directly on the cerebellum, which in giants is unusually developed.
This time the sleeper opened one eye, closed it again, and after having
scratched himself at the place where he had been struck, he fell asleep
again.
Brutal by nature and doubly so when fasting, Thor had become perfectly
furious when he found himself thus mysteriously powerless. Fully
determined the next time to make an end, once for all, of his adversary,
he put on his invisible belt, which had the gift of doubling his
strength, seized his hammer with both hands and threw it with such
amazing force at the giant, that it sank up to the handle into one of
his cheeks and Thor had no small trouble in getting it to come back to
him.
This time Skrymner was fully roused; he opened both of his eyes, raised
his hand to his cheek, and exclaimed that it was impossible to sleep
comfortably {378}in that place, as a fly had just stung him in the
cheek.
Then, perceiving his assailant, who stood right before him, he asked him
good-naturedly, how he happened to be there, and whether he had lost
his way. In the meantime the other travellers are also coming up and
Skrymner offers to show them the way to the great city of Utgard, where
he promises they will find a good inn, a good table, a warm reception,
and not only enough for their wants but all that their heart can desire.
Thor does not know what to think. Overcome and confounded, he follows
the footsteps of his guide, without being able to form any idea except
the one: to avenge himself in a signal manner for all his humiliations.
The city of Utgard is of incredible size, the city walls, the houses,
the trees, the furniture, all are gigantic. Our travellers could easily
pass between the legs of the little children they met in the streets,
as we modern people pass under the triumphal arches of the ancients. You
see, now we are no longer in Lilliput, we have reached the island of the
giants with Gulliver. Gulliver might very well be the offspring of some
Scandinavian legend.
The king received Thor and, his friends, laughing heartily at their
small size, and the seats they are offered are three times as high as
they are. {379}After a host of adventures in which our men, that is to
say, our gods, are continually victimized, Thor in his rage challenges
the giants to single combat. The king accepts the challenge and
offers to back his nurse, a toothless old woman, against the god. Thor
consents, eager as he is to vent his wrath on somebody, and determines
to pitch His Majesty’s nurse out of the window. But by all his efforts
he hardly succeeds in lifting her slightly off the ground, and he
himself, exhausted by the struggle, sinks on his knees.
On the next day our travellers came to the conclusion that they had
travelled far enough. Skrymner again showed the way, with his usual
courtesy, and when they were well out of the town he took the god Thor
aside and said to him: “So far you have only known my name and nothing
of myself, now you ought to know that I am Skrym-ner, the wizard. You
ought, therefore, not to mind anything that has happened to you during
these last days. You thought you were striking me three times with your
hammer, but in reality you were striking the impenetrable rocks, on
which I was apparently sleeping. As to the nurse, you have given proof
there of such strength as I should not even have expected from the great
Thor, when you lifted her from the ground; for the toothless old woman
is none other but Death, yes Death, {380}whom I had compelled to
come and take part in our games. The rest was all enchantment, mere
delusions! I wanted to see if the power of the art of Magic was equal to
that of the gods. Farewell, Asa-Thor, and a pleasant journey to you.”
More enraged than ever, Asa-Thor was about to throw himself upon him;
but the pretended giant had fled in the shape of a bird. Then Thor
turned back towards the city of Utgard, determined to destroy it
utterly, but before his eyes it dissolved into a column of smoke.
Well, I promised you some of Mother Goose’s stories--have I kept word?
And do not imagine that this story of Thor and the giants’ city is of
doubtful origin--you will find it in chapters 23, 24, 25, and 26 of the
sacred book called Edda.
Of magicians and wizards I could say much, but the road is long and I
am in haste to reach the end. And who does not know the story of the
prowess of Merlin and of the Maugis?
In all the ancient traditions of the North there are found innumerable
tales of wizards, witchcraft, and ghosts. Now rocks are changed into
palaces, and now brutes into men and men into brutes; and the same
fantastic but always epic element prevails largely in all the old
romances of chivalry as well as in the great poems of Ariosto and Tasso.
{381}In almost all countries we find that epic poetry is closely allied
to religious sentiments and through these to the marvelous; for it has
always found a first home in temples and a first use for temples. Thus
it was in India with the Mahabarata, and in Greece with the myths of
Hercules and of Orpheus. It could not be otherwise with the Gallic or
German bards, nor with the Scandinavian skalds, all of whose grand poems
are most unfortunately unknown at present.
But a feature more peculiarly German than the wizards, are the
bewitched, often called the Sleepers. In these Germany incorporates, as
it were, the loftiest of her patriotic aspirations, the saddest of her
disappointments, the most persistent of her hopes. They represent not
only her old faith, that could never be completely eradicated, but
also her old favorites, a Hermann and a Siegfried, the hero of the
Nibelungen, a Theodoric and a Charlemagne, a Witikind and a Frederick
Barbarossa, a William Tell and a Charles V. Her heroes, her beloved,
her glory--she has not allowed them to fall into oblivion and be severed
from the present; she will not admit that they are dead, they are but
asleep. Witikind under the Siegberg in Westphalia, Charlemagne in the
lowest rooms of his old castle at Nuremberg. There--and not, as might
have been imagined, in Aix-la-Chapelle--the mighty old {382}Emperor
rests majestically, surrounded by his brave champions, ready to awake
again whenever God shall be pleased to tell him that the moment has
come.
As for Frederick Barbarossa, he sleeps in the Kyffhauser, one of the
porphyry and granite mountains of the Taunus, and so do others; there is
no denying the fact, for they have been seen!
A few years after his disappearance from this world, Frederick showed
himself upon the summit of one of these mountains, whenever the sound of
a musical instrument was heard in the valley. Knowing his love of music,
the Philharmonic Societies of Erfurth and of other towns to this day,
are fond of serenading the old warrior.
It is said that one evening, when the clock at Tilleda struck midnight,
certain musicians who had ascended the Kyffhauser, suddenly saw the
mountain open and a number of women adorned with jewels and carrying
torches, came out of the opening. They beckoned to them, the men
followed, continuing to play on their instruments and thus they came
where the Emperor was. The latter ordered a good supper to be served,
and when they were ready to leave again, the fair ladies of the court
escorted them back, with their torches in their hands, and at the last
moment gave to each of them a poplar branch. The poor musicians had
{383}hoped for better things from the Emperor’s generosity, and when
they reached the foot of the mountain, they threw their branches into
the road, very indignant at having been so badly treated. Only one among
the number kept his branch, and when he reached home, carefully stuck it
by the side of the consecrated bunch of box which hung over the head of
his bed. Immediately, O marvel! each leaf of the poplar branch changed
into a gold ducat. When the others heard of this, they hastened to look
for their branches, but they never found them again.
On another occasion a shepherd--others say a miner--met on the
Kyffhäuser a monk with a white beard, who unceremoniously and just as
if he had asked him to come and see his next door neighbor, told him
to come with him and see the Emperor Barbarossa, who wanted to speak
to him. At first the poor shepherd was dumb-founded; then he began to
tremble in all his limbs. The monk, however, reassured him and led him
into a narrow, dark valley, and then, striking the ground three times
with his rod, he said: “Open! open! open!”
Thereupon a great noise arose beneath the feet of the monk and the
shepherd; the earth seemed to quake and then a large opening became
visible. They found they were in a long gallery, lighted up {384}by a
single lamp and closed at the other end by folding doors of brass. The
monk, who no doubt was a magician, knocked three times at the door with
his rod, saying again: “Open! open! open!” and the brass doors turned
upon their hinges, producing the same noise which they had heard before
underground.
They were now in a grotto, whose ceiling and walls, blackened by the
smoke of an immense number of torches, seemed to be hung with black as
a sign of mourning. It might have been taken for a mortuary chapel, only
there was no coffin or catafalque visible. The shepherd had, in the
mean time, begun to tremble once more, but the monk repeated his summons
before a silver door, which thereupon opened in the same manner as the
brass door.
In a magnificent room lighted but dimly and in such a manner that it
was impossible to tell where the light came from, they saw the Emperor
Frederick, seated upon a golden throne, with a golden crown on his
head; as they entered he gently inclined his head, contracting his bushy
eyebrows. His long red beard had grown through the table before him and
fell down to the ground.
Turning, not without visible effort, towards the shepherd, he spoke to
him for some time on different subjects and recommended to him to repeat
{385}what he heard to his friends at home. His voice was feeble, but it
grew strong and sonorous as soon as he alluded to the glory of Germany.
Then he said:--
“Are the ravens still flying over the mountains?”
“Yes!” replied the shepherd.
“Are the dead trees still hanging over the abysses of the Kyffhâuser as
in former days?”
“Who could uproot them, unless it be a great storm?”
“Has no one spoken to you of the reappearance of the old woman?”
“No!”
“Well then, I must sleep another hundred years!”
He made a sign to the shepherd that he could go, and then fell asleep,
murmuring the name of a woman which died on his lips.
For among these great Sleepers of Germany there is also a woman, but a
woman rather of symbolic than real existence. What is the difference?
Tradition gives the following account of her:--
When Witikind was beaten by Charlemagne at Engter, a poor old woman,
unable to follow him in his flight, uttered lamentable cries and thus
added to the panic among the defeated army. When the {386}soldiers
obeyed Witikind’s orders and stopped for a moment in the heat of their
flight, they threw a mass of sand and rock upon the old woman. They did
not expect that she would die when thus buried alive; their commander
had told them: “She will come back!”
This old woman, who is to come back, is Teutonia, and it was her name
that Frederick Barbarossa was murmuring to himself as he fell asleep
for another century.
When the old woman shall have succeeded in extricating herself from
this mass of sand and rock which weighs her down, then and then only
the great day will come. The heroes who now are held captive in their
mountains and subterranean grottoes, will shake off the torpor of their
long sleep; they will reappear among their people, the dead trees will
bear new foliage to proclaim their return by a miracle, and the cry of:
Teutonia! Teutonia! will resound in a thousand valleys, and the birds
even will repeat the name!
They say that when this long wished for day does come, Germany will be
freed of all her difficulties, and will boast of having but one
creed, one law, and one heart; she will be glorious and free, one and
indivisible!
We must wait for the birds to tell us so, before we believe it. {387}At
that time Teutonia and her emperors were alike asleep. They mention a
peasant woman from Mayence, who on her way home became so exhausted and
unable to bear the heat of the sun, that she had to seek shelter in an
isolated house, standing by the wayside in the midst of a plantation of
young trees. It was a dwelling of a skillful magician. She asked him for
leave to rest there a few moments. As he was in the midst of some of
his most abstruse calculations, he only replied by nodding his head, and
glanced with his eye at a bench in the most distant part of the room.
She went and sat down, but only on the edge, hardly knowing if she was
allowed to do so or not; every moment she got up to ask her host if she
disturbed him, and if she had not better leave him, tired and exhausted
as she was. She told him that she would much rather endure the heat and
the fatigue, than be a burden to him, she begged him not to mind her and
to go on just as if she were not there, and a host of similar phrases.
Annoyed by her incessant, idle talk, the magician suddenly turned round
and fixedly looked her full in the face. Immediately she fell asleep.
(There was no doubt some knowledge of magnetism already in the world
at that time, but as yet only of magic magnetism). When the good woman
awoke, {388}she was alone; her host had left her. To her great regret
she was compelled to leave without being able to thank him for his
hospitality in her usual profuse manner, and to beg him to excuse her
falling asleep, when he did her the honor of keeping her company.
As she left the house, she was not a little surprised to see around the
house, not a copse of young trees, but a number of tall pine trees and
noble oaks, but she thought it possible she might have left by another
door than that by which she had entered.
When she at last reached her village, new surprises were in store for
her. Of all the good people whom she met on her way or whom she saw
standing in the doors of their houses, she could not recognize a single
one; she had to look a long time before she found her own house, and
when she reached it at last, it was inhabited by strange people, who in
spite of her protestations, pushed her out and treated her as mad.
Then followed a lawsuit, the result of which was to prove, that instead
of sleeping an hour or so on that bench, as she believed, she had been
asleep there a hundred years. Thus the young saplings had had time to
grow up into large trees and her house to change masters. The
strangers who were now living in it and who had turned her out so
{389}unceremoniously, were nothing less than her great grandchildren.
I hope, however, the matter was settled amicably.
The Germans have, with that perseverance which characterizes the nation,
preserved all that could be preserved of their ancient gods as well as
of their former heroes; they do not like to lose anything, only they
did not embalm their favorites, but used enchantment. Let us, however,
notice at once for the honor of the gods, that they were never condemned
to sleep indefinitely. Not one of them is found among the great
Sleepers, such as Charlemagne, Witikind, Frederick I., William Tell, or
the peasant woman, from the neighborhood of Mayence. It is true, they
were exiled to certain remote districts, which they were not allowed to
leave, but they could at least move about and continue their former mode
of life there, after a fashion.
It is not so very long since certain charcoal burners protested that
they had seen Asa-Thor, for want of giants to combat, hurl his hammer
against the tallest trees, which he broke and uprooted.
They had also seen the enchanted hunt of Diana, whose deep-mouthed dogs
bark at night and disturb the slumbers of honest people in {390}Bohemian
villages. Who has not heard of the intrigues of old Venus, not with
her former, classic lover, the god Mars, but with the good knight
Tannhäuser? If we are to believe Heinrich
Heine, even Jupiter has been recently discovered again in one of the
Norwegian islands.
[Illustration: 410]
It would be the height of imprudence, of course, to undertake an account
of the discovery, after such a master. I shall, therefore, be content to
present a mere summary of this remarkable tradition.
There is an island in the Northern seas, which is bordered by icebergs
and arid mountains: the valleys are dim and dark with heavy mists, the
mountain tops are covered with snow for nine months of the year.
Here, one dismal morning, some travellers landed, driven by a tempest
much more than by their own free will. They were mostly savants, members
of great academies from Stockholm and St. Petersburg, who had undertaken
a voyage of discovery to the polar regions. The arid, almost {391}bare
soil did not promise a pleasant resting place, but the mountain slopes
towards the south produced fine grass and dwarf gooseberry bushes, and
the immense number of holes in the ground, together with distinct traces
of debris left at the openings, proved that the island was at all
events inhabited by countless numbers of rabbits. Of other animal life,
however, no trace could be found.
Rabbits seemed to be the only inhabitants of the island, and that was
tempting enough for poor sailors who had for some time been put on salt
rations.
Our savants prepared, therefore, a large number of traps and snares,
when suddenly a fierce tempest of snow and hail broke out, and compelled
them instantly to seek refuge in a spacious cave which opened in that
direction.
They were not a little surprised to find here an old man, bald, hollow
cheeked, and pale, whose body was emaciated and decrepit and who was
hardly clothed in spite of the rigor of the climate. But beneath all
these signs of extreme old age, and great destitution, the stranger
displayed an air of authority, and on his serene and lofty brow such
supernatural majesty, that the travellers were filled with respect and
reverence, and well-nigh trembled at his appearance. {392}An eagle of
the largest variety, but so reduced that he looked the mere skeleton
of a bird, and with faded and disheveled plumage, sat in a corner, the
picture of misery, with his dull eyes and his drooping wings. He was the
old man’s sole companion.
The two hermits, having no other means of subsistence, lived by hunting,
and the old man found in addition, means to carry on a modest traffic
in the furs of the only game that the island contained; he laid up large
supplies of the small peltry and exchanged it for luxuries.....
But my pen refuses to go on. I cannot reconcile it to my principles as
an author nor to my conscience as an honest student of genuine myths, to
repeat here a story, which is altogether apocryphal, and which belongs
much less to tradition than to mystification.
Now, this old man was Jupiter, and as I think it over, I come to the
conclusion that Mr. Heine, who laughs at the most serious things, has
skillfully concealed his irony under the cloak of an interesting story,
for the mere purpose of telling us that the Chief of the Gods, dread
Jupiter, has become--a dealer in rabbit skins!
I cannot follow his example.
Without wandering from my subject, for I am still speaking of false
gods, I will substitute for {393}this necessarily much curtailed
account, another story which I can warrant as authentic.
“In Persia,” we are told by Count Gobineau, in a recently published
book of great merit, “the _Soufys,_ that is to say the savants and
philosophers, reject all dogmatic religion and believe in the reunion of
the soul with God in trances only. When this union is complete, the soul
is transformed and becomes itself a participant in the nature of the
uncreated essence, and Man is God.” Human folly is always a disease
produced by human pride.
France, also, has produced a few gods of that kind; I do not mean to
mention them, however, as belonging to the myths of the Rhine, which
have special reference to Germany only. But among the Germans, also,
there is a school of philosophers who without going as far as the
Persians go, are utterly incredulous, and disregarding trances
and immortal souls alike, have finally denied the existence of God
altogether and made themselves gods. This shows how anxious savants as
well as ignorant men are, in that beautiful country, to people the earth
with deities of every kind!
It is the history of one of these earth-born gods which I propose to
give here, before I close this long chapter. Alas! he is dead now, and
that is a great pity; but he did live once; on that essential point
there is no lack of evidence. I could even, {394}like the Thuringian
peasants when speaking of Frederick Barbarossa, say: “I have seen him!”
In the year 1800 there was born in Düsseldorf, in Prussia, a child in a
Jewish family recently converted to Christianity. This child might well
have been looked upon as of supernatural origin, so entirely different
was it, from its earliest days, from all that had ever been seen before.
Martin Luther no doubt, if the child had been one of his own, would have
pronounced him to be a Killecroff.
He was not only noisy and troublesome, but he was also a pedant; he
snubbed professors and listened to the advice of very young children.
When his parents scolded him, he only laughed at them; when a grave
event disturbed a neighbor’s household, he laughed; when the French took
his native city, he laughed; in fine he was always laughing.
However, as he grew up, he gorged himself with logic, with mathematics,
with Greek and Latin and Hebrew and all kinds of good things besides.
He became even a philosopher before he was of age, but his philosophy
consisted mainly in a sarcastic laugh. When they spoke to him of the
position he might occupy in Düsseldorf, and of the wealth he might
acquire, his only answer was a grimace.
A rabbi spread out before him heaps of gold, {395}promising to give him
that and more, if he would be his slave only for a few years; he refused
to listen to him. As he was a vain man, the demon of Fame endeavored to
tempt him, but he laughed in his face.
At last the devil, a real devil, I am sure (his name was George William
Frederick Schlegel) whispered into his ear: “Would you like to be a
god?”
This time our young philosopher did not laugh. He became a god, and,
from official jealousy, proceeded to deny the great God in Heaven until
he lost all human sentiments. He lived alone, friendless, childless,
without a family and giving up even his mother country, finding that
everything had to be done over again in this world, which he had not
created.
After leaving Germany he came to France, and here in France he laughed
louder and bitterer than ever. In France they did not believe in his
divinity; they did not worship him, but they loved him as if he had been
a simple mortal; in France he made friends and he became like other men
once more. Finally, as he was after all bad only in his wit, he became
voluntarily a convert as he saw the evil fruit of his teachings. He
took a wife to himself with the sanction of the Church, and he died
a believer. {396}This ex-god was called Heinrich Heine, that Heinrich
Heine, who laughed so bitterly at his ex-colleague, Jupiter, and spoke of
him as a dealer in rabbit skins.
[Illustration: 416]
[Illustration: 419]
XVI.
{399}Women as Missionaries, Women as Prophets, Strong Women and Serpent
Women.--_Children’s Myths.--Godmothers.--Fairies.--The Magic Wand and
the Broomstick.--The Lady of Kynast.--The World of the Dead,’ the World
of Ghosts, and the World of Shadows.--Myths of Animals._
Well? Have you seen enough of the gods and demigods of Germany, of the
Nixen and goblins, the Kobolds, the giants, and the dwarfs? Have I shown
you enough of this vast storehouse of human folly? I must confess, it
makes me melancholy to speak of all this, and I feel an urgent desire to
“shut up shop.”
The conscientious collector of myths, who has more material than he can
manage, and sees new myths continually rising before him, is not unlike
those learned physicians who spend their lives among crowds of insane
people. A fever of imitation seizes them and soon they begin to wander
like their patients.