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.