 section 5 of popular tales from the Norse this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org read by Lenny popular tales from the Norse by Sir George Webb Dason section 5 introduction part 3 Norse mythology and now in the second place for that particular branch of the Aryan race in which this peculiar development of the common tradition has arisen which we are to consider as Norse popular tales whatever disputes may have existed as to the mythology of other branches of the Teutonic subdivision of the Aryan race whatever discussions may have arisen as to the position of this or that divinity among the Franks the Anglo-Saxons or the Goths about the Norsemen there can be no dispute or doubt from a variety of circumstances but two before all the rest the one their settlement in Iceland which preserve their language and its literary treasures in corrupt the other their late conversion to Christianity their cosmogony and mythology stands before us in full flower and we have not as elsewhere to pick up and piece together the ratched fragments of a faith the articles of which its own priests had forgotten to commit to writing and which those of another creed had dashed to pieces and destroyed wherever their zealous hands could reach in the therefore in the early sagas in Saxo's tilted Latin which barely conceals the popular songs and legends from which the historians drew his materials we are unable to form a perfect conception of the creed of the hidden Norsemen we are unable to trace as has been traced by the same hand in another place the natural and rational development of that creed from a simple worship of nature and her powers first to monotheism and then to a polytheistic system the tertiary system of polytheism is the soil out of which the mythology of the eddas sprang though through it each of the older formations crops out in huge masses which admit of no mistake as to its origin in the eddas the natural powers have been partly subdued partly thrust on one side for a time by Odin and the aesir by the great father and his children by one supreme and 12 subordinate gods who roll for an appointed time and over whom hangs an impending fate which imparts a charm of melancholy to the creed which has clung to the rays who once believed in it long after the creed itself has vanished before the light of christianity according to this creed the aesir and odin had their boat in asgard a lofty hill in the center of the habitable earth in the midst of midgard that middle earth which we hear of in early english poetry the abode of gods and men around that earth which was fenced in against the attacks of ancient and inveterate foes by a natural fortification of hills flowed the great sea in a ring and beyond that sea was utgard the outlying world the abode of frost giants and monsters those old natural powers who had been dispossessed by odin and the aesir when the new order of the universe arose and between whom and the new gods a feud as inveterate as that cherished by the titans against jupiter was necessarily kept alive it is true indeed that this feud was broken by intervals of truths during which the aesir and the giants visit each other and appear on more or less friendly terms but the true relation between them was war pretty much as the Norsemen was at war with all the west of the world nor was this struggle between two rival races or powers confined to the gods in osgard alone just as their ancient foes were the giants of frost and snow so between the race of men and the race of trolls was there a perpetual feud as the gods were men magnified and exaggerated so were the trolls diminished frost giants far superior to men in strength and stature but inferior to men in wit and invention like the frost giants they inhabit the rough and rugged places of the earth and historically speaking in all probability represent the old aboriginal races who retired into the mountainous fastnesses of the land and whose strength was exaggerated because the intercourse between the races was so small in almost every respect they stand in the same relations to men as the frost giants stand to the gods there is nothing perhaps more characteristic of a true as compared with a false religion than the restlessness of the one when brought face to face with the quiet dignity and majesty of the other under the christian dispensation our blessed lord his awful sacrifice once performed ascended up on high having led captivity captive and expects the hour that shall make his foes his footstool but false gods jupiter vishnu odin thor must constantly keep themselves as it were before the eyes of men lest they should lose respect such gods being variably what the philosophers call subjective that is to say having no existence except in the minds of those who believe in them having been created by men in his own image with his own desires and passions stand in constant need of being recreated they change as the habits and temper of the race which adores them alter they are ever bound to do something fresh less men should forget them and new divinities assert their place hence came endless avatars in hindu mythology reproducing all the dreamy monstrosities of that passive indian mind hence came joe's adventures tinged with all the lust and guile which the wickedness of the natural man planted on a hot bed of iniquity is capable of conceiving hence bloody malloch and the foul abominations of chamosh and milkem hence to odin's countless adventures his journeys into all parts of the world his constant trials of wit and strength when his ancient foes the frost giants his hair breath escapes when stores labors and toils his passages beyond the sea girt with his strength belt wearing his iron gloves and grasping his hammer which split the skulls of so many of the giants kith and kin in the Norse gods then we see the Norsemen himself sublime and elevated beyond men's nature but bearing about with him all his bravery and endurance all his dash and spirit of adventure all his fortitude and resolution to struggle against a certainty of doom which sooner or later must overtake him on that dread day the twilight of the gods when the wolf was to break loose when the great snake that lay coiled around the world should lash himself into wrath and the whole race of the zeers and their antagonists were to perish in internecine strife such were the gods in whom the Norsemen believed exaggerations of himself of all his good and all his bad qualities their might and their adventures their domestic quarrels and certain doom were some invincible lays now collected in what we call the elder or poetic era simple majestic sounds whose mellow accents go straight to the heart through the year and whose simple severity never suffers us to mistake their meaning but besides these gods there were heroes of the race whose fame and glory were in every man's memory and whose mighty deeds were in every minstrel's mouth Helgi, Sigmund, Sinfjötli, Sigurd, Signi, Brinhild, Gudrun, champions and shieldmaidens, henchmen and course-choosers now dead and gone who sat round Odin's board in Falhalla women whose beauty woes and sufferings were beyond those of all women men whose prowess had never found an equal between these love and hate all that can foster passion or beget revenge ill assorted marriages the right men to the wrong woman the wrong man to the right woman envings jealousies hatred murders all the works of the natural man combined together to form that marvelous story which begins with a curse the curse of ill-gotten gold and ends with a curse a widow's curse which drags down all on whom it falls and even her own flesh and blood to certain doom such was the theme of the wondrous Folsom tale the far-older simpler and grander original of that Nibelungen need of the 13th century a tale which begins with the slaughter of Fafnir by Sigurd and ends with Hermannarik that fears faith breaker as the Anglo-Saxon minstrel calls him when he is describing in rapid touches the mythic glories of the Teutonic race this was the story of the Folsoms they traced themselves back like all heroes to Odin the great father of gods and men from him sprung Sigurd, from him Redir, from him Folsom ripped from his mother's womb after six years bearing to become the eponymous of that famous race in the center of his hall grew an oak the tall trunk of which passed through the roof and its bow spread far and wide in upper air into that hall on a high feast day when Sigurd Folsom's daughter was to be given away to Sigurd king of Gothelin strode an old one-eyed guest his feet were bare his holes were of knitted linen he wore a great striped cloak and a brode flapping hat in his hand he bore a sword which at one stroke he drove up to the hilt in the oak trunk there said he let him of all this company bear this sword who is many enough to pull it out I give it him and none shall say he ever bore a better blade with these words he passed out of the hall and was seen no more many tried for that sword was plainly a thing of price but none could stir it till Sigmund the best and bravest of Folsom's sons tried his hands and lo the weapon yielded itself at once this was that famous blade Grum of which we shall hear again Sigmund bore it in battle against his brother-in-law who quarreled with him about this very sword when Folsom fell and Sigmund and his ten brothers were taken and bound all perished but Sigmund who was saved by his sister Signy and hidden in a wood till he could revenge his father and brethren here with Synthietli who was at once his son and nephew he ran as a werewolf through the forest and wrought many wild deeds when Synthietli was of age to help him they proceeded to vengeance and burned the treacherous brother-in-law alive with all his followers. Sigmund then regains his father's kingdom and in extreme old age dies in battle against the sons of King Humding just as he was about to turn the fight a warrior of more than mortal might a one-eyed man in a blue cloak with a flapping head rose up against him spear in hand at that outstretched spear Sigmund smites with his trusty sword it snaps in twain then he knows that his luck's gone he sees in his foe Odin the giver of the sword sinks down on the gory battlefield and dies in the arms of Hjordis his young wife refusing all leechcraft and bowing his head to Odin's will by the fortune of war Hjordis bearing a babe under her girdle came into the hands of King Helpreg of Denmark there she bore a son to Sigmund Sigurd the darling of Teutonic song and story Ragn the king's myth was his foster father and as the boy grew up the fairest and stoutest of all the Volsans Ragn who was of the dwarf race urged him day by day to do a doubt he did and slay Fafnir the dragon for Fafnir Ragn and Otter had been brothers sons of Raidmar in one of their many wanderings Odin Loki and Hynir came to a river in a forge there on the bank under the forge they saw an Otter with a salmon in its mouth which it ate gridly with its eyes shut Loki took a stone threw it and killed the beast and both said how he had got both fish and flesh at one throw then the Ezir passed on and came at night to Raidmar's house asked the lodging got it and showed their spoil season bind them lads cried Raidmar for they have slain your brother Otter so they were seasoned bound by Ragn and Fafnir and offered an atonement to buy off the feud and Raidmar was to name the sum then Otter was flayed and the Ezir were to fill the skin with red gold and cover it without that not a hair could be seen to fetch the gold Odin sent Loki down to the abode of the black elves there in a stream he got Unwadi the dwarf and made him give up all the gold which he had hoarded up in the stony rock and vain the dwarf bagged and prayed that he might keep one ring for it was the source of all his wealth and ring after ring dropped from it no not a penny should he have said Loki then the dwarf lay the curse on the ring and said it should be every man's bane who owned it so much the better said Loki and when he got back Odin saw the ring how fair it was and kept it to himself but gave the gold to Raidmar so Raidmar filled the skin with gold as full as he could and set it up on end and Odin poured gold over it and covered it up but when Raidmar looked at it he saw still one gray hair and they then covered that too as the atonement was at an end then Odin drew forth the ring and laid it over the gray hair so the Ezir was set free but before they went Loki repeated the curse which Unwadi had laid upon the ring and gold it soon began to work first Rajin asked for some of the gold but not a penny would Raidmar give so the two brothers led their heads together and slew their sire then Rajin bagged Fafnir to share the gold with him but no Fafnir was stronger and said he should keep it all himself and Rajin had best be off unless he wished to fear the same way as Raidmar so Rajin had to fly but Fafnir took a dragon's shape and there said Rajin he lies on the glistening heath coiled around his store of golden precious things and that's why i wish it to kill him Sigurd told Rajin who was the best of smiths to forge him a sword two are made but both snap a thunder at the first stroke untrue are they like you and all your rays cries Sigurd then he went to his mother and bagged the broken bits of grumb and out of them Rajin forged a new blade that clove the anvil in the smithy and cut a lock of wool borne down upon it by a running stream now slay me Fafnir said Rajin but Sigurd must first find out King Hungin's sons and avenge his father Sigmun's death King Helpreck lends him force by Odin's guidance he finds them out rouse their army and slays all those brothers on his return his foster father still eggs him on to slay the dragon and thus to shoe that there was still a false son left so armed with grumb and mounted on gran his good steed whom Odin had taught him how to choose Sigurd rolled to the glistening heath dug a pit in the dragon's path and slew him as he passed over him down to drink at the river then Rajin came up and the old feeling of vengeance for brothers blood grew stronger and as an atonement Sigurd was to rose Fafnir's heart and carried to Rajin who swilled his fill of the dragon's blood and laid down to sleep but as Sigurd roasted the heart and wondered if it would soon be done he tried it with his finger to see if it were soft the hot roast burned his finger and he put it into his mouth and tasted the life blood of the dragon then in a moment he understood the song of birds and heard how the swallows over his head said one to the other there thou sittest Sigurd roasting Fafnir's heart eat it thyself and become the wisest of men then another said there lies Rajin and means to cheat him who trusts him then a third said let Sigurd cut off his head then and so owned all the gold himself then Sigurd went to Rajin and slew him and ate the heart and rode on grand to Fafnir's lair and took the spoil and loaded his good steed with it and rode away and now Sigurd was the most famous of men all the songs and stories of the north made him the darling of that age they dwell on his soft hair which fell in great lots of golden brown on his bushy beard of Auburn Hugh his straight features his ruddy cheeks his broad brow his bright and piercing eye of which few dare to meet the gaze his tapper limbs and well-knit joints his broad shoulders and towering height so tall he was that as he strode through the full-grown rye gird with grime the tip of this cupboard just touched the ears of corn ready of tone two and full of forethought his great pleasure was to help other men and to do daring deeds to spoil his foes and give largely to his friends the bravest men alive and one that never knew fear on and on he rode till on a lone fell he saw a flickering flame and when he reached it dared flame and blazed all around the house no horse but grand could ride that flame no men alive but Sigurd sit him while he leaped through it inside the house lay a fair maiden armed from head to foot in a deep sleep brinhild at least sister was her name a valkyrie a course chooser but out of wilfulness she had given the victory to the wrong side and Odin in his wrath had thrust the horn of sleep into her cloak and laid her under a curse to slumber there till a man bold enough to ride through that flame came to set her free and win her for his bride so then she woke up and taught him all runes and wisdom and they swore to love each other with a mighty oath and then Sigurd left her and rode on so on he rode to king yuki's hall yuki the nifflung king of franklin whose wife was grimhild whose sons were gunna and hogni whose stepson was gutorn and whose daughter was the fair gudrun here at first he was full of brinhild and all for going back to fetch his lovely bride from the long fell but grimhild was given to dark arts she longed for the brave fulsung for her own daughter she brewed him the filter of forgetfulness he drained it off forgot brinhild swore a brother's friendship with gunna and hogni and wedded the fair gudrun but now yuki wanted a wife for gunna and so offset the brothers and their bosom friend to wu but whom should they choose but brinhild at least sister who sat there still upon the fell waiting for the man who was bold enough to ride through the flickering flame she knew but one could do it and waited for that one to come back so she had given out whoever could ride that flame should have her to wife so when gunna and hogni reached it gunna rode at it but his horse good though it was swerved from the fierce flame then by grimhild's magic arts sigurd and gunna changed shapes and arms and sigurd lept up on grin's back and the good steed bore him bravely through the flame so brinhild the proud maiden was won and forced to yield that evening was their wedding but when they lay down to rest sigurd unshithed his keen sword grumb and laid it naked between them next morning when he arose he took the ring which anvadi had laid under the curse and which was among Fafnir's treasures and gave it to brinhild as a morning gift and she gave him another ring as a pledge then sigurd rolled back to his companions and took his own shape again and then gunna went and claimed brinhild and carried her home as his bride but no sooner was gunna wedded then sigurd's eyes were opened and the power of the filter passed away he remembered all that had passed and the oath he had sworn to brinhild all this came back upon him when it was too late but he was wise and said nothing about it well so things went on till one day brinhild and godrun went down to the river to wash their hair then brinhild waited out into the stream as far as she could and said she wouldn't have on her head the water that streamed from gundrun's for hers was the braver husband so gundrun waited out after her and said the water ought to come on her hair first because her husband bore away the palm for gunna and every other man alive for his lu fafnir and regin and took their inheritance i said brinhild but it was a worthier deed when gunna rode through the flame but sigurd dared not try then gundrun left and said thinks thou that gunna really rode the flame i thought he went to bed with thee that night who gave me this gold ring and that's for that ring yonder which you'll have on your finger and which you got as your morning gift its name is envadi spoil and that i don't think gunna sought on the glistening heath then brinhild held her peace and went home and her lover sigurd came back but it was turned to hate for she felt herself betrayed then she egged on gunna to revenge her wrong at last the brother yielded to her entreaties but they were sworn brothers to sigurd and to break that oath by deed was a thing unheard of still they broke it in spirit by charms and prayers they sat on gutorm their half-brother and so at that of night while gundrun held the bravest men alive fast locked in her white arms the murderer stole to the bedside and drove a sword through the hero then sigurd turned and writhed and as a gutorm fled he hurled gram after him and the keen blade took him asunder at the waist and his head fell out of the room and his heels in and that was the end of gutorm but with revenge brinhild's love returned and when sigurd was laid upon the pile her heart broke she burst forth into a prophetic song of the woes that were still to come made them lay her by his side with gram between them and so went to falhala with her old lover thus on vadi's curse was fulfilled gutrun the weary widow wandered away after a while she accepts atonements for her brothers for her husband's loss and marius otley the humking brinhild's brother he cherished a grudge against yuki's sons for the guile they had practiced against their brother in law which had broken his sister's heart and besides he claimed in rite of gutrun all the gold which sigurd won from the dragon with which the nifflung princes had seized when he was slain it was in vain to attack them in fear fight so he sent them a friendly message and invited them to a banquet they go and are overpowered hockney's heart is cut out of him alive but he still smiles gunar is cast into a pit full of snakes but even then charms them to sleep with his harp all but one that flies at his heart and stings him to death with them perish the secret of the dragon's horror which they had thrown into the rine as they crossed it on the way to hunland now comes horror on horror revenge for her brothers now belongs to gutrun she slays with her own hand her two sons by otley makes him eat their flesh and drink their blood out of their schools and while the king slept sound slew him in his bed by the help of her brother hockney's son then she set the hall ablaze and burnt all that were in it after that she went to the seashore and threw herself in to drown but the deed will not have her the billows bear her over to king jonak her's land he marries her and has three sons by her sarley hum deer and herb black haired as ravens like all the nifflungs svanhild her daughter by sigurd who had her father's bright and terrible eyes she has still with her now grown up to be the fairest of women so when her monarch the mighty the great gothic king heard of svanhild's beauty he sent his son runver to woo her for him but bicky the false said to the youth better far were this maiden for thee than for thy old father and the maiden and the prince thought it good advice then bicky went and told the king and her monarch made them take and hang renver at once so on his way to the gallows the prince took his hawk and plucked off all its feathers and sent it to his father but when his sire saw it he knew at once that as the hawk was featherless and unable to fly so was his realm defenseless under an old and sonless king too late he sent to stop the hanging his son was already dead so one day as he rode back from hunting he saw fairs vanhild washing her golden locks and it came into his heart how there she said the cause of all his woe and he and his men rode at her and over her and their steeds trampled her to death but when Gudrun heard this she sat on her three nifflung sons to avenge their sister bernie's and helms she gave them so true that no sword would bite on them they were to steal on hermonaric as he slept sorely was to cut off his hands hamder his feet and herb his head so as the three went along the two asked herb what help he would give them when they got to hermonaric such as hand lends to foot he said no help at all they cried and passing from words to blows and because their mother loved herb best they slew him a little further on sorely stumbled and fell forward but saved himself with one hand and said here hand helps foot better were it that herb lived so they came on hermonaric as he slept and sorely hewed off his hand and hamder his feet but he awoke and called for his men then said hamder where herb alive the head would be off and he couldn't call out then hermonaric's men arose and took the twain and when they found that no steel would touch them an old one eyed man gave them advice to stone them to death thus fell sorely and hamder and soon after Gudrun died too and with her ends the false song and the nifflum tale and here it is worthwhile to say since some minds are so narrowly molded as to being capable of containing more than one idea that because it has seen a duty to describe in its true light the old faith of our forefathers it by no means follows that the same eyes are blind to the glorious beauty of greek mythology that have the rare advantage of running its course free and unfettered until it fell rather by natural decay than before the weapon of a new belief the greeks were atheists before they became christian their faith had passed through every stage we can contemplate it as it springs out of the dim mishappened symbol during that phase when men's eyes are fixed more on meaning and reality than on beauty and form we can mark how it gradually looks more to symmetry and shape how it is transfigured in the arts until under the pure air and bright sky the glowing radiant figures of apollo and aphrodite of zeus and athene of perfect man worship and woman worship stand out clear and round in the foreground against the misted distance of ancient times out of that misted distance the Norseman's faith never emerged while that early phase of faith might have become had it been once wedded to the muses and learned to cultivate the arts it is impossible to say as it is its career was cut short in midcourse it carried about with it that melancholy presentment of the solution which has come to be so characteristic of modern life but of which scars at race exists in ancient times and this feeling would always have made it different from the cheerful carelessness which so attracts us in the greeks but even that downcast brooding heart was capable of conceiving great and heroic thoughts which it might have clothed in noble shapes and forms had not the acts of providence cut down the stately sapling in the north before it grew to be a tree while it spared the pines of delphi and the donor's sacred oaks until they had attained a green old age and so this faith remained rude and rough but even rudeness has a simplicity of its own and it's better to be rough and true hearted than polished and false and all the feelings of natural affection that faith near fear no comparison with any other upon earth in this respect it is firm and steadfast as a rock and pure and bright as a living spring the highest god is a father who protects his children who gives them glory and victory while they live and when they die takes them to himself to those fatherly abode's death was a happy return a glorious going home by the side of this great father stands a venerable goddess dazzling with beauty the great mother of gods and men hand in hand does the vine pear traverse the land he teaching the men the use of arms and all the arts of war for war was then as now a noble calling and to handle arms and honorable nay necessary profession to the women she teaches domestic duties and the arts of peace from her they learn to weave and sew and spin from her to the husband man learns to till his fields from him springs poetry and song from her legend and tradition nor should it ever be forgotten that the footsteps of providence are always onward even when they seem taken in the dark and that their rude faith was the first in which that veneration for women arose which the western nations may well claim as the brightest jewel in their crown of civilization that while she was a slave in the east a toy to the greeks and a housewife to the romans she was a help me to the tootin and that those stern warriors recognize something divine in her nature and bow before her clear insight into heavenly mysteries the worship of the virgin Mary was gradually developed out of this conception of woman's character and would have been a thing absurd and impossible had christianity clung forever to eastern soil and now to proceed after the starring aside to compare the mythology of the greek with the faith of the Norsemen the mistake is to favor one or the other exclusively instead of respecting and admiring both but it is a mistake which those only can fall into whose souls are narrow and confined who would say this thing and this person you shall love and none other those form and feature you shall worship and adore and this alone when in fact the whole promised land of thought and life lies before us at our feet our nature encourages us to go in and possess it and every step we make in this new world of knowledge brings us to fresh prospects of beauty and to new pastures of the light such were the gods and such the heroes of the Norsemen who like his own gods went smiling to death under the weight of an inevitable destiny but that fate never fell on their gods before this subjective mythological dream of the Norsemen could be fulfilled the religious mist in which they walked was scattered by the sunbeams of christianity a new state in condition of society arose the creed which had satisfied the race of hidden warriors who externally were at war with all the world became in time an object of horror and aversion to the converted christian this is not the place to describe the long struggle between the new and the old faith in the north how kings and queens became the foster fathers and nursing mothers of the church how the great chiefs each a little king in himself scorned and derided the whole scheme as altogether weak and effeminate how the bulk of the people were silent and suspicious and often broke out into hidden mutiny how kings rose and kings fell just as they took one or the other side and how finally after a contest which had lasted altogether more than three centuries Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Sweden we run them over in the order of conversion became faithful to christianity as preached by the missionaries of the church of Rome one fact however we must insist on which might be inferred indeed both from the nature of the struggle itself and the character of Rome and that is that throughout there was something in the process of conversion of the nature of a compromise of what we may call the great principle of give and take in all christian churches indeed and in none so much as the church of Rome nothing is so austere so elevating and so grand as to uncompromising tone in which the great dogmas of the faith are enunciated and proclaim nothing is more magnificent in short than the theory of christianity but nothing is more mean and miserable than the time-serving way in which those dogmas are dragged down to the dual level of daily life and that sublime theory reduced to ordinary practice at Rome it was true that the pope could congratulate the faithful that whole nations in the barbaros and frozen north had been added to the true fold and that Odin's grim champions now universally believed in the gospel of peace and love it is so easy to dispose of a doubtful struggle in a single sentence and so tempting to believe it when once written but in the north the state of things and the manner of proceeding were entirely different there the dogma was proclaimed indeed but the manner of preaching it was not in that mild spirit with which the savior rebuked the disciple when he said put up again thy sword into his place for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword there the sword was used to bring converse to the font and the baptism was often one rather of blood than of water there the new converse perpetually relapsed chased away the missionaries and the kings who sheltered them and only yielded at last to the overwhelming weight of christian opinion in the western world Saint Olaf king and martyr martyred in pitched battle by his mutinous allodial freemen because he tried to drive rather than to lead them to the cross and another all of greater than he all of trick vassan who fell in battle against the hitten swedes were men of blood rather than peace but to them the introduction of the new faith into Norway is mainly owing so also Charlie Magna at an earlier period had dealt with the sections at the main bridge when his ultimatum was christianity or death so also the first missionary to Iceland who met indeed with a sorry reception was followed about by a stout champion named Thangbren who whenever there was what we should now call a missionary meeting challenged any pugner of the new doctrines to mortal combat on the spot no wonder that after having killed several opponents in the little tour which he made with his missionary friend through the island it became too hot to hold him and he and the missionary and the new creed were forced to take ship and sail back to Norway precept upon precept lion upon lion here a little and there a little was the motto of Rome in her dealings with the hitten Norsemen and if she suited herself at first rather to their habits and temper than to those of more enlightened nations she had an excuse in Saint Paul's maxim of making herself all things to all men thus when a second attempt to christianize Iceland proved more successful for in the meantime King Alftrik Vassen a zealous christian has seized as hostages all the Icelanders of family and fame who happened to be in Norway and thus worked on the feelings of the chiefs of those families at home who in their turn bribed the lawmen who presided over the great assembly to pronounce in favor of the new faith even then the adherents of the old religion were allowed to perform its rights in secret and two old heathen practices only were expressly prohibited the exposure of infants and the eating of horse flesh for horses were sacred animals and the heathen ate their flesh after they had been solemnly sacrificed to the gods as a matter of fact it is far easier to change a form of religion than to extirpate a faith the first indeed is no easy matter as those students of history well know who are acquainted with the tenacity with which a large proportion of the english nation clung to the church of Rome long after the state had declared for the reformation but to change the faith of a whole nation in black and bulk on the instant was a thing contrary to the ordinary working of providence and unknown even in the days of miracles though the days of miracles had long seized when Rome advanced against the north there it was more politic to raise a cross in the grove where the sacred tree had once stood and to point to the sacred emblem which had supplanted the old object of national adoration when the populace came at certain seasons with songs and dances to perform their heathen rights near the cross soon rose a church and both were girded by a cemetery the soil of which was doubly sacred as a heathen vein and a christian sanctuary and where alone the bodies of the faithful could repose in peace but the songs and dances and processions in the churchyard around the cross continued long after christianity had become dominant so also the worship of wells and springs was christianized when it was found impossible to prevent it great churches arose over or near them as at waltingham where an abbey the holiest place in england after the shrine of saint thomas at canterbury through its majestic shade over the heathen wishing well and the worshipers of odin in the norner were gradually converted into vultries of the virgin mary such practices form a subject of constant remonstrance and reproof in the treatises and penitential epistles of medieval divines and in some few places and churches even in england such rites are still yearly celebrated so too again with the ancient gods they were cast down from honor but not from power they lost their genial kindly influence as the protectors of men and the origin of all things good but their existence was tolerated they became powerful for ill and degenerated into malignant demons thus the worshipers of odin had supposed that at certain times and rare intervals the good powers showed themselves in bodily shape to mortal eye passing through the land in divine progress bringing blessings in their train and receiving in return the offerings and homage of their grateful vultries but these were naturally only exceptional instances on ordinary occasions the pious heathen recognized his gods sweeping through the year in cloud and storm riding on the wings of the wind and speaking in awful accents as the tempest howled and roared and the sea shook his white mane and crest nor did he fail to see them in the dust and den of battle and odin appeared with his terrible helm securing his own striking fear into their foes and turning the day in many a doubtful fight or in the hurry and uproar of the chase where the mighty huntsman on his swift steed seen in glimpses among the trees took up the hunt where weary mortals let it down outstrip them all and brought the noble quarry to the ground looking up to the stars in heaven they saw the footsteps of the gods marked out in the bright path of the milky way and in the bear they hail the war chariot of the warrior's god the great goddesses too friga and freya were thoroughly old-fashioned domestic divinities they help women in their greatest need they spin themselves they teach the maids to spin and punish them if the wool remains upon their spindle they are kind and good and bright for holder bertha are the epithets given to them and so too this mythology which in its aspect to the stranger and the external world was so ruthless and terrible when looked at from within and at home was genial and kindly and hearty and affords another proof that men in all ages and climes are not so bad as they seem that after all peace and not war is the proper state for men and that a nation may make war on others and exist but that unless it has peace within and industry at home it must perish from the face of the earth but when christianity came the whole character of this goodly array of divinities was soured and spoiled instead of the stately procession of the god which the intensely sensuous eye of men in that early time connected with all the phenomena of nature the people were led to believe in a ghastly grizzly ban of ghosts who followed an infernal warrior or huntsman in hideous tumult through the midnight air no doubt as grim rightly remarks the hidden had fondly fancied that the spirits of those who had gone to odin followed him in his triumphant progress either visibly or invisibly that they rode with him in the whirlwind just as they followed him to battle and feasted with him in falhala but now the christian belief when it had degraded the mighty god into a demon huntsman who pursued his nightly round in chains of human souls saw in the train of the infernal master of the hunt only the specters of suicides drunkards and ruffians and with all the uncharitableness of a dogmatic faith the spirits of children who died unbaptized whose hard fate had thrown them into such evil company this was the way in which that widespread superstition eyebrows which sees in the phantoms of the clouds the shapes of the wild huntsman and he's a cursed crew and hears in spring and autumn nights when seafowl take the wing to fly either south or north the strange accents and uncowled yells with which the chaise is pressed on in upper air thus in sweden it is still odin who passes by in danmark it is king waldemar's hunt in norway it is askerida that is asgard's car in germany it is woede woeden or hakelberend or dieterish of burn in france it is hellekin or king hugo or charles the fifth or dropping a name altogether it is le grand veneur who ranges at night through the forest of fontaine bleu nor was england without her wild huntsman and his ghastly following jervais of tilbury in the 12th century could tell it of king arthur round whose mighty name the superstition settled itself for he had heard from the foresters how on alternate days about the full of the moon one day at noon the next at midnight when the moon shone bright a mighty train of hunters on horses was seen with baying hounds and blasts of horns and when those hunters were asked of whose company and household they were they replied of arthur's we hear of him again in the complaint of scotland that curious composition attributed by some to sir david linsey of the mount in five and of guilmerton in east lothian where he says arturnite he raid on night with gilden spur and candlelight nor should we forget when considering this legend the story of her and the hunter who sometime a keeper here in winster forest doth all the winter time at still midnight walk round about an oak with great ragged horns and there he blesses the trees and takes the cattle and makes mule kind yield blood and shakes a chain in a most hideous and dreadful manner mary wives of interact four seen four and even yet in various parts of england the story of some great men generally a member of one of the county families who drives about the country at night is common thus in warwick shire it is the one-handed bowton who drives about in his coach in six and makes the benighted traveler hold gates open for him or it is ladies kipwith who passes through the country at night in the same manner this subject might be pursued to much greater length for popular tradition is full of such stories but enough has been said to show how the awful presence of a glorious god can be converted into a gloomy superstition and at the same time how the majesty of the old beliefs strives to rescue itself by clinging in the popular consciousness to some king or hero as arthur or waldemar or failing that to some squire's family as hacklebaran or the one-handed bowton or even to the keeper hern odin and the azer then were dispossessed and degraded by our savior and his apostles just as they had of old thrown out the frost giants and the two are mingled together in medieval norse tradition as trolls and giants hostile alike to christianity and men christianity had taken possession indeed but it was beyond her power to kill to this half result the swift corruption of the church of rome lent no small aid her doctrines as taught by augustine and boniface by ancher and sigrid were comparatively mild and pure but she had scars swallow the heathendom of the north much in the same way as the wolf was to swallow odin at the twilight of the gods then she fell into a deadly lethargy of faith which put it out of her powers to digest her meal gregory the seventh elected pope in 1073 tore the clergy from the ties of domestic life with a grasp that wounded every fiber of natural affection and made it bleed to the very root with the celibacy of the clergy he established the hierarchy of the church but her labors as a missionary church were over henceforth she worked not by missionaries and apostles but by crusaders and bulls now she raised mighty armaments to recover the barren soil of the holy sepulcher or to annihilate heretic obligancies now she established great orders templars and hospitalars whose pride and luxury and palm brought swift destruction on one at least of those fraternities now she became feudal she owned land instead of hearts and forgot that the true patrimony of san peter was the souls of men no wonder that with the barbarism of the times she soon fulfilled the apostles words she that liveth in luxury is dead while she liveth and became filled with idle superstitions and vain beliefs no wonder then that instead of completing her conquests over the heathen and carrying out their conversion she became half heathen herself that she adopted the tales and traditions of the old mythology which she had never been able to extirpate and related them of our lord and his apostles no wonder then that having abandoned her mission of being the first power of intelligence on earth she fell like Lucifer when the mist of medieval feudalism rolled away and the light of learning and education returned fell before the indignation of enlightened men working upon popular opinion since which day though she has changed her plans and remodeled her superstitions to suit the times she has never regained the supremacy which if she had been wise in a true sense she seemed destined to hold forever end of section five section six part one of popular tales from the north this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org popular tales from the north by Sir George Webb Dessant section six introduction part four Norse popular tales part one the preceding observations will have given a sufficient account of the mythology of the Norsemen and of the way in which it fell they came from the east and brought that common stock of tradition with them settled in the Scandinavian peninsula they developed themselves through heathenism romanism and Lutheranism in a locality little exposed to foreign influence so that even now the dail man in Norway or Sweden may be reckoned among the most primitive examples left of peasant life we should expect then that these popular tales which for the sake of those ignorant in such matters it may be remarked had never been collected or reduced to writing till within the last few years would present a faithful picture of the national consciousness or perhaps to speak more correctly that half consciousness out of which the heart of any people speaks in its abundance besides those old world affinities and primeval parallelisms besides those dreamy recollections of its old home in the east which we have already pointed out we should expect to find its later history after the great migration still more distinctly reflected to discover heathen gods masked in the garb of christian saints and thus to see a proof of our assertion above that a nation more easily changes the form than the essence of its faith and clings with a toughness which endures for centuries to what it has once learned to believe in all mythologies the trait of all others which most commonly occurs is that of the descent of the gods to earth where in human form they mix among mortals and occupy themselves with their affairs either out of a spirit of adventure or to try the hearts of men such a conception is shocking to the christian notion of the omnipotence and omnipresence of god but we question if there be not times when the most pious and perfect christian may not find comfort and relief from a fallacy which was a matter of faith in less enlightened creeds and over which the apostle writing to the Hebrews throws the sanction of his authority so far as angels are concerned Hebrews 13 one let brotherly love continue be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares nor could he have forgotten those words of the men of leastra the gods come down to us in the likeness of men and how they called Barnabas Jupiter and himself mercury because he was the chief speaker classical mythology is full of such stories these wanderings of the gods are mentioned in the odyssey and the sanctity of the rites of hospitality and the dread of turning a stranger from the door took its origin from a fearless the wayfaring man should be a divinity in disguise according to the Greek story Orion owed his birth to the fact that the childless Harius his reputed father had once received unawares Zeus Poseidon and Hermes or to call them by their latin names Jupiter Neptune and mercury in the beautiful story of philemon and bosses Jupiter and mercury reward the aged couple who had so hospitably received them by warning them of the approaching deluge the fables of fadris and asop represent mercury and demeter as wandering and enjoying the hospitality of men in india it is Brahma and Vishnu who generally wander in the Eda Odin Loki and Honir thus Rome about or Thor the Elfie and Loki sometimes Odin appears alone as a horseman who turns in at night to the smith's house and gets him to shoe his horse a legend which reminds us at once of the master smith sometimes it is Thor with his great hammer who wanders thus alone now let us turn from heathenism to christian times and look at some of these old legends of wandering gods in a new dress throughout the middle age it is our blessed lord and saint Peter that thus wander and here we see that half digested heathenism to which we have alluded those who may be shocked at such tales in this collection as the master smith and Gertrude's bird must just remember that these are most purely heathen traditions in which the names alone are christian and if it be any consolation to any to know the fact we may as well state at once that this adaptation of new names to old beliefs is not peculiar to the Norsemen but is found in all the popular tales of Europe Germany was full of them and there saint Peter often appears in a snappish ludicrous guise which reminds the reader versed in Norse mythology of the tricks and pranks of the shifty loci in the Norse tales he thoroughly preserves his saintly character nor was it only gods that walked among men in the Norse mythology Frigga Odin's wife who knew beforehand all that was to happen and Frigia the goddess of love and plenty were prominent figures and often trod the earth the three norns or faiths who sway the weards of men and spin their destinies at Mimir's well of knowledge were awful venerable powers to whom the heathen world looked up with love and adoration and ah to that love and adoration and ah throughout the middle age one woman transfigured into a divine shape succeeded by a sort of natural right and round the virgin mary's blessed head a halo of lovely tales of divine help beams with soft radiance as a crown bequeathed to her by the ancient goddesses she appears as divine mother spinner and helpful virgin virgey sacrable flowers and plants bear her name in england one of our commonest and prettiest insects is still called after her but which belong to Frigia the heathen lady long before the western nations had learned to adore the name of the mother of jesus footnote so also orion's belt was called by the Norsemen Frigga's spindle or rock frijar rock in modern swedish frigorock where the old goddess holds her own but in danish maria rock our ladies rock or spindle thus to carlavang the car of men or heroes who rode with odin which we call charles wane thus keeping something at least of the old name though none of its meaning became in scotland peter's plough from the christian saint just as orion's sword became peter's staff but what do lady landers and lady ellison mean as applied to the ladybird in scotland the reader of these tales will meet in that of the lassie and her godmother number 27 with the virgin mary in a purely mythic character as the majestic guardian of sun moon and stars combined with that of a helpful kindly woman who while she knows how to punish a fault knows also how to reconcile and forgive the Norsemen's god was a god of battles and victory his greatest gift to men but this was not the only aspect under which the great father was revered not victory in the fight alone but every other good gift came down from him and from the azer odin's supreme will was that treasure house of bounty towards which in one shape or the other all mortal desires turned and out of its abundance showers of mercy and streams of divine favor constantly poured down to refresh the weary race of men all these blessings and mercies nay their very source itself the ancient language bound up in a single word which however expressive it may still be has lost much of the fullness of its meaning in its descent to these later times this word was wish which originally meant the perfect ideal the actual fruition of all joy and desire and not as now the empty longing for the object of our desires from this original abstract meaning it is but a step to pass to the concrete to personify the idea to make it an immortal essence an attribute of the divinity another name for the greatest of all gods himself and so we find a host of passages in early writers dm page 126 and following where they are cited at length in every one of which god or odin might be substituted for wish with perfect propriety here we read how the wish has hands feet power sight toil and art how he works in labors shapes and masters inclines his ear thinks swears curses and rejoices adopts children and takes men into his house behaves in short as a being of boundless power and infinite free will still more he rejoices in his own works as in a child and thus appears in a thoroughly patriarchal point of view as the lord of creation glorifying in his handiwork as the father of a family in early times was glad at heart when he reckoned his children as arrows in his quiver and beheld his house full of a long line of retainers and dependents for this attribute of the great father for odin as the god of wish the edda uses the word oski which literally expresses the masculine personification of wish and it passed on and added the works wish as a prefix to a number of others to signify that they stood in a peculiar relation to that great-giver of all good thus we have oska stein or wishing stone i.e a stone which plays the part of a divining rod and reveals secrets and hidden treasure oska beer a fair wind a wind as fair as man's heart could wish it osk barn and oska barn a child after one's heart an adopted child as when the younger edda tells us that all those who die in battle are odin's choice barons his adopted children those on whom he has set his heart an expression which in their turn was taken by the acelantic christian writers to express the relation existing between god and the baptized and though last not least oska mare wish maidens another name for the valkyries odin's coarse choosers who picked out the dead for him on the field of battle and waited on the heroes of valhalla again the edda is filled with choice things possessing some mysterious power of their own some virtue as our older english would express it which belong to this or that god and are occasionally lent or lost thus odin himself had a spear which gave victory to those on whose side it was hurled thore a hammer which destroyed the giants hallowed vows and returned of itself to his hand he had a strength belt too which when he girded it on his god strength waxed one half frair had a sword which wielded itself frage a necklace which like the cestus of venus inspired all hearts with love frair again had a ship called skithblath near she is so great that all the acer with their weapons and war gear may find room on board her and as soon as the sail is set she has a fair wind with her she shall go and when there is no need for faring on the sea in her she is made of so many things and with so much craft that frair may hold her together like a cloth and keep her in his bag snarrow's edda stock home 1842 translated by the writer of this kind too was the ring dropper which odin had and from which 12 other rings dropped every night the apples which idun one of the goddesses had and of which so soon as the acer ate it became young again the helm which odir the sea giant had which struck terror into all antagonists like the aegis of ethene and that wonderful mill which the mythical frody owned of which we shall shortly speak now let us see what traces of this great god wish and his choice parents and wishing things we can find in these tales faint echoes of a mighty heathen voice which once proclaimed the goodness of the great father in the blessings which he bestowed on his chosen sons we shall not have long to seek in the tale number 20 when short shanks meets those three old crook backed hags who have only one eye which he snaps up and gets first a sword that puts a whole army to flight be it ever so great we have the one eyed odin degenerated into an old hag or rather by no uncommon process we have an old witch fused by a popular tradition into a mixture of odin and the three nor near again when he gets that wondrous ship which can sail over fresh water and saltwater and over high hills and deep dales and which is so small that he can put it into his pocket and yet when he came to use it could hold 500 men we have plainly the skith blath near of the edda to the very life so also in the best wish number 36 the whole groundwork of this story rests on this old belief and when we meet that pair of old scissors that cuts all manner of fine clothes out of the air that tablecloth which covers itself with the best dishes you could think of as soon as it was spread out and that tap which as soon as it was turned poured out the best of mead and wine we have plainly another form of frody's wishing quern another recollection of these things of choice about which the old mythology has so much to tell of the same kind are the tablecloth the ram and the stick in the lad who went to the north wind number 34 and the rings in the three princesses of white land number 26 and the saraya mariah castle number 56 in the first of these stories too we find those three brothers who have stood on a moor these hundred years fighting about a hat a cloak and a pair of boots which had the virtue of making him who wore them invisible choice things which will again remind the reader of the nibelungen lead of the way in which sigphreed became possessed of the famous hoard of gold and how he got that cap of darkness which was so useful to him in his remaining exploits so again in the blue belt number 22 what is that belt which when the boy girded it on he felt as strong as if he could lift the whole hill but thaw's choice belt and what is the daring boy himself who overcomes the troll but thaw himself as engaged in one of his adventures with the giants so too in little annie the goose girl number 59 the stone which tells the prince all the secrets of his brides is plainly the old oska stein or wishing stone these instances will suffice to show the prolonged faith in wish and his choice things a belief which though so deeply rooted in the north we have already traced to its home in the east once it stretches itself from pole to pole and reappears in every race we recognize in it the wishing cap of fortunateus which is a Celtic legend in the cornucopia of the romans in the great amalthea among the Greeks in the wishing cow and wishing tree of the hindus in the pumpkin tree of the west indian annanzee stories in the cow of the servian legends who spins out yarn out of her ear in the sample of the fins and in all these stories of cups and glasses and horns and rings and swords seized by some bold spirit in the midst of a fairy revel for earned by some kind deed rendered by mortal hand to one of the good folk in her hour of need and with which the luck see the well-known story of the luck of eden hall of that mortals house was ever afterwards bound up stories with which the local traditions of all lands are full but which all pay unconscious homage to the worship of that great god of whom so many heathen hearts so often turned as the divine realiser of their prayers in the giver of all good things until they came at last to make an idol out of their hopes and prayers and to immortalize the very wish itself again of all beliefs that in which man has at all times of his history then most prone to set faith is that of a golden age of peace and plenty which had passed away but which might be expected to return such a period was looked for when augustus closed the temple of janus and peace though perhaps not plenty reigned over what the proud roman called the habitable world such a period the early christian expected when the savior was born in the reign of that very augustus and such a period some whose thoughts were more set on earth than heaven have hoped for ever since with a hope which though deferred for 18 centuries has not made their hearts sick such a period of peace and plenty such a golden time the norseman could tell of in his mythic frody's reign when gold or frody's meal as it was called was so plentiful that golden armlets lay untouched from year's end to year's end on the king's highway and the fields war crops unsone here in england the anglo-saxon bead history of 216 knew how to tell the same story of edwin the northumbrian king and when elford came to be mythic the same legend was passed on from edwin to the west saxon monarch the remembrance of the bountiful frody echoed in the songs of german poets long after the story which made him so bountiful had been forgotten but the north skulls could tell not only the story of frody's wealth and bounty but also of his downfall and ruin in frody's house were two maidens of that old giant race benja and menja these daughters of the giant he had bought as slaves and he made them grind his quern or handmill grotty out of which he used to grind peace and gold even in that golden age one sees there were slaves and frody however bountiful to his veins and people was a hard taskmaster to his giant hand maidens he kept them to the mill nor gave them longer rest than the cuckoo's note lasted or they could sing a song but that quern was such that it ground anything that the grinder chose though until then it had ground nothing but gold and peace so the maidens ground and ground and one sang their piteous tale in a strain worthy of aescalus as the other worked they prayed for rest and pity but frody was deaf then they turned in giant mood and ground no longer peace and plenty but fire and war then the quern went fast and furious and that very night came mycing the sea rover and slew frody and all his men and carried off the quern and so frody's peace ended the maidens the sea rover took with him and when he got on the high seas he made them grind salt so they ground and at midnight they asked if he had not salt enough but he made them still grind on so they ground till the ship was full and sank myzing maids and mill and all and that's why the sea is salt perhaps of all the tales in this volume none could be selected as better proving the toughness of the traditional belief than number two which tells why the sea is salt the notion of the arch enemy of god and man or a fallen angel to whom power was permitted at certain times for an all wise purpose by the great ruler of the universe was as foreign to the heathendom of our ancestors as his name was outlandish and strange to their tongue this notion christianity brought with it from the east and though it is a plant which has struck deep roots grown distorted and awry and born a bitter crop of superstition it required all the authority of the church to prepare the soil at first for its reception to the notion of good necessarily follows that of evil the eastern mind with its ormuzed and araman is full of such dualism and from that hour when a more than mortal eye saw satan falling like lightning from heaven st luke 1018 the kingdom of darkness the abode of satan and his bad spirits was established in direct opposition to the kingdom of the savior and his angels the north had its own notion on this point its mythology was not within its own dark powers but though they too rejected and dispossessed they according to that mythology had rights of their own to them belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by the younger race of odin and asir and though this upstart dynasty as the frost giants in promethean phrase would have called it well knew that hell one of this giant progeny was fated to do them all mischief and to outlive them they took her and made her queen of niffelheim and mistress over nine worlds there in a bitterly cold place she received the souls of all who died of sickness or old age care was her bed hunger her dish starvation her knife her walls were high and strong and her bolts and bars huge half blue was her skin and half the color of human flesh a goddess easy to know and in all things very stern and grim edda chapter 34 english translation but though severe she was not an evil spirit she only received those who died as no Norsemen wished to die for those who fell on the gory battlefield or sink beneath the waves while halla was prepared and endless mirth and bliss with odin those who went to hell who were rather unfortunate than wicked who died before they could be killed but when christianity came in and ejected odin and his crew of false divinities declaring them to be lying gods and demons then hell fell with the rest but fulfilling her fate outlived them from a person she became a place and all the northern nations from the goth to the norsemen agreed in believing hell to be the abode of the devil and his wicked spirits the place prepared from the beginning for the everlasting torments of the damned one curious fact connected with this explanation of hell's origin will not escape the reader's attention the christian notion of hell is that of a place of heat for in the east once christianity came heat is often an intolerable torment and cold on the other hand everything that is pleasant and delightful but to the dweller in the north heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort and life without fire has a dreary outlook so their hell ruled in a cold region over those who were cowards by implication while the mead cup went round and huge lugs blazed and crackled in valhalla for the brave and beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle but under christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met and hell the cold uncomfortable goddess is now our hell where flames and fire abound and where the devils abide an everlasting flame still popular tradition is tough and even after centuries of christian teaching the norse peasant in his popular tales can still tell of hell as a place where firewood is wanted at christmas and over which a certain air of comfort breathes though as in the goddess hell's halls meat is scarce the following passage from why the sea assault number two will sufficiently prove this well here is the flitch said the rich brother and now go straight to hell what i have given my word to do i must stick to said the other so he took the flitch and set off he walked the whole day and at dusky came to a place where he saw a very bright light maybe this is the place said the man to himself so he turned aside and the first thing he saw was an old old man with a long white beard who stood in an outhouse hewing wood for the christmas fire good even said the man with the flitch the same to you whether are you going so late said the man oh i'm going to hell if i only knew the right way answered the poor man well you're not far wrong for this is hell said the old man when you get inside they will be all for buying your flitch for meat is scarce in hell but mind you don't sell it unless you get the hand corn which stands behind the door for it when you come out i'll teach you how to handle the corn for it's good to grind almost anything this too is the proper place to explain the conclusion of that intensely heathen tale the master smith number sixteen we have already seen how the savior and saint peter supply in its beginning the place of odin and some other heathen god but when the smith sets out with the feeling that he has done a silly thing in quarreling with the devil having already lost his hope of heaven this tale assumes a still more heathen shape according to the old notion those who were not odin's guests went either to thore's house who had all the thralls or to frija who even claimed a third part of the slain on every battlefield with odin or to hell the cold comfortless goddess already mentioned who is still no tormenter though she ruled over nine worlds and though her walls were high and her bolts and bars huge traits which come out in the master smith number sixteen when the devil who here assumes hell's place orders the watch to go back and lock up all the nine locks on the gates of hell a lock for each of the goddess's nine worlds and put a padlock on besides in the twilight between heathendom and christianity in that half christian half heathen consciousness which this tale reveals heaven is the preferable abode as valhalla was of yore but rather than be without a house to one's head after death hell was not to be despised though having behaved ill to the ruler of one and actually quarreled with the master of the other the smith was naturally anxious on the matter this notion of different abodes in another world not necessarily places of torment comes out to in not a pin to choose between them number 24 where peter the second husband of the silly goodie goes out begging from house to house in paradise for the rest whenever the devil appears in these tales it is not at all as the arch enemy as the subtle spirit of the christian's faith but rather as one of the old giants supernatural and hostile indeed to man but simple and easily deceived by a cunning reprobate whose superior intelligence he learns to dread for whom he feels himself no match and whom finally he will receive in hell at no price we shall have to notice some of the other characteristics of this race of giants a little further on but certainly no greater proof can be given of the small hold which the christian devil has taken of the Norse mind than the heathen aspect under which he constantly appears and the ludicrous way in which he is always outwitted we have seen how our lord and the saint succeeded to odin and his children in the stories which told of their wanderings on earth to warn the wicked or to help the good we have seen how the kindness and helpfulness of the ancient goddesses fell like a royal mantle around the form of the virgin mary we have seen too on the other hand how the procession of the almighty god degenerated into the infernal midnight hunt we have now to see what became of the rest of the power of the goddesses of all that might which was not absorbed into the glory of the blessed virgin we shall not have far to seek no reader of early medieval chronicles and sermons can fail to have been struck with the many passages which ascribe majesty and power to beings of a woman's sex now it is a heathen goddess as Diana now some half historical figure as bertha now a mythical being as hola now herodias now sadia now domina abundia or dame habond a very short investigation will serve to identify the two ancient goddesses friga and frija with all these leaders of a midnight host just as odin was banished from day to darkness so the two great heathen goddesses fused into one uncanny shape were supposed to ride the air at night medieval chroniclers writing in bastard latin and following the example of classical authors when they had to find a name for this demon goddess chose of course Diana the heathen huntress the moon goddess and the ruler of the night in the same way when they threw odin's name into a latin shape he the god of wit and will as well as power and victory became mercury as for herodias not the mother but the daughter who danced she must have made a deep impression on the mind of the early middle age for she was supposed to have been cursed after the beheading of john the baptist and to have gone on dancing forever when heathen dom fell she became confounded with the ancient goddesses and thus we find her sometimes among the crew of the wild huntsmen sometimes as we see in the passages below in company with or in the place of diana hola satia and abundia at the head of a bevy of women who met at certain places to celebrate unholy rites and mysteries as for hola satia and abundia the kind the satisfying and the abundant they are plainly names of good rather than evil powers they are ancient epithets drawn from the bounty of the good lady and attest the feeling of respect which still clung to them in the popular mind as was the case whenever Christianity was brought in the country folk always averse to change as compared with the more lively and intelligent dwellers in towns still remained more or less heathen and to this day they preserve unconsciously many superstitions which can be traced up in lineal descent to their old belief in many ways does the old divinity peep out under the new superstition the long train the midnight feast the good lady who presides the bounty and abundance which her votaries fancied would follow in her footsteps all belong to the ancient goddess most curious of all is the way in which all these traditions from different countries insist on the third part of the earth the third child born the third soul is belonging to the good lady who leads the revel for this right of a third or even a half was one which freija possessed but freija is most famous for the asinjor she has that power in heaven height folk bender and with her so ever she rightest to the battle there hath she one half of the slain but owed in the other half again when she fares abroad she drives two cats and sits in a car and she lends an easy ear to the prayers of men snarrows edda dasons translation page 29 stock home 1842 we have got then the ancient goddesses identified as evil influences and as the leader of a midnight band of women who practiced secret and unholy rights this leads us at once to witchcraft in all ages and in all races this belief in sorcery has existed men and women practiced it alike but in all times female sorcerers have predominated this was naturally enough in those days women were priestesses they collected drugs and symbols women alone knew the virtues of plants those soft hands spun linen made lint and bound wounds women in the earliest times with which we are acquainted with our forefathers alone knew how to read and write only they could carve the mystic runes only they could chant the charm so potent to allay the wounded warriors smart and pain the men were busy out of doors with plowing hunting barter and war in such an age the sex which possessed by natural right book learning physics suceing and incantation even when they used these mysteries for good purposes were but a step from sin the same soft white hand that bound the wound and scraped the lint the same gentle voice that sung the mystic rune that helped the childbearing woman or drew the arrowhead from the dying champions breast the same bright eye that gazed up to heaven and ecstasy through the sacred grove and read the will of the gods when the mystic tablets and rune carved lots were cast all these if the will were bad if the soothsayer passed into the false prophetess the leech into a poisoner and the priestess into a witch was potent and terrible for ill as they had once been powerful for good in all the indo-european tribes therefore women and especially old women have practiced witchcraft from the earliest times in christianity found them wherever it advanced but christianity as it placed mankind upon a higher platform of civilization increased the evil which it found and when it expelled the ancient goddesses and confounded them as demons with diana and herodias it added them and their votaries to the old class of malevolent sorcerers there was but one step but a simple act of the will between the norn and the hag even before christianity came in as soon as it came down went goddess valkyrie norn priestess and soothsayer into that own holy deep where the heathen hags and witches had their being and as christianity gathered strength developed its dogmas and worked out its faith fancy tradition leechcraft poverty and idleness produced that unhappy class the medieval witch the persecution of which is one of the darkest pages in religious history it is curious indeed to trace the belief in witches through the middle age and to mark how it increases in intensity and absurdity at first as we have seen in the passages quoted the superstition seemed comparatively harmless and though the witches themselves may have believed in their unholy power there were not wanting divines who took a common sense view of the matter and put the absurdity of their pretensions to a practical proof such was that good parish priest who asked when an old woman of his flock insisted that she had been in his house with the company of the good lady and had seen him naked and covered him up how then did you get in when all the doors were locked we can get in she said even if the doors are locked then the priest took her into the chancel of the church locked the door and gave her a sound thrashing with the pastoral staff calling out out with you lady witch but as she could not he sent her home saying see how foolish you are to believe in such empty dreams but as the church increased in strength as heresies arose and consequent persecution then the secret meetings of these sectarians as we should now call them were identified by the hierarchy with the rites of sorcery and magic and with the relics of the worship of the old gods by the time too that the hierarchy was established that belief in the fallen angel the arch fiend the devil originally so foreign to the nations of the west had become thoroughly engrafted on the popular mind and a new element of wickedness and superstition was introduced at these unholy festivals about the middle of the 13th century we find the mania of persecuting heretics invading the tribes of the teutonic race from France and Italy backed by all the power of the pope like jealousy persecution too often makes the meat it feeds on and many silly if not harmless superstitions were rapidly put under the ban of the church now the good lady and her train began to recede only they fill up the background while the prince of darkness steps dark and terrible in front and soon draws after him the following of the ancient goddess now we hear stories of demoniac possession now the witches adore a demon of the other sex with the male element and its harsher sterner nature the sinfulness of these unholy assemblies is infinitely increased folly becomes guilt and guilt crime from the middle of the 14th to the middle of the 17th century the history of europe teams with processes against witches and sorcerers before the reformation it reached its height in the catholic world with the famous bowl of innocent the eighth in 1484 the infamous malleus maleficarum the first of a long list of witchfinding books and the zeal with which the state lent all the terrors of the law to assist the ecclesiastical inquisitors before the tribunals of these inquisitors in the 15th century innumerable victims were reigned on the double charge of heresy and sorcery for the crimes ran in couples both being children and sworn servants of the devil would that the historian could say that with the era of the reformation these abominations ceased the roman hierarchy with her bulls and inquisitors had sewn a bitter crop which both she and the Protestant churches were destined to reap but in no part of the world were the laborers more eager and willing when the fields were black to harvest than in those very reformed communities which had just shaken off the yoke of Rome and which had sprung in many cases from the very heretics whom she had persecuted and burnt accusing them at the same time of the most malignant sorceries their excuses that no one is before his age the intense personality given to the devil in the middle age had possessed the whole mind of europe we must take them as we find them with their bright fancy their earnest faith their stern fanaticism their revolting superstition just as when we look upon a picture we know that those brilliant hues and tones that spirit which informs the whole could never be were it not for the vulgar earths and soil out of which the glorious work of art is mixed and made strangely monotonous are all the witch trials of which europe has so many to show at first the accused denies then under torture she confesses then relapses and denies tortured again she confesses again amplifies her story and accuses others when given to the stake she not seldom asserts all her confessions to be false which is ascribed to the power which the fiend still has over her then she is burnt and her ash is given to the winds those who wish to read one unexampled perhaps for barbarity and superstition and more curious from the rest from the prominence given in it to a man may find it in the trial of dr fian the scotch wizard quote which doctor was registered to the devil that sundry times preached at north brack north berwick in east lothian kerk to a number of notorious witches and quote but we advise no one to venture on a perusal of this tract who is not prepared to meet with the most unutterable accusations and crimes the most cruel tortures and the most absurd confessions followed as usual by the stoutest denial of all that had been confessed when torture had done her worst on poor human nature and the soul reasserted at the last her supremacy over the body one characteristic of all these witch trials is the fact that in spite of their unholy connection and intrigues with the evil one no witch ever attained to wealth and station by the aid of the prince of darkness the pleasure to do ill is all the pleasure they feel this fact alone might have opened the eyes of their persecutors for if the devil had the worldly power which they represented him to have he might at least have raised some of his voteries to temporal rank and to the pumps and the vanities of this world an old german proverbs expresses this notorious fact by saying that every seven years a witch is three half pens richer and so with all the unholy means of hell at their command they dragged out their lives along with their black cats in poverty and wretchedness to this fate at last came the worshipers of the great goddess freja whom our forefathers adored as the goddess of love and plenty and whose car was drawn by those animals which popular superstition has ever since assigned to the old witch of our english villages end of section six part one