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.