversaries, having no other motive but
+to amuse themselves and to entertain the company, would seize with their
+left hand one end of a handkerchief, and with their right hand a table
+knife or a hunting knife, it did not matter which, provided the weapon
+was sharp and very pointed. For our good ancestors did not know foils
+with cork buttons or other arms of courtesy. Imbued with the strange
+idea that to fight, man against man, or a thousand against a thousand,
+was the greatest happiness upon earth, they delighted in occasionally
+cutting each other's throat, even if they were the best friends in the
+world.
+
+The spectators formed a ring around the combatants. After they had taken
+a solemn oath, by the rims of their bucklers, by the shoulders of
+their horses, and by the points of their swords, that they cherished no
+feeling of animosity against each other, a signal was given and the game
+commenced. For some time I saw how the handkerchief was stretched out,
+twisted and then suddenly {079}turned around and around rapidly. Light
+red lines had already begun to mark the skin of the two adversaries; the
+blood was trickling down their arms, but these wounds were such trifles
+that the spectators took no notice of them and uttered not a single
+exclamation.
+
+All of a sudden I heard three hurrahs in rapid succession; the welcomed
+guest, whom all had been striving to honor to the utmost of their
+capacity, had fallen down with his adversary's knife still sticking in
+his breast. He was dead.
+
+They had not been able to think of any better way to make him spend a
+pleasant evening. The good old times had a hospitality of their own!
+
+This pleasant handkerchief game has survived, only slightly modified,
+in several countries of northern Europe. The handkerchief is generally
+wrapped around a rapier, so as to shorten the length of the blade. In
+the taverns of Holland the game is considered conducive to health; a
+knife wound gives a man a chance to escape apoplexy; it serves as a
+timely bleeding.
+
+I had run away in horror. For an hour I wandered about, casting a
+furtive glance down a trapdoor here and there, and almost everywhere
+I saw men and women, horses and cattle, enjoying their rest, lying
+pell-mell on the same litter.
+
+In one of these hovels I thought I recognized {080}the young girl whom
+I had seen on the hill; her attitude of repose gave a peculiar charm to
+her supple and delicate limbs, and by the feeble flickering light of the
+lamp, she suggested the idea of a sleeping nymph.
+
+[Illustration: 100]
+
+She was a young Ionian girl, a countrywoman of Aspasia; captured in war,
+she had been sold as a slave in twenty markets, developing in spite of
+such treatment, one grace and one beauty after another. On the banks of
+the Ilyssus, they would have erected an altar in her honor, on the banks
+of the Rhine they made her keep a herd of swine. {081}She was not the
+only one of her sex, however, whom I saw during that fantastic night.
+
+The sound of a shrill fife, mingling with the sweeter notes of a harp,
+attracted my attention. I went toward the spot from which the music
+came.
+
+In a little room decked with flowers, a young woman was engaged in her
+toilet.
+
+I ought to have fled once more,--this time from bashfulness or a sense
+of propriety,--but a conscientious historian is bound to overcome every
+difficulty, in order to ascertain the exact truth. It was a great piece
+of good luck, surely, to be able to report as an eye-witness, what might
+be seen in the boudoir of a Celtic lady.
+
+My friend was sitting, half undressed, on a stool, with her hair
+loosened, and holding in her hand a metal mirror. An old woman, a
+servant or her mother, I cannot tell which--and yet it seemed to me as
+if I had seen both these women, as well as the beautiful swine-herd,
+somewhere before; when that was, however, I could not possibly tell--the
+old woman held the whole rich abundance of the young lady's hair in
+both her hands and rubbed it with a horrid mixture of tallow, ashes, and
+plaster. Thanks to this wretched pomatum, the beautiful hair gradually
+changed from pale blonde to intense red, and thus enabled the owner
+to comply with a fashion, which I do not presume to criticise, but
+{082}simply record here. Then she washed and combed it carefully,
+plaited it cunningly, and at last rubbed the shoulders and the neck of
+the beauty with melted butter, while she washed the face and the hands
+with foaming beer.
+
+[Illustration: 102]
+
+After the demands of cleanliness had thus been satisfied, she placed
+before her mistress a slight collation, which was promptly served and
+promptly dispatched. While she was thus attending to her toilet and
+disposing of a bird's meal, there was a cyclopean feast going on in an
+adjoining room; loud and violent voices were heard, everybody seemed
+{083}to talk at once, and in such high tones that even the shrill fife
+could no longer be distinguished--for it was from this hall that the
+sound of music proceeded, which had attracted me to the dwelling.
+
+The old woman evidently thought the feast was drawing to an end, for she
+hastened to finish her mistress's toilet: She opened a wooden box and
+drew from it a pair of pretty red boots, which she put on the feet of
+the young beauty; then she threw over her white dress a purple scarf,
+which she fastened on the left shoulder with a long thorn from a
+sloe-tree. After that she tied a narrow scarlet ribbon around her head,
+handed her a collar and bracelets made of small berries, which in form
+and color were strikingly like corals, and finally, as the finishing
+touch, she daubed her cheeks with red by means of a cosmetic which I
+suspect consisted largely of brickdust. When the young Frankish beauty
+found that there was enough red--scarlet, crimson, purple, and pink--on
+her person from head to foot, she uttered a cry of triumph, especially
+when her husband, who entered her room, followed by his guests, seemed
+to be quite dazzled by the resplendent charms of his lovely wife, whom
+he had just _bought_.
+
+To buy a woman was a familiar expression in Germany at that time, as
+it is now,--_Ein weib kaufen_. It must be borne in mind, however, that
+{084}in those days the bride brought no dower; on the contrary, the
+husband paid her family a certain sum as compensation. We have inherited
+many of our usages from our Celtic forefathers; but as to this custom,
+we have not thought proper to keep it up.
+
+I at once recognized the husband, although he was now all smiles in his
+face, and let us hope, all smiles in his heart also. He was the chief
+personage in the wedding procession, whom I had seen two hours before,
+looking so grave and solemn, so sad and mournful.
+
+According to Druidical regulations, the bride has first of all waited
+upon him at table, humbly standing behind him like the other house
+slaves; then, towards the middle of the repast, she had gone to her
+room in order to exchange her girlish costume for the dress of a married
+woman--a woman who has the right to follow the fashions and to dress
+herself up in red from the heels of her feet to the end of her hair.
+
+Now she receives her master _at home_; here she is mistress, and
+mistress she will remain. This was the rule among the Franks; for in
+spite of the lachrymose anthems of the bards and in spite of the sombre
+ceremonies of the wedding, the women became almost invariably the
+masters at home, a usage which, contrary to that of dowerless girls,
+may possibly have crossed the Rhine. {085}Thinking it over, I found that
+during my nocturnal excursion into the land of my forefathers, I had
+been present--as a witness only, be it understood--at three successive
+entertainments; a feast of welcome, a business dinner, and a wedding
+dinner. Although they had not been calculated to satisfy my appetite,
+they had, at all events, made me extremely hungry. I was thinking,
+therefore, of retracing my steps and looking for a lodging, when I
+saw the Druid-bard, who had not disdained taking a seat at the nuptial
+feast, coming slowly and solemnly to the centre of the room, all the
+while drawing a few accords from, a kind of harp, which consisted of a
+closely bent bow with three strings instead of one.
+
+[Illustration: 105]
+
+He was getting ready to charm the company with the recital of one of
+those long and mysterious poems which recount the history of the Celts.
+I delay my departure.
+
+It has been said, and not without a show of reason, that the history of
+our Gallic or Germanic ancestors ought to be for us a subject of deep
+interest; but bold minds have in vain tried to raise {086}up once more
+the old oak tree, to trim it and to let air and light enter within its
+canopy of leaves. The birds that once sang in its branches have left no
+trace behind them of their songs, and nothing has reached us from those
+sacred precincts but a few faint echoes.
+
+I certainly have reason to praise my good fortune! What all these great
+scholars, these learned men, have not been able to accomplish by dint
+of energy and perseverance and aided by all their knowledge of Latin,
+Greek, and Sanskrit, I (I, the man whom you know) am enabled to do!
+Thanks to the bard's long recital, I am able to fill up this blank,--the
+first, the only man in the history of mankind, who can throw light upon
+the impenetrable darkness of those ages!
+
+The bard began. I listened, all attention and eagerness, trying to catch
+every sound and to impress every word upon my excellent memory.
+
+In a pompous introduction he told us all about the first arrival of the
+Celts in Europe, the coming of the Druids as apostles of the true
+faith; he told us how a great colony of Salic Franks, Gauls, under the
+collective name of Pelasgi, all children of Teut, or Teutons, had
+first planted a sacred oak at Dodona. On this point I was already well
+informed. He then alluded to the building up of Athens, due as much to
+the Teutons as to the {087}Greeks of Cecrops; he boasted, that when the
+Greeks were led astray by their corrupt imagination and wished to
+raise altars to Saturn, Jupiter, and all those false gods whom they had
+borrowed from the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, the Teutons rose in the
+name of outraged human reason, and proclaimed the only one God, breaking
+down all the false altars. Hence, he said, that formidable struggle,
+still so well known as the battle of the gods of Olympus against the
+_Teutons_ or _Titans_....
+
+I held my breath. What? Those terrible giants, those colossal men, whom
+Jupiter himself feared and who piled Ossa upon Pelion, or Pelion upon
+Ossa--they were Celts? They were the ancestors of the brave French?
+
+O Titans, O my brothers, with what delight I listened to the sacred
+words of the bard, so that I might repeat them to you and rejoice with
+you in our glorious descent!
+
+By special grace I understood the Germano-Celtic words of the bard
+without difficulty. But the poem was flowing on interminably; I began
+to mistrust my memory. Centuries succeeded centuries, events followed
+events, and they were as close to each other and as numerous as grains
+in a bag of wheat. The continuous exertion of all my faculties began to
+tell upon me. The most illustrious {088}heroes of Gaul and of Germany
+appeared to me soon only like the faint forms seen by means of a magic
+lantern; Sigovesus and Bellovesus, the descendants of the great king
+Ambigat; Brennus, Btlgius, and Lutharius, sons or sons-in-law of that
+other great king Cambaules, began to turn around and arouad in my head,
+holding each other by the hand and performing an old British dance to
+the music of an old Breton instrument. Ariovistus played on the biniou.
+Then the sounds of the biniou, the shrill tones of the fife and the
+Druid harp were broken in upon by a terrible noise of countless church
+bells; the air shook all of a sudden, the earth trembled, everything
+around me fell to the ground with a great crash, the Druid, the house of
+the wedding, the trap-door, the hamlet, the trees, the hill, the Rhine
+and its banks, the heaven and the stars, all disappeared at the same
+moment, and I awoke in my arm-chair, surrounded by my poor books, which
+had just fallen from my knees.
+
+The dinner bell was still ringing.
+
+[Illustration: 111]
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+{091}_The Roman Gods invade Germany.--Drusus and the Druidess.--Ogmius,
+the Hercules of Gaul.--Great Philological Discovery concerning Teut at
+es.--Transformations of every kind.--Irmexsul.--The Rhine deified.--The
+Gods cross the River.--Druids of the Third Epoch._
+
+You may rest assured, I did not merely dream of that bold transformation
+of Teutons into Titans; one of the most learned and most reliable
+authors in my library, assures me of the fact. These great scholars are
+sometimes very clever men.
+
+According to this authority, the Celts were very much taller than the
+Greeks, and this fact had naturally suggested to the latter the idea
+of speaking of them as giants. The Celtic Pelasgi, who were warlike
+shepherds like all the men of their race, usually watched their flocks
+as they were {092}grazing on the high mountains, and it was these
+mountains which the myth accused them of piling up, one upon another,
+to scale the heavens. You will say, What mad follies of poets! I grant
+this; but after these mad poets came men like Hesiod and Homer, who
+changed the idle dream into stern reality, and upon this rock a new
+religion was founded, and with it, a new civilization.
+
+Now the day has come when these same gods of Greece, having become the
+gods of great Rome, will pursue the Titans, or Teutons, to the very
+heart of Germany.
+
+It is well known that Caesar, after having conquered Gaul, had promptly
+crossed the Rhine, rather for the purpose of making a reconnaissance
+on the opposite bank of the river, than with any view to conquest.
+His successor went farther into Germany. Drusus, the adopted son of
+Augustus, and his lieutenant, reached the banks of the river Elbe,
+pursuing the Franks, the Teutons, the Burgundians, the Cheruski, the
+Marcomanni, all those children of the same great family, who had been
+overcome, put to flight, but never subjugated. All of a sudden, at the
+very moment when he is about to cross the river, there comes forth from
+the dark, dense forest, not a new army of barbarians, bristling with
+spears and halberts, but a woman, a tall, haughty looking woman, with
+long disheveled hair{093}
+
+[Illustration: 113]
+
+{094}
+
+[Illustration: 114]
+
+{095}flowing down upon her bare shoulders, and on her brow a crown of
+simple oak branches.
+
+She steps across his path and with uplifted finger orders him in an
+imperious voice to turn back and to go to his camp to prepare for death.
+
+It was a Druidess, endowed in the highest degree with the gift of
+prophecy; so it would seem at least, for Drusus had hardly entered the
+Roman camp, when he fell from his horse and expired.
+
+Not all the Druidesses, however, succeeded in making the Roman generals
+go back, by a word or a gesture; nor did all the Roman generals fall
+from their horses and die. After fifty-five years of strangely varying
+fortunes, the Genius of Rome was victorious, and must needs have been
+victorious, for it led the whole world by its power. It brought with
+it also its gods, which in spite of their numbers, or rather perhaps
+because they were so numerous, met on the banks of the Rhine with a more
+determined resistance than its soldiers.
+
+Rome had a magnificent mission to fulfill. Her glorious duty upon earth
+was to restore the unity of all the great human families, and to
+improve their condition by bringing them in contact with each other--by
+fraternity, in fine. To attain this end, she had generally employed War
+as her principal instrument; Religion had been a subsidiary agent only,
+a weapon which she kept concealed, {096}but which she used with great
+efficacy to secure the permanency of her conquests.
+
+Unfortunately, Roman gods were as liable to corruption, and to fearful
+corruption, as the great men of the Empire. Nations rise step by step
+on the grand ladder of civilization; when they have reached the top they
+must keep up their activity, without which no life and no progress can
+be maintained, and thus the moment comes when they are forced to descend
+again, till at last they sink into sensual degradation, into erudite,
+refined, voluptuous barbarism--the very bottom of the ladder.
+
+[Illustration: 116]
+
+Rome had begun by raising altars to all the virtues; now her deities
+personified nothing but vices. How could they expect to introduce
+them and make them acceptable to these coarse Germans, among whom
+prostitution, adultery, and theft were hardly known by name, who allowed
+a woman {097}to claim hospitality at the house of any _Karl_, to rest
+under his roof, and even to share his couch, without fearing slander, if
+he had but put a naked sword between her and himself, and who had
+never known and could not know the use of locks and keys? Were they not
+accustomed to hang their most valuable possessions upon the branches
+of a consecrated tree in the open camp, or to place them on top of a
+druidical stone or beneath it, as they chose--knowing that there they
+were perfectly safe? When they had taken this simple precaution, they
+could go to bed and sleep quietly, and there was no need for putting a
+sentinel on guard.
+
+Already, in the days of Caesar, the Romans had employed a very ingenious
+and cunning device, in order to win over the simple Gauls. They
+had pretended to find their gods, their own peculiar gods, already
+established in the country from olden times. Thus there existed in Gaul
+a statue which the Etrusci had erected in honor of _Ogmius_, or rather
+_Ogma_. The Greek Lucian mentions it in these words:--
+
+"It is a decrepit old man; his skin is black; this form of a man,
+however, wears the attributes of Hercules, the lion's skin and the club.
+
+"I thought at first," Lucian adds, "that the Celts had invented this odd
+figure in order to laugh at {098}the gods of Greece; but this so-called
+Hercules, who is of very great antiquity, drags after him a multitude of
+men, whom he leads by golden chains which he holds in his mouth, while
+they are fastened to the ears of his victims."
+
+[Illustration: 118]
+
+This _Ogmius_ was evidently a typical representation of Druidism itself;
+_Ogma_, in Celtic languages, means both science and eloquence. What
+has Hercules to do with all this? Nevertheless the Romans insisted upon
+calling him by that name.
+
+Nor did they stop here. {099}When they found all the nations they had
+conquered were continually speaking of a certain _Teutates_,
+they at once declared that they recognized in this popular person their
+own god Mercury. It was he and no other! It was Mercury, the son of
+Jupiter and the nymph Ma'ia. There was a striking resemblance, an
+unmistakable analogy! No one could misapprehend the thing for an
+instant!
+
+[Illustration: 119]
+
+Oh, my good Romans, I don't mean to blame you now for all the trouble
+you gave me when I was at college! I will forget all that--But what
+could make you conceive this stupid idea, of naturalizing among us your
+Mercury, the god of eloquence, if {100}you choose, but above all the
+ever ready pimp of Jupiter, the god of trade and of thieves, and of
+naturalizing him in a land where trade, love, and thieves are so little
+known! In subservience to this Roman notion, some of our modern writers
+have been clever enough to prove that there were really many points of
+resemblance between Mercury and Teutates--but I, I openly deny it! Once
+more, philology shall come to my assistance, to overturn their doctrine.
+It was only this morning, while shaving, that I made a philologie
+discovery of the very highest importance, in which the public will take
+the most lively interest, and, I doubt not, the French Acadamy also.
+
+The word _Teut_, as the reader no doubt knows perfectly well, means
+_God; Tat_ in ancient Celtic and in modern Breton may be accurately
+rendered as _father_--so an old Breton woman assures me, who brought me
+up when I was a child. Add to _Tat_ the termination _Es_, the diminutive
+form of _Esus_, the _Lord_, connect the three monosyllables, and you
+have _Teut-Tat-Es_, God, Father, and Lord!
+
+Where--I appeal to all the famous historians so graphically described
+by Rabelais--where do you find a trace of Mercury in Teutates now? He is
+beyond all doubt the great divinity of the Celts, but you found it more
+convenient to follow the interested views of the Roman writers. And yet
+{101}even if they were innocent of any design upon your credulity, might
+they not have been mistaken themselves? Are you not aware that Plutarch,
+conscientious Plutarch himself, after having witnessed the Feast of
+Tabernacles in Palestine, tells us gravely that the Jews worshipped
+Bacchus? You were not aware of it, come, confess it frankly! For I will
+confess to you, that I was not aware of it, myself, ten minutes ago;
+but Dr. Rosahl has just told me so. The good doctor is delighted at
+my discovery of the true meaning of _Teut-Tat-Es_; he thinks no
+etymological question of such importance 'was ever more satisfactorily
+put and answered in the same breath. He advises me strongly to write a
+memoir on the subject, which he will undertake to bring to the notice of
+learned societies, and only suggests the expediency of leaving out any
+allusion to my old Breton nurse; but I am too conscientious a writer
+ever to omit quoting my authorities.
+
+Now, since I have mentioned Rabelais, let us "return to our lambs," that
+is, to our Teutons.
+
+After the Roman conquest, the same transformation of native deities
+into classic gods continued in Germany. The sacred oak was changed into
+Jupiter, whom it represented symbolically; the Druidical altars became
+either Apollo or Diana; sometimes they were made to represent deities
+of inferior rank, nymphs, anything in fact. But these numerous
+{102}metamorphoses, made rather hastily, led to a curious mistake.
+
+The conquerors had met on the banks of the Weser a huge monolith,
+cut with an axe by simple and ignorant stone-carvers. It was called
+_Irmensul_. Like the Celtic Teutates, this Irmensul also attracted
+at certain fixed times an immense concourse of people. The Romans,
+appreciating the martial spirit of the natives, did not hesitate to
+declare that this was Mars, their god of war. Thereupon they paid it
+all possible honor, consecrating their weapons to the new deity, and
+offering countless propitiatory sacrifices.
+
+Now, who was this Irmensul?
+
+When Varus had invaded Germany, during the reign of Augustus, at
+the head of three legions, Arminius, a chieftain of the Cheruski (a
+Brunswicker, we would say nowadays), had surprised him, and completely
+surrounded his army in the marshes of Teutoburg, on the banks of the
+Weser. Every man of this army, whether a Roman or a warrior of the
+allied tribes wearing Roman livery, had perished by the sword. For eight
+days the bloody waters of the Weser had carried down more than thirty
+thousand dead bodies.
+
+When the news of this disaster reached Augustus, he thought that Gaul
+was lost, Italy in danger, and Rome herself imperilled. Mad with grief,
+he would {103}rise, for a month afterwards, night after night, and in
+his terror wander through his vast palace, crying out: "O Varus, Varus,
+bring me back my legions!"
+
+[Illustration: 123]
+
+Well, the Irmensul was nothing more than a triumphal column erected
+in honor of Arminius and his Cheruski. _Irmen_ is the same as the
+name _Herman or Armin_ (Arminius), and _sul_ means column. The Romans,
+however, did not know this, and they paid dearly for their ignorance.
+If they had known better they would not have committed the egregious
+blunder of kneeling down and worshipping the man who had destroyed the
+three legions of Varus. It is very evident that they were as ignorant of
+German as of Celtic. {104}It ought not to surprise us, however, to
+see the soldiers of the imperial people change stones into gods, as
+Deucalion had changed them into men. Before the days of Homer, and for
+a long time after him, Jupiter was in Seleucia modestly represented by
+a fragment of rock and Cybele by a black stone. In Cyprus, the Venus of
+Paphos was nothing but a triangular or quadrangular pyramid, nor can I
+imagine what importance could be attached to three or four angles in
+a body, which was soon to assume the softest and most fascinating
+outlines. First the poets had come and sung of Cybele, the kind goddess,
+of Jupiter the omnipotent, and of Venus, the soul of the world and the
+queen of beauty. Inspired by their voice and the bold conceptions of
+their fancy, the sculptors had next employed the chisel upon these
+stones and these pyramids, and there had sprung forth from these
+shapeless masses the Lord of Gods, armed with his lightning, the
+beautiful Cytherea, armed with the most powerful weapons of all womanly
+graces. Oh, poets and sculptors, you have upset everything in religion!
+You are responsible for the loss of that austere simplicity which once
+characterized the faith of men! Miserable cutters of stone, reckless
+counters of syllables, you, and you alone, have substituted symbols
+for truth! Still, I do not condemn you; although I have stood up
+to {105}defend the Druids of the earliest days, I am far from being
+insensible to the charms of art and of poetry; besides, what right have
+I, who speak of gods and myths, to pass sentence on those who have been
+the real creators of Mythology?
+
+[Illustration: 125]
+
+While the conquerors of the Teutons, in the pride of their cleverness,
+were committing blunder after blunder, and fell into the pits they had
+dug for others, the real gods of Rome stayed on the banks of the Rhine,
+where they had already been accepted by the Gauls. They were impatient
+enough to see Germany also erect them temples and statues, but the Rhine
+with uplifted waves barred the passage.
+
+Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances {106}of former days,
+when he had been compelled to appear in the triumphal processions of
+Germanicus, as a conquered river, loaded with chains, while the rabble
+and riffraff of Rome had insulted him to his face and covered him from
+head to foot with the mud of the Tiber.
+
+The remembrance of his former humiliation seemed to revive his wrath
+at this day, and he unfolded his whole strength to take his revenge. In
+vain had the Olympians tried repeatedly to cross at different points;
+everywhere, from the Alps to the Northern Sea, they found him
+furious, roaring and rushing, full of threats in his green waters and
+besprinkling the banks with white foam.
+
+[Illustration: 126]
+
+At last they bribed him to espouse the cause of the Empire: they made
+him a king, the king of German rivers. A king more or less mattered very
+little to a people who made and unmade kings at will.
+
+The Rhine was evidently flattered by the distinction; and he laid aside
+his long cherished wrath.
+
+He had already allowed Jupiter to cross, taking {107}him perhaps for
+Esus; he now carefully examined the passports and certificates of good
+conduct of several other gods, and left the way open for Apollo and
+Minerva, Diana and some deities of fair repute; but when he saw Bacchus,
+his anger was rekindled. What? Were not the Germans mad and quarrelsome
+enough, when they had only taken too much beer? How could he consent to
+allow their passions to be aroused by potent wine? He was king, and as
+such bound to keep this scourge from his people.
+
+[Illustration: 127]
+
+The gods whom he had allowed to cross endeavored to plead for the son of
+Semele,--but he remained inexorable. His severity relaxed, however, when
+the vines planted by order of the Emperor {108}Probus in parts of the
+Rheingau, began to adorn the banks of the river with their verdure--he
+was overcome, when he had once tasted the juice of the grape. He
+consented to let Bacchus pass from bank to bank, but only at the time of
+the vintage.
+
+[Illustration: 0128]
+
+Once admitted, Bacchus soon brought into the land the whole crowd of
+gods and goddesses, who made up his following and who enjoyed no great
+reputation in Rome and in Greece. The Rhine {109}became angry once more,
+but once more caresses and unexpected honors had their hoped-for effect.
+He was already a king; he now became a god.
+
+[Illustration: 129]
+
+Henceforth Father Rhine conceived a strong affection for his former
+adversaries. When he saw that the German bank had adopted the customs
+and the religion of the conquerors as fully as the Celtic bank, he
+abandoned completely his restrictive policy and did his best to help
+everybody across. Thus Jupiter was no sooner installed in Germany, than
+he summoned his Corybantes; Bacchus his Bacchantes and his Maenads,
+Diana {110}her hunting nymphs, Venus her whole court of lascivious
+priestesses; the Dryads and the Hamadryads, the Naiads and the Tritons,
+the Fauns and the S il vans, all came one by one. It was a perfect
+invasion.
+
+[Illustration: 130]
+
+Germany, grave and solemn as she was, felt not a little troubled by this
+wholesale irruption of frivolous {111}and ill-mannered deities, who so
+little agreed with her austere habits. The young, it is true, were more
+easily Romanized and readily caught at this poetical personification of
+all the forces of Nature; but the old, the chieftains, and above all the
+Druids, backed by a nearly unanimous people, asked each other what could
+be the meaning of this sudden enthusiasm for new gods, this half mad
+devotion to celestial clowns?
+
+No one, however, dared to raise a hand; the Teutons had lost their
+former energy, they were enfeebled, unnerved and exhausted by their long
+but useless resistance. Hence, like true cowards, they appeared in the
+pagan temples, in order to conciliate the good-will of the conquerors,
+and then, to pacify their consciences, they hastened to some dark forest
+and there with anxious eyes and disturbed minds, they offered in fear
+and trembling their fervent worship to the sacred oak.
+
+The Roman gods were soon to encounter far more formidable adversaries
+elsewhere.
+
+Far beyond Germany, as we find it described and limited by geographers,
+there lived a host of nations, scattered over a vast territory, and
+extending as far East as the shores of the Caspian Sea. The Romans
+had never penetrated far into these unknown depths, which sent forth
+incessantly new armies of soldiers whom they classed indiscriminately
+{112}under the vague and collective name of Hyperboreans. Such were
+the Huns, the Scythians, the Goths, the Slaves (Poles, Danes, Swedes,
+Russians, and Norwegians), all of them robbers and pirates. Some, under
+the name of Cimbrians, had joined the Teutons t and with them invaded
+Gaul and even Italy, till they encountered the armies of Marius; others,
+were about to cross the Pyrenees and to fall upon Spain. Among them all,
+the Scandinavians were by far the most powerful, intrepid soldiers and
+fearless sailors, who were soon to darken the waters of the Rhine
+with their countless vessels, and to make Charlemagne shed tears as he
+thought of the days to come.
+
+Ere long these dauntless pirates will actually enter the Loire, then
+even the Seine; they will besiege Paris, and finally, thanks to the
+able statesmanship of King Charles, whom they call the Simple, they will
+become. Christians, after a fashion, and under the name of Normans take
+possession of one of the fairest provinces of France. Then they will
+cultivate the soil which they had heretofore robbed of its produce, they
+will drink beer instead of cider, they will peacefully devote themselves
+to lawsuits and cattle-raising, and will end by wearing white cotton
+night-caps--after having destroyed Rome and conquered England twice.
+
+The Scandinavians, of Celtic origin like the {113}Gauls and the Germans,
+led at first both nomadic and sedentary lives and were rather barbarous
+than unpolished; but they built cities and erected temples, in which
+they worshipped Odin the One-Eyed.
+
+[Illustration: 133]
+
+If the harvest failed, or whenever the first warmth of spring aroused
+in them their innate fondness of vagabondage and war, they took to their
+boats or mounted their horses, and the stupefied nations {114}of Europe
+watched the horizon and listened along the river courses, to distinguish
+whether this great Northern tempest, this storm of iron and fire, of
+blood and of tears, was rushing down upon them by land or by sea.
+
+After having crossed Germany in all directions, some of these bands,
+or rather some remnants of such bands, settled from inclination or from
+necessity, in certain portions of the country, especially on the islands
+in the Main, the Weser, and the Neckar. Their priests soon made numerous
+converts among the neighbors to the faith of Odin. The Germans paid
+little heed to the difference between Odin and Teut. The two names
+designated, for them, one and the same god, the one god of the Celts.
+
+The increasing influence of these Druids of the third epoch led,
+however, naturally to some opposition. The German priests accused them
+of being too profuse in the shedding of blood, and of having given their
+god Odin a companion in a certain god Thor, fond of overcoming giants,
+and of having thus destroyed the true nature of the original creed,
+which knew but one God.
+
+A schism was about to divide the Druidical church, when the arrival of
+the Roman deities brought the two opposite parties once more together.
+Each yielded somewhat; {115}they came to an understanding and finally
+joined hands in a conspiracy.
+
+[Illustration: 135]
+
+{117}The Scandinavian Druids, forsaking the prudent reserve which they
+had so far scrupulously observed, declared that, in order to triumph
+over the Roman Olympians, Odin had not only the assistance of his
+all-powerful son Thor, but could, if he chose, summon an escort of gods
+at least as imposing in numbers as that of Jupiter himself.
+
+The German Druids veiled their faces, but the people and the whole party
+which was opposed to Jupiter the wicked, and to Venus the shameless,
+joyfully accepted the proposition. However cruel the Scandinavian ritual
+appeared with its increased number of victims who had to be offered to
+the new gods, it seemed to them better still to worship Terror than to
+worship disgraceful Voluptuousness. They acknowledged Odin and his son
+Thor, and impatiently waited for the arrival of the others.
+
+The German Druids gave way, hoping perhaps that the two hosts of deities
+would erelong fall out among themselves and soon destroy each other.
+
+Father Rhine, in his equal affection for all his brother gods, was
+far too good-natured to take this admission of new deities amiss, and
+promptly went northward, to the most hyperborean regions of snow and
+ice, in search of the newly chosen gods.
+
+The two parties soon met face to face. {118}It is our solemn duty to
+explain fully the whole curious system of Scandinavian gods. We shall
+see that here, as in all that we shall have to add, legends, myths, and
+traditions abound in such numbers that they can be had for the asking.
+
+[Illustration: 141]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+{121}_The World before and since Odin.--Birth of Ymer.--The Giants of
+the Frost.--A Log split in Two.--The First Man and the First Woman--The
+Tree Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.--Thor's Three Jewels. Freyr's Enchanted
+Swoj'd.--A Souvenir of the National Guard of Bellville.--The Story of
+Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.--Honey and Blood.--Invocation._
+
+The world was not born.
+
+Thick mists, unbroken by light, unbounded in limit, filled space.
+
+After a long period of darkness, silence, and perfect repose, a faint
+light is seen, vague and uncertain, hardly deserving the name; something
+is moving unsteadily in this night. The giant Ymer has been born
+spontaneously out of the mixture {122}and assimilation of these closely
+compressed mists, which sudden and severe frost has condensated.
+
+At that time men of science had not yet discussed the question of
+spontaneous generation; not one academy made mention of the subject.
+
+Ymer, the sole inhabitant, the Robinson Crusoe of this world of
+darkness, became tired of his solitude. Guessing how he had been born
+himself, he gathered the mists that surrounded him, piled them one upon
+the other, shaped them into a form resembling his own, and once more the
+North wind came and solidified the mists. As he was a giant, he
+created giants; he also created mountains, no doubt for the purpose of
+furnishing seats for these giants, for the highest among them did not
+reach up to their belts. This does not mean, that these mountains were
+less high than they are nowadays, but the sons of Ymer were of such size
+that without bending down a little, they could not have rested their
+elbows on the summit of Chimborazo, and what is more marvelous still,
+Ymer himself not only was taller than every one of his sons, but taller
+than all of his sons together, standing one upon the shoulders of the
+other! When he stretched himself out full length, the Alps might have
+served him as a pillow, while his feet would have rested on {123}Mount
+Caucasus.
+
+[Illustration: 143]
+
+{125}In order to produce such giants and such mountains, he had, of
+course, to consume large quantities of the material furnished by the
+chaos of mists; the remainder of this gaseous substance, trembling in
+vacant space and losing its balance, fell back into the depths of the
+valleys, and formed the ocean.
+
+Some few animals began soon to stir in the waters, and on the shores
+of that vast sea; sphinxes and dragons, hydras and griffins, kraken
+and leviathans, all creatures of a low order, but in their proportions
+adapted to this colossal world, this world of the infinitely great, and
+no doubt related in some manner to the antediluvian families of mammoths
+and pterodactyls, of ichthyosauri and plesiosauri.
+
+A god of the first race, a creator without being created, Ymer naturally
+did not possess that skill and that cleverness which can only be
+acquired by long experience. However strange, therefore, it may appear,
+however inexplicable, the fact is, that this world, fresh with new
+life and freed from the original mists, was nevertheless covered with
+darkness. The only light which existed was an occasional phosphorescence
+of the sea or a few flashes of electric light, such as an aurora
+borealis sends forth; and this faint glimmer alone illumined the pathway
+of those vast creatures, those monstrous {126}reptiles, who, dazzled for
+an instant, plunged back into the lowest depths of the waters, casting
+up huge waves and tall columns of spray.
+
+It must have been a peculiarly curious sight, certainly, to see those
+Giants of the Frost, as they were called, wandering, through the
+darkness across the boundless plains and along endless shores, under a
+sky without light, looking for each other from one end of the world to
+the other. To be sure, they could accomplish the journey in a few long
+strides, and if they were peculiarly anxious to see each other, face
+to face, they had only to wait for the chance of a momentary flash or a
+faint twilight glimmer.
+
+The sight was no doubt curious, but there was no one to behold it.
+
+This state of things could not last long. With a new god a new world
+also came into existence. This new god was very different from the
+first, it was Light itself, condensed at the southern extremity of the
+heavens, far from this earth inhabited by giants.
+
+One fine day--an unlucky day for them, however--these giants noticed
+that the sky above their heads was suddenly assuming a faint pinkish
+hue, then violet, and finally purple. At this they rejoiced. But
+suddenly a ball of fire appeared, and they were terrified. It was Odin,
+Odin followed {127}by his celestial family, which consisted at least of
+a dozen principal deities!
+
+[Illustration: 147]
+
+But no! no! I take it back! I rebel! No one can come in contact
+with these ancient myths, without knocking against some principle of
+astronomy. Astronomers find only seven principal deities in Scandinavian
+mythology, when they are called upon to transform them into planets, and
+twelve, when the question is about the signs of the Zodiac. That seems
+to me to make mythology a. little too easy. Does it not look as if the
+first men had been born with a telescope and a compass in their pocket,
+and as if they had erected an observatory long before they thought of
+building huts for themselves?
+
+Fortunately I am not bound to follow their footsteps.
+
+Certain historians of high authority have found out that Odin lived
+upon earth before he came to dwell in heaven. He was an illustrious
+conqueror, {128}very expert at killing men, one of those scourges of
+God, who fall upon nations in order to break them to pieces. As a matter
+of course, these nations deified him after his death.
+
+[Illustration: 148]
+
+I see nothing astronomical in all this.
+
+Hence, I return to my own method, and propose to describe him, as he
+appeared to his Druids, his Scalds, and his worshippers.
+
+[Illustration: 149]
+
+He arrived from the southern countries, no doubt from the Orient,
+bringing with him the sun, as an indispensable auxiliary in the
+great task{129} which {131}he had undertaken, to reform this dark and
+ice-covered world: "For there was a time," says the Edda, the bible of
+the Scandinavians, "when the sun, the moon, and the stars did not know
+the place they were to occupy. It was then the gods assembled and agreed
+as to the post which was to be assigned to each one of them."
+
+When the installation of the heavenly bodies had thus been agreed upon,
+Odin followed the example of all the Hercules of Egypt and of Greece,
+and began his benevolent career by freeing the earth of all the monsters
+by which it was infested. Ymer was the first to succumb to his blows,
+and after him, the other giants of the frost, "a race of evildoers,"
+adds the Edda. Evildoers? Whom did they aggrieve, I wonder? The
+complainants must have been the kraken, the griffins, and the serpents.
+
+The world had hardly come into existence and already the right of the
+stronger had established the doctrine: _Vae victis!_
+
+Of all the giants of the frost a single one escaped. He must have been a
+married man, for his descendants became after a while so numerous as
+to trouble the Ases, that is to say, Odin and his companions, the other
+gods.
+
+After the giants, came the turn of land and sea monsters, who were
+almost as formidable as they themselves. In the general destruction two
+monsters {132}only survived: the wolf Fenris, with his fearful jaws,
+which enabled him to crush mountains and even to injure the sun, and the
+serpent Iormungandur, the great sea serpent of world-wide renown. Both
+these monsters were one day to aid the giants of the frost in avenging
+themselves on their conqueror.
+
+[Illustration: 152]
+
+Odin thought he had now nothing more to fear, and returned to the realms
+of light, there to enjoy his glory in peace and to revel in the delights
+of Walhalla.
+
+{133}One morning he came down to see how the world was coming on since
+he had reorganized it, and he found to his great joy, that the new
+creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance. Grass was growing in
+the plains, on the slopes of hills, and even at the bottom of the rivers
+and the sea; here and there trees of varied forms and shapes arose
+and gave variety to the monotonous horizon; some, crowding together in
+groups on the mountain side, seemed to whisper confidentially to each
+other, as the breeze was lightly agitating their foliage, while others
+stood together in countless hosts, stretching away over hill and dale
+as far as eye could reach, but silent and immovable, like an army which
+remains motionless, while the chiefs are deliberating.
+
+[Illustration: 153]
+
+Behind the green curtain of forests, deer, eland, and aurochs were
+bounding in herds, now and then showing their beautiful horns or
+their dark bushy brows at the opening of some clearing; goats were
+{134}climbing about on the rocks and venturing close to the brink of
+precipices; birds were singing in the groves, now swinging playfully on
+the supple branches of willows, and now darting suddenly on swift wings
+through the air; fish were gliding silently under the surface of the
+waters, which reflected their silvery sheen or broke in soft ripples,
+while butterflies and insects were sporting and buzzing around beautiful
+flowers.
+
+Odin smiled; the artist was pleased with his work.
+
+But were animals, impelled by natural instincts only and exclusively
+occupied with the desire to satisfy their coarse wants, were such
+animals worthy to be the sole owners of such a charming abode?
+
+It occurred to him to invent a being which, without participating in the
+divine essence, might still rise high above all other creatures. This
+time the divine artist wanted a spectator, to witness his work, to
+appreciate it intelligently, and afterwards to profit by it for some
+good purpose.
+
+He was meditating on it during a walk on the sea-shore, when a piece of
+wood, a fragment of a huge branch of a tree which the wind had broken
+off, attracted his attention. It had evidently fallen into a river,
+which had carried it out into the high sea, and there it had been beaten
+and bruised by {135}ebb and tide. He drew this poor shapeless stick of
+wood towards him, split it in two and made out of it a man and a woman.
+
+"Do you hear? Do you understand?" Asks the Edda, at this point.
+
+Now, what is this intended to convey to us? That man, exposed to the
+caprices of the elements, is nothing but a poor plaything in the hands
+of Fate? Very well, let us admit this explanation. But can the sacred
+book of the Scandinavians really presume to teach us that the origin of
+mankind must be looked for in two sticks of wood? We cannot but think
+that that would be a sorry jest, alike unworthy of the general solemnity
+of the Edda and of the mysterious majesty of ancient cosmogonies.
+
+Besides, we ought not to forget that all the Northern nations attributed
+a divine character to trees; if in Germany the oak was held sacred, the
+hyperboreans held the ash tree in great respect, and the question is
+only whether our first father was made of the wood of an ash tree, an
+oak, or a willow.
+
+This leads us naturally to the consideration of the ash _Ygdrasil_ and
+its curious population of gods, birds, and quadrupeds.
+
+The branches of this marvelous tree spread over the whole surface of the
+earth; its top supported {136}the Walhalla and rose is to the uppermost
+heavens, while its roots penetrated to the very bottom of hell. Under
+its shadow dwell Odin and his Ases, when the government of the world
+requires his presence, or some important question has to be decided.
+
+[Illustration: 156]
+
+Two swift winged ravens are incessantly flying to and fro in the
+Universe, to see what is going on; then they come and perch, one on his
+left and one on his right shoulder, and whisper into his ear the news
+of the day. A squirrel, as swift in its movements as the two ravens,
+is perpetually running up and down the tree. If you doubt my word, hear
+what the poet says:--
+
+     .... The fearful Odin Was seated beneath the ancient ash,
+     The sacred tree whose immortal brow
+     Rises and touches the vault of heaven.
+     {137}On the top an eagle with eager eyes,
+     With piercing eyes, with ever open eyes,
+     Takes in the whole Universe in a single glance.
+     Odin receives his swift messages.
+     Incessantly a tiny squirrel
+     Comes and goes; the god's voice cheers it onward.
+     All at once it dashes from the trunk to the top
+     And in an instant it returns again
+     From the top to the trunk. Odin, when it comes,
+     Turns an attentive ear to the squirrel.....
+
+But the poet does not tell the whole story.
+
+[Illustration: 157]
+
+To act as a check upon the reports of the eagle, the ravens, and the
+squirrel, a vulture is perching {138}upon the loftiest top of the sacred
+tree, who looks over all the horizons of the earth and the universe,
+watching for the slightest stir and giving notice of any important event
+by his cries or the flapping of his wings.
+
+Still other animals, however, inhabit the great ash tree Ygdrasil. Some
+of these play a sinister part in the great menagerie; they are hideous
+reptiles, half concealed in the slimy marshes into which one of the
+roots of the tree finds its way, and ever striving to pour their
+venom into the mire; beneath another root a dragon is crouching, who
+constantly gnaws at it, and four starving deer, rushing through its
+branches, forever devour its foliage.
+
+"Do you hear? Do you understand?" asks the Edda once more.
+
+For the present we do not presume to interpret these descriptions,
+and before we attempt to penetrate into these dark mysteries, we will
+mention the principal chiefs among the Ases.
+
+The mystic marriage of Odin and Frigg resulted in the god Thor, who
+is held in equal veneration with his father. As his duty is to carry
+thunder and lightning, it is he who shakes the earth whenever he drives
+through the clouds in his car drawn by two goats and producing a noise
+represented by the words: "_Pumerle pump! Ptimerle pump! Pliz! Pluz!
+Schmi! Schmur! Tarantara! Tarantara!_". {139}This onomatopoetic
+translation of the flashing of lightning and the rolling of thunder,
+is not my own; it comes directly from Dr. Martin Luther, the great
+Reformer.
+
+Thor is also engaged in pursuing and destroying the giants of the
+mountains, degenerate children of the giants of the frost, in size at
+least. At a later period we shall meet with giants of still smaller
+dimensions. Alas! that here below everything that is great and strong
+has a tendency to decrease steadily!
+
+[Illustration: 159]
+
+For this war against the giants Odin has bestowed upon his son three
+precious objects, which in the inventory of the Ases appear under the
+name of _Thor's Three Jewels._ The first is his weighty hammer.
+
+_Mjoiner_ (some people call it his club), which goes forth by itself to
+meet giants and crushes their heads. One of the commentators upon the
+Edda professes to see in the giants of the mountains nothing but the
+mountains themselves, and in the hammer Mjoiner, nothing but lightning,
+which generally strikes their summit. We must evidently {140}put as
+little faith in commentators as in astronomers.
+
+The second of Thor's jewels was a pair of iron gloves. As soon as he
+puts them on, his spear no sooner reaches the point at which it is
+aimed, than it returns to his hand, precisely as the falcon comes back
+to the keeper's gauntlet, after having destroyed its victim.
+
+The third jewel of Thor is his war belt; when he puts it on, his
+strength is twice as great as before; in fact, he becomes irresistible
+and would overthrow the great Odin himself. But Odin has nothing to fear
+on his part, for in spite of his brutal and passionate temper, Thor is
+always an obedient and submissive son.
+
+Asa-Thor, that is to say, the Lord Thor, was most highly respected
+among men as the redhaired master of thunder and lightning, and as
+the destroyer of giants; and he was also greatly feared as an active,
+blustering god, of a troublesome, turbulent temper and of somewhat
+eccentric manners.
+
+Another weapon, at least as marvelous as Asa-Thor's famous hammer, was
+the sword of the god Freyr. This sword was endowed with an intelligence
+very rarely to be met with among swords, and punctually obeyed the
+orders of its master. Even in his absence, it went promptly and
+faithfully {141}to carry out his orders, striking here and there at a
+given point, or making terrible havoc in the midst of a battle, without
+a hand at the hilt to direct its mortal blows.
+
+[Illustration: 161]
+
+The good Freyr, as pacific a god as ever lived, was quite indifferent
+to battles and fights; hence he gave his orders quietly to his faithful
+sword, while he remained comfortably seated at Odin's table, enjoying
+his strong beer and the rarest wines.
+
+I cannot help wishing that they might have known the art of
+manufacturing guns after this system, at the time when I was a
+lieutenant in the Belleville National Guard. It would have been so
+pleasant to see a rifle move gravely to and fro, quite alone, in front
+of the City Hall and the Guard House; or to meet a patrol of four
+{142}guns, accompanied by a corporal, but a flesh and blood corporal to
+cry out: Who is there?
+
+[Illustration: 162]
+
+In the meantime the happy owners of these improved weapons might have
+been sitting, not at Odin's table, but at the nearest coffee house or
+restaurant, {143}drinking beer or wine just like the Scandinavian gods.
+
+Unfortunately our manufacturers of arms have not yet reached that degree
+of skill, which our forefathers seem to have possessed, and thus I have
+never yet been able to enjoy such a sight.
+
+The happy owner of this magic weapon, Freyr, presided over the general
+administration of the clouds; it was he who made fine weather or rain,
+a very troublesome office, which must have exposed him to countless
+petitions and most contradictory prayers.
+
+His sister Freya, afterwards called Frigg, was Odin's wife and the
+most honored goddess on earth as well as in heaven. She inspired and
+protected lovers, and very different from her sister in Greece, this
+Northern Venus enjoyed an unsullied reputation.
+
+They say that once, when her husband had gone away on a long journey,
+she was so deeply grieved at his absence, that her tears ran day and
+night incessantly; these tears, however, differed from those of mortal
+beings; "they were all drops of gold which fell into her bosom,"--and
+hence the Northern people call the precious metal to this day _Freyas
+tears_.
+
+One only among all the dwellers in Walhalla had been able to give her
+some comfort by singing {144}his sweetest songs; this was the god Bragi,
+the god of poetry and beautiful words.
+
+A tradition which deserves to be mentioned here, accounts for the manner
+in which he obtained this precious gift of eloquence and the art of
+poetry.
+
+In the early days of the world, when the creating god had concentrated,
+so to say, all the active powers of humanity in a few individuals,
+and when a long life permitted these favored beings to carry on their
+studies till they reached a happy end, there lived on earth a wise man
+who possessed an art unknown, not among men only, but among the gods
+themselves. This was the art of perpetuating thoughts by word-painting,
+of reproducing them in outward forms, not to the eye by colors, but
+to the ear by sounds. This sage was called Kvasir. He had invented the
+_Runes_, the art of poetry, and the no less precious art of reproducing
+words and fixing them in writing. He cut his runes on beech tablets; if
+he had gone a step farther, he would have invented printing long before
+Guttenberg.
+
+Kvasir was then the sole owner of the art of Poetry.
+
+Two wicked dwarfs prowling about in search of treasures, took it into
+their heads, that the treasure of Poetry was better than any other, and
+forthwith determined to obtain possession of it. They killed Kvasir,
+into whose dwelling they had crept by {145}stealth, and as they were
+masters in magic, like all the dwarfs of those days, they carefully
+collected his blood, and mixing it, in different proportions, with
+honey, put it into three vessels, which they closed hermetically. These
+three vessels contained respectively Logic, Eloquence, and Poetry. To
+keep them safe till the day on which they should be used, they buried
+them in the depths of a cave which was inaccessible to men and unknown
+to the gods themselves. But one of those travelling agents, who under
+the form of ravens, were continually wandering over the world in Odin's
+employ, had been a silent witness of the transactions, the murder, the
+mixing, and the hiding of the three vessels. He returned instantly to
+the ash Ygdrasil and reported it all to his master. The god gave his
+orders, which the squirrel, no doubt, at once carried to the eagle, and
+the latter, who was continually on the watch on the top of the sacred
+tree, left his post for a few moments in charge of the vulture, and flew
+with rapid wings to the cave, from whence he returned laden with the
+three precious vessels. It is to be supposed that he carried one in his
+beak, and the two others, one in each of his claws.
+
+He placed the mysterious vessels at Odin's feet and at once returned to
+relieve the vulture and to resume his watch.
+
+Odin opened first the vessel which contained {146}Poetry and tasted the
+contents. From that moment he never spoke otherwise than in verse.
+He also tasted Logic, and henceforth he spoke and reasoned with such
+extreme accuracy, that he found no one to agree with him any longer; he
+tasted Eloquence, and as soon as he opened his lips, he might have been
+mistaken for one of our own most eminent lawyers. Gold chains seemed to
+come out from his lips, as was the case with Ogmius, with which he bound
+the ears and hearts of all his hearers.
+
+Whilst he was thus enjoying himself, Bragi his son, and Saga his
+daughter, who were sitting by him, felt their mouths water and looked
+imploringly at him.
+
+Setting aside the terror with which the Druids have surrounded Odin, he
+seems to have been occasionally good-natured, and certainly always acted
+like a kind father. He offered the vessel with Poetry first to Saga,
+courteously giving her the preference on account of her sex. She barely
+touched it with her lips. When Bragi's turn came, he eagerly swallowed
+as much as he could, and without taking time to gather breath, he began
+a grand triumphal chant in honor of the feasts, the loves, the wars, and
+the greatness of the gods, the stars of the firmament, paradise, hell,
+and the ash Ygdrasil. {147}
+
+[Illustration: 167]
+
+{149}In well chosen cadences he imitated the clanking of cups, the
+cooing of doves and of lovers, the tumult of battles, the harmonies of
+the celestial spheres, and all this with such energy, such fire and
+such grace by turns, that Odin was enchanted, and having become a master
+himself about five minutes ago, on the spot changed his name of the
+Long-bearded God, which he had borne so far, to that of the God of
+Poetry. Moreover, he entrusted to his keeping the threefold treasure
+which had been taken from Kvasir's murderers.
+
+This was that god Bragi who alone succeeded in comforting the beautiful
+and inconsolable Freya in her great grief.
+
+Through him the Druids were instructed in the art of verse; to him is
+due that terrible Scandinavian poetry, which contains, according to
+Ozanam, quite as much blood as honey.
+
+As to Saga, she became the goddess of Tradition. "The heart of history
+is in tradition," says a master, a sage, and a poet.
+
+Good goddess Saga, your lips, I know, never touched the vessel
+containing Eloquence, nor that which held Logic, far from it! And still
+I count upon you to support me in carrying out my work, which I have
+perhaps imprudently begun; for I begin to be overwhelmed with materials,
+the subject is a very grave one, and, in spite of the good advice of my
+learned doctor and the assistance of my two charming lady-companions,
+time and strength threaten not to suffice. Therefore I beseech you as
+well as my readers, to grant me a short repose, before I proceed any
+farther on my journey through Odin's fantastic world.
+
+[Illustration: 170]
+
+[Illustration: 173]
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+{153}Short Biographies.--_A Clairvoyant among the Gods.--A Bright
+God.--Tyr and the Wolf Fenris.--The Hospital at the Walhalla.--Why was
+Odin one-eyed?--The Three Norns.--Mimer the Sage.--A Goddess the Mother
+of Four Oxen.--The Love Affairs of Heimdall, the God with the Golden
+Teeth._
+
+We have no intention of giving here a complete list of the numerous
+deities of the North. We will only mention Hermode, Odin's messenger and
+man of business; Forseti, the peacemaker; Widar, the god of silence,
+a dumb person who only walks on air, as if he were afraid to hear
+the noise of his own footsteps; Vali, the skilfull archer; Uller, the
+excellent skater, who taught the giant Tialff his art, in spite of what
+the poet Klopstock says to the contrary; Hoder, a mysterious deity,
+whose name must never be uttered by any one in heaven or on earth. Why
+not? Odin alone knows the reason.
+
+Let us also mention Heimdall, with the golden teeth. A son of Odin, he
+had nine mothers--eight more than had ever been known before him. He
+is the guardian of Walhalla, and his duty is to watch lest the giants
+should one fine day attempt to storm the heavenly abode by means of the
+Bifrost bridge, that is, the rainbow. But the gods can sleep in peace;
+neither the eagle nor the ravens on the ash Ygdrasil can surpass
+Heimdall in vigilance. The senses of sight and hearing are in him
+developed to a perfectly marvelous degree; he can hear the grass grow in
+the meadows and the wool grow on the back of the sheep. From one end of
+the world he sees a fly pass through the air at the other end, and, more
+than that, he sees distinctly the different joints in its feet and the
+black or brown spots with which its wings are {155}dotted. In the midst
+of the darkest night and at the bottom of the sea where it is deepest,
+he sees an atom moving and watches the marriage of monads. There is
+nothing in the whole universe hid from him.
+
+But why should this god Heimdall have golden teeth, after a fashion of
+some of the natives of Sunda? Odin alone knows the reason.
+
+Among all these gods Balder is the most richly endowed, the best, the
+handsomest and the most virtuous--Balder, the Bright God, by eminence.
+Although the son of Odin and Frigg, he might be taken for a son of
+Freya, on account of his strong resemblance to Love itself, not to the
+turbulent, passionate, and capricious Love of the Greeks, but to Love
+in the widest and noblest sense of the word,--Love, in fine, in its
+Christian meaning. Balder represents that universal goodness, loyalty,
+affection, and harmony, which binds all beings to each other; Bragi, the
+poet is his brother; Forseti, the peacemaker, is his son. But we shall
+but too soon have to return to him on a most melancholy occasion.
+
+In spite of our desire to close this already too numerous list, we
+cannot well pass over in silence that poor Tyr, the very type of
+intrepidity and loyalty, who fell a victim to his own prowess and to his
+imprudent confidence in the other gods. {156}The latter, having one day
+met the wolf Fenris, invited him to enjoy a good meal with them. The
+wolf, always voraciously hungry, listened to the proposal. Then the
+Ases, pretending to fear that he might play them an ugly trick on the
+way home, insisted upon leading him by a chain around his neck, pledging
+their word as gods, however, that they would set him free upon going to
+table.
+
+[Illustration: 176]
+
+Fenris, suspicious as all wolves, in fact, as all wicked creatures are,
+consented to be bound, but made it a condition that as a proof of the
+good faith of the Ases, one of them should put his hand into his mouth.
+Tyr agreed to do so without hesitation, not expecting that personages of
+such lofty position could possibly be faithless. The gods, {157}however,
+did behave faithlessly and kept Fenris a prisoner, whereupon the wolf
+claimed the fulfillment of the pledge, and when Tyr put his hand into
+his mouth, coolly bit it off up to the wrist. Hence that particular
+joint has ever since been called _the wolf's joint_, in memory of this
+inartistic amputation.
+
+Thus the gods had a one-handed brother among them, after having long
+been presided over by a one-eyed god. But Tyr and Odin were by no means
+the only gods who labored under such an infirmity. Heimdall with the
+golden teeth must evidently have had a set of false teeth; Widar, the
+god of silence, was dumb, and Hoder, that mysterious being whose name
+must not be pronounced by any one, was blind. There was also a certain
+god, called Herblinde, who was not only blind but--actually dead! We
+poor mortals generally imagine that death includes blindness as a matter
+of course, but it was not so, apparently, among these mystic personages.
+Herblinde, for instance, was quite blind, although he was quite dead
+also, and yet he attended the meetings of the gods and even had a vote
+in their counsels. Do you understand that? I do not, I am sure.
+
+And this grand council, this hospital of the Walhalla, which counted
+among its members a onehanded and a dumb god, a toothless and two blind
+{158}gods, was, as I said, presided over by one-eyed Odin! This fact
+recalls forcibly the old proverb: Among the blind the one-eyed is king.
+
+But why had Odin but one eye?
+
+Fortunately I am able, for once, to give an answer to this question.
+
+Astronomers have naturally found a reply to this Why? in their
+imperturbable system of sidereal interpretations. Odin was the sun-god;
+the sun was the eye of Nature, Nature had but one eye--consequently
+Odin was bound to be born one-eyed!.... Now you see why your daughter is
+deaf-mute.
+
+The Edda, however, gives a different account of the matter, and I feel
+bound to adopt this explanation, as it is founded upon a knowledge of
+the most secret mysteries.
+
+Odin had two eyes when he was born, and the sun was nothing more than
+his travelling companion, when he came from the far East, to revive and
+warm the earth which had so long been in the hands of' the giants of the
+frost.
+
+Several centuries after he had created man, he was one day walking up
+and down in the lower parts of his great ash tree Ygdrasil, and thinking
+of the greatly increased responsibility which rested upon him since he
+had added the government of the earth to that of heaven, and since the
+earth {159}had begun to be peopled with a multitude of races. He was
+asking himself whether the knowledge of all things had been revealed
+to him fully enough to enable him satisfactorily to fill, his two great
+offices. He had quaffed ample draughts by turns from the three vessels
+of Kvasir, but Eloquence, Poetry, and even Logic do not supply Wisdom.
+
+[Illustration: 179]
+
+As he passed by a large tank fed by a purling brook, he saw three
+beautiful swans swimming merrily about in it, who after having examined
+him with half thoughtful, half mocking attention, twisted their long
+flexible necks in strange contortions and then seemed to converse with
+each other by significative glances.
+
+He spoke to them and asked them if they possessed the secret of Wisdom.
+
+The swans suddenly plunged beneath the surface, {160}and in their place
+there appeared three beautiful women, representing three different
+stages of life.
+
+They were the Norns.
+
+[Illustration: 180]
+
+The first, called Urda, knew the Past; the second, called Verandi, saw
+the Present unfold itself before her eyes, hour by hour and minute by
+minute, and when to-day had become yesterday, her older sister gathered
+up the departed day and entered it on her record. Finally Skulda, the
+third, the Norn of the Future, enjoyed the privilege of beholding with
+her far-seeing eyes the germs of all future events and of being able to
+foretell with unerring accuracy the date and the consequences of their
+occurrence.
+
+Let us pause here a moment to notice a remark communicated to me by the
+amiable and learned {161}Dr. Rosalh, which may not be without interest
+to some of my readers.
+
+It will be remembered that the Romans had at first pretended to
+recognize in these three Norns their own three Fates, probably because
+they were three and because they were women; at least I can see no other
+reason. Urda, Verandi, and Skulda were as beautiful and as graceful
+as the three Parcae--Alecto, Lachesis, and Atropos--were ugly. Besides,
+their duties were entirely different. The Norns knew the fate of men,
+but they were utterly unable to lengthen human life. Such at least is
+the opinion of the great Holinshed in his Chronicles. Warburton sees
+in them nothing more than Valkyrias, but, what is far more astonishing,
+Shakespeare chose these three beautiful prophetic virgins, to furnish
+the three hideous, unclean, and toothless witches, the weird sisters,
+who called out to Macbeth, "All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king
+hereafter!"
+
+Shakespeare had evidently taken the curse denounced by the Church
+against the ancient deities in its literal meaning.
+
+Odin had a better opinion of the three sisters; he conversed for some
+time with them, and afterwards came frequently back to visit them. It
+was thus and by their aid that he gained experience.
+
+But even Experience, added to the precious gifts {162}of Eloquence,
+Poetry, and Logic, is not able to supply Wisdom.
+
+[Illustration: 182]
+
+He took counsel with the Norns, and in his anxiety to possess this most
+precious of all gifts, he expressed his willingness to exchange for it,
+if needs be, his treasures of poetry and of eloquence, his magic armor
+which made him safe against all danger, his horse Sleipner, which had
+eight legs and crossed the air with the rapidity of lightning, his eagle
+and his vulture, his squirrel and his two {163}ravens. Then he went to
+Mimer, the wisest man in existence, the successor of old Kvasir, and
+attended his lectures like the most humble and zealous of students. When
+he had mastered the subject, and felt that he had acquired Wisdom at
+last, he paid the philosopher liberally by giving him one of his own
+eyes, in order thus to show him the high value he set upon the service
+which had been rendered to him by Mimer.
+
+This was the reason why Odin was one-eyed. The truth is far too
+honorable to the god to be hid under idle astronomical pretexts.
+
+Now, what use did he make of his wisdom?
+
+He began by regulating the government of heaven. The Ases had until now
+lived very much as they chose; he now gave to each of them a duty to
+perform: to Niord the management of rivers and of fishing; to Egir, the
+seas and navigation; and so to others, requiring regularity and accuracy
+of all, but sternly prohibiting the display of extreme zeal, just as
+Talleyrand used to do with his diplomatic apprentices.
+
+Then he turned to the earth.
+
+Here men had multiplied incessantly, and with their numbers their wants
+had increased, and alas! with these, their vices also! In order to
+satisfy the wants and to repress the vices, they had established among
+them that great, primitive law which {164}constitutes the whole code of
+laws among barbarians--the right of the stronger.
+
+[Illustration: 184]
+
+"TO EGIR, THE SEAS AND NAVIGATION."
+
+The most fertile pastures, the rocks and grottoes best fitted for
+dwellings and safe retreats, the forests that were richest in game and
+the springs that were most frequented by the flocks, all were taken by
+force and possession maintained by the strength of the sword.
+
+Wise Odin felt that violence gave no right and that theft could not
+give a title to possession. He {165}determined to establish the right of
+property, and to give it, for greater efficiency, a religious character
+which would make it sacred in the eyes of nations.
+
+One of his daughters, Gefione, was sent by him to one of the most
+powerful chiefs of Scandinavia. She presented herself before his tent,
+with presents in her hands. In return she asked only for a span of land.
+The chief gave her a vast but uncultivated territory.
+
+[Illustration: 185]
+
+Next she went, with secret purposes in her mind and always inspired by
+Odin, to a distant country, into the mountains, where giants dwelt. Here
+she married one of these giants, the most powerful of them all, to whom
+she bore four sons. The strong are apt to be gentle. Gefione took her
+four sons, changed them into oxen, and by words of gentle persuasion
+induced her husband to harness them himself to a plough. A river marked
+the boundary of the field, on the other side stood an altar. Thus was
+the first piece of property inaugurated, {166}by purchase, by labor, and
+under the protection of the gods. The first owner, the gigantic husband,
+represented Force submitting to Right, and the four oxen represented the
+hard-working family, improving the soil and enriching it with the sweat
+of their brow.
+
+Soon people began to imitate Gefione's example, and in all directions
+land was measured and laid out; stones were put up to mark the boundary
+lines of each legal possession, and these stones were held sacred.
+
+In order to encourage men in these efforts, the Ases made it a point
+every morning to show their bright, shining heads above the horizon and
+thus to cheer them by their presence and the interest they took in their
+labors.
+
+The god Thor even came once to pay a visit to his sister Gefione, and
+then cast a few flashes of lightning upon each one of the newly acquired
+pieces of land, to render them sacred. Hence the old, deeply rooted
+notion that lightning hallows all it touches. Afterwards, and as late as
+the fifteenth century, it was deemed sufficient at Bonn, at Cologne, and
+at Mayence, to cast Thor's hammer upon the piece of land that had become
+a fief, in order to establish an absolute right of proprietorship.
+
+But the right of property alone did not suffice to render human society
+stable and flourishing,--{167}the nations of the earth longed for a
+hierarchy of rank and race; at least the divine pupil of the wise Mimer
+decided it should be so. The means he employed to found such a hierarchy
+and the system itself appear curious and odd enough to us, who are no
+gods, but, unsuitable as they look now, they were successful at the
+time.
+
+By his order Heimdall, the god with the false teeth, abandoned his post
+as guardian of the Wal-halla for nine days, and after a long journey
+across the country, knocked at the door of a wretched tumbledown hut,
+where the _Great-grandmother_ lived. Here he remained three days and
+three nights.
+
+The Great-grandmother brought a male child into the world,
+black-skinned, broad-shouldered, with hard horny hands, and powerful
+arms. They called it _Thrall_, the serf.
+
+Thrall's natural inclination led him to prefer the hard work in mines
+and in the wilderness; he was fond of the society of domestic
+animals and even slept with them in their stables. His sons became
+cattle-raisers, miners, or charcoal-burners.
+
+Heimdall had continued his journey. He next stopped at the
+_Grandmother's_ house, a small, simple cottage, but lacking in nothing
+that was useful.
+
+Here he remained three days and three nights.
+
+The Grandmother gave birth to a son, who was called _Karl_, the free
+man. {168}Karl was fond of driving oxen under the yoke, of working in
+wood and in iron, of building boats and houses, and of trading. From him
+are descended our workmen and artisans, our merchants and builders.
+
+Turning his face towards the south, Heimdall next went to a beautiful
+mansion, surrounded by magnificent gardens and reflected in the blue
+waters of a large lake. As the god had only to show his golden teeth
+in order to be welcomed by every woman he saw, the mistress of this
+mansion, the _Mother_, also received him with great delight and tried
+to do him honor. Dressed in her most costly robes she put an embroidered
+cloth upon a table of polished wood and offered him in silver dishes
+all the varieties of fish and game, in which the lake and the park near
+the house abounded. The Mother did everything to keep the god as long
+as possible at her house, but, as at the Grandmother's and at the
+Great-grandmother's, so he remained here only three days and three
+nights.
+
+A son appeared to console the Mother for the departure of her
+illustrious guest; this child had at its birth already rosy cheeks,
+long hair, and a haughty look. When he was still a child, he was fond of
+brandishing his spear and of bending his bow; at fifteen he swam across
+the blue waters of the lake, or plunged on an unbroken horse into
+{169}the depths of the forest, riding as fast as the wind. They called
+him Jarl, the noble.
+
+Some years later Heimdall paid another visit to this country; delighted
+with the prowess of Jarl, he acknowledged him as his son and taught
+him the language of birds, which the gods alone understand and fluently
+speak. He taught him also the science of Runes, of runes of victory
+which are engraven on the blades of swords; runes of love to be traced
+upon drinking horns or the thumbnail; runes of the sea, with which the
+prow and the rudder of ships are decorated--in all cases precautionary
+measures by which alone ill fortune can be kept at bay.
+
+Besides these gifts of knowledge, he bestowed upon him an inalienable,
+hereditary domain. This was the first entailed estate ever known in
+Europe.
+
+Jarl, says the Edda, was a man of _eight-horse power_. Could we express
+it better in the noble railway Anglo-Saxon of our day, or does
+our modern English really go back to the old Scandinavian, as this
+coincidence would seem to prove?
+
+Jarl's descendants are the great chieftains, the barons, princes,
+kings, and Druids, who have all inherited great power from their divine
+ancestor with the golden teeth. They alone are his legitimate
+and acknowledged children; the descendants of the grandmother and
+great-grandmother are illegitimate. {170}Still, whether acknowledged by
+the law or not, they all form a close chain, a single family, they all
+spring from the same god! Thus the humblest among them saw his rights
+secured for the future.
+
+I must confess that, the more carefully I examine these barbarians,
+whether they were gods or men, the more I am surprised to discover
+beneath the outward cloak of their fables so many correct ideas of order
+and of justice. These fables had, of course, their day and then passed
+away. Up to the present time, it is true, there is not much of the day
+gone; perhaps also Odin may be blamed for having invented, before the
+world was a few hundred years old, both the Middle Ages and the Feudal
+System. But it would be wrong to blame him, for it must be acknowledged,
+that in spite of the violence of their manners and the bloody nature
+of their worship, a certain civilization had at last appeared among
+the Scandinavians. It may be called brutal, I grant; it may be called
+aggressive even, but it was after all an improvement, and it has held
+its own in the North, under snow and ice, like the vigorous plants of
+our Alps. How comes it that the Germans and the Franks, more favored by
+climate and by contact with highly civilized nations, remained so long
+inferior to the Scandinavians in this respect? Perhaps they were more
+liable to be invaded than the Sons of the North; the Scandinavians
+invaded the continent {171}in all directions, but no one ever dreamt of
+invading their country.
+
+After having thus established the right of property and a certain social
+hierarchy, Odin had next instituted marriage with the symbolic ring, and
+finally courts of justice.
+
+But, since he had given to man an immortal soul, and since he held out
+to him reward or punishment in another world according to his deserts,
+Odin had been compelled to establish the first high tribunals in that
+other world.
+
+[Illustration: 191]
+
+We must, therefore, find our way to Walhalla and even to Hell, if the
+reader is disposed to follow us to that place.
+
+[Illustration: 195]
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+{175}Heaven and Hell.--_The Valkyrias.--Amusements in Walhalla.--Pork
+and Wild Boar.--A Frozen Hell.--Balder's Death.--Frigg's Devotion.--The
+Iron Tree Forest.--The Twilight of the Gods.--Idunas' Apples.--The Fall
+of Heaven and the End of the World.--Reflections on that Event.--The
+Little Fellow still alive._
+
+When the warriors were preparing for battle, a number of blue-eyed young
+maidens, mounted on {176}bright, shining horses, passed through their
+ranks, animating them with word and gesture, and whispering into their
+ears warlike songs to be soon changed into triumphal chants for those
+who fell on the battlefield, mortally wounded.
+
+[Illustration: 196]
+
+These maidens were the Valkyrias, those Valkyrias whom ever since the
+poets and painters of the Ossianic school have reproduced in a thousand
+forms. Nor must it be forgotten that this remarkable school, which the
+Scotchman Macpherson revived {177}towards the end of the eighteenth
+century, counted among its most ardent admirers two enthusiastic
+Frenchmen, whose names were Napoleon and Lamartine.
+
+These Valkyrias, beautiful nymphs of carnage as they were, delighted in
+the clash of arms, the shedding of blood, and the dying groans of the
+wounded, even in the odors exhaled by the dying,--a taste which seems
+little suited to fair, blue-eyed maidens. These unnatural tastes were,
+however, justified to a certain extent, by the peculiar mission which
+they had to fulfill, a mission of kindness and tender compassion. They
+walked to and fro on the battlefield, not to carry off the dead, but to
+gather the souls of those who had fallen. Of the _Seola_ (such was the
+sweet name of the Soul among the nations of Germanic or Scandinavian
+race), they rapidly asked these questions:--
+
+"Seola, did you belong to a free man or to a slave?
+
+"Seola, did your master honor the gods and the priests of those gods?
+
+"Did he keep his pledged word?
+
+"Did he die like a brave man, with his face to the enemy and not a fear
+in his heart?
+
+"Seola, did he ever fight against the men of his own blood and his own
+race?"
+
+The human soul, as soon as it escapes from the {178}wretched bondage of
+this earth, no longer possesses the sad power of being able to tell a
+falsehood; Seola, therefore, answered these questions truthfully, even
+though it were to its own condemnation. In the latter case the Valkyrias
+left it to the black Alfs, a kind of demons who belonged to hell; but
+if the Seola had belonged to a brave and loyal warrior, the Valkyria
+instantly unfolded her white wines and took it to Walhalla, the home of
+the gods and the paradise of heroes.
+
+This paradise, exclusively intended for free men, was still open to
+slaves also, if they had fallen by the side of their masters, or if they
+had thrown themselves voluntarily into the fire of the funeral pile for
+the purpose of continuing their service in the future life.
+
+Let us see whether the delights of Walhalla were sufficiently attractive
+to warrant such selfimmolation.
+
+The one great enjoyment of all who dwell in Walhalla was combat and
+strife. That is a matter of taste, but did they not carry combat and
+strife a little too far? They fought there for hours and hours, with
+eagerness, with fury, even piercing each other and cutting each other to
+pieces to their hearts' delight. It is true, that as soon as the dinner
+hour came the blood ceased to flow, the wounds closed their gaping lips,
+the {179}limbs that had been lopped off by the swords returned to their
+place, the broken heads and exposed entrails were restored without the
+surgeon's aid, not leaving a scar behind, and the heroes went arm in arm
+to dinner, looking forward with joy to a repetition of the same merry
+sport as soon as the meal should be finished.
+
+The fare at this table of gods and heroes does not seem to have been
+peculiarly wholesome; at all events it was not very varied.
+
+The pork-butchers' business was at that time uncommonly flourishing both
+in heaven and on earth. Tacitus tells us that among the races of the
+North, as far as the borders of the Baltic Sea, chieftains and matrons
+alike loved to wear suspended around their neck a small image of a pig
+as an emblem of abundance and fecundity. Rich and poor, all looked
+upon pork as the main supply of their pantry. The pig, however, was not
+deemed worthy to appear on Odin's table, and its place was taken by the
+boar: the gods lived upon wild boar, men upon domestic pig, that was the
+whole difference.
+
+I am often tempted to eat pork, and I am occasionally enabled to taste
+wild boar; but I must solemnly confess, swearing if needs be by my
+stomach, that in my opinion, the gods and the heroes had by no means the
+best of it. It may {180}be, however, that wild boars here below are not
+quite equal to heavenly boars.
+
+[Illustration: 200]
+
+However that may be, there appeared every morning upon the edge of one
+of the marvelous forests to be found in Walhalla, an enormous colossal
+boar, a very mammoth of a boar. The {181}heroes proceeded to hunt it,
+accompanied at times by Thor, by Vali, the skillful archer, or by Tyr,
+the one-handed god, who nevertheless wielded his sword with power and
+accuracy. Then the monster was killed, cut up and roasted, and all dined
+together.
+
+[Illustration: 201]
+
+The next day there appeared on the edge of the marvelous forest another
+wild boar, quite as fat and quite as enormous, in fact in every respect
+as attractive as the boar of the day before--some think it was always
+the same animal, come to life again. Then a new hunt and a new dinner
+upon roasted wild boar. Surely we poor people might become disgusted for
+the rest of our lives, one would imagine,--and those were immortal gods!
+What taste!
+
+But there is worse behind yet. The Scandinavian {182}paradise was by
+no means the only one where the pork-butcher was thus glorified. In a
+neighboring paradise, which the Finns had established, we are told by
+a learned writer, the rivers were flowing with beer and hydromel, the
+mountains consisted of lard and the hills of half salted pork.
+
+To help them in digesting their solid food, the Scandinavian gods drank,
+like those of Finland, great quantities of beer and hydromel; but they
+had in addition, an abundance of wine which they quaffed from gold cups.
+Wine! In this one word thoughtful historians have discovered a whole
+revelation.
+
+Now would it ever have occurred to Odin, in his hyperborean lands, where
+the vine did not exist and could not possibly live, to bring the fruit
+of the vine to his paradise? Did he know grapes? And when had he learnt
+to know them? But as I do not wish to interrupt my story, I reserve the
+discussion of this great and important question, with several others
+of the same kind, for another chapter, in which I hope to be able to
+develop my views fully and scientifically.
+
+Besides wine, beer, and hydromel, the blessed people in Walhalla had
+an additional precious beverage of their own, which it may safely be
+presumed, no mortal on earth has ever tasted. This {183}ambrosia of a
+novel nature was obtained by the gods and heroes themselves, on certain
+favorable days, from the white substance of the moon. Yes, from the
+moon! Did they quaff it in full draughts or did they inhale it through
+calumets? We do not know, but the nations of the earth saw in these
+periodical bleedings of the moon the reason for her divers phases and
+her gradual diminution. When she became reduced to a mere crescent,
+fright was seen on all faces and oppressed all hearts. Were the great
+people up there forgetting themselves in their celestial orgies, and
+would they drink up the moon to the last drop?
+
+It must be borne in mind that they, like the Germans, saw in the moon
+nothing but a transparent leathern bottle, filled with sweetened milk,
+and phosphorescent.
+
+Let us return now. To hunt the boar, to breakfast on wild boar, to dine
+on the same dish, day after day, to drink beer and wine, and from time
+to time that mulled egg which the moon furnished, to fight morning
+and evening, to die and come to life again, merely for the purpose of
+fighting again--these were the amusements of that delightful place. Upon
+my word, it took Scandinavians to be content with such pleasures.
+
+If Odin's paradise appears to us but little attractive, his hell, on the
+other hand, seems to have been {184}far from terrible, especially if we
+compare it with the hell of some of our great poets, such as Dante and
+Milton.
+
+The hell of the Scandinavians occupied the lowest depths of the world
+and consisted of two parts, _Nastrond_ and _Niflheim_. The latter is
+a kind of dismal vestibule shrouded in darkness, in which are seen
+wandering about the mournful seolas of those who have been neither good
+nor bad, neither heroes nor scoundrels, and of all who have not fallen
+by the sword. To die on one's bed or in an armchair, was a wrong in
+Odin's eyes, a grievous wrong, though not exactly a crime, since he
+punished it only with a temporary detention in those damp, low places,
+where darkness, silence, and weariness seemed to combine for their
+punishment. The dwellers in Niflheim had scarcely any amusement except
+their reciprocal yawns, and from time to time a flash of dim light which
+reached there when the little black Alfs came in or went out, busily
+engaged in conveying a load of souls.
+
+The great criminals were thrown into Nastrond, the real hell. What
+is very remarkable is, that here there were no braziers and burning
+gridirons to be seen, no furnaces and masses of flames as in all the
+other hells. This was a hell of ice; it froze here hard enough to split
+iron, and the damned shivered with cold. Dante mentions something of
+{185}the kind in his great work, but between the Florentine and the
+Scandinavian there can be no doubt who borrowed from the other.
+
+It was quite natural after all that in these win-tery regions of
+Scandinavia, where cold is the greatest evil to be dreaded, intense,
+continued, eternal cold should have become the terror and the punishment
+of the criminal. The idea of a hell of fire, so far from keeping them
+from the fatal slope, might very well have tempted some chilly scoundrel
+to commit a great crime.
+
+[Illustration: 205]
+
+The poor wretches who were shivering in Nastrond {186}with stiffened
+hands and eyes full of frozen tears, felt their tortures increased
+whenever Hela, the pale goddess, the queen of that place, Death itself,
+cast upon them a glance from her lack-lustre eyes.
+
+Yes, it was Hela who reigned over this frightful iceberg; her palace is
+called Misery, her gate the Precipice, her reception room Grief, her bed
+Disease, her table Famine, and her throne Malediction!
+
+The body of this terrible queen is party-colored, half white and half
+blue, and her breath is perfumed with that horrible cadaverous odor in
+which the Valkyrias delight.
+
+But after all, the names seem to be worse than the sufferings
+themselves; for excessive cold paralyzes pain itself, and there is
+nothing here to compare with those classic places where lava-baths,
+rolling rocks, flaming wheels, horses of red-hot iron, boiling pitch,
+fiery arrows and the snake whips of the Eumenides made up an infernal
+stock of tortures which might well tempt the imagination of the greatest
+of poets.
+
+In Nastrond there were no demons and no Eumenides; to be sure, there was
+a Bigvor and a Sisvor, furies if you will have it so, watching at the
+gates of hell, with the help of Gaun, the formidable dog, but all three
+are forbidden to enter within. {187}The place of missing monsters is
+occupied by some of those whom Odin spared on the occasion of his first
+campaign against the giant sons of Ymer, and by the wolf Fenris, whom
+the Ases had treacherously captured. There are also two other wolves,
+convicted of having made an attempt upon the life of the Sun, and all of
+these monsters are firmly chained and appear rather as sufferers than as
+tormentors.
+
+One of these days, their iron chains will be loosened; one of these days
+heaven will turn cold and hell will melt, and--then, woe to the gods!
+
+Listen! The moment is drawing near when all these mysteries are to
+be solved. The hour is coming when _you shall hear, when you shall
+understand!_ But before uttering these last words, final and at the same
+time fatal words, we must mention an event which at that moment
+occurred in the open assembly of the gods, filling heaven and earth with
+amazement, with pity and horror.
+
+It must be acknowledged that so far the heavenly personages have
+appeared to be rather kindhearted and mild. Odin, in spite of his Druids
+and their demands for bloody sacrifices, seems to have been full of good
+intentions. The god Thor, with all his somewhat brutal ways, rendered
+great services to mankind; and the same hammer, which protected them
+against the giants, afterwards served, {188}without the aid of
+geometry, to mark the boundary lines of their respective properties.
+The golden-teethed god, Heimdall, gave most undoubted evidence of his
+devotion to the human race and of his self-denial in his visits to the
+Grandmother and the Great-grandmother, and so did the other gods. But we
+had good reasons for not going through the whole list of the Ases. For
+there is one whom we keep in reserve so that he may appear at the right
+hour, and that is Loki, the god of evil and the genius of destruction.
+
+Surpassing Odin himself in his magic skill, fair of form and features,
+a smile on his lips--thin lips, however, the Edda adds--and apparently
+possessed of the most jovial temper so as to make him a most agreeable
+person, Loki is in reality a compound of the most hideous vices. He
+is the representative of hatred and cruelty, of envy, hypocrisy, and
+perversity. In fact, he is our Satan, before the fall. If he had been
+king of hell, Miflheim and Nastrond would both have been filled with
+more tortures and more horrors than all the other hells which are known
+to men.
+
+And yet he was the god upon whom the dwellers in Walhalla counted for
+their entertainment, and whom they had surnamed the Clown!
+
+One day an ancient prophetess returns to life, rises in her grave, and
+utters a terrible cry: "Balder, {189}fair Balder, is going to die!"
+With these words she falls back again upon her mournful couch and dies
+again--forever.
+
+[Illustration: 209]
+
+In the meantime this cry has been heard even at the top of the ash
+Ygdrasil. The Ases are troubled and amazed; they meet, they look at
+each other, thoroughly frightened, for on the life of Balder depends the
+existence of all the other gods. Moreover, {190}Balder the Bright is
+the glory of heaven and the love of the earth. Can Balder die, the most
+charming and the purest as well as the most beautiful of all the sons of
+Odin? He, who was so beautiful that Hela herself could not help smiling
+when she looked at him--he, so pure that no falsehood could be uttered
+in his presence and that a vessel containing an adulterated liquid would
+break instantly at his approach--he, so charming that all the gods love
+him as their favorite child, and that men have surnamed him Hope? No,
+no! Balder shall not die, said the Ases.
+
+His distressed mother Frigg, Odin's wife, shows her apprehensions by
+her intense anguish, and her sobs scarcely allow her to speak. She tells
+those who try to laugh at the sudden alarm of all who have heard the
+warning of the prophetess, that for several nights already she has
+been repeatedly, persistently warned in her dreams of the death of her
+well-beloved son. She would not believe it, she adds, but now she does
+believe.
+
+The divine sybil Vola, whose predictions have never proved untrue, and
+Skulda, the Norn of the Future, are 'summoned to appear. They consult
+with each other and this is their decision:--
+
+"Balder is in danger; Balder will die unless all earthly substances that
+can inflict death, are rendered powerless." {191}Frigg descends to the
+earth and speaks to volcanoes and water-spouts, to frost and hail, and
+they promise to spare her son. Among the aquatic powers, from the ocean
+to the smallest brook, among the stones, from the mightiest rock to the
+pebble, and among the metals, from gold to iron, there is none that does
+not swear the same oath. The plants also promise, from the oak to the
+smallest shrub and down to the humblest grass.
+
+[Illustration: 211]
+
+Triumphantly she returns to heaven to announce the good news. Everybody
+is overjoyed. They celebrate the happy result of her journey by a family
+dinner, at which Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself by his
+merry jokes. He had never appeared in better spirits; had never seemed
+to sympathize more warmly with the happy court.
+
+When the feast was ended and the last cups were drained in honor of
+Balder, some one proposed for the general amusement to try how far all
+these substances, vegetable or mineral, will be faithful to the oath
+they have sworn, when brought face to face with Balder. {192}Beginning
+with the most inoffensive of them all, they throw at him a clod of
+earth; the clod of earth breaks into a cloud of dust before it touches
+him. Then they pour a pitcher of water over him and the water forms a
+cascade above him without wetting even his garments. They try to strike
+him with a hazel wand; the wand, slipping from the hand that holds
+it, breaks in two. Balder is amused by the game and encourages the
+bystanders to renew their attacks.
+
+[Illustration: 212]
+
+The skillful Uller shoots at him a pointless arrow, aiming, from
+excessive caution, only at his shoulder. The arrow passes at a distance
+of twenty feet from its aim and continues its flight through {193}the
+air, like a bird in search of its prey beyond the clouds.
+
+Ten other assailants meet the same fate, trying their luck with a
+fragment of rock and a heavy branch in the shape of a club. But the
+fragment was of stone and remembered the promise given to Frigg, and the
+club was cut from a tree and the tree remembered the promise given to
+Frigg.
+
+Encouraged by so many reassuring trials, Freyr desired to try his magic
+sword, but for once the faithful sword was deaf to his orders. Thor
+brandished his hammer, but the hammer suddenly reversed its action and
+well nigh made him fall back upon his heels. Freyr's sword and Thor's
+hammer were both of iron and the iron remembered the promise given to
+Frigg.
+
+Loki took care not to appear.
+
+The sport was over, as it seemed, when suddenly the blind god Hoder,
+Balder's own brother, was seen to advance, feeling his way, towards the
+bright god. Hoder held in his hand a small bunch of leaves, a bit of
+grass, at least it appeared such after the fearful instruments that had
+just been brought into play.
+
+Immense laughter, a laughter such as the gods of Homer were in the habit
+of enjoying, broke out at the sight; Loki laughed till his sides shook
+and Hoder himself shared the general hilarity. {194}But he drew
+nearer and nearer, shaking his bit of verdure in the air; then, almost
+tottering and having learnt from the bystanders in what direction he
+would have to turn, he threw the slender twig against Balder, using his
+full force, which was prodigious.
+
+He hit Balder full in the chest and the god fell instantly. That bright
+light which was always shining around him became extinct; he closed his
+eyes, and lowered his beautiful brow deprived of its glory.....Balder
+was dead!
+
+He had been struck by a bit of mistletoe. Frigg had addressed her
+prayers to the oak tree, but she had not thought of the mistletoe which
+grows on the oak tree; the mistletoe had given no promise to Frigg. Must
+we look here for a symbolic meaning? Did this mean, that the Druidical
+mistletoe was soon to triumph over the gods of Scandinavia? This could
+not be so, for at the time to which we have come, there was no trace
+left of the wise worship of the Druids of the first epoch; the Druids of
+the second epoch were fast losing their power, and the Scandinavian gods
+were daily increasing in popularity, even beyond the banks of the Rhine.
+
+But we ought not to interrupt this account of Balder's death, which
+is as poetical and as touching as the most famous fables of Greece.
+{195}When blind Hoder, whose name must not be uttered, you remember,
+hears the cries of despair which break out all around him, and encircle
+him on all sides with maledictions, he is troubled and seriously
+distressed. Then, all of a sudden joining in the distressed cries of the
+Ases, he falls utterly overcome upon his brother's body and denounces
+Loki as the author of this calamity. Loki has reproached him for being
+the only one who took no part in the amusements by which they thought to
+honor Balder, and he it was who had not only given him the fatal
+plant but who had also directed his arm. Loki was jealous of all the
+perfections of Balder and he hated him as much as the other gods loved
+him.
+
+They look for Loki, but he has disappeared. No doubt he has tried to
+escape from the vengeance of the Ases by seeking refuge in the mountains
+among the giants, his natural allies, or perhaps in the deep sea, with
+the serpent Iormungandur.
+
+And whilst they thus lament, inquire, and investigate, Balder's soul is
+carried off by the black Alfs to Niflheim, the dark vestibule of hell.
+
+Odin still cherished hopes that his dead son might be restored to him.
+Upon his order Her-mode, the messenger of the gods, mounts his horse
+Sleipner and goes to see Hela, but neither promises nor threats can move
+the dread goddess. Fate has {196}decided, and Fate is above the gods, as
+the gods are above men.
+
+Then Frigg herself goes to see the pale goddess. Frigg weeps and the
+merciless goddess is unable to keep her heart from softening when she
+sees the tears of such a mother. She says to her:--
+
+"Let all created beings--mind, I say, all created beings!--give a tear
+to Balder, a tear such as you have' shed in my presence, and Balder
+shall be restored to you!"
+
+Frigg was unwilling to trust any one but herself with the effort to
+realize such hopes. Once more she went over the world, gathering around
+her all the races of men, one after the other, and as she mentioned the
+name of Balder, tears flowed from all eyes.
+
+For three months she visited all the forests and all the mountains,
+the seas and the lakes and the animals that live in the waters and the
+mountains; and seas and lakes and mountains wept. She went even to the
+abode of the giants, the enemies of the gods, and her grief made the
+giants also weep; every tree wept and every rock wept.
+
+Frigg thought her task was accomplished, and was filled with joy; but
+she heard that in the far East of Midgard there lived an old woman in
+the heart of a forest of iron trees. As she lived alone there, far
+from any beaten track, she had never {197}become known to the intrepid
+traveller. Now, however, Frigg sought her out by steep paths, cut up
+with gullies and fierce torrents, and at last found her. When the mother
+told her pitiful tale, the iron trees wept, but the old woman would not
+weep.
+
+[Illustration: 217]
+
+{198}They called her Thorck, and her heart was ten times as hard as her
+name.
+
+"What do I care for your Balder?" she cried; "what do I care whether he
+is dead or alive? You have other sons; I have not one left me. Once I
+had four, and all four were my pride, my delight. They were so fair!
+They were so tall! Your son Thor killed every one of them. I wept much
+at that time. Now, it is all over. Look for tears elsewhere, I have no
+tears to give to other people's sorrows!"
+
+Frigg bowed down before her, begged her, conjured her, and even fell on
+her knees before her; but the old woman was inflexible. Balder had to
+remain a prisoner with Hela.
+
+Some interpreters of Scandinavian runes have been of the opinion that
+the bereaved mother in the forest of iron trees was none other than
+Loki himself, changed into an old woman. That thought, however, is
+inadmissible. The Ases were beyond the reach of Hela, and Loki's refusal
+would not have rendered void the unanimous vote of all Nature, when
+tears of pity and sympathy alone were to be given as votes. It is much
+more plausible to suppose, that Loki had induced Thorck to refuse by his
+counsels and by his enchantments; through him the heart of the old woman
+had' become iron as well as the trees of the forest in {199}which she
+lived. Thus Loki had twice caused the death of Balder!
+
+It was at this time that a strange, almost incredible report was for the
+first time heard among men. The Druids whispered it cautiously into
+the ears of the initiated, and voices were said to utter it in the air
+during the night. This report, a terrible secret, a most unexpected
+revelation, stated that the gods were about to die! Thor would die,
+after seeing lightning become extinct in his hands; Odin himself would
+die, and so would the others. The fate of each one of them was depending
+on the fate of this fragile world over which they ruled, and this world
+had to perish because Balder had perished.
+
+What? Should the Universe change back into chaos? Was there no
+all-powerful will that could arrest the process of destruction before
+it was too late? But where could such omnipotent will be found, now that
+the gods were no longer to be in existence?
+
+Listen! listen to these verses from the Edda!
+
+"Who is the most ancient among the gods?
+
+"Alfader, that is, the universal father. He has always been and will
+ever be; he governs all things, both big and small; he has made the
+heavens, the earth and the gods. Odin created man, but Al-fader gave
+him his immortal soul!" {200}Thus we come back to the pure essence of
+an only god, who is ever the same, whether his name be Teut, Esus, or
+Jehovah; the other gods are nothing but emanations proceeding from him,
+living symbols intended to live for a few thousand centuries--that is
+all.
+
+"Do you hear? Do you understand now?
+
+"Do you understand why the great ash tree Ygdrasil is continually
+gnawed at its root by a dragon? Why four famished stags feed upon its
+foliage? You understand? Well!
+
+"But by what sign shall we recognize the approaching end of the
+gods--that which the Edda calls their _twilight?_
+
+"The most important among all the sacred books of the North, a volume
+containing the prophecies of the divine sybil Vola, the _Voluspa,_ will
+tell you.
+
+"When the fatal moment draws near, their voice will cease to be able
+to utter the accustomed chants, and the luminous brightness radiating
+from their bodies will fade away little by little.
+
+"When they leave their bath, their bodies will not dry at once, as they
+do now, but remain moist; drops of water will continually drip from
+them, and they will in this respect become like unto mortal men.
+
+"In order to overcome these first symptoms of {201}indisposition, the
+wife of the god Bragi, Iduna, will give them certain apples to eat,
+which she keeps in reserve. These apples will have the effect of
+strengthening them and of restoring to them a kind of fictitious youth
+for a few thousand years perhaps.
+
+"One day, however, their eyes will begin to wink; the next morning, upon
+awaking, their eyelids will be found closed, and then they will turn red
+and blear.
+
+"At table, when proceeding to their usual libations, their slightly
+tremulous hands will be unable to hold their cups steadily; some of the
+wine or the hydromel will escape and their garments will remain stained.
+
+"Woe to them if a grain of dust adheres to these stained garments!
+
+"Woe to them still more, if the wreaths of flowers or of jewels begin to
+fade and to wither on their brows!
+
+"Finally, when the sweet perfumes which now are exhaled from their
+bodies, change into acrid and sickening odors, there will be nothing
+left for them but to make their last will."
+
+I am well convinced that this last phrase has been stealthily introduced
+into the Voluspa by some kind of criminal and fraudulent trick. The
+rest, however, is a faithful translation of the original {202}text, as
+taken from the best authenticated editions.
+
+[Illustration: 222]
+
+"Then," the prophecy continues, "then three sacred cocks, dwelling
+in the three principal worlds, will crow and reply to each other,
+announcing the _Twilight of Greatness._
+
+"Then, everything on earth will be in disorder and confusion; families
+will be at variance with {203}each other, the claims of blood will no
+longer be acknowledged, and brothers will be arrayed against brothers.
+
+"Adultery and incest, robbery and murder, will prevail among men, and
+the age will be an age of barbarism, an age of the sword, an age of
+tempests, an age of wolves!
+
+"The wolves will be ready to devour the sun. Three long winters, with
+no summers between them, will cover the earth with snow and ice; the
+branches of the trees will give way under the immense burden; the sun
+will be darkened more and more; the moon will dissolve into vapor and
+the stars will go out; the mountains, shaking in their foundations, will
+be tossed to and fro like reeds in a river; the earth will reject all
+the plants, the trees, and the rocks which it now bears; the waters will
+cast the fish upon the shore and with them their algae, their corals,
+and even the bodies of shipwrecked men, hideous skeletons, whose
+rattling bones will chime in grimly with the warning of the rising
+flood.
+
+"Then the sea will grow dark, and upon its waters there will be seen
+floating that monstrous ship made of the nails of dead men. At the
+rudder, Ymer, the giant, will stand, having been recalled to life for
+a time, in order to assist Loki in scaling the heavens by the way of
+Bifrost, the {204}rainbow, at the head of the other Giants of the Frost.
+
+"Then Surtur the Black will arrive from the southern regions, from the
+realm of fire, with all of his malignant demons, bearing torches and
+ready to set heaven and earth on fire.
+
+"Then Hela, the pale goddess of death, will set free her prisoners, the
+wolf Fenris first of all, and march at the head of these monsters to
+assist the powers of the South.
+
+"Then the gods will take up their arms; Odin will gather them around
+him, and with them the heroes from Walhalla; and the last battle will be
+fought."
+
+But Vola's prophecy has to be fulfilled; the gods must perish, and the
+world with them.
+
+Freyr dies in the flames of Surtur the Black; Thor succumbs to
+the deadly embrace and the poisonous bites of the great serpent
+Iormungandur; but, before dying, he kills it. Odin is torn to pieces by
+the wolf Fenris.
+
+During the struggle, the heavens have been scaled and the genii of fire
+enter on horseback through the breach, while the giants shake the ash
+Ygdrasil, which writhes uttering long sighs, and at last falls with
+the heavenly vault which it has been upholding. The conquerors and the
+conquered alike are crushed under the ruins, and the world {205}being
+set on fire by Surtur the Black, vanishes in smoke.
+
+Thus the night of the gods has to succeed to the twilight of the gods.
+
+"O you, spirits of the mountains, do you know whether anything will
+continue to exist?" asks the Voluspa, at the end of these mournful
+prophecies.
+
+It must be admitted that this sombre and terrible conception is not
+without a certain poetic grandeur, a certain savage heroism, which we
+cannot help admiring. In these verses the Edda is in no way inferior to
+the most brilliant pictures drawn by Dante or by Milton, and more than
+once it approaches nearly to the Apocalypse. Thus, as the inspired
+Apostle saw a new heaven and a new earth, the Edda also announces the
+coming of a time, when a new earth, more favored and more perfect than
+ours, shall succeed the old earth.
+
+"When the earth is thus broken to pieces and devoured by fire, what
+shall happen next?
+
+"There will come forth from the sea another earth, more beautiful and
+more perfect.
+
+"And will any of the gods survive?
+
+"Balder will be revived and come forth from the place of departed
+spirits, to rule over the new world under the guidance of the
+imperishable Al-fader. {206}Then will be the reign of Justice."
+
+The mythology of the Scandinavians embraces, as we have shown, among
+its symbols all the great phenomena of Nature, the continual struggle
+between the two opposite principles, creation and destruction. Being,
+besides, more complicated and more intelligent than the mythology of the
+Gauls and the Germans, it deserved to fill a large space in our work,
+and such a space we have accorded it cheerfully.
+
+But why was it that the civilization introduced by Odin contributed as
+little as the philosophy of the Druids to the real well-being and the
+improvement of mankind? I think I see the reason.
+
+In the eyes of the German as well as of the Scandinavian, God was only
+just and rigid. The rule of the God of Love had not yet begun.
+Perhaps Balder was to inaugurate it in that other world which the Edda
+announced.
+
+Do you hear? Do you understand?
+
+Amid all the incidents which were to mark the general conflagration,
+there is one which particularly recalls to our mind a great historical
+event. Alexander of Macedonia once questioned certain Celtic ambassadors
+and was told by them, that what they feared most upon earth, was the
+falling down of the sky.
+
+This apparently lofty answer filled the young {207}conqueror with
+admiration, and it is still admired by modern students of history. It
+was, however, in reality nothing more than a simple, naive rendering of
+one of their articles of faith; for all their prophetic books threatened
+them with the destruction of the heavens.
+
+Another detail, the complete destruction of this globe of ours, after
+a series of fearful catastrophes, recalls to me, not exactly a great
+historical fact, but a simple game of my childhood, which may have
+been symbolic, nay, which may have come down to us from the Edda. This,
+however, I state with great hesitation.
+
+Did you ever know one of the merriest games, which was once very much
+the fashion in city and country alike, when a firebrand, a burning
+stick, or a bunch of straw set on fire, was quickly passed from hand
+to hand? To prevent its going out, while you held it, you were bound to
+pass it as quickly as possible to your neighbor, repeating at the same
+time the expressive words: "_The little fellow is still alive_." Your
+neighbor passed it to his neighbor and thus it travelled all around,
+always accompanied by the same, constant burden: "The little fellow is
+still alive!" This game was transformed during the Middle Ages, in
+the North, and especially in Bretagne, into the Torch Dance, as I have
+mentioned before. {208}Now I imagine that this game, in some way or
+other, prefigured the universal conflagration that was to come, and _the
+little fellow_ was the world.
+
+[Illustration: 228]
+
+But we must make haste to reach our great scientific discussion.
+
+[Illustration: 231]
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+{211}_How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time
+between one World and another.--How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.--How
+Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the
+Indians.--How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God
+Buddha.--About Mahabarata and Ramayana.--Chronology.--The World's
+Age.--Comparative Tables.--Quotations.--Supporting Evidence.--A
+Cenotaph._
+
+My reader has had a lucky escape.
+
+Determined as I was to fathom in this chapter the true origin of the
+Scandinavian religion, and inspired by the zeal of a recent convert, I
+had collected and compared every document that could aid me in proving
+the Oriental descent of the priests of Odin as well as of the other
+Druids. I {212}thought it was a beautiful doctrine, and especially an
+entirely new one.
+
+When I finished my chapter, which I thought was exceedingly well done,
+I read it to Doctor Rosahl, expecting, I must confess, to be warmly
+congratulated.
+
+"Why, my dear sir," he said, when I had finished, "you have made great
+efforts to prove a thing which has been established long since. All the
+master minds of France and Germany, to say nothing of other nations,
+agree on that subject. I mean men like Fauriel, Lassen, Lenormand,
+Ampere, Eichhoff, Saint-Marc Girardin, Marmier, Klaproth, Ozanam, the
+two Remusats, the two Thierrys, the two Humboldts, the two Grimms, not
+to mention twenty others.
+
+"Why will you come to their assistance after they have won the victory?
+Do you merely wish to display your scholarship?"
+
+I indignantly denied the charge, and seizing my manuscript with both
+hands, I resolutely threw it into the fire.
+
+A remnant of paternal weakness induced me, however, to retain the
+summary of that famous chapter, and I have inserted it here in its
+regular place, so that it might bear evidence of my wasted labor. As the
+_corpus delicti_ is no longer in existence, this summary may stand there
+like an inscription {213}on an empty tomb, to honor the memory of the
+deceased.
+
+My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph.
+
+I--a scholar! Great God! Let the reader not be disturbed. My purpose
+in writing this work was nothing more than to try and collect along the
+banks of the Rhine all the curious myths which have survived the ancient
+creeds of Europe; for they have all come to the great river. There the
+traveller finds piled up, after the manner of alluvial layers, all the
+ancient fables, all the marvelous and often childish tales to which
+the credulity and lively imagination of our forefathers gave a ready
+welcome. With the exception of a very few cases, in which the grave
+nature of the subject lifts me necessarily into higher regions, I wish
+mainly to tell you once more _Grandmamma's Tales_. That is what we are
+going to do next. The Edda itself has no other meaning, for _Edda_ means
+the same as our _grandmother_.
+
+No, I am too great a lover of tales of a tub ever to have claimed the
+reputation of being a scholar; but at times I like to glean a little
+where scholars have reaped. I have been shown the best spots, and I
+pilfer as well as I can--that is all.
+
+An ignoramus and a pilferer, I resemble a bee which might fly into a
+botanical garden and, utterly {214}unacquainted with the Latin names
+of flowers, carry off joyously a rich harvest, without pretending to be
+able to make academic honey.
+
+[Illustration: 234]
+
+[Illustration: 237]
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+{217}_Confederation of all the Northern Gods.--Freedom of
+Religion.--Christianity.--Miserere mei!--Homeric Enumeration.--Prussian,
+Slavic, and Finnish Deities.--The God of Cherries and the God
+of Bees.--A Silver Woman.--Ilmarinnen's Wedding Song.--A Skeleton
+God.--Yaga-Babcus Pestle and Mortar.--Preparation for Battle.--The
+Little Chapel on the Hill.--The Signal for the Attack.--Jesus and Mary._
+
+It is high time for us to return to the banks of the Rhine, where the
+two religions of Jupiter and Odin were about to meet face to face.
+{218}At that time the terrible prophecies of the Edda were far from
+being near their fulfillment; Odin had a long period of omnipotence yet
+before him.
+
+To the great surprise of the adversaries, the Romans, so far from
+showing any alarm at his approach, received him and his retinue of
+deities as old acquaintances.
+
+According to their unchanging policy they would see in him nothing but a
+Jupiter, and in fierce Thor another gallant Mars, somewhat sobered by a
+long residence in northern countries and excessive use of beer.
+
+The Romans looked, in fact, upon all of these Scandinavian gods and
+goddesses simply as upon myths of their own that came back to them once
+more.
+
+The poets hallowed these claims and the historians tried to justify
+them. According to some, Odin the Conqueror, a member of the family of
+Ases, had first given to some of his conquests the name of Asia (which
+might very well be so), and then receded before the Roman armies to cold
+hyperborean regions. Here he had adopted the gods of his new conquerors,
+hoping that they would, in return, make him victorious--which seems to
+me in the highest degree improbable. According to others, the poet Ovid,
+when Augustus had banished him to Scythia, had learnt the language of
+the barbarians, {219}among whom he was living, and finding them willing
+and eager to listen to him, had recited before them his "Metamorphoses."
+This was all that was needed to induce the Scythians to make for
+themselves gods after the model of the Roman gods.
+
+[Illustration: 239]
+
+Tacitus, Plutarch, Strabo, and a host of the most illustrious writers
+never hesitated to give currency to such childish stories, ignoring
+entirely the date of the Scandinavian religion.
+
+As Rome, however, permitted no human sacrifices, the priests of Odin
+and of Teut had at first withdrawn far from the beaten track, into the
+depths of dark old forests. There they could live quietly, practice
+without restraint the religion of their forefathers, and kill their men
+in perfect security. At least such were their hopes. The Roman soldiers,
+however, who handled the woodman's axe {220}as readily as the sword, and
+the spade as well as the spear, soon made big holes in these venerable
+forests, murdered the murderers, and overthrew their blood-stained
+altars.
+
+[Illustration: 240]
+
+{221}Occasionally it happened that the brave legionaries who were
+employed in these hazardous enterprises, did not reappear. The
+proconsuls, whose duty it was to keep Germany in order, would have liked
+to inflict severe punishment; but just then the great reaction began to
+set in, from the North against the South.
+
+Whilst Rome was making efforts to establish her power in Germany,
+certain German tribes, Franks and Burgundians, invaded France and began
+to settle down in some of the conquered Roman provinces. The proconsuls
+thought it both prudent and wise not to raise the question of religion;
+and for a long time a truce was tacitly agreed upon between all the
+different creeds, though not without some misgivings on both sides. Odin
+had his altars by the side of those of Jupiter; a temple in honor of
+Thor stood facing a temple dedicated to Mars, and if Bacchus, Diana, and
+Apollo had their sacred days, Bragi, Frigg, and Freya had theirs also.
+
+In spite of this general toleration, the parties watched each other
+carefully.
+
+Sooner or later a holy war had to break out; in certain regions it had
+already begun, when fishermen of the Rhine busily drawing in their nets,
+heard, for the first time, a still small voice coming down upon them on
+the waters of the river, which whispered the names of Jesus and Mary.
+{222}The same voice and the same names were simultaneously heard again
+and again before Strasbourg, Mayence, and Cologne. It was Christianity
+that was approaching.
+
+[Illustration: 242]
+
+These wondrous words, which now the river only {223}murmured, had soon
+after been forced by some mystic power from the lips of the Druidesses
+in their prophetic exaltation and from the priests of Jupiter, as they
+consulted their auguries.
+
+There was a Druid, who, in the act of sacrificing, was suddenly seized
+with inspiration, and dropping the bloody knife felt impelled to cry
+out: _Miserere mei, Jesus!_ and yet Latin had until then been an unknown
+tongue among the Druids!
+
+The nations stood expectant, waiting for the revelation of a new faith.
+
+Soon a number of fugitives from Tolbiac, returning to the Rhine,
+produced consternation in all hearts by the announcement that Clovis,
+the king of the Franks, who had long been suspected of a secret
+understanding with Rome, had gone over to the god of the Christians, and
+that the god of the Christians was at that moment advancing at the head
+of ten legions of destroying angels.
+
+When this news came, the rival religions laid aside their jealousy,
+and terrified by a common danger, joined hands to resist the invader.
+A general appeal was made not only by the followers of Odin to those of
+Jupiter, but also to the Northern gods, the Finnish gods, the Russian
+gods, and the Slavic gods. The danger was threatening to all alike, and
+they responded to the appeal and came to the Rhine. {224}We cannot so
+rapidly pass over this vast Olympian assembly of gods, a poet's dream,
+it may be, but a traditional dream, full of strange and striking
+splendor, which completes in a most unexpected manner the limited
+description we have tried to give of Northern Myths.
+
+[Illustration: 244]
+
+At this grand meeting there appeared in the first place a goodly number
+of Borussian or Prussian gods, among whom stood first and foremost
+Percunos, the divine leader of the heavenly bodies; Pikollos, whose
+face was as pale as Hela's and whose duty was, like hers, to preside
+over hell; exacting, however, from men nothing but prayers accompanied
+by beating hearts, he cared nothing whether he was feared or beloved. A
+third god, Potrympos, had the appearance of a youth, with smiling lips
+and with a wreath of wheat ears and flowers on his brow; this was the
+god of War. Of War? And what meant the smile on his lips and the wheat
+ears on his brow? They indicated that he was also the god of public
+supplies and even of love.
+
+It seems that, in ancient Prussia, War was the purveyor-general and
+supplied everything.
+
+In the retinue of this great trio, we find Antrympos, the god of seas
+and lakes; Poculos, the god of the air and of storms; then, after these
+gods ending in _os_, came other deities ending in _us_; Pilvitus, the
+god of riches, Auchwitus, the god of the sick, and Marcopulus, the god
+of the nobles. The latter was the terror of the common people, whom he
+held under an iron yoke. In order to {226}conciliate his good will, they
+prayed to Puscatus, another god in us, but a kindhearted god. He
+lived under an elder tree, and the price he exacted in return for his
+mediation was the modest gift of a piece of bread and a _schoppen_ of
+beer.
+
+[Illustration: 246]
+
+Although their priests were called Crives or Waidelottes, their
+ceremonies were, nevertheless, mere imitations of those of the Druids.
+The Borussians honored particularly the famous oak of Remowe, to which
+Percunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos paid a daily visit. To these same gods
+they offered their prisoners of war; but they were not sacrificed by
+means of a knife after the German {227}Or the Scandinavian manner. They
+destroyed them by fire or they gave them to be devoured to enormous
+serpents who lived upon the altar and for the altar.
+
+[Illustration: 247]
+
+Now all these gods have come to Germany accompanied by their monstrous
+reptiles, by griffins fearful to behold, and by demons summoned
+from hell, all called upon to take part in the impending struggle.
+{228}Almost at the same time with the Prussian gods arrived also the
+Scythian gods and those of the Sarmatians, the former in chariots,
+according to the manner of travelling which prevailed among those
+nations. They also bowed low, like their people, before the all-powerful
+Tahiti, the great representative of their religion, Fire. The Scythians
+had evidently derived very little profit from hearing Ovid read his
+"Metamorphoses."
+
+The others were but few in numbers; their representatives were their
+chief triad: Perun, their Jupiter Tonans; Rujewit, who controlled the
+clouds; and Sujatowist, the judge of the dead. These three brought in
+their train only Trizbog and the Tassanis, that is, the plague and the
+furies. Their other gods, unable to do anything for success in war, had
+wisely stayed at home.
+
+Can I neglect mentioning the names and attributes of these inoffensive
+local deities, whom the fierce Sarmatians worshipped. They were:--
+
+Kirnis, who causes the cherries to ripen;
+
+Sardona, who watches over the nut trees;
+
+Austeia, who presides over the education of bees;
+
+The sweet Kolna, who sees to the marriage of flowers.
+
+There were also gods or goddesses of corn, of the kneading-tub and the
+wash-tub, the god of flies and the god of butterflies; we must confess
+that {229}these deities could hardly have been very useful on the banks
+of the Rhine.
+
+But Odin and Jupiter could count upon more efficient and more reliable
+allies in the gods of Finland.
+
+The gods bear almost always the impress of the character of their
+followers and of those over whom they rule, and what other nation has
+ever given such proofs of undaunted courage as the Finns or Finlanders?
+Pirates on the Baltic, as the Scandinavians were pirates on the ocean,
+they shared with them the booty that could be gotten in all the Northern
+seas. They had originally come from the high table-lands of Asia,
+together with their brethren the Turks, the Mongols, and the Tartars;
+their first appearance was made under the name of Ugorians, Ogres, and
+surely the Ogres have made a lasting and a terrible impression on bur
+popular tales!
+
+The Finns consisted almost exclusively of sailors and soldiers, of
+miners and blacksmiths. To smelt iron and to fashion it into anchors
+for their ships, into lances, swords, and spears, was their principal
+occupation. Hence they paid special reverence to Rauta-Rekhi, the
+personification of iron; to Wulangoinen, the father of iron, and to
+Ruojuota, the nurse of iron. They worshipped in like manner with special
+zeal three sombre virgins, whose powerful breasts were running over
+with a dark milk, {230}which turned into iron as it cooled off, as water
+turns into ice when it cools off.
+
+Their principal gods, besides these whom I have mentioned, were again
+three, and, as usual, three brothers.
+
+The oldest, Vainamoinen, of hoary age, created celestial and terrestial
+fire, that is to say, the sun and the volcanoes.
+
+The second, Ukko, has to provide them with fire, so as to prevent the
+earth from returning to the condition of an immense icicle, and the sun
+to the form of a heap of extinct embers. Living in the clouds he now
+blows upon the sun and now upon the volcanoes so as to keep up the blaze
+in both, and encourages them with his voice, the thunder.
+
+Ilmarinnen, the third, a very industrious and most skillful workman, has
+forged the earth and the seven heavens by which it is surrounded; hence
+he is called the _Eternal Blacksmith_. He spends his life at the forge,
+making sometimes stars of all sizes and at other times spare moons.
+He has even made a silver woman, not for himself, however, but for a
+younger brother, whose manifold and incessant occupations left him no
+time to take the necessary steps for a suitable marriage. This woman
+of fine metal, well-made, beautiful, charming, and of the sweetest
+disposition, had but one single defect,--no {231}one could come near her
+without being chilled to the marrow of his bones.
+
+However, the most skillful blacksmith cannot be expected to make a
+perfect woman at the first trial.
+
+When the question of his own marriage was mooted, Ilmarinnen preferred
+taking a ready made wife, and, according to the usage which prevailed
+among the Finns as well as among the Germans, he bought one.
+
+For the sake of enjoying some relief after such a long enumeration of
+deities, now entirely out of fashion, I feel strongly tempted to insert
+here _a saga_, a Finnish legend, which treats of this very marriage of
+Ilmarinnen, the blacksmith, and was composed by his own sister. In this
+wedding-song, which is full of the sweetest and chastest sentiments,
+she exhibits the domestic life of these artisan-gods, who sometimes were
+disposed to beat their wives,--at least the saga suggests the occurrence
+of such events.
+
+Ilmarinnen has just been married and becomes impatient, he actually
+swears at not seeing his young bride come to him in great haste. Listen
+to what is sung to him, with an accompaniment on a small Kantele
+guitar, by his sister, the hostess of Pohjola, in order to calm him the
+better:--
+
+"O husband, brother of my brothers, you have {232}already waited long
+for the coming of this happy day; wait patiently a little longer. Your
+well beloved will not tarry long. She finishes her toilet; but you know
+it is far to the fountain to which she has to go for water.
+
+"O husband, brother of my brothers, be patient! She has just put on her
+robe, but she has only put on one sleeve. You would surely not have her
+appear before you with one sleeve empty?
+
+"O husband, she has just arranged her hair; a beautiful belt encircles
+her waist, but she has a shoe only on one foot; she must needs have time
+to put on the other shoe also.
+
+"Husband,.... here she is coming,.... but she has put on only one
+glove,.... give her time to put on the other!"
+
+When the young bride appears at last, the good hostess of Pohjola is
+suddenly deeply concerned for her:--
+
+"O wife, O purchased maid, O dove that has been sold! My sister, my
+poem, my green branch, how many tears you will shed!
+
+"Your family were very eager to have the money paid down for you in the
+hollow of a shield.
+
+"Poor ignorant girl, you thought you were leaving the paternal roof for
+a few hours, for a day, perhaps! Alas! You have surrendered forever, you
+have a master now!" {233}And then turning once more to Ilmarinnen, she
+adds:--
+
+"O husband, brother of my brothers, do not teach this child, the slave,
+whip in hand, the way she must walk.
+
+"Do not make her cry under the rod or under the stick; teach her gently,
+in a soft voice, with closed doors.
+
+"The first year by words, the second year by a frown, the third year by
+gently pressing her foot. Be patient!
+
+"If, after three years, she is unwilling to learn, O husband, brother of
+my brothers, take a few slender reeds, take a little broom-sedge,
+chastise her, but with a rod covered with wool.
+
+"If she still resists, well; cut a twig in the woods, a willow branch,
+not too stout, and hide it beneath your garment. Let no one guess what
+is going to happen.
+
+"Above all, do not strike her hands nor her face; for her brother might
+well ask you: Has a wolf bitten her? Her father might well say to you:
+Has a bear torn her thus?"
+
+Does not this Saga, with all its harsh allusions, breathe a most
+touching tenderness? It seems that the most delicate sentiments
+were preserved intact amid the coarsest manners and the most violent
+passions. What was your name, O naive muse of {234}Finland, who inspired
+the good hostess of Pohjola? Were you not perhaps a daughter of those
+beautiful Indian gandharvas, who said,--
+
+"The elephant is led by a rope, the horse by a bridle, and a woman by
+her heart."
+
+And does it not remind us of our humble and simple-minded neighbors,
+when we hear how this Eternal Blacksmith, this first-class god who has
+made heaven and earth, who buys a wife and beats her, expresses his fear
+of the reproaches of his brother-in-law and his father-in-law?
+
+After this pause we must go on describing the other armies of gods
+who had hastened to the banks of the Rhine in order to resist a common
+enemy.
+
+By the side of the heavenly representatives of Scythia and Sarmatia,
+of Prussia and Finland, we find other gods belonging to the different
+Slavonic races. But why should we repeat here a complete list of all
+this multitude of allies, whose curious names the most retentive memory
+could not possibly retain?
+
+Suffice it to say that the Lithuanians, the Moravians, the Silesians,
+Bohemians, and Russians were represented at this meeting by their most
+formidable deities. There was Ilia, the great archer, whose arrows hit
+the mark after having passed through a thickness of nine fir trees;
+Radgost, the {235}merciless destroyer; Flintz, the skeleton god, who
+bore a lion's head on his shoulders and drove a chariot of flames;
+and the giant Yaga-Baba, whose head reached high above the loftiest
+mountains. When a warrior was seized with fear before he beheld the
+enemy, he immediately took him from the ranks and brayed him in a wooden
+mortar with an iron pestle.
+
+All four of them brought in their retinue whole battalions of Strygi
+or blood-suckers, of voracious Trolls, Marowitzes, and Kikimoras, who
+smothered their victims; of Polkrans and Leschyes, the latter a kind of
+dwarf satyrs, who could at will change into giants, and the former half
+men and half dogs, singing and barking alternately. Their songs,
+as fearful as their barkings, spread terror around them, and they
+themselves killed at a hundred yards' distance by the venom of their
+breath.
+
+Such were the allies whom the Roman and Scandinavian gods arrayed
+against Christianity.
+
+When the new comers had been properly organized, Jupiter's eagle rose
+above the clouds, uttered three piercing cries, turning to the three
+points of the horizon, and at once from the East, from the West, and
+from the South, there came forth the gods of Rome and Greece, abandoning
+their mysterious retreats. There was Neptune with his Tritons, his
+Harpies, and his marine monsters; and {236}there was Pluto with his
+Fates, his Furies, and his whole host from hell.
+
+Odin struck his buckler, and from the far North came not only the gods
+and the Valkyrias, with the heroes of Walhalla, but even the adversaries
+of the Ases,--Hela, the wolf Fenris, the Giants of the Frost with Loki
+at their head,--and all enlisted under him to take part in the immense
+slaughter.
+
+Never had the armies of a Darius, an Alexander, an Attila, or a
+Charlemagne, presented a more imposing and more terrible aspect; nor has
+the world ever seen the like since.
+
+When the Sibyls and the Norns, the augurs and the witches had been
+consulted, the march began.
+
+A few miles from the other side of the river, in the direction of
+Argentoratum (Strasbourg), about half way up the slope of a gentle hill,
+there stood a little chapel which had not been quite finished.
+
+The Sibyls and Druidesses had pointed out this building as the end of
+the first day's march, not doubting but that the god of the Christians
+would appear at the head of his legions, to defend his temple.
+
+The Confederates were advancing silently under cover of the night
+in order to surprise the enemy, whom they thought fully prepared for
+resistance. Odin was in command of the right wing of the {237}army,
+Jupiter of the left. The Scythian, Sarma-tian, Borussian, and Finnish
+deities under the orders of Tahiti, Perun, Percunos, Wainamoinen, and
+Radgost, commanded the centre.
+
+As soon as they came in sight of the hill, they noticed a very peculiar
+twinkling light, which shone out from the deep darkness, and was
+surrounded below by a circle of light.
+
+Immediately the three light-footed messengers of the Roman, Slavonic,
+and Scandinavian gods, Mercury, Algis, and Hermode, were sent out to
+reconnoitre, accompanied by the Eumenides, the Valkyrias, and a small
+detachment of Lapithes and Centaurs. When they returned they reported
+that the light proceeded from the flaming swords of ten thousand
+destroying angels. They were quite sure of it.
+
+Some of the allies immediately rushed forth, as is the usage in all epic
+battles, to challenge the chiefs of the angels to single combat. But
+Jupiter and Odin, thinking that all these private contests can only
+jeopardize the success of the great battle, compelled them to obey
+orders.
+
+Thor, who had been one of the first to rush forth, was so much
+disappointed, that in his anger he let his heavy mace fall upon a little
+town that was on their route, and that might possibly have impeded the
+progress of the army. The mace {238}instantly returned to the hand of
+the owner, and then fell and returned again and again.
+
+[Illustration: 258]
+
+The barking of Cerberus, the three-headed dog, of his brother dog Garm,
+and the howlings of the Strygi, the Kikimoras, and the Polkrans.
+
+This was by no means all of the concert.
+
+Mars, Odin, Potrympos, and the other war-gods now drew their swords,
+which produced a fearful grating sound as they came out of their
+sheaths; next Jupiter sounds his thunder among the Romans, and after him
+thunder Perun among the Slaves, Ukko among the Finns, and Thor among
+the Scandinavians. The repeated crash of thunder. And thanks to this
+incident, the plain had been cleared and levelled at the same time, and
+the signal for the attack was given at once. The Corybantes beat their
+drums in muffled tones; the chants of the Bards and the Skalds responded
+from the right and the left wing, although their harps were soon drowned
+in the bleat of the trumpets, the furious {239}lightning mingles with
+the rumbling of the chariots of Tabiti, of Flintz, the skeleton god,
+and of Pocu-los and Stribog, the gods of waterspouts and of Northern
+tempests; the Egipans, the Cyclops, the blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen, begin
+to push immense masses of rock before them, brandishing entire oak trees
+as spears; while the Giants of the Frost with fearful clamor, which is
+taken up by the whole army of invaders, follow them, led by the equally
+gigantic Yaga-Baba, the terrible conductor of such an infernal concert,
+who marks the time by beating with his iron pestle upon his wooden
+mortar.
+
+[Illustration: 259]
+
+All these fearful noises, all these echoing explosions, seem to confound
+heaven and earth; the {240}horizon trembles and shakes, the mountains
+start and stagger.
+
+But the holy hill stands unmoved.
+
+The light which at first shone only at the base has gradually risen as
+high as the summit, and the little chapel now shines brightly like a
+brilliant constellation.
+
+Surprised at seeing no enemy appear, the army of the pagan gods makes a
+halt.
+
+Suddenly, O miracle! lifted up as if by a gust of wind from on high,
+the little chapel vanishes, and in its place is seen a simple altar
+surmounted by a cross.
+
+Before this altar stands a young maid, showing neither ornament nor
+weapon of defense,--a Virgin barefooted, with a child in her arms.
+
+She comes down the hill, a smile on her lips; the brilliant light still
+encircles her brow and the brow of the infant; she comes straight up to
+the allied gods, who begin to look at each other in utter consternation.
+
+She draws nearer, and all of a sudden an irresistible panic seizes
+Jupiter and Odin, Mars and Thor, Wainomoinen and Perun, together with
+the Eumenides, the Tassanis, the Cyclops, and the Giants, and all turn
+back towards the river, cross it in fearful disorder, and crush each
+other in their desperate flight, while their own temples and {241}their
+own statues fall to pieces in the universal destruction.
+
+Some of these were buried in the Rhine, where we shall hereafter find
+them once more; the remainder reached in sad condition their northern
+homes, abandoning almost the whole of Germany to Jesus and Mary.
+
+It is but right to notice that in all the traditions which speak of this
+struggle between the gods and the rising religion of Christ, no mention
+is ever made of the Teut and the Esus of the Celts, the Alfader of the
+Scandinavians, the Jumala of the Finns, and the Bog of the Slaves,--nor
+is the Unknown God of the Romans ever mentioned. The reason is that
+each one of these grand deities, like the Indra of the Indian heaven,
+contained all the others and represented to the mind the idea of the
+only one eternal God.
+
+This grand but vain effort of the pagan gods was made, according to
+tradition, about the year 510 of the Christian era. In the course of the
+same year King Clovis determined to erect a temple in honor of Christ
+which should be worthy of Him, and laid the foundation of the Minster
+at Strasbourg, perhaps with a design to replace the little chapel, which
+had disappeared in so miraculous a manner.
+
+[Illustration: 265]
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+{245}_Marietta and the Sweet-briar.--Esus and Jesus.--A malgam--
+A Neophyte.--Prohibition to eat Horse-flesh.--Bishops in
+Arms.--Interruption.--Come Home, my Good Friend!--Prussia and the Myths
+of the Middle Ages.--Tybilimts, the Black God.--The little Blue Flower._
+
+All who know me and esteem me will testify to my great natural modesty.
+Even when I have {246}to do with fables, I would not venture to
+invent the smallest thing; I am incapable of committing such a crime.
+Nevertheless, some of my incredulous readers, when they see the
+marvelous nature of the poem, in which the triumph of Jesus and Mary
+over the allied pagan gods was celebrated, might possibly fancy it to be
+a product of my imagination. In self-defense I feel bound to quote here
+one of the countless traditions which allude to this great event. I once
+more borrow from the Muse of the Finns.
+
+"There lived in those days a virgin who was so pure, so pure and chaste,
+that her eyes had never seen anything but the eyes of her sisters, that
+her hands had never yet touched a being in creation for the purpose of
+caressing it.
+
+"She lived alone in her chamber, in company with her distaff, and
+ignorant of what happened even within the narrow circle of shadows which
+the sun traced around her house, and the image of a man was as foreign
+to her eyes as it was to her mind. Her thoughts and her eyes had alike
+kept their chastity perfect.
+
+"She was called Marietta.
+
+"One day, on a fine spring morning, Marietta felt a vague and
+incomprehensible desire to enjoy the beauties of Nature. Her heart rose
+within her with strange emotion. {247}"Impelled rather by a desire of
+her own than by a command from on high, she opened her door and hastened
+to a meadow inclosed with a hedge, which was near the house.
+
+"In this hedge a sweet-briar was in bloom. She drew near to inhale the
+fragrance; she touched the flower, and that was all that was needed.
+Marietta became a mother, and when her son was born she felt by the
+boundless pride that filled her heart, that she had given birth to a
+god.
+
+"In the mean time the other gods of her own country and of the adjoining
+countries had been warned by their prophetesses that this child, born
+of a virgin and a flower, would one day drive them out of heaven; they
+assembled, fully armed and determined that mother and child must both
+die so as to prevent the threatened catastrophe.
+
+"At the moment when they were holding their secret councils, Marietta
+appeared in their midst holding her infant in her arms, and all these
+gods, who had until now wielded such absolute power, fled in dismay to
+the far North, and the icy gates of the North Pole closed behind them."
+
+This is the story of Marietta and her child Jesus.
+
+It would certainly seem as if this naive account, well known among the
+ancient legends of Finland, was nothing less than a slight sketch of
+that great epic poem which we have laid before our readers. {248}We have
+only filled out the details by the aid of similar documents.
+
+Henceforth Christianity enjoyed the results of that great day at
+Argentoratum. At a later period the conquered gods, it is true, showed
+once more signs of resistance on isolated points, but from the first,
+this triumph of Mary and Jesus, and perhaps also the victories obtained
+by King Clovis, changed the first dawn of Christianity in Germany into a
+kind of purifying conflagration, which spread rapidly from the Rhine to
+the Weser and from the Weser to the Danube.
+
+Curious circumstances sometimes came to its assistance. Thus, many
+Teutons had been taught by their Druid teachers to acknowledge but one
+single God, and this primitive doctrine naturally reconciled them to
+the new creed. But, more than that, the particular god whom they thus
+acknowledged, was called _Esus_, almost Jesus! Others had followed the
+example of the Slaves and worshipped the handle of their swords, which
+bore the form of a cross; they naturally recognized in the Christian
+cross a familiar emblem of protection and safety. Even baptism was in
+no way distasteful to the followers of Odin. They readily adopted, it in
+memory of the regular and regenerative ablutions with water which their
+ancient creed prescribed. Odin had said to them in the Runic chapter of
+the {248}Edda: "If I wish a man never to perish in combat, _I sprinkle
+him with water soon after his birth?_"
+
+Finally, this just man, put to death by wicked men, this risen Christ,
+reminded them forcibly of their own god Balder. Evidently the predicted
+time had come. Balder, the ancient prisoner of Niflheim, was about to
+renew the world; in his new shape, the Bright God was no longer the son
+of Frigg; he was now Mary's son and his name was Jesus.
+
+This disposition, however, although plainly shown in many parts of
+Germany, was by no means unanimous.
+
+At the table of King Clovis, the bishops, and Saint Reni himself, were
+compelled to sit by the side of Scandinavian Druids. When they intoned
+their Benedicite, the latter never failed to pour out their libations
+in honor of Asa-Thor and Asa-Freyr. In spite of all the heroic and
+indefatigable efforts of the priests, polytheism survived even among the
+new converts, who would walk devoutly in the processions of Christian
+worship, while they carried their idols and their fetishes under their
+arms, and who never failed to make the sign of the cross when
+they passed a tree or a spring that had been held sacred by their
+forefathers. What could be done to make them sincere and orthodox
+Christians? {250}Liberty, in the sense in which we understand it now,
+and have good reason to understand it, would have appeared to a Teuton
+or a Slave as a beautiful woman, with a wooden yoke around her neck and
+all her limbs in chains. Germany had her laws, as well as every other
+Northern country her written or unwritten laws, but the dignity of a
+freeborn man consisted mainly in disregarding these laws. The free man
+left his country, to engage in war wherever he chose, and his family,
+to live in any country he might prefer. It was the same thing with
+religious matters; he reserved to himself his independent judgment,
+the right to worship as he chose and the privilege of combining such
+articles of creed as pleased him.
+
+This curious freedom of religion, this curious amalgamation of creeds,
+produced the strange result, that the neophytes especially remained half
+pagan and half Christian, and preferred generally to "ride on the fence"
+between the two creeds.
+
+In the Nibelungen Lied, which we look upon as nothing more than a great
+epic poem of the Scandinavians, pagan at first but Christianized at
+a later period, men are represented as going devoutly to church after
+having consulted the Nix of the river as to their future fate. This is,
+no doubt, a true picture of the Germany of the early Christian days.
+{251}Some looked upon baptism, with its magnificent and pompous
+ceremonies, as a pleasure; others submitted to it for a consideration.
+Ozanam, who is exceedingly well informed about everything that refers
+to this curious period of transition in point of religion, tells the
+following anecdote:--
+
+[Illustration: 271]
+
+One day there was a crowd of candidates for baptism; each one of them
+was, as usual, dressed in white, as emblematic of purity. This symbolic
+dress, made of a suitable material, was a present from the Church to
+the neophyte, which he had carefully to preserve as an evidence of his
+conversion.
+
+Now, on that day, all the available robes had been given away, when one
+more candidate for baptism presented himself; the priest found at last a
+robe of light color, but unfortunately in wretched condition.
+
+"What do you mean?" exclaimed the neophyte, angrily drawing back; "have
+I not a right to claim a white robe as well as the others, and one of
+fine wool?" and looking furiously at the priest he added: "Do you think
+I am a man to be taken {252}in? This is the twentieth time that I am
+baptized, and I have never been offered such rags before!"
+
+The naive candor of this good Teuton could make me almost believe that
+he misunderstood the nature of the ceremony altogether, and looked upon
+it only as a gratuitous distribution of wearing apparel.
+
+Other more painful mistakes were made when the Christian missionaries,
+crossing rivers and seas at the risk of their lives, went to the
+uttermost confines of Germany, and there encountered half savage nations
+who were still worshipping the Scandinavian gods.
+
+The patient zeal, the gentleness, and the eloquence of these holy men,
+succeeded finally in overcoming the convictions of these barbarians, and
+in introducing among them not only the Gospel, but also the worship of
+saints. The people received baptism, and not only welcomed the saints
+with great eagerness and enthusiasm, but in their desire to do them all
+the honor in their power, they hastened to turn every one of them into
+a god! They erected altars to these new gods, and on these altars they
+offered them human sacrifices.
+
+These same missionaries had been instructed to prohibit the use of
+horseflesh among the new converts; but they found it very difficult
+to overcome a custom which at that time was very general. {253}We can
+hardly, at the present day, understand the importance which the Church
+attached to this abstinence, since now-a-days the best of people are
+perfectly willing to allow their horses to be taken from their stables
+for the purpose of being served up at table!
+
+[Illustration: 273]
+
+The most serious difficulty in all such critical periods is this, that
+while the true and faithful clergymen by their prodigious labors and
+admirable self-devotion succeeded in converting and disciplining
+great multitudes, false priests appeared among them, taking forcible
+possession of parishes and bishoprics, often without waiting till they
+became vacant. Pepin of Heristal and Charles Martel, his son, had just
+compelled the pagan Saxons to take refuge behind the Weser. When the
+war was over and they proceeded to dismiss the commanders of {254}this
+numerous army till the beginning of another campaign, as was the custom
+in those days, the majority among them claimed, as a reward for services
+rendered, the right to exchange the sword for the crozier and the helmet
+for the mitre. They evidently thought that the profession was an easy
+one to practice and rich in rewards.
+
+Pepin and Charles resisted, but they had to give way.
+
+To the great disgust of the newly converted populations and to the great
+injury of the holy cause, which they professed to have served, these
+warrior-priests brought with them into the Church the manners of
+the camp and the fortress. They surrounded themselves with squires,
+falconers, and riding-masters, with horses and hounds; they hawked, they
+hunted, they lived high, giving themselves up to all kinds of excesses,
+and drawing the sword against any one who should venture to reproach
+them.
+
+When war began once more, they almost all returned to arms, without,
+on that account renouncing their ecclesiastic duties. Gerold, Bishop of
+Mayence, perished in a battle against the Saxons; his son succeeded
+him on the episcopal throne, and had hardly been consecrated when
+he proceeded to avenge his father. He rushes into battle, challenges
+Gerold's murderer, kills him, and quietly returns to {255}Mayence for
+the purpose of officiating there at Mass and of returning thanks to God
+for his success.
+
+Such acts of violence and such worldly enjoyments were incomprehensible
+to the faithful; gradually the Church of the Apostles began to fear
+the Church of the Soldiers. The Saxons, having vastly increased their
+numbers by an alliance with the Scythians and Scandinavians, appeared
+once more in the field.
+
+"But," exclaims the reader, whom I fancy I hear at this distance, "but
+this is history, church history moreover, and you told us you would tell
+us all about gods!"
+
+I confess I did, sir; and that is the reason why I have traced out, on
+this historical ground, the narrowest and shortest possible path, on
+which I can safely return to my own domain.
+
+"Well, then, let us return, my good friend."
+
+I beg your pardon, sir, but before we return, allow me at least
+to glorify three men, who were called upon at that time to save
+Christianity, and with it civilization, by the pen, the word, and the
+sword. These equally great and equally heroic men are now three of our
+saints.
+
+"Saints again!"
+
+Yes, sir, the first is Pope Gregory, the second Saint Boniface the
+missionary, and the third the Emperor Charlemagne. Do not be afraid; I
+shall {256}do no more than mention them, for fear of going again out
+of my way and of speaking of forbidden subjects, against which you have
+warned me. Allow me, however, to add that if the struggle which the
+great Emperor undertook, was a long and ter-tible one, it was also
+glorious far beyond all. Was it not marvelous, I ask you, to see
+this nation of Franks, which but just now consisted of a mixture of
+barbarians, go forth under the command of their young king, to become
+the protector of Rome, of civilization, and of Christianity? The mace
+had become a shield, the siege-ram a wall and a rampart.
+
+"Of course! Everybody knows that!"
+
+But, did you know this, sir: When the Saxons, conquered for the tenth
+time, had received baptism, together with their king Witikind, when the
+Rhine, also baptized, had become a French river and a Christian river,
+when the whole of Germany bowed low before the cross, one of the nations
+of that country, the Borussians (Pruszi, or Prussians), refused to give
+up their old gods, and continued to refuse for several centuries to
+come? And yet it was so. The proscribed gods, finding a refuge on the
+banks of the Oder and the Spree, paid frequent visits, as was quite
+natural, to their former followers. It was thus that the old pagan creed
+was long preserved in the remote regions of Germany. You see, sir, I
+have returned to my subject. {257}Let us rapidly conclude this first
+part of our task, so as to reach at last the modern gods, who were as
+popular as the others, and in their way neither less strange nor less
+curious.
+
+During the time of the Middle Ages, Germany had been filling up with
+towns and castles, feudal dungeons bearing aloft a helmet and a
+cross. The cross arose wherever two streets met in a city and at every
+cross-road in the country; the most beautiful cathedrals in the world
+and the most magnificent monasteries were reflected in her broad river;
+and still, in field and forest, in city and country, and along the banks
+of the Rhine, the false gods were worshipped in secret.
+
+As the church taught that they were to be looked upon as demons, the
+people dared not treat them badly. Demons are not guests to be turned
+out rudely.
+
+"From the eighth century of our Christian era," says one of our erudite
+authorities, "the Saxons and Sarmatians heard the Christian missionaries
+speak so continually of the formidable power of Satan, that they thought
+it best to worship him secretly in order to disarm his wrath and perhaps
+to win his favor. They called him the Black God or _Tybilinus_; the
+Germans call him, even now, _Dibel or Teufel_."
+
+This Black God now became for all the German {258}nations the army
+leader of their proscribed gods, an army which was presently to be
+largely increased.
+
+The princes and knights, followed by their vassals, departed in large
+numbers, on the Crusades, but they brought back from the Crusades,
+together with holy relics, traditions of Gnomes, Peris, and Undines.
+
+[Illustration: 278]
+
+The Rhine, disgusted at the loss of his royal dignity, and determined to
+take his vengeance on the warrior-bishops, received these last arrivals
+as he had those who came before. In his healing waters the Undines
+mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads; the Gnomes found shelter under
+the rocks, where they were hospitably received by the Dwarfs, and in the
+evening twilight the Nymphs, the Elves, and the Dryads danced once more
+merrily in company with Sylphs, Fairies, and Peris.
+
+No doubt Christian Germany looked afterwards at all this more in the
+light of food for the imagination than of trouble for the conscience,
+but in that happy land, where people believe and dream {259}at the same
+time, and where the words of the poet are as true as the Gospel, the
+imagination easily gets the better of conscience. Thus the search after
+the little blue flower led many a learned man astray, far off into half
+satanic paths. Besides, it lies in the nature of the German mind, which
+has always a tendency towards idealism, its magnetic pole, to oppose to
+the orthodox religion another more secret and more mysterious creed.
+
+[Illustration: 279]
+
+This was the case already in the fourteenth and {260}fifteenth century;
+it is the case still in this, the nineteenth century, especially among
+the country people, who have passed through the age of witchcraft in
+which the Black God ruled supreme, and, completely modifying their pagan
+notions, have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken, the mountain of
+the Witches' Sabbath.
+
+Let us now see what the dwellers on the banks of the Rhine have done
+with all their old gods and demi-gods of every denomination.
+
+[Illustration: 283]
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+{263}Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.--_Sylphs,
+their Amusements and Domestic Arrangements.--Little Queen Mab.
+--Will-o'-the-Wisps.--White Elves and Black Elves.--True Causes of
+Natural Somnambulism.--The Wind's Betrothed.--Fire-damp.--Master
+Haemmerling.--The Last of the Gnomes._
+
+The reader is requested to recall what I have said before, that in
+Germany manners, customs, and creeds, matters of prejudice as well as
+matters of art, and even of science, may have a beginning, {264}but
+never have an end. In that ancient home of mysticism and of philosophy,
+everything is permanently rooted, everything is made for eternity, like
+those old oak trees of the Hercynia of antiquity: when the parent tree
+is cut down, and has no longer a trunk to bear boughs and branches,
+it sends forth new shoots from the roots. Druidism also has become
+permanent there. We have seen it fight against the gods of the Romans;
+it fought in like manner against Christianity under Witikind; it was
+kept alive, though in concealment, by the first iconoclasts or image
+breakers, and when that whole vast country was at last conquered and
+became wholly devoted to Catholicism, it broke forth once more quite
+unexpectedly in the first days of the Reformation. Luther was a Druid
+still.
+
+Thanks to this tenacity of life which characterizes creeds, and thanks
+to the prolific nature of that soil, whatever seems to have disappeared,
+rises again, under new forms, and whatever has perished is recalled to
+life in some way or other. Let us prove this.
+
+Among all those gods which we have mentioned before, none surely would
+seem to have been more readily forgotten, swept away by the wind, which
+they claimed to render useless, or buried in the dust with which they
+seemed to compete, than those tiny, microscopic deities, called Monads.
+{265}And yet this was by no means the case. Did they not, in fact,
+represent the elementary spirits? And the worship of the elements
+continued in spite of all other creeds which tried to suppress it
+forever.
+
+Only these atomic deities, still quite small, exceedingly small, had
+increased in the most astonishing manner, when compared with their
+original diminutiveness. They had even assumed a form and a body, a
+visible body and a shape by no means void of grace.
+
+They had become Alps or Alfs, better known afterwards under their
+Eastern designation of Sylphs.
+
+It happened occasionally that a belated traveller, a peasant or a
+charcoal burner, returning homeward from a wedding towards the beginning
+of night, would be fortunate enough to meet at a clearing in the woods
+or on the banks of a brook with a band of little goblins, who were
+making merry in the dim twilight.
+
+These were Sylphs, a little people flying in swarms through the air,
+making their nest in a flower or building one with a few bits of grass
+at the foot of a broom-sedge, and going out only in the evening to pay
+visits and as good neighbors to perform their social duties.
+
+If the traveller, the peasant, or the charcoal burner {266}had walked
+softly on the fine sand of the brook or on a grass-grown path on which
+his steps could not be heard, and if he had then stopped in time so as
+to be able to see without being seen, he might witness their gambols and
+ascertain the secrets of their private life, without running any risk.
+
+[Illustration: 286]
+
+Have you, dear reader, have you heard Mercutio, in Shakespeare's "Romeo
+and Juliet," relate how Queen Mab came, and say:--{267}
+
+     "Oh, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.....
+     Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs,
+     The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
+     The traces of the smallest spider's web,
+     The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
+     Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
+     Her wagoner, a small, gray-coated gnat!"
+
+Well, the peasant, the traveller, or the charcoal burner, enjoyed a
+sight which was by no means less curious.
+
+Some of his Sylphs, suspending a thread of gossamer from one blade of
+grass to another, made a delightful swing for their amusement, or took a
+spiders web to supply them with a hammock. Others danced wildly about
+in the air, beating their tiny wings with harmonious accuracy and
+furnishing thus an orchestra for the aerial ball.
+
+Not far from them some little sylph ladies, no doubt excellent
+housekeepers, were washing their linen in the beams of the moon, or
+preparing a feast.
+
+The provisions consisted of a mixture of honey with the nectar of
+flowers, a few drops of milk which the hanging udders of young heifers
+had left on the high grass, and a few pearls of that precious dew which
+aromatic plants secrete; this mixture was used as a seasoning for some
+butterfly-eggs beaten up white as snow.
+
+If during the repast darkness fell upon them and {268}suddenly
+covered the guests with its sombre cloak, other hobgoblins, the
+Will-o'-the-Wisps, with wings of fire, came and took seats at the
+hospitable table, paying for their entertainment by diffusing a pleasant
+light all over the place.
+
+The principal occupation of these elves consisted in walking before
+the wanderer who had lost his way so as to lead him back again into the
+right path.
+
+Such were some of the harmless spirits of Air and Fire. Everything
+has, however, been changed in these two elements. The Will-o'-the-Wisps
+especially, angry at the reports of wicked people, that they are nothing
+more than the products of burning hydrogen, or at best phosphorus in
+a volatile form floating above damp places, have conceived a veritable
+hatred against men and now only appear when they wish to tempt
+travellers into marshes and deep ravines.
+
+As to the Sylphs, they also seem to have heard similar stories which
+have been told about them, or they may have been irritated by the
+chemist Liebig, who in his "Treatise on the Composition of the Air,"
+absolutely denies their existence, having found in his apparatus neither
+Sylphs nor Sylphides.
+
+They have changed into faithless Elves, hostile to men, like the other
+Gnomes.{269}
+
+[Illustration: 289]
+
+{271}The Fairies of our day are divided into two formidable classes.
+
+The White Fairies are damsels who wander about on meadows and in woods,
+like the Willis of the Slaves, and lie in wait for inexperienced young
+men, whom they persuade to join in their dances and keep dancing, till
+they lose their breath and generally fall to the ground never to rise
+again. German stories are full of such wicked tricks. The place where
+they perform their diabolic dances, becomes quite silvery under their
+feet. The shepherds can thus at once recognize the place where they have
+been, and are sure to hasten away at once with their flocks.
+
+[Illustration: 291]
+
+The Black Fairies personify Nightmare and Somnambulism, but only Natural
+Somnambulism, it must be borne in mind. {272}When men fall into this
+state, the Black Elf directs all the motions of the sleeper; he lives in
+him, thinks and acts for him, makes him get upon the furniture and climb
+upon roofs, and keeps him from falling, unless... Poor sleeper, he allowed
+them breath enough to swell the sails of a vessel or to chase the clouds
+from one end of the heavens to another.
+
+Among the Celts all magicians had been able to command the winds and
+the tempests at will; even now certain men in Norway and in Lapland will
+sell you, for a small price, the wind you desire to carry you home.
+
+Careful! The Black Fairies are treacherous and cruel; the Fairy who
+controls you for the moment may at any moment take a fancy to throw you
+from your height.
+
+[Illustration: 292]
+
+The Alfs, who have thus become Elves or Fairies, are of course not the
+only Spirits of the Air; their fragile and delicate structure would
+never have al{272}In Germany, on the contrary, the wind was looked upon
+as an elementary power. It was not deified, as in Rome, where there was
+a whole windy family of gods, like Eurus, AEolus, Boreas, and Favonius,
+but it was an important personage, with a will of his own and
+independent action. The poets did their part to give importance to
+_Master Wind._
+
+I have in my hand a ballad, which will enable the reader to judge for
+himself:--
+
+"Gretchen, the pretty miller's daughter, was courted by the son of the
+king. Her father, the miller, knowing that kings' sons are not apt to
+marry, had chosen her a husband, a young flour merchant from Rotterdam.
+
+"The Dutchman was on his way up the Rhine; that very evening he was
+expected to arrive, to make his proposals.
+
+"Gretchen called upon Master Wind to help her; he came in by the window,
+but not without breaking a number of panes.
+
+"'What do you wish me to do?'
+
+"'A man wants to marry me, against my will; he is coming in a sail boat;
+contrive it so that he cannot land at Bingen.'
+
+"The wind blew, and blew so well that the boat, instead of coming up to
+Bingen, was driven back again as far as Rotterdam. {274}"At Rotterdam
+also it could not make land; it was driven into the North Sea, and there
+the Dutchman is perhaps still sailing about at this day.
+
+"But Master Wind had made his conditions before he went to work blowing
+so well; and the pretty miller's daughter had agreed to them without
+hearing them, for all around her the furniture, the doors, and the
+blinds were shaking and rattling furiously, thanks to her visitor. Thus
+it came about that poor Gretchen found herself betrothed to Master Wind,
+which made her very sad, for now she had less hope than ever of marrying
+the king's son.
+
+"However, Master Wind was as gallant towards his fair betrothed as he
+could be. Every morning, when she opened her window, he would throw
+her in beautiful bouquets of flowers which he had torn off in the
+neighboring gardens.
+
+"If any young man of the village, whom she had rejected, passed without
+saluting her, Master Wind was promptly at hand to carry off his hat
+and send it up in the air so high, that soon it looked no bigger than a
+lark. It was well for him that Master Wind did not, with the hat, take
+his head off at the same time.
+
+"One day (when Master Wind must have been asleep), the king's son came
+to the mill, made his {275}way without difficulty to Gretchen's chamber,
+and forthwith desired to kiss her. Gretchen did not object. But at once,
+and although out of doors all was quiet, the tables and chairs performed
+a wild dance, and the doors and windows began to slam as if they had
+been mad.
+
+"Gretchen herself began to twirl around and around in the most
+unaccountable manner; her hair was loosened by an invisible hand and
+whisked about her head with strange rustling and dismal whistling.
+
+"Terrified by the sight of a tempest in a close room, the prince
+cried:--
+
+"'Ah! accursed one, you are the betrothed of Master Wind!'
+
+"And at the same moment a terrible gust of wind carried off the king's
+son, the miller's daughter, and the mill, and no one ever saw or heard
+anything more of them.
+
+"Perhaps they went to join the Dutchman, who was all the time sailing
+about in the North Sea, or the hat, which was still on its way in the
+clouds."
+
+The legend does not tell us whether it was before or after this
+occurrence that Master Wind married Mistress Rain.
+
+So much for the Spirits of the Air.
+
+As for the Spirits of the Fire, it must be remembered {276}that the
+Will-o'-the-Wisps were by no means their only representatives. There
+were also Salamanders, too well known to be described here; and St.
+Elmo Fires, near relations of the Will-o'-the-Wisps. But we must pause
+a moment to speak of the formidable Fire-damp, the miner's terror. The
+remarkable feature about it is that it plays so insignificant a part in
+the popular German myths, although it has destroyed so many victims in
+all mountainous countries, and above all in the Hartz mountains.
+
+This subterranean lightning, far more fatal than that of the upper
+regions, is known to the people of the Rhine simply as a tall monk, whom
+they call Master Haemmerling.
+
+Master Haemmerling visits the mines from time to time in the guise of a
+harmless amateur, or of an inspector, who is not fond of being hurried.
+However, on Fridays especially, he is subject to violent attacks of
+anger. If a laborer handles his pickaxe awkwardly, or if he is insolent
+to his master, or the master harsh to him and requiring too much, he is,
+quick as a flash of lightning, between them when they are as yet half
+way under ground. Then he suddenly draws his long legs together, and
+between his two knees crushes their heads with as little hesitation and
+ceremony as a mother would show in destroying between her two thumbs the
+{277}little hateful insect that has troubled her darling child.
+
+Nothing more need be said of the elementary spirits of Air and Fire;
+but as we have followed Master Haemmerling into the lower depths of
+the mountains, we might just as well remain there a while and make the
+acquaintance of the Gnomes, the Spirits of the Earth.
+
+Can you see, through the dense air which fills these immense caverns,
+the long, gigantic stalactites, reaching from the ceiling to the
+floor and strongly impregnated with iron? They are the columns of this
+subterranean palace, and around these stalactites, peaceful, slumbering
+waters form a kind of little lakes, the shores of which look as if they
+were covered with rust.
+
+Here and there, in the damp low grounds, half choked with ore and slag
+of various kinds, dark reeds are growing in the shape of lizards; like
+lizards they bend backwards, moving their heads from side to side and
+showing thus the diamond eye which shines brilliantly at the extreme
+end.
+
+These dark depths seem to teem with fantastic creatures; close by a
+heap of grains of gold, stands immovable a watchful, silent guardian,
+a griffin; a pack of black dogs, also guardians of the treasures hid in
+this world of precious metals and {278}stones, are roaming incessantly
+along the ceiling. On the sloping sides, dwarfs not larger than
+grasshoppers, and jumping about like peas in the sieve of the winnower,
+are gathering right and left the tiny gold and silver spangles which
+are left at their disposal, while enormous toads are posted about as
+watchmen.
+
+Finally, far back in the remotest part of these abysses the kings of
+this empire are moving about; these thick-set men, with stout limbs and
+monstrous heads, are the Gnomes.
+
+But people hardly believe in Gnomes any longer; the hard-working miners
+who ought to come every day in contact with them, deny their existence,
+and they have gradually passed into the class of fabulous beings.
+
+Still, I am told that as recently as last year, a pretty peasant girl
+from the neighborhood of Hamburg appeared on a certain evening at a
+ball, with a large ruby on her finger. She professed to have received
+this gem from an Earth Spirit, who had appeared to her at the entrance
+to the Faunus mines.
+
+The gossips of the village were not satisfied, however, with the
+account, and suspected the Gnome to have been an English Gnome, who
+was travelling abroad for his health and courting pretty girls for his
+amusement. This conviction {279}was so strong that the poor girl had to
+leave the country in disgrace.
+
+This is the last Gnome that has been mentioned in that part of Germany.
+
+[Illustration: 299]
+
+[Illustration: 303]
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+{283}Elementary Spirits of the Water.--_Petrarch at Cologne.--Divine
+Judgment by Water.--Nixen and Undines.--A Furlough till Ten
+o'clock.--The White-footed Undine.--Mysteries on the Rhine.--The Court
+of the Great Nichus.--Nix-COBT, the Messenger of the Dead.--His Funny
+Tricks.--I go in Search of an Undine._
+
+"After leaving Aix-la-Chapelle, I had stopped at Cologne, on the left
+bank of the Rhine, which I then found completely covered with several
+rows of women, a countless and charming multitude....
+
+"Adorned with flowers or aromatic herbs, the sleeves {284}pushed up above
+the elbow, they dipped their soft white hands and arms into the river,
+murmuring certain mysterious words which I could not understand.
+
+"I questioned some people. They told me it was an ancient custom of the
+country. Thanks to these ablutions and certain prayers which accompanied
+them, the river carried down with it all the diseases, which would
+otherwise have attacked them during the coming year. I answered,
+smilingly: 'How happy the people of the Rhine must be if the kind river
+thus takes all their sufferings to distant countries! The Po or the
+Tiber have never been able to do as much for us.'"
+
+These are the words which Petrarch wrote in one of his familiar letters,
+written on St. John's Eve.
+
+This letter, as precious by its date as by its contents, proves beyond
+all question, that in the fourteenth century the Rhine was popularly
+worshipped and adored on the very days on which the summer solstice is
+celebrated by bonfires after the manner of the old fire worshippers.
+
+Unfortunately the Christians ended by appealing to the elements, to Fire
+or Water, as to a judicial authority.
+
+The popular notion that the elements were perfectly pure and would hence
+instinctively reject every impure substance, led naturally to ordeals
+{285}by water. The accused was undressed; his hands and feet were tied
+crosswise, the right hand to the left foot and the right foot to the
+left hand, and thus bound he was thrown into a river or any watercourse
+that was deep enough. If he floated, he was guilty and instantly burnt;
+if he sank and remained for some time at the bottom of the water, he was
+considered innocent--but he was drowned.
+
+Heinrich Heine, at least, tells us that this was the infallible result
+of justice in the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages ended in Germany but
+yesterday.
+
+There was also a trial by bread and cheese (_exorcismus panis hordeacei,
+vel casei, ad probationem veri_), but bread and cheese are not elements.
+Let us return to the elementary spirits of Water.
+
+During the great religious reaction which took place after the days
+of Charlemagne, all the mythological gods of rivers and streams
+had gradually returned, more or less successfully, to their former
+occupations. The great Nix or Nichus, upon whom devolved the rule over
+all the rivers of Germany, was no other than the ancient Niord, a
+very important deity and a kind of Northern Neptune. This very weighty
+discovery is due to the learned Mallet.
+
+No doubt this god Niord was one of those who, on their disastrous flight
+from Argentoratum, had {286}fallen into the Rhine. They thought that he
+was drowned, but he had only taken refuge in one of the lowest, almost
+unfathomable depths of the river. From this safe retreat the great
+Nichus had defied the decrees of Councils and the anathemas of the
+Christians hurled against all elementary spirits alike; there he had
+summoned the subaltern deities of sources, ponds, lakes, and smaller
+streams, the nymphs of the banks, and the hideous, scaly monsters which
+swarmed at the bottom of the river. Organizing all these into a people,
+an escort, and an army, he had come forth and invaded at the head of his
+host the banks of the Neckar and the Main, the Moselle and the Meuse,
+the great tributaries of the Rhine, and governed the inhabitants of the
+banks by terror. More than once he had extended his ravages far beyond
+the plains, overthrowing churches that had but just been completed, and
+drowning in his waters all the deserters from the altars of Odin.
+
+Niord was a wicked god, who had a fearful temper. He held his subjects,
+to whatever class they might belong, completely under his yoke, treating
+them capriciously and cruelly, and making of the Rhine a hell of waters.
+
+It is to this dark and damp kingdom of the great Nichus that we have to
+go in order to make the acquaintance, not of his great dignitaries, but
+{287}of the very humblest and lowest of his subjects, the Nixen and the
+male and female Undines, a race of anathematized demons, who make up, by
+themselves, almost the whole population of this realm beneath the waters
+of the Rhine.
+
+What! Must we really count our beautiful Lore, the charming fairy
+Lorelei, you who preferred death to the punishment of making all men
+fall in love with you, much as you loved men in general, must we count
+you among the demons, evildoing and accursed sprites? No! How public
+opinion has stoutly held its own in defiance of all the decrees of the
+Church. Nixen, like the Fairies, are by common consent divided into two
+classes: Nixen proper, who are former pagan deities and not too much to
+be dreaded, and female Nixen, almost always harmless and at times even
+useful.
+
+It is these latter only of whom we shall hereafter speak as Undines.
+
+The Nixen of the first class are ever ready to assume any disguise that
+may aid them in attaining their purpose. Some of them roam about in
+deserted places near the banks of rivers; others have at times
+appeared in the neighboring towns, pretending to be foreign ladies of
+distinction, or artists, generally great performers on the harp. Here
+they have begun intrigues with credulous lovers or unlucky admirers.
+Others appear at village {288}celebrations, mingling in the dance with
+such energy, that their partners are intoxicated, carried away, and,
+losing their heads, think they continue to hear the sound of harps and
+violins, while they are already far away, led on by imaginary music, and
+only return to consciousness on the banks of the river, at the moment
+when they are about to sink helpless into the waters of the Rhine.
+
+[Illustration: 308]
+
+One important point, however, must not be overlooked. To protect
+one's self against the allurements of these accursed fairies, a bit of
+horehound or marjoram is sufficient. We hope all who propose visiting
+the Rhine will be careful always to keep such an herb on their person.
+Before they take out their passports they ought always to pay a visit to
+an herbalist.
+
+The second class of Nixen, the only one in which we are interested, the
+Undines, are, as far as I have been able to learn, the restless souls of
+{289}poor girls who, driven to despair by love, have thrown themselves
+into the Rhine. Unfortunately German lovers, not very courageous at
+best, are but too apt to seek relief in suicide.
+
+[Illustration: 309]
+
+According to the somewhat uncertain information for which I am indebted
+to my authorities or to my intercourse with the Rosahl family, the
+Undines {290}are born as human beings and very inferior in power to
+the genuine Nixen. They live under the water exactly the same time they
+would have lived on earth, if they had not voluntarily put an end
+to their existence. They are thus granted a kind of exceptional
+resurrection and have here a preliminary purgatory, in which they but
+too frequently expiate, if not the sin of their love, at least that of
+their death.
+
+In the lowest depths of the river, at the bottom of vast, submerged
+grottoes, a secret tribunal, presided over by the great Nichus, holds
+its solemn meetings. Here they are disciplined with the utmost severity,
+as is abundantly proven by a great number of terrible stories, such as
+the account of the three Undines of Sinzheim, which the two brothers
+Grimm report in their great work.
+
+Three young girls of marvelous beauty, three sisters, appeared every
+evening at the social meetings of Epfenbach, near Sinzheim and took
+their seats among the linen-spinners. They brought new songs and merry
+stories which no one had heard before. Where did they come from? No one
+knew, and no one dared to ask for fear of appearing suspicious. They
+were the delight of these meetings, but as soon as the clock struck ten
+they rose, and neither prayers nor supplications could induce them to
+stay a moment longer. {291}One evening the schoolmaster's son, who had
+fallen in love with one of them, undertook to prevent their departure
+at the usual hour; he put back the wooden clock, which usually gave them
+warning.
+
+[Illustration: 311]
+
+The next day some people from Sinzheim, who were walking by the side
+of the lake, heard groans rising from the depths of the lake, while the
+surface was stained by three large spots of blood. From that time the
+three sisters were never seen again at the evening assemblies, and
+the school{292}master's son faded away gradually. He died very soon
+afterwards.
+
+These three sisters, so gentle, so lovely and laborious, had in nothing
+betrayed a connection with the spirits of the lower world. The only
+thing was, that people remembered how the hems of their garments had
+frequently been wet, a sure sign by which Undines can be recognized.
+Otherwise they seem to have been very much like other girls, and the
+severity of the great Nichus appears hardly reasonable.
+
+As to this hour of ten o'clock, however, military rules cannot be more
+rigorous than his.
+
+It must, on the other hand, not be imagined that all Undines are as
+gentle and resigned as these three sisters. There are some who bitterly
+resent having been abandoned by their lovers, and try to revenge
+themselves; these seem to partake to some degree of the character of
+the Nixen, or rather,--why should we not say so at once and quite
+candidly?--they remain faithful to their instincts as women.
+
+As a proof of this statement I will quote a short but perfect little
+drama, which Miss Margaret Rosahl has, at my request, copied from
+Busching's voluminous collection.
+
+Count Herman von Filsen, whose estates lay on the right bank of the
+Rhine, between Oslerspey {293}and Brauback, was about to marry the rich
+heiress of the castle of Rheins, on the other bank. His messenger had
+started to carry the letters of invitation to all the guests, but a
+sudden rise of the waters had nearly prevented his crossing a small
+stream. In trying to get over, his horse stumbled, and was drowned. The
+messenger, however, did not lose courage, but went on his way on foot.
+Everywhere he found the brooks swollen into streams, and the torrent
+seemed to press him more and more closely, describing curves and
+zigzags, with countless cataracts, barring him the way on all sides and
+making the usual path impassable.
+
+By the aid of a huge stick and jumping from rock to rock, the poor, half
+bewildered man kept on, walking well-nigh at hap-hazard, till he found
+himself near the Rhine, into which the swollen torrent, rushing after
+him with sudden fury, seemed determined to push him.
+
+Fortunately a small boat was lying quite near the shore: he loosened it,
+took the oars, and returned to Filsen.
+
+When he reached the castle he said to the Count: "Sir, a Nix has barred
+me the way."
+
+The Count did not believe in Nixen. He sent out another messenger. But
+the same adventure befell him.
+
+The wedding day had been fixed and the Count {294}went on, although he
+feared his friends and followers would be few in number.
+
+One morning, as he crossed the river from the right bank to the left,
+in order to pay a visit to his lady love, a sudden tempest broke out. He
+thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters, bending over the
+bow of the boat and trying to draw it down into the abyss beneath
+the waters. Thereupon he became thoughtful, sent for his steward,
+and ordered him to find out what had become of a certain girl of the
+neighborhood, Gott-friede from Braubach.
+
+[Illustration: 314]
+
+{295}"I met her a few days ago," replied the steward, "as she was going
+to St. Marks Chapel, and I offered her holy water. Gottfriede asked me
+about your approaching wedding. She was very well, and seemed to be in
+good spirits."
+
+"Go and see if you can find her," said the Count, "and bring me word."
+
+[Illustration: 315]
+
+During the wedding feast Hermann von Filsen appeared joyous and
+attentive to his bride, the new Countess, but the effort to appear so
+caused his perspiration to break out profusely, especially when all of
+a sudden a small woman's foot, white and delicate, appeared to his eyes,
+and to his only, on the ceiling of the dinner-hall.
+
+He felt a chill in all his limbs. He rose suddenly {296}and fled to
+another room, followed by his wife, his mother, and all the guests, who
+thought he had been seized with sudden illness.
+
+In this room he saw, and he alone again saw, a white hand raise a
+curtain and with the forefinger beckon him to follow.
+
+Long time ago Hermann had heard, without paying any attention at that
+time to the statement, that such a small white foot and a small white
+hand indicated the presence of an Undine and the coming of an inevitable
+calamity.
+
+Now he believed it.
+
+The bishop, who had performed the marriage ceremony, was at the dinner.
+Hermann went straight up to him, knelt down, and confessed aloud, and
+with many tears, that a young girl named Gottfriede, fairer and better
+than all her sisters, had loved him dearly, and that he had returned
+her love and then abandoned her. Gottfriede had sought oblivion of her
+sufferings in the river, and now was bent upon revenge.
+
+"Bless me, father, for I am going to die!"
+
+The bishop, before uttering the words of absolution, demanded first that
+the Count should abjure his impious faith in such supernatural beings,
+of whom the Church knew nothing.
+
+"How can I refuse to believe what I see? There she is! Looking as pale
+as she was this morning {297}at the bow of the boat. Her hair, full of
+green grass, is hanging in disorder all over her shoulders; she looks at
+me with a tearful smile."
+
+"Nothing but visions!" replies the bishop. "Your eyes deceive you."
+
+"But it is not only by the eye that I am aware of her presence, I hear
+her voice; she is calling me? Forgive me, Gottfriede!"
+
+[Illustration: 317]
+
+"You are out of your mind! These are the devil's snares! And who tells
+you that the girl has ceased to live? That she has committed a crime?
+Thanks be to God, Gottfriede came to me, she confessed to me penitently,
+and now she is in a convent!" At this moment the assembly, already
+deeply excited, was somewhat startled by the entrance of the steward,
+who looked terrified, went up to the Count's mother, and whispered some
+words into her ear. She could not repress a cry.
+
+"Dead!" she said.
+
+"Yes, she is dead, and I also must die!" cried Hermann in accents of
+despair.
+
+The young bride, offended at this avowal of a previous attachment, had
+at first stood aloof; now, consulting her own heart alone, she thought
+of contesting {298}the right of this invisible rival, and with open arms
+drew near the Count; but he pushed her aside rudely.
+
+The bishop began his exorcisms. While he was repeating the prescribed
+words, the Count asked:--
+
+"What do you want of me, Gottfriede? Forgive me and we will all pray
+for you. You are seeping and kissing me by turns, but your kisses are
+nothing but bitterness and sorrow to me, since I have given my name to
+another, since another is my--"
+
+He could not complete the sentence. Uttering a sharp cry he fell at full
+length to the ground, and on his neck appeared a long, bluish mark, such
+as is seen in strangled persons.
+
+The great Nichus is, as we have seen, the master, the despot, the
+_Wassermann_, par excellence, of all this watery, dark world, peopled
+by Nixen and Undines. His authority is, moreover, by no means limited
+to the exercise of judicial functions; his will, constantly under the
+influence of an ill-regulated appetite, is law for everybody; the male
+Nixen are his Court, and his harem is kept full by the fairest among
+those women who become his own by suicide. This greenish-complexioned
+Sardanapalus is said to celebrate incredibly monstrous orgies with his
+drowned Odalisques.
+
+He is, in reality, Niord, the Scandinavian god, {299}and this Niord
+again is, originally, one of those old Roman emperors, who were deified,
+and whose portraits Petronius has left us drawn in mud and blood.
+
+[Illustration: 319]
+
+His principal agent, and the Jack-of-all-trades of the whole community,
+Nixcobt, the messenger of the dead, has to maintain communication
+between the people who live on the river, and those who live in it.
+He is perhaps the most eccentric of all the mythical personages of the
+Rhine.
+
+When morning is about to dawn and the mountain tops are beginning to
+glow in a faint subdued light, a kind of low, thickset man of the most
+hideous appearance, may occasionally be seen gliding along the houses of
+a town, keeping carefully in the shade, or slipping down the hill-side
+between the long rows of grapes, which are almost as high as he is. His
+terrible head turns upon his slender neck as upon a pivot, and thus he
+can see and examine everything without stopping for a moment. His bare
+shoulders, his elbows, knees, and cheekbones are covered with scales;
+small pins appear {300}at intervals at his ankles; his round glamous
+eyes have a bright red point in the centre; his teeth and hair are
+green, and his enormous mouth, split wide open and shaped like the mouth
+of a fish, wears a fixed smile, which strikes terror in the beholder.
+This creature is Nixcobt.
+
+[Illustration: 320]
+
+With daybreak he is back in the river to inquire if its mournful
+population has been added to over night by some victim, suicide or not.
+He takes down a description of each one, draws up a report, inquires as
+to what induced them to seek refuge in the new world, and offers them
+his services for the purpose of letting the friends and parents
+know, {301}whom they may have left behind, ignorant of their fate and
+inconsolable at their loss.
+
+Then he amuses the great Nichus with all his stories and all the clever
+tricks he has been playing during his nocturnal visits to the people in
+the villages and towns on the river.
+
+These merry tricks of Master Nixcobt form even in our day an ever
+welcome staple of amusement to the young spinners during the long winter
+nights, accompanied as they are by the cheerful hum of the swiftly
+turning wheels.
+
+One day Nixcobt calls upon the tax collector of a little town on the
+Rhine, whom he finds in great consternation. His wife has left his house
+and he does not know what has become of her. To console him Nixcobt
+tells him that she is dead, having drowned herself, and as a proof of
+it, he shows him a letter which he has with his own hands taken from the
+pockets of the deceased.
+
+The husband, whose tears had been flowing freely, dries them quickly,
+becomes furious, and looks at his children with fierce glances. He is
+jealous of their dead mother. Nixcobt laughs and goes to some one else.
+
+That some one else, an honest vintner of the Rheingau, has the night
+before killed his friend in an excess of passion and then thrown the
+body into the Rhine, together with the knife with which {302}he had
+committed the murder. This knife Nix-cobt now presents to him, for he
+takes delight in restoring lost objects of this kind.
+
+While the murderer stands petrified at the sight of the still bloody
+knife, the Gnome hastens to the Mayor to report to him the whole matter.
+
+An inquiry is held, the vintner is found, holding the bloody knife in
+his hand, he is hanged and Nixcobt laughs heartily.
+
+One night a notary of Badenheim, near Mayence, hears in his sleep a
+voice saying:--
+
+"John Harnisch, the great Nichus is courting your wife, who has been
+changed into an Undine three months ago; she will not listen to him, and
+{303}he wants you to tell him how he must manage to please her."
+
+The notary thought it was a bad dream, uttered a sigh as he thought of
+his deceased wife, and fell asleep once more. But a chilly hand resting
+upon his breast waked him once more, and the voice said:--
+
+"John Harnisch, speak, speak promptly and be sincere, or you shall never
+sleep again."
+
+John Harnisch resisted for some time longer, but a red flame dimly
+lighted up his alcove and he saw a row of green teeth and scaly cheek
+bones. Thoroughly frightened, he said what he could.
+
+"Thanks!" cries Nixcobt, and breaks out into a far sounding laugh.
+
+We might fill folios with all the lugubrious jokes of this messenger
+of the dead, but we will abstain. Besides, Nixcobt has lost all respect
+now-a-days. He is no longer seen gliding along the houses in towns or
+slipping through the rows in the vineyards.
+
+We might in like manner tell a vast number of interesting stories and
+quote endless _Lieder_ and ballads, which treat of Nixen and Undines.
+For there are, besides, Undines of rivers and Undines of lakes, and
+there are even some in the ocean; in Germany all watercourses, down to
+the tiniest rills, have their Undines. {304}Only day before yesterday
+I was walking on the banks of the Rhine; only yesterday on those of
+the Moselle, This morning, wandering about at haphazard I encountered a
+brook, a mere rill, which attracted me by its sweet murmurs. I followed
+it, followed it for two hours. I happened to have nothing else to do.
+
+My tiny rill, a mere infant so near its source, was turning and twisting
+in the thick grass and seemed to try and walk on all fours as little
+children do. Farther down it had become a little girl, having increased
+in size and bulk; it now wandered hither and thither, carelessly,
+capriciously, leaping merrily over the rocks and carrying off here
+a flower and there a flower that grew on its banks, no doubt for the
+purpose of making a bouquet. Still farther on, I witnessed its marriage
+with a big brook that had come down all the way from the mountains; it
+was a young woman now, a wife, and walked soberly through the plain,
+like a prudent stream, bearing already boats on its surface and
+preparing to join an elder sister, the Moselle. Soon I had to cross
+it on a bridge; on this same bridge four Prussian soldiers were busy
+watching the water as it flowed by, no doubt in the hope of catching
+a fair Undine as she was stealthily slipping down the river. As for
+myself, I had in vain traced the unknown little river from its birth
+all {305}along its banks, under the thick shelter of willows and alder
+bushes; neither day before yesterday on the Rhine, nor yesterday on the
+Moselle, nor today, did I ever find a trace of a Nymph, a Nix, or an
+Undine!
+
+What must be my conclusion?
+
+A thief who had been brought before a police court and was there
+confronted with two persons who had seen him steal, said:--
+
+"These men claim that they have seen me, but I, I could bring twenty
+other witnesses who would swear that they have not seen me!"
+
+"What does that prove?" asked the judge of the court.
+
+[Illustration: 325]
+
+I saw nothing. "What does that prove?" as the wise judge said to the
+thief.
+
+[Illustration: 329]
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+{309}Familiar Spirits.--_Butzemann.--The Good Frau Holle.--Ko-bolds.--A
+Kobold in the Cook's Employ.--Zotterais and the Little White
+Ladies.--The Killecroffs, the Devil's Children.--White Angels.--Granted
+Wishes, a Fable._
+
+France, which is skeptic to the core, has no idea of the importance of
+certain visible or invisible spirits, who eagerly seek the society of
+man, sleeping {310}under his roof, or in certain cases becoming members
+of his family, in the strictest sense of the word. Besides, they render
+efficient services to a good housekeeper; they may do great harm if they
+are made angry, and they give at times most useful advice.
+
+These hobgoblins, little known outside of Germany and England, frequent
+also the French provinces watered by the Meuse, the Moselle, and the
+Rhine, and are sometimes brought to Paris by cooks from Alsace and
+coachmen from Lorraine.
+
+Let us rapidly glance, not at all, but at some of the best authenticated
+among these familiar spirits.
+
+Evening has come, the night is dark, and master and mistress are fast
+asleep. A servant with a candle in her hand and gaping to her heart's
+content, goes once more over the house, looking in all the corners and
+out of the way places and putting everything in order. All of a sudden a
+door is swiftly opened and closed again right in her face and her light
+is blown out. You will say a window has been left open and the draught
+has done all this.
+
+By no means! It is the _Butzemann_.
+
+Some merry companions are assembled in the large dining-room of the
+hotel and celebrate there a feast of grapes in memory of the divine
+Dionysius. The night advances and there they are still, {311}glass
+in hand, singing, drinking.... Silence! all of a sudden singing and
+drinking comes to an end; the glasses halt half way in the midst of a
+toast; the heavy eyes open wide, the trembling knees grow strong
+once more. Every one of the guests hastens home. Three times a hairy,
+ill-shapen creature has come and knocked with its wings against the
+window. You will say it was a bat.
+
+By no means! It is the _Butzemann!_
+
+The family is gathering around the warm porcelain stove, where they can
+safely defy cold winter. The men are smoking, a pot of beer by their
+side; the women are knitting and talking of the approaching wedding
+of the eldest daughter. Oh misery! Away back in the fireplace, a great
+noise is heard; a bright light shines. Coals and sparks are scattered
+all around, and some have fallen upon the dress of the betrothed. What
+is the matter? You will say again, it was a knot in the wood, perhaps a
+chestnut that had been overlooked in the ashes and has burst now.
+
+By no means! it is the _Butzemann!_
+
+The Butzemann, a prophetic family spirit, warns you of coming danger
+and bids you prepare for an approaching misfortune. Never undertake
+a journey, never get married if a clear sign has made you aware that
+Butzemann has put his veto upon your journey or your marriage. The only
+difficulty {312}you will have is to distinguish between Butzemann and a
+puff of wind, a bat, or an exploding chestnut.
+
+It is much easier to recognize _Frau Holle_, as her presence is always
+announced by unmistakable indications. She has assumed the task of
+overlooking the poor country girls at their work. But it has never been
+found out why this benevolent fairy of work-people does not live in some
+great industrial city, or some beautiful country district, where the
+signs of active life are abundant and the whirring of wheels or the
+stamping of machinery is heard; where the spinners sing, and the
+washerwomen beat time at the limpid stream. She prefers, with
+unaccountable perverseness, to live in dismal swamps, beside faithless
+Will-o'-the-Wisps and low Nixen!
+
+No one has ever dared examine this question so closely as to ascertain
+the precise truth.
+
+Some have dropped timid hints that Frau Holle, now occupying a very
+humble position and rated among the familiar spirits only, was once upon
+a time a high and mighty personage, but they have had nothing more to
+say of her past glory, as is the case with poor ladies who have been
+"unfortunate." Others, with more boldness or more knowledge, have
+recognized in her the goddess Frigg, Odin's wife. Dear Frau Holle! what
+a coming down! what poor creatures we are, after all. {313}As soon as
+the cross was planted on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, Frigg,
+under the name of Hertha (Mother Earth), had taken refuge on an island
+in the ocean, where she lived invisible and alone in the heart of a
+sacred forest, which was constantly invaded by the waves of the sea.
+
+A priest, who had remained faithful to the old religion, alone knew the
+hour and the minute when the goddess would deign once more to appear to
+men. At the given moment he drew forth, on the marshy island, a chariot
+wrapped in veils. Hertha got in, and for some days travelled through the
+world, diffusing all around her good will and consolation. Then all wars
+were suspended; not only the sword went back into its sheath, but all
+irons, all defensive and offensive weapons and even the iron shoes of
+the ploughs, had to be kept carefully concealed. Hertha invited the
+world to enjoy peace and repose.
+
+Now let us see in what respect Frau Holle or Holla reminds us of the
+good goddess.
+
+At certain periods of the year, especially at Christmas, Frau Holle
+leaves her marshy island in order to inspect the world. All who work in
+linen, spinning, weaving, embroidery, or starching, are by turns visited
+by the good lady. Their idleness and their carelessness are severely
+punished. If one fine morning Annie finds her wheel {314}or Kate her
+loom covered with green slime, if Bertha notices her work torn in the
+place which she repaired only the night before, or if the water has over
+night turned greasy and looks discolored, the poor girls may be sure
+that Frau Holle has been on her round of inspection.
+
+If she is pleased, on the other hand, the ribbon around the distaff
+holds a pretty marshflower, a lily, an iris, or a gladiolus; on the lace
+cushion or on the seamstress's work a little golden needle is stuck, and
+on the heap of specially well washed and well folded linen lies a cake
+of perfumed soap, which fills the whole house with its sweet odor.
+
+Sometimes Frau Holle finds her way mysteriously to a garret, where a
+poor woman is lying sick with fever, the result of overwork. Then she
+finishes herself the work that had been begun, and when she leaves she
+puts a few florins under the pillow of the sleeping sufferer.
+
+Blessings be upon you, good Dame Holle! Even if you were really once a
+goddess of the first rank, you need not blush at your present condition.
+Still, we cannot help asking, with a slight tremor of fear, how it can
+have come about, that the noble Frigg, the all powerful Hertha,
+should have been reduced to play the lady patroness of washerwomen and
+seamstresses? How has this island in the ocean, with its sacred forest,
+become a wretched {315}marsh, fetid and ill reputed? There is but one
+answer to such a question: Frigg has been unfortunate.
+
+But the spinners and seamstresses, the clear-starchers and embroiderers
+are not the only ones who are honored by kind attentions from the
+supernatural world. The brothers Grimm say:--
+
+[Illustration: 335]
+
+"In certain parts of the world, every person--man, woman, or child--has
+his own goblin to do menial service; he carries water, cuts wood, and
+fetches beer." During all this time the master has nothing to do but to
+set still and to see the work done.
+
+This goblin is evidently the _Genius loci_ of the ancients.
+
+Among all these goblins, however, one is by far the most famous in
+Germany, and at the same time the oddest, of whom the most extraordinary
+stories are told. They call him _Kobold._
+
+During the night the Kobold sets everything to {316}rights in the
+kitchen; he cleans the glasses, the plates, the pans, and wages war
+against the spiders and the mice. For all these attentions he asks only
+a little food, specially prepared for him, for he would never dream to
+ask for a share of his master's dinner.
+
+Although he seems to be specially devoted to the cook's department, the
+Kobold is first of all attached to the house. If the cook is dismissed,
+or if the master moves, he nevertheless remains in his old home, quite
+ready to offer his services to the new comers. If the cook goes, she
+says to her who takes her place:--
+
+"Do not forget to put a little panada on the kneading trough for the
+Kobold, or he might play you some ugly tricks. Be careful, for he is not
+always in good humor."
+
+If the Kobold, or in his place the cat, eats the panada, the new cook is
+sure to say:--
+
+"Chim has been here; I see we shall be good friends."
+
+But if Chim has left the dainty untouched, or has merely tasted it, she
+is troubled.
+
+"Perhaps he wants it made with the yolk of an egg? Or perhaps I had not
+put enough butter to it?"
+
+Although the Kobold is almost always invisible, he is at all times
+ready for a chat. {317}What are we to make of these strange beings, the
+servants of our servants, who are even more faithful than the latter to
+the house which they have once made their home, who do not, as we are
+told is the case in some countries, insist so strongly upon certain
+privileges that it becomes uncertain whether the servants are not
+themselves masters and those who think themselves to be masters are in
+reality servants? They generally do nothing but kindness. Nevertheless
+they keep out of sight, thus shunning all public return for their
+benevolent services. What are we to make of such servants? Martin Luther
+answers in his "Table Talk."
+
+[Illustration: 337]
+
+"For many years," he says, "a servant had a familiar spirit who sat down
+by her on the hearth, where she had made a little place for him, and
+they talked to each other during the long winter evenings. One day she
+asked Heinzchen (Chim, Heinzchen, and Kurt Chimgen are the pet names by
+which German and Alsatian cooks generally call their Ko-bolds) to let
+her see him in his natural shape. At first Heinzchen refused. {318}but
+at last, as she insisted, he told her to go down into the cellar, where
+he would show himself to her." "She took a candle," he goes on to say,
+"and went into the cellar, where the Kobold appeared to her in the
+likeness of a child of hers who had died some years before." Whether
+he vanished then, leaving her in amazement and terror, or whether he
+resumed the shape in which she had been accustomed to see him, we are
+not told. It is a grim story upon which we do not care to dwell, for we
+prefer to remember the Kobold as a cheerful household companion. It is
+pleasant to think of those quaint little creatures, whose world is the
+kitchen, and to imagine the joy they feel in sharing the busy, bustling
+life that goes on there daily. Be sure they know every nook and corner
+about,--every stew-pan and ladle, and are learned in the steamy scents
+and fragrant savors which are the atmosphere of their home. At night
+when the fires are out, and the family is asleep, they have a life of
+their own. They are on the best possible terms with the cat, which they
+permit to share their food, and with which they no doubt waltz when in a
+gamesome mood. Happy Kobolds.
+
+According to general belief the Kobolds belong as much to the race
+of men as to the world of spirits; they retain the size and shape of
+infants, and that knife which so often is noticed in the form {319}of
+a caudal appendage, is nothing less than the instrument with which they
+have been put to death.
+
+There exist, however, quite a number of troublesome hobgoblins, who turn
+the house upside down and deprive the people to whom they bear a grudge
+of all peace and sleep, till they well nigh drive them mad. But these
+creatures ought, in my opinion, not be mixed up with the Kobolds. The
+latter are almost invariably gentle and inoffensive; if they sometimes
+become angry, they act just like children; they break and smash things,
+but they are easily pacified by the sight of some little tit-bit, as for
+instance, a panada made with butter and eggs.
+
+[Illustration: 339]
+
+The Zotterais and the Little White Ladies seem, in their habits at
+least, to come nearer to Kobolds. Very useful and easily satisfied, the
+Zotterais are as fond of stables as the Kobolds are of kitchens;
+they curry the horses, nurse {320}them when they are sick, and
+keep everything in excellent order in their racks as well as in the
+harness-room.
+
+The Little White Ladies, on the other hand, are more delicate in their
+instincts and often quite fastidious; they like only blood horses, Arab
+or Turkish horses, and hence the popular idea that they have originated
+in the East.
+
+They slip into the stables of wealthy people, while the grooms are
+asleep; here they light a small candle, which they always keep about
+them, and then proceed to business.
+
+In the morning, when the head, coachman makes his round to see that
+everything is right, he sometimes finds a drop of wax on the smooth
+coat of a sorrel or an Isabel colored horse, and then he says to the
+grooms:--
+
+"You have not had much to do to-day, my friends, with your horses; I see
+the little lady has been here."
+
+The Zotterais are of unmistakable German origin, for they take care of
+horses without regard to race and without the help of a wax candle. They
+have, of course, harder work to do and are more apt to become soiled
+or to have accidents; but, nevertheless, they accomplish their purpose.
+They are naturally easily tired, and hence they require a knot to be
+made in the mane of a horse, where {321}they can suspend themselves and
+rest. There is not a peasant on the banks of the Rhine or the Meuse, who
+would neglect this duty, and I have myself often seen them attend to it
+carefully.
+
+[Illustration: 341]
+
+Formerly the Zotterais also protected sheep against ticks and kept their
+wool from getting tangled; they even derived their name from Zotte,
+which means a flock of wool. In those days, it must be presumed, from
+the habits of those benevolent little people, the fleeces must have been
+whiter and better kept than they are now-a-days; but sheep raisers had
+the unlucky idea, produced probably by avarice, that not a particle of
+wool should be left on ram or ewe, and thus deprived their tiny friends
+of all means to rest and recover breath when hard at work. The Zotterais
+looked upon this neglect of what was due to them as an insult, and
+abandoned the flocks of sheep for the horses in the stables. Besides,
+they found it impossible to live on good terms with the shepherds' dogs.
+
+We must finally mention the most important and most extraordinary of all
+familiar spirits, whom we must needs include among these favored beings,
+{322}as he represents nothing less than the son of the house, the child
+of the family.
+
+This is the _Killecroff or Suppositus._ The last mentioned name is
+given to him because this so-called son of the house is in reality a
+changeling, a supposed child, which has been put into the place of the
+real child.
+
+[Illustration: 342]
+
+Who has taken the legitimate child from its cradle in order to put into
+its place a _Killecroff_, and who is the real father of the latter?
+
+Both of these questions are met by one and the same answer. The Devil!
+We have so far carefully avoided touching on matters of witchcraft; but
+unfortunately they are as well known on the banks of the Rhine as on
+those of the Thames and the Seine. The _Killecroffs_, however, children
+of the Devil and begotten according to popular belief during the orgies
+of the Witches' Sabbath, have been really in existence upon earth;
+_suppositi_ or not, they have played their part in the world's history
+and occasionally even left behind them illustrious descendants. {323}In
+the same way as the Swedish king Vilkins and Merovaeus, king of the
+Franks, boasted of being the sons of a sea-god, the dynasty of the
+Jagellons in Poland were proud of their original descent from the Devil,
+no doubt through Killecroffs, and actually bore in their arms certain
+emblems of hell.
+
+How can a real Killecroff be recognized, since he has been, improperly
+enough, counted in among the Kobolds?
+
+[Illustration: 343]
+
+From his first appearance in the world, the Killecroff excites the
+astonishment, and sometimes the {324}admiration of his reputed parents.
+He sucks so heartily and with such an appetite that his nurse has to be
+reinforced by two goats and a cow, like the renowned Gargantua.
+
+When he is weaned a new marvel appears: he swallows his soup by the
+tureen, "as much as two peasants and two threshers in the barn would
+take," says a celebrated writer in speaking of this subject.
+
+He grows up and keeps everything in commotion around him; he provokes
+quarrels not only among the servants, but even between his parents. If
+some untoward event occurs he roars with laughter, on a day of rejoicing
+he sheds tears and moans piteously. He takes a stick or a spit and rides
+on it in his room, from morning till evening, climbing on every
+chair and table, breaking everything that comes in his way, injuring
+himself--also quite as readily, provoking cats, dogs, and even the
+parrot on his perch, till they all mew and bark and scream. Then he runs
+to the stable and sticks a pin into the croup of a horse to see it kick,
+and then breaks open the doors and locks by the aid of a huge stick
+of wood; next he rushes into the garden, playing the part of a tempest
+there, destroying, uprooting, and breaking everything.
+
+In the poultry yard he wrings the hens' necks and walks over the young
+chickens; in the kitchen {325}he loves to take up the tops of pots and
+pans and to season the dishes according to his fancy with salt, pepper,
+dust, ashes, oil, vinegar, mustard, sand, or sawdust, and never leaves
+without having turned on the water everywhere.
+
+If a visitor arrives, he takes possession of him and stands between his
+legs, and walks on his toes, pulls the buttons off his waistcoat, and
+draws the strings out of his shoes; he troubles and annoys him in every
+way, he pinches and scratches, he worries and tortures him. When his
+mother cautiously observes that he must not trouble the gentleman he
+obeys like a good child and leaves the gentleman alone, but not without
+having first broken his watch-chain, taken his cane, and hid his
+spectacles; the cane he drops accidentally into the well; as for the
+spectacles, he forgets where he has put them. When the poor visitor,
+quite overcome and exhausted, at last rises to go, he stumbles and falls
+down the stairs, thanks to a string which his playful young friend, the
+Killecroff, has stretched across the top step.
+
+The Killecroffs are generally the delight of their parents; fortunately
+they do not live long.
+
+The great man whom I have quoted before, told the Duke of Anhalt
+frankly, that if he were a sovereign like the duke, he would run the
+risk and become a murderer in such a case, by ordering {326}every such
+son of the devil to be thrown into the Moldau!
+
+This great man, who believed so firmly in Killecroffs, who believed
+likewise in Butzemann, in Ko-bolds, in Nixen and Undines, who saw the
+Devil in every fly that came to drink his ink or to perch on his nose,
+was again Dr. Martin Luther.
+
+[Illustration: 346]
+
+The great Reformer, who was so valiant in combating the superstitions of
+the Papists, seems to have taken very little trouble to get rid of his
+own.
+
+But among the many delusions, in which he apparently delighted, there
+was one, a really charming {327}one, which arose from the Christian
+religion itself, and which, it seems to me, I cannot well pass over in
+silence when speaking of familiar spirits.
+
+I mean Guardian Angels.
+
+A most erudite and clever academician, Mr. Alfred Maury, tells us in
+his charming book on "Magic and Astrology," that according to Egyptian
+doctrines a special star foretold the arrival of every man in this
+world. In proof of this statement, he refers us to Horapollon, in his
+"Treatise on Hieroglyphics."
+
+We infinitely prefer taking Mr. Maury's own evidence; and he adds: "This
+creed exists still in some remote districts among rural populations, and
+especially in Germany."
+
+It may be that in certain portions of Germany every man may still have
+faith in his star; we are willing to believe it, since he says so; but
+almost everywhere the star has been superseded by a Guardian Angel,
+the White Angel, as they call him, a far more tempting personage, and
+infinitely more intimate and sympathetic. The White Angel is much more
+than the _Genius loci_; it is in fact the _Genius personalis_.
+
+Without entering here upon a serious discussion, on the subject of
+Guardian Angels, whom the modern Church is disposed to ignore, we shall
+prefer {328}inserting here, as a complement to our chapter on Familiar
+Spirits, a legend, which we were fortunate enough to obtain directly
+from very truthful and very beautiful lips:--
+
+"A white figure appeared before the young girl as she awoke.
+
+"'I am your Guardian Angel!'
+
+"'Then you will grant me the wishes which I shall mention?'
+
+"'I shall carry them to God's throne. You may count upon my assistance.
+What are your wishes?' "'O White Angel, I am tired of continually
+turning the spindle, and my fingers are getting to be so hard by
+constant work, that yesterday, at the dance, my partner might have
+imagined he was holding a wooden hand.'
+
+"'Your partner was that fine looking gentleman from Hesse? Did he not
+tell you that he adored your blue eyes and fair hair, and that he would
+make you a baroness, if you would go home with him?'
+
+"'White Angel, make me a baroness.'
+
+"The evening of that day a young peasant came and asked Louisa's mother
+for her daughter's hand. The mother said, Yes.
+
+"'White Angel, deliver me from this boor. I want to be a baroness!'
+
+"But the mother, who was a widow, had energy {329}enough for two. The
+White Angel did not appear again; Louisa had to yield, and went on
+turning her spindle.
+
+"One day her husband, who was a hard-working man, had over-exerted
+himself and was taken ill. Louisa had seen her gentleman again.
+
+"'White Angel, he loves me still. He has sworn he would marry me if I
+were a widow.'.... She dared not say more. Her husband recovered his
+health completely. The White Angel still turned a deaf ear to her
+wishes. She lost all hope of ever becoming a baroness.
+
+"Some years later Louisa was the mother of two beautiful children;
+she was fond of her husband, whose labor procured for her all that she
+needed, and when she thought of him and her two darlings, the spindle
+felt quite soft to her fingers.
+
+"One evening, when she was only half asleep, lying by her husband's
+side, with one of her hands in his, and the youngest of her babies at
+her bosom, the white figure appeared once more and she heard a gentle
+voice whispering something into her ear. It was the voice of the White
+Angel.
+
+"What did it say?
+
+"It told her a fable.
+
+"'A little fish was merrily swimming about in the water and looking
+seriously at a pretty blackcap which first circled around and around in
+the air {330}and then alighted softly on a branch of a willow which grew
+close to the bank of the river.
+
+"'"Oh," said the little fish, "how happy that bird is. It can rise up
+to the heavens and go high up to the sun to warm itself in its rays. Why
+cannot I do the same?"
+
+"'The blackcap was looking at the fish at the same time, and said:--
+
+"'"Oh! how happy that fish is! The element in which it lives furnishes
+it at the same time with food; it has nothing to do but to glide along.
+How I should like to sport in the fresh, transparent water!"
+
+"'At that moment, a kite pounced upon the poor little fish, while a
+scamp of a schoolboy threw a stone at the bird; the blackcap fell into
+the water, the fresh, transparent water, and for a moment struggled in
+it before it died, while the little fish, carried aloft, could go up
+on high to the sun and warm itself in its rays. Their wishes had been
+granted.'
+
+"'Louisa,' continued the gentle voice, 'our duty as Guardian Angels is
+far more frequently to thwart wishes than to satisfy them.'
+
+"This was the moral of the fable.
+
+"Louisa pressed her husband's hand warmly, kissed her last born,
+and said: 'Thank you, White Angel, thank you.'" {331}I am certainly
+delighted to think, that if the poor Germans have Killecroffs among
+their familiar spirits, they have at least also White Angels.
+
+[Illustration: 351]
+
+[Illustration: 355]
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+{335}Giants and Dwarfs.--_Duel between Efthesim and Grommelund.--Court
+Dwarfs and Little Dwarfs.--Ymer's Solis.--The Invisible Reapers.--Story
+of the Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragant.--How the Giants came to
+serve the Dwarfs._
+
+If legendary tradition is only a distant vibration of the bell of
+history, where must we go and look for traces of the real existence of
+giants? Must we believe the Edda or Holy writ itself? Afterwards the
+great fossil skeletons of mammoths, mastodons, and other antediluvian
+animals only revived the {336}memory of gigantic men. The Apocryphal
+Books tell us that in the days of Enoch, a number of angels, amounting
+to two hundred, had conceived a desire for the daughters of men and came
+down to Mount Hermon in order to be near them. Some of the principal
+ones are even mentioned by name; there were Urakabaramiel, Sanyaza,
+Tamiel, and Akibiel. Is it a wonder, then, that credulous people should
+have believed that devils also, who after all are but fallen angels,
+have acted in the same way towards the descendants of Eve. The
+Killecroffs, we have seen, were the offspring of a union between
+devils and earthborn women; in like manner giants were the offspring
+of marriages between women and angels. Women are evidently capable of
+setting heaven, earth, and hell on fire.
+
+Germany, which was the last part of Europe to enter the great Catholic
+Church, and was to be the first to leave it again at the time of the
+Reformation, kept up the belief in giants longer than any other country.
+Perhaps this was one of the results of the right of free inquiry.
+
+The giant Einheer lived in the days of Charlemagne and even served
+in his army. Several centuries later there were gigantic burgraves
+(Burggra-fen), living all along the banks of the Rhine. They have a well
+known story there of a young and ingenious giant's daughter, who had
+been jealously {337}guarded in her father's castle, and when she got
+out into the fields for the first time in her life, brought back in her
+apron a peasant with his plough and his two horses, whom she had picked
+up on the way. She showed them to her father as being all three little
+animals of very curious shape.
+
+[Illustration: 357]
+
+After a while, however, the giants became smaller and smaller, until
+there were only a few left in the highest mountains, in dark forests,
+and in the romances of chivalry. After that they disappeared altogether.
+
+The report is, however, that a single couple, man and wife, are kept
+alive by magic art in an isolated part of the Hartz Mountains, to serve
+as a specimen of the lost race. {338}At first the giants had produced
+universal terror. The god Thor was blessed because he had driven them,
+armed as he was with his famous iron mace, all across the Hercynian
+forest. But as people became better acquainted with them, their fears
+subsided. They turned out to be far from cruel, to eat human flesh only
+in cases of dire necessity, and to act generally not only kindly, but
+even like simpletons--a misfortune common to most men, who are too
+fully developed in length or in breadth. This latter weakness is well
+supported by a popular German tale.
+
+An old duke of Bavaria had at his court a dwarf, called Ephesim, and a
+giant, called Grommelund. The latter laughed at the dwarf, and Ephesim
+threatened to box his ears. Grommelund laughed only the more heartily
+and challenged Ephesim to carry out his threat. The dwarf accepted
+the challenge, and the duke, having been a witness of the whole scene,
+ordered at once that a field for single combat should be prepared.
+
+Everybody expected to do as the giant did and laugh at the pigmy; as the
+poor little fellow was hardly two feet high and would have had to climb
+a long way before reaching the giant's ears. But it turned out very
+differently.
+
+The dwarf began by walking all around the giant as if to take his
+measure. The good-natured giant, {339}standing up immovable, looks down
+upon him and laughs till his sides shake; but while he is holding his
+hands to his sides, the dwarf unties his shoestrings and then worries
+him by kicking and pinching his calves.
+
+[Illustration: 359]
+
+Grommelund laughs more loudly than ever, thanks to the tickling, takes
+a few strides, steps on his loose shoestrings, nearly stumbles, and at
+last, with a thoughtful presence of mind, characteristic of his race, he
+stoops down to tie the strings.
+
+Ephesim has foreseen this, he avails himself of the opportunity, and
+slaps the giant's cheek with his little hand, so heartily that the sound
+reaches the ears of the duke and the lords of his court, who applaud
+Ephesim's skill enthusiastically.
+
+The poor giant, humiliated and overcome, left the town, it is said, and
+sought refuge in the mountains, where he died of shame.
+
+The people were thus beginning to have a very humble opinion of giants,
+when a rumor was spread that they had entered the service of the dwarfs;
+{340}not of court dwarfs, but of little dwarfs, who are so small that,
+by their size, the others appear as giants.
+
+[Illustration: 360]
+
+These little dwarfs appear in the popular tales of Germany, under
+different names, as _Wichtelman-ner, Metallarii, or Homunculi_, and
+evidently, at one time, were found in great numbers throughout all the
+mountainous parts of the North. In Bretagne they were also known as
+_Couribes, Parulpiquets or Cornicouets_, but as they are ugly and evil
+disposed, I presume they are not of the same race with our good little
+dwarfs. These latter appear in the evening at the foot of large oak
+trees, or in old ruins, where they come by the {341}thousand out
+of every crack and crevice and gambol and frolic, but vanish at the
+smallest noise.
+
+[Illustration: 361]
+
+{343}As to their origin there are different opinions entertained. One
+theory alone is worthy of belief, because it is mentioned already in the
+Edda.
+
+According to the Scandinavian Bible, when Odin had killed the giant
+Ymer, his decaying body produced an innumerable quantity of small
+worms. By a law of natural order which had already become operative with
+insects, each worm changed into a chrysalis, and out of each chrysalis
+came forth a little man, resembling, with a few trifling differences,
+the race of full sized men, whom Odin had created.
+
+Like ourselves, they also are subject to all the infirmities of age,
+to disease and death; like ourselves, they are at times capable of
+reasoning with fairness. Skillful metallurgists, they are at work in the
+mines, where we have already met them; they are not without imagination,
+and even know what piety is.
+
+What religion do they profess?
+
+For a long time, we are told, the majority, having been converted to
+Christianity, were under its benign influence, in a far higher degree
+than we, for they did not carry on war among themselves, and all
+authors, legends, and ballads agree, that they were gentle and peaceful,
+loving each other, {344}kindly disposed towards others, laborious,
+and very obliging. Hence they were universally known as the _Peaceful
+People_,--das stille Volk.
+
+"In ancient times," says Wyss, "men lived in the valleys, and around
+their dwellings, in the cavities of the rocks, dwelt the little dwarf
+people, keeping always on very good terms with them, and helping them
+even at times in their work in the fields. They took great delight in
+doing good in this way; for generally they were very busy mining in the
+mountains, and digging in the ground to collect the tiny particles of
+gold and silver that could be obtained."
+
+Sometimes field laborers coming out to plant or to weed, found their
+work already done, and heard the dwarfs, hid behind the bushes, break
+out into loud laughter, when they showed their amazement.
+
+It happened one day, early in the morning, that some peasants in passing
+a cornfield, saw that the stalks were falling in long rows, as if by
+their own will; they were most cunningly cut off below, and now they
+were ranging themselves, also to all appearance by their own act, in
+long sheaves. The peasants had no doubt that the good little dwarfs
+were there, working away stealthily, but of the tiny workmen not a trace
+could be seen.
+
+The dwarfs possessed, in common with all these {345}mysterious races,
+the power of making themselves invisible. They had nothing to do, for
+that purpose, but merely to draw a little hood over their ears, which
+formed part of their costume.
+
+Our countrymen, seeing that the wheat was not ripe enough to be cut,
+became exceedingly angry against these injudicious friends, and arming
+themselves with twigs, went to work striking right and left in the hope
+of hurting one or the other by chance. They really heard some faint
+cries of distress in the furrows, and soon the first rows of wheat
+which had been left standing were thrown into violent disorder, thus
+testifying to the flight of the little ones.
+
+Several of the dwarfs became even visible, as the twigs suddenly tore
+the hoods from their heads. Thereupon the men became furious and tried
+to strike all the harder; but suddenly a violent storm broke forth
+and the hail came down in torrents, cutting the whole standing crop to
+pieces and sparing only the rows that had been reaped.
+
+The rude countrymen now saw clearly that the Quiet People had foreseen
+the hailstorm and anticipated the harvest on that account. They repented
+their brutality, but the dwarfs, disgusted by their ingratitude, never
+again appeared in that region of country. Similar occurrences took place
+in other countries. {346}Now let us see, by what perseverance, by what
+skill, and especially by what audacious conceptions these tiny beings,
+not much more than a few inches high, succeeded in making themselves
+masters of the giants.
+
+[Illustration: 366]
+
+They were running about quite bewildered, pushing and jostling each
+other in their anxiety to regain their little mole-hill, he stood at
+first with his mouth {347}wide open, lost in amazement. Then, to amuse
+himself in true lordly fashion, he crushed a few dozen with his foot.
+
+But he was not without curiosity, and hence he tried in the next place
+to find out something about their manners. The moment was not very well
+chosen, it must be confessed. Men do not usually choose a city that has
+just been taken by storm and given up to pillage, for the purpose of
+studying the manners and customs of its citizens. But we have seen
+before this, that giants are not remarkably bright.
+
+Our giant, whose name I have never been able to ascertain and whom I
+will call for convenience sake, _Quadragant_ ("Quadragant was rather
+colossal," I once read in "Amadis of Gaul;" our giant was really
+colossal, for he measured thirty feet in height), our giant, I say,
+stretched himself out at full length and fixed his eyes upon the hole
+out of which he had pulled the oak tree. He heard a low humming noise
+underground, but he could see nothing.
+
+He thought he would wait patiently, and in waiting he fell quietly
+asleep, turning over so as to lie on his back, his usual position when
+he was sleeping.
+
+After a few hours' sound and heavy sleep, such as all giants are said to
+enjoy, he awoke. Finding {348}that the sun had in the mean time followed
+his example and gone to sleep, he remembered that it was supper time,
+and as he thought of the delights in store for him he uttered a long and
+deep sigh of satisfaction. But something that his long drawn breath had
+brought up, suddenly jumped out of his mouth.
+
+[Illustration: 368]
+
+This something was one of the dwarfs; and this dwarf, the boldest and
+most intelligent among them all, was called Kreiss.
+
+But in order to make it clear how Kreiss happened to be almost in the
+giant's throat, which was {349}of course only accidentally his home for
+a time, we must go back and see what had happened while Quadragant was
+asleep.
+
+When the little pigmies found their tree uprooted and their people
+scattered in all directions, escaping through every crack and crevice in
+the soil, they had rushed into a long subterranean passage, excavated
+in days long gone by, by their forefathers. Here they had uttered their
+well known cries of distress, resembling the chirp of crickets, and thus
+they had finally reached the ruins of an old castle, inhabited by vast
+numbers of their people, and chosen as the place of meeting of the
+General Council of the dwarfs.
+
+Kreiss happened to have arrived the night before, as one of a numerous
+deputation, and he at once suggested the propriety of burying the dead
+with all due honors, before anything else was done. After that, they
+might go to work stopping up all the holes and openings made by the
+tearing up of the sapling, and filling the excavation which it had
+produced, so that the rain might not come and inundate their long
+gallery, which was their only safe means of communication.
+
+The two resolutions offered by Kreiss were carried by acclamation, and
+all, loaded with brush and with stakes, went immediately to work. There
+were some ten thousand of them. {350}They thought the giant had left,
+but they found him lying full length on the ground and snoring most
+fiercely. Their first impulse was to escape, but Kreiss held them back.
+He had conceived a bold plan; he proposed to capture the giant. Were
+they not already provided with ropes and with stakes? Was there not
+strength in numbers? They immediately went to work, and in less than an
+hour the murderer, unable as he was to make the slightest motion, was
+bound to the soil which he had soaked with their blood.
+
+"What do you say?.... Yes, sir, you are undoubtedly right. This looks
+very much like the manner in which Gulliver was treated in the island
+of Lilliput. How can we help that? Besides, we must remember that there
+have been dwarfs in Germany from time immemorial. If Jonathan Swift
+undertook to transfer them to imaginary countries, whose business is
+that and who is liable to be charged with plagiarism, I ask you?"
+
+We will not stop to discuss this trifling matter, which is of little
+importance. We have weightier matters than that in hand.
+
+When the work was done and with the excitement of the efforts the first
+enthusiasm also had somewhat passed away, the question arose what was
+to be done with their capture. They looked at each other in great
+perplexity. {351}The dwarfs are kind hearted people, who have a great
+horror of blood. Besides, it would have been more difficult even, to
+dispose of the giant after death than to kill him. Still, if they did
+not kill Quadragant he would, as soon as he was awake, go to work and
+cry for help lustily; then the other giants would, no doubt, hasten to
+his assistance. The disgrace inflicted upon one of their brethren would
+in all probability render them furious, and they would proceed at once
+to uproot all the trees and to pursue the poor little people of dwarfs
+down into the very bowels of the earth.
+
+While these and similar observations were passing in the crowd from one
+group to another, Kreiss remained silent and thoughtful, supporting his
+head in his hand and his hand on his elbow.
+
+In the mean time the crowd passed from simple talk to grumbling and from
+grumbling to threats. There was nothing left but to undo what was done
+as promptly as possible, to abandon this ridiculous enterprise and
+to restore the giant to liberty in the same way in which he had
+been deprived of it--during his sleep. If he should awake before the
+operation was over, why, then they might try to appease his wrath by
+handing over to him the authors of this fatal project.
+
+Ah! one can see at a glance, that these dwarfs, small as they were,
+were nevertheless men, and {352}that it is better not to venture upon
+attacking giants!
+
+They were utterly discouraged and demoralized. Calm in spite of all this
+excitement around him, Kreiss was still meditating, apparently quite
+unmindful of all the invectives that were hurled at him and the little
+hands that were threatening him. But when some of them actually began to
+loosen the ropes, he suddenly dropped his hands from his elbow and his
+brow, and turning sharply upon his aggressors, he said:--
+
+"I acknowledge my mistake and I am ready to atone for it. Go,--my seven
+brothers and myself, we will alone set the giant free again. If he
+awakes, he shall have to do with us and with us only. Go!"
+
+The former conspirators were well content to accept the proposition, and
+without bestowing a thought upon their murdered brethren, they escaped
+as fast as they could. In the dim twilight of the last hour of the day
+one might have seen them running nimbly through the tall grass and under
+the cupolas of mushroom, arousing in their hurry the beetles and moths,
+or even mounting upon their backs in order to reach by their aid all the
+more quickly their safe retreat in the ruins of the old castle.
+
+When all were gone save Kreiss and his seven {353}brothers, he said
+to them: "Now that we are alone, we alone shall reap the glory of the
+enterprise! So far from regretting what I have done, I mean on the
+contrary, to enlarge our project in a manner which shall redound to the
+eternal glory of our race."
+
+[Illustration: 373]
+
+The dwarfs are not only skillful metallurgists, but they are also most
+expert carpenters and builders.
+
+Hence the good people of the Rheingau are {354}convinced that they have
+built all those ruins of solid old castles, in which they are still
+living and which they have so cunningly repaired and propped up that
+they will last forever.
+
+[Illustration: 374]
+
+Now Quadragant was sleeping with his mouth wide open, as all large
+people are apt to' do. Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious
+cavity, armed with a long spear which was equally sharp and pointed at
+both ends. He took care to rest at first most cautiously only upon
+the projections of the teeth, which formed, so to say, a double row of
+parallel battlements. By such assistance he passed from one end of the
+abyss to the other, without troubling the slumbers of the giant by the
+{355}slightest awkwardness in his movements. For a case of emergency
+Kreiss held his spear firmly in his hands, ready to fasten it so between
+the two jaws as to prevent their closing upon him.
+
+[Illustration: 375]
+
+His brothers were in the meantime busily engaged in preparing posts,
+pins, and rafters, which they handed to him as he needed them. One of
+them even went with him to assist him.
+
+They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth, and strengthened
+the piles by beams, which secured them to each other. The work was by
+no means an easy one, for in the mouth of the giant it was as dark as
+night, and there reigned in it a heat equal to that of an oven. Moreover
+Quadragant had dined that day on a deer and several {356}hares, and
+as he liked his game high, like every good judge of fine dinners, the
+perfumes of his breath increased the inconvenience caused by the heat
+and the darkness.
+
+Kreiss's brother was all of a sudden taken ill, and had to leave to join
+the others outside. They, however, continued work on the scaffolding,
+and watched the giant carefully.
+
+Quadragant was absolutely in the hands of the eight dwarf brothers.
+
+They had passed up a lantern to Kreiss, which he hung upon one of
+the transverse beams, and he now continued his work alone resolutely,
+although he was every now and then compelled to stop his nose.
+
+His work was at last completed, and he was just about to leave this
+damp, pestiferous abyss, when the giant awoke, and his first sigh
+carried off the brave pigmy, as a gust of wind would have carried off
+a dry leaf from a branch, and hurled him senseless into space. He fell
+heavily upon the chest of the colossus.
+
+As soon as he recovered from the shock, he looked around carefully, and
+saw, to his great satisfaction, that the bonds which held the giant
+were beyond doubt strong enough to hold him a prisoner. Then he crept
+cautiously all along the neck as far as his ear, and by its aid climbed
+up the chin, after having crossed the cheek in its whole {357}length.
+When he had found a convenient restingplace, he drew himself up to his
+full height, and raising his feeble voice as loud as he could, he said
+to the giant:--
+
+"Murderer of our brethren, you are our prisoner, and you must die!
+Commend your soul to God."
+
+[Illustration: 377]
+
+The giant tried to see the tiny being who was speaking to him so boldly,
+and cast down his eyes. At first he could distinguish nothing but a
+feeble glimmering light at the extremity of his nose; but the nose
+itself completely concealed the speaker.
+
+Kreiss then advanced a few steps from the chin towards the mouth of the
+colossus, and the latter now perceived a kind of little man, dressed in
+a cloak of mouse skin, which he grandly wrapped around him, as Hercules
+did with the skin of the Nemean lion.
+
+In his hand, however, he held not a club, but a lantern, in which a
+firefly did service as candle.
+
+Thanks to this phosphorescent sheen, which seemed to surround Kreiss
+as with a halo, Quadragant could examine him at leisure, and he asked
+himself how such an embryo could have flown out of his mouth, and how
+he, Quadragant, could have become his prisoner? {358}The contemptuous
+glance which he threw at the dwarf made Kreiss aware of what he was
+discussing in his mind.
+
+"You think you are not captured yet," he said. "Very well, try to get up
+and walk, if you can!" Quadragant did try, and found that he was firmly
+fastened to the ground by ropes and chains, by each single hair of his
+head, by every hair on his body. He tried to speak to the pigmy, and he
+could not, by any effort of his, move his jaws in the slightest way.
+
+"As to the manner of your death," Kreiss went on, "if the wolves and the
+vultures do not hasten your end, hunger will do the work."
+
+At this thought of dying of hunger, a mode of death which he had always
+looked upon as the most terrible of all, Quadragant's heart gave way,
+and he began to cry piteously. Two torrents of tears flowed down his
+cheeks, and after turning around the prominence of his lips, ran over
+from his chin.
+
+Kreiss was compelled to leave his position, so as to avoid the double
+current.
+
+Although quite firm in his resolution, he was naturally kind-hearted.
+These many tears of such unwonted size finally touched 'him, but his
+sympathy made him only the more determined to render his vengeance as
+useful as it was complete. {359}"Listen to me, giant. You can buy your
+life, if you choose." Quadragant's tears ceased to flow. Here was life
+offered to him, and with that life he saw first of all a good supper
+in store for him, and if his mouth had not been held so tight by the
+scaffolding erected in it by Kreiss, his big face would have grinned
+from ear to ear.
+
+[Illustration: 379]
+
+"But," continued the dwarf, "you will Tiave to devote your life and
+your liberty, if we restore both to you, to the service of our decimated
+people; do you hear? You must understand me clearly; you will not be our
+protector, but our servant; you will unhesitatingly perform every kind
+of work which may be required of you for our safety or our comfort.
+First of all you will replant that oak tree, {360}under which the dwarfs
+of this district were living in peace, and you will water it every
+morning until it has taken root again. Now, close your eyes, if you mean
+to accept our conditions!"
+
+Quadragant opened and shut his eyes quickly ten times in succession.
+
+Kreiss made with his lamp a kind of telegraphic signal; his brothers,
+all seven dressed in garments of mouse skin or mole skin, and carrying
+each one a lantern with a firefly inside, climbed in an instant upon the
+face of the giant, which now looked quite brightly illuminated.
+
+Three of them took their station on his forehead; two others by the side
+of each eye. The last two held each a long thorn in their hands, which
+they seemed to use as a dagger.
+
+Kreiss, who had remained at his place, said again to the giant:--
+
+"If, after you have been set free, you dare utter a sound to call for
+help, you lose both of your eyes instantly. Mind the warning!"
+
+Armed with his double pointed spear, he then went once more into
+Quadragant's mouth, and loosened one of the transverse beams which
+formed the ceiling. The giant assisted him with his tongue in the work
+of demolition; then, after drawing a long sigh of relief, he closed his
+mouth and crushed between his formidable jaws all the timber, posts,
+{361}and beams, as if they had been a bundle of matches, and swallowed
+the whole in anticipation of his supper.
+
+[Illustration: 381]
+
+After that he swore an oath which binds the giants as firmly as the
+invocation of the Styx pledged the s of Greece.
+
+"By the earth, which is my mother, by the mountains, which are her
+bones, by the woods and forests, which are her hair, by the brooks, the
+streams, and the rivers, which are the blood of her veins, I, {302}the
+giant Quadragant, declare that I am the slave of the dwarfs."
+
+At sunrise Quadragant was up again, carrying his new masters between
+his fingers, which he twisted together in the shape of a cradle. In
+less than five minutes he reached, in obedience to their orders, the
+old castle in ruins, where a 'solemn meeting was held, not only by the
+fugitives of the day before, but also by the principal representatives
+of all the dwarfs of that part of Germany.
+
+When the sentinels announced the arrival of the giant, all thought their
+last hour had come and endeavored to escape, hoping to find a refuge in
+the lowest depths of the old building. Kreiss, however, had ordered the
+giant to put him down in front of the cellars of the castle, and now
+entered the great Meeting Hall, assuming like all great conquerors, an
+air of extreme modesty.
+
+Then he informed them that the giant was their slave!
+
+They at once threw themselves at his feet and expressed their desire to
+proclaim him Emperor of the Dwarfs.
+
+Kreiss, however, having heard of a recent experiment of that kind,
+was far from believing such sudden enthusiasm to be either deep or
+permanent.
+
+
+[Illustration: 383]
+
+From that day the giant abandoned his {363}old name of Quadragant, and
+assumed that of _Ptitskuchen,_ which at that time meant Friend of
+the Dwarfs, but which, translated into modern German, represents our
+_omelette soufflee_.
+
+[Illustration: 385]
+
+{365}At first all went well; but at the end of three weeks Putskuchen
+looked sad and melancholy; Putskuchen only took half a dozen meals a
+day; Putskuchen was slowly fading away; Putskuchen was in love, in love
+with a young giantess, who taunted him with having become the servant of
+these wretched pygmies and reproached him with his poverty. The unhappy
+creature fell off more and more, the _omelette soufflee_ fell down flat,
+and Putskuchen was a mere lath of thirty feet in length.
+
+Kreiss had always felt a certain tenderness for him, and hence, after
+having asked the consent of all the other chieftains, he placed in the
+giant's hands a large heap of gold scales such as the dwarfs were in the
+habit of collecting in the neighboring mountains.
+
+It was enough to buy three wives, instead of one.
+
+The fact had no sooner become known than all {366}the happy giant
+fathers of the country desired him as a son-in-law, and when they saw
+how liberally his services had been rewarded by his new masters, they
+were all eager to become the serfs of the dwarfs.
+
+Thus, thanks to Kreiss, the giants gradually came all, one by one, and
+entered the service of the dwarfs.
+
+Certain skeptics have maintained that the whole story is symbolic.
+
+According to their interpretation the giant fastened to the ground and
+muzzled by the dwarfs, is the people, the people always kept down
+and always held in subjection, in spite of its gigantic strength. The
+dwarfs, who lived under the oak, the sacred tree of all nations of
+Celtic origin, are the priests.
+
+We say: Shame upon people, who would change a legend into an apologue
+and our friend Kreiss into a Druid!
+
+When the dwarfs became reconciled again to men, they compelled the
+giants to execute for them great works of public utility, such as
+bridges and highroads, which were afterwards generally ascribed to the
+Romans.
+
+The belief in little dwarfs continues to this day to exist in most of
+the Northern countries. They still live in myriads in the subterranean
+regions {367}and in the rocks in Westphalia, in Sweden, and in Norway,
+and they are still hard at work amassing vast treasures.
+
+[Illustration: 387]
+
+[Illustration: 391]
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+{371}Wizards and the Bewitched.--_The Journey of A sa-Thor and his
+Companions.--The Inn with the Five Passages.--Skryinner.--A Lost Glove
+found again.--Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.--Combat between
+Thor and the King's Nurse.--FREDERICH BARBAROSSA AND THE
+KYFFHAUSER.--Teutonia! Teutonia!--What became of the Ancient
+Gods.--Venus and the good Knight Tannhauser.--Jupiter on Rabbit
+Island.--A Modern God._
+
+Hear! hear! New and greater marvels still! But, unfortunately, we shall
+be under the sad necessity of returning to our giants once more, much as
+we have already spoken of them, from giant Ymer down to Quadragant, and
+there may be too much even of the best things in this world. But let
+the reader take courage; this time my giants are not real giants; or at
+least they are giants of a very peculiar species. But instead of losing
+time with limitations and explanations, let us begin our story.
+
+It was in the days when the Scandinavian gods were still in the full
+enjoyment of their power.
+
+One fine day the god Thor, curious to see certain distant lands of
+which they had told him most marvelous stories, set out on his travels,
+accompanied by Raska, Tialff, and Loki. Leaving Sweden and Norway
+behind, they arrived at the sea-shore and crossed over by swimming. A
+mere trifle, of course, for people of their kind. On the opposite shore
+they found a vast plain, and as night was approaching and they began to
+feel that rest would be acceptable, they looked out for a shelter. In
+this vast and deserted plain they see but one single building; a huge,
+ill-shapen, and abandoned house, {373}rather broad than high and of
+altogether exceptional appearance. It has neither doors nor windows,
+nor even a roof; but the night fog may possibly conceal a part of the
+edifice. The travellers enter and find a square, low vestibule, and at
+the end of it five long passages; each of the travellers takes one of
+these passages, looking for a door or a bed in the dark. As they find
+neither bed nor chamber, they resign themselves and lie down on the
+floor, with their backs to the wall.
+
+But even the walls seem to be elastic, and so does the floor; perhaps
+a layer of straw or of moss was spread over them and gave them the
+softness of felt, rather coarse, to be sure, but not unpleasant. The
+travellers felt that they could sleep there comfortably and warm. So
+they did.
+
+At daybreak Thor rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms and proposed to
+take a turn in the country, to stretch his legs and to shake off the
+heaviness of sleep. Through the white mists which were still hanging on
+the tops of high hills he thought he saw a huge mass of disheveled hair,
+and then he discovered in the centre of that head two eyes. At first
+he thought this head and these eyes were simply a rock covered with
+shrubbery and two small pools of water shining in the rays of the
+rising sun. But soon the disheveled head began to move, bent down to
+the ground, and turned now {374}to one side and now to another. In the
+meantime the mists had risen and Thor found that he was standing before
+a giant of such enormous size that those whom he was generally engaged
+in hunting down would not have reached to his knee.
+
+The giant advanced toward him, always looking here and there, and still
+with his eyes fixed on the ground, as if he were looking for something
+he had lost.
+
+Thor, who was easily incensed by the sight of a giant, went straight up
+to meet him and said in an arrogant tone:--
+
+"What are you doing here? What is your name? Who are you?"
+
+"My name is Skrymner," replied the other. "Did you not know? As for me,
+I have no need to ask you any such question; you are the god Thor, one
+of those under sized gods who live with Odin on the ash tree Ygdrasil.
+Have you seen my glove? I have lost my glove; yes! yesterday," he
+added in the most indifferent manner possible, and as if he were solely
+occupied with his search.
+
+"I have found nothing of the kind," replied Thor, who was always in bad
+humor, and now regretted that he did not have his hammer at hand.
+
+"And do you travel quite alone?" asked Skrymner. {375}"I have three
+companions."
+
+"I do not see them."
+
+"They are all three still asleep in that house there, in which we have
+spent the night."
+
+And with his finger he pointed at the house, which they had used as an
+inn for the night.
+
+Skrymner looked both surprised and delighted. "My glove!" he cried,
+"that is my glove! I have found it." He hastened to pick up this
+apparent house with its five long passages, and took it up, but not
+before he had shaken it, holding it close to the ground, and showing
+thus that he was not without a feeling of humanity.
+
+Loki, Tialft, and Raska tumbled out upon the grass, rather terrified
+by their sudden ascension and the sudden somerset which they had been
+forced to make. But as soon as they had recovered from their first
+surprise, and especially from the discovery that they had spent the
+night in a glove, they thought of continuing their journey.
+
+The country was unknown to them, but Skrymner offered to act as guide
+and even to carry their baggage. So much obliging kindness and courtesy
+drove all aggressive thoughts out of Thor's mind, especially as he now
+had his hammer.
+
+At the first stopping place, and just when they were getting ready for
+breakfast, the giant left them, although only after having pointed out
+to {376}them the road they ought to take. Thor, however, found he was
+unable to open the knapsack in which they carried their provisions; all
+the strings and small chains by which it was fastened, were in knots.
+They had to proceed on their journey without having had any breakfast, a
+necessity which is most disagreeable to travellers, and even to gods.
+
+As hour after hour passed and the plain remained deserted and sterile,
+their hunger became tormenting. They listened with all their might,
+hoping they might hear the roaring of a bear or the lowing of a cow,
+determined as they were to dine upon the one or the other; but the dull
+rumbling of a storm and the distant roll of thunder was all they heard.
+
+Thor was furious at the idea that any one should venture to thunder
+without having obtained permission from him, the god of thunder, and
+rushed forward. Following the direction of the noise, he reached a rocky
+defile, overshadowed by a few oak trees, where he found Skrymner lying
+at full length between two hills and snoring furiously. This snoring it
+was which the travellers had taken for the roaring of a storm.
+
+"No doubt," said Thor to himself, "the wretch is at work digesting the
+provisions of which he has robbed us. No doubt it was he who tied all
+those knots in the strings of our knapsack, in order to {377}conceal his
+theft; but he shall pay for it dear! Besides, did he not speak of me as
+an undersized god?"
+
+With these words he seized his hammer and threw it at the head of the
+sleeping giant, who did not stir, but only passed his hand over his brow
+as if a dead leaf falling from a tree had tickled him a little.
+
+Thor went up closer and struck him once more on the back of his head,
+directly on the cerebellum, which in giants is unusually developed.
+
+This time the sleeper opened one eye, closed it again, and after having
+scratched himself at the place where he had been struck, he fell asleep
+again.
+
+Brutal by nature and doubly so when fasting, Thor had become perfectly
+furious when he found himself thus mysteriously powerless. Fully
+determined the next time to make an end, once for all, of his adversary,
+he put on his invisible belt, which had the gift of doubling his
+strength, seized his hammer with both hands and threw it with such
+amazing force at the giant, that it sank up to the handle into one of
+his cheeks and Thor had no small trouble in getting it to come back to
+him.
+
+This time Skrymner was fully roused; he opened both of his eyes, raised
+his hand to his cheek, and exclaimed that it was impossible to sleep
+comfortably {378}in that place, as a fly had just stung him in the
+cheek.
+
+Then, perceiving his assailant, who stood right before him, he asked him
+good-naturedly, how he happened to be there, and whether he had lost
+his way. In the meantime the other travellers are also coming up and
+Skrymner offers to show them the way to the great city of Utgard, where
+he promises they will find a good inn, a good table, a warm reception,
+and not only enough for their wants but all that their heart can desire.
+
+Thor does not know what to think. Overcome and confounded, he follows
+the footsteps of his guide, without being able to form any idea except
+the one: to avenge himself in a signal manner for all his humiliations.
+
+The city of Utgard is of incredible size, the city walls, the houses,
+the trees, the furniture, all are gigantic. Our travellers could easily
+pass between the legs of the little children they met in the streets,
+as we modern people pass under the triumphal arches of the ancients. You
+see, now we are no longer in Lilliput, we have reached the island of the
+giants with Gulliver. Gulliver might very well be the offspring of some
+Scandinavian legend.
+
+The king received Thor and, his friends, laughing heartily at their
+small size, and the seats they are offered are three times as high as
+they are. {379}After a host of adventures in which our men, that is to
+say, our gods, are continually victimized, Thor in his rage challenges
+the giants to single combat. The king accepts the challenge and
+offers to back his nurse, a toothless old woman, against the god. Thor
+consents, eager as he is to vent his wrath on somebody, and determines
+to pitch His Majesty's nurse out of the window. But by all his efforts
+he hardly succeeds in lifting her slightly off the ground, and he
+himself, exhausted by the struggle, sinks on his knees.
+
+On the next day our travellers came to the conclusion that they had
+travelled far enough. Skrymner again showed the way, with his usual
+courtesy, and when they were well out of the town he took the god Thor
+aside and said to him: "So far you have only known my name and nothing
+of myself, now you ought to know that I am Skrym-ner, the wizard. You
+ought, therefore, not to mind anything that has happened to you during
+these last days. You thought you were striking me three times with your
+hammer, but in reality you were striking the impenetrable rocks, on
+which I was apparently sleeping. As to the nurse, you have given proof
+there of such strength as I should not even have expected from the great
+Thor, when you lifted her from the ground; for the toothless old woman
+is none other but Death, yes Death, {380}whom I had compelled to
+come and take part in our games. The rest was all enchantment, mere
+delusions! I wanted to see if the power of the art of Magic was equal to
+that of the gods. Farewell, Asa-Thor, and a pleasant journey to you."
+
+More enraged than ever, Asa-Thor was about to throw himself upon him;
+but the pretended giant had fled in the shape of a bird. Then Thor
+turned back towards the city of Utgard, determined to destroy it
+utterly, but before his eyes it dissolved into a column of smoke.
+
+Well, I promised you some of Mother Goose's stories--have I kept word?
+And do not imagine that this story of Thor and the giants' city is of
+doubtful origin--you will find it in chapters 23, 24, 25, and 26 of the
+sacred book called Edda.
+
+Of magicians and wizards I could say much, but the road is long and I
+am in haste to reach the end. And who does not know the story of the
+prowess of Merlin and of the Maugis?
+
+In all the ancient traditions of the North there are found innumerable
+tales of wizards, witchcraft, and ghosts. Now rocks are changed into
+palaces, and now brutes into men and men into brutes; and the same
+fantastic but always epic element prevails largely in all the old
+romances of chivalry as well as in the great poems of Ariosto and Tasso.
+{381}In almost all countries we find that epic poetry is closely allied
+to religious sentiments and through these to the marvelous; for it has
+always found a first home in temples and a first use for temples. Thus
+it was in India with the Mahabarata, and in Greece with the myths of
+Hercules and of Orpheus. It could not be otherwise with the Gallic or
+German bards, nor with the Scandinavian skalds, all of whose grand poems
+are most unfortunately unknown at present.
+
+But a feature more peculiarly German than the wizards, are the
+bewitched, often called the Sleepers. In these Germany incorporates, as
+it were, the loftiest of her patriotic aspirations, the saddest of her
+disappointments, the most persistent of her hopes. They represent not
+only her old faith, that could never be completely eradicated, but
+also her old favorites, a Hermann and a Siegfried, the hero of the
+Nibelungen, a Theodoric and a Charlemagne, a Witikind and a Frederick
+Barbarossa, a William Tell and a Charles V. Her heroes, her beloved,
+her glory--she has not allowed them to fall into oblivion and be severed
+from the present; she will not admit that they are dead, they are but
+asleep. Witikind under the Siegberg in Westphalia, Charlemagne in the
+lowest rooms of his old castle at Nuremberg. There--and not, as might
+have been imagined, in Aix-la-Chapelle--the mighty old {382}Emperor
+rests majestically, surrounded by his brave champions, ready to awake
+again whenever God shall be pleased to tell him that the moment has
+come.
+
+As for Frederick Barbarossa, he sleeps in the Kyffhauser, one of the
+porphyry and granite mountains of the Taunus, and so do others; there is
+no denying the fact, for they have been seen!
+
+A few years after his disappearance from this world, Frederick showed
+himself upon the summit of one of these mountains, whenever the sound of
+a musical instrument was heard in the valley. Knowing his love of music,
+the Philharmonic Societies of Erfurth and of other towns to this day,
+are fond of serenading the old warrior.
+
+It is said that one evening, when the clock at Tilleda struck midnight,
+certain musicians who had ascended the Kyffhauser, suddenly saw the
+mountain open and a number of women adorned with jewels and carrying
+torches, came out of the opening. They beckoned to them, the men
+followed, continuing to play on their instruments and thus they came
+where the Emperor was. The latter ordered a good supper to be served,
+and when they were ready to leave again, the fair ladies of the court
+escorted them back, with their torches in their hands, and at the last
+moment gave to each of them a poplar branch. The poor musicians had
+{383}hoped for better things from the Emperor's generosity, and when
+they reached the foot of the mountain, they threw their branches into
+the road, very indignant at having been so badly treated. Only one among
+the number kept his branch, and when he reached home, carefully stuck it
+by the side of the consecrated bunch of box which hung over the head of
+his bed. Immediately, O marvel! each leaf of the poplar branch changed
+into a gold ducat. When the others heard of this, they hastened to look
+for their branches, but they never found them again.
+
+On another occasion a shepherd--others say a miner--met on the
+Kyffhaeuser a monk with a white beard, who unceremoniously and just as
+if he had asked him to come and see his next door neighbor, told him
+to come with him and see the Emperor Barbarossa, who wanted to speak
+to him. At first the poor shepherd was dumb-founded; then he began to
+tremble in all his limbs. The monk, however, reassured him and led him
+into a narrow, dark valley, and then, striking the ground three times
+with his rod, he said: "Open! open! open!"
+
+Thereupon a great noise arose beneath the feet of the monk and the
+shepherd; the earth seemed to quake and then a large opening became
+visible. They found they were in a long gallery, lighted up {384}by a
+single lamp and closed at the other end by folding doors of brass. The
+monk, who no doubt was a magician, knocked three times at the door with
+his rod, saying again: "Open! open! open!" and the brass doors turned
+upon their hinges, producing the same noise which they had heard before
+underground.
+
+They were now in a grotto, whose ceiling and walls, blackened by the
+smoke of an immense number of torches, seemed to be hung with black as
+a sign of mourning. It might have been taken for a mortuary chapel, only
+there was no coffin or catafalque visible. The shepherd had, in the
+mean time, begun to tremble once more, but the monk repeated his summons
+before a silver door, which thereupon opened in the same manner as the
+brass door.
+
+In a magnificent room lighted but dimly and in such a manner that it
+was impossible to tell where the light came from, they saw the Emperor
+Frederick, seated upon a golden throne, with a golden crown on his
+head; as they entered he gently inclined his head, contracting his bushy
+eyebrows. His long red beard had grown through the table before him and
+fell down to the ground.
+
+Turning, not without visible effort, towards the shepherd, he spoke to
+him for some time on different subjects and recommended to him to repeat
+{385}what he heard to his friends at home. His voice was feeble, but it
+grew strong and sonorous as soon as he alluded to the glory of Germany.
+Then he said:--
+
+"Are the ravens still flying over the mountains?"
+
+"Yes!" replied the shepherd.
+
+"Are the dead trees still hanging over the abysses of the Kyffhauser as
+in former days?"
+
+"Who could uproot them, unless it be a great storm?"
+
+"Has no one spoken to you of the reappearance of the old woman?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Well then, I must sleep another hundred years!"
+
+He made a sign to the shepherd that he could go, and then fell asleep,
+murmuring the name of a woman which died on his lips.
+
+For among these great Sleepers of Germany there is also a woman, but a
+woman rather of symbolic than real existence. What is the difference?
+Tradition gives the following account of her:--
+
+When Witikind was beaten by Charlemagne at Engter, a poor old woman,
+unable to follow him in his flight, uttered lamentable cries and thus
+added to the panic among the defeated army. When the {386}soldiers
+obeyed Witikind's orders and stopped for a moment in the heat of their
+flight, they threw a mass of sand and rock upon the old woman. They did
+not expect that she would die when thus buried alive; their commander
+had told them: "She will come back!"
+
+This old woman, who is to come back, is Teutonia, and it was her name
+that Frederick Barbarossa was murmuring to himself as he fell asleep
+for another century.
+
+When the old woman shall have succeeded in extricating herself from
+this mass of sand and rock which weighs her down, then and then only
+the great day will come. The heroes who now are held captive in their
+mountains and subterranean grottoes, will shake off the torpor of their
+long sleep; they will reappear among their people, the dead trees will
+bear new foliage to proclaim their return by a miracle, and the cry of:
+Teutonia! Teutonia! will resound in a thousand valleys, and the birds
+even will repeat the name!
+
+They say that when this long wished for day does come, Germany will be
+freed of all her difficulties, and will boast of having but one
+creed, one law, and one heart; she will be glorious and free, one and
+indivisible!
+
+We must wait for the birds to tell us so, before we believe it. {387}At
+that time Teutonia and her emperors were alike asleep. They mention a
+peasant woman from Mayence, who on her way home became so exhausted and
+unable to bear the heat of the sun, that she had to seek shelter in an
+isolated house, standing by the wayside in the midst of a plantation of
+young trees. It was a dwelling of a skillful magician. She asked him for
+leave to rest there a few moments. As he was in the midst of some of
+his most abstruse calculations, he only replied by nodding his head, and
+glanced with his eye at a bench in the most distant part of the room.
+She went and sat down, but only on the edge, hardly knowing if she was
+allowed to do so or not; every moment she got up to ask her host if she
+disturbed him, and if she had not better leave him, tired and exhausted
+as she was. She told him that she would much rather endure the heat and
+the fatigue, than be a burden to him, she begged him not to mind her and
+to go on just as if she were not there, and a host of similar phrases.
+
+Annoyed by her incessant, idle talk, the magician suddenly turned round
+and fixedly looked her full in the face. Immediately she fell asleep.
+(There was no doubt some knowledge of magnetism already in the world
+at that time, but as yet only of magic magnetism). When the good woman
+awoke, {388}she was alone; her host had left her. To her great regret
+she was compelled to leave without being able to thank him for his
+hospitality in her usual profuse manner, and to beg him to excuse her
+falling asleep, when he did her the honor of keeping her company.
+
+As she left the house, she was not a little surprised to see around the
+house, not a copse of young trees, but a number of tall pine trees and
+noble oaks, but she thought it possible she might have left by another
+door than that by which she had entered.
+
+When she at last reached her village, new surprises were in store for
+her. Of all the good people whom she met on her way or whom she saw
+standing in the doors of their houses, she could not recognize a single
+one; she had to look a long time before she found her own house, and
+when she reached it at last, it was inhabited by strange people, who in
+spite of her protestations, pushed her out and treated her as mad.
+
+Then followed a lawsuit, the result of which was to prove, that instead
+of sleeping an hour or so on that bench, as she believed, she had been
+asleep there a hundred years. Thus the young saplings had had time to
+grow up into large trees and her house to change masters. The
+strangers who were now living in it and who had turned her out so
+{389}unceremoniously, were nothing less than her great grandchildren.
+
+I hope, however, the matter was settled amicably.
+
+The Germans have, with that perseverance which characterizes the nation,
+preserved all that could be preserved of their ancient gods as well as
+of their former heroes; they do not like to lose anything, only they
+did not embalm their favorites, but used enchantment. Let us, however,
+notice at once for the honor of the gods, that they were never condemned
+to sleep indefinitely. Not one of them is found among the great
+Sleepers, such as Charlemagne, Witikind, Frederick I., William Tell, or
+the peasant woman, from the neighborhood of Mayence. It is true, they
+were exiled to certain remote districts, which they were not allowed to
+leave, but they could at least move about and continue their former mode
+of life there, after a fashion.
+
+It is not so very long since certain charcoal burners protested that
+they had seen Asa-Thor, for want of giants to combat, hurl his hammer
+against the tallest trees, which he broke and uprooted.
+
+They had also seen the enchanted hunt of Diana, whose deep-mouthed dogs
+bark at night and disturb the slumbers of honest people in {390}Bohemian
+villages. Who has not heard of the intrigues of old Venus, not with
+her former, classic lover, the god Mars, but with the good knight
+Tannhaeuser? If we are to believe Heinrich
+
+Heine, even Jupiter has been recently discovered again in one of the
+Norwegian islands.
+
+[Illustration: 410]
+
+It would be the height of imprudence, of course, to undertake an account
+of the discovery, after such a master. I shall, therefore, be content to
+present a mere summary of this remarkable tradition.
+
+There is an island in the Northern seas, which is bordered by icebergs
+and arid mountains: the valleys are dim and dark with heavy mists, the
+mountain tops are covered with snow for nine months of the year.
+
+Here, one dismal morning, some travellers landed, driven by a tempest
+much more than by their own free will. They were mostly savants, members
+of great academies from Stockholm and St. Petersburg, who had undertaken
+a voyage of discovery to the polar regions. The arid, almost {391}bare
+soil did not promise a pleasant resting place, but the mountain slopes
+towards the south produced fine grass and dwarf gooseberry bushes, and
+the immense number of holes in the ground, together with distinct traces
+of debris left at the openings, proved that the island was at all
+events inhabited by countless numbers of rabbits. Of other animal life,
+however, no trace could be found.
+
+Rabbits seemed to be the only inhabitants of the island, and that was
+tempting enough for poor sailors who had for some time been put on salt
+rations.
+
+Our savants prepared, therefore, a large number of traps and snares,
+when suddenly a fierce tempest of snow and hail broke out, and compelled
+them instantly to seek refuge in a spacious cave which opened in that
+direction.
+
+They were not a little surprised to find here an old man, bald, hollow
+cheeked, and pale, whose body was emaciated and decrepit and who was
+hardly clothed in spite of the rigor of the climate. But beneath all
+these signs of extreme old age, and great destitution, the stranger
+displayed an air of authority, and on his serene and lofty brow such
+supernatural majesty, that the travellers were filled with respect and
+reverence, and well-nigh trembled at his appearance. {392}An eagle of
+the largest variety, but so reduced that he looked the mere skeleton
+of a bird, and with faded and disheveled plumage, sat in a corner, the
+picture of misery, with his dull eyes and his drooping wings. He was the
+old man's sole companion.
+
+The two hermits, having no other means of subsistence, lived by hunting,
+and the old man found in addition, means to carry on a modest traffic
+in the furs of the only game that the island contained; he laid up large
+supplies of the small peltry and exchanged it for luxuries.....
+
+But my pen refuses to go on. I cannot reconcile it to my principles as
+an author nor to my conscience as an honest student of genuine myths, to
+repeat here a story, which is altogether apocryphal, and which belongs
+much less to tradition than to mystification.
+
+Now, this old man was Jupiter, and as I think it over, I come to the
+conclusion that Mr. Heine, who laughs at the most serious things, has
+skillfully concealed his irony under the cloak of an interesting story,
+for the mere purpose of telling us that the Chief of the Gods, dread
+Jupiter, has become--a dealer in rabbit skins!
+
+I cannot follow his example.
+
+Without wandering from my subject, for I am still speaking of false
+gods, I will substitute for {393}this necessarily much curtailed
+account, another story which I can warrant as authentic.
+
+"In Persia," we are told by Count Gobineau, in a recently published
+book of great merit, "the _Soufys,_ that is to say the savants and
+philosophers, reject all dogmatic religion and believe in the reunion of
+the soul with God in trances only. When this union is complete, the soul
+is transformed and becomes itself a participant in the nature of the
+uncreated essence, and Man is God." Human folly is always a disease
+produced by human pride.
+
+France, also, has produced a few gods of that kind; I do not mean to
+mention them, however, as belonging to the myths of the Rhine, which
+have special reference to Germany only. But among the Germans, also,
+there is a school of philosophers who without going as far as the
+Persians go, are utterly incredulous, and disregarding trances
+and immortal souls alike, have finally denied the existence of God
+altogether and made themselves gods. This shows how anxious savants as
+well as ignorant men are, in that beautiful country, to people the earth
+with deities of every kind!
+
+It is the history of one of these earth-born gods which I propose to
+give here, before I close this long chapter. Alas! he is dead now, and
+that is a great pity; but he did live once; on that essential point
+there is no lack of evidence. I could even, {394}like the Thuringian
+peasants when speaking of Frederick Barbarossa, say: "I have seen him!"
+
+In the year 1800 there was born in Duesseldorf, in Prussia, a child in a
+Jewish family recently converted to Christianity. This child might well
+have been looked upon as of supernatural origin, so entirely different
+was it, from its earliest days, from all that had ever been seen before.
+Martin Luther no doubt, if the child had been one of his own, would have
+pronounced him to be a Killecroff.
+
+He was not only noisy and troublesome, but he was also a pedant; he
+snubbed professors and listened to the advice of very young children.
+When his parents scolded him, he only laughed at them; when a grave
+event disturbed a neighbor's household, he laughed; when the French took
+his native city, he laughed; in fine he was always laughing.
+
+However, as he grew up, he gorged himself with logic, with mathematics,
+with Greek and Latin and Hebrew and all kinds of good things besides.
+He became even a philosopher before he was of age, but his philosophy
+consisted mainly in a sarcastic laugh. When they spoke to him of the
+position he might occupy in Duesseldorf, and of the wealth he might
+acquire, his only answer was a grimace.
+
+A rabbi spread out before him heaps of gold, {395}promising to give him
+that and more, if he would be his slave only for a few years; he refused
+to listen to him. As he was a vain man, the demon of Fame endeavored to
+tempt him, but he laughed in his face.
+
+At last the devil, a real devil, I am sure (his name was George William
+Frederick Schlegel) whispered into his ear: "Would you like to be a
+god?"
+
+This time our young philosopher did not laugh. He became a god, and,
+from official jealousy, proceeded to deny the great God in Heaven until
+he lost all human sentiments. He lived alone, friendless, childless,
+without a family and giving up even his mother country, finding that
+everything had to be done over again in this world, which he had not
+created.
+
+After leaving Germany he came to France, and here in France he laughed
+louder and bitterer than ever. In France they did not believe in his
+divinity; they did not worship him, but they loved him as if he had been
+a simple mortal; in France he made friends and he became like other men
+once more. Finally, as he was after all bad only in his wit, he became
+voluntarily a convert as he saw the evil fruit of his teachings. He
+took a wife to himself with the sanction of the Church, and he died
+a believer. {396}This ex-god was called Heinrich Heine, that Heinrich
+Heine, who laughed so bitterly at his ex-colleague, Jupiter, and spoke of
+him as a dealer in rabbit skins.
+
+[Illustration: 416]
+
+[Illustration: 419]
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+{399}Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women and Serpent
+Women.--_Children's Myths.--Godmothers.--Fairies.--The Magic Wand and
+the Broomstick.--The Lady of Kynast.--The World of the Dead,' the World
+of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.--Myths of Animals._
+
+Well? Have you seen enough of the gods and demigods of Germany, of the
+Nixen and goblins, the Kobolds, the giants, and the dwarfs? Have I shown
+you enough of this vast storehouse of human folly? I must confess, it
+makes me melancholy to speak of all this, and I feel an urgent desire to
+"shut up shop."
+
+The conscientious collector of myths, who has more material than he can
+manage, and sees new myths continually rising before him, is not unlike
+those learned physicians who spend their lives among crowds of insane
+people. A fever of imitation seizes them and soon they begin to wander
+like their patients.
+
+Perhaps I have reached that point myself without becoming aware of it.
+The reader must judge for himself.
+
+My mind, filled with myths, symbols, and eccentricities, is ready to ask
+for mercy, and still I feel it, there are some things yet to be done.
+For instance, I recollect having promised to give a completion of the
+history of the Druidesses, that is to say, of women, those myth-like
+beings by eminence! That kind of instinctive sense, that delicacy of
+almost intuitive perceptions which distinguished them from the other
+sex in its material coarseness, could not fail to give them easily the
+advantage over men. In Celtic lands as in Scandinavia they were the
+models of all virtues, the oracles of the house. They were occasionally
+beaten, {401}it is true, but they were also grandly honored, and in
+Germany especially people burnt incense before them, long before they
+smoked tobacco in their presence.
+
+[Illustration: 421]
+
+{403}At the time when Christianity came, the women played a prominent
+and truly glorious part there; all the historians bear witness. Between
+the fourth and the sixth century Fritigill, Queen of the Marcomanni,
+Clotilda, Queen of France, and Bertha. Queen of England, had compelled
+their husbands to bow down before the Cross, and not by witchcraft, as
+the pagans wickedly maintained, but simply by persuasion. Other women,
+who belonged to noble families or to the common people at large, a
+Krimhild, a Thekla, and a Liobat, assisted the missionaries in their
+dangerous enterprise and actually helped them in cutting down the sacred
+oak trees.
+
+What had become, during these long continued persecutions, of you, fair
+Gann, noble Aurinia, majestic Velleda, and of your sisters, the other
+Druidesses?
+
+They were wandering about in dark forests, proscribed and weeping over
+their departed glory; they concealed themselves in remote places where
+the agents of the civil power but rarely appeared. Sometimes, of an
+evening, they would venture forth, approach a belated traveller on a
+cross-road, and {404}hold with him mysterious converse. Sometimes,
+also, the inhabitants of a village, or even of a larger place, would go
+secretly to their well chosen hiding places to consult them on the good
+or evil chances of their prospects in life, or on an epidemic that was
+attacking their cattle. Some people, and among them not unfrequently
+recent converts, who were still strongly imbued with their former creed,
+would ask them to name their new-born infants and thus to bring them
+good luck. Hence they were at first known as _Godmothers_, and at a
+later time as _Fairies_.
+
+It was naturally supposed that like the ancient fairies of the East,
+these women also derived their power from the stars, for why else should
+they have been met so constantly on the mountain slopes, when the moon
+was shining brightly, or slipping suddenly from behind a rock or a tree,
+where will-o'-the-wisps and fireflies alone were in the habit of being
+about?
+
+Among these fairies many were kind and naturally benevolent; others, no
+doubt embittered by their fate, appeared irascible and ill disposed. Woe
+to the men, or even the cattle upon whom they cast an evil eye!
+
+This evil influence could be averted only by the assistance of another
+fairy, a good one in this case, who relieved you more or less promptly
+by means {405}of a talisman, a constellated stone, or certain words
+possessed of magic power.
+
+Now, if we add to these godmothers, to these godchildren, to good and
+bad fairies, the terrible Ogres, whose very name filled the people of
+those days with terror, you will know all the mysterious personages
+which appear in the myths of children and which we have all known in our
+early days.
+
+If we were to examine these legends and traditions more carefully, we
+should no doubt easily find "Bluebeard" again among the old burggraves
+of the Rhine, as "Puss in Boots" has already been discovered there. "The
+Sleeping Beauty" might very well be the peasant woman who had slept a
+century under the influence of magic magnetism, and why should not our
+little dwarf Kreiss and his brothers have furnished the first idea
+of little Tom Thumb, with Quadragant to play the part of the ogre? In
+"Cinderella" we might with the same readiness recognize one of the three
+Undine sisters, who forgot amid the delights of the evening assembly,
+that their furlough was out at ten o'clock? The same would apply, no
+doubt, to many others who lived under the influence of wicked Nichus or
+evil disposed fairies.
+
+Poor Druidesses! If you had at least survived as fairies! If they had
+met you only in the air travelling simply by the aid of your magic wand!
+{406}But in proportion as Christianity increased, your power necessarily
+decreased.
+
+[Illustration: 426]
+
+The day came at last, when they dared transform you into fortune
+tellers, and finally into accursed witches! Then your enchantress' wand
+became that atrocious broomstick upon which you travelled through
+the air on your way to the witches' Sabbath! Oh misery! Oh
+{407}wretchedness! What a fatal overthrow of all earthly glory and
+grandeur!
+
+When the women thus saw their power of ruling men by prophetic
+inspiration slip away from them, they one fine day determined to change
+their tactics, their ways and manners, and, I am sorry to have to say
+it, almost their sex! They assumed the noisy and truculent manners of
+their brothers and husbands and affected violent exercises, riding on
+horseback, wrestling, and even fighting in battles. This was the age of
+bullying women, of _Strong Women_ in fact.
+
+When they were young ladies they would admit no lover who could not
+prove his affections by the most perilous adventures and impossible
+enterprises. Such was the case with the famous Lady of Kynast.
+
+She owned a large domain and on this domain a ruined old tower which
+stood on the summit of a steep, high rock, surrounded on all sides by a
+deep abyss.
+
+Rich, young, and beautiful, eagerly sought for by a number of admirers,
+she did not think, in her desire to keep them from becoming too
+pressing, of undertaking an endless piece of embroidery like Penelope.
+She did not embroider; in fact, she looked with contempt, and almost
+with disgust, upon every kind of work that was done by women. {408}She
+told her lovers that she was betrothed to Ky-nast--this was the name of
+the old tower--and that any one who thought of winning her good will,
+would first have to compete with her betrothed. To do this, nothing
+was required but to climb up the rock and the tower, and after having
+reached the battlements, to make a complete round, not on foot, however,
+and assisted by the hands and knees, but on horseback, without other
+assistance than the bridle.
+
+The flock of lovers took flight instantly; only two remained. They were
+two brothers, bereft of reason by the strength of their passion.
+
+After having cast lots, the first one attempted the task and at first
+he was successful. But that was all. He had no sooner reached the
+crenelated top of the old tower, unaccompanied by his less active
+courser, than he was seized with vertigo and fell instantly into the
+abyss.
+
+The second brother, in his turn, climbed up to the top and actually
+succeeded in riding some length along the battlements; but soon his
+horse, feeling the stones slipping from under its hoofs, and the whole
+tower rocking under the weight, refused to go on. To return was as
+impossible as to proceed.{409}
+
+[Illustration: 429]
+
+{411}The knight, determined to carry through the undertaking in which he
+was engaged, encouraged his horse with his voice and with his spurs,
+but the poor animal remained immovable, apparently wedged in between
+the large stones of the tower. At last, knight and horse disappeared
+together; the abyss swallowed up their bleeding, mangled remains.
+
+The Lady of Kynast could not disguise her delight and her pride as
+she received the congratulations of her noble neighbors; all the great
+ladies thought of having a Kynast, or a similar trap, in which they
+might catch' and try their lovers.
+
+No other claimants, however, appeared to woo this fair lady, who was so
+well protected by her betrothed. The poor damsel felt rather aggrieved
+by this neglect. She was by no means satisfied with having sacrificed
+only two young men to her pride; she was gradually becoming soured and
+ill-tempered, when at last a third lover presented himself and asked
+leave to attempt the trial.
+
+She did not know who it was, and this surprised her; for how could he
+have fallen in love with her? He might possibly have seen her on her
+balcony, or at some royal feast; perhaps he was only allured by her
+great reputation. However, there was nothing to lose by accepting his
+offer. At best, he was only one more victim to be added to the list;
+that was all. At that time women were ferocious.
+
+For some days a thick, heavy fog had shrouded {412}the castle and
+the old tower from top to bottom, so as to make the ascent utterly
+impossible.
+
+The simple laws of hospitality, required, therefore, that the lady
+should offer her castle to the newly arrived knight.
+
+The latter was handsome and of fine figure; his features beamed with
+bravery and intelligence; his white, delicate hands, exquisitely shaped,
+proved sufficiently that he was of noble descent; and his large retinue
+bespoke his high rank and large fortune. During three days he spent
+almost all his time with the young lady, but as yet he had not dared say
+a word of his love. She, however, felt herself gradually conquered by a
+feeling which had, until now, been unknown to her heart.
+
+When the dense veil of mist was at length torn aside, and the Kynast
+shone forth in its full splendor, she was on the point of telling the
+knight that she would not insist on the trial in his case; but what
+would her good friends, the noble ladies of the neighborhood, have said?
+
+When the moment came, the Lady of Kynast felt her heart fail her. She
+shut herself in, she wept, she cried, and although little given to
+prayers generally, she besought God to do a miracle in behalf of her
+knight. She could, however, hope very little from such a miracle, for in
+the meantime, loud clamors had been heard below, and as {413}she surely
+thought the spectators were bewailing the death of her last lover, she
+fainted away.
+
+[Illustration: 433]
+
+{415} Cries of joy and of triumph roused her again; the knight had
+successfully accomplished the task. Quite overcome, she rushes to meet
+him, and in her intense excitement and the depth of her passion, she
+forgets that all eyes are upon her, and breathlessly cries out: "My hand
+is yours."
+
+But he draws himself up to his full height, and, haughtily and harshly
+he replies with a withering smile:--
+
+"Have I ever asked you for your hand? I only came to avenge my two
+brothers, whom you have killed, and I have done it, for I do not love
+you, and you love me! Very well! Now you can die of your love, or of
+your shame, as you like it! Farewell, I am going back to Margaret, my
+darling, my wife!"
+
+The same evening the wretched lady had herself hoisted up to the top
+of the tower, from whence she wished, as she said, to watch the setting
+sun.
+
+But before the sun had sunk below the horizon, she had rejoined her
+victims at the foot of the ruined old tower.
+
+Thus the Kynast obtained possession of his betrothed.
+
+The story might furnish an admirable plot for a grand opera. But, upon
+reflection, I think it would {416}suit a circus better, for there are in
+it three first-class parts for horses.
+
+The Lady of Kynast was a strong minded woman, rather than a really
+strong woman; but there were others, who really distinguished themselves
+by extraordinary physical strength. It would seem that the habit of
+taking violent exercise had finally developed their muscles and sinews
+to such a degree, that few men could be found strong enough to overcome
+them in a wrestling match, or in armed combat.
+
+Such was the noble Brunehilt, queen of Isenstein, in Norway.
+
+_Soothsayers, Godmothers, Fairies, Strong Women, and Serpent Women_ are
+not the only women of this class which we ought to mention here perhaps.
+We might also speak of the _Swan Women_, who floated on the water in
+the dim morning mist, clothed in a cloak of eider down; and the _Forest
+Woman_, who was honored every year by the burning of a spindle full of
+hemp, to keep her from doing any harm; and the _Water Sneezers,_ to whom
+you had to say three times "God bless you!" in order to save their souls
+from purgatory; and the little _Moss Gatherers_, who could not escape
+from their enemies, the Forest Woman and the Wild Huntsman, unless a
+benevolent charcoal burner would mark some trees with three crosses,
+behind {417}which they could conceal themselves. But we must make haste
+to conclude.
+
+However, as the great _Wild Huntsman_ has accidentally been mentioned,
+we do not think it would be fair to leave him out and pass him over in
+silence.
+
+[Illustration: 437]
+
+He is the Lord Hackelberg. Most imprudently he had begged God to allow
+him to exchange his place in heaven for the right to hunt upon earth for
+all time to come. To punish him, God granted {418}his prayer, and ever
+since he has been hunting, with horns blowing and dogs barking, without
+respite or repose. He hunts continually, day and night, to-day as
+yesterday; he must hunt to-morrow as he does to-day, and yet he must
+hunt the same deer, which forever escapes from him, and ever will
+escape.
+
+Which of the two is most to be pitied, the everlasting huntsman, or the
+everlasting game?
+
+How many others could claim a right to be mentioned here as well as he?
+
+These are the people who are _condemned to remain standing forever_, and
+those who are _condemned to dance forever,_ another variety of bewitched
+people.
+
+You do not think my material is all used up? By no means! In the first
+place, I might have told you all about mythological animals; of Thor's
+_buck-goat_, which enjoyed the same privilege as the boar of the
+Walhalla, of daily satisfying the powerful appetite of its master and
+his guests, and yet being replaced in all its bodily fullness, provided
+only care had been taken to put all the bones aside.
+
+I might have gone back to give a fuller account of that famous
+Iormungandur, the great sea serpent, which still exists in our
+days--who dares doubt it? The crew of an English vessel, passengers,
+{419}officers, and sailors, have unanimously testified in a legally
+drawn up deposition that they have met it quite recently in the Northern
+seas. What more evidence do you want?
+
+And the _Kraken_, that most marvelous of all cetaceans, which could
+easily be mistaken for a habitable island, and on which imprudent
+navigators once really landed, erecting their tents and saying mass,
+without its ever stirring, until they hoisted anchors, when the animal
+for the first time gave signs of life?
+
+And the _Griffins_, those perfect symbols of avarice, who are all the
+time busily engaged in dragging forth from underground vast heaps of
+gold and precious stones, merely in order to guard and defend them
+ever afterwards, at the peril of their lives, although the gold and
+the jewels are of no use to any one? And Sleipner, Odin's _eight-legged
+horse_, and the dog _Garm_, etc?
+
+Passing on to another variety of zoological marvels, I might have
+mentioned the _Salmon,_ whose scaly skin wicked Loki assumed as a
+disguise in order to escape from the wrath of the gods after Balder's
+death. And that marvelous _Sturgeon_ in the Rhine, which the French
+legends have put to good profit. Let us pause a moment in contemplation
+of this wonderful fish.
+
+A young, noble lady determined, in order to save {420}her honor, to
+destroy her beauty, the grandest, most heroic, and most calamitous
+sacrifice that can possibly be made. Hence, when the moment for action
+arrived, her courage failed her. But if she could not bear the idea
+of becoming ugly, she could at least mutilate herself. So she puts her
+dagger upon the ledge of a window which overlooked the Rhine, seizes a
+hatchet, and with a single blow cuts off her hand, which falls into
+the river, and then with the bleeding stump terrifies her infamous
+persecutor. Here the sturgeon makes its appearance. This providential
+sturgeon has seen the hand drop into the river; it swallows it with
+well-known voracity, but in the anticipation of restoring it, seven
+years later, uninjured to the true owner, and thus to prove her
+superhuman virtue. And this really happened seven years after the
+occurrence in Rome, in the presence of the Pope and his assembled
+Cardinals.
+
+At first sight it does not appear quite clear, how the sturgeon could
+have passed from the waters of the Rhine into those of the Tiber, but in
+this kind of stories there is no use in trying to comprehend everything.
+
+The noble lady and the sturgeon have furnished the theme for the
+famous novel, "La Manekine," and later, in the Middle Ages, for a
+great dramatic mystery on the French stage. {421}Before concluding this
+chapter, I may be allowed to say a word about the _World of the Dead_,
+which sends in certain consecrated nights its representatives to some of
+the churches, or to silent dinners, and about the _World of Ghosts_,
+the annals of which have been collected, and the laws of which have been
+explained by Jung Stilling and Kerner.
+
+[Illustration: 441]
+
+These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men, walk, run, and even
+jump, but they have no power over material objects; they cannot move
+a table, a chair, or even a straw. All their united efforts would
+not succeed in causing the light of a candle {422}to flicker. We can
+therefore feel perfectly easy with regard to these ghosts; they cannot
+injure our furniture, nor draw the knot of our cravat inconveniently
+tight, if they should take a fancy to make an end of us.
+
+Nor can I keep altogether silence as to the _World of Shadows_, still
+dimmer and less perceptible than the World of Ghosts. I shall therefore
+content myself with a single instance, which we owe to a Dutch legend.
+The master bell-ringer of the city of Haarlem, caught at a tavern by his
+wife escaped with such extraordinary rapidity that his shadow was unable
+to follow him, and remained hanging on the wall--a fact duly certified
+by the signature and seal of the reigning burgomaster, the aldermen, and
+other notables of said town.
+
+In spite of such overwhelming evidence one might be disposed to doubt
+the authenticity of this remarkable occurrence, which Hoffmann, I
+believe, has used in one of his Tales; but had not long before Hoffmann,
+and long before the master bell-ringer of Haarlem even, the god Fo left
+his shadow in some town of Hindustan, instead of his card? We try in
+vain to find anything new under the sun; all our most famous myths and
+all our most amusing anecdotes have travelled all over India before they
+reached us.
+
+I might also tell you.... but he who tells {423}everything, says too
+much. Let us here pause once more, and for the last time. Farewell,
+reader, and may Heaven keep you sound in body and soul.{424}
+
+[Illustration: 443]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Rhine, by X. B. Saintine
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diff --git a/44430.zip b/44430.zip
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #44430 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44430)
diff --git a/old/44430-h.htm.2021-01-25 b/old/44430-h.htm.2021-01-25
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Myths of the Rhine, by Prof. M. Schele de Vere, LL. D.
+    </title>
+    <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
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+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Rhine, by X. B. Saintine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Myths of the Rhine
+
+Author: X. B. Saintine
+
+Illustrator: Gustave Doré
+
+Translator: M. Schele De Vere
+
+Release Date: December 14, 2013 [EBook #44430]
+Last Updated: December 14, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYTHS OF THE RHINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      MYTHS OF THE RHINE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      Translated from the French of X. B. Saintine
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By Prof. M. Schele De Vere, LL. D.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      Illustrated by Gustave Doré
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h5>
+      Scribner, Armstrong, and Company <br /> <br /> 1874
+    </h5>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/009m.jpg" alt="009m " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> DESCRIPTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_LIST"> LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> I. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> II. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> III. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> IV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> V. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> VIII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> IX. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> X. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XIV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DESCRIPTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Primitive Times.&mdash;The First Settlers on the Rhine.&mdash;Masters
+      going to School.&mdash;Sanskrit and Breton.&mdash;An Idle God.&mdash;Microscopic
+      Deities.&mdash;Tree Worship.&mdash;Birth-Trees and Death-Trees..<a
+      href="#link003">...003</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Druids and their Creed.&mdash;Esus.&mdash;The Holy Oak.&mdash;The
+      Pforzheim Lime Tree.&mdash;A Rival Plant.&mdash;The Mistletoe and the
+      Anguinufh.&mdash;The Oracle at Do-dona.&mdash;Immaculate Horses.&mdash;The
+      Druidesses.&mdash;A late Elector.&mdash;Philanthropic Institution of Human
+      Sacrifices.&mdash;Second Druidical. Epoch..<a href="#link027">...027</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.&mdash;The Two Banks of the Rhine.&mdash;Druid
+      Stones.&mdash;Weddings and Burials.&mdash;Night Service.&mdash;A Demigod
+      Glacier.&mdash;Social Duels.&mdash;A Countrywoman of Aspasia.&mdash;Boudoir
+      of a Celtic Lady.&mdash;The Bard&rsquo;s Story.&mdash;Teutons and Titans.&mdash;Earthquake..<a
+      href="#link055">...055</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Roman Gods invade Germany.&mdash;Drusus and the Dru-idess.&mdash;Ogmius,
+      the Hercules of Gaul.&mdash;Great Philological Discovery concerning
+      Tentâtes.&mdash;Transformations of every kind.&mdash;Irmensul.&mdash;The
+      Rhine deified.&mdash;The Gods cross the River.&mdash;Druids of the Third
+      Epoch..<a href="#link091">...091</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The World before and since Odin.&mdash;Birth of Ymer.&mdash;The Giants of
+      the Frost.&mdash;A Log split in Two.&mdash;The First Man and the First
+      Woman.&mdash;The Ash Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.&mdash;Thor&rsquo;s Three
+      Jewels.&mdash;Freyr&rsquo;s Enchanted Sword.&mdash;A Souvenir of the
+      National Guard of Belleville.&mdash;The Story of Kvasir and the Two
+      Dwarfs.&mdash;Honey and Blood.&mdash;Invocation..<a href="#link121">...121</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Short Biographies.&mdash;A Clairvoyant among the Gods.&mdash;A Bright God.&mdash;Tyr
+      and the Wolf Fenris.&mdash;The Hospital at the Walhalla.&mdash;Why was
+      Odin one-eyed.&mdash;The Three Norns.&mdash;Mimer the Sage.&mdash;A
+      Goddess the Mother of Four Oxen.&mdash;The Love Affairs of Heimdall&mdash;The
+      God with the Golden Teeth..<a href="#link153">...153</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Heaven and Hell.&mdash;The Valkyrias.&mdash;Amusements in Walhalla.&mdash;Pork
+      and Wild Boar.&mdash;A Frozen Hell.&mdash;Balder&rsquo;s Death.&mdash;Frigg&rsquo;s
+      Devotion.&mdash;The Iron Tree Forest.&mdash;The Twilight of the Gods.&mdash;Iduna&rsquo;s
+      Apples.&mdash;The Fall of Heaven and the End of the World.&mdash;Reflections
+      on that Event.&mdash;The Little Fellow still alive..<a href="#link175">...175</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VIII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time between
+      one World and another.&mdash;How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.&mdash;How
+      Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the Indians.&mdash;How
+      Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God Buddha.&mdash;About
+      Mahabarata and Ramavana.&mdash;Chronology.&mdash;The World&rsquo;s Age.&mdash;Comparative
+      Tables.&mdash;Quotations.&mdash;Supporting Evidence.&mdash;A Cenotaph..<a
+      href="#link211">...211</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IX.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Confederation of all the Northern Gods.&mdash;Freedom of Religion.&mdash;Christianity.&mdash;Miserere
+      mei!&mdash;Homeric Enumeration.&mdash;Prussian, Slavic, and Finnish
+      Deities.&mdash;The God of Cherries and the God of Bees.&mdash;A Silver
+      Woman.&mdash;Ilmarinnen&rsquo;s Wedding Song.&mdash;A Skeleton God.&mdash;Yaga-Baba&rsquo;s
+      Pestle and Mortar.&mdash;Preparation for Battle.&mdash;The Little Chapel
+      on the Hill.&mdash;The Signal for the Attack.&mdash;Jesus and Mary..<a
+      href="#link217">...217</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      X.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Marietta and the Sweet-briar.&mdash;Esus and Jesus.&mdash;Amalgam.&mdash;A
+      Neophyte.&mdash;Prohibition to eat Horseflesh.&mdash;Bishops in Arms.&mdash;Interruption.&mdash;Come
+      Home, my Good Friend!&mdash;Prussia and the Myths of the Middle Ages.&mdash;Tybilinus,
+      the Black God.&mdash;The little Blue Flower..<a href="#link245">...245</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.&mdash;Sylphs, their Amusements
+      and Domestic Arrangements.&mdash;Little Queen Mab.&mdash;Will-o&rsquo;-the-
+      Wisps.&mdash;White Elves and Black Elves.&mdash;True Causes of Natural
+      Somnambulism.&mdash;The Wind&rsquo;s Betrothed.&mdash;Fire-damp.&mdash;Master
+      Haemmerling.&mdash;The Last of the Gnomes..<a href="#link263">...263</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Elementary Spirits of the Water.&mdash;Petrarch at Cologne.&mdash;Divine
+      Judgment by Water.&mdash;Nixen and Undines.&mdash;A Furlough till Ten o&rsquo;clock.&mdash;The
+      White footed Undine.&mdash;Mysteries on the Rhine.&mdash;The Court of the
+      Great Nichus.&mdash;Nixcobt, the Messenger of the Dead.&mdash;His Funny
+      Tricks.&mdash;I go in Search of an Undine..<a href="#link283">...283</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XIII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Familiar Spirits.&mdash;Butzemann.&mdash;The Good Frau Holle.&mdash;Kobolds.&mdash;A
+      Kobold in the Cook&rsquo;s Employ.&mdash;Zot-terais and the Little White
+      Ladies.&mdash;The Killecroffs, the Devil&rsquo;s Children.&mdash;White
+      Angels.&mdash;Granted Wishes, a Fable..<a href="#link309">...309</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XIV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Giants and Dwarfs.&mdash;Duel between Ephesim and Gromme-lund.&mdash;Court
+      Dwarfs and Little Dwarfs.&mdash;Ymer&rsquo;s Sons.&mdash;The Invisible
+      Reapers.&mdash;Story of the Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragaat.&mdash;How
+      the Giants came to serve the Dwarfs..<a href="#link335">...335</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Wizards and the Bewitched.&mdash;The Journey of Asa-Thor and his
+      Companions.&mdash;The Inn with the Five Passages.&mdash;Skrymner.&mdash;A
+      Lost Glove found again.&mdash;Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.&mdash;Combat
+      between Thor and the King&rsquo;s Nurse.&mdash;Frederick Barbarossa and
+      the Kyffhâuser.&mdash;Teutonia! Teutonia!&mdash;What became of the Ancient
+      Gods.&mdash;Venus and the good Knight Tannhâuser.&mdash;Jupiter on Rabbit
+      Island.&mdash;A Modern God..<a href="#link371">...371</a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XVI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women, and Serpent Women.&mdash;Children&rsquo;s
+      Myths.&mdash;Godmothers.&mdash;Fairies.&mdash;The Magic Wand and the
+      Broomstick.&mdash;The Lady of Kynast.&mdash;The World of the Dead, the
+      World of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.&mdash;Myths of Animals..<a
+      href="#link399">...399</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_LIST" id="link2H_LIST"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Father Rhine.................................................<a href="#link003">...003</a>
+
+The impassive historian .....................................<a href="#link004">...004</a>
+
+Vast forests as old as the world ............................<a href="#link005">...005</a>
+
+The first pioneers...........................................<a href="#link007">...007</a>
+
+The Celts were a people from India...........................<a href="#link009">...009</a>
+
+What happy people scholars are...............................<a href="#link010">...010</a>
+
+A horrible custom............................................<a href="#link019">...019</a>
+
+Dead man&rsquo;s trees.............................................<a
+      href="#link022">...022</a>
+
+The Druids now appear for the first time in Germany..........<a href="#link023">...023</a>
+
+The other chieftains were generally polygamists..............<a href="#link031">...031</a>
+
+Courts of justice were always held under an elm tree.........<a href="#link032">...032</a>
+
+Attempt to murder the mayor .................................<a href="#link033">...033</a>
+
+Mistletoe an officinal and sacred plant......................<a href="#link035">...035</a>
+
+Gauls........................................................<a href="#link037">...037</a>
+
+Serpents&rsquo; knots..............................................<a
+      href="#link038">...038</a>
+
+Prophetic trembling and neighing.............................<a href="#link041">...041</a>
+
+A Druid teacher .............................................<a href="#link044">...044</a>
+
+The Germans were in full flight .............................<a href="#link046">...046</a>
+
+The bloody knife of the Druids ..............................<a href="#link052">...052</a>
+
+I turn my steps from the sacred precincts....................<a href="#link055">...055</a>
+
+Who are these other soldiers?................................<a href="#link057">...057</a>
+
+These laborers seem to suffer from some restraint............<a href="#link058">...058</a>
+
+I look around for a resting-place ...........................<a href="#link059">...059</a>
+
+A shepherd...................................................<a href="#link060">...060</a>
+
+The guard of a sword, which had been driven into the ground..<a href="#link061">...061</a>
+
+The shepherd,&mdash;as mournful as ever............................<a
+      href="#link063">...063</a>
+
+Herds of swine are wallowing ................................<a href="#link066">...066</a>
+
+A young wife bearing the burden of united household..........<a href="#link067">...067</a>
+
+Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty ...............<a href="#link068">...068</a>
+
+Such were the ways of our fathers: rejoice in facing death...<a href="#link069">...069</a>
+
+The Druidical altars.........................................<a href="#link070">...070</a>
+
+As there is no window I peep through the trap-door...........<a href="#link072">...072</a>
+
+One of the chief men of the country .........................<a href="#link075">...075</a>
+
+She was a young Ionian girl, a country-woman of Aspasia......<a href="#link080">...080</a>
+
+The boudoir of a Celtic lady.................................<a href="#link082">...082</a>
+
+The Druid-bard...............................................<a href="#link085">...085</a>
+
+Death of Druids..............................................<a href="#link091">...091</a>
+
+A Druidess endowed with the gift of prophecy ................<a href="#link093">...093</a>
+
+The victorious march of the Romans ..........................<a href="#link094">...094</a>
+
+Her deities personified nothing but vices ...................<a href="#link096">...096</a>
+
+The Hercules&mdash;so called.......................................<a
+      href="#link098">...098</a>
+
+Mercury, the son of Jupiter .................................<a href="#link099">...099</a>
+
+&ldquo;O Varus, Varus, bring me back my legions!&rdquo;..................<a
+      href="#link103">...103</a>
+
+Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances..............<a href="#link105">...105</a>
+
+They made him a king, the King of German rivers..............<a href="#link106">...106</a>
+
+He had already allowed Jupiter to cross......................<a href="#link107">...107</a>
+
+The vines began to adorn the banks of the river..............<a href="#link108">...108</a>
+
+Once more caresses had their hoped-for effect................<a href="#link109">...109</a>
+
+He did his best to help everybody across.....................<a href="#link110">...110</a>
+
+Fnvolous and ill-mannered deities............................<a href="#link110">...110</a>
+
+The dauntless pirates will end by wearing white night-caps...<a href="#link113">...113</a>
+
+The great Northern Tempest ..................................<a href="#link115">...115</a>
+
+The German Druids gave way...................................<a href="#link117">...117</a>
+
+Iormungondur, the great sea serpent..........................<a href="#link118">...118</a>
+
+The giant Ymer has been born.................................<a href="#link123">...123</a>
+
+The first men had been born with a telescope in their pocket?<a href="#link127">...127</a>
+
+Ymer was the first to succumb................................<a href="#link128">...128</a>
+
+After the giants came the turn of land and sea monsters......<a href="#link129">...129</a>
+
+The new creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance.....<a href="#link132">...132</a>
+
+Deer, eland, and aurochs were bounding in herds..............<a href="#link133">...133</a>
+
+Incessantly a tiny squirrel comes and goes...................<a href="#link136">...136</a>
+
+A vulture perching upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree..<a href="#link137">...137</a>
+
+Thor&rsquo;s weighty hammer Mjoïner................................<a
+      href="#link139">...139</a>
+
+The good Freyr seated at Odin&rsquo;s table........................<a
+      href="#link141">...141</a>
+
+Portrait of Freyr............................................<a href="#link142">...142</a>
+
+Bragi and the beautiful Freya ...............................<a href="#link147">...147</a>
+
+Return of the eagle with the three precious vessels..........<a href="#link149">...149</a>
+
+Balder, the bright god.......................................<a href="#link151">...151</a>
+
+The wolf Fenris..............................................<a href="#link156">...156</a>
+
+Converse with each other by significative glances............<a href="#link159">...159</a>
+
+They were the Norns..........................................<a href="#link160">...160</a>
+
+He took counsel with the Norns...............................<a href="#link162">...162</a>
+
+&ldquo;To Egir, the seas and navigation&rdquo;...........................<a
+      href="#link164">...164</a>
+
+Gefione took her four sons and changed them into oxen........<a href="#link165">...165</a>
+
+Jarl, the noble..............................................<a href="#link171">...171</a>
+
+The Valkyrias ...............................................<a href="#link175">...175</a>
+
+Beautiful nymphs of carnage..................................<a href="#link176">...176</a>
+
+A very mammoth of a boar.....................................<a href="#link180">...180</a>
+
+Feast in Scandinavian Paradise...............................<a href="#link181">...181</a>
+
+Hela, the pale goddess.......................................<a href="#link185">...185</a>
+
+&ldquo;Balder, fair Balder, is going to die&rdquo;.......................<a
+      href="#link189">...189</a>
+
+Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself..............<a href="#link191">...191</a>
+
+Balder is amused by the game.................................<a href="#link192">...192</a>
+
+When the mother told her pitiful tale the iron trees wept....<a href="#link197">...197</a>
+
+The three sacred cocks announcing the Twilight of Greatness..<a href="#link202">...202</a>
+
+The death of the gods........................................<a href="#link208">...208</a>
+
+My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph............<a href="#link211">...211</a>
+
+I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped..........<a href="#link214">...214</a>
+
+The two religions face to face...............................<a href="#link217">...217</a>
+
+Ovid reciting his &ldquo;Metamorphoses&rdquo;............................<a
+      href="#link219">...219</a>
+
+Druidic worship suspended by the Romans......................<a href="#link220">...220</a>
+
+&ldquo;Miserere mei, Jesu&rdquo;.........................................<a
+      href="#link222">...222</a>
+
+Perkunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos............................<a href="#link224">...224</a>
+
+Puscatus,&mdash;a kind-hearted god ................................<a
+      href="#link226">...226</a>
+
+Monstrous reptiles accompany the gods to Germany.............<a href="#link227">...227</a>
+
+He let his heavy mace fall upon a little town................<a href="#link238">...238</a>
+
+The blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen................................<a href="#link239">...239</a>
+
+Marietta appeared in their midst.............................<a href="#link245">...245</a>
+
+&ldquo;Do you think I am a man to be taken in ?&rdquo;...................<a
+      href="#link251">...251</a>
+
+Horse-head, a la mode........................................<a href="#link253">...253</a>
+
+The Undines mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads..........<a href="#link258">...258</a>
+
+Have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken................<a href="#link259">...259</a>
+
+The Olympus of the North.....................................<a href="#link263">...263</a>
+
+Able to see without being seen ..............................<a href="#link266">...266</a>
+
+Dance of the white fairies ..................................<a href="#link269">...269</a>
+
+The black fairies personify Nightmare .......................<a href="#link271">...271</a>
+
+An important personage with a will of his own ...............<a href="#link272">...272</a>
+
+Enormous toads are posted about.as watchmen..................<a href="#link279">...279</a>
+
+Elementary spirits of the water..............................<a href="#link283">...283</a>
+
+Imaginary music .............................................<a href="#link288">...288</a>
+
+The nix with the harp .......................................<a href="#link289">...289</a>
+
+Schoolmaster&rsquo;s son who had fallen in love with one of them...<a
+      href="#link291">...291</a>
+
+He thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters..........<a href="#link294">...294</a>
+
+He rose suddenly and fled to another room ...................<a href="#link295">...295</a>
+
+The steward whispered some words in her ear .................<a href="#link297">...297</a>
+
+Niord, the Scandinavian god .................................<a href="#link299">...299</a>
+
+This creature is Nixcobt.....................................<a href="#link300">...300</a>
+
+The Vintner is hanged, and Nixcobt laughs heartily...........<a href="#link302">...302</a>
+
+Four Prussian soldiers watching the water ...................<a href="#link305">...305</a>
+
+The Zotterais protected sheep ...............................<a href="#link309">...309</a>
+
+The master has nothing to do.................................<a href="#link315">...315</a>
+
+Prefer to remember the Kobold a cheerful household companion.<a href="#link317">...317</a>
+
+The Zotterais as fond of stables as the Kobolds of kitchens..<a href="#link319">...319</a>
+
+They are naturally easily tired .............................<a href="#link321">...321</a>
+
+The Killecroffs are children of the Devil ...................<a href="#link322">...322</a>
+
+His nurse has to be reinforced by two goats and a cow........<a href="#link324">...324</a>
+
+The great Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther .......................<a href="#link326">...326</a>
+
+The fall of Killecroff ......................................<a href="#link331">...331</a>
+
+Giants and dwarfs............................................<a href="#link335">...335</a>
+
+The last of the giants.......................................<a href="#link337">...337</a>
+
+Grommelund and Ephesim ......................................<a href="#link339">...339</a>
+
+The humiliated giant.........................................<a href="#link340">...340</a>
+
+Our good little dwarfs ......................................<a href="#link341">...341</a>
+
+He stood at first with his mouth wide open ..................<a href="#link346">...346</a>
+
+A long and deep sigh of satisfaction.........................<a href="#link348">...348</a>
+
+Flight of the conspirators...................................<a href="#link353">...353</a>
+
+Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious cavity.....<a href="#link354">...354</a>
+
+They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth........<a href="#link355">...355</a>
+
+In his hand he held not a club but a lantern.................<a href="#link357">...357</a>
+
+Kreiss compelled to leave his position by torrents of tears..<a href="#link359">...359</a>
+
+The last two held each a long thorn in their hands...........<a href="#link361">...361</a>
+
+Kreiss entering the great meeting hall.......................<a href="#link363">...363</a>
+
+Putskuchen was in love.......................................<a href="#link364">...364</a>
+
+Ouadragant vanquished........................................<a href="#link367">...367</a>
+
+The passing of the wizard ...................................<a href="#link371">...371</a>
+
+Venus and Tannhàuser.........................................<a href="#link390">...390</a>
+
+His ex-colleague Jupiter ....................................<a href="#link396">...396</a>
+
+The author pursues the subject ..............................<a href="#link399">...399</a>
+
+The conscientious collector of myths.........................<a href="#link401">...401</a>
+
+The Druidess transformed into an accursed witch..............<a href="#link406">...406</a>
+
+To return was as impossible as to proceed....................<a href="#link409">...409</a>
+
+She had rejoined her victims ................................<a href="#link413">...413</a>
+
+He is the Lord Hackelberg....................................<a href="#link417">...417</a>
+
+These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men..............<a href="#link421">...421</a>
+
+Farewell.....................................................<a href="#link423">...423</a>
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[003]</span><a name="link003" id="link003"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/023s.jpg" alt="023s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/023.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/023m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Primitive Times.&mdash;The First Settlers on the Rhine.&mdash;Masters
+      going to School.&mdash;Sanskrit and Breton.&mdash;Ax Idle God.&mdash;Microscopic
+      Deities.&mdash;Tree Worship.&mdash;Birth-Trees and Death-Trees.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he Rhine is born
+      in Switzerland, in the Canton of Grisons; it skirts France and passes
+      through it, and after a long and magnificent career it finally loses
+      itself in the countless canals of Holland; and yet the Rhine is
+      essentially a German river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[004]</span><a name="link004" id="link004"></a>Already
+      in the earliest ages, long before towns were built on its banks, it saw
+      all the Germanic races dwell here in tents, watch their flocks, and fight
+      their interminable battles, although the clash of arms and the blast of
+      trumpets never for a moment aroused the impassive historian from his deep
+      slumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/024s.jpg" alt="024s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/024.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/024m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      His silence, long continued into later centuries, does not prevent us from
+      supposing, however, that the Rhine was already at that time the great
+      high-<span class="pagenum">[005]</span><a name="link005" id="link005"></a>road
+      on which the Germanic races wandered to and fro, and other races came to
+      their native land. It was the Rhine that brought to them commerce and
+      civilization; but on the Rhine came also invasions of a very different
+      kind. We can allude here only to those religious invasions which are
+      connected with our subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/025s.jpg" alt="025s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/025.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/025m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      In the earliest ages the South of Europe alone was inhabited, while the
+      Northern part was covered with vast forests, as old as the world, and as
+      yet<span class="pagenum">[006]</span><a name="link006" id="link006"></a>unbroken
+      by the footsteps of men. Dark, dismal solitudes, consisting of ancient
+      woods or wretched morasses, where trees struggled painfully for existence
+      and only the strongest survived when they reached the light and the sun;
+      densely wooded deserts, in which vast herds of wild beasts pursued each
+      other incessantly, while in the deep shadow of impenetrable foliage flocks
+      of timid, trembling birds sought a refuge against hosts of voracious birds
+      of prey. Thus, even while Man was yet absent, War was already reigning
+      supreme here, and in these vast regions the Great Destroyer seemed to
+      revel in it, as if it had been a feast, a necessity, a glory!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had never human eye yet looked upon these magnificent but unknown regions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, one fine day a host of savages appeared here and settled down with
+      their flocks. After them came another host of more warlike and better
+      armed men, who drove out the first comers and took possession of the
+      tilled ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After them another race, and then still another. Thus it went on for years
+      and for centuries, and all these waves of immigration came down from the
+      extreme North, marking each halting place by a bloody battle, while the
+      conquered people, driven by the sharp edge of the sword to seek new homes,
+      by turns pursued and pursuing, went and peopled those wild unsettled
+      countries which afterwards be<span class="pagenum">[007]</span><a
+      name="link007" id="link007"></a>came known as Belgium and France, as
+      Bretagne and England. Continuing their march from thence southward, from
+      the Rhine to the Mediterranean, they spread right and left, east and west,
+      and crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps, making themselves masters on one
+      side of Iberia, and on the other side of the plains of Lombardy, thus
+      changing from fugitives into conquerors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/027s.jpg" alt="027s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/027.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/027m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These conquered conquerors, driven from their own homes, and now driving
+      other nations from their homes, these first pioneers who laid open one
+      unknown country after another, were all children of one great family and
+      all bore the same name of <i>Celts</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But where was the first source from which this <span class="pagenum">[008]</span><a
+      name="link008" id="link008"></a>flood of families, of peoples, of nations,
+      broke forth, that now overflowed Europe and in successive waves spread
+      over the greater part of the Old World? Whence came these vast multitudes
+      of Northern visitors, unexpected and unknown, who broke the mournful
+      silence that had so long reigned in Europe? Were the frozen regions of the
+      North pole, at that early time, really so fertile in men? We call upon men
+      of science to answer our question. The question is a serious one, perhaps
+      an indiscreet one, for who can be appealed to on such a difficult point?
+      History? It did not exist. Monuments, written or sculptured? The Celts had
+      never dreamt yet of writings or of carvings. Does this universal silence
+      put it out of the power of our learned men to give a reply? Must they
+      confess that they are unable to do so? By no means. Learned men never
+      condescend to make such confessions. The Celts have left as a monument, a
+      language, a dialect, still largely used in certain parts of ancient
+      Bretagne as well as in the Principality of Wales.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Illustrious academicians, mostly Germans, did not hesitate to go to school
+      once more in order to learn Breton. The self-denial of which science is
+      capable, deserves our admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After long labors, devoted to the separation of what belonged to the
+      primitive language from subsequent additions, our great scholars found
+      them<span class="pagenum">[009]</span><a name="link009" id="link009"></a>selves
+      once more face to face with Sanskrit, the sacred idiom of the Brahmins,
+      the ancestor of the old German tongue, and of the old Celtic tongue, and
+      thus of the Breton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/029s.jpg" alt="029s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/029.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/029m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The matter was decided, scientifically and categorically, and no appeal
+      allowed. The Celts were a people from India. Europeans are all descended
+      from Indians, driven from home by some powerful pressure, a political or
+      religious revolution, or one of those fearful famines which periodically
+      devastate <span class="pagenum">[010]</span><a name="link010" id="link010"></a>that
+      immense and inexhaustible storehouse of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/030s.jpg" alt="030s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/030.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/030m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      At first, we good people, artists, poets, or authors, who generally claim
+      to possess some little knowledge, were rather surprised at such a
+      decision. But the wise men had said so; Bengal and Bretagne had to
+      fraternize; the Brahmins of Benares speak Breton and the Bretons of
+      Bretagne speak Sanskrit. Bretagne is Indian and India is Breton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Comparative Philology has taught the children of our day, that two
+      syllables which are identical <span class="pagenum">[011]</span><a
+      name="link011" id="link011"></a>in the idioms of two different races,
+      prove the connection between two nations; hybridism means kinship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What happy people scholars are! They can converse with people who have
+      been dead these three thousand years, and the grave has no secrets for
+      them! A single word bequeathed to us by an extinct people, enables them to
+      reconstruct that whole race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I am bound to ask them another question, a question of much greater
+      importance to myself. What were the religious convictions of these first
+      inhabitants of Europe? I am answered by Mr. Simon Pelloutier, a minister
+      of the Reformed Church in Berlin, of French descent, who has studied the
+      primitive creed of the Celts most thoroughly and successfully. He tells us
+      that these people, before they had Druids, worshipped, or rather held in
+      honor the sun, the moon, and the stars, a kind of Sabaism, which, however,
+      did not exclude the belief in a God, who was the creator, but not the
+      ruler, of all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This god appears to me to have been very imperfect; he was heavy, sleepy,
+      and shapeless, having neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; he was
+      incapable of feeling pity or anger, and the prayers and vows of men were
+      unable to reach him. Invisible, intangible, and incomprehensible, he was
+      floating in space, which he filled, and which he <span class="pagenum">[012]</span><a
+      name="link012" id="link012"></a>animated without bestowing a thought upon
+      it; omnipotent and yet utterly inactive, creating islands and continents,
+      and causing the sun and the stars to give light by his mere approach, this
+      divine idler had created the world, but declined taking the trouble of
+      governing his creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To whom had he confided the control over the stars in heaven? Mr.
+      Pelloutier himself never could find out. As to the government of the
+      earth, he had entrusted it to an infinite number of inferior deities, gods
+      and sub-gods, of very small stature. They were as shapeless and as
+      invisible as he was, but vastly more active, and endowed with all the
+      energy which he had disdained to bestow upon himself. By their numbers and
+      by their collective force they made up for their individual feebleness&mdash;and
+      they must have been feeble indeed, since their extremely small size
+      permitted a thousand of them to find a comfortable shelter under the leaf
+      of a walnut tree!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides, they presided over the different departments which were assigned
+      to them, not by hundreds, but by myriads, nay, by millions of myriads.
+      Thus they rushed forth in vast hosts, stirring the air in lively currents,
+      causing the rivers and brooks to flow onwards, watching over fields and
+      forests, penetrating the soil to great depths, creeping in through every
+      crack and crevice, and breaking out <span class="pagenum">[013]</span><a
+      name="link013" id="link013"></a>again through the craters of volcanoes.
+      They formed a belt from the Rhine to the Taunus mountains, dazzling the
+      whole region for a moment by a shower of sparks, and falling back upon the
+      plain in the form of columns of black smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Science has, moreover, established this incontestable principle, that
+      motion can only be produced in two ways here, below: either by the acts of
+      living beings, or by the contact of these microscopic deities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever the waters rose or broke forth in cataracts, whenever the leaves
+      trembled in the wind, or the flowers bent before a storm, it was these
+      diminutive gods who, invisible and yet ever active, forced the waters to
+      come down in torrents, drove the tempest through the branches, bent the
+      flowers down to the ground, and chased the dust of the highroads in lofty
+      columns up to the clouds. It was they who caused the golden hair of the
+      maid to fall down upon her shoulders as she went to the well, who shook
+      the earthenware pitcher she carried on her shoulder, who crackled in the
+      fire on the hearth, and who roared in the storm, or the eruptions of fiery
+      mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I think of this little world of tiny insect gods, who passed through
+      the air in swarms, coming and going, turning to the left and to the right,
+      struggling and striving above and beneath (I ask <span class="pagenum">[014]</span><a
+      name="link014" id="link014"></a>their pardon for comparing these deities
+      to humble insects, born in the mud and subject to infirmity and death like
+      ourselves), I cannot help thinking of the beautiful lines by Lamartine, in
+      which he so graphically describes life in Nature.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Chaque fois que nos yeux, pénétrant dans ces ombres,
+De la nuit des rameaux éclairaient les dais sombres,
+Nous trouvions sous ces lits de feuille où dort l&rsquo;été,
+Des mystères d&rsquo;amour et de fécondité.
+
+Chaque fois que nos pieds tombaient dans la verdure
+Les herbes nous montaient jusques à la ceinture,
+Des flots d&rsquo;air embaumé se répandaient sur nous,
+Des nuages ailés partaient de nos genoux;
+Insectes, papillons, essaims nageants de mouches,
+Oui d&rsquo;un éther vivant semblaient former les couches,
+Ils&rsquo; montaient en colonne, en tourbillon flottant,
+Comblaient l&rsquo;air, nous cachaient l&rsquo;un à l&rsquo;autre un instant,
+Comme dans les chemins la vague de poussière
+Se lève sous les pas et retombe en arrière.
+
+Ils roulaient; et sur l&rsquo;eau, sur les prés, sur le foin,
+Ces poussières de vie allaient tomber plus loin;
+Et chacune semblait, d&rsquo;existence ravie,
+Epuiser le bonheur dans sa goutte de vie,
+Et l&rsquo;air qu&rsquo;ils animaient de leurs frémissements
+N&rsquo;était que mélodie et que bourdonnements.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Such were the gods known to the first ingenuous dwellers on the banks of
+      the Rhine&mdash;gods worthy of a society but just beginning. And still, I
+      venture to make a suggestion, which Mr. Simon Pelloutier, my guide up to
+      this point, has unfortunately neglected to make. It is this: I feel as if
+      <span class="pagenum">[015]</span><a name="link015" id="link015"></a>there
+      was hidden beneath this primitive and apparently puerile mythology a
+      hideous monster, writhing in fearful threatenings and bitter mockery. This
+      god Chaos, so careless and reckless, gifted with the power of creation but
+      not with love for his work, seems to me nothing else but Matter,
+      organizing itself. I have called these countless inferior deities
+      microscopic. I should have called them molecular, for they are atoms, the
+      monads of our science. There is evidently here a germ, not of a religious
+      creed so much as of a philosophic system, a shadow of the materialism of a
+      former civilization that is now degraded and nearly lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first I doubted the correctness of the opinions of our learned men; but
+      I begin to believe in them; yes, these early Celts had come, to us from
+      distant India, from that ancient, decayed country, and in their knapsacks
+      they had brought with them, by an accident, this fragment of their
+      symbolic cosmogony, the sad meaning of which was, no doubt, a mystery to
+      them also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some years, perhaps after some centuries, &mdash;for time does not
+      count for much in those questions,&mdash;the Celts became weary of this
+      selfish Deity, which was lost in the contemplation of its own being and
+      dwelt in the centre of a cold and empty heaven, and they desired to
+      establish some relations between him and themselves. Unable to appeal to
+      <span class="pagenum">[016]</span><a name="link016" id="link016"></a>the
+      Creator, they appealed to Creation, and asked for a mediator, who should
+      hear their complaints or accept their thank-offerings and transmit them to
+      the Supreme Power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have already seen that they turned first to sun and moon; but they were
+      ill rewarded for their efforts. These heavenly bodies were either too far
+      removed from their clients to hear their complaints, or they were too busy
+      with their own daily duties; at all events they shared with their common
+      master in his indifference towards men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our pious friends were offended by this want of consideration, and thought
+      of looking for other intercessors, who might be less busy; whom they might
+      not only see with their eyes but touch with their hands, and who would
+      remain as much as possible in the same place, so as to be always on hand
+      when they were needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They appealed to rivers and mountains; but the rivers had nothing
+      permanent but their banks, and went their way like the sun and moon; while
+      the mountains, besides being the home of wolves, bears, and serpents, and
+      thus enjoying an evil reputation, were continually hid by snow and rain
+      from the eyes of the petitioners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they turned to the trees, and as it always happens, they now found
+      out that they ought to have commenced where they ended. <span
+      class="pagenum">[017]</span><a name="link017" id="link017"></a>A tree was
+      an excellent mediator; standing between heaven and earth, it clung to the
+      latter by its roots, while its trunk, shaped like an arrow, feathered with
+      verdure, rose upwards as if to touch the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The worship of trees was probably the first effect of sedentary life
+      adopted by the Celts after their long, more or less forced wanderings; in
+      a few years it prevailed on both sides of the river Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no lack of trees; every man had his own. As he could not carry
+      it away with him, he became accustomed to live by its side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Man could lean his hut against the trunk; the flock could sleep in its
+      shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The birds came to it in numbers. If they were singing, it was a sign of
+      joy to come; if they built their nests there, it was an invitation to
+      marry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fruit-bearing tree suggested comfort, abundance, and enjoyment; it
+      spoke of harvest feasts and cider-making, when friends gathered around it,
+      holding in their hands large horns filled to overflowing with foaming
+      drink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon it became customary to plant at the birth of a child a tree which was
+      to become a companion and a counsellor for life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus in the course of time a copse represented a family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The worship bestowed upon the tree consisted <span class="pagenum">[018]</span><a
+      name="link018" id="link018"></a>in pruning it, in making it grow straight,
+      in freeing its bark from parasitical growth and in keeping the roots free
+      from ants, rats, snakes and all dangerous enemies. Such continuous care
+      naturally led in the course of time to an improvement in cultivation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tree worshippers, however, did more than this. On certain hallowed
+      days they hung bouquets of herbs and of flowers on its branches, they
+      brought food and drink, and thus fetichism crept in gradually. Alas! That
+      men have never been able to keep from extremes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the wind whispered in the leaves, the devout owner listened
+      attentively, trying anxiously to interpret the mystic language of his
+      cedar or his pear tree, and often a regular conversation ensued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bad omen when a rising storm shook the tree fiercely; if the
+      tempest was strong enough to break a branch, the event foretold a great
+      calamity, and if it was struck by lightning, the owner was warned of his
+      approaching death. The latter was resigned; he felt quite proud at having
+      at last compelled his indolent god to reveal himself to his devout
+      worshipper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a child died, it was buried under its own tree, a mere sapling.. But
+      it was not so when a man died.<span class="pagenum">[019]</span><a
+      name="link019" id="link019"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/039s.jpg" alt="039s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/039.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/039m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Celts used various and strange means for the purpose of disposing of
+      the remains of their <span class="pagenum">[021]</span><a
+      name="link021" id="link021"></a>deceased friends. In some
+      countries they were burnt, and their own tree furnished the fuel for the
+      funeral pile; in other countries the <i>Todtenbaum</i> (Tree of the Dead),
+      hollowed out with an axe, became the owner&rsquo;s coffin. This coffin was
+      interred, unless it was intrusted to the current of the river, to be
+      carried God knows where! Finally, in certain localities there existed a
+      custom&mdash;a horrible custom!&mdash;of exposing the body to the voracity
+      of birds of prey, and the place of exposure was the top of the very tree
+      which had been planted at the birth of the deceased, and which in this
+      case, quite exceptionally, was not cut down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, observe, that in these four distinct methods by which human remains
+      were restored to the four elements of air and water, earth and fire, we
+      meet again the four favorite ways of burial still practiced in India, as
+      of old, by the followers of Brahma, Buddha, and Zoroaster. The
+      fire-worshippers of Bombay are as familiar with them as the dervishes who
+      drown children in the Ganges. Thus we have here four proofs, instead of
+      one, of the Indian origin of our Celts. For my part at least, I confess I
+      am convinced by this quadruple evidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to be presumed that the use of Dead Men&rsquo;s Trees and of
+      posthumous drownings continued for centuries in ancient Gaul as well as in
+      ancient Germany. About 1560 some Dutch laborers found, <span
+      class="pagenum">[022]</span><a name="link022" id="link022"></a>in
+      examining a part of the Zuyder Zee, at a great depth, several trunks of
+      trees which were marvelously well preserved and nearly petrified. Each one
+      of these trunks had been occupied by a man, and contained some
+      half-petrified fragments. It was evident that they had been carried down,
+      trunk and man, by the Rhine, the Ganges of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/042s.jpg" alt="042s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/042.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/042m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      As recently as 1837 such <i>Todtenbaume</i> or Dead Men&rsquo;s Trees,
+      well preserved by the peculiar nature of the soil, have been discovered in
+      England, near Solby in Yorkshire, and still more recently, in 1848, on
+      Mount Lupfen in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In face of such well authenticated evidence of Dead Men&rsquo;s Trees
+      having been confided to the current of rivers or the bosom of the earth,
+      it seems superfluous to ask for additional proof in support of the fact
+      that cremation was practiced all over ancient Europe. Nor do I consider
+      myself, as a collector of myths, bound to prove everything. I <span
+      class="pagenum">[023]</span><a name="link023" id="link023"></a>do not mean
+      to speak, therefore, any further of Birthday Trees, of Dead Men&rsquo;s
+      Trees, and of Fetich Trees,&mdash;which we shall moreover meet again
+      presently,&mdash;and hasten on to other myths of far greater importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids now appear for the first time in Gaul and in Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/043s.jpg" alt="043s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/043.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/043m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[027]</span><a name="link027" id="link027"></a><i>The
+      Druids and their Creed.&mdash;Esus.&mdash;The Holy Oak.&mdash;The
+      Pforzheim Lime Tree.&mdash;A Rival Plant.&mdash;The Mistletoe and the
+      Ansfuinum.&mdash;The Oracle at Dodona.&mdash;Immaculate Horses.&mdash;The
+      Druidesses.&mdash;A late Elector.&mdash;Philanthropic Institution of Human
+      Sacrifices.&mdash;Second Druidical Epoch</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he Druids were the
+      first to bring to the Gauls as well as to the Germans religious truths,
+      but their creed can be appreciated from no dogma of theirs; it must be
+      judged by their rites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first question is: Whence did the Druids <span class="pagenum">[028]</span><a
+      name="link028" id="link028"></a>come? Were they disciples of the Magi, and
+      did they come from Persia? Such an origin has been claimed for them: or
+      had they been initiated by Isis in her ancient mysteries, and did they
+      come from Egypt? This view also has its adherents. Or, finally, had they
+      been driven towards Western Europe by one of the last waves of
+      immigration, which left India under the pressure of some new calamity?
+      Many think so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it seems to be difficult to decide between these three suggestions, it
+      might be worth while to try and reconcile them with each other. It is a
+      long way from India to Germany and to Gaul, and there might have been many
+      stopping places between the country from which they started and their
+      future home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids, like all other Celts, might very well have started from India,
+      and choosing not the most direct way might have reached Europe only after
+      making many a long halt in Persia and in Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'If that can be admitted, then there is no difficulty in assuming that the
+      first Celts might very well have taken with them from the banks of the
+      Indus and the Ganges only a few fragments of a sickly materialism taught
+      by false teachers outside of the temple, while the Druids might have been
+      initiated within the temple itself, thus learning to know the true nature
+      of the Deity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their creed was founded upon a triple basis&mdash;one <span class="pagenum">[029]</span><a
+      name="link029" id="link029"></a>God; the immortality of the soul; and
+      rewards and punishments in a future life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These sound doctrines, which are as old as the world and form the
+      foundation of all human morality, had ever been maintained by their wise
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a later period the Greeks, proud as they were of their Platonic
+      philosophy, had not hesitated to acknowledge that they had obtained the
+      first germ of it from the Celts, the Galati, and consequently from the
+      Druids. One of the Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, openly
+      admits that these same Celts had been orthodox in their religion, at least
+      as far as their dogmas were concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By what name was the Supreme Being known to the Druids? They called it <i>Esus</i>,
+      which means the Lord, or they gave it the simple designation of <i>Teut</i>
+      (God). Through this Teut the German races became afterwards Teutons, the
+      sons and followers of Teut, and even in our day they call themselves in
+      their own language Teutsche or <i>Deutsche</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three marvelously brief maxims contain almost the whole catechism of the
+      Druids: Serve God; Abstain from evil; Be brave!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids, being warriors as well as priests, displayed in the
+      performance of their warlike priesthood all the energy, the severity, and
+      the authority which must needs accompany such a strange combination of
+      powers. <span class="pagenum">[030]</span><a name="link030" id="link030"></a>Holding
+      all the power of the state in their hands, and speaking in the name of
+      God, commanding the army, controlling the public treasury, and acting not
+      only as judges but also as physicians, they punished heresy and rebellion,
+      and ended lawsuits as well as diseases, by the death of the person most
+      interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their laws, liberal and philanthropic in spite of their apparent severity,
+      allowed a jury consisting of notables, to judge grave crimes; this fact of
+      a jury suggests naturally the idea of extenuating circumstances, and thus
+      the criminal, escaping more readily than the patient, frequently got off
+      with a fine, if he was rich, or with banishment if he was poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless all the efforts of the Druids did not succeed in thoroughly
+      eradicating Tree worship; they were thus led to adopt one tree, to the
+      exclusion of all others, which should rally around it the scattered
+      adoration of all the nations. This official tree, a kind of green altar,
+      on which God manifested himself to his priests, was an oak, a strong,
+      vigorous oak, the king of the forests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the holy oak became known and honored; pious worshippers came by
+      night, with torches in their hands, in long processions to present their
+      offerings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This usage soon became general among all Celtic nations. Around these oaks
+      the Druids formed sacred precincts within which they lived with their
+      families, for they were married; but they could have <span class="pagenum">[031]</span><a
+      name="link031" id="link031"></a>only one wife, while the other chieftains
+      were generally polygamists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/051s.jpg" alt="051s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/051.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/051m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But the oak, although thus enjoying preeminence over all other trees, was
+      by no means exclusively worshipped everywhere. Perhaps from religious
+      antagonism, or perhaps merely from local usage, some provinces of Gaul and
+      of Italy preferred the beech and the elm. In Gaul especially, the elm
+      prevailed over the oak, and even Christian France still continued for a
+      long time to plant an elm tree before every newly built church, so as to
+      draw God&rsquo;s blessing the more surely upon it; and down to the end of
+      the Middle Ages courts of justice were always held under an elm tree.
+      Hence the curious <span class="pagenum">[032]</span><a name="link032"
+      id="link032"></a>French proverb, which did not always have the mocking
+      sense in which it is used nowadays, wait for me under the elm tree!
+      (Attendez-moi sous forme) What was then a formal summons to appear before
+      a judge has now come to mean: Wait till doomsday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/052s.jpg" alt="052s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/052.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/052m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The ash tree, also, had its worshippers among the dwellers in high
+      northern latitudes, and it was under the dense branches of an enormous ash
+      tree that terrible Odin and his following of deities appeared in a dark
+      cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Tree worship appeared once more. It has ever since continued to
+      flourish more or less in Germany, and even now exists to a certain extent.
+      But it is not the oaks, nor the beech, nor the elm, nor the ash tree,
+      which in our day receives the worship of the young especially&mdash;but
+      the lime tree. The admirers of the lime tree carry their fervor to
+      fanaticism and their fanaticism to murder. I had <span class="pagenum">[033]</span><a
+      name="link033" id="link033"></a>been unwilling to believe this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/053s.jpg" alt="053s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/053.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/053m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But this morning I opened my newspaper and there I found an article, dated
+      December 30, 1860, and stating that a young man from Pforzheim, in the
+      Palatinate, attempted to murder the mayor of his town by means of a
+      revolver, the four barrels of which were loaded with as many leaden balls.
+      When he was arrested, he declared that he had personally nothing to say
+      against the burgomaster, but that the latter <span class="pagenum">[034]</span><a
+      name="link034" id="link034"></a>had recently ordered certain lime trees to
+      be cut down, that <i>the good people of Pforzheim idolized these trees</i>,
+      and that he had determined to punish him for such profanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The paper added: &ldquo;This young man belongs to an honorable family, his
+      antecedents are excellent, and he has never shown the slightest symptom of
+      mental derangement.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How, then does it come about that the lime tree should in our day, in the
+      nineteenth century, call forth sentiments of such extreme violence? The
+      reason is that Young Germany has proclaimed it to be the Tree of Love,
+      because <i>its leaves are shaped like hearts</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I were not afraid of getting myself into trouble, having a natural
+      horror of all firearms, and especially of four barrelled revolvers, I
+      should mention here, that anatomists protest against this pretended
+      resemblance of the leaf to the heart. In reality it looks much more like
+      the ace of hearts, as it terminates below in a sharp point&mdash;but
+      superstition prevails over anatomy, and teaches us once more that science
+      ought not to meddle with things pertaining to love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids&rsquo; Oak, although less tempting to gallant comparisons,
+      finally excited almost equal fanaticism. Processions and sacrifices became
+      well nigh endless; young maidens adorned it with garlands of flowers,
+      <span class="pagenum">[035]</span><a name="link035" id="link035"></a>interspersed
+      with bracelets and necklaces, while warriors suspended in its branches the
+      most precious spoil they brought home from their battles. If a storm
+      arose, the other trees of the forest seemed in good faith, humbly to bow
+      down before their chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/055s.jpg" alt="055s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/055.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/055m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      And yet it had an enemy, a fierce, relentless enemy. An abject, little
+      plant, unknown and miserable in appearance, came unceremoniously and made
+      its home on its sacred branches and even on its august summit; there it
+      lived on its life&rsquo;s blood, feeding on its sap, absorbing its
+      substance, threatening <span class="pagenum">[036]</span><a
+      name="link036" id="link036"></a>to impede its natural growth, and
+      finally carrying the impudence so far as to conceal the glossy leaves of
+      the noble godlike tree under its own lustreless and viscous foliage. This
+      hostile and impious plant was the Mistletoe, the mistletoe of the oak (<i>Guythil</i>).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other people, less intelligent and less sagacious than the Druids, would
+      have freed the tree from this unwelcome and obnoxious visitor, by simply
+      climbing up and cutting off the parasite by means of a pruning bill. This
+      would have been irreverent as well as impolitic. What would the people
+      have thought? The people would most assuredly have reasoned, that the
+      sacred tree had been rendered powerless, being unable to rid itself of its
+      vermin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids did much better. They treated the mistletoe very much as we, in
+      our day, treat a formidable member of the opposition; they gave it a place
+      in the sanctuary. The mistletoe was proclaimed to be an official and
+      sacred plant, and became an essential part of their worship. When it was
+      to be detached from the tree, this was not done stealthily and by a mean
+      iron bill-hook, but in the presence of all, amid public rejoicings and
+      accompanied by solemn chants. The instrument was a golden reaping hook,
+      and with it the <i>Guythil</i> was carefully cut off at the base and
+      gathered in <span class="pagenum">[037]</span><a name="link037"
+      id="link037"></a>linen veils. These veils became henceforth sacred,
+      and were not allowed to be used for ordinary purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Teutons who lived on the Rhine, obtained from the mistletoe a kind of
+      glue, which they looked upon as a panacea against the sterility of women,
+      the ravages of diseases, the effects of witchcraft,&mdash;and also as a
+      means to catch birds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/057s.jpg" alt="057s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/057.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/057m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Gauls, on the other hand, dried it carefully and put the dust into
+      pretty little scent-bags, which they presented to each other as New Year&rsquo;s
+      Gifts on the first day of the year. Hence, in t some provinces of France,
+      the cry is still heard, &ldquo;Aguilanneuf&rdquo; (<i>au gui l&rsquo;an
+      neuf</i>), &ldquo;Mistletoe for New Year!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Modern science treats mistletoe simply as a purgative, and thus attempts
+      to prove that our ancestors showed their affection to each other by
+      exchanging presents of violent purgatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The introduction of this parasite plant into the <span class="pagenum">[038]</span><a
+      name="link038" id="link038"></a>sanctuary became, however, very soon a
+      public benefit. For the oak-mistletoe obtained ere long considerable
+      commercial value, and at once counterfeiters (for even under the Druids
+      there existed such men) went to work and gathered it from other trees
+      also, from apple trees and pear trees, from nut trees and lime trees, from
+      beeches, elms, and even larches. The consequence was, that owners of
+      orchards as well as owners of forests, rejoiced in the trick, at which the
+      Druids discreetly winked; for they took advantage of the lesson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/058s.jpg" alt="058s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/058.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/058m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      At one time venomous reptiles had become so numerous in the regions of the
+      Rhine, that they caused continually serious accidents among the <span
+      class="pagenum">[039]</span><a name="link039" id="link039"></a>people, the
+      majority of whom lived all day long in the open air, and did not always
+      sleep under shelter. During their winter sleep, these reptiles rolled
+      themselves up into vast balls, and became apparently glued to each other
+      by a kind of viscous ooze. In this state they were called by the Celts <i>Serpents
+      Eggs</i>, or rather <i>Serpents&rsquo; Knots</i>, while the Romans called
+      them <i>anguimim</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These strange balls were used medicinally by the Druids like the
+      mistletoe; they employed them even in their religious ceremonies, and soon
+      they became so rare, that only the wealthiest people could procure them,
+      by paying their weight in gold. If the Druids had really at first been
+      misled so as to adopt superstitious customs, which they repented of in
+      their hearts, they soon found means to make these same superstitious rites
+      beneficial to the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately serpents&rsquo; knots, oaks, and their parasites, did not
+      long satisfy a people ever desirous of new things. It is a well-known fact
+      that innovations, however small may have been their first beginning, are
+      sure to go on enlarging and increasing from day to day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old party of Tree worshippers, still numerous and very active as all
+      old parties are, complained of the suppression of their companion-trees,
+      the ancient family oracles, for the purpose of favoring <span
+      class="pagenum">[040]</span><a name="link040" id="link040"></a>one single
+      oak tree,&mdash;a tree which yet was not able, in spite of all the
+      privileges it enjoyed, to put them into communication with <i>Estes</i>,
+      the god of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This complaint was certainly not unfounded;&mdash;it had to be answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids consisted of three classes:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids proper (<i>Eubages</i>, they were called in Gaul) were
+      philosophers as well as scholars, perhaps even magicians, for magic was at
+      that time nothing more than the outward form of science. They were charged
+      with the maintenance of the principles of morality, and had to study the
+      secrets of nature. The Prophets, on the other hand, knew how to interpret
+      in the slightest breath of wind, the language of the holy oak, which spoke
+      to them in the rustling of its leaves, in the soughing of the branches, in
+      the low cracking heard within the trunk, and even in the earlier or later
+      appearance of the foliage. There were, finally, the Bards, poets bound to
+      the altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the bards were singing around the oak, the prophets caused it to
+      render its oracles. These oracles soon increased largely not only in
+      Europe, but also in Asia Minor, where a Celtic colony, according to
+      Herodotus, established in the land they had conquered the oracle of
+      Dodona. Early Greece worshipped an oak tree, which Strabo, however,
+      assures <span class="pagenum">[041]</span><a name="link041" id="link041"></a>us
+      was a beech. There is no disputing about trees any more than about colors;
+      but Homer calls it an oak, and an oak it must remain for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/061s.jpg" alt="061s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/061.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/061m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This new movement, grafted upon the simple worship of the Druids, did not
+      stop here. After having for some time been accustomed to converse with
+      Teut by means of a tree, the Celts were naturally surprised at seeing
+      that, while trees could speak, living creatures remained silent, and were
+      apparently deprived of the power of foretelling the future. Certain
+      chieftains, especially, felt aggrieved, <span class="pagenum">[042]</span><a
+      name="link042" id="link042"></a>upon setting out on a great campaign, that
+      they were not allowed to carry the holy oak along with them, and in their
+      intense devotion, fell upon the idea of consulting the nervous trembling
+      of their horses and their sudden neighing in moments of surprise or
+      terror,&mdash;for in order to be of prophetic nature the movements of the
+      animals had to be involuntary and spontaneous. As this creed began to
+      spread gradually, every man who was setting out on a journey or a warlike
+      expedition mounted his horse in the firm conviction that he would be able
+      to consult his four-footed prophet at any time during his absence from
+      home, provided he was able to submit the omens to the learned
+      interpretations of a soothsayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druid priests were not long in becoming seriously alarmed at these
+      travelling oracles, liable as they naturally were to contradict each
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they had before chosen a single tree to be the sacred tree, so they now
+      accepted as genuine omens only the symptoms noticed in certain horses
+      which were bred within the sacred precincts and under their own eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These horses, of immaculate whiteness and raised at public expense, were
+      not employed for any work, and never had to submit to saddle or bridle.
+      Wild and untamed, they roamed with fluttering manes in perfect liberty
+      through the lofty forests. The freedom <span class="pagenum">[043]</span><a
+      name="link043" id="link043"></a>of their movements gave naturally a safer
+      character to their omens, and thus these prophetic horses, which formed
+      almost a part of the druidical clergy, enjoyed for a long time the highest
+      authority in all Celtic countries, when suddenly one fine day new rivals
+      arose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other living creatures entered into competition with them, and these
+      rivals of the horses were&mdash;shall I say it?&mdash;were women. These
+      women discovered, all of a sudden, that they also were endowed, and in the
+      very highest degree, with the gifts of second sight, of inspiration,
+      intuition, and divination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When public opinion appealed to the Druids to give their views on this
+      claim, they admitted, according to the statement of Tacitus, that women
+      had something more instinctive and more divine in them than men, nay, even
+      than horses. Their sensitive organization predisposed them to receive the
+      gift of prophecy, and hence &ldquo;women indeed act more readily from
+      natural impulse, without reflection, than from thought or reason.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last explanation, improper in the highest degree, does not come from
+      Tacitus, nor from myself, God forbid! It is the exclusive property of the
+      aforementioned Mr. Simon Pelloutier. Let every one be responsible for his
+      own work!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids treated the women just as they had <span class="pagenum">[044]</span><a
+      name="link044" id="link044"></a>treated the horses, the mistletoe, and the
+      trees. They acknowledged as true prophetesses only those who were already
+      under the direct influence of the holy place and the sacred oak; that is
+      to say, their wives and their daughters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The principle of centralization of power is evidently not of modern
+      origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:15%;">
+      <img src="images/064s.jpg" alt="064s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/064.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/064m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Thus, there were now Druidesses, as there had been Druids before. The
+      latter became the teachers of the young men; they taught their pupils the
+      motions of the stars, the shape and extent of the earth, the divers
+      products of nature, the history of their ancestors written in the form of
+      poems which the bards recited; in fact, they taught them everything except
+      reading and writing. Memory was as yet sufficient for all things. The
+      priestesses, on the other hand, opened schools for the young girls; they
+      taught them to sing and to sew, they initiated them into religious
+      ceremonies and confided to them the knowledge of simples; nor was poetry
+      neglected, as they had to learn by heart certain poems which were
+      specially composed for their benefit. These verses, of somewhat doubtful
+      <span class="pagenum">[045]</span><a name="link045" id="link045"></a>lyrical
+      character, probably taught them how to make bread, how to brew beer, and
+      other small details of the kitchen and the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druidesses practiced also medicine. This threefold prerogative of
+      being physicians, prophets, and preceptors, finally raised them so high in
+      the estimation of the nation, that when the priests of Teut were compelled
+      to abandon their sanctuaries, they did not hesitate to confide them to
+      their guardianship. They even presided in their own right, at certain
+      ceremonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If one of them excelled by the frequency, the lucidity, and the
+      reliability of her inspirations, as was the case at different times with
+      the illustrious Aurinia, Velleda, and Ganna, whom the Roman emperors even
+      deigned to consult through their ambassadors, the proud Druids placed her
+      with humble submission, at the head of their own college of priests.
+      During this female dictatorship, she became the arbiter of the destiny of
+      nations, decided on peace and war, and controlled all the movements of
+      great armies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caesar tells us that he once asked one of his German captives, why
+      Ariovistus, their chieftain, had never yet dared to meet him in battle,
+      and was told in reply, that the Druidesses, after a careful examination of
+      the eddies and whirlpools of the Rhine, had forbid his engaging in action
+      till the <span class="pagenum">[046]</span><a name="link046" id="link046"></a>time
+      of the new moon. As a matter of course, the shrewd general profited by
+      this information, and when the new moon appeared, the Germans were in full
+      flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/066s.jpg" alt="066s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/066.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/066m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But the Rhine has not yet given its oracles, and the time has not yet
+      come, when Ganna Velleda, and Aurinia condescend to grant audiences to
+      Roman ambassadors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We only wished to trace in a few outlines the future development of this
+      institution of Druidesses, which we shall meet again in the days of its
+      decline. <span class="pagenum">[047]</span><a name="link047" id="link047"></a>In
+      the mean time, however, their influence and their power were daily
+      growing. Were the Teutons at last satisfied? By no means. In spite of all
+      the skill displayed by their diviners and the Druid-esses, they came to
+      the conclusion, that neither the trembling foliage of the holy oak, nor
+      the sudden starts, the wild leaps, and the more or less prolonged, loud
+      neighings of the horses, afforded them sufficient excitement and perfectly
+      reliable revelations. It occurred to them next, to consult animals, not in
+      their outward manifestations, but in their still quivering entrails. This
+      new ceremony could not fail to give to their religious worship a more
+      serious aspect, and a certain savor of murder, which no doubt had its
+      charms for a warlike people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Druids yielded once more, but they felt discouraged. What had become
+      of that grand philosophic religion, which was content with prayer and
+      meditation, and which they once&mdash;too fondly, perhaps&mdash;had hoped
+      to be able to adapt to the nature of these barbarians?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They first consented to slay at the foot of the sacred oak, so long kept
+      free from blood, a number of noxious beasts, like wolves, lynxes, and
+      bears; but the turn of domestic animals came ere long, and they began to
+      sacrifice sheep, goats, and finally man&rsquo;s best companion in war, the
+      horse. Not even the spotless white horses, heretofore looked upon <span
+      class="pagenum">[048]</span><a name="link048" id="link048"></a>with such
+      profound and superstitious reverence, were spared any longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at each step forward in this bloody career, the Druids, always
+      resisting, and always compelled to yield, made their last and their very
+      last concession, vainly hoping that they might thus retain for a little
+      while longer the power, which they felt was fast slipping from their
+      grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Encouraged by success, the reformers finally came to the question, whether
+      the most acceptable offering to be presented to God, was not the blood of
+      man? Is not man, of all created beings, the most noble and the most
+      perfect? Perhaps they were inclined to carry the argument still farther,
+      and to reason that among all men the most worthy to be chosen and the most
+      likely to be acceptable to God, were the Druids themselves? But they took
+      care not to ask too much at once. They held this final consequence of a
+      great principle in reserve, requiring for the present nothing more than a
+      common victim, anything that might come in the way, provided it was a
+      human being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might have been expected, that when this abominable demand was made to
+      hallow murder by committing it in the name of Heaven, the descendants and
+      heirs of the ancient sages would have remembered their noble ancestors who
+      had put an end to the first and quite inoffensive superstitions <span
+      class="pagenum">[049]</span><a name="link049" id="link049"></a>of the
+      early Celts. They ought to have veiled their faces, drawn back with
+      horror, and recovering for once their former energy, appealed by means of
+      the holy oak, the spotless horses, the soothsayers and the Druidesses, nay
+      of heaven and earth itself, to the whole nation, calling upon them to
+      anathematize the infamous petitioners. But they did no such thing. On the
+      contrary they hastened to legalize such savage bloodshed by their holy
+      consent. One might almost be led to suspect that they had themselves,
+      underhand, suggested the horrible idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O ye hypocritical priests, ye false philosophers, ye tigers disguised as
+      shepherds of the people!.... But we must check our indignation. For who
+      knows, but they may have been swayed not so much by an instinct of cruelty
+      as by a lofty political, or even philanthropic principle? Philanthropic?
+      Yes, indeed; we will explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the Celts human life counted for little; it was lavished in battles,
+      it was cast away in duels. At the time when the Gauls held large national
+      assemblies, they tried to secure punctual attendance by simply putting to
+      death the man who was the last to come; he paid for all the tardy ones. I
+      do not mean to propose such a plan at the present day; but after all it
+      was an infallible and economical measure. <span class="pagenum">[050]</span><a
+      name="link050" id="link050"></a>The Teutons, on the other hand, bloodless
+      in their national assemblies, after a battle in which they had been
+      victorious, delighted in massacring all their prisoners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These massacres ceased from the time when the Druids claimed for
+      themselves the exclusive right of human sacrifices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good Esus, having become bloodthirsty, demanded all the captives to be
+      slain in expiation at his altar, and woe to him who dared to anticipate
+      him in his wrath. He was excluded from the sacred precincts; he was
+      declared an impious, sacrilegious person, who could no longer take his
+      place among the citizens; and he ran great risk of being forced to offer
+      his own life in compensation for that which by his fault was wanting at
+      the holocaust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this custom became once fully established, the prisoners of war were
+      all delivered up to the high-priest, who chose from among them one or more
+      to be slain as an offering. The victim was generally one of the captive
+      chieftains, and he was slain together with his war horse, so as to add to
+      the impressiveness of the ceremony and to reconcile the spectators by the
+      abundance of blood that was shed to the small number of victims.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having carefully examined the opened bodies of man and animal, the
+      sacrificing priest, his <span class="pagenum">[051]</span><a
+      name="link051" id="link051"></a>beard and clothes saturated with
+      blood, raised his bloody right hand to heaven and, reeking with murder and
+      breathing carnage, he proclaimed that his god was satisfied. The remainder
+      of the prisoners were kept for another day, but that other day never came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus a new office had been created: that of a sacrificing priest. On both
+      banks of the Rhine, in Germany as well as in Gaul, the Druids reserved
+      this office for themselves; in other Celtic countries, in Scandinavia and
+      among the Scythians, women performed the terrible duty; we all remember as
+      a proof of it, Iphigenia of Tauris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever we may think of this bloody innovation, it certainly benefited
+      the prisoners, but the Druids obtained from it, after all, the greatest
+      advantage. Their power, which had been seriously undermined, step by step,
+      was once more firmly established. The opposition, which had paid no
+      attention to their remonstrances or their prayers, shrunk from their
+      knives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this moment begins the Second Period of the Druids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bloody knife of the Druids remained long all powerful, but we need not
+      follow its later fate. Cæsar had conquered and pacified Gaul, and the
+      successors of Augustus fulminated their Imperial <span class="pagenum">[052]</span><a
+      name="link052" id="link052"></a>decrees against the Druids, as slayers of
+      men, while the same knife continued to shed the blood of the Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/072s.jpg" alt="072s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/072.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/072m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/075s.jpg" alt="075s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/075.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/075m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[055]</span><a name="link055" id="link055"></a><i>A
+      Visit to the Land of our Forefathers.&mdash;The two Banks of the Rhine.&mdash;Druid
+      Stones.&mdash;Weddings and Burials.&mdash;Xight Service.&mdash;A Dentigod
+      Glacier.&mdash;Social Duels. A Countrywoman of Aspasia.&mdash;Boudoir of a
+      Celtic Lady.&mdash;The Bard&rsquo;s Story.&mdash;Teutons and Titans.&mdash;Earthquake.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ny one who has
+      ever travelled in my company, must know that I am apt to stray from my
+      way, or at least to choose the longest route. I have a fancy to-day, to
+      turn my eyes and my steps away from those sacred precincts of the Druids,
+      which <span class="pagenum">[056]</span><a name="link056"
+      id="link056"></a>had become slaughter-houses and in which the hand
+      that blessed was also the hand that killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I desire to breathe an air less filled with the perfumes, or rather the
+      fetid odor of sacrifices. Up there, on that hill-top, where the setting
+      sun lights up the bright summit, I shall breathe more freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here I am.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath me the Rhine spreads out its two banks, not united yet by any
+      bridge, and even without a ferry to bring the one nearer to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on both sides, half hid under dense willow thickets and gigantic
+      reeds, there lie, in many a shallow little bay, large numbers of tiny
+      barks. These cunning looking boats belong to harmless fishermen in the
+      daytime; but at night they are filled with robbers and corsairs, who form
+      in bands, cross over to the other side in search of booty, and even
+      venture, if needs be, out into the Northern Sea. Just now nothing stirs;
+      the fishermen have gone home, the corsairs have not come forth. I look
+      farther out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the left bank there are some Gallic Celts encamped, with blue eyes,
+      white skin, and abundant golden tresses. Almost naked, their principal
+      garment seems to be that immense shield, almost as long as their body,
+      which shelters them on the march as well as when they are at rest, and
+      which protects <span class="pagenum">[057]</span><a name="link057"
+      id="link057"></a>them against the sun and the enemy alike. All of a
+      sudden I hear them, with lips held close to one of the edges of their
+      shields, utter sharp cries, which are taken up and repeated, from distance
+      to distance, all the way down the river. To these cries, which no doubt
+      represent their telegraphic system, there comes an answer from far
+      sounding trumpets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/077s.jpg" alt="077s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/077.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/077m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Who are these other soldiers with the black hair and the bronzed
+      complexions? Carefully arrayed in symmetrical lines they advance steadily,
+      clad in brilliant armor, and carrying banners surmounted by golden eagles
+      with half open wings. Has Cæsar really succeeded, after ten years&rsquo;
+      warfare, in making himself master of Gaul as far as the banks of the
+      Rhine? I cannot doubt it; for at their <span class="pagenum">[058]</span><a
+      name="link058" id="link058"></a>approach, the Gauls lower their
+      lance-heads, in token of their peaceful disposition, and allow them to
+      pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/078s.jpg" alt="078s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/078.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/078m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      When they reach the river, the small Roman army pauses; under the
+      protection of this armed force a few men, dressed in simple tunics, with
+      no arms but tablets, a style, and ropes for measuring the ground, go to
+      work preparing a plan, perhaps for a bridge, perhaps for a town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      German sentinels, take care!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the height of my hill I look down upon a <span class="pagenum">[059]</span><a
+      name="link059" id="link059"></a>narrow strip of land on the right bank of
+      the river, and here I see several groups of men, scattered here and there
+      in the woods and on the plain, who work under the superintendence of a
+      Druid. Some are digging up the roots of trees which overshadow and
+      impoverish the ground; others draw long furrows with the iron of their
+      ploughs. These laborers seem all to suffer from some restraint which
+      impedes their movements, but of which at this distance I can discover no
+      cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to meditate on this strange sight, I look around for a resting
+      place. Half way up the hill I notice a small stone bench. As I draw
+      nearer, the object grows in size and rises to such a height, that I should
+      need a ladder if I wished to take possession of my seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/079s.jpg" alt="079s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/079.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/079m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This apparent bench is a monument, a Druidical monument, and consists of
+      two upright stones, on which rests a third, horizontal stone. In France,
+      in England, and in Germany there are still found <span class="pagenum">[060]</span><a
+      name="link060" id="link060"></a>such Druidical altars, cromlechs or
+      dolmens; these menhyrs astonished already Alexander of Macedonia when he
+      marched through Scythia. In Bretagne, at Carnac, some of these stones,
+      consisting of a single rock, rise by the wayside, as if to tell the
+      traveller the story of the past, or they range themselves before his eyes
+      in long lines, forming on the ground endless circles of emblematic
+      meaning, as it is supposed. But the traveller can no longer understand
+      their language. Was this an altar, or was it an idol, or perhaps only a
+      simple monument raised over a grave. If they were altars, Carnac would be
+      Olympus; if they were tombstones, it would be a cemetery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:15%;">
+      <img src="images/080s.jpg" alt="080s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/080.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/080m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      I was going all around the mystic three stones to examine them more
+      closely, when I noticed close by a flock of sheep, and then a shepherd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This shepherd, covered with a ragged <i>sagum</i>, had on his feet leather
+      sandals, a half open wound on his forehead, which had not yet had time to
+      close, enhanced the fierceness of his appearance. His burning <span
+      class="pagenum">[061]</span><a name="link061" id="link061"></a>glances
+      fell now upon the Druidical stone and now upon another object which I had
+      not noticed before. This was the guard of a sword which had been driven
+      into the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could it be that this stone resting upon two supports, were new
+      concessions made by the politic Druids?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/081s.jpg" alt="081s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/081.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/081m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      As according to their spiritualistic views God could not render himself
+      visible in a shape resembling our own, they had represented him as well as
+      they could by a symbol. It appeared thus that human sacrifices were
+      already no longer sufficient to maintain their creed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While I was examining with growing curiosity this strange keeper of sheep,
+      fair, with bare neck and bare feet, was busy watching on the same side of
+      the hill another flock, and at the same time gathering herbs for medicinal
+      purposes. When she was about to leave, she offered the shepherd to attend
+      to his wound, sword handle, and this <span class="pagenum">[062]</span><a
+      name="link062" id="link062"></a>but he refused haughtily; she ran away
+      laughing, and threw a flower into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not pick up that flower; he did not salute that pretty girl as she
+      left him. He looked at her with disdain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! I can doubt it no longer; this unhappy man is like the wood-cutter in
+      the forest, and the laborers in the field, one of those prisoners taken in
+      war, whom the Druids have spared, and now render useful. His closely shorn
+      hair, his open wound, and the heavy wooden yoke which he has to carry on
+      his neck, all betray his sad fate. He has made no reply to the half
+      pitiful, half coquettish advances of the pretty gatherer of simples,
+      because she has only awakened in his heart painful memories of his distant
+      love, or of his wife, whom he is never to see again! He has cast glances
+      of fierce hatred and burning revenge at the Druidical altar and the handle
+      of the sword, because both of these objects point out the place of bloody
+      sacrifices. Does he think he is himself destined to be slain? or was
+      perhaps the warrior whom they slew yesterday, a man of his own tribe, his
+      best friend, his own brother?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I have taken refuge here in order to escape from these painful
+      thoughts of blood and murder. I propose to seek new objects of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farther down, nearly at the foot of the hill, I <span class="pagenum">[063]</span><a
+      name="link063" id="link063"></a>see a few huts, or rather a few low,
+      almost crushed roofs, which seem hardly to rise from the ground. Are they
+      houses, or stables, or caves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the left bank Gauls and Romans have alike disappeared in the mists
+      rising from the river. On the right bank the wood-cutters and the
+      field-laborors are resting upon their axes or their ploughs, and seem to
+      ask the sun if the day is not drawing to an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/083s.jpg" alt="083s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/083.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/083m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      A breeze is springing up, the shepherd gathers his flock and, as mournful
+      as ever, he slowly takes <span class="pagenum">[064]</span><a
+      name="link064" id="link064"></a>the footpath that leads down the hill
+      towards the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I follow him without knowing what mysterious power draws me in that
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps some Druid magician holds me under a potent spell, which enables
+      me to forget who I am, whence I come, and even to what century I belong,
+      and to witness these strange scenes, which, well nigh forgotten by all
+      living beings, I alone am permitted to watch? Let me try, at all events,
+      to profit by this rare piece of good fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I reach the low village and find it occupied by a colony of Salic Franks,
+      who live scattered all along the Rhine. With their eyes fixed upon the
+      left bank, they are just now far more occupied with the invasion of
+      Germany by the Romans, than with the thought of invading Gaul themselves.&mdash;I
+      feel suddenly a deep interest in these people. What Frenchman of this
+      nineteenth century can feel sure that the blood in his veins is not the
+      same that once gave life and strength to these terrible warriors from the
+      North, Franks or Gauls? We are all natives of one or the other bank of
+      this great river Rhine, and feel towards each other, whether we live on
+      the right or the left bank, very much like school-boys whose friendship is
+      cemented by many a battle royal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being a Frenchman, I feel that I am about to <span class="pagenum">[065]</span><a
+      name="link065" id="link065"></a>pay a visit to my paternal ancestors&mdash;for
+      the Franks have given us our name. No wonder that I feel deeply moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I examine the low huts of the village, if village it can be called, and
+      find that they are separated from each other by commons and by fields, and
+      that they finally lose themselves in the open country. Where now these
+      scattered huts are standing, there may be one of these days a Mayence or a
+      Cologne, and yet they will occupy no larger space with all their suburbs
+      included.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On both sides of the road extend orchards, fenced in with reeds and all
+      aglow with blooming apple trees; dark, sombre pine forests and swamps, the
+      greenish waters of which are confined within slight dams; here and there
+      the live rock crops out from the ground and interrupts the road, or huge
+      trees are lying across, recently cut down and but just deprived of their
+      branches. In the open pasture grounds huge buffaloes are lying about
+      snorting and panting with fatigue, for they have worked all day in the
+      plough; the neighing of horses is heard from one end of the country to the
+      other, and gradually dies out as the sun sinks below the horizon; lean
+      heifers, with long, spiral horns, push here and there their heads through
+      the fence of the orchards to have a last bite at the tender foliage of the
+      reeds, and small oxen of an <span class="pagenum">[066]</span><a
+      name="link066" id="link066"></a>inferior breed return to their quarters at
+      the same time with the sheep, quite content to browse on the grass by the
+      wayside, while herds of swine are wallowing in the mire of the low
+      grounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/086s.jpg" alt="086s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/086.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/086m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The landscape resembles parts of Bretagne and of Normandy; but these
+      provinces have no such huts. To see a human habitation, you have to rise
+      high above the fences and hedges and then look down upon the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a place where two roads meet, the cracking of a whip is heard; hogs,
+      sheep, and small oxen are driven aside to make way for a kind of
+      procession, consisting of grave and solemn men and women, who almost all
+      wear a look of consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a wedding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two young people have just had their union blessed by the priests under
+      the sacred oak. The bride is dressed in black, and wears a wreath of dark
+      leaves on her head; she walks in the midst <span class="pagenum">[067]</span><a
+      name="link067" id="link067"></a>of her friends, bent double, as if weighed
+      down by overwhelming thoughts. A matron, who walks on her left, holds
+      before her eyes a white cloth; it is a shroud, the shroud in which she
+      will be buried one of these days. On her right, a Druid intones a chant,
+      in which he enumerates, in solemn rhythm, all the troubles and all the
+      anxieties which await her in wedded life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/087s.jpg" alt="087s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/087.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/087m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From this day, young wife, thou alone wilt have to bear all the
+      burden of your united household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will have to attend the baking oven, to provide fuel, and to go
+      in search of food; you will have to prepare the resinous torch and the
+      lamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will wash the linen at the fountain, and you will make up all
+      the clothing;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will attend to the cow, and even to the horse if your husband
+      requires it;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always full of respect, you will wait upon him, standing behind
+      him, at his meals;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he chooses to take more wives, you will receive your new
+      companions with sweetness; <span class="pagenum">[068]</span><a
+      name="link068" id="link068"></a>"If needs be, you will even offer
+      to nurse the children of these favorites, and all from obedience to your
+      karl (master);
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he is angry against you and strikes you, you will pray to Esus,
+      the only God, but you will never blame your husband, who cannot do wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he expresses a wish to take you with him to war, you will
+      accompany him to carry his baggage, to keep his arms in good condition,
+      and to nurse him if he should be sick or wounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty. Be happy, my child!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/088s.jpg" alt="088s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/088.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/088m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      When I heard this dolorous wedding song, which in some parts of France is
+      to this day addressed to brides by local minstrels, when I saw this
+      winding-sheet, <span class="pagenum">[069]</span><a name="link069"
+      id="link069"></a>the mournful costumes and the whole funereal wedding
+      procession, I felt overcome with sadness. Just then, cries and joyous
+      acclamations were heard at some little distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another procession came from the opposite direction to the cross-roads;
+      there all the faces were smiling and full of joyousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a funeral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/089s.jpg" alt="089s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/089.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/089m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Such were the ways of our fathers; they rejoiced in facing death, which
+      relieves man from all his sufferings; they had nothing but tears for man
+      when he entered upon his trials.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime the twilight had passed into darkness. Small lights,
+      looking like will-o&rsquo;-the-wisps, were flitting to and fro in field
+      and forest, going in all directions. Devout worshippers, carrying torches
+      or lanterns in their hands, were going to consecrated places, to hold
+      public worship or to recite private prayers. <span class="pagenum">[070]</span><a
+      name="link070" id="link070"></a>Some, and these were the majority, go in
+      the direction of the oak forests, where the Druids are found; others,
+      concealing the light of their lanterns as well as they can, go hither and
+      thither, towards the copses of beeches and pine trees, or towards the
+      river, or towards the hill, which was but just now shining brightly in the
+      sunlight, but is now concealed in utter darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/090s.jpg" alt="090s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/090.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/090m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      What are they going to do? They are going to worship the Rhine, the wells,
+      the water-courses, the trees, the Druidical <span class="pagenum">[071]</span><a
+      name="link071" id="link071"></a>altars, and the sword-guards. For no creed
+      yet but has had its schisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Orthodox or not, German or Gallic, the Franks have always shown a
+      preference for nocturnal worship; they divide the year into moons, and
+      count the moons not by days but by nights. And yet they have been
+      suspected of worshipping the sun! And I had nearly fallen into the same
+      error! How well it was that I came to see for myself!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I am just now more interested in watching manners than in studying
+      mythology, I pursue my investigations, especially as I know very well that
+      we must know the lives which people lead in order to be able fully to
+      appreciate the objects of their worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While all these small lights are flashing, like shooting stars, here and
+      there through the landscape, certain specially bright lights seem to
+      become stationary and permanent. These are the lighted-up windows of human
+      habitations. I called the latter just now stables, or caves, and excepting
+      a few of them, I must still call them such.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are dug out of the ground, damp and dark; their ceiling is on a level
+      with the surface of the earth, and their roof consists of layers of turf,
+      or of dry thatch covered with moss. The only door resembles the lid of a
+      snuff-box, and is set in the roof on a level with the ground. The dwelling
+      <span class="pagenum">[072]</span><a name="link072" id="link072"></a>has
+      no light but such as enters through these trapdoors; consequently they are
+      utterly dark during the whole rainy season and during winter, that is to
+      say, for three fourths of the year! Darkness reigns supreme here; that
+      darkness which is the enemy of all healthfulness, of enjoyment, of every
+      comfort. No windows! No glass! O divine Apollo,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou of the silver bow, god of Claros, hear!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/092s.jpg" alt="092s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/092.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/092m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      I never had any objection to the doctrine which made of you, the brilliant
+      personification of the sun, a first class divinity; but I think like
+      honors ought to have been bestowed upon the unknown man who first invented
+      windows and window-panes, the <span class="pagenum">[073]</span><a
+      name="link073" id="link073"></a>first glazier in fine. He ought at least
+      to have been made a demigod, and if he had to remain a simple mortal, they
+      ought surely to have remembered his name! Alas! that high honors are as
+      unfairly distributed in heaven as upon earth!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As there is no window, I peep through the trapdoor to see how these
+      subterranean dwellings look inside. The aspect is far from being as
+      wretched as I had expected. I find that the walls are hung with mattings
+      and the floor is beaten hard; by the side of the smoking lamp which is
+      suspended from the main beam of the ceiling, there are hanging, on hooks,
+      a hindquarter of venison, baskets filled with provisions, and implements
+      for fishing and hunting. Besides, I notice long strings of medicinal
+      herbs, such as we see in the shops of herb-doctors, and among these plants
+      the mistletoe occupies, as a matter of course, the place of honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another underground hut there appear actually some traces of luxury.
+      Here the walls are incrusted with pebbles from the Rhine, of many colors
+      and skillfully arranged; here and there weapons are arranged in various
+      shapes; javelins with sharp hooks; framees, such as the ancient Franks
+      were using; hatchets of stone or iron; &ldquo;morning stars,&rdquo; with
+      sharp points, were pleasantly mingled with huge bucklers; large leather
+      quivers and long arrows feathered at one end and with jagged teeth <span
+      class="pagenum">[074]</span><a name="link074" id="link074"></a>at the
+      other. At first sight it looks as if for the purpose of softening somewhat
+      the threatening aspect of these panoplies, the Celtic lady of the house
+      had added some of her jewels to these weapons. But it is not so; these
+      gold chains, these necklaces set with onyx and rubies, are worn by the
+      grim warriors on the day of battle, quite as much in the nature of
+      ornaments as for the purpose of protection. One of our sober, I may say,
+      most sober historians, ascribes to this custom of our forefathers, the
+      Franks, the gorget, worn still by officers in some European armies. Here
+      also I see straw mats, but here they are trod under foot; they are used as
+      carpets, not as hangings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deep and spacious dwelling contains, besides the large room which
+      alone I can see through my dormer-window, a number of other rooms on all
+      sides, or rather of other caves, which are all connected with each other.
+      I am evidently before the palace of one of the chief men of the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first hut, into which I had looked, I had found the people at
+      table, drinking a beverage made from grain and herbs&mdash;cerevisia&mdash;in
+      horns of wild bulls, and talking about business&mdash;for our ancestors
+      talked about business at dinner, just as we do. The conversation turned
+      about exchanges of rams, a great fishing expedition to be undertaken
+      jointly, an invasion to be made into the territory on the other<span
+      class="pagenum">[075]</span><a name="link075" id="link075"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/095s.jpg" alt="095s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/095.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/095m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[077]</span><a name="link077" id="link077"></a>bank
+      of the river, and most eagerly, about the approaching elections. For
+      Montesquieu tells us that municipal and even constitutional government
+      existed alike among the early Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the other dwelling, the one adorned with panoplies, they were talking
+      neither of elections, nor of fishing, but they were likewise at table.
+      Here they drank not only cerevisia in the <i>horns of the brave</i>, but
+      also hydromel and hippocras in leathern tankards or human skulls, as white
+      as ivory, adorned with silver and naturally shaped like cups. God be
+      thanked that this custom has not been bequeathed to us by the Franks!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that evening they were celebrating the welcome given to a young warrior
+      who had already made himself known by great exploits and who belonged to a
+      neighboring, friendly tribe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the meal was ended, and what a meal it was!&mdash;I shall be careful
+      not to give the bill of fare, since the mere recital would cause an
+      indigestion,&mdash;they thought of prolonging the entertainment given to
+      their illustrious guest. But what could they do? The young Frankish ladies
+      were not familiar yet with the piano, and the noble game of billiards had
+      not yet been invented. They proposed riddles to be guessed, but this did
+      not seem to afford much amusement to the young man. Then came a game with
+      bones; but he nearly fell <span class="pagenum">[078]</span><a
+      name="link078" id="link078"></a>asleep. As the duty of hospitality
+      required that they should make every possible effort to entertain their
+      guest, a great man among the Cheruski or the Marcomanni, they proposed the
+      <i>handkerchief</i>; this, seemed to arouse his attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The handkerchief game was at that time very popular; it was a kind of
+      company duel. Two kind-hearted adversaries, having no other motive but to
+      amuse themselves and to entertain the company, would seize with their left
+      hand one end of a handkerchief, and with their right hand a table knife or
+      a hunting knife, it did not matter which, provided the weapon was sharp
+      and very pointed. For our good ancestors did not know foils with cork
+      buttons or other arms of courtesy. Imbued with the strange idea that to
+      fight, man against man, or a thousand against a thousand, was the greatest
+      happiness upon earth, they delighted in occasionally cutting each other&rsquo;s
+      throat, even if they were the best friends in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spectators formed a ring around the combatants. After they had taken a
+      solemn oath, by the rims of their bucklers, by the shoulders of their
+      horses, and by the points of their swords, that they cherished no feeling
+      of animosity against each other, a signal was given and the game
+      commenced. For some time I saw how the handkerchief was stretched out,
+      twisted and then suddenly <span class="pagenum">[079]</span><a
+      name="link079" id="link079"></a>turned around and around rapidly. Light
+      red lines had already begun to mark the skin of the two adversaries; the
+      blood was trickling down their arms, but these wounds were such trifles
+      that the spectators took no notice of them and uttered not a single
+      exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of a sudden I heard three hurrahs in rapid succession; the welcomed
+      guest, whom all had been striving to honor to the utmost of their
+      capacity, had fallen down with his adversary&rsquo;s knife still sticking
+      in his breast. He was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not been able to think of any better way to make him spend a
+      pleasant evening. The good old times had a hospitality of their own!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This pleasant handkerchief game has survived, only slightly modified, in
+      several countries of northern Europe. The handkerchief is generally
+      wrapped around a rapier, so as to shorten the length of the blade. In the
+      taverns of Holland the game is considered conducive to health; a knife
+      wound gives a man a chance to escape apoplexy; it serves as a timely
+      bleeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had run away in horror. For an hour I wandered about, casting a furtive
+      glance down a trapdoor here and there, and almost everywhere I saw men and
+      women, horses and cattle, enjoying their rest, lying pell-mell on the same
+      litter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one of these hovels I thought I recognized <span class="pagenum">[080]</span><a
+      name="link080" id="link080"></a>the young girl whom I had seen on the
+      hill; her attitude of repose gave a peculiar charm to her supple and
+      delicate limbs, and by the feeble flickering light of the lamp, she
+      suggested the idea of a sleeping nymph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0033" id="linkimage-0033"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/100s.jpg" alt="100s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/100.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/100m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      She was a young Ionian girl, a countrywoman of Aspasia; captured in war,
+      she had been sold as a slave in twenty markets, developing in spite of
+      such treatment, one grace and one beauty after another. On the banks of
+      the Ilyssus, they would have erected an altar in her honor, on the banks
+      of the Rhine they made her keep a herd of swine. <span class="pagenum">[081]</span><a
+      name="link081" id="link081"></a>She was not the only one of her sex,
+      however, whom I saw during that fantastic night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of a shrill fife, mingling with the sweeter notes of a harp,
+      attracted my attention. I went toward the spot from which the music came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little room decked with flowers, a young woman was engaged in her
+      toilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I ought to have fled once more,&mdash;this time from bashfulness or a
+      sense of propriety,&mdash;but a conscientious historian is bound to
+      overcome every difficulty, in order to ascertain the exact truth. It was a
+      great piece of good luck, surely, to be able to report as an eye-witness,
+      what might be seen in the boudoir of a Celtic lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My friend was sitting, half undressed, on a stool, with her hair loosened,
+      and holding in her hand a metal mirror. An old woman, a servant or her
+      mother, I cannot tell which&mdash;and yet it seemed to me as if I had seen
+      both these women, as well as the beautiful swine-herd, somewhere before;
+      when that was, however, I could not possibly tell&mdash;the old woman held
+      the whole rich abundance of the young lady&rsquo;s hair in both her hands
+      and rubbed it with a horrid mixture of tallow, ashes, and plaster. Thanks
+      to this wretched pomatum, the beautiful hair gradually changed from pale
+      blonde to intense red, and thus enabled the owner to comply with a
+      fashion, which I do not presume to criticise, but <span class="pagenum">[082]</span><a
+      name="link082" id="link082"></a>simply record here. Then she washed and
+      combed it carefully, plaited it cunningly, and at last rubbed the
+      shoulders and the neck of the beauty with melted butter, while she washed
+      the face and the hands with foaming beer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/102s.jpg" alt="102s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/102.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/102m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      After the demands of cleanliness had thus been satisfied, she placed
+      before her mistress a slight collation, which was promptly served and
+      promptly dispatched. While she was thus attending to her toilet and
+      disposing of a bird&rsquo;s meal, there was a cyclopean feast going on in
+      an adjoining room; loud and violent voices were heard, everybody seemed
+      <span class="pagenum">[083]</span><a name="link083" id="link083"></a>to
+      talk at once, and in such high tones that even the shrill fife could no
+      longer be distinguished&mdash;for it was from this hall that the sound of
+      music proceeded, which had attracted me to the dwelling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman evidently thought the feast was drawing to an end, for she
+      hastened to finish her mistress&rsquo;s toilet: She opened a wooden box
+      and drew from it a pair of pretty red boots, which she put on the feet of
+      the young beauty; then she threw over her white dress a purple scarf,
+      which she fastened on the left shoulder with a long thorn from a
+      sloe-tree. After that she tied a narrow scarlet ribbon around her head,
+      handed her a collar and bracelets made of small berries, which in form and
+      color were strikingly like corals, and finally, as the finishing touch,
+      she daubed her cheeks with red by means of a cosmetic which I suspect
+      consisted largely of brickdust. When the young Frankish beauty found that
+      there was enough red&mdash;scarlet, crimson, purple, and pink&mdash;on her
+      person from head to foot, she uttered a cry of triumph, especially when
+      her husband, who entered her room, followed by his guests, seemed to be
+      quite dazzled by the resplendent charms of his lovely wife, whom he had
+      just <i>bought</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To buy a woman was a familiar expression in Germany at that time, as it is
+      now,&mdash;<i>Ein weib kaufen</i>. It must be borne in mind, however, that
+      <span class="pagenum">[084]</span><a name="link084" id="link084"></a>in
+      those days the bride brought no dower; on the contrary, the husband paid
+      her family a certain sum as compensation. We have inherited many of our
+      usages from our Celtic forefathers; but as to this custom, we have not
+      thought proper to keep it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I at once recognized the husband, although he was now all smiles in his
+      face, and let us hope, all smiles in his heart also. He was the chief
+      personage in the wedding procession, whom I had seen two hours before,
+      looking so grave and solemn, so sad and mournful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to Druidical regulations, the bride has first of all waited upon
+      him at table, humbly standing behind him like the other house slaves;
+      then, towards the middle of the repast, she had gone to her room in order
+      to exchange her girlish costume for the dress of a married woman&mdash;a
+      woman who has the right to follow the fashions and to dress herself up in
+      red from the heels of her feet to the end of her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now she receives her master <i>at home</i>; here she is mistress, and
+      mistress she will remain. This was the rule among the Franks; for in spite
+      of the lachrymose anthems of the bards and in spite of the sombre
+      ceremonies of the wedding, the women became almost invariably the masters
+      at home, a usage which, contrary to that of dowerless girls, may possibly
+      have crossed the Rhine. <span class="pagenum">[085]</span><a
+      name="link085" id="link085"></a>Thinking it over, I found that
+      during my nocturnal excursion into the land of my forefathers, I had been
+      present&mdash;as a witness only, be it understood&mdash;at three
+      successive entertainments; a feast of welcome, a business dinner, and a
+      wedding dinner. Although they had not been calculated to satisfy my
+      appetite, they had, at all events, made me extremely hungry. I was
+      thinking, therefore, of retracing my steps and looking for a lodging, when
+      I saw the Druid-bard, who had not disdained taking a seat at the nuptial
+      feast, coming slowly and solemnly to the centre of the room, all the while
+      drawing a few accords from, a kind of harp, which consisted of a closely
+      bent bow with three strings instead of one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/105s.jpg" alt="105s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/105.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/105m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      He was getting ready to charm the company with the recital of one of those
+      long and mysterious poems which recount the history of the Celts. I delay
+      my departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has been said, and not without a show of reason, that the history of
+      our Gallic or Germanic ancestors ought to be for us a subject of deep
+      interest; but bold minds have in vain tried to raise <span class="pagenum">[086]</span><a
+      name="link086" id="link086"></a>up once more the old oak tree, to trim it
+      and to let air and light enter within its canopy of leaves. The birds that
+      once sang in its branches have left no trace behind them of their songs,
+      and nothing has reached us from those sacred precincts but a few faint
+      echoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I certainly have reason to praise my good fortune! What all these great
+      scholars, these learned men, have not been able to accomplish by dint of
+      energy and perseverance and aided by all their knowledge of Latin, Greek,
+      and Sanskrit, I (I, the man whom you know) am enabled to do! Thanks to the
+      bard&rsquo;s long recital, I am able to fill up this blank,&mdash;the
+      first, the only man in the history of mankind, who can throw light upon
+      the impenetrable darkness of those ages!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bard began. I listened, all attention and eagerness, trying to catch
+      every sound and to impress every word upon my excellent memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a pompous introduction he told us all about the first arrival of the
+      Celts in Europe, the coming of the Druids as apostles of the true faith;
+      he told us how a great colony of Salic Franks, Gauls, under the collective
+      name of Pelasgi, all children of Teut, or Teutons, had first planted a
+      sacred oak at Dodona. On this point I was already well informed. He then
+      alluded to the building up of Athens, due as much to the Teutons as to the
+      <span class="pagenum">[087]</span><a name="link087" id="link087"></a>Greeks
+      of Cecrops; he boasted, that when the Greeks were led astray by their
+      corrupt imagination and wished to raise altars to Saturn, Jupiter, and all
+      those false gods whom they had borrowed from the Egyptians and the
+      Phoenicians, the Teutons rose in the name of outraged human reason, and
+      proclaimed the only one God, breaking down all the false altars. Hence, he
+      said, that formidable struggle, still so well known as the battle of the
+      gods of Olympus against the <i>Teutons</i> or <i>Titans</i>....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I held my breath. What? Those terrible giants, those colossal men, whom
+      Jupiter himself feared and who piled Ossa upon Pelion, or Pelion upon Ossa&mdash;they
+      were Celts? They were the ancestors of the brave French?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Titans, O my brothers, with what delight I listened to the sacred words
+      of the bard, so that I might repeat them to you and rejoice with you in
+      our glorious descent!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By special grace I understood the Germano-Celtic words of the bard without
+      difficulty. But the poem was flowing on interminably; I began to mistrust
+      my memory. Centuries succeeded centuries, events followed events, and they
+      were as close to each other and as numerous as grains in a bag of wheat.
+      The continuous exertion of all my faculties began to tell upon me. The
+      most illustrious <span class="pagenum">[088]</span><a name="link088"
+      id="link088"></a>heroes of Gaul and of Germany appeared to me soon
+      only like the faint forms seen by means of a magic lantern; Sigovesus and
+      Bellovesus, the descendants of the great king Ambigat; Brennus, Btlgius,
+      and Lutharius, sons or sons-in-law of that other great king Cambaules,
+      began to turn around and arouad in my head, holding each other by the hand
+      and performing an old British dance to the music of an old Breton
+      instrument. Ariovistus played on the biniou. Then the sounds of the
+      biniou, the shrill tones of the fife and the Druid harp were broken in
+      upon by a terrible noise of countless church bells; the air shook all of a
+      sudden, the earth trembled, everything around me fell to the ground with a
+      great crash, the Druid, the house of the wedding, the trap-door, the
+      hamlet, the trees, the hill, the Rhine and its banks, the heaven and the
+      stars, all disappeared at the same moment, and I awoke in my arm-chair,
+      surrounded by my poor books, which had just fallen from my knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner bell was still ringing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0036" id="linkimage-0036"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/111s.jpg" alt="111s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/111.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/111m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[091]</span><a name="link091" id="link091"></a><i>The
+      Roman Gods invade Germany.&mdash;Drusus and the Druidess.&mdash;Ogmius,
+      the Hercules of Gaul.&mdash;Great Philological Discovery concerning Teut
+      at es.&mdash;Transformations of every kind.&mdash;Irmexsul.&mdash;The
+      Rhine deified.&mdash;The Gods cross the River.&mdash;Druids of the Third
+      Epoch.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou may rest
+      assured, I did not merely dream of that bold transformation of Teutons
+      into Titans; one of the most learned and most reliable authors in my
+      library, assures me of the fact. These great scholars are sometimes very
+      clever men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to this authority, the Celts were very much taller than the
+      Greeks, and this fact had naturally suggested to the latter the idea of
+      speaking of them as giants. The Celtic Pelasgi, who were warlike shepherds
+      like all the men of their race, usually watched their flocks as they were
+      <span class="pagenum">[092]</span><a name="link092" id="link092"></a>grazing
+      on the high mountains, and it was these mountains which the myth accused
+      them of piling up, one upon another, to scale the heavens. You will say,
+      What mad follies of poets! I grant this; but after these mad poets came
+      men like Hesiod and Homer, who changed the idle dream into stern reality,
+      and upon this rock a new religion was founded, and with it, a new
+      civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the day has come when these same gods of Greece, having become the
+      gods of great Rome, will pursue the Titans, or Teutons, to the very heart
+      of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is well known that Cæsar, after having conquered Gaul, had promptly
+      crossed the Rhine, rather for the purpose of making a reconnaissance on
+      the opposite bank of the river, than with any view to conquest. His
+      successor went farther into Germany. Drusus, the adopted son of Augustus,
+      and his lieutenant, reached the banks of the river Elbe, pursuing the
+      Franks, the Teutons, the Burgundians, the Cheruski, the Marcomanni, all
+      those children of the same great family, who had been overcome, put to
+      flight, but never subjugated. All of a sudden, at the very moment when he
+      is about to cross the river, there comes forth from the dark, dense
+      forest, not a new army of barbarians, bristling with spears and halberts,
+      but a woman, a tall, haughty looking woman, with long disheveled hair<span
+      class="pagenum">[093]</span><a name="link093" id="link093"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0037" id="linkimage-0037"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/113s.jpg" alt="113s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/113.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/113m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[094]</span><a name="link094" id="link094"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0038" id="linkimage-0038"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/114s.jpg" alt="114s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/114.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/114m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[095]</span><a name="link095" id="link095"></a>flowing
+      down upon her bare shoulders, and on her brow a crown of simple oak
+      branches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She steps across his path and with uplifted finger orders him in an
+      imperious voice to turn back and to go to his camp to prepare for death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a Druidess, endowed in the highest degree with the gift of
+      prophecy; so it would seem at least, for Drusus had hardly entered the
+      Roman camp, when he fell from his horse and expired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not all the Druidesses, however, succeeded in making the Roman generals go
+      back, by a word or a gesture; nor did all the Roman generals fall from
+      their horses and die. After fifty-five years of strangely varying
+      fortunes, the Genius of Rome was victorious, and must needs have been
+      victorious, for it led the whole world by its power. It brought with it
+      also its gods, which in spite of their numbers, or rather perhaps because
+      they were so numerous, met on the banks of the Rhine with a more
+      determined resistance than its soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rome had a magnificent mission to fulfill. Her glorious duty upon earth
+      was to restore the unity of all the great human families, and to improve
+      their condition by bringing them in contact with each other&mdash;by
+      fraternity, in fine. To attain this end, she had generally employed War as
+      her principal instrument; Religion had been a subsidiary agent only, a
+      weapon which she kept concealed, <span class="pagenum">[096]</span><a
+      name="link096" id="link096"></a>but which she used with great efficacy to
+      secure the permanency of her conquests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately, Roman gods were as liable to corruption, and to fearful
+      corruption, as the great men of the Empire. Nations rise step by step on
+      the grand ladder of civilization; when they have reached the top they must
+      keep up their activity, without which no life and no progress can be
+      maintained, and thus the moment comes when they are forced to descend
+      again, till at last they sink into sensual degradation, into erudite,
+      refined, voluptuous barbarism&mdash;the very bottom of the ladder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0039" id="linkimage-0039"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/116s.jpg" alt="116s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/116.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/116m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Rome had begun by raising altars to all the virtues; now her deities
+      personified nothing but vices. How could they expect to introduce them and
+      make them acceptable to these coarse Germans, among whom prostitution,
+      adultery, and theft were hardly known by name, who allowed a woman <span
+      class="pagenum">[097]</span><a name="link097" id="link097"></a>to claim
+      hospitality at the house of any <i>Karl</i>, to rest under his roof, and
+      even to share his couch, without fearing slander, if he had but put a
+      naked sword between her and himself, and who had never known and could not
+      know the use of locks and keys? Were they not accustomed to hang their
+      most valuable possessions upon the branches of a consecrated tree in the
+      open camp, or to place them on top of a druidical stone or beneath it, as
+      they chose&mdash;knowing that there they were perfectly safe? When they
+      had taken this simple precaution, they could go to bed and sleep quietly,
+      and there was no need for putting a sentinel on guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already, in the days of Cæsar, the Romans had employed a very ingenious
+      and cunning device, in order to win over the simple Gauls. They had
+      pretended to find their gods, their own peculiar gods, already established
+      in the country from olden times. Thus there existed in Gaul a statue which
+      the Etrusci had erected in honor of <i>Ogmius</i>, or rather <i>Ogma</i>.
+      The Greek Lucian mentions it in these words:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a decrepit old man; his skin is black; this form of a man,
+      however, wears the attributes of Hercules, the lion&rsquo;s skin and the
+      club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought at first,&rdquo; Lucian adds, &ldquo;that the Celts had
+      invented this odd figure in order to laugh at <span class="pagenum">[098]</span><a
+      name="link098" id="link098"></a>the gods of Greece; but this so-called
+      Hercules, who is of very great antiquity, drags after him a multitude of
+      men, whom he leads by golden chains which he holds in his mouth, while
+      they are fastened to the ears of his victims.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0040" id="linkimage-0040"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/118s.jpg" alt="118s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/118.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/118m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This <i>Ogmius</i> was evidently a typical representation of Druidism
+      itself; <i>Ogma</i>, in Celtic languages, means both science and
+      eloquence. What has Hercules to do with all this? Nevertheless the Romans
+      insisted upon calling him by that name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor did they stop here. <span class="pagenum">[099]</span><a
+      name="link099" id="link099"></a>When they found all the nations
+      they had conquered were continually speaking of a certain <i>Teutates</i>,
+      they at once declared that they recognized in this popular person their
+      own god Mercury. It was he and no other! It was Mercury, the son of
+      Jupiter and the nymph Ma&rsquo;ia. There was a striking resemblance, an
+      unmistakable analogy! No one could misapprehend the thing for an instant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0041" id="linkimage-0041"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/119s.jpg" alt="119s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/119.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/119m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Oh, my good Romans, I don&rsquo;t mean to blame you now for all the
+      trouble you gave me when I was at college! I will forget all that&mdash;But
+      what could make you conceive this stupid idea, of naturalizing among us
+      your Mercury, the god of eloquence, if <span class="pagenum">[100]</span><a
+      name="link100" id="link100"></a>you choose, but above all the ever ready
+      pimp of Jupiter, the god of trade and of thieves, and of naturalizing him
+      in a land where trade, love, and thieves are so little known! In
+      subservience to this Roman notion, some of our modern writers have been
+      clever enough to prove that there were really many points of resemblance
+      between Mercury and Teutates&mdash;but I, I openly deny it! Once more,
+      philology shall come to my assistance, to overturn their doctrine. It was
+      only this morning, while shaving, that I made a philologie discovery of
+      the very highest importance, in which the public will take the most lively
+      interest, and, I doubt not, the French Acadamy also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The word <i>Teut</i>, as the reader no doubt knows perfectly well, means
+      <i>God; Tat</i> in ancient Celtic and in modern Breton may be accurately
+      rendered as <i>father</i>&mdash;so an old Breton woman assures me, who
+      brought me up when I was a child. Add to <i>Tat</i> the termination <i>Es</i>,
+      the diminutive form of <i>Esus</i>, the <i>Lord</i>, connect the three
+      monosyllables, and you have <i>Teut-Tat-Es</i>, God, Father, and Lord!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where&mdash;I appeal to all the famous historians so graphically described
+      by Rabelais&mdash;where do you find a trace of Mercury in Teutates now? He
+      is beyond all doubt the great divinity of the Celts, but you found it more
+      convenient to follow the interested views of the Roman writers. And yet
+      <span class="pagenum">[101]</span><a name="link101" id="link101"></a>even
+      if they were innocent of any design upon your credulity, might they not
+      have been mistaken themselves? Are you not aware that Plutarch,
+      conscientious Plutarch himself, after having witnessed the Feast of
+      Tabernacles in Palestine, tells us gravely that the Jews worshipped
+      Bacchus? You were not aware of it, come, confess it frankly! For I will
+      confess to you, that I was not aware of it, myself, ten minutes ago; but
+      Dr. Rosahl has just told me so. The good doctor is delighted at my
+      discovery of the true meaning of <i>Teut-Tat-Es</i>; he thinks no
+      etymological question of such importance &lsquo;was ever more
+      satisfactorily put and answered in the same breath. He advises me strongly
+      to write a memoir on the subject, which he will undertake to bring to the
+      notice of learned societies, and only suggests the expediency of leaving
+      out any allusion to my old Breton nurse; but I am too conscientious a
+      writer ever to omit quoting my authorities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, since I have mentioned Rabelais, let us &ldquo;return to our lambs,&rdquo;
+      that is, to our Teutons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the Roman conquest, the same transformation of native deities into
+      classic gods continued in Germany. The sacred oak was changed into
+      Jupiter, whom it represented symbolically; the Druidical altars became
+      either Apollo or Diana; sometimes they were made to represent deities of
+      inferior rank, nymphs, anything in fact. But these numerous <span
+      class="pagenum">[102]</span><a name="link102" id="link102"></a>metamorphoses,
+      made rather hastily, led to a curious mistake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conquerors had met on the banks of the Weser a huge monolith, cut with
+      an axe by simple and ignorant stone-carvers. It was called <i>Irmensul</i>.
+      Like the Celtic Teutates, this Irmensul also attracted at certain fixed
+      times an immense concourse of people. The Romans, appreciating the martial
+      spirit of the natives, did not hesitate to declare that this was Mars,
+      their god of war. Thereupon they paid it all possible honor, consecrating
+      their weapons to the new deity, and offering countless propitiatory
+      sacrifices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, who was this Irmensul?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Varus had invaded Germany, during the reign of Augustus, at the head
+      of three legions, Arminius, a chieftain of the Cheruski (a Brunswicker, we
+      would say nowadays), had surprised him, and completely surrounded his army
+      in the marshes of Teutoburg, on the banks of the Weser. Every man of this
+      army, whether a Roman or a warrior of the allied tribes wearing Roman
+      livery, had perished by the sword. For eight days the bloody waters of the
+      Weser had carried down more than thirty thousand dead bodies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the news of this disaster reached Augustus, he thought that Gaul was
+      lost, Italy in danger, and Rome herself imperilled. Mad with grief, he
+      would <span class="pagenum">[103]</span><a name="link103" id="link103"></a>rise,
+      for a month afterwards, night after night, and in his terror wander
+      through his vast palace, crying out: &ldquo;O Varus, Varus, bring me back
+      my legions!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0042" id="linkimage-0042"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/123s.jpg" alt="123s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/123.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/123m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Well, the Irmensul was nothing more than a triumphal column erected in
+      honor of Arminius and his Cheruski. <i>Irmen</i> is the same as the name
+      <i>Herman or Armin</i> (Arminius), and <i>sul</i> means column. The
+      Romans, however, did not know this, and they paid dearly for their
+      ignorance. If they had known better they would not have committed the
+      egregious blunder of kneeling down and worshipping the man who had
+      destroyed the three legions of Varus. It is very evident that they were as
+      ignorant of German as of Celtic. <span class="pagenum">[104]</span><a
+      name="link104" id="link104"></a>It ought not to surprise us, however, to
+      see the soldiers of the imperial people change stones into gods, as
+      Deucalion had changed them into men. Before the days of Homer, and for a
+      long time after him, Jupiter was in Seleucia modestly represented by a
+      fragment of rock and Cybele by a black stone. In Cyprus, the Venus of
+      Paphos was nothing but a triangular or quadrangular pyramid, nor can I
+      imagine what importance could be attached to three or four angles in a
+      body, which was soon to assume the softest and most fascinating outlines.
+      First the poets had come and sung of Cybele, the kind goddess, of Jupiter
+      the omnipotent, and of Venus, the soul of the world and the queen of
+      beauty. Inspired by their voice and the bold conceptions of their fancy,
+      the sculptors had next employed the chisel upon these stones and these
+      pyramids, and there had sprung forth from these shapeless masses the Lord
+      of Gods, armed with his lightning, the beautiful Cytherea, armed with the
+      most powerful weapons of all womanly graces. Oh, poets and sculptors, you
+      have upset everything in religion! You are responsible for the loss of
+      that austere simplicity which once characterized the faith of men!
+      Miserable cutters of stone, reckless counters of syllables, you, and you
+      alone, have substituted symbols for truth! Still, I do not condemn you;
+      although I have stood up to <span class="pagenum">[105]</span><a
+      name="link105" id="link105"></a>defend the Druids of the earliest days, I
+      am far from being insensible to the charms of art and of poetry; besides,
+      what right have I, who speak of gods and myths, to pass sentence on those
+      who have been the real creators of Mythology?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0043" id="linkimage-0043"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/125s.jpg" alt="125s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/125.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/125m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      While the conquerors of the Teutons, in the pride of their cleverness,
+      were committing blunder after blunder, and fell into the pits they had dug
+      for others, the real gods of Rome stayed on the banks of the Rhine, where
+      they had already been accepted by the Gauls. They were impatient enough to
+      see Germany also erect them temples and statues, but the Rhine with
+      uplifted waves barred the passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances <span class="pagenum">[106]</span><a
+      name="link106" id="link106"></a>of former days, when he had been compelled
+      to appear in the triumphal processions of Germanicus, as a conquered
+      river, loaded with chains, while the rabble and riffraff of Rome had
+      insulted him to his face and covered him from head to foot with the mud of
+      the Tiber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The remembrance of his former humiliation seemed to revive his wrath at
+      this day, and he unfolded his whole strength to take his revenge. In vain
+      had the Olympians tried repeatedly to cross at different points;
+      everywhere, from the Alps to the Northern Sea, they found him furious,
+      roaring and rushing, full of threats in his green waters and besprinkling
+      the banks with white foam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0044" id="linkimage-0044"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/126s.jpg" alt="126s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/126.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/126m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      At last they bribed him to espouse the cause of the Empire: they made him
+      a king, the king of German rivers. A king more or less mattered very
+      little to a people who made and unmade kings at will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rhine was evidently flattered by the distinction; and he laid aside
+      his long cherished wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had already allowed Jupiter to cross, taking <span class="pagenum">[107]</span><a
+      name="link107" id="link107"></a>him perhaps for Esus; he now carefully
+      examined the passports and certificates of good conduct of several other
+      gods, and left the way open for Apollo and Minerva, Diana and some deities
+      of fair repute; but when he saw Bacchus, his anger was rekindled. What?
+      Were not the Germans mad and quarrelsome enough, when they had only taken
+      too much beer? How could he consent to allow their passions to be aroused
+      by potent wine? He was king, and as such bound to keep this scourge from
+      his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0045" id="linkimage-0045"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/127s.jpg" alt="127s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/127.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/127m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The gods whom he had allowed to cross endeavored to plead for the son of
+      Semele,&mdash;but he remained inexorable. His severity relaxed, however,
+      when the vines planted by order of the Emperor <span class="pagenum">[108]</span><a
+      name="link108" id="link108"></a>Probus in parts of the Rheingau, began to
+      adorn the banks of the river with their verdure&mdash;he was overcome,
+      when he had once tasted the juice of the grape. He consented to let
+      Bacchus pass from bank to bank, but only at the time of the vintage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0046" id="linkimage-0046"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/128s.jpg" alt="128s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/128.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/128m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Once admitted, Bacchus soon brought into the land the whole crowd of gods
+      and goddesses, who made up his following and who enjoyed no great
+      reputation in Rome and in Greece. The Rhine <span class="pagenum">[109]</span><a
+      name="link109" id="link109"></a>became angry once more, but once more
+      caresses and unexpected honors had their hoped-for effect. He was already
+      a king; he now became a god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0047" id="linkimage-0047"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/129s.jpg" alt="129s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/129.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/129m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Henceforth Father Rhine conceived a strong affection for his former
+      adversaries. When he saw that the German bank had adopted the customs and
+      the religion of the conquerors as fully as the Celtic bank, he abandoned
+      completely his restrictive policy and did his best to help everybody
+      across. Thus Jupiter was no sooner installed in Germany, than he summoned
+      his Corybantes; Bacchus his Bacchantes and his Maenads, Diana <span
+      class="pagenum">[110]</span><a name="link110" id="link110"></a>her hunting
+      nymphs, Venus her whole court of lascivious priestesses; the Dryads and
+      the Hamadryads, the Naiads and the Tritons, the Fauns and the S il vans,
+      all came one by one. It was a perfect invasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0048" id="linkimage-0048"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/130s.jpg" alt="130s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/130.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/130m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Germany, grave and solemn as she was, felt not a little troubled by this
+      wholesale irruption of frivolous <span class="pagenum">[111]</span><a
+      name="link111" id="link111"></a>and ill-mannered deities, who so little
+      agreed with her austere habits. The young, it is true, were more easily
+      Romanized and readily caught at this poetical personification of all the
+      forces of Nature; but the old, the chieftains, and above all the Druids,
+      backed by a nearly unanimous people, asked each other what could be the
+      meaning of this sudden enthusiasm for new gods, this half mad devotion to
+      celestial clowns?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one, however, dared to raise a hand; the Teutons had lost their former
+      energy, they were enfeebled, unnerved and exhausted by their long but
+      useless resistance. Hence, like true cowards, they appeared in the pagan
+      temples, in order to conciliate the good-will of the conquerors, and then,
+      to pacify their consciences, they hastened to some dark forest and there
+      with anxious eyes and disturbed minds, they offered in fear and trembling
+      their fervent worship to the sacred oak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Roman gods were soon to encounter far more formidable adversaries
+      elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Far beyond Germany, as we find it described and limited by geographers,
+      there lived a host of nations, scattered over a vast territory, and
+      extending as far East as the shores of the Caspian Sea. The Romans had
+      never penetrated far into these unknown depths, which sent forth
+      incessantly new armies of soldiers whom they classed indiscriminately
+      <span class="pagenum">[112]</span><a name="link112" id="link112"></a>under
+      the vague and collective name of Hyperboreans. Such were the Huns, the
+      Scythians, the Goths, the Slaves (Poles, Danes, Swedes, Russians, and
+      Norwegians), all of them robbers and pirates. Some, under the name of
+      Cimbrians, had joined the Teutons t and with them invaded Gaul and even
+      Italy, till they encountered the armies of Marius; others, were about to
+      cross the Pyrenees and to fall upon Spain. Among them all, the
+      Scandinavians were by far the most powerful, intrepid soldiers and
+      fearless sailors, who were soon to darken the waters of the Rhine with
+      their countless vessels, and to make Charlemagne shed tears as he thought
+      of the days to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ere long these dauntless pirates will actually enter the Loire, then even
+      the Seine; they will besiege Paris, and finally, thanks to the able
+      statesmanship of King Charles, whom they call the Simple, they will
+      become. Christians, after a fashion, and under the name of Normans take
+      possession of one of the fairest provinces of France. Then they will
+      cultivate the soil which they had heretofore robbed of its produce, they
+      will drink beer instead of cider, they will peacefully devote themselves
+      to lawsuits and cattle-raising, and will end by wearing white cotton
+      night-caps&mdash;after having destroyed Rome and conquered England twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scandinavians, of Celtic origin like the <span class="pagenum">[113]</span><a
+      name="link113" id="link113"></a>Gauls and the Germans, led at first both
+      nomadic and sedentary lives and were rather barbarous than unpolished; but
+      they built cities and erected temples, in which they worshipped Odin the
+      One-Eyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0049" id="linkimage-0049"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/133s.jpg" alt="133s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/133.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/133m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      If the harvest failed, or whenever the first warmth of spring aroused in
+      them their innate fondness of vagabondage and war, they took to their
+      boats or mounted their horses, and the stupefied nations <span
+      class="pagenum">[114]</span><a name="link114" id="link114"></a>of Europe
+      watched the horizon and listened along the river courses, to distinguish
+      whether this great Northern tempest, this storm of iron and fire, of blood
+      and of tears, was rushing down upon them by land or by sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having crossed Germany in all directions, some of these bands, or
+      rather some remnants of such bands, settled from inclination or from
+      necessity, in certain portions of the country, especially on the islands
+      in the Main, the Weser, and the Neckar. Their priests soon made numerous
+      converts among the neighbors to the faith of Odin. The Germans paid little
+      heed to the difference between Odin and Teut. The two names designated,
+      for them, one and the same god, the one god of the Celts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The increasing influence of these Druids of the third epoch led, however,
+      naturally to some opposition. The German priests accused them of being too
+      profuse in the shedding of blood, and of having given their god Odin a
+      companion in a certain god Thor, fond of overcoming giants, and of having
+      thus destroyed the true nature of the original creed, which knew but one
+      God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A schism was about to divide the Druidical church, when the arrival of the
+      Roman deities brought the two opposite parties once more together. Each
+      yielded somewhat; <span class="pagenum">[115]</span><a name="link115"
+      id="link115"></a>they came to an understanding and finally joined
+      hands in a conspiracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0050" id="linkimage-0050"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/135s.jpg" alt="135s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/135.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/135m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[117]</span><a name="link117" id="link117"></a>The
+      Scandinavian Druids, forsaking the prudent reserve which they had so far
+      scrupulously observed, declared that, in order to triumph over the Roman
+      Olympians, Odin had not only the assistance of his all-powerful son Thor,
+      but could, if he chose, summon an escort of gods at least as imposing in
+      numbers as that of Jupiter himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German Druids veiled their faces, but the people and the whole party
+      which was opposed to Jupiter the wicked, and to Venus the shameless,
+      joyfully accepted the proposition. However cruel the Scandinavian ritual
+      appeared with its increased number of victims who had to be offered to the
+      new gods, it seemed to them better still to worship Terror than to worship
+      disgraceful Voluptuousness. They acknowledged Odin and his son Thor, and
+      impatiently waited for the arrival of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German Druids gave way, hoping perhaps that the two hosts of deities
+      would erelong fall out among themselves and soon destroy each other.
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/138s.jpg" alt="138s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/138.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/138m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Father Rhine, in his equal affection for all his brother gods, was far too
+      good-natured to take this admission of new deities amiss, and promptly
+      went northward, to the most hyperborean regions of snow and ice, in search
+      of the newly chosen gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two parties soon met face to face. <span class="pagenum">[118]</span><a
+      name="link118" id="link118"></a>It is our solemn duty to explain fully the
+      whole curious system of Scandinavian gods. We shall see that here, as in
+      all that we shall have to add, legends, myths, and traditions abound in
+      such numbers that they can be had for the asking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0051" id="linkimage-0051"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/141s.jpg" alt="141s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/141.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/141m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[121]</span><a name="link121" id="link121"></a><i>The
+      World before and since Odin.&mdash;Birth of Ymer.&mdash;The Giants of the
+      Frost.&mdash;A Log split in Two.&mdash;The First Man and the First Woman&mdash;The
+      Tree Ygdrasil and its Menagerie.&mdash;Thor&rsquo;s Three Jewels. Freyr&rsquo;s
+      Enchanted Swoj&rsquo;d.&mdash;A Souvenir of the National Guard of
+      Bellville.&mdash;The Story of Kvasir and the Two Dwarfs.&mdash;Honey and
+      Blood.&mdash;Invocation.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he world was not
+      born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thick mists, unbroken by light, unbounded in limit, filled space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a long period of darkness, silence, and perfect repose, a faint
+      light is seen, vague and uncertain, hardly deserving the name; something
+      is moving unsteadily in this night. The giant Ymer has been born
+      spontaneously out of the mixture <span class="pagenum">[122]</span><a
+      name="link122" id="link122"></a>and assimilation of these closely
+      compressed mists, which sudden and severe frost has condensated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that time men of science had not yet discussed the question of
+      spontaneous generation; not one academy made mention of the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ymer, the sole inhabitant, the Robinson Crusoe of this world of darkness,
+      became tired of his solitude. Guessing how he had been born himself, he
+      gathered the mists that surrounded him, piled them one upon the other,
+      shaped them into a form resembling his own, and once more the North wind
+      came and solidified the mists. As he was a giant, he created giants; he
+      also created mountains, no doubt for the purpose of furnishing seats for
+      these giants, for the highest among them did not reach up to their belts.
+      This does not mean, that these mountains were less high than they are
+      nowadays, but the sons of Ymer were of such size that without bending down
+      a little, they could not have rested their elbows on the summit of
+      Chimborazo, and what is more marvelous still, Ymer himself not only was
+      taller than every one of his sons, but taller than all of his sons
+      together, standing one upon the shoulders of the other! When he stretched
+      himself out full length, the Alps might have served him as a pillow, while
+      his feet would have rested on <span class="pagenum">[123]</span><a
+      name="link123" id="link123"></a>Mount Caucasus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0052" id="linkimage-0052"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/143s.jpg" alt="143s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/143.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/143m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[125]</span><a name="link125" id="link125"></a>In
+      order to produce such giants and such mountains, he had, of course, to
+      consume large quantities of the material furnished by the chaos of mists;
+      the remainder of this gaseous substance, trembling in vacant space and
+      losing its balance, fell back into the depths of the valleys, and formed
+      the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some few animals began soon to stir in the waters, and on the shores of
+      that vast sea; sphinxes and dragons, hydras and griffins, kraken and
+      leviathans, all creatures of a low order, but in their proportions adapted
+      to this colossal world, this world of the infinitely great, and no doubt
+      related in some manner to the antediluvian families of mammoths and
+      pterodactyls, of ichthyosauri and plesiosauri.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A god of the first race, a creator without being created, Ymer naturally
+      did not possess that skill and that cleverness which can only be acquired
+      by long experience. However strange, therefore, it may appear, however
+      inexplicable, the fact is, that this world, fresh with new life and freed
+      from the original mists, was nevertheless covered with darkness. The only
+      light which existed was an occasional phosphorescence of the sea or a few
+      flashes of electric light, such as an aurora borealis sends forth; and
+      this faint glimmer alone illumined the pathway of those vast creatures,
+      those monstrous <span class="pagenum">[126]</span><a name="link126"
+      id="link126"></a>reptiles, who, dazzled for an instant, plunged back
+      into the lowest depths of the waters, casting up huge waves and tall
+      columns of spray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must have been a peculiarly curious sight, certainly, to see those
+      Giants of the Frost, as they were called, wandering, through the darkness
+      across the boundless plains and along endless shores, under a sky without
+      light, looking for each other from one end of the world to the other. To
+      be sure, they could accomplish the journey in a few long strides, and if
+      they were peculiarly anxious to see each other, face to face, they had
+      only to wait for the chance of a momentary flash or a faint twilight
+      glimmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight was no doubt curious, but there was no one to behold it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This state of things could not last long. With a new god a new world also
+      came into existence. This new god was very different from the first, it
+      was Light itself, condensed at the southern extremity of the heavens, far
+      from this earth inhabited by giants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One fine day&mdash;an unlucky day for them, however&mdash;these giants
+      noticed that the sky above their heads was suddenly assuming a faint
+      pinkish hue, then violet, and finally purple. At this they rejoiced. But
+      suddenly a ball of fire appeared, and they were terrified. It was Odin,
+      Odin followed <span class="pagenum">[127]</span><a name="link127"
+      id="link127"></a>by his celestial family, which consisted at least of
+      a dozen principal deities!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0053" id="linkimage-0053"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/147s.jpg" alt="147s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/147.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/147m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But no! no! I take it back! I rebel! No one can come in contact with these
+      ancient myths, without knocking against some principle of astronomy.
+      Astronomers find only seven principal deities in Scandinavian mythology,
+      when they are called upon to transform them into planets, and twelve, when
+      the question is about the signs of the Zodiac. That seems to me to make
+      mythology a. little too easy. Does it not look as if the first men had
+      been born with a telescope and a compass in their pocket, and as if they
+      had erected an observatory long before they thought of building huts for
+      themselves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately I am not bound to follow their footsteps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certain historians of high authority have found out that Odin lived upon
+      earth before he came to dwell in heaven. He was an illustrious conqueror,
+      <span class="pagenum">[128]</span><a name="link128" id="link128"></a>very
+      expert at killing men, one of those scourges of God, who fall upon nations
+      in order to break them to pieces. As a matter of course, these nations
+      deified him after his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0054" id="linkimage-0054"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/148s.jpg" alt="148s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/148.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/148m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      I see nothing astronomical in all this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence, I return to my own method, and propose to describe him, as he
+      appeared to his Druids, his Scalds, and his worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[129]</span><a name="link129" id="link129"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0055" id="linkimage-0055"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/149s.jpg" alt="149s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/149.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/149m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      He arrived from the southern countries, no doubt from the Orient, bringing
+      with him the sun, as an indispensable auxiliary in the great taskwhich he
+      had undertaken, to reform this dark and ice-covered world: &ldquo;For
+      there was a time,&rdquo; says the Edda, the bible of the Scandinavians,
+      &ldquo;when the sun, the moon, and the stars did not know the place they
+      were to occupy.<span class="pagenum">[131]</span><a name="link131"
+      id="link131"></a> It was then the gods assembled and agreed as to the post
+      which was to be assigned to each one of them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the installation of the heavenly bodies had thus been agreed upon,
+      Odin followed the example of all the Hercules of Egypt and of Greece, and
+      began his benevolent career by freeing the earth of all the monsters by
+      which it was infested. Ymer was the first to succumb to his blows, and
+      after him, the other giants of the frost, &ldquo;a race of evildoers,&rdquo;
+      adds the Edda. Evildoers? Whom did they aggrieve, I wonder? The
+      complainants must have been the kraken, the griffins, and the serpents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world had hardly come into existence and already the right of the
+      stronger had established the doctrine: <i>Væ victis!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the giants of the frost a single one escaped. He must have been a
+      married man, for his descendants became after a while so numerous as to
+      trouble the Ases, that is to say, Odin and his companions, the other gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the giants, came the turn of land and sea monsters, who were almost
+      as formidable as they themselves. In the general destruction two monsters
+      <span class="pagenum">[132]</span><a name="link132" id="link132"></a>only
+      survived: the wolf Fenris, with his fearful jaws, which enabled him to
+      crush mountains and even to injure the sun, and the serpent Iormungandur,
+      the great sea serpent of world-wide renown. Both these monsters were one
+      day to aid the giants of the frost in avenging themselves on their
+      conqueror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0056" id="linkimage-0056"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/152s.jpg" alt="152s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/152.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/152m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Odin thought he had now nothing more to fear, and returned to the realms
+      of light, there to enjoy his glory in peace and to revel in the delights
+      of Walhalla.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[133]</span><a name="link133" id="link133"></a>One
+      morning he came down to see how the world was coming on since he had
+      reorganized it, and he found to his great joy, that the new creation was
+      assuming a more pleasing appearance. Grass was growing in the plains, on
+      the slopes of hills, and even at the bottom of the rivers and the sea;
+      here and there trees of varied forms and shapes arose and gave variety to
+      the monotonous horizon; some, crowding together in groups on the mountain
+      side, seemed to whisper confidentially to each other, as the breeze was
+      lightly agitating their foliage, while others stood together in countless
+      hosts, stretching away over hill and dale as far as eye could reach, but
+      silent and immovable, like an army which remains motionless, while the
+      chiefs are deliberating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0057" id="linkimage-0057"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/153s.jpg" alt="153s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/153.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/153m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Behind the green curtain of forests, deer, eland, and aurochs were
+      bounding in herds, now and then showing their beautiful horns or their
+      dark bushy brows at the opening of some clearing; goats were <span
+      class="pagenum">[134]</span><a name="link134" id="link134"></a>climbing
+      about on the rocks and venturing close to the brink of precipices; birds
+      were singing in the groves, now swinging playfully on the supple branches
+      of willows, and now darting suddenly on swift wings through the air; fish
+      were gliding silently under the surface of the waters, which reflected
+      their silvery sheen or broke in soft ripples, while butterflies and
+      insects were sporting and buzzing around beautiful flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin smiled; the artist was pleased with his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But were animals, impelled by natural instincts only and exclusively
+      occupied with the desire to satisfy their coarse wants, were such animals
+      worthy to be the sole owners of such a charming abode?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It occurred to him to invent a being which, without participating in the
+      divine essence, might still rise high above all other creatures. This time
+      the divine artist wanted a spectator, to witness his work, to appreciate
+      it intelligently, and afterwards to profit by it for some good purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was meditating on it during a walk on the sea-shore, when a piece of
+      wood, a fragment of a huge branch of a tree which the wind had broken off,
+      attracted his attention. It had evidently fallen into a river, which had
+      carried it out into the high sea, and there it had been beaten and bruised
+      by <span class="pagenum">[135]</span><a name="link135" id="link135"></a>ebb
+      and tide. He drew this poor shapeless stick of wood towards him, split it
+      in two and made out of it a man and a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear? Do you understand?&rdquo; Asks the Edda, at this
+      point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, what is this intended to convey to us? That man, exposed to the
+      caprices of the elements, is nothing but a poor plaything in the hands of
+      Fate? Very well, let us admit this explanation. But can the sacred book of
+      the Scandinavians really presume to teach us that the origin of mankind
+      must be looked for in two sticks of wood? We cannot but think that that
+      would be a sorry jest, alike unworthy of the general solemnity of the Edda
+      and of the mysterious majesty of ancient cosmogonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides, we ought not to forget that all the Northern nations attributed a
+      divine character to trees; if in Germany the oak was held sacred, the
+      hyperboreans held the ash tree in great respect, and the question is only
+      whether our first father was made of the wood of an ash tree, an oak, or a
+      willow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This leads us naturally to the consideration of the ash <i>Ygdrasil</i>
+      and its curious population of gods, birds, and quadrupeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The branches of this marvelous tree spread over the whole surface of the
+      earth; its top supported <span class="pagenum">[136]</span><a
+      name="link136" id="link136"></a>the Walhalla and rose is to the uppermost
+      heavens, while its roots penetrated to the very bottom of hell. Under its
+      shadow dwell Odin and his Ases, when the government of the world requires
+      his presence, or some important question has to be decided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0058" id="linkimage-0058"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/156s.jpg" alt="156s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/156.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/156m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Two swift winged ravens are incessantly flying to and fro in the Universe,
+      to see what is going on; then they come and perch, one on his left and one
+      on his right shoulder, and whisper into his ear the news of the day. A
+      squirrel, as swift in its movements as the two ravens, is perpetually
+      running up and down the tree. If you doubt my word, hear what the poet
+      says:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+.... The fearful Odin Was seated beneath the ancient ash,
+The sacred tree whose immortal brow
+Rises and touches the vault of heaven.
+<span class="pagenum">[137]</span><a name="link137" id="link137"></a>On the top an eagle with eager eyes,
+With piercing eyes, with ever open eyes,
+Takes in the whole Universe in a single glance.
+Odin receives his swift messages.
+Incessantly a tiny squirrel
+Comes and goes; the god&rsquo;s voice cheers it onward.
+All at once it dashes from the trunk to the top
+And in an instant it returns again
+From the top to the trunk. Odin, when it comes,
+Turns an attentive ear to the squirrel.....
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the poet does not tell the whole story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0059" id="linkimage-0059"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/157s.jpg" alt="157s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/157.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/157m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      To act as a check upon the reports of the eagle, the ravens, and the
+      squirrel, a vulture is perching <span class="pagenum">[138]</span><a
+      name="link138" id="link138"></a>upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree,
+      who looks over all the horizons of the earth and the universe, watching
+      for the slightest stir and giving notice of any important event by his
+      cries or the flapping of his wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still other animals, however, inhabit the great ash tree Ygdrasil. Some of
+      these play a sinister part in the great menagerie; they are hideous
+      reptiles, half concealed in the slimy marshes into which one of the roots
+      of the tree finds its way, and ever striving to pour their venom into the
+      mire; beneath another root a dragon is crouching, who constantly gnaws at
+      it, and four starving deer, rushing through its branches, forever devour
+      its foliage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear? Do you understand?&rdquo; asks the Edda once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the present we do not presume to interpret these descriptions, and
+      before we attempt to penetrate into these dark mysteries, we will mention
+      the principal chiefs among the Ases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mystic marriage of Odin and Frigg resulted in the god Thor, who is
+      held in equal veneration with his father. As his duty is to carry thunder
+      and lightning, it is he who shakes the earth whenever he drives through
+      the clouds in his car drawn by two goats and producing a noise represented
+      by the words: &ldquo;<i>Pumerle pump! Ptimerle pump! Pliz! Pluz! Schmi!
+      Schmur! Tarantara! Tarantara!</i>&rdquo;. <span class="pagenum">[139]</span><a
+      name="link139" id="link139"></a>This onomatopoetic translation of the
+      flashing of lightning and the rolling of thunder, is not my own; it comes
+      directly from Dr. Martin Luther, the great Reformer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor is also engaged in pursuing and destroying the giants of the
+      mountains, degenerate children of the giants of the frost, in size at
+      least. At a later period we shall meet with giants of still smaller
+      dimensions. Alas! that here below everything that is great and strong has
+      a tendency to decrease steadily!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0060" id="linkimage-0060"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/159s.jpg" alt="159s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/159.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/159m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      For this war against the giants Odin has bestowed upon his son three
+      precious objects, which in the inventory of the Ases appear under the name
+      of <i>Thor&rsquo;s Three Jewels.</i> The first is his weighty hammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Mjoïner</i> (some people call it his club), which goes forth by itself
+      to meet giants and crushes their heads. One of the commentators upon the
+      Edda professes to see in the giants of the mountains nothing but the
+      mountains themselves, and in the hammer Mjoïner, nothing but lightning,
+      which generally strikes their summit. We must evidently <span
+      class="pagenum">[140]</span><a name="link140" id="link140"></a>put as
+      little faith in commentators as in astronomers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second of Thor&rsquo;s jewels was a pair of iron gloves. As soon as he
+      puts them on, his spear no sooner reaches the point at which it is aimed,
+      than it returns to his hand, precisely as the falcon comes back to the
+      keeper&rsquo;s gauntlet, after having destroyed its victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third jewel of Thor is his war belt; when he puts it on, his strength
+      is twice as great as before; in fact, he becomes irresistible and would
+      overthrow the great Odin himself. But Odin has nothing to fear on his
+      part, for in spite of his brutal and passionate temper, Thor is always an
+      obedient and submissive son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asa-Thor, that is to say, the Lord Thor, was most highly respected among
+      men as the redhaired master of thunder and lightning, and as the destroyer
+      of giants; and he was also greatly feared as an active, blustering god, of
+      a troublesome, turbulent temper and of somewhat eccentric manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another weapon, at least as marvelous as Asa-Thor&rsquo;s famous hammer,
+      was the sword of the god Freyr. This sword was endowed with an
+      intelligence very rarely to be met with among swords, and punctually
+      obeyed the orders of its master. Even in his absence, it went promptly and
+      faithfully <span class="pagenum">[141]</span><a name="link141" id="link141"></a>to
+      carry out his orders, striking here and there at a given point, or making
+      terrible havoc in the midst of a battle, without a hand at the hilt to
+      direct its mortal blows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0061" id="linkimage-0061"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/161s.jpg" alt="161s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/161.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/161m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The good Freyr, as pacific a god as ever lived, was quite indifferent to
+      battles and fights; hence he gave his orders quietly to his faithful
+      sword, while he remained comfortably seated at Odin&rsquo;s table,
+      enjoying his strong beer and the rarest wines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot help wishing that they might have known the art of manufacturing
+      guns after this system, at the time when I was a lieutenant in the
+      Belleville National Guard. It would have been so pleasant to see a rifle
+      move gravely to and fro, quite alone, in front of the City Hall and the
+      Guard House; or to meet a patrol of four <span class="pagenum">[142]</span><a
+      name="link142" id="link142"></a>guns, accompanied by a corporal, but a
+      flesh and blood corporal to cry out: Who is there?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0062" id="linkimage-0062"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/162s.jpg" alt="162s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/162.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/162m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime the happy owners of these improved weapons might have been
+      sitting, not at Odin&rsquo;s table, but at the nearest coffee house or
+      restaurant, <span class="pagenum">[143]</span><a name="link143"
+      id="link143"></a>drinking beer or wine just like the Scandinavian
+      gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately our manufacturers of arms have not yet reached that degree
+      of skill, which our forefathers seem to have possessed, and thus I have
+      never yet been able to enjoy such a sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The happy owner of this magic weapon, Freyr, presided over the general
+      administration of the clouds; it was he who made fine weather or rain, a
+      very troublesome office, which must have exposed him to countless
+      petitions and most contradictory prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His sister Freya, afterwards called Frigg, was Odin&rsquo;s wife and the
+      most honored goddess on earth as well as in heaven. She inspired and
+      protected lovers, and very different from her sister in Greece, this
+      Northern Venus enjoyed an unsullied reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They say that once, when her husband had gone away on a long journey, she
+      was so deeply grieved at his absence, that her tears ran day and night
+      incessantly; these tears, however, differed from those of mortal beings;
+      &ldquo;they were all drops of gold which fell into her bosom,&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      hence the Northern people call the precious metal to this day <i>Freyas
+      tears</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One only among all the dwellers in Walhalla had been able to give her some
+      comfort by singing <span class="pagenum">[144]</span><a name="link144"
+      id="link144"></a>his sweetest songs; this was the god Bragi, the god
+      of poetry and beautiful words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tradition which deserves to be mentioned here, accounts for the manner
+      in which he obtained this precious gift of eloquence and the art of
+      poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the early days of the world, when the creating god had concentrated, so
+      to say, all the active powers of humanity in a few individuals, and when a
+      long life permitted these favored beings to carry on their studies till
+      they reached a happy end, there lived on earth a wise man who possessed an
+      art unknown, not among men only, but among the gods themselves. This was
+      the art of perpetuating thoughts by word-painting, of reproducing them in
+      outward forms, not to the eye by colors, but to the ear by sounds. This
+      sage was called Kvasir. He had invented the <i>Runes</i>, the art of
+      poetry, and the no less precious art of reproducing words and fixing them
+      in writing. He cut his runes on beech tablets; if he had gone a step
+      farther, he would have invented printing long before Guttenberg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kvasir was then the sole owner of the art of Poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two wicked dwarfs prowling about in search of treasures, took it into
+      their heads, that the treasure of Poetry was better than any other, and
+      forthwith determined to obtain possession of it. They killed Kvasir, into
+      whose dwelling they had crept by <span class="pagenum">[145]</span><a
+      name="link145" id="link145"></a>stealth, and as they were masters in
+      magic, like all the dwarfs of those days, they carefully collected his
+      blood, and mixing it, in different proportions, with honey, put it into
+      three vessels, which they closed hermetically. These three vessels
+      contained respectively Logic, Eloquence, and Poetry. To keep them safe
+      till the day on which they should be used, they buried them in the depths
+      of a cave which was inaccessible to men and unknown to the gods
+      themselves. But one of those travelling agents, who under the form of
+      ravens, were continually wandering over the world in Odin&rsquo;s employ,
+      had been a silent witness of the transactions, the murder, the mixing, and
+      the hiding of the three vessels. He returned instantly to the ash Ygdrasil
+      and reported it all to his master. The god gave his orders, which the
+      squirrel, no doubt, at once carried to the eagle, and the latter, who was
+      continually on the watch on the top of the sacred tree, left his post for
+      a few moments in charge of the vulture, and flew with rapid wings to the
+      cave, from whence he returned laden with the three precious vessels. It is
+      to be supposed that he carried one in his beak, and the two others, one in
+      each of his claws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He placed the mysterious vessels at Odin&rsquo;s feet and at once returned
+      to relieve the vulture and to resume his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin opened first the vessel which contained <span class="pagenum">[146]</span><a
+      name="link146" id="link146"></a>Poetry and tasted the contents. From that
+      moment he never spoke otherwise than in verse. He also tasted Logic, and
+      henceforth he spoke and reasoned with such extreme accuracy, that he found
+      no one to agree with him any longer; he tasted Eloquence, and as soon as
+      he opened his lips, he might have been mistaken for one of our own most
+      eminent lawyers. Gold chains seemed to come out from his lips, as was the
+      case with Ogmius, with which he bound the ears and hearts of all his
+      hearers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst he was thus enjoying himself, Bragi his son, and Saga his daughter,
+      who were sitting by him, felt their mouths water and looked imploringly at
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Setting aside the terror with which the Druids have surrounded Odin, he
+      seems to have been occasionally good-natured, and certainly always acted
+      like a kind father. He offered the vessel with Poetry first to Saga,
+      courteously giving her the preference on account of her sex. She barely
+      touched it with her lips. When Bragi&rsquo;s turn came, he eagerly
+      swallowed as much as he could, and without taking time to gather breath,
+      he began a grand triumphal chant in honor of the feasts, the loves, the
+      wars, and the greatness of the gods, the stars of the firmament, paradise,
+      hell, and the ash Ygdrasil. <span class="pagenum">[147]</span><a
+      name="link147" id="link147"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0063" id="linkimage-0063"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/167s.jpg" alt="167s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/167.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/167m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[149]</span><a name="link149" id="link149"></a>In
+      well chosen cadences he imitated the clanking of cups, the cooing of doves
+      and of lovers, the tumult of battles, the harmonies of the celestial
+      spheres, and all this with such energy, such fire and such grace by turns,
+      that Odin was enchanted, and having become a master himself about five
+      minutes ago, on the spot changed his name of the Long-bearded God, which
+      he had borne so far, to that of the God of Poetry. Moreover, he entrusted
+      to his keeping the threefold treasure which had been taken from Kvasir&rsquo;s
+      murderers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was that god Bragi who alone succeeded in comforting the beautiful
+      and inconsolable Freya in her great grief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through him the Druids were instructed in the art of verse; to him is due
+      that terrible Scandinavian poetry, which contains, according to Ozanam,
+      quite as much blood as honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to Saga, she became the goddess of Tradition. &ldquo;The heart of
+      history is in tradition,&rdquo; says a master, a sage, and a poet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good goddess Saga, your lips, I know, never touched the vessel containing
+      Eloquence, nor that which held Logic, far from it! And still I count upon
+      you to support me in carrying out my work, which I have perhaps
+      imprudently begun; for I begin to be overwhelmed with materials, the
+      subject is a very grave one, and, in spite of the good advice of my
+      learned doctor and the assistance of my two charming lady-companions, time
+      and strength threaten not to suffice. Therefore I beseech you as well as
+      my readers, to grant me a short repose, before I proceed any farther on my
+      journey through Odin&rsquo;s fantastic world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[150]</span><a name="link150" id="link150"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0064" id="linkimage-0064"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/170s.jpg" alt="170s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/170.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/170m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[151]</span><a name="link151" id="link151"></a>
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0065" id="linkimage-0065"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/173s.jpg" alt="173s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/173.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/173m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Short<span class="pagenum">[153]</span><a name="link153" id="link153"></a>
+      Biographies.&mdash;<i>A Clairvoyant among the Gods.&mdash;A Bright God.&mdash;Tyr
+      and the Wolf Fenris.&mdash;The Hospital at the Walhalla.&mdash;Why was
+      Odin one-eyed?&mdash;The Three Norns.&mdash;Mimer the Sage.&mdash;A
+      Goddess the Mother of Four Oxen.&mdash;The Love Affairs of Heimdall, the
+      God with the Golden Teeth.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e have no
+      intention of giving here a complete list of the numerous deities of the
+      North. We will only mention Hermode, Odin&rsquo;s messenger and man of
+      business; Forseti, the peacemaker; Widar, the god of silence, a dumb
+      person who only walks on air, as if he were afraid to hear the noise of
+      his own footsteps; Vali, the skilfull archer; Uller, the excellent skater,
+      who taught the giant Tialff his art, in spite of what the poet Klopstock
+      says to the contrary; Hoder, a mysterious deity, whose name must never be
+      uttered by any one in heaven or on earth. Why not? Odin alone knows the
+      reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us also mention Heimdall, with the golden teeth. A son of Odin, he had
+      nine mothers&mdash;eight more than had ever been known before him. He is
+      the guardian of Walhalla, and his duty is to watch lest the giants should
+      one fine day attempt to storm the heavenly abode by means of the Bifrost
+      bridge, that is, the rainbow. But the gods can sleep in peace; neither the
+      eagle nor the ravens on the ash Ygdrasil can surpass Heimdall in
+      vigilance. The senses of sight and hearing are in him developed to a
+      perfectly marvelous degree; he can hear the grass grow in the meadows and
+      the wool grow on the back of the sheep. From one end of the world he sees
+      a fly pass through the air at the other end, and, more than that, he sees
+      distinctly the different joints in its feet and the black or brown spots
+      with which its wings are <span class="pagenum">[155]</span><a
+      name="link155" id="link155"></a>dotted. In the midst of the darkest night
+      and at the bottom of the sea where it is deepest, he sees an atom moving
+      and watches the marriage of monads. There is nothing in the whole universe
+      hid from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why should this god Heimdall have golden teeth, after a fashion of
+      some of the natives of Sunda? Odin alone knows the reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among all these gods Balder is the most richly endowed, the best, the
+      handsomest and the most virtuous&mdash;Balder, the Bright God, by
+      eminence. Although the son of Odin and Frigg, he might be taken for a son
+      of Freya, on account of his strong resemblance to Love itself, not to the
+      turbulent, passionate, and capricious Love of the Greeks, but to Love in
+      the widest and noblest sense of the word,&mdash;Love, in fine, in its
+      Christian meaning. Balder represents that universal goodness, loyalty,
+      affection, and harmony, which binds all beings to each other; Bragi, the
+      poet is his brother; Forseti, the peacemaker, is his son. But we shall but
+      too soon have to return to him on a most melancholy occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of our desire to close this already too numerous list, we cannot
+      well pass over in silence that poor Tyr, the very type of intrepidity and
+      loyalty, who fell a victim to his own prowess and to his imprudent
+      confidence in the other gods. <span class="pagenum">[156]</span><a
+      name="link156" id="link156"></a>The latter, having one day met the wolf
+      Fenris, invited him to enjoy a good meal with them. The wolf, always
+      voraciously hungry, listened to the proposal. Then the Ases, pretending to
+      fear that he might play them an ugly trick on the way home, insisted upon
+      leading him by a chain around his neck, pledging their word as gods,
+      however, that they would set him free upon going to table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0066" id="linkimage-0066"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/176s.jpg" alt="176s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/176.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/176m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Fenris, suspicious as all wolves, in fact, as all wicked creatures are,
+      consented to be bound, but made it a condition that as a proof of the good
+      faith of the Ases, one of them should put his hand into his mouth. Tyr
+      agreed to do so without hesitation, not expecting that personages of such
+      lofty position could possibly be faithless. The gods, <span class="pagenum">[157]</span><a
+      name="link157" id="link157"></a>however, did behave faithlessly and kept
+      Fenris a prisoner, whereupon the wolf claimed the fulfillment of the
+      pledge, and when Tyr put his hand into his mouth, coolly bit it off up to
+      the wrist. Hence that particular joint has ever since been called <i>the
+      wolf&rsquo;s joint</i>, in memory of this inartistic amputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the gods had a one-handed brother among them, after having long been
+      presided over by a one-eyed god. But Tyr and Odin were by no means the
+      only gods who labored under such an infirmity. Heimdall with the golden
+      teeth must evidently have had a set of false teeth; Widar, the god of
+      silence, was dumb, and Hoder, that mysterious being whose name must not be
+      pronounced by any one, was blind. There was also a certain god, called
+      Herblinde, who was not only blind but&mdash;actually dead! We poor mortals
+      generally imagine that death includes blindness as a matter of course, but
+      it was not so, apparently, among these mystic personages. Herblinde, for
+      instance, was quite blind, although he was quite dead also, and yet he
+      attended the meetings of the gods and even had a vote in their counsels.
+      Do you understand that? I do not, I am sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this grand council, this hospital of the Walhalla, which counted among
+      its members a onehanded and a dumb god, a toothless and two blind <span
+      class="pagenum">[158]</span><a name="link158" id="link158"></a>gods, was,
+      as I said, presided over by one-eyed Odin! This fact recalls forcibly the
+      old proverb: Among the blind the one-eyed is king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why had Odin but one eye?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately I am able, for once, to give an answer to this question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Astronomers have naturally found a reply to this Why? in their
+      imperturbable system of sidereal interpretations. Odin was the sun-god;
+      the sun was the eye of Nature, Nature had but one eye&mdash;consequently
+      Odin was bound to be born one-eyed!.... Now you see why your daughter is
+      deaf-mute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Edda, however, gives a different account of the matter, and I feel
+      bound to adopt this explanation, as it is founded upon a knowledge of the
+      most secret mysteries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin had two eyes when he was born, and the sun was nothing more than his
+      travelling companion, when he came from the far East, to revive and warm
+      the earth which had so long been in the hands of&rsquo; the giants of the
+      frost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several centuries after he had created man, he was one day walking up and
+      down in the lower parts of his great ash tree Ygdrasil, and thinking of
+      the greatly increased responsibility which rested upon him since he had
+      added the government of the earth to that of heaven, and since the earth
+      <span class="pagenum">[159]</span><a name="link159" id="link159"></a>had
+      begun to be peopled with a multitude of races. He was asking himself
+      whether the knowledge of all things had been revealed to him fully enough
+      to enable him satisfactorily to fill, his two great offices. He had
+      quaffed ample draughts by turns from the three vessels of Kvasir, but
+      Eloquence, Poetry, and even Logic do not supply Wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0067" id="linkimage-0067"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/179s.jpg" alt="179s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/179.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/179m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      As he passed by a large tank fed by a purling brook, he saw three
+      beautiful swans swimming merrily about in it, who after having examined
+      him with half thoughtful, half mocking attention, twisted their long
+      flexible necks in strange contortions and then seemed to converse with
+      each other by significative glances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke to them and asked them if they possessed the secret of Wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The swans suddenly plunged beneath the surface, <span class="pagenum">[160]</span><a
+      name="link160" id="link160"></a>and in their place there appeared three
+      beautiful women, representing three different stages of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were the Norns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0068" id="linkimage-0068"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/180s.jpg" alt="180s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/180.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/180m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The first, called Urda, knew the Past; the second, called Verandi, saw the
+      Present unfold itself before her eyes, hour by hour and minute by minute,
+      and when to-day had become yesterday, her older sister gathered up the
+      departed day and entered it on her record. Finally Skulda, the third, the
+      Norn of the Future, enjoyed the privilege of beholding with her far-seeing
+      eyes the germs of all future events and of being able to foretell with
+      unerring accuracy the date and the consequences of their occurrence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us pause here a moment to notice a remark communicated to me by the
+      amiable and learned <span class="pagenum">[161]</span><a name="link161"
+      id="link161"></a>Dr. Rosalh, which may not be without interest to some
+      of my readers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that the Romans had at first pretended to recognize
+      in these three Norns their own three Fates, probably because they were
+      three and because they were women; at least I can see no other reason.
+      Urda, Verandi, and Skulda were as beautiful and as graceful as the three
+      Parcæ&mdash;Alecto, Lachesis, and Atropos&mdash;were ugly. Besides, their
+      duties were entirely different. The Norns knew the fate of men, but they
+      were utterly unable to lengthen human life. Such at least is the opinion
+      of the great Holinshed in his Chronicles. Warburton sees in them nothing
+      more than Valkyrias, but, what is far more astonishing, Shakespeare chose
+      these three beautiful prophetic virgins, to furnish the three hideous,
+      unclean, and toothless witches, the weird sisters, who called out to
+      Macbeth, &ldquo;All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare had evidently taken the curse denounced by the Church against
+      the ancient deities in its literal meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin had a better opinion of the three sisters; he conversed for some time
+      with them, and afterwards came frequently back to visit them. It was thus
+      and by their aid that he gained experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even Experience, added to the precious gifts <span class="pagenum">[162]</span><a
+      name="link162" id="link162"></a>of Eloquence, Poetry, and Logic, is not
+      able to supply Wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0069" id="linkimage-0069"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/182s.jpg" alt="182s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/182.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/182m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      He took counsel with the Norns, and in his anxiety to possess this most
+      precious of all gifts, he expressed his willingness to exchange for it, if
+      needs be, his treasures of poetry and of eloquence, his magic armor which
+      made him safe against all danger, his horse Sleipner, which had eight legs
+      and crossed the air with the rapidity of lightning, his eagle and his
+      vulture, his squirrel and his two <span class="pagenum">[163]</span><a
+      name="link163" id="link163"></a>ravens. Then he went to Mimer, the wisest
+      man in existence, the successor of old Kvasir, and attended his lectures
+      like the most humble and zealous of students. When he had mastered the
+      subject, and felt that he had acquired Wisdom at last, he paid the
+      philosopher liberally by giving him one of his own eyes, in order thus to
+      show him the high value he set upon the service which had been rendered to
+      him by Mimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the reason why Odin was one-eyed. The truth is far too honorable
+      to the god to be hid under idle astronomical pretexts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, what use did he make of his wisdom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began by regulating the government of heaven. The Ases had until now
+      lived very much as they chose; he now gave to each of them a duty to
+      perform: to Niord the management of rivers and of fishing; to Egir, the
+      seas and navigation; and so to others, requiring regularity and accuracy
+      of all, but sternly prohibiting the display of extreme zeal, just as
+      Talleyrand used to do with his diplomatic apprentices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned to the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here men had multiplied incessantly, and with their numbers their wants
+      had increased, and alas! with these, their vices also! In order to satisfy
+      the wants and to repress the vices, they had established among them that
+      great, primitive law which <span class="pagenum">[164]</span><a
+      name="link164" id="link164"></a>constitutes the whole code of laws among
+      barbarians&mdash;the right of the stronger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0070" id="linkimage-0070"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/184s.jpg" alt="184s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/184.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/184m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;TO EGIR, THE SEAS AND NAVIGATION.&rdquo;
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The most fertile pastures, the rocks and grottoes best fitted for
+      dwellings and safe retreats, the forests that were richest in game and the
+      springs that were most frequented by the flocks, all were taken by force
+      and possession maintained by the strength of the sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wise Odin felt that violence gave no right and that theft could not give a
+      title to possession. He <span class="pagenum">[165]</span><a
+      name="link165" id="link165"></a>determined to establish the right
+      of property, and to give it, for greater efficiency, a religious character
+      which would make it sacred in the eyes of nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of his daughters, Gefione, was sent by him to one of the most powerful
+      chiefs of Scandinavia. She presented herself before his tent, with
+      presents in her hands. In return she asked only for a span of land. The
+      chief gave her a vast but uncultivated territory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0071" id="linkimage-0071"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/185s.jpg" alt="185s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/185.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/185m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Next she went, with secret purposes in her mind and always inspired by
+      Odin, to a distant country, into the mountains, where giants dwelt. Here
+      she married one of these giants, the most powerful of them all, to whom
+      she bore four sons. The strong are apt to be gentle. Gefione took her four
+      sons, changed them into oxen, and by words of gentle persuasion induced
+      her husband to harness them himself to a plough. A river marked the
+      boundary of the field, on the other side stood an altar. Thus was the
+      first piece of property inaugurated, <span class="pagenum">[166]</span><a
+      name="link166" id="link166"></a>by purchase, by labor, and under the
+      protection of the gods. The first owner, the gigantic husband, represented
+      Force submitting to Right, and the four oxen represented the hard-working
+      family, improving the soil and enriching it with the sweat of their brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon people began to imitate Gefione&rsquo;s example, and in all
+      directions land was measured and laid out; stones were put up to mark the
+      boundary lines of each legal possession, and these stones were held
+      sacred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to encourage men in these efforts, the Ases made it a point every
+      morning to show their bright, shining heads above the horizon and thus to
+      cheer them by their presence and the interest they took in their labors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god Thor even came once to pay a visit to his sister Gefione, and then
+      cast a few flashes of lightning upon each one of the newly acquired pieces
+      of land, to render them sacred. Hence the old, deeply rooted notion that
+      lightning hallows all it touches. Afterwards, and as late as the fifteenth
+      century, it was deemed sufficient at Bonn, at Cologne, and at Mayence, to
+      cast Thor&rsquo;s hammer upon the piece of land that had become a fief, in
+      order to establish an absolute right of proprietorship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the right of property alone did not suffice to render human society
+      stable and flourishing,&mdash;<span class="pagenum">[167]</span><a
+      name="link167" id="link167"></a>the nations of the earth longed for a
+      hierarchy of rank and race; at least the divine pupil of the wise Mimer
+      decided it should be so. The means he employed to found such a hierarchy
+      and the system itself appear curious and odd enough to us, who are no
+      gods, but, unsuitable as they look now, they were successful at the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By his order Heimdall, the god with the false teeth, abandoned his post as
+      guardian of the Wal-halla for nine days, and after a long journey across
+      the country, knocked at the door of a wretched tumbledown hut, where the
+      <i>Great-grandmother</i> lived. Here he remained three days and three
+      nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Great-grandmother brought a male child into the world, black-skinned,
+      broad-shouldered, with hard horny hands, and powerful arms. They called it
+      <i>Thrall</i>, the serf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thrall&rsquo;s natural inclination led him to prefer the hard work in
+      mines and in the wilderness; he was fond of the society of domestic
+      animals and even slept with them in their stables. His sons became
+      cattle-raisers, miners, or charcoal-burners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heimdall had continued his journey. He next stopped at the <i>Grandmother&rsquo;s</i>
+      house, a small, simple cottage, but lacking in nothing that was useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he remained three days and three nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Grandmother gave birth to a son, who was called <i>Karl</i>, the free
+      man. <span class="pagenum">[168]</span><a name="link168" id="link168"></a>Karl
+      was fond of driving oxen under the yoke, of working in wood and in iron,
+      of building boats and houses, and of trading. From him are descended our
+      workmen and artisans, our merchants and builders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning his face towards the south, Heimdall next went to a beautiful
+      mansion, surrounded by magnificent gardens and reflected in the blue
+      waters of a large lake. As the god had only to show his golden teeth in
+      order to be welcomed by every woman he saw, the mistress of this mansion,
+      the <i>Mother</i>, also received him with great delight and tried to do
+      him honor. Dressed in her most costly robes she put an embroidered cloth
+      upon a table of polished wood and offered him in silver dishes all the
+      varieties of fish and game, in which the lake and the park near the house
+      abounded. The Mother did everything to keep the god as long as possible at
+      her house, but, as at the Grandmother&rsquo;s and at the Great-grandmother&rsquo;s,
+      so he remained here only three days and three nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A son appeared to console the Mother for the departure of her illustrious
+      guest; this child had at its birth already rosy cheeks, long hair, and a
+      haughty look. When he was still a child, he was fond of brandishing his
+      spear and of bending his bow; at fifteen he swam across the blue waters of
+      the lake, or plunged on an unbroken horse into <span class="pagenum">[169]</span><a
+      name="link169" id="link169"></a>the depths of the forest, riding as fast
+      as the wind. They called him Jarl, the noble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some years later Heimdall paid another visit to this country; delighted
+      with the prowess of Jarl, he acknowledged him as his son and taught him
+      the language of birds, which the gods alone understand and fluently speak.
+      He taught him also the science of Runes, of runes of victory which are
+      engraven on the blades of swords; runes of love to be traced upon drinking
+      horns or the thumbnail; runes of the sea, with which the prow and the
+      rudder of ships are decorated&mdash;in all cases precautionary measures by
+      which alone ill fortune can be kept at bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides these gifts of knowledge, he bestowed upon him an inalienable,
+      hereditary domain. This was the first entailed estate ever known in
+      Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jarl, says the Edda, was a man of <i>eight-horse power</i>. Could we
+      express it better in the noble railway Anglo-Saxon of our day, or does our
+      modern English really go back to the old Scandinavian, as this coincidence
+      would seem to prove?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jarl&rsquo;s descendants are the great chieftains, the barons, princes,
+      kings, and Druids, who have all inherited great power from their divine
+      ancestor with the golden teeth. They alone are his legitimate and
+      acknowledged children; the descendants of the grandmother and
+      great-grandmother are illegitimate. <span class="pagenum">[170]</span><a
+      name="link170" id="link170"></a>Still, whether acknowledged by the
+      law or not, they all form a close chain, a single family, they all spring
+      from the same god! Thus the humblest among them saw his rights secured for
+      the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must confess that, the more carefully I examine these barbarians,
+      whether they were gods or men, the more I am surprised to discover beneath
+      the outward cloak of their fables so many correct ideas of order and of
+      justice. These fables had, of course, their day and then passed away. Up
+      to the present time, it is true, there is not much of the day gone;
+      perhaps also Odin may be blamed for having invented, before the world was
+      a few hundred years old, both the Middle Ages and the Feudal System. But
+      it would be wrong to blame him, for it must be acknowledged, that in spite
+      of the violence of their manners and the bloody nature of their worship, a
+      certain civilization had at last appeared among the Scandinavians. It may
+      be called brutal, I grant; it may be called aggressive even, but it was
+      after all an improvement, and it has held its own in the North, under snow
+      and ice, like the vigorous plants of our Alps. How comes it that the
+      Germans and the Franks, more favored by climate and by contact with highly
+      civilized nations, remained so long inferior to the Scandinavians in this
+      respect? Perhaps they were more liable to be invaded than the Sons of the
+      North; the Scandinavians invaded the continent <span class="pagenum">[171]</span><a
+      name="link171" id="link171"></a>in all directions, but no one ever dreamt
+      of invading their country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having thus established the right of property and a certain social
+      hierarchy, Odin had next instituted marriage with the symbolic ring, and
+      finally courts of justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, since he had given to man an immortal soul, and since he held out to
+      him reward or punishment in another world according to his deserts, Odin
+      had been compelled to establish the first high tribunals in that other
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0072" id="linkimage-0072"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/191s.jpg" alt="191s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/191.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/191m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      We must, therefore, find our way to Walhalla and even to Hell, if the
+      reader is disposed to follow us to that place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[175]</span><a name="link175" id="link175"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0073" id="linkimage-0073"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/195s.jpg" alt="195s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/195.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/195m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Heaven and Hell.&mdash;<i>The Valkyrias.&mdash;Amusements in Walhalla.&mdash;Pork
+      and Wild Boar.&mdash;A Frozen Hell.&mdash;Balder&rsquo;s Death.&mdash;Frigg&rsquo;s
+      Devotion.&mdash;The Iron Tree Forest.&mdash;The Twilight of the Gods.&mdash;Idunas&rsquo;
+      Apples.&mdash;The Fall of Heaven and the End of the World.&mdash;Reflections
+      on that Event.&mdash;The Little Fellow still alive.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen the warriors
+      were preparing for battle, a number of blue-eyed young maidens, mounted on
+      <span class="pagenum">[176]</span><a name="link176" id="link176"></a>bright,
+      shining horses, passed through their ranks, animating them with word and
+      gesture, and whispering into their ears warlike songs to be soon changed
+      into triumphal chants for those who fell on the battlefield, mortally
+      wounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0074" id="linkimage-0074"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/196s.jpg" alt="196s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/196.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/196m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These maidens were the Valkyrias, those Valkyrias whom ever since the
+      poets and painters of the Ossianic school have reproduced in a thousand
+      forms. Nor must it be forgotten that this remarkable school, which the
+      Scotchman Macpherson revived <span class="pagenum">[177]</span><a
+      name="link177" id="link177"></a>towards the end of the eighteenth century,
+      counted among its most ardent admirers two enthusiastic Frenchmen, whose
+      names were Napoleon and Lamartine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These Valkyrias, beautiful nymphs of carnage as they were, delighted in
+      the clash of arms, the shedding of blood, and the dying groans of the
+      wounded, even in the odors exhaled by the dying,&mdash;a taste which seems
+      little suited to fair, blue-eyed maidens. These unnatural tastes were,
+      however, justified to a certain extent, by the peculiar mission which they
+      had to fulfill, a mission of kindness and tender compassion. They walked
+      to and fro on the battlefield, not to carry off the dead, but to gather
+      the souls of those who had fallen. Of the <i>Seola</i> (such was the sweet
+      name of the Soul among the nations of Germanic or Scandinavian race), they
+      rapidly asked these questions:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seola, did you belong to a free man or to a slave?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seola, did your master honor the gods and the priests of those
+      gods?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he keep his pledged word?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he die like a brave man, with his face to the enemy and not a
+      fear in his heart?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seola, did he ever fight against the men of his own blood and his
+      own race?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The human soul, as soon as it escapes from the <span class="pagenum">[178]</span><a
+      name="link178" id="link178"></a>wretched bondage of this earth, no longer
+      possesses the sad power of being able to tell a falsehood; Seola,
+      therefore, answered these questions truthfully, even though it were to its
+      own condemnation. In the latter case the Valkyrias left it to the black
+      Alfs, a kind of demons who belonged to hell; but if the Seola had belonged
+      to a brave and loyal warrior, the Valkyria instantly unfolded her white
+      wines and took it to Walhalla, the home of the gods and the paradise of
+      heroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This paradise, exclusively intended for free men, was still open to slaves
+      also, if they had fallen by the side of their masters, or if they had
+      thrown themselves voluntarily into the fire of the funeral pile for the
+      purpose of continuing their service in the future life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us see whether the delights of Walhalla were sufficiently attractive
+      to warrant such selfimmolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The one great enjoyment of all who dwell in Walhalla was combat and
+      strife. That is a matter of taste, but did they not carry combat and
+      strife a little too far? They fought there for hours and hours, with
+      eagerness, with fury, even piercing each other and cutting each other to
+      pieces to their hearts&rsquo; delight. It is true, that as soon as the
+      dinner hour came the blood ceased to flow, the wounds closed their gaping
+      lips, the <span class="pagenum">[179]</span><a name="link179" id="link179"></a>limbs
+      that had been lopped off by the swords returned to their place, the broken
+      heads and exposed entrails were restored without the surgeon&rsquo;s aid,
+      not leaving a scar behind, and the heroes went arm in arm to dinner,
+      looking forward with joy to a repetition of the same merry sport as soon
+      as the meal should be finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fare at this table of gods and heroes does not seem to have been
+      peculiarly wholesome; at all events it was not very varied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pork-butchers&rsquo; business was at that time uncommonly flourishing
+      both in heaven and on earth. Tacitus tells us that among the races of the
+      North, as far as the borders of the Baltic Sea, chieftains and matrons
+      alike loved to wear suspended around their neck a small image of a pig as
+      an emblem of abundance and fecundity. Rich and poor, all looked upon pork
+      as the main supply of their pantry. The pig, however, was not deemed
+      worthy to appear on Odin&rsquo;s table, and its place was taken by the
+      boar: the gods lived upon wild boar, men upon domestic pig, that was the
+      whole difference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am often tempted to eat pork, and I am occasionally enabled to taste
+      wild boar; but I must solemnly confess, swearing if needs be by my
+      stomach, that in my opinion, the gods and the heroes had by no means the
+      best of it. It may <span class="pagenum">[180]</span><a name="link180"
+      id="link180"></a>be, however, that wild boars here below are not quite
+      equal to heavenly boars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0075" id="linkimage-0075"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/200s.jpg" alt="200s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/200.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/200m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      However that may be, there appeared every morning upon the edge of one of
+      the marvelous forests to be found in Walhalla, an enormous colossal boar,
+      a very mammoth of a boar. The <span class="pagenum">[181]</span><a
+      name="link181" id="link181"></a>heroes proceeded to hunt it, accompanied
+      at times by Thor, by Vali, the skillful archer, or by Tyr, the one-handed
+      god, who nevertheless wielded his sword with power and accuracy. Then the
+      monster was killed, cut up and roasted, and all dined together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0076" id="linkimage-0076"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/201s.jpg" alt="201s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/201.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/201m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The next day there appeared on the edge of the marvelous forest another
+      wild boar, quite as fat and quite as enormous, in fact in every respect as
+      attractive as the boar of the day before&mdash;some think it was always
+      the same animal, come to life again. Then a new hunt and a new dinner upon
+      roasted wild boar. Surely we poor people might become disgusted for the
+      rest of our lives, one would imagine,&mdash;and those were immortal gods!
+      What taste!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is worse behind yet. The Scandinavian <span class="pagenum">[182]</span><a
+      name="link182" id="link182"></a>paradise was by no means the only one
+      where the pork-butcher was thus glorified. In a neighboring paradise,
+      which the Finns had established, we are told by a learned writer, the
+      rivers were flowing with beer and hydromel, the mountains consisted of
+      lard and the hills of half salted pork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To help them in digesting their solid food, the Scandinavian gods drank,
+      like those of Finland, great quantities of beer and hydromel; but they had
+      in addition, an abundance of wine which they quaffed from gold cups. Wine!
+      In this one word thoughtful historians have discovered a whole revelation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now would it ever have occurred to Odin, in his hyperborean lands, where
+      the vine did not exist and could not possibly live, to bring the fruit of
+      the vine to his paradise? Did he know grapes? And when had he learnt to
+      know them? But as I do not wish to interrupt my story, I reserve the
+      discussion of this great and important question, with several others of
+      the same kind, for another chapter, in which I hope to be able to develop
+      my views fully and scientifically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides wine, beer, and hydromel, the blessed people in Walhalla had an
+      additional precious beverage of their own, which it may safely be
+      presumed, no mortal on earth has ever tasted. This <span class="pagenum">[183]</span><a
+      name="link183" id="link183"></a>ambrosia of a novel nature was obtained by
+      the gods and heroes themselves, on certain favorable days, from the white
+      substance of the moon. Yes, from the moon! Did they quaff it in full
+      draughts or did they inhale it through calumets? We do not know, but the
+      nations of the earth saw in these periodical bleedings of the moon the
+      reason for her divers phases and her gradual diminution. When she became
+      reduced to a mere crescent, fright was seen on all faces and oppressed all
+      hearts. Were the great people up there forgetting themselves in their
+      celestial orgies, and would they drink up the moon to the last drop?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be borne in mind that they, like the Germans, saw in the moon
+      nothing but a transparent leathern bottle, filled with sweetened milk, and
+      phosphorescent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us return now. To hunt the boar, to breakfast on wild boar, to dine on
+      the same dish, day after day, to drink beer and wine, and from time to
+      time that mulled egg which the moon furnished, to fight morning and
+      evening, to die and come to life again, merely for the purpose of fighting
+      again&mdash;these were the amusements of that delightful place. Upon my
+      word, it took Scandinavians to be content with such pleasures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Odin&rsquo;s paradise appears to us but little attractive, his hell, on
+      the other hand, seems to have been <span class="pagenum">[184]</span><a
+      name="link184" id="link184"></a>far from terrible, especially if we
+      compare it with the hell of some of our great poets, such as Dante and
+      Milton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hell of the Scandinavians occupied the lowest depths of the world and
+      consisted of two parts, <i>Nastrond</i> and <i>Niflheim</i>. The latter is
+      a kind of dismal vestibule shrouded in darkness, in which are seen
+      wandering about the mournful seolas of those who have been neither good
+      nor bad, neither heroes nor scoundrels, and of all who have not fallen by
+      the sword. To die on one&rsquo;s bed or in an armchair, was a wrong in
+      Odin&rsquo;s eyes, a grievous wrong, though not exactly a crime, since he
+      punished it only with a temporary detention in those damp, low places,
+      where darkness, silence, and weariness seemed to combine for their
+      punishment. The dwellers in Niflheim had scarcely any amusement except
+      their reciprocal yawns, and from time to time a flash of dim light which
+      reached there when the little black Alfs came in or went out, busily
+      engaged in conveying a load of souls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great criminals were thrown into Nastrond, the real hell. What is very
+      remarkable is, that here there were no braziers and burning gridirons to
+      be seen, no furnaces and masses of flames as in all the other hells. This
+      was a hell of ice; it froze here hard enough to split iron, and the damned
+      shivered with cold. Dante mentions something of <span class="pagenum">[185]</span><a
+      name="link185" id="link185"></a>the kind in his great work, but between
+      the Florentine and the Scandinavian there can be no doubt who borrowed
+      from the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite natural after all that in these win-tery regions of
+      Scandinavia, where cold is the greatest evil to be dreaded, intense,
+      continued, eternal cold should have become the terror and the punishment
+      of the criminal. The idea of a hell of fire, so far from keeping them from
+      the fatal slope, might very well have tempted some chilly scoundrel to
+      commit a great crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0077" id="linkimage-0077"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/205s.jpg" alt="205s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/205.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/205m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The poor wretches who were shivering in Nastrond <span class="pagenum">[186]</span><a
+      name="link186" id="link186"></a>with stiffened hands and eyes full of
+      frozen tears, felt their tortures increased whenever Hela, the pale
+      goddess, the queen of that place, Death itself, cast upon them a glance
+      from her lack-lustre eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, it was Hela who reigned over this frightful iceberg; her palace is
+      called Misery, her gate the Precipice, her reception room Grief, her bed
+      Disease, her table Famine, and her throne Malediction!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The body of this terrible queen is party-colored, half white and half
+      blue, and her breath is perfumed with that horrible cadaverous odor in
+      which the Valkyrias delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after all, the names seem to be worse than the sufferings themselves;
+      for excessive cold paralyzes pain itself, and there is nothing here to
+      compare with those classic places where lava-baths, rolling rocks, flaming
+      wheels, horses of red-hot iron, boiling pitch, fiery arrows and the snake
+      whips of the Eumenides made up an infernal stock of tortures which might
+      well tempt the imagination of the greatest of poets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Nastrond there were no demons and no Eumenides; to be sure, there was a
+      Bigvor and a Sisvor, furies if you will have it so, watching at the gates
+      of hell, with the help of Gaun, the formidable dog, but all three are
+      forbidden to enter within. <span class="pagenum">[187]</span><a
+      name="link187" id="link187"></a>The place of missing monsters is occupied
+      by some of those whom Odin spared on the occasion of his first campaign
+      against the giant sons of Ymer, and by the wolf Fenris, whom the Ases had
+      treacherously captured. There are also two other wolves, convicted of
+      having made an attempt upon the life of the Sun, and all of these monsters
+      are firmly chained and appear rather as sufferers than as tormentors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of these days, their iron chains will be loosened; one of these days
+      heaven will turn cold and hell will melt, and&mdash;then, woe to the gods!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Listen! The moment is drawing near when all these mysteries are to be
+      solved. The hour is coming when <i>you shall hear, when you shall
+      understand!</i> But before uttering these last words, final and at the
+      same time fatal words, we must mention an event which at that moment
+      occurred in the open assembly of the gods, filling heaven and earth with
+      amazement, with pity and horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be acknowledged that so far the heavenly personages have appeared
+      to be rather kindhearted and mild. Odin, in spite of his Druids and their
+      demands for bloody sacrifices, seems to have been full of good intentions.
+      The god Thor, with all his somewhat brutal ways, rendered great services
+      to mankind; and the same hammer, which protected them against the giants,
+      afterwards served, <span class="pagenum">[188]</span><a name="link188"
+      id="link188"></a>without the aid of geometry, to mark the boundary
+      lines of their respective properties. The golden-teethed god, Heimdall,
+      gave most undoubted evidence of his devotion to the human race and of his
+      self-denial in his visits to the Grandmother and the Great-grandmother,
+      and so did the other gods. But we had good reasons for not going through
+      the whole list of the Ases. For there is one whom we keep in reserve so
+      that he may appear at the right hour, and that is Loki, the god of evil
+      and the genius of destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surpassing Odin himself in his magic skill, fair of form and features, a
+      smile on his lips&mdash;thin lips, however, the Edda adds&mdash;and
+      apparently possessed of the most jovial temper so as to make him a most
+      agreeable person, Loki is in reality a compound of the most hideous vices.
+      He is the representative of hatred and cruelty, of envy, hypocrisy, and
+      perversity. In fact, he is our Satan, before the fall. If he had been king
+      of hell, Miflheim and Nastrond would both have been filled with more
+      tortures and more horrors than all the other hells which are known to men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet he was the god upon whom the dwellers in Walhalla counted for
+      their entertainment, and whom they had surnamed the Clown!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day an ancient prophetess returns to life, rises in her grave, and
+      utters a terrible cry: &ldquo;Balder, <span class="pagenum">[189]</span><a
+      name="link189" id="link189"></a>fair Balder, is going to die!&rdquo; With
+      these words she falls back again upon her mournful couch and dies again&mdash;forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0078" id="linkimage-0078"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/209s.jpg" alt="209s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/209.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/209m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime this cry has been heard even at the top of the ash
+      Ygdrasil. The Ases are troubled and amazed; they meet, they look at each
+      other, thoroughly frightened, for on the life of Balder depends the
+      existence of all the other gods. Moreover, <span class="pagenum">[190]</span><a
+      name="link190" id="link190"></a>Balder the Bright is the glory of heaven
+      and the love of the earth. Can Balder die, the most charming and the
+      purest as well as the most beautiful of all the sons of Odin? He, who was
+      so beautiful that Hela herself could not help smiling when she looked at
+      him&mdash;he, so pure that no falsehood could be uttered in his presence
+      and that a vessel containing an adulterated liquid would break instantly
+      at his approach&mdash;he, so charming that all the gods love him as their
+      favorite child, and that men have surnamed him Hope? No, no! Balder shall
+      not die, said the Ases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His distressed mother Frigg, Odin&rsquo;s wife, shows her apprehensions by
+      her intense anguish, and her sobs scarcely allow her to speak. She tells
+      those who try to laugh at the sudden alarm of all who have heard the
+      warning of the prophetess, that for several nights already she has been
+      repeatedly, persistently warned in her dreams of the death of her
+      well-beloved son. She would not believe it, she adds, but now she does
+      believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The divine sybil Vola, whose predictions have never proved untrue, and
+      Skulda, the Norn of the Future, are &lsquo;summoned to appear. They
+      consult with each other and this is their decision:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balder is in danger; Balder will die unless all earthly substances
+      that can inflict death, are rendered powerless.&rdquo; <span
+      class="pagenum">[191]</span><a name="link191" id="link191"></a>Frigg
+      descends to the earth and speaks to volcanoes and water-spouts, to frost
+      and hail, and they promise to spare her son. Among the aquatic powers,
+      from the ocean to the smallest brook, among the stones, from the mightiest
+      rock to the pebble, and among the metals, from gold to iron, there is none
+      that does not swear the same oath. The plants also promise, from the oak
+      to the smallest shrub and down to the humblest grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0079" id="linkimage-0079"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/211s.jpg" alt="211s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/211.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/211m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Triumphantly she returns to heaven to announce the good news. Everybody is
+      overjoyed. They celebrate the happy result of her journey by a family
+      dinner, at which Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself by his
+      merry jokes. He had never appeared in better spirits; had never seemed to
+      sympathize more warmly with the happy court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the feast was ended and the last cups were drained in honor of
+      Balder, some one proposed for the general amusement to try how far all
+      these substances, vegetable or mineral, will be faithful to the oath they
+      have sworn, when brought face to face with Balder. <span class="pagenum">[192]</span><a
+      name="link192" id="link192"></a>Beginning with the most inoffensive of
+      them all, they throw at him a clod of earth; the clod of earth breaks into
+      a cloud of dust before it touches him. Then they pour a pitcher of water
+      over him and the water forms a cascade above him without wetting even his
+      garments. They try to strike him with a hazel wand; the wand, slipping
+      from the hand that holds it, breaks in two. Balder is amused by the game
+      and encourages the bystanders to renew their attacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0080" id="linkimage-0080"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/212s.jpg" alt="212s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/212.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/212m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The skillful Uller shoots at him a pointless arrow, aiming, from excessive
+      caution, only at his shoulder. The arrow passes at a distance of twenty
+      feet from its aim and continues its flight through <span class="pagenum">[193]</span><a
+      name="link193" id="link193"></a>the air, like a bird in search of its prey
+      beyond the clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten other assailants meet the same fate, trying their luck with a fragment
+      of rock and a heavy branch in the shape of a club. But the fragment was of
+      stone and remembered the promise given to Frigg, and the club was cut from
+      a tree and the tree remembered the promise given to Frigg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Encouraged by so many reassuring trials, Freyr desired to try his magic
+      sword, but for once the faithful sword was deaf to his orders. Thor
+      brandished his hammer, but the hammer suddenly reversed its action and
+      well nigh made him fall back upon his heels. Freyr&rsquo;s sword and Thor&rsquo;s
+      hammer were both of iron and the iron remembered the promise given to
+      Frigg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loki took care not to appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sport was over, as it seemed, when suddenly the blind god Hoder,
+      Balder&rsquo;s own brother, was seen to advance, feeling his way, towards
+      the bright god. Hoder held in his hand a small bunch of leaves, a bit of
+      grass, at least it appeared such after the fearful instruments that had
+      just been brought into play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immense laughter, a laughter such as the gods of Homer were in the habit
+      of enjoying, broke out at the sight; Loki laughed till his sides shook and
+      Hoder himself shared the general hilarity. <span class="pagenum">[194]</span><a
+      name="link194" id="link194"></a>But he drew nearer and nearer, shaking his
+      bit of verdure in the air; then, almost tottering and having learnt from
+      the bystanders in what direction he would have to turn, he threw the
+      slender twig against Balder, using his full force, which was prodigious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hit Balder full in the chest and the god fell instantly. That bright
+      light which was always shining around him became extinct; he closed his
+      eyes, and lowered his beautiful brow deprived of its glory.....Balder was
+      dead!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been struck by a bit of mistletoe. Frigg had addressed her prayers
+      to the oak tree, but she had not thought of the mistletoe which grows on
+      the oak tree; the mistletoe had given no promise to Frigg. Must we look
+      here for a symbolic meaning? Did this mean, that the Druidical mistletoe
+      was soon to triumph over the gods of Scandinavia? This could not be so,
+      for at the time to which we have come, there was no trace left of the wise
+      worship of the Druids of the first epoch; the Druids of the second epoch
+      were fast losing their power, and the Scandinavian gods were daily
+      increasing in popularity, even beyond the banks of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we ought not to interrupt this account of Balder&rsquo;s death, which
+      is as poetical and as touching as the most famous fables of Greece. <span
+      class="pagenum">[195]</span><a name="link195" id="link195"></a>When blind
+      Hoder, whose name must not be uttered, you remember, hears the cries of
+      despair which break out all around him, and encircle him on all sides with
+      maledictions, he is troubled and seriously distressed. Then, all of a
+      sudden joining in the distressed cries of the Ases, he falls utterly
+      overcome upon his brother&rsquo;s body and denounces Loki as the author of
+      this calamity. Loki has reproached him for being the only one who took no
+      part in the amusements by which they thought to honor Balder, and he it
+      was who had not only given him the fatal plant but who had also directed
+      his arm. Loki was jealous of all the perfections of Balder and he hated
+      him as much as the other gods loved him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They look for Loki, but he has disappeared. No doubt he has tried to
+      escape from the vengeance of the Ases by seeking refuge in the mountains
+      among the giants, his natural allies, or perhaps in the deep sea, with the
+      serpent Iormungandur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And whilst they thus lament, inquire, and investigate, Balder&rsquo;s soul
+      is carried off by the black Alfs to Niflheim, the dark vestibule of hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin still cherished hopes that his dead son might be restored to him.
+      Upon his order Her-mode, the messenger of the gods, mounts his horse
+      Sleipner and goes to see Hela, but neither promises nor threats can move
+      the dread goddess. Fate has <span class="pagenum">[196]</span><a
+      name="link196" id="link196"></a>decided, and Fate is above the gods, as
+      the gods are above men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Frigg herself goes to see the pale goddess. Frigg weeps and the
+      merciless goddess is unable to keep her heart from softening when she sees
+      the tears of such a mother. She says to her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let all created beings&mdash;mind, I say, all created beings!&mdash;give
+      a tear to Balder, a tear such as you have&rsquo; shed in my presence, and
+      Balder shall be restored to you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Frigg was unwilling to trust any one but herself with the effort to
+      realize such hopes. Once more she went over the world, gathering around
+      her all the races of men, one after the other, and as she mentioned the
+      name of Balder, tears flowed from all eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three months she visited all the forests and all the mountains, the
+      seas and the lakes and the animals that live in the waters and the
+      mountains; and seas and lakes and mountains wept. She went even to the
+      abode of the giants, the enemies of the gods, and her grief made the
+      giants also weep; every tree wept and every rock wept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Frigg thought her task was accomplished, and was filled with joy; but she
+      heard that in the far East of Midgard there lived an old woman in the
+      heart of a forest of iron trees. As she lived alone there, far from any
+      beaten track, she had never <span class="pagenum">[197]</span><a
+      name="link197" id="link197"></a>become known to the intrepid traveller.
+      Now, however, Frigg sought her out by steep paths, cut up with gullies and
+      fierce torrents, and at last found her. When the mother told her pitiful
+      tale, the iron trees wept, but the old woman would not weep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0081" id="linkimage-0081"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/217s.jpg" alt="217s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/217.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/217m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[198]</span><a name="link198" id="link198"></a>They
+      called her Thorck, and her heart was ten times as hard as her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I care for your Balder?&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;what do I
+      care whether he is dead or alive? You have other sons; I have not one left
+      me. Once I had four, and all four were my pride, my delight. They were so
+      fair! They were so tall! Your son Thor killed every one of them. I wept
+      much at that time. Now, it is all over. Look for tears elsewhere, I have
+      no tears to give to other people&rsquo;s sorrows!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Frigg bowed down before her, begged her, conjured her, and even fell on
+      her knees before her; but the old woman was inflexible. Balder had to
+      remain a prisoner with Hela.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some interpreters of Scandinavian runes have been of the opinion that the
+      bereaved mother in the forest of iron trees was none other than Loki
+      himself, changed into an old woman. That thought, however, is
+      inadmissible. The Ases were beyond the reach of Hela, and Loki&rsquo;s
+      refusal would not have rendered void the unanimous vote of all Nature,
+      when tears of pity and sympathy alone were to be given as votes. It is
+      much more plausible to suppose, that Loki had induced Thorck to refuse by
+      his counsels and by his enchantments; through him the heart of the old
+      woman had&rsquo; become iron as well as the trees of the forest in <span
+      class="pagenum">[199]</span><a name="link199" id="link199"></a>which she
+      lived. Thus Loki had twice caused the death of Balder!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this time that a strange, almost incredible report was for the
+      first time heard among men. The Druids whispered it cautiously into the
+      ears of the initiated, and voices were said to utter it in the air during
+      the night. This report, a terrible secret, a most unexpected revelation,
+      stated that the gods were about to die! Thor would die, after seeing
+      lightning become extinct in his hands; Odin himself would die, and so
+      would the others. The fate of each one of them was depending on the fate
+      of this fragile world over which they ruled, and this world had to perish
+      because Balder had perished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What? Should the Universe change back into chaos? Was there no
+      all-powerful will that could arrest the process of destruction before it
+      was too late? But where could such omnipotent will be found, now that the
+      gods were no longer to be in existence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Listen! listen to these verses from the Edda!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is the most ancient among the gods?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alfader, that is, the universal father. He has always been and will
+      ever be; he governs all things, both big and small; he has made the
+      heavens, the earth and the gods. Odin created man, but Al-fader gave him
+      his immortal soul!&rdquo; <span class="pagenum">[200]</span><a
+      name="link200" id="link200"></a>Thus we come back to the pure
+      essence of an only god, who is ever the same, whether his name be Teut,
+      Esus, or Jehovah; the other gods are nothing but emanations proceeding
+      from him, living symbols intended to live for a few thousand centuries&mdash;that
+      is all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear? Do you understand now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you understand why the great ash tree Ygdrasil is continually
+      gnawed at its root by a dragon? Why four famished stags feed upon its
+      foliage? You understand? Well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But by what sign shall we recognize the approaching end of the gods&mdash;that
+      which the Edda calls their <i>twilight?</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The most important among all the sacred books of the North, a
+      volume containing the prophecies of the divine sybil Vola, the <i>Voluspa,</i>
+      will tell you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the fatal moment draws near, their voice will cease to be able
+      to utter the accustomed chants, and the luminous brightness radiating from
+      their bodies will fade away little by little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When they leave their bath, their bodies will not dry at once, as
+      they do now, but remain moist; drops of water will continually drip from
+      them, and they will in this respect become like unto mortal men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In order to overcome these first symptoms of <span class="pagenum">[201]</span><a
+      name="link201" id="link201"></a>indisposition, the wife of the god Bragi,
+      Iduna, will give them certain apples to eat, which she keeps in reserve.
+      These apples will have the effect of strengthening them and of restoring
+      to them a kind of fictitious youth for a few thousand years perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day, however, their eyes will begin to wink; the next morning,
+      upon awaking, their eyelids will be found closed, and then they will turn
+      red and blear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At table, when proceeding to their usual libations, their slightly
+      tremulous hands will be unable to hold their cups steadily; some of the
+      wine or the hydromel will escape and their garments will remain stained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woe to them if a grain of dust adheres to these stained garments!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woe to them still more, if the wreaths of flowers or of jewels
+      begin to fade and to wither on their brows!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Finally, when the sweet perfumes which now are exhaled from their
+      bodies, change into acrid and sickening odors, there will be nothing left
+      for them but to make their last will.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am well convinced that this last phrase has been stealthily introduced
+      into the Voluspa by some kind of criminal and fraudulent trick. The rest,
+      however, is a faithful translation of the original <span class="pagenum">[202]</span><a
+      name="link202" id="link202"></a>text, as taken from the best authenticated
+      editions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0082" id="linkimage-0082"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/222s.jpg" alt="222s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/222.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/222m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; the prophecy continues, &ldquo;then three sacred
+      cocks, dwelling in the three principal worlds, will crow and reply to each
+      other, announcing the <i>Twilight of Greatness.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, everything on earth will be in disorder and confusion;
+      families will be at variance with <span class="pagenum">[203]</span><a
+      name="link203" id="link203"></a>each other, the claims of blood will no
+      longer be acknowledged, and brothers will be arrayed against brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adultery and incest, robbery and murder, will prevail among men,
+      and the age will be an age of barbarism, an age of the sword, an age of
+      tempests, an age of wolves!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wolves will be ready to devour the sun. Three long winters,
+      with no summers between them, will cover the earth with snow and ice; the
+      branches of the trees will give way under the immense burden; the sun will
+      be darkened more and more; the moon will dissolve into vapor and the stars
+      will go out; the mountains, shaking in their foundations, will be tossed
+      to and fro like reeds in a river; the earth will reject all the plants,
+      the trees, and the rocks which it now bears; the waters will cast the fish
+      upon the shore and with them their algae, their corals, and even the
+      bodies of shipwrecked men, hideous skeletons, whose rattling bones will
+      chime in grimly with the warning of the rising flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the sea will grow dark, and upon its waters there will be seen
+      floating that monstrous ship made of the nails of dead men. At the rudder,
+      Ymer, the giant, will stand, having been recalled to life for a time, in
+      order to assist Loki in scaling the heavens by the way of Bifrost, the
+      <span class="pagenum">[204]</span><a name="link204" id="link204"></a>rainbow,
+      at the head of the other Giants of the Frost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Surtur the Black will arrive from the southern regions, from
+      the realm of fire, with all of his malignant demons, bearing torches and
+      ready to set heaven and earth on fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Hela, the pale goddess of death, will set free her prisoners,
+      the wolf Fenris first of all, and march at the head of these monsters to
+      assist the powers of the South.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the gods will take up their arms; Odin will gather them around
+      him, and with them the heroes from Walhalla; and the last battle will be
+      fought.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Vola&rsquo;s prophecy has to be fulfilled; the gods must perish, and
+      the world with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Freyr dies in the flames of Surtur the Black; Thor succumbs to the deadly
+      embrace and the poisonous bites of the great serpent Iormungandur; but,
+      before dying, he kills it. Odin is torn to pieces by the wolf Fenris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the struggle, the heavens have been scaled and the genii of fire
+      enter on horseback through the breach, while the giants shake the ash
+      Ygdrasil, which writhes uttering long sighs, and at last falls with the
+      heavenly vault which it has been upholding. The conquerors and the
+      conquered alike are crushed under the ruins, and the world <span
+      class="pagenum">[205]</span><a name="link205" id="link205"></a>being set
+      on fire by Surtur the Black, vanishes in smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the night of the gods has to succeed to the twilight of the gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O you, spirits of the mountains, do you know whether anything will
+      continue to exist?&rdquo; asks the Voluspa, at the end of these mournful
+      prophecies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be admitted that this sombre and terrible conception is not
+      without a certain poetic grandeur, a certain savage heroism, which we
+      cannot help admiring. In these verses the Edda is in no way inferior to
+      the most brilliant pictures drawn by Dante or by Milton, and more than
+      once it approaches nearly to the Apocalypse. Thus, as the inspired Apostle
+      saw a new heaven and a new earth, the Edda also announces the coming of a
+      time, when a new earth, more favored and more perfect than ours, shall
+      succeed the old earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the earth is thus broken to pieces and devoured by fire, what
+      shall happen next?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will come forth from the sea another earth, more beautiful
+      and more perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And will any of the gods survive?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balder will be revived and come forth from the place of departed
+      spirits, to rule over the new world under the guidance of the imperishable
+      Al-fader. <span class="pagenum">[206]</span><a name="link206" id="link206"></a>Then
+      will be the reign of Justice.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mythology of the Scandinavians embraces, as we have shown, among its
+      symbols all the great phenomena of Nature, the continual struggle between
+      the two opposite principles, creation and destruction. Being, besides,
+      more complicated and more intelligent than the mythology of the Gauls and
+      the Germans, it deserved to fill a large space in our work, and such a
+      space we have accorded it cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why was it that the civilization introduced by Odin contributed as
+      little as the philosophy of the Druids to the real well-being and the
+      improvement of mankind? I think I see the reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the eyes of the German as well as of the Scandinavian, God was only
+      just and rigid. The rule of the God of Love had not yet begun. Perhaps
+      Balder was to inaugurate it in that other world which the Edda announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you hear? Do you understand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amid all the incidents which were to mark the general conflagration, there
+      is one which particularly recalls to our mind a great historical event.
+      Alexander of Macedonia once questioned certain Celtic ambassadors and was
+      told by them, that what they feared most upon earth, was the falling down
+      of the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This apparently lofty answer filled the young <span class="pagenum">[207]</span><a
+      name="link207" id="link207"></a>conqueror with admiration, and it is still
+      admired by modern students of history. It was, however, in reality nothing
+      more than a simple, naïve rendering of one of their articles of faith; for
+      all their prophetic books threatened them with the destruction of the
+      heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another detail, the complete destruction of this globe of ours, after a
+      series of fearful catastrophes, recalls to me, not exactly a great
+      historical fact, but a simple game of my childhood, which may have been
+      symbolic, nay, which may have come down to us from the Edda. This,
+      however, I state with great hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did you ever know one of the merriest games, which was once very much the
+      fashion in city and country alike, when a firebrand, a burning stick, or a
+      bunch of straw set on fire, was quickly passed from hand to hand? To
+      prevent its going out, while you held it, you were bound to pass it as
+      quickly as possible to your neighbor, repeating at the same time the
+      expressive words: &ldquo;<i>The little fellow is still alive</i>.&rdquo;
+      Your neighbor passed it to his neighbor and thus it travelled all around,
+      always accompanied by the same, constant burden: &ldquo;The little fellow
+      is still alive!&rdquo; This game was transformed during the Middle Ages,
+      in the North, and especially in Bretagne, into the Torch Dance, as I have
+      mentioned before. <span class="pagenum">[208]</span><a name="link208"
+      id="link208"></a>Now I imagine that this game, in some way or other,
+      prefigured the universal conflagration that was to come, and <i>the little
+      fellow</i> was the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0083" id="linkimage-0083"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/228s.jpg" alt="228s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/228.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/228m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But we must make haste to reach our great scientific discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[211]</span><a name="link211" id="link211"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0084" id="linkimage-0084"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/231s.jpg" alt="231s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/231.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/231m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time
+      between one World and another.&mdash;How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.&mdash;How
+      Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the Indians.&mdash;How
+      Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God Buddha.&mdash;About
+      Mahabarata and Ramayana.&mdash;Chronology.&mdash;The World&rsquo;s Age.&mdash;Comparative
+      Tables.&mdash;Quotations.&mdash;Supporting Evidence.&mdash;A Cenotaph.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>y reader has had a
+      lucky escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Determined as I was to fathom in this chapter the true origin of the
+      Scandinavian religion, and inspired by the zeal of a recent convert, I had
+      collected and compared every document that could aid me in proving the
+      Oriental descent of the priests of Odin as well as of the other Druids. I
+      <span class="pagenum">[212]</span><a name="link212" id="link212"></a>thought
+      it was a beautiful doctrine, and especially an entirely new one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I finished my chapter, which I thought was exceedingly well done, I
+      read it to Doctor Rosahl, expecting, I must confess, to be warmly
+      congratulated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, my dear sir,&rdquo; he said, when I had finished, &ldquo;you
+      have made great efforts to prove a thing which has been established long
+      since. All the master minds of France and Germany, to say nothing of other
+      nations, agree on that subject. I mean men like Fauriel, Lassen,
+      Lenormand, Ampere, Eichhoff, Saint-Marc Girardin, Marmier, Klaproth,
+      Ozanam, the two Rémusats, the two Thierrys, the two Humboldts, the two
+      Grimms, not to mention twenty others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why will you come to their assistance after they have won the
+      victory? Do you merely wish to display your scholarship?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I indignantly denied the charge, and seizing my manuscript with both
+      hands, I resolutely threw it into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A remnant of paternal weakness induced me, however, to retain the summary
+      of that famous chapter, and I have inserted it here in its regular place,
+      so that it might bear evidence of my wasted labor. As the <i>corpus
+      delicti</i> is no longer in existence, this summary may stand there like
+      an inscription <span class="pagenum">[213]</span><a name="link213"
+      id="link213"></a>on an empty tomb, to honor the memory of the
+      deceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I&mdash;a scholar! Great God! Let the reader not be disturbed. My purpose
+      in writing this work was nothing more than to try and collect along the
+      banks of the Rhine all the curious myths which have survived the ancient
+      creeds of Europe; for they have all come to the great river. There the
+      traveller finds piled up, after the manner of alluvial layers, all the
+      ancient fables, all the marvelous and often childish tales to which the
+      credulity and lively imagination of our forefathers gave a ready welcome.
+      With the exception of a very few cases, in which the grave nature of the
+      subject lifts me necessarily into higher regions, I wish mainly to tell
+      you once more <i>Grandmamma&rsquo;s Tales</i>. That is what we are going
+      to do next. The Edda itself has no other meaning, for <i>Edda</i> means
+      the same as our <i>grandmother</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, I am too great a lover of tales of a tub ever to have claimed the
+      reputation of being a scholar; but at times I like to glean a little where
+      scholars have reaped. I have been shown the best spots, and I pilfer as
+      well as I can&mdash;that is all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ignoramus and a pilferer, I resemble a bee which might fly into a
+      botanical garden and, utterly <span class="pagenum">[214]</span><a
+      name="link214" id="link214"></a>unacquainted with the Latin names of
+      flowers, carry off joyously a rich harvest, without pretending to be able
+      to make academic honey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0085" id="linkimage-0085"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/234s.jpg" alt="234s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/234.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/234m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[217]</span><a name="link217" id="link217"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0086" id="linkimage-0086"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/237s.jpg" alt="237s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/237.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/237m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confederation of all the Northern Gods.&mdash;Freedom of Religion.&mdash;Christianity.&mdash;Miserere
+      mei!&mdash;Homeric Enumeration.&mdash;Prussian, Slavic, and Finnish
+      Deities.&mdash;The God of Cherries and the God of Bees.&mdash;A Silver
+      Woman.&mdash;Ilmarinnen&rsquo;s Wedding Song.&mdash;A Skeleton God.&mdash;Yaga-Babcûs
+      Pestle and Mortar.&mdash;Preparation for Battle.&mdash;The Little Chapel
+      on the Hill.&mdash;The Signal for the Attack.&mdash;Jesus and Mary.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is high time for
+      us to return to the banks of the Rhine, where the two religions of Jupiter
+      and Odin were about to meet face to face. <span class="pagenum">[218]</span><a
+      name="link218" id="link218"></a>At that time the terrible prophecies of
+      the Edda were far from being near their fulfillment; Odin had a long
+      period of omnipotence yet before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the great surprise of the adversaries, the Romans, so far from showing
+      any alarm at his approach, received him and his retinue of deities as old
+      acquaintances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to their unchanging policy they would see in him nothing but a
+      Jupiter, and in fierce Thor another gallant Mars, somewhat sobered by a
+      long residence in northern countries and excessive use of beer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Romans looked, in fact, upon all of these Scandinavian gods and
+      goddesses simply as upon myths of their own that came back to them once
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poets hallowed these claims and the historians tried to justify them.
+      According to some, Odin the Conqueror, a member of the family of Ases, had
+      first given to some of his conquests the name of Asia (which might very
+      well be so), and then receded before the Roman armies to cold hyperborean
+      regions. Here he had adopted the gods of his new conquerors, hoping that
+      they would, in return, make him victorious&mdash;which seems to me in the
+      highest degree improbable. According to others, the poet Ovid, when
+      Augustus had banished him to Scythia, had learnt the language of the
+      barbarians, <span class="pagenum">[219]</span><a name="link219"
+      id="link219"></a>among whom he was living, and finding them willing
+      and eager to listen to him, had recited before them his &ldquo;Metamorphoses.&rdquo;
+      This was all that was needed to induce the Scythians to make for
+      themselves gods after the model of the Roman gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0087" id="linkimage-0087"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/239s.jpg" alt="239s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/239.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/239m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Tacitus, Plutarch, Strabo, and a host of the most illustrious writers
+      never hesitated to give currency to such childish stories, ignoring
+      entirely the date of the Scandinavian religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Rome, however, permitted no human sacrifices, the priests of Odin and
+      of Teut had at first withdrawn far from the beaten track, into the depths
+      of dark old forests. There they could live quietly, practice without
+      restraint the religion of their forefathers, and kill their men in perfect
+      security. At least such were their hopes. The Roman soldiers, however, who
+      handled the woodman&rsquo;s axe <span class="pagenum">[220]</span><a
+      name="link220" id="link220"></a>as readily as the sword, and the spade as
+      well as the spear, soon made big holes in these venerable forests,
+      murdered the murderers, and overthrew their blood-stained altars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0088" id="linkimage-0088"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/240s.jpg" alt="240s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/240.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/240m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[221]</span><a name="link221" id="link221"></a>Occasionally
+      it happened that the brave legionaries who were employed in these
+      hazardous enterprises, did not reappear. The proconsuls, whose duty it was
+      to keep Germany in order, would have liked to inflict severe punishment;
+      but just then the great reaction began to set in, from the North against
+      the South.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst Rome was making efforts to establish her power in Germany, certain
+      German tribes, Franks and Burgundians, invaded France and began to settle
+      down in some of the conquered Roman provinces. The proconsuls thought it
+      both prudent and wise not to raise the question of religion; and for a
+      long time a truce was tacitly agreed upon between all the different
+      creeds, though not without some misgivings on both sides. Odin had his
+      altars by the side of those of Jupiter; a temple in honor of Thor stood
+      facing a temple dedicated to Mars, and if Bacchus, Diana, and Apollo had
+      their sacred days, Bragi, Frigg, and Freya had theirs also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of this general toleration, the parties watched each other
+      carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sooner or later a holy war had to break out; in certain regions it had
+      already begun, when fishermen of the Rhine busily drawing in their nets,
+      heard, for the first time, a still small voice coming down upon them on
+      the waters of the river, which whispered the names of Jesus and Mary.
+      <span class="pagenum">[222]</span><a name="link222" id="link222"></a>The
+      same voice and the same names were simultaneously heard again and again
+      before Strasbourg, Mayence, and Cologne. It was Christianity that was
+      approaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0089" id="linkimage-0089"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/242s.jpg" alt="242s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/242.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/242m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These wondrous words, which now the river only <span class="pagenum">[223]</span><a
+      name="link223" id="link223"></a>murmured, had soon after been forced by
+      some mystic power from the lips of the Druidesses in their prophetic
+      exaltation and from the priests of Jupiter, as they consulted their
+      auguries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a Druid, who, in the act of sacrificing, was suddenly seized
+      with inspiration, and dropping the bloody knife felt impelled to cry out:
+      <i>Miserere mei, Jesus!</i> and yet Latin had until then been an unknown
+      tongue among the Druids!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nations stood expectant, waiting for the revelation of a new faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon a number of fugitives from Tolbiac, returning to the Rhine, produced
+      consternation in all hearts by the announcement that Clovis, the king of
+      the Franks, who had long been suspected of a secret understanding with
+      Rome, had gone over to the god of the Christians, and that the god of the
+      Christians was at that moment advancing at the head of ten legions of
+      destroying angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this news came, the rival religions laid aside their jealousy, and
+      terrified by a common danger, joined hands to resist the invader. A
+      general appeal was made not only by the followers of Odin to those of
+      Jupiter, but also to the Northern gods, the Finnish gods, the Russian
+      gods, and the Slavic gods. The danger was threatening to all alike, and
+      they responded to the appeal and came to the Rhine. <span class="pagenum">[224]</span><a
+      name="link224" id="link224"></a>We cannot so rapidly pass over this vast
+      Olympian assembly of gods, a poet&rsquo;s dream, it may be, but a
+      traditional dream, full of strange and striking splendor, which completes
+      in a most unexpected manner the limited description we have tried to give
+      of Northern Myths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0090" id="linkimage-0090"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/244s.jpg" alt="244s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/244.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/244m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      At this grand meeting there appeared in the first place a goodly number of
+      Borussian or Prussian gods, among whom stood first and foremost Percunos,
+      the divine leader of the heavenly bodies; Pikollos, whose face was as pale
+      as Hela&rsquo;s and whose duty was, like hers, to preside over hell;
+      exacting, however, from men nothing but prayers accompanied by beating
+      hearts, he cared nothing whether he was feared or beloved. A third god,
+      Potrympos, had the appearance of a youth, with smiling lips and with a
+      wreath of wheat ears and flowers on his brow; this was the god of War. Of
+      War? And what meant the smile on his lips and the wheat ears on his brow?
+      They indicated that he was also the god of public supplies and even of
+      love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems that, in ancient Prussia, War was the purveyor-general and
+      supplied everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the retinue of this great trio, we find Antrympos, the god of seas and
+      lakes; Poculos, the god of the air and of storms; then, after these gods
+      ending in <i>os</i>, came other deities ending in <i>us</i>; Pilvitus, the
+      god of riches, Auchwitus, the god of the sick, and Marcopulus, the god of
+      the nobles. The latter was the terror of the common people, whom he held
+      under an iron yoke. In order to <span class="pagenum">[226]</span><a
+      name="link226" id="link226"></a>conciliate his good will, they prayed to
+      Puscatus, another god in us, but a kindhearted god. He lived under an
+      elder tree, and the price he exacted in return for his mediation was the
+      modest gift of a piece of bread and a <i>schoppen</i> of beer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0091" id="linkimage-0091"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/246s.jpg" alt="246s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/246.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/246m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Although their priests were called Crives or Waidelottes, their ceremonies
+      were, nevertheless, mere imitations of those of the Druids. The Borussians
+      honored particularly the famous oak of Remowe, to which Percunos,
+      Pikollos, and Potrympos paid a daily visit. To these same gods they
+      offered their prisoners of war; but they were not sacrificed by means of a
+      knife after the German <span class="pagenum">[227]</span><a
+      name="link227" id="link227"></a>Or the Scandinavian manner. They
+      destroyed them by fire or they gave them to be devoured to enormous
+      serpents who lived upon the altar and for the altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0092" id="linkimage-0092"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/247s.jpg" alt="247s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/247.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/247m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Now all these gods have come to Germany accompanied by their monstrous
+      reptiles, by griffins fearful to behold, and by demons summoned from hell,
+      all called upon to take part in the impending struggle. <span
+      class="pagenum">[228]</span><a name="link228" id="link228"></a>Almost at
+      the same time with the Prussian gods arrived also the Scythian gods and
+      those of the Sarmatians, the former in chariots, according to the manner
+      of travelling which prevailed among those nations. They also bowed low,
+      like their people, before the all-powerful Tahiti, the great
+      representative of their religion, Fire. The Scythians had evidently
+      derived very little profit from hearing Ovid read his &ldquo;Metamorphoses.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others were but few in numbers; their representatives were their chief
+      triad: Perun, their Jupiter Tonans; Rujewit, who controlled the clouds;
+      and Sujatowist, the judge of the dead. These three brought in their train
+      only Trizbog and the Tassanis, that is, the plague and the furies. Their
+      other gods, unable to do anything for success in war, had wisely stayed at
+      home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can I neglect mentioning the names and attributes of these inoffensive
+      local deities, whom the fierce Sarmatians worshipped. They were:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kirnis, who causes the cherries to ripen;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sardona, who watches over the nut trees;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Austeïa, who presides over the education of bees;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sweet Kolna, who sees to the marriage of flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were also gods or goddesses of corn, of the kneading-tub and the
+      wash-tub, the god of flies and the god of butterflies; we must confess
+      that <span class="pagenum">[229]</span><a name="link229" id="link229"></a>these
+      deities could hardly have been very useful on the banks of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Odin and Jupiter could count upon more efficient and more reliable
+      allies in the gods of Finland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gods bear almost always the impress of the character of their
+      followers and of those over whom they rule, and what other nation has ever
+      given such proofs of undaunted courage as the Finns or Finlanders? Pirates
+      on the Baltic, as the Scandinavians were pirates on the ocean, they shared
+      with them the booty that could be gotten in all the Northern seas. They
+      had originally come from the high table-lands of Asia, together with their
+      brethren the Turks, the Mongols, and the Tartars; their first appearance
+      was made under the name of Ugorians, Ogres, and surely the Ogres have made
+      a lasting and a terrible impression on bur popular tales!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Finns consisted almost exclusively of sailors and soldiers, of miners
+      and blacksmiths. To smelt iron and to fashion it into anchors for their
+      ships, into lances, swords, and spears, was their principal occupation.
+      Hence they paid special reverence to Rauta-Rekhi, the personification of
+      iron; to Wulangoinen, the father of iron, and to Ruojuota, the nurse of
+      iron. They worshipped in like manner with special zeal three sombre
+      virgins, whose powerful breasts were running over with a dark milk, <span
+      class="pagenum">[230]</span><a name="link230" id="link230"></a>which
+      turned into iron as it cooled off, as water turns into ice when it cools
+      off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their principal gods, besides these whom I have mentioned, were again
+      three, and, as usual, three brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The oldest, Vainamoinen, of hoary age, created celestial and terrestial
+      fire, that is to say, the sun and the volcanoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second, Ukko, has to provide them with fire, so as to prevent the
+      earth from returning to the condition of an immense icicle, and the sun to
+      the form of a heap of extinct embers. Living in the clouds he now blows
+      upon the sun and now upon the volcanoes so as to keep up the blaze in
+      both, and encourages them with his voice, the thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ilmarinnen, the third, a very industrious and most skillful workman, has
+      forged the earth and the seven heavens by which it is surrounded; hence he
+      is called the <i>Eternal Blacksmith</i>. He spends his life at the forge,
+      making sometimes stars of all sizes and at other times spare moons. He has
+      even made a silver woman, not for himself, however, but for a younger
+      brother, whose manifold and incessant occupations left him no time to take
+      the necessary steps for a suitable marriage. This woman of fine metal,
+      well-made, beautiful, charming, and of the sweetest disposition, had but
+      one single defect,&mdash;no <span class="pagenum">[231]</span><a
+      name="link231" id="link231"></a>one could come near her without being
+      chilled to the marrow of his bones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the most skillful blacksmith cannot be expected to make a perfect
+      woman at the first trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the question of his own marriage was mooted, Ilmarinnen preferred
+      taking a ready made wife, and, according to the usage which prevailed
+      among the Finns as well as among the Germans, he bought one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the sake of enjoying some relief after such a long enumeration of
+      deities, now entirely out of fashion, I feel strongly tempted to insert
+      here <i>a saga</i>, a Finnish legend, which treats of this very marriage
+      of Ilmarinnen, the blacksmith, and was composed by his own sister. In this
+      wedding-song, which is full of the sweetest and chastest sentiments, she
+      exhibits the domestic life of these artisan-gods, who sometimes were
+      disposed to beat their wives,&mdash;at least the saga suggests the
+      occurrence of such events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ilmarinnen has just been married and becomes impatient, he actually swears
+      at not seeing his young bride come to him in great haste. Listen to what
+      is sung to him, with an accompaniment on a small Kantele guitar, by his
+      sister, the hostess of Pohjola, in order to calm him the better:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O husband, brother of my brothers, you have <span class="pagenum">[232]</span><a
+      name="link232" id="link232"></a>already waited long for the coming of this
+      happy day; wait patiently a little longer. Your well beloved will not
+      tarry long. She finishes her toilet; but you know it is far to the
+      fountain to which she has to go for water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O husband, brother of my brothers, be patient! She has just put on
+      her robe, but she has only put on one sleeve. You would surely not have
+      her appear before you with one sleeve empty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O husband, she has just arranged her hair; a beautiful belt
+      encircles her waist, but she has a shoe only on one foot; she must needs
+      have time to put on the other shoe also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Husband,.... here she is coming,.... but she has put on only one
+      glove,.... give her time to put on the other!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the young bride appears at last, the good hostess of Pohjola is
+      suddenly deeply concerned for her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O wife, O purchased maid, O dove that has been sold! My sister, my
+      poem, my green branch, how many tears you will shed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your family were very eager to have the money paid down for you in
+      the hollow of a shield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor ignorant girl, you thought you were leaving the paternal roof
+      for a few hours, for a day, perhaps! Alas! You have surrendered forever,
+      you have a master now!&rdquo; <span class="pagenum">[233]</span><a
+      name="link233" id="link233"></a>And then turning once more to
+      Ilmarinnen, she adds:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O husband, brother of my brothers, do not teach this child, the
+      slave, whip in hand, the way she must walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not make her cry under the rod or under the stick; teach her
+      gently, in a soft voice, with closed doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first year by words, the second year by a frown, the third year
+      by gently pressing her foot. Be patient!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If, after three years, she is unwilling to learn, O husband,
+      brother of my brothers, take a few slender reeds, take a little
+      broom-sedge, chastise her, but with a rod covered with wool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she still resists, well; cut a twig in the woods, a willow
+      branch, not too stout, and hide it beneath your garment. Let no one guess
+      what is going to happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Above all, do not strike her hands nor her face; for her brother
+      might well ask you: Has a wolf bitten her? Her father might well say to
+      you: Has a bear torn her thus?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does not this Saga, with all its harsh allusions, breathe a most touching
+      tenderness? It seems that the most delicate sentiments were preserved
+      intact amid the coarsest manners and the most violent passions. What was
+      your name, O naïve muse of <span class="pagenum">[234]</span><a
+      name="link234" id="link234"></a>Finland, who inspired the good hostess of
+      Pohjola? Were you not perhaps a daughter of those beautiful Indian
+      gandharvas, who said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The elephant is led by a rope, the horse by a bridle, and a woman
+      by her heart.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And does it not remind us of our humble and simple-minded neighbors, when
+      we hear how this Eternal Blacksmith, this first-class god who has made
+      heaven and earth, who buys a wife and beats her, expresses his fear of the
+      reproaches of his brother-in-law and his father-in-law?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this pause we must go on describing the other armies of gods who had
+      hastened to the banks of the Rhine in order to resist a common enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the side of the heavenly representatives of Scythia and Sarmatia, of
+      Prussia and Finland, we find other gods belonging to the different
+      Slavonic races. But why should we repeat here a complete list of all this
+      multitude of allies, whose curious names the most retentive memory could
+      not possibly retain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suffice it to say that the Lithuanians, the Moravians, the Silesians,
+      Bohemians, and Russians were represented at this meeting by their most
+      formidable deities. There was Ilia, the great archer, whose arrows hit the
+      mark after having passed through a thickness of nine fir trees; Radgost,
+      the <span class="pagenum">[235]</span><a name="link235" id="link235"></a>merciless
+      destroyer; Flintz, the skeleton god, who bore a lion&rsquo;s head on his
+      shoulders and drove a chariot of flames; and the giant Yaga-Baba, whose
+      head reached high above the loftiest mountains. When a warrior was seized
+      with fear before he beheld the enemy, he immediately took him from the
+      ranks and brayed him in a wooden mortar with an iron pestle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All four of them brought in their retinue whole battalions of Strygi or
+      blood-suckers, of voracious Trolls, Marowitzes, and Kikimoras, who
+      smothered their victims; of Polkrans and Leschyes, the latter a kind of
+      dwarf satyrs, who could at will change into giants, and the former half
+      men and half dogs, singing and barking alternately. Their songs, as
+      fearful as their barkings, spread terror around them, and they themselves
+      killed at a hundred yards&rsquo; distance by the venom of their breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the allies whom the Roman and Scandinavian gods arrayed against
+      Christianity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the new comers had been properly organized, Jupiter&rsquo;s eagle
+      rose above the clouds, uttered three piercing cries, turning to the three
+      points of the horizon, and at once from the East, from the West, and from
+      the South, there came forth the gods of Rome and Greece, abandoning their
+      mysterious retreats. There was Neptune with his Tritons, his Harpies, and
+      his marine monsters; and <span class="pagenum">[236]</span><a
+      name="link236" id="link236"></a>there was Pluto with his Fates, his
+      Furies, and his whole host from hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odin struck his buckler, and from the far North came not only the gods and
+      the Valkyrias, with the heroes of Walhalla, but even the adversaries of
+      the Ases,&mdash;Hela, the wolf Fenris, the Giants of the Frost with Loki
+      at their head,&mdash;and all enlisted under him to take part in the
+      immense slaughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had the armies of a Darius, an Alexander, an Attila, or a
+      Charlemagne, presented a more imposing and more terrible aspect; nor has
+      the world ever seen the like since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Sibyls and the Norns, the augurs and the witches had been
+      consulted, the march began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few miles from the other side of the river, in the direction of
+      Argentoratum (Strasbourg), about half way up the slope of a gentle hill,
+      there stood a little chapel which had not been quite finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sibyls and Druidesses had pointed out this building as the end of the
+      first day&rsquo;s march, not doubting but that the god of the Christians
+      would appear at the head of his legions, to defend his temple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Confederates were advancing silently under cover of the night in order
+      to surprise the enemy, whom they thought fully prepared for resistance.
+      Odin was in command of the right wing of the <span class="pagenum">[237]</span><a
+      name="link237" id="link237"></a>army, Jupiter of the left. The Scythian,
+      Sarma-tian, Borussian, and Finnish deities under the orders of Tahiti,
+      Perun, Percunos, Wainamoinen, and Radgost, commanded the centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as they came in sight of the hill, they noticed a very peculiar
+      twinkling light, which shone out from the deep darkness, and was
+      surrounded below by a circle of light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately the three light-footed messengers of the Roman, Slavonic, and
+      Scandinavian gods, Mercury, Algis, and Hermode, were sent out to
+      reconnoitre, accompanied by the Eumenides, the Valkyrias, and a small
+      detachment of Lapithes and Centaurs. When they returned they reported that
+      the light proceeded from the flaming swords of ten thousand destroying
+      angels. They were quite sure of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the allies immediately rushed forth, as is the usage in all epic
+      battles, to challenge the chiefs of the angels to single combat. But
+      Jupiter and Odin, thinking that all these private contests can only
+      jeopardize the success of the great battle, compelled them to obey orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor, who had been one of the first to rush forth, was so much
+      disappointed, that in his anger he let his heavy mace fall upon a little
+      town that was on their route, and that might possibly have impeded the
+      progress of the army. The mace <span class="pagenum">[238]</span><a
+      name="link238" id="link238"></a>instantly returned to the hand of the
+      owner, and then fell and returned again and again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0093" id="linkimage-0093"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/258s.jpg" alt="258s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/258.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/258m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The barking of Cerberus, the three-headed dog, of his brother dog Garm,
+      and the howlings of the Strygi, the Kikimoras, and the Polkrans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was by no means all of the concert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mars, Odin, Potrympos, and the other war-gods now drew their swords, which
+      produced a fearful grating sound as they came out of their sheaths; next
+      Jupiter sounds his thunder among the Romans, and after him thunder Perun
+      among the Slaves, Ukko among the Finns, and Thor among the Scandinavians.
+      The repeated crash of thunder. And thanks to this incident, the plain had
+      been cleared and levelled at the same time, and the signal for the attack
+      was given at once. The Corybantes beat their drums in muffled tones; the
+      chants of the Bards and the Skalds responded from the right and the left
+      wing, although their harps were soon drowned in the bleat of the trumpets,
+      the furious <span class="pagenum">[239]</span><a name="link239"
+      id="link239"></a>lightning mingles with the rumbling of the chariots
+      of Tabiti, of Flintz, the skeleton god, and of Pocu-los and Stribog, the
+      gods of waterspouts and of Northern tempests; the Egipans, the Cyclops,
+      the blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen, begin to push immense masses of rock before
+      them, brandishing entire oak trees as spears; while the Giants of the
+      Frost with fearful clamor, which is taken up by the whole army of
+      invaders, follow them, led by the equally gigantic Yaga-Baba, the terrible
+      conductor of such an infernal concert, who marks the time by beating with
+      his iron pestle upon his wooden mortar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0094" id="linkimage-0094"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/259s.jpg" alt="259s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/259.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/259m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      All these fearful noises, all these echoing explosions, seem to confound
+      heaven and earth; the <span class="pagenum">[240]</span><a
+      name="link240" id="link240"></a>horizon trembles and shakes, the
+      mountains start and stagger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the holy hill stands unmoved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light which at first shone only at the base has gradually risen as
+      high as the summit, and the little chapel now shines brightly like a
+      brilliant constellation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surprised at seeing no enemy appear, the army of the pagan gods makes a
+      halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, O miracle! lifted up as if by a gust of wind from on high, the
+      little chapel vanishes, and in its place is seen a simple altar surmounted
+      by a cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before this altar stands a young maid, showing neither ornament nor weapon
+      of defense,&mdash;a Virgin barefooted, with a child in her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She comes down the hill, a smile on her lips; the brilliant light still
+      encircles her brow and the brow of the infant; she comes straight up to
+      the allied gods, who begin to look at each other in utter consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She draws nearer, and all of a sudden an irresistible panic seizes Jupiter
+      and Odin, Mars and Thor, Wainomoinen and Perun, together with the
+      Eumenides, the Tassanis, the Cyclops, and the Giants, and all turn back
+      towards the river, cross it in fearful disorder, and crush each other in
+      their desperate flight, while their own temples and <span class="pagenum">[241]</span><a
+      name="link241" id="link241"></a>their own statues fall to pieces in the
+      universal destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of these were buried in the Rhine, where we shall hereafter find them
+      once more; the remainder reached in sad condition their northern homes,
+      abandoning almost the whole of Germany to Jesus and Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is but right to notice that in all the traditions which speak of this
+      struggle between the gods and the rising religion of Christ, no mention is
+      ever made of the Teut and the Esus of the Celts, the Alfader of the
+      Scandinavians, the Jumala of the Finns, and the Bog of the Slaves,&mdash;nor
+      is the Unknown God of the Romans ever mentioned. The reason is that each
+      one of these grand deities, like the Indra of the Indian heaven, contained
+      all the others and represented to the mind the idea of the only one
+      eternal God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This grand but vain effort of the pagan gods was made, according to
+      tradition, about the year 510 of the Christian era. In the course of the
+      same year King Clovis determined to erect a temple in honor of Christ
+      which should be worthy of Him, and laid the foundation of the Minster at
+      Strasbourg, perhaps with a design to replace the little chapel, which had
+      disappeared in so miraculous a manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[245]</span><a name="link245" id="link245"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0095" id="linkimage-0095"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/265s.jpg" alt="265s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/265.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/265m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Marietta and the Sweet-briar.&mdash;Esus and Jesus.&mdash;A malgam&mdash;
+      A Neophyte.&mdash;Prohibition to eat Horse-flesh.&mdash;Bishops in Arms.&mdash;Interruption.&mdash;Come
+      Home, my Good Friend!&mdash;Prussia and the Myths of the Middle Ages.&mdash;Tybilimts,
+      the Black God.&mdash;The little Blue Flower.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ll who know me and
+      esteem me will testify to my great natural modesty. Even when I have <span
+      class="pagenum">[246]</span><a name="link246" id="link246"></a>to
+      do with fables, I would not venture to invent the smallest thing; I am
+      incapable of committing such a crime. Nevertheless, some of my incredulous
+      readers, when they see the marvelous nature of the poem, in which the
+      triumph of Jesus and Mary over the allied pagan gods was celebrated, might
+      possibly fancy it to be a product of my imagination. In self-defense I
+      feel bound to quote here one of the countless traditions which allude to
+      this great event. I once more borrow from the Muse of the Finns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There lived in those days a virgin who was so pure, so pure and
+      chaste, that her eyes had never seen anything but the eyes of her sisters,
+      that her hands had never yet touched a being in creation for the purpose
+      of caressing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She lived alone in her chamber, in company with her distaff, and
+      ignorant of what happened even within the narrow circle of shadows which
+      the sun traced around her house, and the image of a man was as foreign to
+      her eyes as it was to her mind. Her thoughts and her eyes had alike kept
+      their chastity perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was called Marietta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day, on a fine spring morning, Marietta felt a vague and
+      incomprehensible desire to enjoy the beauties of Nature. Her heart rose
+      within her with strange emotion. <span class="pagenum">[247]</span><a
+      name="link247" id="link247"></a>"Impelled rather by a desire of her own
+      than by a command from on high, she opened her door and hastened to a
+      meadow inclosed with a hedge, which was near the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this hedge a sweet-briar was in bloom. She drew near to inhale
+      the fragrance; she touched the flower, and that was all that was needed.
+      Marietta became a mother, and when her son was born she felt by the
+      boundless pride that filled her heart, that she had given birth to a god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the mean time the other gods of her own country and of the
+      adjoining countries had been warned by their prophetesses that this child,
+      born of a virgin and a flower, would one day drive them out of heaven;
+      they assembled, fully armed and determined that mother and child must both
+      die so as to prevent the threatened catastrophe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the moment when they were holding their secret councils,
+      Marietta appeared in their midst holding her infant in her arms, and all
+      these gods, who had until now wielded such absolute power, fled in dismay
+      to the far North, and the icy gates of the North Pole closed behind them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the story of Marietta and her child Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would certainly seem as if this naïve account, well known among the
+      ancient legends of Finland, was nothing less than a slight sketch of that
+      great epic poem which we have laid before our readers. <span
+      class="pagenum">[248]</span><a name="link248" id="link248"></a>We have
+      only filled out the details by the aid of similar documents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henceforth Christianity enjoyed the results of that great day at
+      Argentoratum. At a later period the conquered gods, it is true, showed
+      once more signs of resistance on isolated points, but from the first, this
+      triumph of Mary and Jesus, and perhaps also the victories obtained by King
+      Clovis, changed the first dawn of Christianity in Germany into a kind of
+      purifying conflagration, which spread rapidly from the Rhine to the Weser
+      and from the Weser to the Danube.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Curious circumstances sometimes came to its assistance. Thus, many Teutons
+      had been taught by their Druid teachers to acknowledge but one single God,
+      and this primitive doctrine naturally reconciled them to the new creed.
+      But, more than that, the particular god whom they thus acknowledged, was
+      called <i>Esus</i>, almost Jesus! Others had followed the example of the
+      Slaves and worshipped the handle of their swords, which bore the form of a
+      cross; they naturally recognized in the Christian cross a familiar emblem
+      of protection and safety. Even baptism was in no way distasteful to the
+      followers of Odin. They readily adopted, it in memory of the regular and
+      regenerative ablutions with water which their ancient creed prescribed.
+      Odin had said to them in the Runic chapter of the Edda: &ldquo;If I wish a
+      man never to perish in combat, <i>I sprinkle him with water soon after his
+      birth?</i>&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, this just man, put to death by wicked men, this risen Christ,
+      reminded them forcibly of their own god Balder. Evidently the predicted
+      time had come. Balder, the ancient prisoner of Niflheim, was about to
+      renew the world; in his new shape, the Bright God was no longer the son of
+      Frigg; he was now Mary&rsquo;s son and his name was Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This disposition, however, although plainly shown in many parts of
+      Germany, was by no means unanimous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the table of King Clovis, the bishops, and Saint Reni himself, were
+      compelled to sit by the side of Scandinavian Druids. When they intoned
+      their Benedicite, the latter never failed to pour out their libations in
+      honor of Asa-Thor and Asa-Freyr. In spite of all the heroic and
+      indefatigable efforts of the priests, polytheism survived even among the
+      new converts, who would walk devoutly in the processions of Christian
+      worship, while they carried their idols and their fetishes under their
+      arms, and who never failed to make the sign of the cross when they passed
+      a tree or a spring that had been held sacred by their forefathers. What
+      could be done to make them sincere and orthodox Christians? <span
+      class="pagenum">[250]</span><a name="link250" id="link250"></a>Liberty, in
+      the sense in which we understand it now, and have good reason to
+      understand it, would have appeared to a Teuton or a Slave as a beautiful
+      woman, with a wooden yoke around her neck and all her limbs in chains.
+      Germany had her laws, as well as every other Northern country her written
+      or unwritten laws, but the dignity of a freeborn man consisted mainly in
+      disregarding these laws. The free man left his country, to engage in war
+      wherever he chose, and his family, to live in any country he might prefer.
+      It was the same thing with religious matters; he reserved to himself his
+      independent judgment, the right to worship as he chose and the privilege
+      of combining such articles of creed as pleased him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This curious freedom of religion, this curious amalgamation of creeds,
+      produced the strange result, that the neophytes especially remained half
+      pagan and half Christian, and preferred generally to &ldquo;ride on the
+      fence&rdquo; between the two creeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Nibelungen Lied, which we look upon as nothing more than a great
+      epic poem of the Scandinavians, pagan at first but Christianized at a
+      later period, men are represented as going devoutly to church after having
+      consulted the Nix of the river as to their future fate. This is, no doubt,
+      a true picture of the Germany of the early Christian days. <span
+      class="pagenum">[251]</span><a name="link251" id="link251"></a>Some looked
+      upon baptism, with its magnificent and pompous ceremonies, as a pleasure;
+      others submitted to it for a consideration. Ozanam, who is exceedingly
+      well informed about everything that refers to this curious period of
+      transition in point of religion, tells the following anecdote:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0096" id="linkimage-0096"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/271s.jpg" alt="271s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/271.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/271m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      One day there was a crowd of candidates for baptism; each one of them was,
+      as usual, dressed in white, as emblematic of purity. This symbolic dress,
+      made of a suitable material, was a present from the Church to the
+      neophyte, which he had carefully to preserve as an evidence of his
+      conversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, on that day, all the available robes had been given away, when one
+      more candidate for baptism presented himself; the priest found at last a
+      robe of light color, but unfortunately in wretched condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; exclaimed the neophyte, angrily drawing
+      back; &ldquo;have I not a right to claim a white robe as well as the
+      others, and one of fine wool?&rdquo; and looking furiously at the priest
+      he added: &ldquo;Do you think I am a man to be taken <span class="pagenum">[252]</span><a
+      name="link252" id="link252"></a>in? This is the twentieth time
+      that I am baptized, and I have never been offered such rags before!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The naïve candor of this good Teuton could make me almost believe that he
+      misunderstood the nature of the ceremony altogether, and looked upon it
+      only as a gratuitous distribution of wearing apparel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other more painful mistakes were made when the Christian missionaries,
+      crossing rivers and seas at the risk of their lives, went to the uttermost
+      confines of Germany, and there encountered half savage nations who were
+      still worshipping the Scandinavian gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The patient zeal, the gentleness, and the eloquence of these holy men,
+      succeeded finally in overcoming the convictions of these barbarians, and
+      in introducing among them not only the Gospel, but also the worship of
+      saints. The people received baptism, and not only welcomed the saints with
+      great eagerness and enthusiasm, but in their desire to do them all the
+      honor in their power, they hastened to turn every one of them into a god!
+      They erected altars to these new gods, and on these altars they offered
+      them human sacrifices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These same missionaries had been instructed to prohibit the use of
+      horseflesh among the new converts; but they found it very difficult to
+      overcome a custom which at that time was very general. <span
+      class="pagenum">[253]</span><a name="link253" id="link253"></a>We can
+      hardly, at the present day, understand the importance which the Church
+      attached to this abstinence, since now-a-days the best of people are
+      perfectly willing to allow their horses to be taken from their stables for
+      the purpose of being served up at table!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0097" id="linkimage-0097"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/273s.jpg" alt="273s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/273.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/273m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The most serious difficulty in all such critical periods is this, that
+      while the true and faithful clergymen by their prodigious labors and
+      admirable self-devotion succeeded in converting and disciplining great
+      multitudes, false priests appeared among them, taking forcible possession
+      of parishes and bishoprics, often without waiting till they became vacant.
+      Pepin of Heristal and Charles Martel, his son, had just compelled the
+      pagan Saxons to take refuge behind the Weser. When the war was over and
+      they proceeded to dismiss the commanders of <span class="pagenum">[254]</span><a
+      name="link254" id="link254"></a>this numerous army till the beginning of
+      another campaign, as was the custom in those days, the majority among them
+      claimed, as a reward for services rendered, the right to exchange the
+      sword for the crozier and the helmet for the mitre. They evidently thought
+      that the profession was an easy one to practice and rich in rewards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pepin and Charles resisted, but they had to give way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the great disgust of the newly converted populations and to the great
+      injury of the holy cause, which they professed to have served, these
+      warrior-priests brought with them into the Church the manners of the camp
+      and the fortress. They surrounded themselves with squires, falconers, and
+      riding-masters, with horses and hounds; they hawked, they hunted, they
+      lived high, giving themselves up to all kinds of excesses, and drawing the
+      sword against any one who should venture to reproach them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When war began once more, they almost all returned to arms, without, on
+      that account renouncing their ecclesiastic duties. Gerold, Bishop of
+      Mayence, perished in a battle against the Saxons; his son succeeded him on
+      the episcopal throne, and had hardly been consecrated when he proceeded to
+      avenge his father. He rushes into battle, challenges Gerold&rsquo;s
+      murderer, kills him, and quietly returns to <span class="pagenum">[255]</span><a
+      name="link255" id="link255"></a>Mayence for the purpose of officiating
+      there at Mass and of returning thanks to God for his success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such acts of violence and such worldly enjoyments were incomprehensible to
+      the faithful; gradually the Church of the Apostles began to fear the
+      Church of the Soldiers. The Saxons, having vastly increased their numbers
+      by an alliance with the Scythians and Scandinavians, appeared once more in
+      the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; exclaims the reader, whom I fancy I hear at this
+      distance, &ldquo;but this is history, church history moreover, and you
+      told us you would tell us all about gods!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I confess I did, sir; and that is the reason why I have traced out, on
+      this historical ground, the narrowest and shortest possible path, on which
+      I can safely return to my own domain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, let us return, my good friend.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I beg your pardon, sir, but before we return, allow me at least to glorify
+      three men, who were called upon at that time to save Christianity, and
+      with it civilization, by the pen, the word, and the sword. These equally
+      great and equally heroic men are now three of our saints.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saints again!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, sir, the first is Pope Gregory, the second Saint Boniface the
+      missionary, and the third the Emperor Charlemagne. Do not be afraid; I
+      shall <span class="pagenum">[256]</span><a name="link256" id="link256"></a>do
+      no more than mention them, for fear of going again out of my way and of
+      speaking of forbidden subjects, against which you have warned me. Allow
+      me, however, to add that if the struggle which the great Emperor
+      undertook, was a long and ter-tible one, it was also glorious far beyond
+      all. Was it not marvelous, I ask you, to see this nation of Franks, which
+      but just now consisted of a mixture of barbarians, go forth under the
+      command of their young king, to become the protector of Rome, of
+      civilization, and of Christianity? The mace had become a shield, the
+      siege-ram a wall and a rampart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course! Everybody knows that!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, did you know this, sir: When the Saxons, conquered for the tenth
+      time, had received baptism, together with their king Witikind, when the
+      Rhine, also baptized, had become a French river and a Christian river,
+      when the whole of Germany bowed low before the cross, one of the nations
+      of that country, the Borussians (Pruszi, or Prussians), refused to give up
+      their old gods, and continued to refuse for several centuries to come? And
+      yet it was so. The proscribed gods, finding a refuge on the banks of the
+      Oder and the Spree, paid frequent visits, as was quite natural, to their
+      former followers. It was thus that the old pagan creed was long preserved
+      in the remote regions of Germany. You see, sir, I have returned to my
+      subject. <span class="pagenum">[257]</span><a name="link257" id="link257"></a>Let
+      us rapidly conclude this first part of our task, so as to reach at last
+      the modern gods, who were as popular as the others, and in their way
+      neither less strange nor less curious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the time of the Middle Ages, Germany had been filling up with towns
+      and castles, feudal dungeons bearing aloft a helmet and a cross. The cross
+      arose wherever two streets met in a city and at every cross-road in the
+      country; the most beautiful cathedrals in the world and the most
+      magnificent monasteries were reflected in her broad river; and still, in
+      field and forest, in city and country, and along the banks of the Rhine,
+      the false gods were worshipped in secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the church taught that they were to be looked upon as demons, the
+      people dared not treat them badly. Demons are not guests to be turned out
+      rudely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the eighth century of our Christian era,&rdquo; says one of
+      our erudite authorities, &ldquo;the Saxons and Sarmatians heard the
+      Christian missionaries speak so continually of the formidable power of
+      Satan, that they thought it best to worship him secretly in order to
+      disarm his wrath and perhaps to win his favor. They called him the Black
+      God or <i>Tybilinus</i>; the Germans call him, even now, <i>Dibel or
+      Teufel</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Black God now became for all the German <span class="pagenum">[258]</span><a
+      name="link258" id="link258"></a>nations the army leader of their
+      proscribed gods, an army which was presently to be largely increased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The princes and knights, followed by their vassals, departed in large
+      numbers, on the Crusades, but they brought back from the Crusades,
+      together with holy relics, traditions of Gnomes, Peris, and Undines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0098" id="linkimage-0098"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/278s.jpg" alt="278s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/278.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/278m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Rhine, disgusted at the loss of his royal dignity, and determined to
+      take his vengeance on the warrior-bishops, received these last arrivals as
+      he had those who came before. In his healing waters the Undines mingled
+      with the Tritons and the Naiads; the Gnomes found shelter under the rocks,
+      where they were hospitably received by the Dwarfs, and in the evening
+      twilight the Nymphs, the Elves, and the Dryads danced once more merrily in
+      company with Sylphs, Fairies, and Peris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt Christian Germany looked afterwards at all this more in the light
+      of food for the imagination than of trouble for the conscience, but in
+      that happy land, where people believe and dream <span class="pagenum">[259]</span><a
+      name="link259" id="link259"></a>at the same time, and where the words of
+      the poet are as true as the Gospel, the imagination easily gets the better
+      of conscience. Thus the search after the little blue flower led many a
+      learned man astray, far off into half satanic paths. Besides, it lies in
+      the nature of the German mind, which has always a tendency towards
+      idealism, its magnetic pole, to oppose to the orthodox religion another
+      more secret and more mysterious creed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0099" id="linkimage-0099"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/279s.jpg" alt="279s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/279.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/279m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This was the case already in the fourteenth and <span class="pagenum">[260]</span><a
+      name="link260" id="link260"></a>fifteenth century; it is the case still in
+      this, the nineteenth century, especially among the country people, who
+      have passed through the age of witchcraft in which the Black God ruled
+      supreme, and, completely modifying their pagan notions, have transferred
+      their Olympus to the Brocken, the mountain of the Witches&rsquo; Sabbath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us now see what the dwellers on the banks of the Rhine have done with
+      all their old gods and demi-gods of every denomination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[263]</span><a name="link263" id="link263"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0100" id="linkimage-0100"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/283s.jpg" alt="283s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/283.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/283m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.&mdash;<i>Sylphs, their
+      Amusements and Domestic Arrangements.&mdash;Little Queen Mab. &mdash;Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps.&mdash;White
+      Elves and Black Elves.&mdash;True Causes of Natural Somnambulism.&mdash;The
+      Wind&rsquo;s Betrothed.&mdash;Fire-damp.&mdash;Master Haemmerling.&mdash;The
+      Last of the Gnomes.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he reader is
+      requested to recall what I have said before, that in Germany manners,
+      customs, and creeds, matters of prejudice as well as matters of art, and
+      even of science, may have a beginning, <span class="pagenum">[264]</span><a
+      name="link264" id="link264"></a>but never have an end. In that ancient
+      home of mysticism and of philosophy, everything is permanently rooted,
+      everything is made for eternity, like those old oak trees of the Hercynia
+      of antiquity: when the parent tree is cut down, and has no longer a trunk
+      to bear boughs and branches, it sends forth new shoots from the roots.
+      Druidism also has become permanent there. We have seen it fight against
+      the gods of the Romans; it fought in like manner against Christianity
+      under Witikind; it was kept alive, though in concealment, by the first
+      iconoclasts or image breakers, and when that whole vast country was at
+      last conquered and became wholly devoted to Catholicism, it broke forth
+      once more quite unexpectedly in the first days of the Reformation. Luther
+      was a Druid still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thanks to this tenacity of life which characterizes creeds, and thanks to
+      the prolific nature of that soil, whatever seems to have disappeared,
+      rises again, under new forms, and whatever has perished is recalled to
+      life in some way or other. Let us prove this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among all those gods which we have mentioned before, none surely would
+      seem to have been more readily forgotten, swept away by the wind, which
+      they claimed to render useless, or buried in the dust with which they
+      seemed to compete, than those tiny, microscopic deities, called Monads.
+      <span class="pagenum">[265]</span><a name="link265" id="link265"></a>And
+      yet this was by no means the case. Did they not, in fact, represent the
+      elementary spirits? And the worship of the elements continued in spite of
+      all other creeds which tried to suppress it forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only these atomic deities, still quite small, exceedingly small, had
+      increased in the most astonishing manner, when compared with their
+      original diminutiveness. They had even assumed a form and a body, a
+      visible body and a shape by no means void of grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had become Alps or Alfs, better known afterwards under their Eastern
+      designation of Sylphs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened occasionally that a belated traveller, a peasant or a charcoal
+      burner, returning homeward from a wedding towards the beginning of night,
+      would be fortunate enough to meet at a clearing in the woods or on the
+      banks of a brook with a band of little goblins, who were making merry in
+      the dim twilight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were Sylphs, a little people flying in swarms through the air,
+      making their nest in a flower or building one with a few bits of grass at
+      the foot of a broom-sedge, and going out only in the evening to pay visits
+      and as good neighbors to perform their social duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the traveller, the peasant, or the charcoal burner <span class="pagenum">[266]</span><a
+      name="link266" id="link266"></a>had walked softly on the fine sand of the
+      brook or on a grass-grown path on which his steps could not be heard, and
+      if he had then stopped in time so as to be able to see without being seen,
+      he might witness their gambols and ascertain the secrets of their private
+      life, without running any risk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0101" id="linkimage-0101"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/286s.jpg" alt="286s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/286.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/286m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Have you, dear reader, have you heard Mercutio, in Shakespeare&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Romeo and Juliet,&rdquo; relate how Queen Mab came, and say:&mdash;<span
+      class="pagenum">[267]</span><a name="link267" id="link267"></a>
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+&ldquo;Oh, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.....
+Her wagon spokes made of long spinners&rsquo; legs,
+The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
+The traces of the smallest spider&rsquo;s web,
+The collars of the moonshine&rsquo;s watery beams,
+Her whip of cricket&rsquo;s bone, the lash of film,
+Her wagoner, a small, gray-coated gnat!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Well, the peasant, the traveller, or the charcoal burner, enjoyed a sight
+      which was by no means less curious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of his Sylphs, suspending a thread of gossamer from one blade of
+      grass to another, made a delightful swing for their amusement, or took a
+      spiders web to supply them with a hammock. Others danced wildly about in
+      the air, beating their tiny wings with harmonious accuracy and furnishing
+      thus an orchestra for the aerial ball.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not far from them some little sylph ladies, no doubt excellent
+      housekeepers, were washing their linen in the beams of the moon, or
+      preparing a feast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The provisions consisted of a mixture of honey with the nectar of flowers,
+      a few drops of milk which the hanging udders of young heifers had left on
+      the high grass, and a few pearls of that precious dew which aromatic
+      plants secrete; this mixture was used as a seasoning for some
+      butterfly-eggs beaten up white as snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If during the repast darkness fell upon them and <span class="pagenum">[268]</span><a
+      name="link268" id="link268"></a>suddenly covered the guests with its
+      sombre cloak, other hobgoblins, the Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps, with wings of
+      fire, came and took seats at the hospitable table, paying for their
+      entertainment by diffusing a pleasant light all over the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The principal occupation of these elves consisted in walking before the
+      wanderer who had lost his way so as to lead him back again into the right
+      path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were some of the harmless spirits of Air and Fire. Everything has,
+      however, been changed in these two elements. The Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps
+      especially, angry at the reports of wicked people, that they are nothing
+      more than the products of burning hydrogen, or at best phosphorus in a
+      volatile form floating above damp places, have conceived a veritable
+      hatred against men and now only appear when they wish to tempt travellers
+      into marshes and deep ravines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the Sylphs, they also seem to have heard similar stories which have
+      been told about them, or they may have been irritated by the chemist
+      Liebig, who in his &ldquo;Treatise on the Composition of the Air,&rdquo;
+      absolutely denies their existence, having found in his apparatus neither
+      Sylphs nor Sylphides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They have changed into faithless Elves, hostile to men, like the other
+      Gnomes.<span class="pagenum">[269]</span><a name="link269" id="link269"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0102" id="linkimage-0102"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/289s.jpg" alt="289s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/289.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/289m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[271]</span><a name="link271" id="link271"></a>The
+      Fairies of our day are divided into two formidable classes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The White Fairies are damsels who wander about on meadows and in woods,
+      like the Willis of the Slaves, and lie in wait for inexperienced young
+      men, whom they persuade to join in their dances and keep dancing, till
+      they lose their breath and generally fall to the ground never to rise
+      again. German stories are full of such wicked tricks. The place where they
+      perform their diabolic dances, becomes quite silvery under their feet. The
+      shepherds can thus at once recognize the place where they have been, and
+      are sure to hasten away at once with their flocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0103" id="linkimage-0103"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/291s.jpg" alt="291s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/291.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/291m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Black Fairies personify Nightmare and Somnambulism, but only Natural
+      Somnambulism, it must be borne in mind. <span class="pagenum">[272]</span><a
+      name="link272" id="link272"></a>When men fall into this state, the Black
+      Elf directs all the motions of the sleeper; he lives in him, thinks and
+      acts for him, makes him get upon the furniture and climb upon roofs, and
+      keeps him from falling, unless... Poor sleeper, he allowed them breath
+      enough to swell the sails of a vessel or to chase the clouds from one end
+      of the heavens to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the Celts all magicians had been able to command the winds and the
+      tempests at will; even now certain men in Norway and in Lapland will sell
+      you, for a small price, the wind you desire to carry you home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Careful! The Black Fairies are treacherous and cruel; the Fairy who
+      controls you for the moment may at any moment take a fancy to throw you
+      from your height.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0104" id="linkimage-0104"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/292s.jpg" alt="292s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/292.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/292m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Alfs, who have thus become Elves or Fairies, are of course not the
+      only Spirits of the Air; their fragile and delicate structure would never
+      have been inGermany, on the contrary, the wind was looked upon as an
+      elementary power. It was not deified, as in Rome, where there was a whole
+      windy family of gods, like Eurus, Æolus, Boreas, and Favonius, but it was
+      an important personage, with a will of his own and independent action. The
+      poets did their part to give importance to <i>Master Wind.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have in my hand a ballad, which will enable the reader to judge for
+      himself:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gretchen, the pretty miller&rsquo;s daughter, was courted by the
+      son of the king. Her father, the miller, knowing that kings&rsquo; sons
+      are not apt to marry, had chosen her a husband, a young flour merchant
+      from Rotterdam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Dutchman was on his way up the Rhine; that very evening he was
+      expected to arrive, to make his proposals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gretchen called upon Master Wind to help her; he came in by the
+      window, but not without breaking a number of panes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;What do you wish me to do?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;A man wants to marry me, against my will; he is coming in a
+      sail boat; contrive it so that he cannot land at Bingen.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wind blew, and blew so well that the boat, instead of coming up
+      to Bingen, was driven back again as far as Rotterdam. <span class="pagenum">[274]</span><a
+      name="link274" id="link274"></a>"At Rotterdam also it could not make land;
+      it was driven into the North Sea, and there the Dutchman is perhaps still
+      sailing about at this day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Master Wind had made his conditions before he went to work
+      blowing so well; and the pretty miller&rsquo;s daughter had agreed to them
+      without hearing them, for all around her the furniture, the doors, and the
+      blinds were shaking and rattling furiously, thanks to her visitor. Thus it
+      came about that poor Gretchen found herself betrothed to Master Wind,
+      which made her very sad, for now she had less hope than ever of marrying
+      the king&rsquo;s son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However, Master Wind was as gallant towards his fair betrothed as
+      he could be. Every morning, when she opened her window, he would throw her
+      in beautiful bouquets of flowers which he had torn off in the neighboring
+      gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any young man of the village, whom she had rejected, passed
+      without saluting her, Master Wind was promptly at hand to carry off his
+      hat and send it up in the air so high, that soon it looked no bigger than
+      a lark. It was well for him that Master Wind did not, with the hat, take
+      his head off at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day (when Master Wind must have been asleep), the king&rsquo;s
+      son came to the mill, made his <span class="pagenum">[275]</span><a
+      name="link275" id="link275"></a>way without difficulty to Gretchen&rsquo;s
+      chamber, and forthwith desired to kiss her. Gretchen did not object. But
+      at once, and although out of doors all was quiet, the tables and chairs
+      performed a wild dance, and the doors and windows began to slam as if they
+      had been mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gretchen herself began to twirl around and around in the most
+      unaccountable manner; her hair was loosened by an invisible hand and
+      whisked about her head with strange rustling and dismal whistling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrified by the sight of a tempest in a close room, the prince
+      cried:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Ah! accursed one, you are the betrothed of Master Wind!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And at the same moment a terrible gust of wind carried off the king&rsquo;s
+      son, the miller&rsquo;s daughter, and the mill, and no one ever saw or
+      heard anything more of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps they went to join the Dutchman, who was all the time
+      sailing about in the North Sea, or the hat, which was still on its way in
+      the clouds.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legend does not tell us whether it was before or after this occurrence
+      that Master Wind married Mistress Rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the Spirits of the Air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the Spirits of the Fire, it must be remembered <span class="pagenum">[276]</span><a
+      name="link276" id="link276"></a>that the Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps were by
+      no means their only representatives. There were also Salamanders, too well
+      known to be described here; and St. Elmo Fires, near relations of the
+      Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps. But we must pause a moment to speak of the
+      formidable Fire-damp, the miner&rsquo;s terror. The remarkable feature
+      about it is that it plays so insignificant a part in the popular German
+      myths, although it has destroyed so many victims in all mountainous
+      countries, and above all in the Hartz mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This subterranean lightning, far more fatal than that of the upper
+      regions, is known to the people of the Rhine simply as a tall monk, whom
+      they call Master Haemmerling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Master Haemmerling visits the mines from time to time in the guise of a
+      harmless amateur, or of an inspector, who is not fond of being hurried.
+      However, on Fridays especially, he is subject to violent attacks of anger.
+      If a laborer handles his pickaxe awkwardly, or if he is insolent to his
+      master, or the master harsh to him and requiring too much, he is, quick as
+      a flash of lightning, between them when they are as yet half way under
+      ground. Then he suddenly draws his long legs together, and between his two
+      knees crushes their heads with as little hesitation and ceremony as a
+      mother would show in destroying between her two thumbs the <span
+      class="pagenum">[277]</span><a name="link277" id="link277"></a>little
+      hateful insect that has troubled her darling child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing more need be said of the elementary spirits of Air and Fire; but
+      as we have followed Master Haemmerling into the lower depths of the
+      mountains, we might just as well remain there a while and make the
+      acquaintance of the Gnomes, the Spirits of the Earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can you see, through the dense air which fills these immense caverns, the
+      long, gigantic stalactites, reaching from the ceiling to the floor and
+      strongly impregnated with iron? They are the columns of this subterranean
+      palace, and around these stalactites, peaceful, slumbering waters form a
+      kind of little lakes, the shores of which look as if they were covered
+      with rust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here and there, in the damp low grounds, half choked with ore and slag of
+      various kinds, dark reeds are growing in the shape of lizards; like
+      lizards they bend backwards, moving their heads from side to side and
+      showing thus the diamond eye which shines brilliantly at the extreme end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These dark depths seem to teem with fantastic creatures; close by a heap
+      of grains of gold, stands immovable a watchful, silent guardian, a
+      griffin; a pack of black dogs, also guardians of the treasures hid in this
+      world of precious metals and <span class="pagenum">[278]</span><a
+      name="link278" id="link278"></a>stones, are roaming incessantly along the
+      ceiling. On the sloping sides, dwarfs not larger than grasshoppers, and
+      jumping about like peas in the sieve of the winnower, are gathering right
+      and left the tiny gold and silver spangles which are left at their
+      disposal, while enormous toads are posted about as watchmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, far back in the remotest part of these abysses the kings of this
+      empire are moving about; these thick-set men, with stout limbs and
+      monstrous heads, are the Gnomes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But people hardly believe in Gnomes any longer; the hard-working miners
+      who ought to come every day in contact with them, deny their existence,
+      and they have gradually passed into the class of fabulous beings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, I am told that as recently as last year, a pretty peasant girl from
+      the neighborhood of Hamburg appeared on a certain evening at a ball, with
+      a large ruby on her finger. She professed to have received this gem from
+      an Earth Spirit, who had appeared to her at the entrance to the Faunus
+      mines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gossips of the village were not satisfied, however, with the account,
+      and suspected the Gnome to have been an English Gnome, who was travelling
+      abroad for his health and courting pretty girls for his amusement. This
+      conviction <span class="pagenum">[279]</span><a name="link279" id="link279"></a>was
+      so strong that the poor girl had to leave the country in disgrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the last Gnome that has been mentioned in that part of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0105" id="linkimage-0105"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/299s.jpg" alt="299s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/299.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/299m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[283]</span><a name="link283" id="link283"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0106" id="linkimage-0106"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/303s.jpg" alt="303s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/303.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/303m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Elementary Spirits of the Water.&mdash;<i>Petrarch at Cologne.&mdash;Divine
+      Judgment by Water.&mdash;Nixen and Undines.&mdash;A Furlough till Ten o&rsquo;clock.&mdash;The
+      White-footed Undine.&mdash;Mysteries on the Rhine.&mdash;The Court of the
+      Great Nichus.&mdash;Nix-COBT, the Messenger of the Dead.&mdash;His Funny
+      Tricks.&mdash;I go in Search of an Undine.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>fter leaving
+      Aix-la-Chapelle, I had stopped at Cologne, on the left bank of the Rhine,
+      which I then found completely covered with several rows of women, a
+      countless and charming multitude....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adorned with flowers or aromatic herbs, the sleeves <span
+      class="pagenum">[284]</span><a name="link284" id="link284"></a>pushed up
+      above the elbow, they dipped their soft white hands and arms into the
+      river, murmuring certain mysterious words which I could not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I questioned some people. They told me it was an ancient custom of
+      the country. Thanks to these ablutions and certain prayers which
+      accompanied them, the river carried down with it all the diseases, which
+      would otherwise have attacked them during the coming year. I answered,
+      smilingly: &lsquo;How happy the people of the Rhine must be if the kind
+      river thus takes all their sufferings to distant countries! The Po or the
+      Tiber have never been able to do as much for us.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the words which Petrarch wrote in one of his familiar letters,
+      written on St. John&rsquo;s Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter, as precious by its date as by its contents, proves beyond all
+      question, that in the fourteenth century the Rhine was popularly
+      worshipped and adored on the very days on which the summer solstice is
+      celebrated by bonfires after the manner of the old fire worshippers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately the Christians ended by appealing to the elements, to Fire
+      or Water, as to a judicial authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The popular notion that the elements were perfectly pure and would hence
+      instinctively reject every impure substance, led naturally to ordeals
+      <span class="pagenum">[285]</span><a name="link285" id="link285"></a>by
+      water. The accused was undressed; his hands and feet were tied crosswise,
+      the right hand to the left foot and the right foot to the left hand, and
+      thus bound he was thrown into a river or any watercourse that was deep
+      enough. If he floated, he was guilty and instantly burnt; if he sank and
+      remained for some time at the bottom of the water, he was considered
+      innocent&mdash;but he was drowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heinrich Heine, at least, tells us that this was the infallible result of
+      justice in the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages ended in Germany but
+      yesterday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was also a trial by bread and cheese (<i>exorcismus panis hordeacei,
+      vel casei, ad probationem veri</i>), but bread and cheese are not
+      elements. Let us return to the elementary spirits of Water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the great religious reaction which took place after the days of
+      Charlemagne, all the mythological gods of rivers and streams had gradually
+      returned, more or less successfully, to their former occupations. The
+      great Nix or Nichus, upon whom devolved the rule over all the rivers of
+      Germany, was no other than the ancient Niord, a very important deity and a
+      kind of Northern Neptune. This very weighty discovery is due to the
+      learned Mallet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt this god Niord was one of those who, on their disastrous flight
+      from Argentoratum, had <span class="pagenum">[286]</span><a
+      name="link286" id="link286"></a>fallen into the Rhine. They
+      thought that he was drowned, but he had only taken refuge in one of the
+      lowest, almost unfathomable depths of the river. From this safe retreat
+      the great Nichus had defied the decrees of Councils and the anathemas of
+      the Christians hurled against all elementary spirits alike; there he had
+      summoned the subaltern deities of sources, ponds, lakes, and smaller
+      streams, the nymphs of the banks, and the hideous, scaly monsters which
+      swarmed at the bottom of the river. Organizing all these into a people, an
+      escort, and an army, he had come forth and invaded at the head of his host
+      the banks of the Neckar and the Main, the Moselle and the Meuse, the great
+      tributaries of the Rhine, and governed the inhabitants of the banks by
+      terror. More than once he had extended his ravages far beyond the plains,
+      overthrowing churches that had but just been completed, and drowning in
+      his waters all the deserters from the altars of Odin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Niord was a wicked god, who had a fearful temper. He held his subjects, to
+      whatever class they might belong, completely under his yoke, treating them
+      capriciously and cruelly, and making of the Rhine a hell of waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to this dark and damp kingdom of the great Nichus that we have to go
+      in order to make the acquaintance, not of his great dignitaries, but <span
+      class="pagenum">[287]</span><a name="link287" id="link287"></a>of the very
+      humblest and lowest of his subjects, the Nixen and the male and female
+      Undines, a race of anathematized demons, who make up, by themselves,
+      almost the whole population of this realm beneath the waters of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What! Must we really count our beautiful Lore, the charming fairy Lorelei,
+      you who preferred death to the punishment of making all men fall in love
+      with you, much as you loved men in general, must we count you among the
+      demons, evildoing and accursed sprites? No! How public opinion has stoutly
+      held its own in defiance of all the decrees of the Church. Nixen, like the
+      Fairies, are by common consent divided into two classes: Nixen proper, who
+      are former pagan deities and not too much to be dreaded, and female Nixen,
+      almost always harmless and at times even useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is these latter only of whom we shall hereafter speak as Undines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Nixen of the first class are ever ready to assume any disguise that
+      may aid them in attaining their purpose. Some of them roam about in
+      deserted places near the banks of rivers; others have at times appeared in
+      the neighboring towns, pretending to be foreign ladies of distinction, or
+      artists, generally great performers on the harp. Here they have begun
+      intrigues with credulous lovers or unlucky admirers. Others appear at
+      village <span class="pagenum">[288]</span><a name="link288" id="link288"></a>celebrations,
+      mingling in the dance with such energy, that their partners are
+      intoxicated, carried away, and, losing their heads, think they continue to
+      hear the sound of harps and violins, while they are already far away, led
+      on by imaginary music, and only return to consciousness on the banks of
+      the river, at the moment when they are about to sink helpless into the
+      waters of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0107" id="linkimage-0107"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/308s.jpg" alt="308s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/308.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/308m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      One important point, however, must not be overlooked. To protect one&rsquo;s
+      self against the allurements of these accursed fairies, a bit of horehound
+      or marjoram is sufficient. We hope all who propose visiting the Rhine will
+      be careful always to keep such an herb on their person. Before they take
+      out their passports they ought always to pay a visit to an herbalist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second class of Nixen, the only one in which we are interested, the
+      Undines, are, as far as I have been able to learn, the restless souls of
+      <span class="pagenum">[289]</span><a name="link289" id="link289"></a>poor
+      girls who, driven to despair by love, have thrown themselves into the
+      Rhine. Unfortunately German lovers, not very courageous at best, are but
+      too apt to seek relief in suicide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0108" id="linkimage-0108"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/309s.jpg" alt="309s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/309.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/309m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      According to the somewhat uncertain information for which I am indebted to
+      my authorities or to my intercourse with the Rosahl family, the Undines
+      <span class="pagenum">[290]</span><a name="link290" id="link290"></a>are
+      born as human beings and very inferior in power to the genuine Nixen. They
+      live under the water exactly the same time they would have lived on earth,
+      if they had not voluntarily put an end to their existence. They are thus
+      granted a kind of exceptional resurrection and have here a preliminary
+      purgatory, in which they but too frequently expiate, if not the sin of
+      their love, at least that of their death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the lowest depths of the river, at the bottom of vast, submerged
+      grottoes, a secret tribunal, presided over by the great Nichus, holds its
+      solemn meetings. Here they are disciplined with the utmost severity, as is
+      abundantly proven by a great number of terrible stories, such as the
+      account of the three Undines of Sinzheim, which the two brothers Grimm
+      report in their great work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three young girls of marvelous beauty, three sisters, appeared every
+      evening at the social meetings of Epfenbach, near Sinzheim and took their
+      seats among the linen-spinners. They brought new songs and merry stories
+      which no one had heard before. Where did they come from? No one knew, and
+      no one dared to ask for fear of appearing suspicious. They were the
+      delight of these meetings, but as soon as the clock struck ten they rose,
+      and neither prayers nor supplications could induce them to stay a moment
+      longer. <span class="pagenum">[291]</span><a name="link291" id="link291"></a>One
+      evening the schoolmaster&rsquo;s son, who had fallen in love with one of
+      them, undertook to prevent their departure at the usual hour; he put back
+      the wooden clock, which usually gave them warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0109" id="linkimage-0109"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/311s.jpg" alt="311s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/311.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/311m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The next day some people from Sinzheim, who were walking by the side of
+      the lake, heard groans rising from the depths of the lake, while the
+      surface was stained by three large spots of blood. From that time the
+      three sisters were never seen again at the evening assemblies, and the
+      school<span class="pagenum">[292]</span><a name="link292" id="link292"></a>master&rsquo;s
+      son faded away gradually. He died very soon afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These three sisters, so gentle, so lovely and laborious, had in nothing
+      betrayed a connection with the spirits of the lower world. The only thing
+      was, that people remembered how the hems of their garments had frequently
+      been wet, a sure sign by which Undines can be recognized. Otherwise they
+      seem to have been very much like other girls, and the severity of the
+      great Nichus appears hardly reasonable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to this hour of ten o&rsquo;clock, however, military rules cannot be
+      more rigorous than his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must, on the other hand, not be imagined that all Undines are as gentle
+      and resigned as these three sisters. There are some who bitterly resent
+      having been abandoned by their lovers, and try to revenge themselves;
+      these seem to partake to some degree of the character of the Nixen, or
+      rather,&mdash;why should we not say so at once and quite candidly?&mdash;they
+      remain faithful to their instincts as women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a proof of this statement I will quote a short but perfect little
+      drama, which Miss Margaret Rosahl has, at my request, copied from Busching&rsquo;s
+      voluminous collection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Count Herman von Filsen, whose estates lay on the right bank of the Rhine,
+      between Oslerspey <span class="pagenum">[293]</span><a name="link293"
+      id="link293"></a>and Brauback, was about to marry the rich heiress of
+      the castle of Rheins, on the other bank. His messenger had started to
+      carry the letters of invitation to all the guests, but a sudden rise of
+      the waters had nearly prevented his crossing a small stream. In trying to
+      get over, his horse stumbled, and was drowned. The messenger, however, did
+      not lose courage, but went on his way on foot. Everywhere he found the
+      brooks swollen into streams, and the torrent seemed to press him more and
+      more closely, describing curves and zigzags, with countless cataracts,
+      barring him the way on all sides and making the usual path impassable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the aid of a huge stick and jumping from rock to rock, the poor, half
+      bewildered man kept on, walking well-nigh at hap-hazard, till he found
+      himself near the Rhine, into which the swollen torrent, rushing after him
+      with sudden fury, seemed determined to push him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately a small boat was lying quite near the shore: he loosened it,
+      took the oars, and returned to Filsen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he reached the castle he said to the Count: &ldquo;Sir, a Nix has
+      barred me the way.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Count did not believe in Nixen. He sent out another messenger. But the
+      same adventure befell him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wedding day had been fixed and the Count <span class="pagenum">[294]</span><a
+      name="link294" id="link294"></a>went on, although he feared his friends
+      and followers would be few in number.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, as he crossed the river from the right bank to the left, in
+      order to pay a visit to his lady love, a sudden tempest broke out. He
+      thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters, bending over the bow of
+      the boat and trying to draw it down into the abyss beneath the waters.
+      Thereupon he became thoughtful, sent for his steward, and ordered him to
+      find out what had become of a certain girl of the neighborhood,
+      Gott-friede from Braubach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0110" id="linkimage-0110"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/314s.jpg" alt="314s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/314.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/314m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[295]</span><a name="link295" id="link295"></a>"I
+      met her a few days ago,&rdquo; replied the steward, &ldquo;as she was
+      going to St. Marks Chapel, and I offered her holy water. Gottfriede asked
+      me about your approaching wedding. She was very well, and seemed to be in
+      good spirits.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and see if you can find her,&rdquo; said the Count, &ldquo;and
+      bring me word.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0111" id="linkimage-0111"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/315s.jpg" alt="315s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/315.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/315m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      During the wedding feast Hermann von Filsen appeared joyous and attentive
+      to his bride, the new Countess, but the effort to appear so caused his
+      perspiration to break out profusely, especially when all of a sudden a
+      small woman&rsquo;s foot, white and delicate, appeared to his eyes, and to
+      his only, on the ceiling of the dinner-hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt a chill in all his limbs. He rose suddenly <span class="pagenum">[296]</span><a
+      name="link296" id="link296"></a>and fled to another room, followed by his
+      wife, his mother, and all the guests, who thought he had been seized with
+      sudden illness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this room he saw, and he alone again saw, a white hand raise a curtain
+      and with the forefinger beckon him to follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long time ago Hermann had heard, without paying any attention at that time
+      to the statement, that such a small white foot and a small white hand
+      indicated the presence of an Undine and the coming of an inevitable
+      calamity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he believed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop, who had performed the marriage ceremony, was at the dinner.
+      Hermann went straight up to him, knelt down, and confessed aloud, and with
+      many tears, that a young girl named Gottfriede, fairer and better than all
+      her sisters, had loved him dearly, and that he had returned her love and
+      then abandoned her. Gottfriede had sought oblivion of her sufferings in
+      the river, and now was bent upon revenge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless me, father, for I am going to die!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop, before uttering the words of absolution, demanded first that
+      the Count should abjure his impious faith in such supernatural beings, of
+      whom the Church knew nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I refuse to believe what I see? There she is! Looking as
+      pale as she was this morning <span class="pagenum">[297]</span><a
+      name="link297" id="link297"></a>at the bow of the boat. Her hair,
+      full of green grass, is hanging in disorder all over her shoulders; she
+      looks at me with a tearful smile.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing but visions!&rdquo; replies the bishop. &ldquo;Your eyes
+      deceive you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is not only by the eye that I am aware of her presence, I
+      hear her voice; she is calling me? Forgive me, Gottfriede!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0112" id="linkimage-0112"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/317s.jpg" alt="317s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/317.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/317m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are out of your mind! These are the devil&rsquo;s snares! And
+      who tells you that the girl has ceased to live? That she has committed a
+      crime? Thanks be to God, Gottfriede came to me, she confessed to me
+      penitently, and now she is in a convent!&rdquo; At this moment the
+      assembly, already deeply excited, was somewhat startled by the entrance of
+      the steward, who looked terrified, went up to the Count&rsquo;s mother,
+      and whispered some words into her ear. She could not repress a cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she is dead, and I also must die!&rdquo; cried Hermann in
+      accents of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young bride, offended at this avowal of a previous attachment, had at
+      first stood aloof; now, consulting her own heart alone, she thought of
+      contesting <span class="pagenum">[298]</span><a name="link298" id="link298"></a>the
+      right of this invisible rival, and with open arms drew near the Count; but
+      he pushed her aside rudely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bishop began his exorcisms. While he was repeating the prescribed
+      words, the Count asked:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want of me, Gottfriede? Forgive me and we will all pray
+      for you. You are seeping and kissing me by turns, but your kisses are
+      nothing but bitterness and sorrow to me, since I have given my name to
+      another, since another is my&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not complete the sentence. Uttering a sharp cry he fell at full
+      length to the ground, and on his neck appeared a long, bluish mark, such
+      as is seen in strangled persons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great Nichus is, as we have seen, the master, the despot, the <i>Wassermann</i>,
+      par excellence, of all this watery, dark world, peopled by Nixen and
+      Undines. His authority is, moreover, by no means limited to the exercise
+      of judicial functions; his will, constantly under the influence of an
+      ill-regulated appetite, is law for everybody; the male Nixen are his
+      Court, and his harem is kept full by the fairest among those women who
+      become his own by suicide. This greenish-complexioned Sardanapalus is said
+      to celebrate incredibly monstrous orgies with his drowned Odalisques.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is, in reality, Niord, the Scandinavian god, <span class="pagenum">[299]</span><a
+      name="link299" id="link299"></a>and this Niord again is, originally, one
+      of those old Roman emperors, who were deified, and whose portraits
+      Petronius has left us drawn in mud and blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0113" id="linkimage-0113"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/319s.jpg" alt="319s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/319.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/319m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      His principal agent, and the Jack-of-all-trades of the whole community,
+      Nixcobt, the messenger of the dead, has to maintain communication between
+      the people who live on the river, and those who live in it. He is perhaps
+      the most eccentric of all the mythical personages of the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When morning is about to dawn and the mountain tops are beginning to glow
+      in a faint subdued light, a kind of low, thickset man of the most hideous
+      appearance, may occasionally be seen gliding along the houses of a town,
+      keeping carefully in the shade, or slipping down the hill-side between the
+      long rows of grapes, which are almost as high as he is. His terrible head
+      turns upon his slender neck as upon a pivot, and thus he can see and
+      examine everything without stopping for a moment. His bare shoulders, his
+      elbows, knees, and cheekbones are covered with scales; small pins appear
+      <span class="pagenum">[300]</span><a name="link300" id="link300"></a>at
+      intervals at his ankles; his round glamous eyes have a bright red point in
+      the centre; his teeth and hair are green, and his enormous mouth, split
+      wide open and shaped like the mouth of a fish, wears a fixed smile, which
+      strikes terror in the beholder. This creature is Nixcobt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0114" id="linkimage-0114"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/320s.jpg" alt="320s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/320.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/320m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      With daybreak he is back in the river to inquire if its mournful
+      population has been added to over night by some victim, suicide or not. He
+      takes down a description of each one, draws up a report, inquires as to
+      what induced them to seek refuge in the new world, and offers them his
+      services for the purpose of letting the friends and parents know, <span
+      class="pagenum">[301]</span><a name="link301" id="link301"></a>whom they
+      may have left behind, ignorant of their fate and inconsolable at their
+      loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he amuses the great Nichus with all his stories and all the clever
+      tricks he has been playing during his nocturnal visits to the people in
+      the villages and towns on the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These merry tricks of Master Nixcobt form even in our day an ever welcome
+      staple of amusement to the young spinners during the long winter nights,
+      accompanied as they are by the cheerful hum of the swiftly turning wheels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day Nixcobt calls upon the tax collector of a little town on the
+      Rhine, whom he finds in great consternation. His wife has left his house
+      and he does not know what has become of her. To console him Nixcobt tells
+      him that she is dead, having drowned herself, and as a proof of it, he
+      shows him a letter which he has with his own hands taken from the pockets
+      of the deceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The husband, whose tears had been flowing freely, dries them quickly,
+      becomes furious, and looks at his children with fierce glances. He is
+      jealous of their dead mother. Nixcobt laughs and goes to some one else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That some one else, an honest vintner of the Rheingau, has the night
+      before killed his friend in an excess of passion and then thrown the body
+      into the Rhine, together with the knife with which <span class="pagenum">[302]</span><a
+      name="link302" id="link302"></a>he had committed the murder. This knife
+      Nix-cobt now presents to him, for he takes delight in restoring lost
+      objects of this kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the murderer stands petrified at the sight of the still bloody
+      knife, the Gnome hastens to the Mayor to report to him the whole matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An inquiry is held, the vintner is found, holding the bloody knife in his
+      hand, he is hanged and Nixcobt laughs heartily.
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/322s.jpg" alt="322s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/322.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/322m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      One night a notary of Badenheim, near Mayence, hears in his sleep a voice
+      saying:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John Harnisch, the great Nichus is courting your wife, who has been
+      changed into an Undine three months ago; she will not listen to him, and
+      <span class="pagenum">[303]</span><a name="link303" id="link303"></a>he
+      wants you to tell him how he must manage to please her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The notary thought it was a bad dream, uttered a sigh as he thought of his
+      deceased wife, and fell asleep once more. But a chilly hand resting upon
+      his breast waked him once more, and the voice said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John Harnisch, speak, speak promptly and be sincere, or you shall
+      never sleep again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Harnisch resisted for some time longer, but a red flame dimly lighted
+      up his alcove and he saw a row of green teeth and scaly cheek bones.
+      Thoroughly frightened, he said what he could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks!&rdquo; cries Nixcobt, and breaks out into a far sounding
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might fill folios with all the lugubrious jokes of this messenger of
+      the dead, but we will abstain. Besides, Nixcobt has lost all respect
+      now-a-days. He is no longer seen gliding along the houses in towns or
+      slipping through the rows in the vineyards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might in like manner tell a vast number of interesting stories and
+      quote endless <i>Lieder</i> and ballads, which treat of Nixen and Undines.
+      For there are, besides, Undines of rivers and Undines of lakes, and there
+      are even some in the ocean; in Germany all watercourses, down to the
+      tiniest rills, have their Undines. <span class="pagenum">[304]</span><a
+      name="link304" id="link304"></a>Only day before yesterday I was walking on
+      the banks of the Rhine; only yesterday on those of the Moselle, This
+      morning, wandering about at haphazard I encountered a brook, a mere rill,
+      which attracted me by its sweet murmurs. I followed it, followed it for
+      two hours. I happened to have nothing else to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My tiny rill, a mere infant so near its source, was turning and twisting
+      in the thick grass and seemed to try and walk on all fours as little
+      children do. Farther down it had become a little girl, having increased in
+      size and bulk; it now wandered hither and thither, carelessly,
+      capriciously, leaping merrily over the rocks and carrying off here a
+      flower and there a flower that grew on its banks, no doubt for the purpose
+      of making a bouquet. Still farther on, I witnessed its marriage with a big
+      brook that had come down all the way from the mountains; it was a young
+      woman now, a wife, and walked soberly through the plain, like a prudent
+      stream, bearing already boats on its surface and preparing to join an
+      elder sister, the Moselle. Soon I had to cross it on a bridge; on this
+      same bridge four Prussian soldiers were busy watching the water as it
+      flowed by, no doubt in the hope of catching a fair Undine as she was
+      stealthily slipping down the river. As for myself, I had in vain traced
+      the unknown little river from its birth all <span class="pagenum">[305]</span><a
+      name="link305" id="link305"></a>along its banks, under the thick shelter
+      of willows and alder bushes; neither day before yesterday on the Rhine,
+      nor yesterday on the Moselle, nor today, did I ever find a trace of a
+      Nymph, a Nix, or an Undine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What must be my conclusion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thief who had been brought before a police court and was there
+      confronted with two persons who had seen him steal, said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These men claim that they have seen me, but I, I could bring twenty
+      other witnesses who would swear that they have not seen me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that prove?&rdquo; asked the judge of the court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0115" id="linkimage-0115"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/325s.jpg" alt="325s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/325.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/325m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      I saw nothing. &ldquo;What does that prove?&rdquo; as the wise judge said
+      to the thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[309]</span><a name="link309" id="link309"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0116" id="linkimage-0116"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/329s.jpg" alt="329s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/329.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/329m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Familiar Spirits.&mdash;<i>Butzemann.&mdash;The Good Frau Holle.&mdash;Ko-bolds.&mdash;A
+      Kobold in the Cook&rsquo;s Employ.&mdash;Zotterais and the Little White
+      Ladies.&mdash;The Killecroffs, the Devil&rsquo;s Children.&mdash;White
+      Angels.&mdash;Granted Wishes, a Fable.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>rance, which is
+      skeptic to the core, has no idea of the importance of certain visible or
+      invisible spirits, who eagerly seek the society of man, sleeping <span
+      class="pagenum">[310]</span><a name="link310" id="link310"></a>under his
+      roof, or in certain cases becoming members of his family, in the strictest
+      sense of the word. Besides, they render efficient services to a good
+      housekeeper; they may do great harm if they are made angry, and they give
+      at times most useful advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These hobgoblins, little known outside of Germany and England, frequent
+      also the French provinces watered by the Meuse, the Moselle, and the
+      Rhine, and are sometimes brought to Paris by cooks from Alsace and
+      coachmen from Lorraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us rapidly glance, not at all, but at some of the best authenticated
+      among these familiar spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evening has come, the night is dark, and master and mistress are fast
+      asleep. A servant with a candle in her hand and gaping to her heart&rsquo;s
+      content, goes once more over the house, looking in all the corners and out
+      of the way places and putting everything in order. All of a sudden a door
+      is swiftly opened and closed again right in her face and her light is
+      blown out. You will say a window has been left open and the draught has
+      done all this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By no means! It is the <i>Butzemann</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some merry companions are assembled in the large dining-room of the hotel
+      and celebrate there a feast of grapes in memory of the divine Dionysius.
+      The night advances and there they are still, <span class="pagenum">[311]</span><a
+      name="link311" id="link311"></a>glass in hand, singing, drinking....
+      Silence! all of a sudden singing and drinking comes to an end; the glasses
+      halt half way in the midst of a toast; the heavy eyes open wide, the
+      trembling knees grow strong once more. Every one of the guests hastens
+      home. Three times a hairy, ill-shapen creature has come and knocked with
+      its wings against the window. You will say it was a bat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By no means! It is the <i>Butzemann!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The family is gathering around the warm porcelain stove, where they can
+      safely defy cold winter. The men are smoking, a pot of beer by their side;
+      the women are knitting and talking of the approaching wedding of the
+      eldest daughter. Oh misery! Away back in the fireplace, a great noise is
+      heard; a bright light shines. Coals and sparks are scattered all around,
+      and some have fallen upon the dress of the betrothed. What is the matter?
+      You will say again, it was a knot in the wood, perhaps a chestnut that had
+      been overlooked in the ashes and has burst now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By no means! it is the <i>Butzemann!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Butzemann, a prophetic family spirit, warns you of coming danger and
+      bids you prepare for an approaching misfortune. Never undertake a journey,
+      never get married if a clear sign has made you aware that Butzemann has
+      put his veto upon your journey or your marriage. The only difficulty <span
+      class="pagenum">[312]</span><a name="link312" id="link312"></a>you will
+      have is to distinguish between Butzemann and a puff of wind, a bat, or an
+      exploding chestnut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is much easier to recognize <i>Frau Holle</i>, as her presence is
+      always announced by unmistakable indications. She has assumed the task of
+      overlooking the poor country girls at their work. But it has never been
+      found out why this benevolent fairy of work-people does not live in some
+      great industrial city, or some beautiful country district, where the signs
+      of active life are abundant and the whirring of wheels or the stamping of
+      machinery is heard; where the spinners sing, and the washerwomen beat time
+      at the limpid stream. She prefers, with unaccountable perverseness, to
+      live in dismal swamps, beside faithless Will-o&rsquo;-the-Wisps and low
+      Nixen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one has ever dared examine this question so closely as to ascertain the
+      precise truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some have dropped timid hints that Frau Holle, now occupying a very humble
+      position and rated among the familiar spirits only, was once upon a time a
+      high and mighty personage, but they have had nothing more to say of her
+      past glory, as is the case with poor ladies who have been &ldquo;unfortunate.&rdquo;
+      Others, with more boldness or more knowledge, have recognized in her the
+      goddess Frigg, Odin&rsquo;s wife. Dear Frau Holle! what a coming down!
+      what poor creatures we are, after all. <span class="pagenum">[313]</span><a
+      name="link313" id="link313"></a>As soon as the cross was planted on the
+      banks of the Rhine and the Danube, Frigg, under the name of Hertha (Mother
+      Earth), had taken refuge on an island in the ocean, where she lived
+      invisible and alone in the heart of a sacred forest, which was constantly
+      invaded by the waves of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A priest, who had remained faithful to the old religion, alone knew the
+      hour and the minute when the goddess would deign once more to appear to
+      men. At the given moment he drew forth, on the marshy island, a chariot
+      wrapped in veils. Hertha got in, and for some days travelled through the
+      world, diffusing all around her good will and consolation. Then all wars
+      were suspended; not only the sword went back into its sheath, but all
+      irons, all defensive and offensive weapons and even the iron shoes of the
+      ploughs, had to be kept carefully concealed. Hertha invited the world to
+      enjoy peace and repose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now let us see in what respect Frau Holle or Holla reminds us of the good
+      goddess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At certain periods of the year, especially at Christmas, Frau Holle leaves
+      her marshy island in order to inspect the world. All who work in linen,
+      spinning, weaving, embroidery, or starching, are by turns visited by the
+      good lady. Their idleness and their carelessness are severely punished. If
+      one fine morning Annie finds her wheel <span class="pagenum">[314]</span><a
+      name="link314" id="link314"></a>or Kate her loom covered with green slime,
+      if Bertha notices her work torn in the place which she repaired only the
+      night before, or if the water has over night turned greasy and looks
+      discolored, the poor girls may be sure that Frau Holle has been on her
+      round of inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she is pleased, on the other hand, the ribbon around the distaff holds
+      a pretty marshflower, a lily, an iris, or a gladiolus; on the lace cushion
+      or on the seamstress&rsquo;s work a little golden needle is stuck, and on
+      the heap of specially well washed and well folded linen lies a cake of
+      perfumed soap, which fills the whole house with its sweet odor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes Frau Holle finds her way mysteriously to a garret, where a poor
+      woman is lying sick with fever, the result of overwork. Then she finishes
+      herself the work that had been begun, and when she leaves she puts a few
+      florins under the pillow of the sleeping sufferer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blessings be upon you, good Dame Holle! Even if you were really once a
+      goddess of the first rank, you need not blush at your present condition.
+      Still, we cannot help asking, with a slight tremor of fear, how it can
+      have come about, that the noble Frigg, the all powerful Hertha, should
+      have been reduced to play the lady patroness of washerwomen and
+      seamstresses? How has this island in the ocean, with its sacred forest,
+      become a wretched <span class="pagenum">[315]</span><a name="link315"
+      id="link315"></a>marsh, fetid and ill reputed? There is but one answer
+      to such a question: Frigg has been unfortunate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the spinners and seamstresses, the clear-starchers and embroiderers
+      are not the only ones who are honored by kind attentions from the
+      supernatural world. The brothers Grimm say:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0117" id="linkimage-0117"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/335s.jpg" alt="335s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/335.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/335m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In certain parts of the world, every person&mdash;man, woman, or
+      child&mdash;has his own goblin to do menial service; he carries water,
+      cuts wood, and fetches beer.&rdquo; During all this time the master has
+      nothing to do but to set still and to see the work done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This goblin is evidently the <i>Genius loci</i> of the ancients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among all these goblins, however, one is by far the most famous in
+      Germany, and at the same time the oddest, of whom the most extraordinary
+      stories are told. They call him <i>Kobold.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the night the Kobold sets everything to <span class="pagenum">[316]</span><a
+      name="link316" id="link316"></a>rights in the kitchen; he cleans the
+      glasses, the plates, the pans, and wages war against the spiders and the
+      mice. For all these attentions he asks only a little food, specially
+      prepared for him, for he would never dream to ask for a share of his
+      master&rsquo;s dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although he seems to be specially devoted to the cook&rsquo;s department,
+      the Kobold is first of all attached to the house. If the cook is
+      dismissed, or if the master moves, he nevertheless remains in his old
+      home, quite ready to offer his services to the new comers. If the cook
+      goes, she says to her who takes her place:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not forget to put a little panada on the kneading trough for the
+      Kobold, or he might play you some ugly tricks. Be careful, for he is not
+      always in good humor.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the Kobold, or in his place the cat, eats the panada, the new cook is
+      sure to say:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chim has been here; I see we shall be good friends.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if Chim has left the dainty untouched, or has merely tasted it, she is
+      troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he wants it made with the yolk of an egg? Or perhaps I had
+      not put enough butter to it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the Kobold is almost always invisible, he is at all times ready
+      for a chat. <span class="pagenum">[317]</span><a name="link317"
+      id="link317"></a>What are we to make of these strange beings, the
+      servants of our servants, who are even more faithful than the latter to
+      the house which they have once made their home, who do not, as we are told
+      is the case in some countries, insist so strongly upon certain privileges
+      that it becomes uncertain whether the servants are not themselves masters
+      and those who think themselves to be masters are in reality servants? They
+      generally do nothing but kindness. Nevertheless they keep out of sight,
+      thus shunning all public return for their benevolent services. What are we
+      to make of such servants? Martin Luther answers in his &ldquo;Table Talk.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0118" id="linkimage-0118"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/337s.jpg" alt="337s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/337.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/337m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For many years,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;a servant had a familiar
+      spirit who sat down by her on the hearth, where she had made a little
+      place for him, and they talked to each other during the long winter
+      evenings. One day she asked Heinzchen (Chim, Heinzchen, and Kurt Chimgen
+      are the pet names by which German and Alsatian cooks generally call their
+      Ko-bolds) to let her see him in his natural shape. At first Heinzchen
+      refused. <span class="pagenum">[318]</span><a name="link318" id="link318"></a>but
+      at last, as she insisted, he told her to go down into the cellar, where he
+      would show himself to her.&rdquo; &ldquo;She took a candle,&rdquo; he goes
+      on to say, &ldquo;and went into the cellar, where the Kobold appeared to
+      her in the likeness of a child of hers who had died some years before.&rdquo;
+      Whether he vanished then, leaving her in amazement and terror, or whether
+      he resumed the shape in which she had been accustomed to see him, we are
+      not told. It is a grim story upon which we do not care to dwell, for we
+      prefer to remember the Kobold as a cheerful household companion. It is
+      pleasant to think of those quaint little creatures, whose world is the
+      kitchen, and to imagine the joy they feel in sharing the busy, bustling
+      life that goes on there daily. Be sure they know every nook and corner
+      about,&mdash;every stew-pan and ladle, and are learned in the steamy
+      scents and fragrant savors which are the atmosphere of their home. At
+      night when the fires are out, and the family is asleep, they have a life
+      of their own. They are on the best possible terms with the cat, which they
+      permit to share their food, and with which they no doubt waltz when in a
+      gamesome mood. Happy Kobolds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to general belief the Kobolds belong as much to the race of men
+      as to the world of spirits; they retain the size and shape of infants, and
+      that knife which so often is noticed in the form <span class="pagenum">[319]</span><a
+      name="link319" id="link319"></a>of a caudal appendage, is nothing less
+      than the instrument with which they have been put to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There exist, however, quite a number of troublesome hobgoblins, who turn
+      the house upside down and deprive the people to whom they bear a grudge of
+      all peace and sleep, till they well nigh drive them mad. But these
+      creatures ought, in my opinion, not be mixed up with the Kobolds. The
+      latter are almost invariably gentle and inoffensive; if they sometimes
+      become angry, they act just like children; they break and smash things,
+      but they are easily pacified by the sight of some little tit-bit, as for
+      instance, a panada made with butter and eggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0119" id="linkimage-0119"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/339s.jpg" alt="339s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/339.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/339m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The Zotterais and the Little White Ladies seem, in their habits at least,
+      to come nearer to Kobolds. Very useful and easily satisfied, the Zotterais
+      are as fond of stables as the Kobolds are of kitchens; they curry the
+      horses, nurse <span class="pagenum">[320]</span><a name="link320"
+      id="link320"></a>them when they are sick, and keep everything in
+      excellent order in their racks as well as in the harness-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Little White Ladies, on the other hand, are more delicate in their
+      instincts and often quite fastidious; they like only blood horses, Arab or
+      Turkish horses, and hence the popular idea that they have originated in
+      the East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They slip into the stables of wealthy people, while the grooms are asleep;
+      here they light a small candle, which they always keep about them, and
+      then proceed to business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning, when the head, coachman makes his round to see that
+      everything is right, he sometimes finds a drop of wax on the smooth coat
+      of a sorrel or an Isabel colored horse, and then he says to the grooms:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not had much to do to-day, my friends, with your horses; I
+      see the little lady has been here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Zotterais are of unmistakable German origin, for they take care of
+      horses without regard to race and without the help of a wax candle. They
+      have, of course, harder work to do and are more apt to become soiled or to
+      have accidents; but, nevertheless, they accomplish their purpose. They are
+      naturally easily tired, and hence they require a knot to be made in the
+      mane of a horse, where <span class="pagenum">[321]</span><a
+      name="link321" id="link321"></a>they can suspend themselves and
+      rest. There is not a peasant on the banks of the Rhine or the Meuse, who
+      would neglect this duty, and I have myself often seen them attend to it
+      carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0120" id="linkimage-0120"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/341s.jpg" alt="341s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/341.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/341m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Formerly the Zotterais also protected sheep against ticks and kept their
+      wool from getting tangled; they even derived their name from Zotte, which
+      means a flock of wool. In those days, it must be presumed, from the habits
+      of those benevolent little people, the fleeces must have been whiter and
+      better kept than they are now-a-days; but sheep raisers had the unlucky
+      idea, produced probably by avarice, that not a particle of wool should be
+      left on ram or ewe, and thus deprived their tiny friends of all means to
+      rest and recover breath when hard at work. The Zotterais looked upon this
+      neglect of what was due to them as an insult, and abandoned the flocks of
+      sheep for the horses in the stables. Besides, they found it impossible to
+      live on good terms with the shepherds&rsquo; dogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must finally mention the most important and most extraordinary of all
+      familiar spirits, whom we must needs include among these favored beings,
+      <span class="pagenum">[322]</span><a name="link322" id="link322"></a>as he
+      represents nothing less than the son of the house, the child of the
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the <i>Killecroff or Suppositus.</i> The last mentioned name is
+      given to him because this so-called son of the house is in reality a
+      changeling, a supposed child, which has been put into the place of the
+      real child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0121" id="linkimage-0121"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/342s.jpg" alt="342s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/342.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/342m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Who has taken the legitimate child from its cradle in order to put into
+      its place a <i>Killecroff</i>, and who is the real father of the latter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both of these questions are met by one and the same answer. The Devil! We
+      have so far carefully avoided touching on matters of witchcraft; but
+      unfortunately they are as well known on the banks of the Rhine as on those
+      of the Thames and the Seine. The <i>Killecroffs</i>, however, children of
+      the Devil and begotten according to popular belief during the orgies of
+      the Witches&rsquo; Sabbath, have been really in existence upon earth; <i>suppositi</i>
+      or not, they have played their part in the world&rsquo;s history and
+      occasionally even left behind them illustrious descendants. <span
+      class="pagenum">[323]</span><a name="link323" id="link323"></a>In the same
+      way as the Swedish king Vilkins and Merovæus, king of the Franks, boasted
+      of being the sons of a sea-god, the dynasty of the Jagellons in Poland
+      were proud of their original descent from the Devil, no doubt through
+      Killecroffs, and actually bore in their arms certain emblems of hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How can a real Killecroff be recognized, since he has been, improperly
+      enough, counted in among the Kobolds?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[324]</span><a name="link324" id="link324"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0122" id="linkimage-0122"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/343s.jpg" alt="343s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/343.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/343m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      From his first appearance in the world, the Killecroff excites the
+      astonishment, and sometimes the admiration of his reputed parents. He
+      sucks so heartily and with such an appetite that his nurse has to be
+      reinforced by two goats and a cow, like the renowned Gargantua.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he is weaned a new marvel appears: he swallows his soup by the
+      tureen, &ldquo;as much as two peasants and two threshers in the barn would
+      take,&rdquo; says a celebrated writer in speaking of this subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He grows up and keeps everything in commotion around him; he provokes
+      quarrels not only among the servants, but even between his parents. If
+      some untoward event occurs he roars with laughter, on a day of rejoicing
+      he sheds tears and moans piteously. He takes a stick or a spit and rides
+      on it in his room, from morning till evening, climbing on every chair and
+      table, breaking everything that comes in his way, injuring himself&mdash;also
+      quite as readily, provoking cats, dogs, and even the parrot on his perch,
+      till they all mew and bark and scream. Then he runs to the stable and
+      sticks a pin into the croup of a horse to see it kick, and then breaks
+      open the doors and locks by the aid of a huge stick of wood; next he
+      rushes into the garden, playing the part of a tempest there, destroying,
+      uprooting, and breaking everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the poultry yard he wrings the hens&rsquo; necks and walks over the
+      young chickens; in the kitchen <span class="pagenum">[325]</span><a
+      name="link325" id="link325"></a>he loves to take up the tops of pots and
+      pans and to season the dishes according to his fancy with salt, pepper,
+      dust, ashes, oil, vinegar, mustard, sand, or sawdust, and never leaves
+      without having turned on the water everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a visitor arrives, he takes possession of him and stands between his
+      legs, and walks on his toes, pulls the buttons off his waistcoat, and
+      draws the strings out of his shoes; he troubles and annoys him in every
+      way, he pinches and scratches, he worries and tortures him. When his
+      mother cautiously observes that he must not trouble the gentleman he obeys
+      like a good child and leaves the gentleman alone, but not without having
+      first broken his watch-chain, taken his cane, and hid his spectacles; the
+      cane he drops accidentally into the well; as for the spectacles, he
+      forgets where he has put them. When the poor visitor, quite overcome and
+      exhausted, at last rises to go, he stumbles and falls down the stairs,
+      thanks to a string which his playful young friend, the Killecroff, has
+      stretched across the top step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Killecroffs are generally the delight of their parents; fortunately
+      they do not live long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great man whom I have quoted before, told the Duke of Anhalt frankly,
+      that if he were a sovereign like the duke, he would run the risk and
+      become a murderer in such a case, by ordering <span class="pagenum">[326]</span><a
+      name="link326" id="link326"></a>every such son of the devil to be thrown
+      into the Moldau!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This great man, who believed so firmly in Killecroffs, who believed
+      likewise in Butzemann, in Ko-bolds, in Nixen and Undines, who saw the
+      Devil in every fly that came to drink his ink or to perch on his nose, was
+      again Dr. Martin Luther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0123" id="linkimage-0123"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/346s.jpg" alt="346s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/346.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/346m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The great Reformer, who was so valiant in combating the superstitions of
+      the Papists, seems to have taken very little trouble to get rid of his
+      own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But among the many delusions, in which he apparently delighted, there was
+      one, a really charming <span class="pagenum">[327]</span><a
+      name="link327" id="link327"></a>one, which arose from the
+      Christian religion itself, and which, it seems to me, I cannot well pass
+      over in silence when speaking of familiar spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I mean Guardian Angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A most erudite and clever academician, Mr. Alfred Maury, tells us in his
+      charming book on &ldquo;Magic and Astrology,&rdquo; that according to
+      Egyptian doctrines a special star foretold the arrival of every man in
+      this world. In proof of this statement, he refers us to Horapollon, in his
+      &ldquo;Treatise on Hieroglyphics.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We infinitely prefer taking Mr. Maury&rsquo;s own evidence; and he adds:
+      &ldquo;This creed exists still in some remote districts among rural
+      populations, and especially in Germany.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be that in certain portions of Germany every man may still have
+      faith in his star; we are willing to believe it, since he says so; but
+      almost everywhere the star has been superseded by a Guardian Angel, the
+      White Angel, as they call him, a far more tempting personage, and
+      infinitely more intimate and sympathetic. The White Angel is much more
+      than the <i>Genius loci</i>; it is in fact the <i>Genius personalis</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without entering here upon a serious discussion, on the subject of
+      Guardian Angels, whom the modern Church is disposed to ignore, we shall
+      prefer <span class="pagenum">[328]</span><a name="link328" id="link328"></a>inserting
+      here, as a complement to our chapter on Familiar Spirits, a legend, which
+      we were fortunate enough to obtain directly from very truthful and very
+      beautiful lips:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A white figure appeared before the young girl as she awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I am your Guardian Angel!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Then you will grant me the wishes which I shall mention?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I shall carry them to God&rsquo;s throne. You may count upon
+      my assistance. What are your wishes?&rsquo; &ldquo;&lsquo;O White Angel, I
+      am tired of continually turning the spindle, and my fingers are getting to
+      be so hard by constant work, that yesterday, at the dance, my partner
+      might have imagined he was holding a wooden hand.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Your partner was that fine looking gentleman from Hesse? Did
+      he not tell you that he adored your blue eyes and fair hair, and that he
+      would make you a baroness, if you would go home with him?&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;White Angel, make me a baroness.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The evening of that day a young peasant came and asked Louisa&rsquo;s
+      mother for her daughter&rsquo;s hand. The mother said, Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;White Angel, deliver me from this boor. I want to be a
+      baroness!&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the mother, who was a widow, had energy <span class="pagenum">[329]</span><a
+      name="link329" id="link329"></a>enough for two. The White Angel did not
+      appear again; Louisa had to yield, and went on turning her spindle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day her husband, who was a hard-working man, had over-exerted
+      himself and was taken ill. Louisa had seen her gentleman again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;White Angel, he loves me still. He has sworn he would marry
+      me if I were a widow.&rsquo;.... She dared not say more. Her husband
+      recovered his health completely. The White Angel still turned a deaf ear
+      to her wishes. She lost all hope of ever becoming a baroness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some years later Louisa was the mother of two beautiful children;
+      she was fond of her husband, whose labor procured for her all that she
+      needed, and when she thought of him and her two darlings, the spindle felt
+      quite soft to her fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One evening, when she was only half asleep, lying by her husband&rsquo;s
+      side, with one of her hands in his, and the youngest of her babies at her
+      bosom, the white figure appeared once more and she heard a gentle voice
+      whispering something into her ear. It was the voice of the White Angel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did it say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It told her a fable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;A little fish was merrily swimming about in the water and
+      looking seriously at a pretty blackcap which first circled around and
+      around in the air <span class="pagenum">[330]</span><a name="link330"
+      id="link330"></a>and then alighted softly on a branch of a willow which
+      grew close to the bank of the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;"Oh,&rdquo; said the little fish, &ldquo;how happy that bird
+      is. It can rise up to the heavens and go high up to the sun to warm itself
+      in its rays. Why cannot I do the same?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The blackcap was looking at the fish at the same time, and
+      said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;"Oh! how happy that fish is! The element in which it lives
+      furnishes it at the same time with food; it has nothing to do but to glide
+      along. How I should like to sport in the fresh, transparent water!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;At that moment, a kite pounced upon the poor little fish,
+      while a scamp of a schoolboy threw a stone at the bird; the blackcap fell
+      into the water, the fresh, transparent water, and for a moment struggled
+      in it before it died, while the little fish, carried aloft, could go up on
+      high to the sun and warm itself in its rays. Their wishes had been
+      granted.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Louisa,&rsquo; continued the gentle voice, &lsquo;our duty
+      as Guardian Angels is far more frequently to thwart wishes than to satisfy
+      them.&rsquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This was the moral of the fable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Louisa pressed her husband&rsquo;s hand warmly, kissed her last
+      born, and said: 'Thank you, White Angel, thank you.&rsquo;&rdquo; <span
+      class="pagenum">[331]</span><a name="link331" id="link331"></a>I am
+      certainly delighted to think, that if the poor Germans have Killecroffs
+      among their familiar spirits, they have at least also White Angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0124" id="linkimage-0124"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/351s.jpg" alt="351s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/351.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/351m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[335]</span><a name="link335" id="link335"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0125" id="linkimage-0125"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/355s.jpg" alt="355s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/355.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/355m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Giants and Dwarfs.&mdash;<i>Duel between Efthesim and Grommelund.&mdash;Court
+      Dwarfs and Little Dwarfs.&mdash;Ymer&rsquo;s Solis.&mdash;The Invisible
+      Reapers.&mdash;Story of the Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragant.&mdash;How
+      the Giants came to serve the Dwarfs.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>f legendary
+      tradition is only a distant vibration of the bell of history, where must
+      we go and look for traces of the real existence of giants? Must we believe
+      the Edda or Holy writ itself? Afterwards the great fossil skeletons of
+      mammoths, mastodons, and other antediluvian animals only revived the <span
+      class="pagenum">[336]</span><a name="link336" id="link336"></a>memory
+      of gigantic men. The Apocryphal Books tell us that in the days of Enoch, a
+      number of angels, amounting to two hundred, had conceived a desire for the
+      daughters of men and came down to Mount Hermon in order to be near them.
+      Some of the principal ones are even mentioned by name; there were
+      Urakabaramiel, Sanyaza, Tamiel, and Akibiel. Is it a wonder, then, that
+      credulous people should have believed that devils also, who after all are
+      but fallen angels, have acted in the same way towards the descendants of
+      Eve. The Killecroffs, we have seen, were the offspring of a union between
+      devils and earthborn women; in like manner giants were the offspring of
+      marriages between women and angels. Women are evidently capable of setting
+      heaven, earth, and hell on fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Germany, which was the last part of Europe to enter the great Catholic
+      Church, and was to be the first to leave it again at the time of the
+      Reformation, kept up the belief in giants longer than any other country.
+      Perhaps this was one of the results of the right of free inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The giant Einheer lived in the days of Charlemagne and even served in his
+      army. Several centuries later there were gigantic burgraves (Burggra-fen),
+      living all along the banks of the Rhine. They have a well known story
+      there of a young and ingenious giant&rsquo;s daughter, who had been
+      jealously <span class="pagenum">[337]</span><a name="link337" id="link337"></a>guarded
+      in her father&rsquo;s castle, and when she got out into the fields for the
+      first time in her life, brought back in her apron a peasant with his
+      plough and his two horses, whom she had picked up on the way. She showed
+      them to her father as being all three little animals of very curious
+      shape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0126" id="linkimage-0126"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/357s.jpg" alt="357s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/357.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/357m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      After a while, however, the giants became smaller and smaller, until there
+      were only a few left in the highest mountains, in dark forests, and in the
+      romances of chivalry. After that they disappeared altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The report is, however, that a single couple, man and wife, are kept alive
+      by magic art in an isolated part of the Hartz Mountains, to serve as a
+      specimen of the lost race. <span class="pagenum">[338]</span><a
+      name="link338" id="link338"></a>At first the giants had produced universal
+      terror. The god Thor was blessed because he had driven them, armed as he
+      was with his famous iron mace, all across the Hercynian forest. But as
+      people became better acquainted with them, their fears subsided. They
+      turned out to be far from cruel, to eat human flesh only in cases of dire
+      necessity, and to act generally not only kindly, but even like simpletons&mdash;a
+      misfortune common to most men, who are too fully developed in length or in
+      breadth. This latter weakness is well supported by a popular German tale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old duke of Bavaria had at his court a dwarf, called Ephesim, and a
+      giant, called Grommelund. The latter laughed at the dwarf, and Ephesim
+      threatened to box his ears. Grommelund laughed only the more heartily and
+      challenged Ephesim to carry out his threat. The dwarf accepted the
+      challenge, and the duke, having been a witness of the whole scene, ordered
+      at once that a field for single combat should be prepared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody expected to do as the giant did and laugh at the pigmy; as the
+      poor little fellow was hardly two feet high and would have had to climb a
+      long way before reaching the giant&rsquo;s ears. But it turned out very
+      differently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dwarf began by walking all around the giant as if to take his measure.
+      The good-natured giant, <span class="pagenum">[339]</span><a
+      name="link339" id="link339"></a>standing up immovable, looks down
+      upon him and laughs till his sides shake; but while he is holding his
+      hands to his sides, the dwarf unties his shoestrings and then worries him
+      by kicking and pinching his calves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0127" id="linkimage-0127"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/359s.jpg" alt="359s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/359.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/359m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Grommelund laughs more loudly than ever, thanks to the tickling, takes a
+      few strides, steps on his loose shoestrings, nearly stumbles, and at last,
+      with a thoughtful presence of mind, characteristic of his race, he stoops
+      down to tie the strings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ephesim has foreseen this, he avails himself of the opportunity, and slaps
+      the giant&rsquo;s cheek with his little hand, so heartily that the sound
+      reaches the ears of the duke and the lords of his court, who applaud
+      Ephesim&rsquo;s skill enthusiastically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor giant, humiliated and overcome, left the town, it is said, and
+      sought refuge in the mountains, where he died of shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people were thus beginning to have a very humble opinion of giants,
+      when a rumor was spread that they had entered the service of the dwarfs;
+      <span class="pagenum">[340]</span><a name="link340" id="link340"></a>not
+      of court dwarfs, but of little dwarfs, who are so small that, by their
+      size, the others appear as giants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0128" id="linkimage-0128"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/360s.jpg" alt="360s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/360.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/360m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These little dwarfs appear in the popular tales of Germany, under
+      different names, as <i>Wichtelman-ner, Metallarii, or Homunculi</i>, and
+      evidently, at one time, were found in great numbers throughout all the
+      mountainous parts of the North. In Bretagne they were also known as <i>Couribes,
+      Parulpiquets or Cornicouets</i>, but as they are ugly and evil disposed, I
+      presume they are not of the same race with our good little dwarfs. These
+      latter appear in the evening at the foot of large oak trees, or in old
+      ruins, where they come by the <span class="pagenum">[341]</span><a
+      name="link341" id="link341"></a>thousand out of every crack and crevice
+      and gambol and frolic, but vanish at the smallest noise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0129" id="linkimage-0129"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/361s.jpg" alt="361s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/361.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/361m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[343]</span><a name="link343" id="link343"></a>As to
+      their origin there are different opinions entertained. One theory alone is
+      worthy of belief, because it is mentioned already in the Edda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to the Scandinavian Bible, when Odin had killed the giant Ymer,
+      his decaying body produced an innumerable quantity of small worms. By a
+      law of natural order which had already become operative with insects, each
+      worm changed into a chrysalis, and out of each chrysalis came forth a
+      little man, resembling, with a few trifling differences, the race of full
+      sized men, whom Odin had created.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like ourselves, they also are subject to all the infirmities of age, to
+      disease and death; like ourselves, they are at times capable of reasoning
+      with fairness. Skillful metallurgists, they are at work in the mines,
+      where we have already met them; they are not without imagination, and even
+      know what piety is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What religion do they profess?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time, we are told, the majority, having been converted to
+      Christianity, were under its benign influence, in a far higher degree than
+      we, for they did not carry on war among themselves, and all authors,
+      legends, and ballads agree, that they were gentle and peaceful, loving
+      each other, <span class="pagenum">[344]</span><a name="link344"
+      id="link344"></a>kindly disposed towards others, laborious, and very
+      obliging. Hence they were universally known as the <i>Peaceful People</i>,&mdash;das
+      stille Volk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In ancient times,&rdquo; says Wyss, &ldquo;men lived in the
+      valleys, and around their dwellings, in the cavities of the rocks, dwelt
+      the little dwarf people, keeping always on very good terms with them, and
+      helping them even at times in their work in the fields. They took great
+      delight in doing good in this way; for generally they were very busy
+      mining in the mountains, and digging in the ground to collect the tiny
+      particles of gold and silver that could be obtained.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes field laborers coming out to plant or to weed, found their work
+      already done, and heard the dwarfs, hid behind the bushes, break out into
+      loud laughter, when they showed their amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened one day, early in the morning, that some peasants in passing a
+      cornfield, saw that the stalks were falling in long rows, as if by their
+      own will; they were most cunningly cut off below, and now they were
+      ranging themselves, also to all appearance by their own act, in long
+      sheaves. The peasants had no doubt that the good little dwarfs were there,
+      working away stealthily, but of the tiny workmen not a trace could be
+      seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dwarfs possessed, in common with all these <span class="pagenum">[345]</span><a
+      name="link345" id="link345"></a>mysterious races, the power of making
+      themselves invisible. They had nothing to do, for that purpose, but merely
+      to draw a little hood over their ears, which formed part of their costume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our countrymen, seeing that the wheat was not ripe enough to be cut,
+      became exceedingly angry against these injudicious friends, and arming
+      themselves with twigs, went to work striking right and left in the hope of
+      hurting one or the other by chance. They really heard some faint cries of
+      distress in the furrows, and soon the first rows of wheat which had been
+      left standing were thrown into violent disorder, thus testifying to the
+      flight of the little ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several of the dwarfs became even visible, as the twigs suddenly tore the
+      hoods from their heads. Thereupon the men became furious and tried to
+      strike all the harder; but suddenly a violent storm broke forth and the
+      hail came down in torrents, cutting the whole standing crop to pieces and
+      sparing only the rows that had been reaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rude countrymen now saw clearly that the Quiet People had foreseen the
+      hailstorm and anticipated the harvest on that account. They repented their
+      brutality, but the dwarfs, disgusted by their ingratitude, never again
+      appeared in that region of country. Similar occurrences took place in
+      other countries. <span class="pagenum">[346]</span><a name="link346"
+      id="link346"></a>Now let us see, by what perseverance, by what skill,
+      and especially by what audacious conceptions these tiny beings, not much
+      more than a few inches high, succeeded in making themselves masters of the
+      giants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0130" id="linkimage-0130"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/366s.jpg" alt="366s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/366.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/366m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      They were running about quite bewildered, pushing and jostling each other
+      in their anxiety to regain their little mole-hill, he stood at first with
+      his mouth <span class="pagenum">[347]</span><a name="link347" id="link347"></a>wide
+      open, lost in amazement. Then, to amuse himself in true lordly fashion, he
+      crushed a few dozen with his foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not without curiosity, and hence he tried in the next place to
+      find out something about their manners. The moment was not very well
+      chosen, it must be confessed. Men do not usually choose a city that has
+      just been taken by storm and given up to pillage, for the purpose of
+      studying the manners and customs of its citizens. But we have seen before
+      this, that giants are not remarkably bright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our giant, whose name I have never been able to ascertain and whom I will
+      call for convenience sake, <i>Quadragant</i> (&ldquo;Quadragant was rather
+      colossal,&rdquo; I once read in &ldquo;Amadis of Gaul;&rdquo; our giant
+      was really colossal, for he measured thirty feet in height), our giant, I
+      say, stretched himself out at full length and fixed his eyes upon the hole
+      out of which he had pulled the oak tree. He heard a low humming noise
+      underground, but he could see nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought he would wait patiently, and in waiting he fell quietly asleep,
+      turning over so as to lie on his back, his usual position when he was
+      sleeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few hours&rsquo; sound and heavy sleep, such as all giants are
+      said to enjoy, he awoke. Finding <span class="pagenum">[348]</span><a
+      name="link348" id="link348"></a>that the sun had in the mean time followed
+      his example and gone to sleep, he remembered that it was supper time, and
+      as he thought of the delights in store for him he uttered a long and deep
+      sigh of satisfaction. But something that his long drawn breath had brought
+      up, suddenly jumped out of his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0131" id="linkimage-0131"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/368s.jpg" alt="368s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/368.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/368m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      This something was one of the dwarfs; and this dwarf, the boldest and most
+      intelligent among them all, was called Kreiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in order to make it clear how Kreiss happened to be almost in the
+      giant&rsquo;s throat, which was <span class="pagenum">[349]</span><a
+      name="link349" id="link349"></a>of course only accidentally his home for a
+      time, we must go back and see what had happened while Quadragant was
+      asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the little pigmies found their tree uprooted and their people
+      scattered in all directions, escaping through every crack and crevice in
+      the soil, they had rushed into a long subterranean passage, excavated in
+      days long gone by, by their forefathers. Here they had uttered their well
+      known cries of distress, resembling the chirp of crickets, and thus they
+      had finally reached the ruins of an old castle, inhabited by vast numbers
+      of their people, and chosen as the place of meeting of the General Council
+      of the dwarfs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss happened to have arrived the night before, as one of a numerous
+      deputation, and he at once suggested the propriety of burying the dead
+      with all due honors, before anything else was done. After that, they might
+      go to work stopping up all the holes and openings made by the tearing up
+      of the sapling, and filling the excavation which it had produced, so that
+      the rain might not come and inundate their long gallery, which was their
+      only safe means of communication.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two resolutions offered by Kreiss were carried by acclamation, and
+      all, loaded with brush and with stakes, went immediately to work. There
+      were some ten thousand of them. <span class="pagenum">[350]</span><a
+      name="link350" id="link350"></a>They thought the giant had left, but they
+      found him lying full length on the ground and snoring most fiercely. Their
+      first impulse was to escape, but Kreiss held them back. He had conceived a
+      bold plan; he proposed to capture the giant. Were they not already
+      provided with ropes and with stakes? Was there not strength in numbers?
+      They immediately went to work, and in less than an hour the murderer,
+      unable as he was to make the slightest motion, was bound to the soil which
+      he had soaked with their blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you say?.... Yes, sir, you are undoubtedly right. This
+      looks very much like the manner in which Gulliver was treated in the
+      island of Lilliput. How can we help that? Besides, we must remember that
+      there have been dwarfs in Germany from time immemorial. If Jonathan Swift
+      undertook to transfer them to imaginary countries, whose business is that
+      and who is liable to be charged with plagiarism, I ask you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will not stop to discuss this trifling matter, which is of little
+      importance. We have weightier matters than that in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the work was done and with the excitement of the efforts the first
+      enthusiasm also had somewhat passed away, the question arose what was to
+      be done with their capture. They looked at each other in great perplexity.
+      <span class="pagenum">[351]</span><a name="link351" id="link351"></a>The
+      dwarfs are kind hearted people, who have a great horror of blood. Besides,
+      it would have been more difficult even, to dispose of the giant after
+      death than to kill him. Still, if they did not kill Quadragant he would,
+      as soon as he was awake, go to work and cry for help lustily; then the
+      other giants would, no doubt, hasten to his assistance. The disgrace
+      inflicted upon one of their brethren would in all probability render them
+      furious, and they would proceed at once to uproot all the trees and to
+      pursue the poor little people of dwarfs down into the very bowels of the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While these and similar observations were passing in the crowd from one
+      group to another, Kreiss remained silent and thoughtful, supporting his
+      head in his hand and his hand on his elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time the crowd passed from simple talk to grumbling and from
+      grumbling to threats. There was nothing left but to undo what was done as
+      promptly as possible, to abandon this ridiculous enterprise and to restore
+      the giant to liberty in the same way in which he had been deprived of it&mdash;during
+      his sleep. If he should awake before the operation was over, why, then
+      they might try to appease his wrath by handing over to him the authors of
+      this fatal project.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! one can see at a glance, that these dwarfs, small as they were, were
+      nevertheless men, and <span class="pagenum">[352]</span><a
+      name="link352" id="link352"></a>that it is better not to venture
+      upon attacking giants!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were utterly discouraged and demoralized. Calm in spite of all this
+      excitement around him, Kreiss was still meditating, apparently quite
+      unmindful of all the invectives that were hurled at him and the little
+      hands that were threatening him. But when some of them actually began to
+      loosen the ropes, he suddenly dropped his hands from his elbow and his
+      brow, and turning sharply upon his aggressors, he said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I acknowledge my mistake and I am ready to atone for it. Go,&mdash;my
+      seven brothers and myself, we will alone set the giant free again. If he
+      awakes, he shall have to do with us and with us only. Go!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The former conspirators were well content to accept the proposition, and
+      without bestowing a thought upon their murdered brethren, they escaped as
+      fast as they could. In the dim twilight of the last hour of the day one
+      might have seen them running nimbly through the tall grass and under the
+      cupolas of mushroom, arousing in their hurry the beetles and moths, or
+      even mounting upon their backs in order to reach by their aid all the more
+      quickly their safe retreat in the ruins of the old castle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all were gone save Kreiss and his seven <span class="pagenum">[353]</span><a
+      name="link353" id="link353"></a>brothers, he said to them: &ldquo;Now that
+      we are alone, we alone shall reap the glory of the enterprise! So far from
+      regretting what I have done, I mean on the contrary, to enlarge our
+      project in a manner which shall redound to the eternal glory of our race.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0132" id="linkimage-0132"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/373s.jpg" alt="373s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/373.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/373m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The dwarfs are not only skillful metallurgists, but they are also most
+      expert carpenters and builders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence the good people of the Rheingau are <span class="pagenum">[354]</span><a
+      name="link354" id="link354"></a>convinced that they have built all those
+      ruins of solid old castles, in which they are still living and which they
+      have so cunningly repaired and propped up that they will last forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0133" id="linkimage-0133"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/374s.jpg" alt="374s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/374.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/374m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Now Quadragant was sleeping with his mouth wide open, as all large people
+      are apt to&rsquo; do. Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious
+      cavity, armed with a long spear which was equally sharp and pointed at
+      both ends. He took care to rest at first most cautiously only upon the
+      projections of the teeth, which formed, so to say, a double row of
+      parallel battlements. By such assistance he passed from one end of the
+      abyss to the other, without troubling the slumbers of the giant by the
+      <span class="pagenum">[355]</span><a name="link355" id="link355"></a>slightest
+      awkwardness in his movements. For a case of emergency Kreiss held his
+      spear firmly in his hands, ready to fasten it so between the two jaws as
+      to prevent their closing upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0134" id="linkimage-0134"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/375s.jpg" alt="375s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/375.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/375m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      His brothers were in the meantime busily engaged in preparing posts, pins,
+      and rafters, which they handed to him as he needed them. One of them even
+      went with him to assist him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth, and strengthened
+      the piles by beams, which secured them to each other. The work was by no
+      means an easy one, for in the mouth of the giant it was as dark as night,
+      and there reigned in it a heat equal to that of an oven. Moreover
+      Quadragant had dined that day on a deer and several <span class="pagenum">[356]</span><a
+      name="link356" id="link356"></a>hares, and as he liked his game high, like
+      every good judge of fine dinners, the perfumes of his breath increased the
+      inconvenience caused by the heat and the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss&rsquo;s brother was all of a sudden taken ill, and had to leave to
+      join the others outside. They, however, continued work on the scaffolding,
+      and watched the giant carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quadragant was absolutely in the hands of the eight dwarf brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had passed up a lantern to Kreiss, which he hung upon one of the
+      transverse beams, and he now continued his work alone resolutely, although
+      he was every now and then compelled to stop his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His work was at last completed, and he was just about to leave this damp,
+      pestiferous abyss, when the giant awoke, and his first sigh carried off
+      the brave pigmy, as a gust of wind would have carried off a dry leaf from
+      a branch, and hurled him senseless into space. He fell heavily upon the
+      chest of the colossus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as he recovered from the shock, he looked around carefully, and
+      saw, to his great satisfaction, that the bonds which held the giant were
+      beyond doubt strong enough to hold him a prisoner. Then he crept
+      cautiously all along the neck as far as his ear, and by its aid climbed up
+      the chin, after having crossed the cheek in its whole <span class="pagenum">[357]</span><a
+      name="link357" id="link357"></a>length. When he had found a convenient
+      restingplace, he drew himself up to his full height, and raising his
+      feeble voice as loud as he could, he said to the giant:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Murderer of our brethren, you are our prisoner, and you must die!
+      Commend your soul to God.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0135" id="linkimage-0135"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/377s.jpg" alt="377s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/377.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/377m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The giant tried to see the tiny being who was speaking to him so boldly,
+      and cast down his eyes. At first he could distinguish nothing but a feeble
+      glimmering light at the extremity of his nose; but the nose itself
+      completely concealed the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss then advanced a few steps from the chin towards the mouth of the
+      colossus, and the latter now perceived a kind of little man, dressed in a
+      cloak of mouse skin, which he grandly wrapped around him, as Hercules did
+      with the skin of the Nemean lion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his hand, however, he held not a club, but a lantern, in which a
+      firefly did service as candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thanks to this phosphorescent sheen, which seemed to surround Kreiss as
+      with a halo, Quadragant could examine him at leisure, and he asked himself
+      how such an embryo could have flown out of his mouth, and how he,
+      Quadragant, could have become his prisoner? <span class="pagenum">[358]</span><a
+      name="link358" id="link358"></a>The contemptuous glance which he threw at
+      the dwarf made Kreiss aware of what he was discussing in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think you are not captured yet,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Very
+      well, try to get up and walk, if you can!&rdquo; Quadragant did try, and
+      found that he was firmly fastened to the ground by ropes and chains, by
+      each single hair of his head, by every hair on his body. He tried to speak
+      to the pigmy, and he could not, by any effort of his, move his jaws in the
+      slightest way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to the manner of your death,&rdquo; Kreiss went on, &ldquo;if
+      the wolves and the vultures do not hasten your end, hunger will do the
+      work.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this thought of dying of hunger, a mode of death which he had always
+      looked upon as the most terrible of all, Quadragant&rsquo;s heart gave
+      way, and he began to cry piteously. Two torrents of tears flowed down his
+      cheeks, and after turning around the prominence of his lips, ran over from
+      his chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss was compelled to leave his position, so as to avoid the double
+      current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although quite firm in his resolution, he was naturally kind-hearted.
+      These many tears of such unwonted size finally touched &lsquo;him, but his
+      sympathy made him only the more determined to render his vengeance as
+      useful as it was complete. <span class="pagenum">[359]</span><a
+      name="link359" id="link359"></a>"Listen to me, giant. You can buy your
+      life, if you choose.&rdquo; Quadragant&rsquo;s tears ceased to flow. Here
+      was life offered to him, and with that life he saw first of all a good
+      supper in store for him, and if his mouth had not been held so tight by
+      the scaffolding erected in it by Kreiss, his big face would have grinned
+      from ear to ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0136" id="linkimage-0136"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/379s.jpg" alt="379s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/379.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/379m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; continued the dwarf, &ldquo;you will Tiave to devote
+      your life and your liberty, if we restore both to you, to the service of
+      our decimated people; do you hear? You must understand me clearly; you
+      will not be our protector, but our servant; you will unhesitatingly
+      perform every kind of work which may be required of you for our safety or
+      our comfort. First of all you will replant that oak tree, <span
+      class="pagenum">[360]</span><a name="link360" id="link360"></a>under which
+      the dwarfs of this district were living in peace, and you will water it
+      every morning until it has taken root again. Now, close your eyes, if you
+      mean to accept our conditions!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quadragant opened and shut his eyes quickly ten times in succession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss made with his lamp a kind of telegraphic signal; his brothers, all
+      seven dressed in garments of mouse skin or mole skin, and carrying each
+      one a lantern with a firefly inside, climbed in an instant upon the face
+      of the giant, which now looked quite brightly illuminated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three of them took their station on his forehead; two others by the side
+      of each eye. The last two held each a long thorn in their hands, which
+      they seemed to use as a dagger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss, who had remained at his place, said again to the giant:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If, after you have been set free, you dare utter a sound to call
+      for help, you lose both of your eyes instantly. Mind the warning!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armed with his double pointed spear, he then went once more into
+      Quadragant&rsquo;s mouth, and loosened one of the transverse beams which
+      formed the ceiling. The giant assisted him with his tongue in the work of
+      demolition; then, after drawing a long sigh of relief, he closed his mouth
+      and crushed between his formidable jaws all the timber, posts, <span
+      class="pagenum">[361]</span><a name="link361" id="link361"></a>and beams,
+      as if they had been a bundle of matches, and swallowed the whole in
+      anticipation of his supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0137" id="linkimage-0137"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/381s.jpg" alt="381s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/381.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/381m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      After that he swore an oath which binds the giants as firmly as the
+      invocation of the Styx pledged the s of Greece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the earth, which is my mother, by the mountains, which are her
+      bones, by the woods and forests, which are her hair, by the brooks, the
+      streams, and the rivers, which are the blood of her veins, I, <span
+      class="pagenum">[362]</span><a name="link362" id="link362"></a>the giant
+      Quadragant, declare that I am the slave of the dwarfs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sunrise Quadragant was up again, carrying his new masters between his
+      fingers, which he twisted together in the shape of a cradle. In less than
+      five minutes he reached, in obedience to their orders, the old castle in
+      ruins, where a &lsquo;solemn meeting was held, not only by the fugitives
+      of the day before, but also by the principal representatives of all the
+      dwarfs of that part of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the sentinels announced the arrival of the giant, all thought their
+      last hour had come and endeavored to escape, hoping to find a refuge in
+      the lowest depths of the old building. Kreiss, however, had ordered the
+      giant to put him down in front of the cellars of the castle, and now
+      entered the great Meeting Hall, assuming like all great conquerors, an air
+      of extreme modesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he informed them that the giant was their slave!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They at once threw themselves at his feet and expressed their desire to
+      proclaim him Emperor of the Dwarfs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss, however, having heard of a recent experiment of that kind, was far
+      from believing such sudden enthusiasm to be either deep or permanent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[363]</span><a name="link363" id="link363"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0138" id="linkimage-0138"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/383s.jpg" alt="383s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/383.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/383m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      From that day the giant abandoned his <span class="pagenum">[364]</span><a
+      name="link364" id="link364"></a>old name of Quadragant, and assumed that
+      of <i>Ptitskuchen,</i> which at that time meant Friend of the Dwarfs, but
+      which, translated into modern German, represents our <i>omelette soufflee</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0139" id="linkimage-0139"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/385s.jpg" alt="385s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/385.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/385m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[365]</span><a name="link365" id="link365"></a>At
+      first all went well; but at the end of three weeks Putskuchen looked sad
+      and melancholy; Putskuchen only took half a dozen meals a day; Putskuchen
+      was slowly fading away; Putskuchen was in love, in love with a young
+      giantess, who taunted him with having become the servant of these wretched
+      pygmies and reproached him with his poverty. The unhappy creature fell off
+      more and more, the <i>omelette soufflee</i> fell down flat, and Putskuchen
+      was a mere lath of thirty feet in length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kreiss had always felt a certain tenderness for him, and hence, after
+      having asked the consent of all the other chieftains, he placed in the
+      giant&rsquo;s hands a large heap of gold scales such as the dwarfs were in
+      the habit of collecting in the neighboring mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was enough to buy three wives, instead of one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact had no sooner become known than all <span class="pagenum">[366]</span><a
+      name="link366" id="link366"></a>the happy giant fathers of the country
+      desired him as a son-in-law, and when they saw how liberally his services
+      had been rewarded by his new masters, they were all eager to become the
+      serfs of the dwarfs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, thanks to Kreiss, the giants gradually came all, one by one, and
+      entered the service of the dwarfs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certain skeptics have maintained that the whole story is symbolic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to their interpretation the giant fastened to the ground and
+      muzzled by the dwarfs, is the people, the people always kept down and
+      always held in subjection, in spite of its gigantic strength. The dwarfs,
+      who lived under the oak, the sacred tree of all nations of Celtic origin,
+      are the priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We say: Shame upon people, who would change a legend into an apologue and
+      our friend Kreiss into a Druid!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the dwarfs became reconciled again to men, they compelled the giants
+      to execute for them great works of public utility, such as bridges and
+      highroads, which were afterwards generally ascribed to the Romans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The belief in little dwarfs continues to this day to exist in most of the
+      Northern countries. They still live in myriads in the subterranean regions
+      <span class="pagenum">[367]</span><a name="link367" id="link367"></a>and
+      in the rocks in Westphalia, in Sweden, and in Norway, and they are still
+      hard at work amassing vast treasures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0140" id="linkimage-0140"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/387s.jpg" alt="387s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/387.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/387m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[371]</span><a name="link371" id="link371"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0141" id="linkimage-0141"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/391s.jpg" alt="391s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/391.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/391m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Wizards and the Bewitched.&mdash;<i>The Journey of A sa-Thor and his
+      Companions.&mdash;The Inn with the Five Passages.&mdash;Skryinner.&mdash;A
+      Lost Glove found again.&mdash;Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.&mdash;Combat
+      between Thor and the King&rsquo;s Nurse.&mdash;FREDERICH BARBAROSSA AND
+      THE KYFFHAUSER.&mdash;Teutonia! Teutonia!&mdash;What became of the Ancient
+      Gods.&mdash;Venus and the good Knight Tannhauser.&mdash;Jupiter on Rabbit
+      Island.&mdash;A Modern God.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ear! hear! New and
+      greater marvels still! But, unfortunately, we shall be under the sad
+      necessity of returning to our giants once more, much as we have already
+      spoken of them, from giant Ymer down to Quadragant, and there may be too
+      much even of the best things in this world. But let the reader take
+      courage; this time my giants are not real giants; or at least they are
+      giants of a very peculiar species. But instead of losing time with
+      limitations and explanations, let us begin our story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in the days when the Scandinavian gods were still in the full
+      enjoyment of their power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One fine day the god Thor, curious to see certain distant lands of which
+      they had told him most marvelous stories, set out on his travels,
+      accompanied by Raska, Tialff, and Loki. Leaving Sweden and Norway behind,
+      they arrived at the sea-shore and crossed over by swimming. A mere trifle,
+      of course, for people of their kind. On the opposite shore they found a
+      vast plain, and as night was approaching and they began to feel that rest
+      would be acceptable, they looked out for a shelter. In this vast and
+      deserted plain they see but one single building; a huge, ill-shapen, and
+      abandoned house, <span class="pagenum">[373]</span><a name="link373"
+      id="link373"></a>rather broad than high and of altogether exceptional
+      appearance. It has neither doors nor windows, nor even a roof; but the
+      night fog may possibly conceal a part of the edifice. The travellers enter
+      and find a square, low vestibule, and at the end of it five long passages;
+      each of the travellers takes one of these passages, looking for a door or
+      a bed in the dark. As they find neither bed nor chamber, they resign
+      themselves and lie down on the floor, with their backs to the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even the walls seem to be elastic, and so does the floor; perhaps a
+      layer of straw or of moss was spread over them and gave them the softness
+      of felt, rather coarse, to be sure, but not unpleasant. The travellers
+      felt that they could sleep there comfortably and warm. So they did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At daybreak Thor rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms and proposed to take
+      a turn in the country, to stretch his legs and to shake off the heaviness
+      of sleep. Through the white mists which were still hanging on the tops of
+      high hills he thought he saw a huge mass of disheveled hair, and then he
+      discovered in the centre of that head two eyes. At first he thought this
+      head and these eyes were simply a rock covered with shrubbery and two
+      small pools of water shining in the rays of the rising sun. But soon the
+      disheveled head began to move, bent down to the ground, and turned now
+      <span class="pagenum">[374]</span><a name="link374" id="link374"></a>to
+      one side and now to another. In the meantime the mists had risen and Thor
+      found that he was standing before a giant of such enormous size that those
+      whom he was generally engaged in hunting down would not have reached to
+      his knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The giant advanced toward him, always looking here and there, and still
+      with his eyes fixed on the ground, as if he were looking for something he
+      had lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor, who was easily incensed by the sight of a giant, went straight up to
+      meet him and said in an arrogant tone:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing here? What is your name? Who are you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Skrymner,&rdquo; replied the other. &ldquo;Did you not
+      know? As for me, I have no need to ask you any such question; you are the
+      god Thor, one of those under sized gods who live with Odin on the ash tree
+      Ygdrasil. Have you seen my glove? I have lost my glove; yes! yesterday,&rdquo;
+      he added in the most indifferent manner possible, and as if he were solely
+      occupied with his search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have found nothing of the kind,&rdquo; replied Thor, who was
+      always in bad humor, and now regretted that he did not have his hammer at
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you travel quite alone?&rdquo; asked Skrymner. <span
+      class="pagenum">[375]</span><a name="link375" id="link375"></a>"I have
+      three companions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not see them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are all three still asleep in that house there, in which we
+      have spent the night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with his finger he pointed at the house, which they had used as an inn
+      for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Skrymner looked both surprised and delighted. &ldquo;My glove!&rdquo; he
+      cried, &ldquo;that is my glove! I have found it.&rdquo; He hastened to
+      pick up this apparent house with its five long passages, and took it up,
+      but not before he had shaken it, holding it close to the ground, and
+      showing thus that he was not without a feeling of humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loki, Tialft, and Raska tumbled out upon the grass, rather terrified by
+      their sudden ascension and the sudden somerset which they had been forced
+      to make. But as soon as they had recovered from their first surprise, and
+      especially from the discovery that they had spent the night in a glove,
+      they thought of continuing their journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The country was unknown to them, but Skrymner offered to act as guide and
+      even to carry their baggage. So much obliging kindness and courtesy drove
+      all aggressive thoughts out of Thor&rsquo;s mind, especially as he now had
+      his hammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first stopping place, and just when they were getting ready for
+      breakfast, the giant left them, although only after having pointed out to
+      <span class="pagenum">[376]</span><a name="link376" id="link376"></a>them
+      the road they ought to take. Thor, however, found he was unable to open
+      the knapsack in which they carried their provisions; all the strings and
+      small chains by which it was fastened, were in knots. They had to proceed
+      on their journey without having had any breakfast, a necessity which is
+      most disagreeable to travellers, and even to gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As hour after hour passed and the plain remained deserted and sterile,
+      their hunger became tormenting. They listened with all their might, hoping
+      they might hear the roaring of a bear or the lowing of a cow, determined
+      as they were to dine upon the one or the other; but the dull rumbling of a
+      storm and the distant roll of thunder was all they heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor was furious at the idea that any one should venture to thunder
+      without having obtained permission from him, the god of thunder, and
+      rushed forward. Following the direction of the noise, he reached a rocky
+      defile, overshadowed by a few oak trees, where he found Skrymner lying at
+      full length between two hills and snoring furiously. This snoring it was
+      which the travellers had taken for the roaring of a storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; said Thor to himself, &ldquo;the wretch is at work
+      digesting the provisions of which he has robbed us. No doubt it was he who
+      tied all those knots in the strings of our knapsack, in order to <span
+      class="pagenum">[377]</span><a name="link377" id="link377"></a>conceal his
+      theft; but he shall pay for it dear! Besides, did he not speak of me as an
+      undersized god?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words he seized his hammer and threw it at the head of the
+      sleeping giant, who did not stir, but only passed his hand over his brow
+      as if a dead leaf falling from a tree had tickled him a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor went up closer and struck him once more on the back of his head,
+      directly on the cerebellum, which in giants is unusually developed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time the sleeper opened one eye, closed it again, and after having
+      scratched himself at the place where he had been struck, he fell asleep
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brutal by nature and doubly so when fasting, Thor had become perfectly
+      furious when he found himself thus mysteriously powerless. Fully
+      determined the next time to make an end, once for all, of his adversary,
+      he put on his invisible belt, which had the gift of doubling his strength,
+      seized his hammer with both hands and threw it with such amazing force at
+      the giant, that it sank up to the handle into one of his cheeks and Thor
+      had no small trouble in getting it to come back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time Skrymner was fully roused; he opened both of his eyes, raised
+      his hand to his cheek, and exclaimed that it was impossible to sleep
+      comfortably <span class="pagenum">[378]</span><a name="link378"
+      id="link378"></a>in that place, as a fly had just stung him in the
+      cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, perceiving his assailant, who stood right before him, he asked him
+      good-naturedly, how he happened to be there, and whether he had lost his
+      way. In the meantime the other travellers are also coming up and Skrymner
+      offers to show them the way to the great city of Utgard, where he promises
+      they will find a good inn, a good table, a warm reception, and not only
+      enough for their wants but all that their heart can desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thor does not know what to think. Overcome and confounded, he follows the
+      footsteps of his guide, without being able to form any idea except the
+      one: to avenge himself in a signal manner for all his humiliations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city of Utgard is of incredible size, the city walls, the houses, the
+      trees, the furniture, all are gigantic. Our travellers could easily pass
+      between the legs of the little children they met in the streets, as we
+      modern people pass under the triumphal arches of the ancients. You see,
+      now we are no longer in Lilliput, we have reached the island of the giants
+      with Gulliver. Gulliver might very well be the offspring of some
+      Scandinavian legend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The king received Thor and, his friends, laughing heartily at their small
+      size, and the seats they are offered are three times as high as they are.
+      <span class="pagenum">[379]</span><a name="link379" id="link379"></a>After
+      a host of adventures in which our men, that is to say, our gods, are
+      continually victimized, Thor in his rage challenges the giants to single
+      combat. The king accepts the challenge and offers to back his nurse, a
+      toothless old woman, against the god. Thor consents, eager as he is to
+      vent his wrath on somebody, and determines to pitch His Majesty&rsquo;s
+      nurse out of the window. But by all his efforts he hardly succeeds in
+      lifting her slightly off the ground, and he himself, exhausted by the
+      struggle, sinks on his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the next day our travellers came to the conclusion that they had
+      travelled far enough. Skrymner again showed the way, with his usual
+      courtesy, and when they were well out of the town he took the god Thor
+      aside and said to him: &ldquo;So far you have only known my name and
+      nothing of myself, now you ought to know that I am Skrym-ner, the wizard.
+      You ought, therefore, not to mind anything that has happened to you during
+      these last days. You thought you were striking me three times with your
+      hammer, but in reality you were striking the impenetrable rocks, on which
+      I was apparently sleeping. As to the nurse, you have given proof there of
+      such strength as I should not even have expected from the great Thor, when
+      you lifted her from the ground; for the toothless old woman is none other
+      but Death, yes Death, <span class="pagenum">[380]</span><a
+      name="link380" id="link380"></a>whom I had compelled to come and
+      take part in our games. The rest was all enchantment, mere delusions! I
+      wanted to see if the power of the art of Magic was equal to that of the
+      gods. Farewell, Asa-Thor, and a pleasant journey to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More enraged than ever, Asa-Thor was about to throw himself upon him; but
+      the pretended giant had fled in the shape of a bird. Then Thor turned back
+      towards the city of Utgard, determined to destroy it utterly, but before
+      his eyes it dissolved into a column of smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I promised you some of Mother Goose&rsquo;s stories&mdash;have I
+      kept word? And do not imagine that this story of Thor and the giants&rsquo;
+      city is of doubtful origin&mdash;you will find it in chapters 23, 24, 25,
+      and 26 of the sacred book called Edda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of magicians and wizards I could say much, but the road is long and I am
+      in haste to reach the end. And who does not know the story of the prowess
+      of Merlin and of the Maugis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the ancient traditions of the North there are found innumerable
+      tales of wizards, witchcraft, and ghosts. Now rocks are changed into
+      palaces, and now brutes into men and men into brutes; and the same
+      fantastic but always epic element prevails largely in all the old romances
+      of chivalry as well as in the great poems of Ariosto and Tasso. <span
+      class="pagenum">[381]</span><a name="link381" id="link381"></a>In almost
+      all countries we find that epic poetry is closely allied to religious
+      sentiments and through these to the marvelous; for it has always found a
+      first home in temples and a first use for temples. Thus it was in India
+      with the Mahabarata, and in Greece with the myths of Hercules and of
+      Orpheus. It could not be otherwise with the Gallic or German bards, nor
+      with the Scandinavian skalds, all of whose grand poems are most
+      unfortunately unknown at present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a feature more peculiarly German than the wizards, are the bewitched,
+      often called the Sleepers. In these Germany incorporates, as it were, the
+      loftiest of her patriotic aspirations, the saddest of her disappointments,
+      the most persistent of her hopes. They represent not only her old faith,
+      that could never be completely eradicated, but also her old favorites, a
+      Hermann and a Siegfried, the hero of the Nibelungen, a Theodoric and a
+      Charlemagne, a Witikind and a Frederick Barbarossa, a William Tell and a
+      Charles V. Her heroes, her beloved, her glory&mdash;she has not allowed
+      them to fall into oblivion and be severed from the present; she will not
+      admit that they are dead, they are but asleep. Witikind under the Siegberg
+      in Westphalia, Charlemagne in the lowest rooms of his old castle at
+      Nuremberg. There&mdash;and not, as might have been imagined, in
+      Aix-la-Chapelle&mdash;the mighty old <span class="pagenum">[382]</span><a
+      name="link382" id="link382"></a>Emperor rests majestically, surrounded by
+      his brave champions, ready to awake again whenever God shall be pleased to
+      tell him that the moment has come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Frederick Barbarossa, he sleeps in the Kyffhauser, one of the
+      porphyry and granite mountains of the Taunus, and so do others; there is
+      no denying the fact, for they have been seen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few years after his disappearance from this world, Frederick showed
+      himself upon the summit of one of these mountains, whenever the sound of a
+      musical instrument was heard in the valley. Knowing his love of music, the
+      Philharmonic Societies of Erfurth and of other towns to this day, are fond
+      of serenading the old warrior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is said that one evening, when the clock at Tilleda struck midnight,
+      certain musicians who had ascended the Kyffhauser, suddenly saw the
+      mountain open and a number of women adorned with jewels and carrying
+      torches, came out of the opening. They beckoned to them, the men followed,
+      continuing to play on their instruments and thus they came where the
+      Emperor was. The latter ordered a good supper to be served, and when they
+      were ready to leave again, the fair ladies of the court escorted them
+      back, with their torches in their hands, and at the last moment gave to
+      each of them a poplar branch. The poor musicians had <span class="pagenum">[383]</span><a
+      name="link383" id="link383"></a>hoped for better things from the Emperor&rsquo;s
+      generosity, and when they reached the foot of the mountain, they threw
+      their branches into the road, very indignant at having been so badly
+      treated. Only one among the number kept his branch, and when he reached
+      home, carefully stuck it by the side of the consecrated bunch of box which
+      hung over the head of his bed. Immediately, O marvel! each leaf of the
+      poplar branch changed into a gold ducat. When the others heard of this,
+      they hastened to look for their branches, but they never found them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On another occasion a shepherd&mdash;others say a miner&mdash;met on the
+      Kyffhäuser a monk with a white beard, who unceremoniously and just as if
+      he had asked him to come and see his next door neighbor, told him to come
+      with him and see the Emperor Barbarossa, who wanted to speak to him. At
+      first the poor shepherd was dumb-founded; then he began to tremble in all
+      his limbs. The monk, however, reassured him and led him into a narrow,
+      dark valley, and then, striking the ground three times with his rod, he
+      said: &ldquo;Open! open! open!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon a great noise arose beneath the feet of the monk and the
+      shepherd; the earth seemed to quake and then a large opening became
+      visible. They found they were in a long gallery, lighted up <span
+      class="pagenum">[384]</span><a name="link384" id="link384"></a>by a single
+      lamp and closed at the other end by folding doors of brass. The monk, who
+      no doubt was a magician, knocked three times at the door with his rod,
+      saying again: &ldquo;Open! open! open!&rdquo; and the brass doors turned
+      upon their hinges, producing the same noise which they had heard before
+      underground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were now in a grotto, whose ceiling and walls, blackened by the smoke
+      of an immense number of torches, seemed to be hung with black as a sign of
+      mourning. It might have been taken for a mortuary chapel, only there was
+      no coffin or catafalque visible. The shepherd had, in the mean time, begun
+      to tremble once more, but the monk repeated his summons before a silver
+      door, which thereupon opened in the same manner as the brass door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a magnificent room lighted but dimly and in such a manner that it was
+      impossible to tell where the light came from, they saw the Emperor
+      Frederick, seated upon a golden throne, with a golden crown on his head;
+      as they entered he gently inclined his head, contracting his bushy
+      eyebrows. His long red beard had grown through the table before him and
+      fell down to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning, not without visible effort, towards the shepherd, he spoke to him
+      for some time on different subjects and recommended to him to repeat <span
+      class="pagenum">[385]</span><a name="link385" id="link385"></a>what he
+      heard to his friends at home. His voice was feeble, but it grew strong and
+      sonorous as soon as he alluded to the glory of Germany. Then he said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are the ravens still flying over the mountains?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; replied the shepherd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are the dead trees still hanging over the abysses of the Kyffhâuser
+      as in former days?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who could uproot them, unless it be a great storm?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has no one spoken to you of the reappearance of the old woman?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, I must sleep another hundred years!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a sign to the shepherd that he could go, and then fell asleep,
+      murmuring the name of a woman which died on his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For among these great Sleepers of Germany there is also a woman, but a
+      woman rather of symbolic than real existence. What is the difference?
+      Tradition gives the following account of her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Witikind was beaten by Charlemagne at Engter, a poor old woman,
+      unable to follow him in his flight, uttered lamentable cries and thus
+      added to the panic among the defeated army. When the <span class="pagenum">[386]</span><a
+      name="link386" id="link386"></a>soldiers obeyed Witikind&rsquo;s orders
+      and stopped for a moment in the heat of their flight, they threw a mass of
+      sand and rock upon the old woman. They did not expect that she would die
+      when thus buried alive; their commander had told them: &ldquo;She will
+      come back!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This old woman, who is to come back, is Teutonia, and it was her name that
+      Frederick Barbarossa was murmuring to himself as he fell asleep for
+      another century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the old woman shall have succeeded in extricating herself from this
+      mass of sand and rock which weighs her down, then and then only the great
+      day will come. The heroes who now are held captive in their mountains and
+      subterranean grottoes, will shake off the torpor of their long sleep; they
+      will reappear among their people, the dead trees will bear new foliage to
+      proclaim their return by a miracle, and the cry of: Teutonia! Teutonia!
+      will resound in a thousand valleys, and the birds even will repeat the
+      name!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They say that when this long wished for day does come, Germany will be
+      freed of all her difficulties, and will boast of having but one creed, one
+      law, and one heart; she will be glorious and free, one and indivisible!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must wait for the birds to tell us so, before we believe it. <span
+      class="pagenum">[387]</span><a name="link387" id="link387"></a>At that
+      time Teutonia and her emperors were alike asleep. They mention a peasant
+      woman from Mayence, who on her way home became so exhausted and unable to
+      bear the heat of the sun, that she had to seek shelter in an isolated
+      house, standing by the wayside in the midst of a plantation of young
+      trees. It was a dwelling of a skillful magician. She asked him for leave
+      to rest there a few moments. As he was in the midst of some of his most
+      abstruse calculations, he only replied by nodding his head, and glanced
+      with his eye at a bench in the most distant part of the room. She went and
+      sat down, but only on the edge, hardly knowing if she was allowed to do so
+      or not; every moment she got up to ask her host if she disturbed him, and
+      if she had not better leave him, tired and exhausted as she was. She told
+      him that she would much rather endure the heat and the fatigue, than be a
+      burden to him, she begged him not to mind her and to go on just as if she
+      were not there, and a host of similar phrases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Annoyed by her incessant, idle talk, the magician suddenly turned round
+      and fixedly looked her full in the face. Immediately she fell asleep.
+      (There was no doubt some knowledge of magnetism already in the world at
+      that time, but as yet only of magic magnetism). When the good woman awoke,
+      <span class="pagenum">[388]</span><a name="link388" id="link388"></a>she
+      was alone; her host had left her. To her great regret she was compelled to
+      leave without being able to thank him for his hospitality in her usual
+      profuse manner, and to beg him to excuse her falling asleep, when he did
+      her the honor of keeping her company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she left the house, she was not a little surprised to see around the
+      house, not a copse of young trees, but a number of tall pine trees and
+      noble oaks, but she thought it possible she might have left by another
+      door than that by which she had entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she at last reached her village, new surprises were in store for her.
+      Of all the good people whom she met on her way or whom she saw standing in
+      the doors of their houses, she could not recognize a single one; she had
+      to look a long time before she found her own house, and when she reached
+      it at last, it was inhabited by strange people, who in spite of her
+      protestations, pushed her out and treated her as mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed a lawsuit, the result of which was to prove, that instead of
+      sleeping an hour or so on that bench, as she believed, she had been asleep
+      there a hundred years. Thus the young saplings had had time to grow up
+      into large trees and her house to change masters. The strangers who were
+      now living in it and who had turned her out so <span class="pagenum">[389]</span><a
+      name="link389" id="link389"></a>unceremoniously, were nothing less than
+      her great grandchildren.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hope, however, the matter was settled amicably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Germans have, with that perseverance which characterizes the nation,
+      preserved all that could be preserved of their ancient gods as well as of
+      their former heroes; they do not like to lose anything, only they did not
+      embalm their favorites, but used enchantment. Let us, however, notice at
+      once for the honor of the gods, that they were never condemned to sleep
+      indefinitely. Not one of them is found among the great Sleepers, such as
+      Charlemagne, Witikind, Frederick I., William Tell, or the peasant woman,
+      from the neighborhood of Mayence. It is true, they were exiled to certain
+      remote districts, which they were not allowed to leave, but they could at
+      least move about and continue their former mode of life there, after a
+      fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not so very long since certain charcoal burners protested that they
+      had seen Asa-Thor, for want of giants to combat, hurl his hammer against
+      the tallest trees, which he broke and uprooted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had also seen the enchanted hunt of Diana, whose deep-mouthed dogs
+      bark at night and disturb the slumbers of honest people in <span
+      class="pagenum">[390]</span><a name="link390" id="link390"></a>Bohemian
+      villages. Who has not heard of the intrigues of old Venus, not with her
+      former, classic lover, the god Mars, but with the good knight Tannhäuser?
+      If we are to believe Heinrich
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heine, even Jupiter has been recently discovered again in one of the
+      Norwegian islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0142" id="linkimage-0142"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/410s.jpg" alt="410s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/410.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/410m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      It would be the height of imprudence, of course, to undertake an account
+      of the discovery, after such a master. I shall, therefore, be content to
+      present a mere summary of this remarkable tradition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is an island in the Northern seas, which is bordered by icebergs and
+      arid mountains: the valleys are dim and dark with heavy mists, the
+      mountain tops are covered with snow for nine months of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, one dismal morning, some travellers landed, driven by a tempest much
+      more than by their own free will. They were mostly savants, members of
+      great academies from Stockholm and St. Petersburg, who had undertaken a
+      voyage of discovery to the polar regions. The arid, almost <span
+      class="pagenum">[391]</span><a name="link391" id="link391"></a>bare soil
+      did not promise a pleasant resting place, but the mountain slopes towards
+      the south produced fine grass and dwarf gooseberry bushes, and the immense
+      number of holes in the ground, together with distinct traces of debris
+      left at the openings, proved that the island was at all events inhabited
+      by countless numbers of rabbits. Of other animal life, however, no trace
+      could be found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rabbits seemed to be the only inhabitants of the island, and that was
+      tempting enough for poor sailors who had for some time been put on salt
+      rations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our savants prepared, therefore, a large number of traps and snares, when
+      suddenly a fierce tempest of snow and hail broke out, and compelled them
+      instantly to seek refuge in a spacious cave which opened in that
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were not a little surprised to find here an old man, bald, hollow
+      cheeked, and pale, whose body was emaciated and decrepit and who was
+      hardly clothed in spite of the rigor of the climate. But beneath all these
+      signs of extreme old age, and great destitution, the stranger displayed an
+      air of authority, and on his serene and lofty brow such supernatural
+      majesty, that the travellers were filled with respect and reverence, and
+      well-nigh trembled at his appearance. <span class="pagenum">[392]</span><a
+      name="link392" id="link392"></a>An eagle of the largest variety, but so
+      reduced that he looked the mere skeleton of a bird, and with faded and
+      disheveled plumage, sat in a corner, the picture of misery, with his dull
+      eyes and his drooping wings. He was the old man&rsquo;s sole companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two hermits, having no other means of subsistence, lived by hunting,
+      and the old man found in addition, means to carry on a modest traffic in
+      the furs of the only game that the island contained; he laid up large
+      supplies of the small peltry and exchanged it for luxuries.....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my pen refuses to go on. I cannot reconcile it to my principles as an
+      author nor to my conscience as an honest student of genuine myths, to
+      repeat here a story, which is altogether apocryphal, and which belongs
+      much less to tradition than to mystification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, this old man was Jupiter, and as I think it over, I come to the
+      conclusion that Mr. Heine, who laughs at the most serious things, has
+      skillfully concealed his irony under the cloak of an interesting story,
+      for the mere purpose of telling us that the Chief of the Gods, dread
+      Jupiter, has become&mdash;a dealer in rabbit skins!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot follow his example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without wandering from my subject, for I am still speaking of false gods,
+      I will substitute for <span class="pagenum">[393]</span><a
+      name="link393" id="link393"></a>this necessarily much curtailed
+      account, another story which I can warrant as authentic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Persia,&rdquo; we are told by Count Gobineau, in a recently
+      published book of great merit, &ldquo;the <i>Soufys,</i> that is to say
+      the savants and philosophers, reject all dogmatic religion and believe in
+      the reunion of the soul with God in trances only. When this union is
+      complete, the soul is transformed and becomes itself a participant in the
+      nature of the uncreated essence, and Man is God.&rdquo; Human folly is
+      always a disease produced by human pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      France, also, has produced a few gods of that kind; I do not mean to
+      mention them, however, as belonging to the myths of the Rhine, which have
+      special reference to Germany only. But among the Germans, also, there is a
+      school of philosophers who without going as far as the Persians go, are
+      utterly incredulous, and disregarding trances and immortal souls alike,
+      have finally denied the existence of God altogether and made themselves
+      gods. This shows how anxious savants as well as ignorant men are, in that
+      beautiful country, to people the earth with deities of every kind!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the history of one of these earth-born gods which I propose to give
+      here, before I close this long chapter. Alas! he is dead now, and that is
+      a great pity; but he did live once; on that essential point there is no
+      lack of evidence. I could even, <span class="pagenum">[394]</span><a
+      name="link394" id="link394"></a>like the Thuringian peasants when speaking
+      of Frederick Barbarossa, say: &ldquo;I have seen him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the year 1800 there was born in Düsseldorf, in Prussia, a child in a
+      Jewish family recently converted to Christianity. This child might well
+      have been looked upon as of supernatural origin, so entirely different was
+      it, from its earliest days, from all that had ever been seen before.
+      Martin Luther no doubt, if the child had been one of his own, would have
+      pronounced him to be a Killecroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not only noisy and troublesome, but he was also a pedant; he
+      snubbed professors and listened to the advice of very young children. When
+      his parents scolded him, he only laughed at them; when a grave event
+      disturbed a neighbor&rsquo;s household, he laughed; when the French took
+      his native city, he laughed; in fine he was always laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, as he grew up, he gorged himself with logic, with mathematics,
+      with Greek and Latin and Hebrew and all kinds of good things besides. He
+      became even a philosopher before he was of age, but his philosophy
+      consisted mainly in a sarcastic laugh. When they spoke to him of the
+      position he might occupy in Düsseldorf, and of the wealth he might
+      acquire, his only answer was a grimace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rabbi spread out before him heaps of gold, <span class="pagenum">[395]</span><a
+      name="link395" id="link395"></a>promising to give him that and more, if he
+      would be his slave only for a few years; he refused to listen to him. As
+      he was a vain man, the demon of Fame endeavored to tempt him, but he
+      laughed in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the devil, a real devil, I am sure (his name was George William
+      Frederick Schlegel) whispered into his ear: &ldquo;Would you like to be a
+      god?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time our young philosopher did not laugh. He became a god, and, from
+      official jealousy, proceeded to deny the great God in Heaven until he lost
+      all human sentiments. He lived alone, friendless, childless, without a
+      family and giving up even his mother country, finding that everything had
+      to be done over again in this world, which he had not created.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After leaving Germany he came to France, and here in France he laughed
+      louder and bitterer than ever. In France they did not believe in his
+      divinity; they did not worship him, but they loved him as if he had been a
+      simple mortal; in France he made friends and he became like other men once
+      more. Finally, as he was after all bad only in his wit, he became
+      voluntarily a convert as he saw the evil fruit of his teachings. He took a
+      wife to himself with the sanction of the Church, and he died a believer.
+      <span class="pagenum">[396]</span><a name="link396" id="link396"></a>This
+      ex-god was called Heinrich Heine, that Heinrich Heine, who laughed so
+      bitterly at his ex-colleague, Jupiter, and spoke of him as a dealer in
+      rabbit skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0143" id="linkimage-0143"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/416s.jpg" alt="416s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/416.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/416m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[399]</span><a name="link399" id="link399"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0144" id="linkimage-0144"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/419s.jpg" alt="419s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/419.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/419m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women and Serpent Women.&mdash;<i>Children&rsquo;s
+      Myths.&mdash;Godmothers.&mdash;Fairies.&mdash;The Magic Wand and the
+      Broomstick.&mdash;The Lady of Kynast.&mdash;The World of the Dead,&rsquo;
+      the World of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.&mdash;Myths of Animals.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ell? Have you seen
+      enough of the gods and demigods of Germany, of the Nixen and goblins, the
+      Kobolds, the giants, and the dwarfs? Have I shown you enough of this vast
+      storehouse of human folly? I must confess, it makes me melancholy to speak
+      of all this, and I feel an urgent desire to &ldquo;shut up shop.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conscientious collector of myths, who has more material than he can
+      manage, and sees new myths continually rising before him, is not unlike
+      those learned physicians who spend their lives among crowds of insane
+      people. A fever of imitation seizes them and soon they begin to wander
+      like their patients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps I have reached that point myself without becoming aware of it. The
+      reader must judge for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mind, filled with myths, symbols, and eccentricities, is ready to ask
+      for mercy, and still I feel it, there are some things yet to be done. For
+      instance, I recollect having promised to give a completion of the history
+      of the Druidesses, that is to say, of women, those myth-like beings by
+      eminence! That kind of instinctive sense, that delicacy of almost
+      intuitive perceptions which distinguished them from the other sex in its
+      material coarseness, could not fail to give them easily the advantage over
+      men. In Celtic lands as in Scandinavia they were the models of all
+      virtues, the oracles of the house. They were occasionally beaten, <span
+      class="pagenum">[401]</span><a name="link401" id="link401"></a>it is true,
+      but they were also grandly honored, and in Germany especially people burnt
+      incense before them, long before they smoked tobacco in their presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0145" id="linkimage-0145"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/421s.jpg" alt="421s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/421.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/421m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[403]</span><a name="link403" id="link403"></a>At
+      the time when Christianity came, the women played a prominent and truly
+      glorious part there; all the historians bear witness. Between the fourth
+      and the sixth century Fritigill, Queen of the Marcomanni, Clotilda, Queen
+      of France, and Bertha. Queen of England, had compelled their husbands to
+      bow down before the Cross, and not by witchcraft, as the pagans wickedly
+      maintained, but simply by persuasion. Other women, who belonged to noble
+      families or to the common people at large, a Krimhild, a Thekla, and a
+      Liobat, assisted the missionaries in their dangerous enterprise and
+      actually helped them in cutting down the sacred oak trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had become, during these long continued persecutions, of you, fair
+      Gann, noble Aurinia, majestic Velleda, and of your sisters, the other
+      Druidesses?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were wandering about in dark forests, proscribed and weeping over
+      their departed glory; they concealed themselves in remote places where the
+      agents of the civil power but rarely appeared. Sometimes, of an evening,
+      they would venture forth, approach a belated traveller on a cross-road,
+      and <span class="pagenum">[404]</span><a name="link404" id="link404"></a>hold
+      with him mysterious converse. Sometimes, also, the inhabitants of a
+      village, or even of a larger place, would go secretly to their well chosen
+      hiding places to consult them on the good or evil chances of their
+      prospects in life, or on an epidemic that was attacking their cattle. Some
+      people, and among them not unfrequently recent converts, who were still
+      strongly imbued with their former creed, would ask them to name their
+      new-born infants and thus to bring them good luck. Hence they were at
+      first known as <i>Godmothers</i>, and at a later time as <i>Fairies</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was naturally supposed that like the ancient fairies of the East, these
+      women also derived their power from the stars, for why else should they
+      have been met so constantly on the mountain slopes, when the moon was
+      shining brightly, or slipping suddenly from behind a rock or a tree, where
+      will-o&rsquo;-the-wisps and fireflies alone were in the habit of being
+      about?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among these fairies many were kind and naturally benevolent; others, no
+      doubt embittered by their fate, appeared irascible and ill disposed. Woe
+      to the men, or even the cattle upon whom they cast an evil eye!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This evil influence could be averted only by the assistance of another
+      fairy, a good one in this case, who relieved you more or less promptly by
+      means <span class="pagenum">[405]</span><a name="link405" id="link405"></a>of
+      a talisman, a constellated stone, or certain words possessed of magic
+      power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, if we add to these godmothers, to these godchildren, to good and bad
+      fairies, the terrible Ogres, whose very name filled the people of those
+      days with terror, you will know all the mysterious personages which appear
+      in the myths of children and which we have all known in our early days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we were to examine these legends and traditions more carefully, we
+      should no doubt easily find &ldquo;Bluebeard&rdquo; again among the old
+      burggraves of the Rhine, as &ldquo;Puss in Boots&rdquo; has already been
+      discovered there. &ldquo;The Sleeping Beauty&rdquo; might very well be the
+      peasant woman who had slept a century under the influence of magic
+      magnetism, and why should not our little dwarf Kreiss and his brothers
+      have furnished the first idea of little Tom Thumb, with Quadragant to play
+      the part of the ogre? In &ldquo;Cinderella&rdquo; we might with the same
+      readiness recognize one of the three Undine sisters, who forgot amid the
+      delights of the evening assembly, that their furlough was out at ten o&rsquo;clock?
+      The same would apply, no doubt, to many others who lived under the
+      influence of wicked Nichus or evil disposed fairies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Druidesses! If you had at least survived as fairies! If they had met
+      you only in the air travelling simply by the aid of your magic wand! <span
+      class="pagenum">[406]</span><a name="link406" id="link406"></a>But in
+      proportion as Christianity increased, your power necessarily decreased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0146" id="linkimage-0146"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/426s.jpg" alt="426s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/426.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/426m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The day came at last, when they dared transform you into fortune tellers,
+      and finally into accursed witches! Then your enchantress&rsquo; wand
+      became that atrocious broomstick upon which you travelled through the air
+      on your way to the witches&rsquo; Sabbath! Oh misery! Oh <span
+      class="pagenum">[407]</span><a name="link407" id="link407"></a>wretchedness!
+      What a fatal overthrow of all earthly glory and grandeur!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the women thus saw their power of ruling men by prophetic inspiration
+      slip away from them, they one fine day determined to change their tactics,
+      their ways and manners, and, I am sorry to have to say it, almost their
+      sex! They assumed the noisy and truculent manners of their brothers and
+      husbands and affected violent exercises, riding on horseback, wrestling,
+      and even fighting in battles. This was the age of bullying women, of <i>Strong
+      Women</i> in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they were young ladies they would admit no lover who could not prove
+      his affections by the most perilous adventures and impossible enterprises.
+      Such was the case with the famous Lady of Kynast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She owned a large domain and on this domain a ruined old tower which stood
+      on the summit of a steep, high rock, surrounded on all sides by a deep
+      abyss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rich, young, and beautiful, eagerly sought for by a number of admirers,
+      she did not think, in her desire to keep them from becoming too pressing,
+      of undertaking an endless piece of embroidery like Penelope. She did not
+      embroider; in fact, she looked with contempt, and almost with disgust,
+      upon every kind of work that was done by women. <span class="pagenum">[408]</span><a
+      name="link408" id="link408"></a>She told her lovers that she was betrothed
+      to Ky-nast&mdash;this was the name of the old tower&mdash;and that any one
+      who thought of winning her good will, would first have to compete with her
+      betrothed. To do this, nothing was required but to climb up the rock and
+      the tower, and after having reached the battlements, to make a complete
+      round, not on foot, however, and assisted by the hands and knees, but on
+      horseback, without other assistance than the bridle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flock of lovers took flight instantly; only two remained. They were
+      two brothers, bereft of reason by the strength of their passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having cast lots, the first one attempted the task and at first he
+      was successful. But that was all. He had no sooner reached the crenelated
+      top of the old tower, unaccompanied by his less active courser, than he
+      was seized with vertigo and fell instantly into the abyss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second brother, in his turn, climbed up to the top and actually
+      succeeded in riding some length along the battlements; but soon his horse,
+      feeling the stones slipping from under its hoofs, and the whole tower
+      rocking under the weight, refused to go on. To return was as impossible as
+      to proceed.<span class="pagenum">[409]</span><a name="link409" id="link409"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0147" id="linkimage-0147"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/429s.jpg" alt="429s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/429.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/429m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[411]</span><a name="link411" id="link411"></a>The
+      knight, determined to carry through the undertaking in which he was
+      engaged, encouraged his horse with his voice and with his spurs, but the
+      poor animal remained immovable, apparently wedged in between the large
+      stones of the tower. At last, knight and horse disappeared together; the
+      abyss swallowed up their bleeding, mangled remains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lady of Kynast could not disguise her delight and her pride as she
+      received the congratulations of her noble neighbors; all the great ladies
+      thought of having a Kynast, or a similar trap, in which they might catch&rsquo;
+      and try their lovers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No other claimants, however, appeared to woo this fair lady, who was so
+      well protected by her betrothed. The poor damsel felt rather aggrieved by
+      this neglect. She was by no means satisfied with having sacrificed only
+      two young men to her pride; she was gradually becoming soured and
+      ill-tempered, when at last a third lover presented himself and asked leave
+      to attempt the trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not know who it was, and this surprised her; for how could he have
+      fallen in love with her? He might possibly have seen her on her balcony,
+      or at some royal feast; perhaps he was only allured by her great
+      reputation. However, there was nothing to lose by accepting his offer. At
+      best, he was only one more victim to be added to the list; that was all.
+      At that time women were ferocious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some days a thick, heavy fog had shrouded <span class="pagenum">[412]</span><a
+      name="link412" id="link412"></a>the castle and the old tower from top to
+      bottom, so as to make the ascent utterly impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The simple laws of hospitality, required, therefore, that the lady should
+      offer her castle to the newly arrived knight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter was handsome and of fine figure; his features beamed with
+      bravery and intelligence; his white, delicate hands, exquisitely shaped,
+      proved sufficiently that he was of noble descent; and his large retinue
+      bespoke his high rank and large fortune. During three days he spent almost
+      all his time with the young lady, but as yet he had not dared say a word
+      of his love. She, however, felt herself gradually conquered by a feeling
+      which had, until now, been unknown to her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the dense veil of mist was at length torn aside, and the Kynast shone
+      forth in its full splendor, she was on the point of telling the knight
+      that she would not insist on the trial in his case; but what would her
+      good friends, the noble ladies of the neighborhood, have said?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the moment came, the Lady of Kynast felt her heart fail her. She shut
+      herself in, she wept, she cried, and although little given to prayers
+      generally, she besought God to do a miracle in behalf of her knight. She
+      could, however, hope very little from such a miracle, for in the meantime,
+      loud clamors had been heard below, and as <span class="pagenum">[413]</span><a
+      name="link413" id="link413"></a>she surely thought the spectators were
+      bewailing the death of her last lover, she fainted away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0148" id="linkimage-0148"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/433s.jpg" alt="433s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/433.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/433m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pagenum">[415]</span><a name="link415" id="link415"></a>
+      Cries of joy and of triumph roused her again; the knight had successfully
+      accomplished the task. Quite overcome, she rushes to meet him, and in her
+      intense excitement and the depth of her passion, she forgets that all eyes
+      are upon her, and breathlessly cries out: &ldquo;My hand is yours.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he draws himself up to his full height, and, haughtily and harshly he
+      replies with a withering smile:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I ever asked you for your hand? I only came to avenge my two
+      brothers, whom you have killed, and I have done it, for I do not love you,
+      and you love me! Very well! Now you can die of your love, or of your
+      shame, as you like it! Farewell, I am going back to Margaret, my darling,
+      my wife!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same evening the wretched lady had herself hoisted up to the top of
+      the tower, from whence she wished, as she said, to watch the setting sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before the sun had sunk below the horizon, she had rejoined her
+      victims at the foot of the ruined old tower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the Kynast obtained possession of his betrothed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story might furnish an admirable plot for a grand opera. But, upon
+      reflection, I think it would <span class="pagenum">[416]</span><a
+      name="link416" id="link416"></a>suit a circus better, for there are in it
+      three first-class parts for horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lady of Kynast was a strong minded woman, rather than a really strong
+      woman; but there were others, who really distinguished themselves by
+      extraordinary physical strength. It would seem that the habit of taking
+      violent exercise had finally developed their muscles and sinews to such a
+      degree, that few men could be found strong enough to overcome them in a
+      wrestling match, or in armed combat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the noble Brunehilt, queen of Isenstein, in Norway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Soothsayers, Godmothers, Fairies, Strong Women, and Serpent Women</i>
+      are not the only women of this class which we ought to mention here
+      perhaps. We might also speak of the <i>Swan Women</i>, who floated on the
+      water in the dim morning mist, clothed in a cloak of eider down; and the
+      <i>Forest Woman</i>, who was honored every year by the burning of a
+      spindle full of hemp, to keep her from doing any harm; and the <i>Water
+      Sneezers,</i> to whom you had to say three times &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo;
+      in order to save their souls from purgatory; and the little <i>Moss
+      Gatherers</i>, who could not escape from their enemies, the Forest Woman
+      and the Wild Huntsman, unless a benevolent charcoal burner would mark some
+      trees with three crosses, behind <span class="pagenum">[417]</span><a
+      name="link417" id="link417"></a>which they could conceal
+      themselves. But we must make haste to conclude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, as the great <i>Wild Huntsman</i> has accidentally been
+      mentioned, we do not think it would be fair to leave him out and pass him
+      over in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0149" id="linkimage-0149"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/437s.jpg" alt="437s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/437.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/437m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      He is the Lord Hackelberg. Most imprudently he had begged God to allow him
+      to exchange his place in heaven for the right to hunt upon earth for all
+      time to come. To punish him, God granted <span class="pagenum">[418]</span><a
+      name="link418" id="link418"></a>his prayer, and ever since he has been
+      hunting, with horns blowing and dogs barking, without respite or repose.
+      He hunts continually, day and night, to-day as yesterday; he must hunt
+      to-morrow as he does to-day, and yet he must hunt the same deer, which
+      forever escapes from him, and ever will escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which of the two is most to be pitied, the everlasting huntsman, or the
+      everlasting game?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How many others could claim a right to be mentioned here as well as he?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the people who are <i>condemned to remain standing forever</i>,
+      and those who are <i>condemned to dance forever,</i> another variety of
+      bewitched people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You do not think my material is all used up? By no means! In the first
+      place, I might have told you all about mythological animals; of Thor&rsquo;s
+      <i>buck-goat</i>, which enjoyed the same privilege as the boar of the
+      Walhalla, of daily satisfying the powerful appetite of its master and his
+      guests, and yet being replaced in all its bodily fullness, provided only
+      care had been taken to put all the bones aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I might have gone back to give a fuller account of that famous
+      Iormungandur, the great sea serpent, which still exists in our days&mdash;who
+      dares doubt it? The crew of an English vessel, passengers, <span
+      class="pagenum">[419]</span><a name="link419" id="link419"></a>officers,
+      and sailors, have unanimously testified in a legally drawn up deposition
+      that they have met it quite recently in the Northern seas. What more
+      evidence do you want?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the <i>Kraken</i>, that most marvelous of all cetaceans, which could
+      easily be mistaken for a habitable island, and on which imprudent
+      navigators once really landed, erecting their tents and saying mass,
+      without its ever stirring, until they hoisted anchors, when the animal for
+      the first time gave signs of life?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the <i>Griffins</i>, those perfect symbols of avarice, who are all the
+      time busily engaged in dragging forth from underground vast heaps of gold
+      and precious stones, merely in order to guard and defend them ever
+      afterwards, at the peril of their lives, although the gold and the jewels
+      are of no use to any one? And Sleipner, Odin&rsquo;s <i>eight-legged horse</i>,
+      and the dog <i>Garm</i>, etc?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing on to another variety of zoological marvels, I might have
+      mentioned the <i>Salmon,</i> whose scaly skin wicked Loki assumed as a
+      disguise in order to escape from the wrath of the gods after Balder&rsquo;s
+      death. And that marvelous <i>Sturgeon</i> in the Rhine, which the French
+      legends have put to good profit. Let us pause a moment in contemplation of
+      this wonderful fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young, noble lady determined, in order to save <span class="pagenum">[420]</span><a
+      name="link420" id="link420"></a>her honor, to destroy her beauty, the
+      grandest, most heroic, and most calamitous sacrifice that can possibly be
+      made. Hence, when the moment for action arrived, her courage failed her.
+      But if she could not bear the idea of becoming ugly, she could at least
+      mutilate herself. So she puts her dagger upon the ledge of a window which
+      overlooked the Rhine, seizes a hatchet, and with a single blow cuts off
+      her hand, which falls into the river, and then with the bleeding stump
+      terrifies her infamous persecutor. Here the sturgeon makes its appearance.
+      This providential sturgeon has seen the hand drop into the river; it
+      swallows it with well-known voracity, but in the anticipation of restoring
+      it, seven years later, uninjured to the true owner, and thus to prove her
+      superhuman virtue. And this really happened seven years after the
+      occurrence in Rome, in the presence of the Pope and his assembled
+      Cardinals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first sight it does not appear quite clear, how the sturgeon could have
+      passed from the waters of the Rhine into those of the Tiber, but in this
+      kind of stories there is no use in trying to comprehend everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noble lady and the sturgeon have furnished the theme for the famous
+      novel, &ldquo;La Manekine,&rdquo; and later, in the Middle Ages, for a
+      great dramatic mystery on the French stage. <span class="pagenum">[421]</span><a
+      name="link421" id="link421"></a>Before concluding this chapter, I may be
+      allowed to say a word about the <i>World of the Dead</i>, which sends in
+      certain consecrated nights its representatives to some of the churches, or
+      to silent dinners, and about the <i>World of Ghosts</i>, the annals of
+      which have been collected, and the laws of which have been explained by
+      Jung Stilling and Kerner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0150" id="linkimage-0150"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/441s.jpg" alt="441s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/441.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/441m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men, walk, run, and even jump,
+      but they have no power over material objects; they cannot move a table, a
+      chair, or even a straw. All their united efforts would not succeed in
+      causing the light of a candle <span class="pagenum">[422]</span><a
+      name="link422" id="link422"></a>to flicker. We can therefore feel
+      perfectly easy with regard to these ghosts; they cannot injure our
+      furniture, nor draw the knot of our cravat inconveniently tight, if they
+      should take a fancy to make an end of us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor can I keep altogether silence as to the <i>World of Shadows</i>, still
+      dimmer and less perceptible than the World of Ghosts. I shall therefore
+      content myself with a single instance, which we owe to a Dutch legend. The
+      master bell-ringer of the city of Haarlem, caught at a tavern by his wife
+      escaped with such extraordinary rapidity that his shadow was unable to
+      follow him, and remained hanging on the wall&mdash;a fact duly certified
+      by the signature and seal of the reigning burgomaster, the aldermen, and
+      other notables of said town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of such overwhelming evidence one might be disposed to doubt the
+      authenticity of this remarkable occurrence, which Hoffmann, I believe, has
+      used in one of his Tales; but had not long before Hoffmann, and long
+      before the master bell-ringer of Haarlem even, the god Fô left his shadow
+      in some town of Hindustan, instead of his card? We try in vain to find
+      anything new under the sun; all our most famous myths and all our most
+      amusing anecdotes have travelled all over India before they reached us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I might also tell you.... but he who tells <span class="pagenum">[423]</span><a
+      name="link423" id="link423"></a>everything, says too much. Let us here
+      pause once more, and for the last time. Farewell, reader, and may Heaven
+      keep you sound in body and soul.<span class="pagenum">[424]</span><a
+      name="link424" id="link424"></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0151" id="linkimage-0151"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:35%;">
+      <img src="images/443s.jpg" alt="443s " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h4>
+      <a href="images/443.jpg"><i>Full Page Image</i></a> -- <a
+      href="images/443m.jpg"><i>Medium-Size</i></a>
+    </h4>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths of the Rhine, by X. B. Saintine
+
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