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_.