PRIMITIVE BELIEF
OUTLINES
OF
PEIMITIVE BELIEF
AMONG THE INDO-EUROPEAN RACES
BY
CHAELES FEANC1S EAEY, M.A., F.S.A.
OF THK BRITISH MUSEUM
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1882
till
TO
A. M. K.
AND
K. II. K.
PEE FACE.
THERE are two roads along which students are now
travelling towards (we may reasonably hope) the saim
goal of fuller knowledge touching Prehistoric Belief.
One way is that of Comparative Mythology, which
has become so favourite a pursuit with the present
generation. In this method the myth is taken for the
centre-point of the enquiry, and just as a specimen
in natural history may be it is traced through all
the varieties and sub-species that are to be discovered
in various lands. The other method, which is an
historical rather than a scientific one, may be -called
the study of the History of Belief. In it our eyes are
for the time being fixed upon a single race of men ;
and it is the relationship of these people to the
world by which they are surrounded that we seek
to know. The following outlines of early Aryan
belief belong to the class of studies, which are dis-
tinctly historical in character. They are not designed
to establish any new theory of the origin of belief
among mankind ; nor are they meant to deal with
theories which relate to creeds other than the Indo-
European. They are essentially a record of facts ;
Vlll PEEFACE.
for the facts of early Aryan belief are of a kind as
surely ascertainable as the laws of marriage or of
primitive society among the Aryan races. That the
pictures which are here held up are blurred and im-
perfect I am well aware. But some indulgence may
be claimed for what are, owing to the necessities of
the case and to the incompleteness of our present
knowledge, mosaics and not paintings.
The active discussion which has of late arisen
over some of the secondary questions of Indo-Euro-
pean mythology has tended to obscure our actual
attainments in this field of enquiry. This must neces-
sarily have been the case with the general reader,
who cannot be expected to keep the science constantly
in view nor to register its slow advance. By such a
reader a whole system of mythological interpretation
is supposed to stand or fall upon the question
whether certain stories can be proved to have sprung
out of- ' sun myths,' or certain other tales to have
been called into existence through an ' abuse of
language.' But still more has this discussion tended
to throw into the background the historical method
of enquiry into the early history of belief, and to
hide altogether the results which it has reached.
To this field of research some matters of high im-
portance in comparative mythology are only of
secondary consequence, and therefore some difficulties
which have stood in the way of the one study do not
impede the other. One of the subjects, for instance,
which has been most eagerly debated among mytho-
PREFACE. ix
legists is the question as to what are and where we
are to look for the originals, the actual first forms
of those tales which go to make up any system of
mythology ; and it is upon the answer which should
be given to that question that schools are at present
most divided. The difficulty does not press with the
same insistence upon him who seeks merely to get a
clear notion of belief in some of its particular phases.
He can find out who are the beings that people the
myth system upon which he is. engaged, and what
are the stories related of them, without troubling
himself to discover whether the same stories were
once told concerning beings of another order. It is
with the members of the Aryan pantheon as it is
with such half-mythic beings as the Charles of the
Carlovingian or the Arthur of the Arthurian ro-
mance. The tales told of the two may have won-
derful points of resemblance, but we can distinguish
between the legend of the Frankish emperor and
the legend of the British king. Or, again, that which
is recounted of Charles and Arthur may with varia-
tions have been told of Eed Indian heroes or of Zulu
gods ; but this does not affect the fact that for the
particular times and places under consideration the
stories attach to Charles and his paladins or to
Arthur and his knights. We are not compelled to
trace the myths to their remotest origin to under-
stand the nature of the two legends.
There can, in truth, be little doubt that in some
crude form most of the myths of the Indo-European
system existed among human beings at a date much
X PKEFACE.
earlier than the era in which we first distinguish the
Aryan races. I hardly suppose that the most ardent
hunter after histories which tell of the loves of the
Sun and the Dawn would maintain that it was from
the observation of the Sun and of the Dawn that
mankind first gained its idea of two lovers. The
tales come to attach themselves to those mythic
beings whom at any particular stage of culture the
people have most in their thoughts. What was once
related of a tree or of an animal may come to be
told of the sun and of the earth. Wherefore it is
only after a complete study of the belief in question
that we can form a judgment as to the nature of the
existences to which such tales are likely to relate.
When we have settled this point we can compare the
myths of systems which belong to the same stage of
thought, with a reasonable assurance that like stories
will attach to like individualities.
Now concerning the creed of the primitive Aryas :
Comparative Mythology has made it possible for us
to reconstruct this in outline for a time which pre-
cedes the historical age. The process whereby we
arrive at our knowledge in this case is precisely the
process whereby we gain almost all the knowledge
which we possess concerning the prehistoric life of
the Aryas, their laws of marriage, their social con-
ditions, their advance in arts or in agriculture.
As to the principal result of this enquiry all, or
almost all, who have entered upon it are agreed. It
has been established that this primitive Aryan creed
rested upon a worship of external phenomena, such
PKEFACE. xi
as the sky, the earth, the sea, the storm, the wind,
the sun that is to say, of phenomena which were
appreciable by the senses, but were at the same time
in a large proportion either abstractions or gene-
ralisations. It is this form of creed which I have
throughout the present volume distinguished as
_Nature Worship, and of necessity it is the one with
which we shall be almost exclusively concerned.
Therefore, seeing that concerning the character
of this early Aryan belief all those are agreed who
have made a critical study of the Indo-European
mythologies, it is obvious that it stands in quite a
different category from the disputed questions of
comparative mythology. To me individually, after a
study of certain among the Indo-European systems,
the presence of this nature worship at the root of
them seems incontrovertible. But, what is of infi-
nitely more importance, I find that the specialists in
every field Vedic, Persian, Greek, Eoman, Teutonic,
Celtic have believed themselves to discover this
nature worship at the back of the historic creeds
they knew so well ; and I cannot persuade myself
that all their judgments are mistaken, or that there
should be such a coincidence of error coming from
so many different sides.
For, whether we ask Yedic scholars, as Ben fey,
Max Miiller, Kuhn, Eoth, Breal, Grassmann, Guber-
natis, Bergaigne, students of Greek mythology, as
Welcker, Preller, Maury, of German, as Grimm,
Simrock, we find that those who are first in each of
the several branches of research, or those who have
xil PEEFACE.
studied them all, are alike agreed upon this parti-
cular question. However in minor matters they may
differ, upon this matter their judgment is uniform.
This at least must be res judicata, a question no
longer admitting of dispute.
The sources of our information touching the pre-
historic beliefs of the Indo-Europeans are sufficiently
well known not to need a recapitulation here. The
most important which I have made use 'of in this
volume may be roughly divided into four classes.
(1) The Vedas, and chiefly the Big Veda ; (2) the
Greek literature of mythology, especially the pre-
historic poets, Homer and Hesiod ; (3) the Icelandic
Eddas and Sagas ; (4 ) mediaeval legends and epics,
together with modern popular tales and traditions,
almost all of which preserve some relics of ancient
heathenism. In the case of the Yedas I have been
obliged to avail myself of translations. Of the 7?ig
Yeda there now exist two almost complete transla-
tions into German, those of H. Grassmann and
Ludwig. The beautiful metrical rendering of H.
Grassmann is the one to which I have been most
indebted.
C. F. K
LONDON, 1882.
\3RAf? y^X,
rHB
NIVERSITY
CONTENTS.
PAOR
PREFACE vii
CHAPTER I.
NATURE OP BELIEF AS HERE DEALT WITH.
1. Limits of the Enquiry.
Primitive Beliefs can be studied in a strictly historical fashion The
aid which Philology brings to this enquiry, both in supplying
facts and in supplying principles of research Impossibility of
finding agreement as to the definition of Religion Necessity I'm-
a Definition of Belief Material character of primitive ideas
demonstrated from the history of language The transition from
concrete to abstract terms Relationship lift ween material and
metaphysical or ethical notions which is shown by this change
This relationship also explains the nature of belief \Yhich
implies a sense of moral or metaphysical ideas underlying the
physical ones Definition of belief as the capacity for worship
Belief and poetic creation Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of
religion, how far applicable to belief as here considered Mr.
Matthew Arnold's definition of religion Distinction between
religion and mythology
2. Early Phases of Belief.
The phases of thought shown in the growth of language are likewise
traceable in the growth of belief Various senses in which the
words ' fetich ' and ' fetichisin ' have been used Fetichistn under-
stood as a form of magric does not describe a definite phase of
belief For it may coexist with many different phases Fetichisni
understood as a worship of individual and concrete inanimate
XIV UOWTKNT8.
PAOB
objects does constitute a definite phase of "belief The next dis-
tin, J phase is Nature Worship, which is the worship of external
phenomena, as the sky, the earth, the sea, the storm, &c. The
decisive evidences of nature worship which are furnished by
comparative philology Method of comparative philology in gain-
ing- a knowledge of prehistoric times Instanced in the words yd
(cow), diihitar (daughter) Dyaus the sky god of the proto-Aryas
Nature worship the cause of henotheism, and an explanation
of polytheism Change to a personal god Zeus and tkeos Our
enquiries stop short before the full development of the personal
god Influence of the passions and of strong emotion on belief . 29
CHAPTER II.
THE EARLY GROWTH OP BELIEF.
Abundant traces of a primitive fetichism in the Aryan creeds The
three chief fetiches were trees, rivers, and mountains The
house tree Odysseus' chamber The roof tree of the Norsemen
From the house tree to the world tree Yggdrasill Tanema-
huta of the Maoris Sacredness of birds Prophetic power of
birds Wise women who change themselves into birds Winged
animals, how they arose Prophetic power which remains with the
fetich after it has ceased to be a god With trees With moun-
tains and with rivers The tree ancestor Greek and Persian
houses descended from trees Ask and Embla (Ash and Elm)
the universal parents in the Edda Mediaeval legend touching \>
the Tree of Life From the tree ancestor comes the tree of the-"*
tribe or the village tree, so well known to the German races The
patrician and plebeian trees in Home Passage of the soul into
a tree Philemon and Baucis, Myrrha, &c. Mountain gods
River gods Oceanus compared to Yggdrasill Fetichism gave
the first impulse to a love of country Animal worship Serpent
worship Its connection with worship of rivers Symbolical ser-
pents Jormungandr The Python Worship of stocks and
stones a relic of fetichism Worship of unshapen agalmata in
Greece Sculptured trees Influence of fetich worship on the
beginnings of art Survivals of_fetichism Vitality of the belief
in magic Transition from feticli worship to nature worship
The intermediate stage The dryads, nvmphs, fauns, apsaras,
centaurs, &c. Music born of streams The contest between the
newer and the older gods , 63
CONTENTS. XV
CHAPTER III.
THE AEYAS.
PAGE
Agni's birth He devours his parents Significance of this incident
as showing the religious condition ot' the Vedic worshipper
The idealisation to which Agni attains Other nature gods are
more dependent upon climatic influences It is necessary, there-
fore, to enquire to what climatic influences the ancestors of the
Indo-European races were exposed The cradle of the Aryan
race in Bactria Nature of that land Contrasted with Egypt and
Chaldea The village community Diversities of creed Migra-
tions of the Aryas Fetich gods had to he left behind The
Vedas Religious rather than mythological The pre- Vedic
creed of Eastern Aryas Dyaus, Prithivi Active and passive
gods Rivalry between Dyaus and Indra, and between Varuna
and Indra Hymn to Indra and Varuna The god of the lower -
heaven and the god of the upper heaven Indra as a supreme
god His might His combats Ahi, Vritra, and iSambara
Relationship of Agni to Indra Traces of tire worship in other
Indo-European creeds Agni as a hero^Prometheus How the
nature gods lose their distinct individualities Mitra and Varuna
Originally personified the day and night skies Then tin-.
meeting of day and night, the horizons at morning and evening
Hymn to Varuna and Mitra Hymn to Mitra alone The Aavin
The mythic day : the white dawn, the red dawn (Ushas)
Hymn to Ushas The sun (Surya) Hymn to Surya The storm
winds (the Marute) Hymn to the Maruts Meeting of Indra
and the Maruts The midday battle Sunset Hymn to Savitar
as the setting sun 08
CHAPTER IV.
ZEUS, APOLLO, ATHENE.
Complexity of Greek belief Necessity of comparing it with the
Vedic and Teutonic creeds Lack of individuality of Greek gods
in the historic age Zeus, Apollo, and Athene stand out from
among the rest Relics of nature origin shown in their charac-
ters The Zeus of Pheidias The migration of the European
nationalities The Yavanas The lonians The two routes taken
by those who came to form the Greek nationality The lonians
crossed the ^Egaean The Pelasgians went round by the Helles-
a
XVI CONTENTS.
PAGE
pont The oldest Greek divinities Zeus as the storm The
Pelasgic Zeus Combat with a still older fetich worship The
gods and the Titans The wives of Zeus Nearly all originally
earth goddesses Hera distinct from the others Poseidon and
Hades-Pluton divinities of the older pantheon So also Ares
and Heracles, who were sun gods.
Worship of Apollo and Athene softened the natures of the
other Greek gods The Dorians Spread of their influence The
birth of Apollo Apollo at Delphi His fight with the Python
His wanderings His relationship to Heracles Death of the
sun god Of Heracles Of Apollo, implied in one myth The
harrowing of hell Apollo and Zeus.
Goddesses born of water Aphrodite, Athene Tritogeneia
Earth and cloud goddesses Athene's virgin nature as Pallas,
Parthenos Shows her essential identity with Artemis Athene's
second birth Hymn to Athene Athene Polias Polybulos
Polymetis Athene and the Gorgon Athene in the Iliad In the
Odyssey Apollo and Athene the mediators Zeus the highest
Greek ideal of God 155
CHAPTER V.
MYSTERIES.
Position of the earth divinities in every creed These are always
honoured by rustic dances and processions Antiquity of Greek
mysteries Universality of mysteries Their original intention
was to celebrate the return of spring The myth of Derneter and
Persephone, from the Homeric hymn Mysteries must have
existed before the use of agriculture Changes which that use
introduced into them Triptolemus Peasant festivals The
Lupercalia Emotional element in mysteries The orgy The
use of music in the Eleusinia Comparison with a mystic drama
prepared by St. Francis Original meaning of the wanderings of
Demeter Image of the earth-goddess dragged from place to
place The ceremonial of the Eleusinia Older and newer ele-
ments in it A processional chaunt The resurrection of the
seed Mysteries became associated with thouq-hts about the
other world The decay of the Homeric religion Growth of
the hope of immortality Aristophanes' picture of the under-
world Growing moral sense Neoplatonism Worship of
Serapis and Isis in Greece In Rome Romans adopted mysteries
of Serapis and Isis Plutarch's version of the story of Osiris and
IsLs His explanation of it Last stage of the mysteries . . 214
CONTENTS. xvii
CHAPTER VI.
THE OTHER WORLD.
1. The Under World, the River of Death, and the Bridge of Souls.
PAGE
Alternations of belief and unbelief touching the other world
traceable at all times In the Middle Airrs us in Greece
Interpretations from nature have not diilered greatly from age
to age The soul as the breath The ' unseen place' The
nether kingdom The funeral feast Remains of, in Stone Age
grave mounds Reappearance of the ghost through the mouth of
the grave Personification of grave as animal (e.g. Cerl>erus,
Feurir) or as human being (e.g. Hades, Hel) .Journey of the
soul to the West The Egyptian notions concerning this journey
The Aryas by the Caspian The Caspian became their Sea of
Death, or, earlier still, River of Death Oceanus succeeded to the
same place Separation between myths of River of Death and of
Sea 01 Death The former became more characteristic of Kastern
Aryas, the latter of Western Journeys to seek the Kurthly
Paradise Svegder l-'ioluersson The Indian streams Vijaranadi
and Vaiterawi Introduction of the custom of burning the dead
The soul and the smoke of the pyre The heavenly llridge of
Souls The Milky Way in Vedic mythology The' Surameyaa
the guardians of the bridge The A'iuvad Sirat Asbru or
Bifrost The Winter Street 261
2. The Sea of Death.
Among the Indo-Europeans the Greeks first became familiar with
the sea So among them sprang up the great epic of the Sea of
Death, the Odyssey Contrast between the Iliad and the Odyssey
in respect of the worlds with which they deal Though Homer
does not consciously relate fables, the old imagery of the Sea, of
Death had become associated with the Mediterranean, and is thus
reproduced in the Odyssey Odysseus' voyage Sleep Home (the
Lotophagi) Giant Land (the Cyclopes) Wind Home '
island) The Lse&trygoninns Circe a Goddess of Death Can
only waft Odysseus to Hades Odysseus in the kingdom of Hades
Calypso another Goddess of Death She sends Odysseus to
Paradise, i.e. the Land of the Phteacians The palace and garden
of Alcinoiia Odysseus' return ....... 295
CONTENTS.
CHAPTEE VII.
THE BELIEFS OF HEATHEN GERMANY.
1. The Gods of the Mark.
PAGE
General uniformity of German heathenism wherever found The
climatic influences under which it was matured The German
village community Life beneath trees Worship in the forest
The mark Description of a holy grove at Upsala in the eleventh
century Celtic worship beneath trees The gods of the mark,
Odhinn (Wuotan), Thorr (Donar), and Tyr (Zio) Odhinn the
wind Tyr (Dyaus) superseded by Odhinn Odhinn as the
All-father As the god of wisdom The Counsellor (Gagnrad)
and the Terrible (Yggr) As the storm wind The god of
battles Odhinn and the Valkyriur Nature origin of the Valky-
riur Description of, from the lay of Volund Brynhild or
Sigrdrifa Her first meeting with Sigurd German gods less
immortal than those of Greece and Rome Preparations against
the Gods' Doom (Ragnarok) The Urdar fount Picture of the
Norseman's world: Asgard Yggdrasill Heimdal The Mid-
gard Sea The Iron "Wood Jotunheimar Thorr's journeys to
Jotunheim His visit to the hall of tltgar'oloki To Hymir To
Thrymr We have better means of testing the Teutonic belief
about the giant race than any that are afforded us in the Eddas ;
namely, in the poem of Beowulf Hrothgars palace De-
scription of Grendel Beowulf's fight with him, and with the
mother of Grendel ......... 325
2. The Gods of the Homestead.
There was also a peaceful side to German belief Represented by
Balder and Freyr among gods, and by the goddesses Nerthus,
Frigg, Freyja Freyr and GerS, the story of the anodos
Freyja and Odhur, the story of the kat/iodos The image of
Nerthus dragged from place to place Elements of a mystery
in this ceremonial Traces of its survival in the Middle Ages
Rustic rites which have descended from heathen times Easter
fires May fires The maypole Description of May-day fes-
tivities in Stubbs' * Anatomie of Abuses ' Witches and the
Walpuryisnacht Dragging the plough on Shrove Tuesday or
Plough Monday The twelve Days The Three Kings Super-
stitions connected with Yuletide ...... 368
CONTENTS. XIX
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
PAQR
1. Visits to the Under World. The Death of Balder.
Fatalism of the Teutonic creed Frequent images of death in its
mythology Loki the personification of the funeral tire His
double nature His giant wife, Angrboo'a His children,
Fenrir, Jb'rmungandr, and Hel, who are three personifications of
death Jotunheimar The out-world fire Fire surrounding
the House of Death The ghost of Ilfl<ri Hundingsbane
Skirnir in Jb'tunheim Fiolsvith and Svipdag (Xlhinn's Hrl-rido
The Vala at the gate of the under world I'tguro'loki Thorr's
visit to him in reality a descent to Ilflhrim Mc:miii;jr of the
three contests The death of Balder Ills fum-nil Ilrri'ioor's
ride to Heiheim Hope of Balder's returning from the Land of
Shades Nors> funeral rites imitated those of Balder Ibn Ilau-
kal's description of the fuiu-rul ritrs of th.- linns The St. John's
fires in the twelfth century At the present day, in Germany
In Brittany In England Reflection of the mythology of the
under world in epics and popular tales Brynhild on the Ilin-
darljoll Sigurd's leap over the flame The Sleeping Beauty . 384
2. Ragnarok.
Formation of the world Ginnungagap, Hvergelmir, Muspell's-heim
The end of the world The Firnbul-winter of three years'
duration The three cocks who proclaim the dawning of llag-
narb'k The giant ships which steer across the M id<rard Sea
Surt (Swart) rides over Asbru to join the giants The opposing
powers meet on Vigrid's plain The three great combats
Burning of the world, which afterwards sinks in the sea The
rise of a new world, over which Balder is to rule Muspilli
Heiheim survived in the mediaeval purgatory Visions of purga-
toryBy St. Fursey By Drihthelm By Charles the Fat St.
Patrick's purgatory Vision of Tundale 419
CHAPTER IX.
THE EAETHLY PAEADISE.
Effect of Christianity in changing men's belief concerning the other
world The Earthly Paradise, however, continued to exist
rather in spite of than through its influence Prejudice in favour
XX CONTENTS.
PAGE
of a Paradise in the West The Western Sea still the Sea of
Death England the home of souls Procopius' story concerning
Brittia Claudian alludes to the same myth The ghost of
Grhnvald The ferry of Carnoet Ireland the home of souls
The Island of Saints St. Brandan's Isle Dante's account of
Ulysses' last voyage Dante hears witness to the "belief in an
Earthly Paradise in the West Voyage of Gorm the Wise to
farther Biarmia Voyage of St. Brandan The Island of Sheep
The Paradise of Birds Aval on Arthur's voyage thither
Ogier the Eane in Avalon He revisits earth and again returns
to Paradise The Paradise Knight Sceaf Lohengriu , . 433
CHAPTER X.
HEATHENISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
The heathenism of Northern Europe cannot be studied in heathen
literature or heathen times alone It is therefore desirable to
give a glance at some of its lingering effects in the Middle Ages,
though this can be no more than a glance. The Middle Ages
ages of mythology rather than of history The age of the Teutonic
conquests in Roman territory was that which gave birth to the
great German epic, the Nibelungen The germ of the story to be
traced in the second part of Beowulf, in the Vb'lsung Saga, and
in the Nibelungen-Lied This germ is the slaying of a dragon
(worm), and thereby winning a hoard of gold -Afterwards over-
laid with the story of the loves and jealousies of Brynhild
(Brunhild) and Godrun (Kriemhild) In the histories of Sigurd
and Siegfried are combined the characteristic elements in the
histories of Thorr and Balder The low morality of the Nibelun-
gen due to the special era in which it had its birth The fatal
enchantment of wealth which fell upon the victorious Germans
Rustic mythologies which probably existed contemporaneously
with this great epic The vitality of folk lore Heroic myth of
Arthur The Legends of the Saints Relics of popular mytho-
logy in them The Beast Epic ' Reineke Fuchs' The inaugu-
ration of the Middle Ages by the crowning of Charles the Great as
Emperor The establishment of German influence upon mediaeval
thought was symbolised by the same event The ' Chansons de
Geste ' Points of likeness between Charlemagne and Odhinn
Reappearance of the Valkyriur Berchta Roland compared to
Thorr To Siegfried To Heimdal His horn Ragnarok and
Roucesvalles The last home of German heathenism now the
CONTENTS. 23li
PA OB
home of German popular tales The Wild Huntsman The
Stretmann The Pied Piper of Hamelin Van der Dekkeii The
real meaning of the punishment in every case The Wandering
Jew The world of the Middle Ages Growth of castles
Change in the character of convents Feudalism and Catholi-
cism Feudalism had some of its roots in the ancient German
village community Catholicism likewise had some of its roots in
the same distant past But in both feudalism and Catholicism a
living organism was turned to stone The Gothic cathedral and--\*
the holy grove Witchcraft Transformation of Odhinn into
Satan and of the Valkyriur into witches The wood maidens in
Saxo's story of Balder us and Hotherus Witchcraft was a dis-
tinct cult, originally probably of the ancient divinities It also
included a certain social organisation, and thus was opposed
both to Catholicism and to feudalism Dawn of the Renaissance
era Effect of the crusades Want of coined money Mercenary
soldiers Rise of the burghers The fablitnu' Mendicant orders
Dante the last voice of mediaeval Catholicism . . . 4G1
INDEX . 521
/
^'fV^V
.-H* ^
UNIVERSITY
OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
CHAPTER I.
NATURE OF BELIEF AS HEKE DEALT WITH.
1. Limits of the Enquiry.
THE world around us is what we believe it is, and nothing
more; wherefore the history of belief, so long as the
belief be genuine, is real history, and can be studied by
merely historical methods. This kind of enquiry can be
made independent of any theory of the origin or nature
of belief, just as much as history, a record of events, may
be made independent of the science of history. Of late
years, however, this historical way of regarding belief has
been almost lost sight of, and mythology, since it became
comparative, has concerned itself almost exclusively with
a scientific enquiry into the genesis of myths. It has, as
must be confessed by those who have followed its re-
searches, been, at the expense of some extravagances here
and there, fruitful in great results. It has so changed
our whole outlook over the field of religion and of legend-
ary beliefs, that we have hardly yet been able to recog-
nise the change. Perhaps with some of us it has been
that we have been so affected by the new spirit that
we can scarcely, even by an effort of imagination, realise
a tone of thought upon these matters such as was uni-
versally current but a few years ago ; albeit that tone of
thought and method of interpretation still breathe in our
2 OUTLINES OF PKIMIT1VE BELIEF.
classical dictionaries, and in those other 6 standard au-
thors ' who are considered good enough to instruct the
mind of youth. Now that the researches of comparative
mythologists have so far cleared the ground, we are in a
position to retrace our steps a little ; to return once more
to the historical method, only in a far different spirit and
with a far, clearer outlook ; to take up again in a wider
field the kind of enquiry which once busied itself with
single religious systems and never looked beyond them.
There was once a time when the legendary beliefs of
nations were in histories related side by side with the
actual experiences of those peoples, as if both were of equal
reality and had an interest of the same kind. A little
later on historians tried to place all the mythologies in a
crucible of criticism, and hoped to extract from them
some golden grains of actual fact. Now we know that
both these methods are wrong. We have learned that
myths have quite a different canon of interpretation from
the events of history ; that they tell of a quite different
order of facts ; that the one cannot be rendered in terms
of the other. But we know also, or if we do not, it is
time that we should recognise the truth, that myths, or
better still that 'beliefs., have a history of their own quite
as important as any history of events. To interpret belief
under this aspect is the object of the following pages.
And though this labour differs essentially from labours in
comparative mythology, still it is a task to which com-
parative mythology must ever be a lamp and guide.
I would not have these chapters considered simply
as essays in the science of comparative mythology. They
are not essentially enquiries how and why beliefs have
come to be what they are, but what they have come to be.
It is only because the ground has been broken by scientific
study that we are able to glean from it historic facts ; yet
still the method and aims of the historian are altogether
different from those of the scientist. The qualifications for
the pursuits of the one do not promise success to the other.
USE OF PHILOLOGY.
But the History of Belief, in its early mythologic
stage, is a new study, and is, therefore, without those
canons of criticism which past generations of students
have bequeathed to the modern historian in other fields.
For this reason, and because in dealing with ages so
primitive we are at once brought face to face with psycho-
logical problems applicable to the whole human race, it is
needful for me to preface the other chapters of this book
with one of a scientific kind, in order, if possible, to make
clear the principles which have guided me in the narrative
parts which follow. Let those who have no relish for
psychological questions pass by this chapter if they will.
There is one very simple proposition which applies to
all fields of historical enquiry, and which surely in no
other field than this would have been called in question.
It is that, when we are studying the beliefs of a people
whose language and literature we know, it is to this
language and literature that we must turn for the history
of their thoughts. My investigation, for example, being
narrowed altogether within the circle of the Indo-
European creeds, I am not compelled to defend the results
at which I shall arrive against arguments and facts drawn
from other fields of enquiry, from other languages and
other literatures. I read one theory of the origin and
growth of Egyptian religion or of Semitic beliefs ; quite
another theory, perhaps, of the birth of the creeds of
South Africa or of Australia. Am I convicted of error
if my results do not square with these ? I do not think
so. Nor will I say that what I have discovered, or
believe myself to have found, in the history of Indo-
European thought, is binding upon all other investigators.
The student in any one field no doubt thinks that he
has discovered the key to all truth. One writer will
say that our history begins with too low a conception of
man's faculties ; another that the conception is too high.
It may be I do not say it is too low for the Semitic
race; it may be too high for the Negritic race. But
B 2
4 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIV 7 E BELIEF.
that does not prove that, for the Indo-European races,
the estimate is unjust. In future, therefore, when any-
thing is said of primitive man, let it be understood that
the primitive man spoken of is he who in time developes
into an Aryan. He is the first among the proto-Aryans.
He is no chance primeval being, but has, let us say, the
potentiality of Aryan culture about him.
In the case of this special people, when we desire to
pry into their primitive thoughts, we are not compelled to
proceed by guess work or vague analogies, but can call up
two voices to speak to us of their past. The first voice is
what we may call their literature, widening the use of
that word somewhat to include religious or mythological
poems, Vedic hymns, Greek epics, Icelandic lays, which,
ages before they became in strict sense a literature, had
been handed down by oral tradition from bard to bard.
These poems are the conscious expression of men's thoughts
in prehistoric days. The other voice, not less mighty for
the revelation of truth, may be called the unconscious
expression of the same men's thoughts ; a kind of thinking
aloud. This comes from the history of their language,
whose slow development has of recent years been laid
bare by the researches of Comparative Philology. This is
our best and truest guide ; it is the lamp unto the feet
and the light unto the path of all future explorers in the
tangled ways of psychology. It is an undesigned testi-
mony which cannot lie ; without it the study of mythology
is like surgery divorced from anatomy, or astronomy bereft
of mathematics. It shows us not only facts which would
otherwise be hidden, but, by its own great achievements,
it points out to us the method of enquiry which can alone
yield results.
According to Mr. Herbert Spencer, religion may be
defined as an ' a priori theory of the universe ; ' and there
is, the writer tells us, a subsidiary and unessential element
in religion, namely, the moral teaching, ' which is in all
cases a supplementary growth.' ' Leaving out,' he says,
A DEFINITION OF BELIEF NEEDFUL. 5
'the accompanying moral code, which is in all cases a sup-
plementary growth, religion may be defined as an a priori
theory of the universe.' l But it is clear that this definition
would not be universally accepted, for we find Mr. Mat-
thew Arnold saying in his ' Literature and Dogma,' 2 that
( Religion, if we follow the intention of human thought
and human language in the use of the word, is ethics,
heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling ; the passage from
morality to religion is made when to morality is applied
emotion ; and the true meaning of religion is not simply
morality, but morality touched by emotion.' Mr. Max
Miiller has defined Eeligion more simply, as the smsus
numinis, the sense of our dependence upon some thing
(or some one) else. 'All nations join, in some way or
other, in the words of the Psalmist, " He that hath made
us and not we ourselves." ' 3 In face of these divergences
among the doctors and leaders of thought, we may reason-
ably suppose that it would be scarcely possible to get any
two men to agree in the meaning which they attached to
the word religion. And though our .study is not so much a
study of religion as of belief, which is a something at
once wider than religion and more definite, still, even in
the case of belief, I cannot anticipate with certainty that
I shall carry the reader along with me in the meaning
which I give to that word. But, on the other hand, in
the case of a word of so vague, though so common a use,
all that can be fairly demanded is that I should make
clear the sense in which I employ it. It is, indeed, mainly
to this object that the present chapter is devoted to the
getting some clear notion as to what we are to recognise
as the essential and primitive beliefs of men, and then, as
a necessary consequence, to the presentation of some of
the forms which belief has taken in the course of man's
early development.
We are no longer obliged to call in a ' Darwinian
1 Mrgt Principles, 3rd ed. pp. 43, 44. 2 Pp. 20, 21.
Lectures on the Science of Language, second series, p. 436.
6 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
theory, 5 nor the aid of any external physical demonstration,
to prove all that it is really important to know touching
the evolution of human nature. It matters not in this
respect whether for our first parent we are to reckon with
an ape or a man the ' goodliest of men since born his
sons ; ' for, whatever the state of outward perfection which
our first parent displayed, we are sure of this at least,
that that perfection could not have extended to the mind.
The real significance of our origin lies in the origin of
our thoughts, in their beginning and their earliest changes,
and these it is easy to show must have been of the
rudest.
Philologists may continue long to dispute over the
precise origin of language ; but philology has brought us
so far that there can be now no question that the primitive
speech of mankind was of the rudest character, devoid
almost utterly of abstract words, unfit for the use of any
kind of men save such as were in the earliest stage of
thought.
It is probably true that the mental and moral attain-
ment of any people, all that shows their progress along the
path of civilisation, is (in mathematical phrase) in a direct
ratio with the number of their abstract words. If, there-
fore, the history of language points back to - a time when
man had no abstractions, what could have been his mental
condition then P If we look at our own language, or at
any other which we know, we see its words divisible into
two classes those which express objects appreciable by
the senses ; and those which express ideas Imving no
existence in the physical world ; such words as pen, iiik,
and paper (meaning this particular pen, ink, and paper) on
the one side, and such words as fear, virtue, right, upon
the other. We perceive with very little reflection that
without the possession of these latter words the ideas
which they bespeak could not be present to the mind ; and
with a very little additional reflection we can understand
that the number of such abstract ideas recorded by any
LANGUAGE ROOTED IN SENSATION. V
language is a very fair measure of the advancement of
those who use it.
4 Without abstract words man can have no clear con-
ception of abstract ideas. If all his language speaks of
physical sensation only, if he hare no such expressions in
it, or few such, as thought, virtue, right, his intellectual and
moral nature must be in the embryo only. Though he be
outwardly the goodliest of men, inwardly he cannot be
much above the brute. It will be said by some,'* Man has
only degraded to such a state since the fall; he began
with endowments of the highest.' Well, if tbat were to
be conceded, it would not alter the position in which we
stand for setting out upon our enquiries. Whatever the
primal Adam may have been, the forerunner of the Aryan
race must have been in the degraded condition we have
described. This language plainly tells. Albeit philologers
have not yet insisted very strongly upon it, yet this con-
clusion is forced upon us by the facts of philology ; and,
indeed, lies so patent there, that it cannot be blinked or
set aside. The history of individual words are indi-
cations of it, for the farther we trace such words back
towards their primitive roots, the nearer do they come to
bearing meanings purely physical in place of the meta-
physical significations which at a later time they wear.
As we travel backwards toward these sources of language,
we see the stream of thought becoming more and more
mixed and thickened with earthly matter, and the sounds
approach the nearer to the old physical uses. Language
never arrives at the point of containing none but words
of mere sensation ; but then we can never get back to
the language of the Prime. It shows an approach that
way. One by one the roots seem to desert from the
metaphysical or abstract class, and range themselves in
the ranks of the physical and concrete class. And of this
process we shall presently have occasion to note some
examples.
A conviction of the material nature of primitive
8 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
thought is suggested, or compelled, not by this inductive
reasoning alone. We cannot fashion for ourselves any
theory of the origin of speech which would not point to
the same conclusion any reasonable theory, that is,
which would make speech a part of the acquirements
of the human race. The fact that man alone possesses
the gift of language is often pointed to as a reason
for supposing the method of his acquirement of language
a thing so utterly miraculous, as to be without the pale
even of speculation. But it should be remembered that
speech is only the flower (as we may call it) of certain
inward faculties, most of which can still be traced in the
course of growth. Man is not less distinguished from
animals by his powers of abstract reasoning than by
speech; and it is as reasonable to suppose him acquiring
at once, and by a miraculous gift, the knowledge 'that
two straight lines cannot enclose a space,' or that 'the
three internal angles of a triangle are together equal to
two right angles,' as to suppose him at once starting
with the possession of a finished language. If he did
not start with his finished language, he must have
acquired it, as he acquired his mathematical truths, by
slow experience and experiment. Of what kind then
would this experiment be ?
The use of speech is for the interchange of ideas be-
tween man and man ; its very existence implies a passage
from one mind to another, and the difference between words
and thoughts may be defined by saying that the former are
so much of thought as can be carried from A to B.
Words are not thoughts, but thoughts converted into
sounds, to be afterwards reconverted into thoughts ; just
as, in a modern experiment, sound is converted into elec-
tricity, and then resolved into sound again. Wherefore
the real force of a word may be compared to the force of
the current in the telephone ; it is, not the full thought
with which A utters it, but the amount of thought which
it can convey from A to B. Let us now suppose the case
WITHOUT WORDS NO CLEAE IDEAS. 9
of a primitive A and B first learning ihe use of words.
In whatever way they may have lighted upon the notion
of expressing by sound what was passing in their minds,
it is easy to see that the first experiment owed its success
to the fact that the same idea happened to be present in
two minds at once. If A made a sound, and this sound
happened to convey what A was thinking or feeling to B,
the success was due to the fact that B was thinking or
feeling the same thing at the same moment ; and A in his
turn must have had some foreknowledge of this, or he
could never tell that his experiment had succeeded, and
by that knowledge be tempted to try it again. There is
only one class of ideas which can be in the mind of one
man, and be known by another to be present there the
ideas, namely, of physical sensation. All language, there-
fore, must have taken its origin there. To speak more
plainly, such ideas as horse, tree, wolf, run, flow, river,
must have been the first to receive names ; because A and
B could run together, and could see horses, trees, and
wolves and rivers at the same time. But inward ideas
anxiety, love, thought would receive their names later, and
by a metaphorical transfer of the words from physical to
meta-physical ideas.
In the case suggested of an imaginary A and B trying
to be mutually intelligible, it might seeni as if the physical
meaning of the root sounds of a language were determined
by external necessity the necessity for an instantaneous
common experience of the idea not by any defect in the
constitution of human nature at this primitive time.
There is nothing, it may be said, to prove that humanity
was incapable of conceiving metaphysical ideas, even
though it is proved that it could not at first have ex-
pressed them. The result is really the same, however.
It belongs to our mental constitution that, without any
distinct names for them, we can entertain no clear ideas.
Without language to give it form, we can have at the best
only the rudiments of thought. Whether the first words
10 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
'were percepts or concepts, whether they were nouns, adjec-
tives, or verbs, are questions which may be argued out of
their place, but which do not concern us here. Indeed,
the nearer we look at the matter, the more does the dis-
tinction between percept and concept, between noun and
adjective, seem to fade away. Suppose a sound to be
drawn, as it were, out of A by some sudden physical sen-
sation ; before it can become current between A and B it
must be, in a great degree, modified by thought and by
memory, or loss of memory. The cry which A makes
when he sees a red fox run by may stand in A's mind
partly for the actual sensation of the very, animal, its form
and colour and all, partly for the mere effect of its rapid
motion ; and it must (one would suppose) depend largely
upon chance whether the memory of the fox is next
awakened by the next thing which runs by, by the next
red thing seen, or by the next thing which in form and
vitality shows its likeness to the fox. Taking this for an
example of the first word ever uttered, it must, one would
say, be to a great extent an accident whether this first
word comes in the end to be a substantive, an adjective,
or a verb.
This suggestion I only throw out here, and pass the
subject by ; for, as I have said, it concerns our future
enquiries but little. This much it is needful to remember :
that though the earlier words of a language express physical
sensations, they express them as they are interpreted by the
human mind. There may be nay, we shall see hereafter
often is something more in these sensations than we,
with our powers of abstraction and of distinction between
different orders of ideas, should be disposed to look for
there.
Agreeably, it has been already said, to this a priori
reasoning are the facts of philology, which show us a
physical root as the foundation of the words which seem
most abstract. Right, which we took just now as an ex-
ample of the metaphysical class of words, had once its
OEIGIN OF ABSTRACT TEEMS. 11
place in the physical body ; and without the need of any
deep philological knowledge we can see what its first
meaning was. We at once connect the Latin rectus with
porrectus, meaning stretched out or straight. This brings
us back to the German recken, to stretch. We therefore
get upon the scent of right as meaning first straight, and
earlier still ' stretched,' stretched and straight being really
the same words, and the straight string being the stretched
string. We have further if further proof were wanted
a Greek root, opsy- opeywcri, opsysi, with the same signifi-
cance of stretched or straight ; and, finally, we find that
all these words are connected with a Sanskrit arj, which
means * to stretch.' What is stretched, then, is straight,
and the straight way is the right way. Will (Latin volo,
voluntas) is a word which seems remote enough from any
physical thing ; yet this, too, may be shown to be grounded
in sensation. In the first place, will is only the more in-
stantaneous wish, and is connected with the German
wdhlen, to choose, and ultimately with the Sanskrit var, to
choose, ' to place, or draw out first.' With this root we must
connect the Latin verus, veritas, the Lithuanian and Scla-
vonic vera, vera, ' belief.' Verus, or veritas, is, therefore, what
is credible, or, earlier still, the thing chosen ; and the old
Latin proverb, reduced to its simplest terms, stands thus :
' Great is the thing chosen ; it will prevail.' There is, it
may be added, another Sanskrit word, vdra, and a Lithu-
anian valyti, meaning * heap,' coming from the same root
and the same physical idea, to draw together being the
same thing as to draw. Wherefore the origin of the Latin
veritas, as well as of voluntas, will, is merely the physical
process of drawing ; and the change from this original
sense to two such opposite ideas as truth and heap can
easily be followed.
Our individual words thought, think, cannot, I believe,
be followed back to an origin in sensation. But are we,
on this account, justified in doubting that they had such
a beginning? The question will best be answered by
12 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
turning to other sounds which have been used for the
same idea ; to see whether they can show an equally in-
dependent existence. The Greek and Latin words which
have the same significance, pavQavw, memini, mens, &c.,
can be followed further backward than can our thought,
think, and can be shown to have meant at first nothing
more than ' measure.'
Examples such as those which we have just chosen
show best the inmost workings of the human mind. There
are others in which the mode of transfer from physical to
abstract senses is more obvious and superficial. As I shall
show presently, the examples of the first class open the way
to an understanding of the genesis of belief; those of the
second are more instructive in the same way with regard
to the growth of myths. For myths are the flower and
the most superficial appearances of belief. As an example
of the more obvious kind of change from physical to
metaphysical meanings, we may take that expressed by
our use of the phrases ' cold-hearted ' or 'hard-hearted.'
With us such a phrase is pure metaphor, but not so with
ancient writers. In reading Homer, for example, it is no
easy matter to say when the physical aspect of /cfjp (heart)
or of ^f%^ (breath, soul) is most present to the mind of
the poet, and when the metaphysical or metaphorical
aspect. Examples of this kind might be multiplied
without end.
Will it be said by the candid reader, after considering
even these few examples, that confusion of ideas between
physical and metaphysical could possibly have arisen in
an exactly opposite way from that which I have supposed
was the order of their growth namely, by a transfer
through metaphor of the metaphysical idea to the physical
thing : that, for example, the idea of moral Tightness
came before the idea of straightness, and was applied to
this latter by analogy ; that the idea of truth came before
the idea of selecting, choosing, or heaping together ; the idea
of thought preceded the idea of measuring? The two
ORIGIN OF ABSTRACT TERMS. 13
orders of ideas could not have both been in the mind at
the same time ; that is certain. Had they been so present
we should have had two separate orders of words devoid
of etymological connection. Therefore either the moral
idea was taken from the physical one, or the physical
from the moral. Have we any hesitation in deciding
which process actually took place ? l
But somehow a deeper than a purely physical sense
has come in time to attach itself to all and each of these
words. By whatever process and the process differs
somewhat in each individual case straight has come to
mean right, heap, truth, measure, think, and so forth ; the
ethical meaning has grown over the physical meaning,
and in many places hidden it altogether. And as this
gradual development is not arbitrary, nor one to be illus-
trated by a few examples only, but a continuous change
parallel with the growth of human speech, it must express
a certain faculty or tendency in human thought. This
faculty had we learnt fully to understand, we should know
much. We should have gained the key to that which is
most essential in our nature, the capacity of abstract
thought and of moral sense.
Having formed a certain elementary language of root
sounds, man desired to communicate to his neighbour
ideas to which he found no correspondence in external
nature. How was he to act then ? He was now brought
to the verge of perhaps the greatest step which has ever
1 I find a writer upon mythology saying that 'the adherents of the
theory of primitive fetichism, primeval barbarism, and the like, when
hard pressed by the evidence which shows the simplicity and the purity of
the religious views of archaic man, are wont to take refuge in " boundless
time," where indeed they are perfectly safe from our pursuit '...-. and
that ' of primitive man we know little, but dogmatise much,' the writer
quoting as a proof of such dogmatism assertions by Ludwig Noire and others
of less repute, and ending ' such asseitions jn the absence of evidence are
of course valueless ' (The Religion and Mythology of the Aryans of Northern
Jtl'iirojye, by R. Brown, F.S.A.) Certainly all assertions are valueless in the
absence of evidence. But is there, in the history of the development of
words, no evidence on the question of the development of human thought 1
14 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
been taken by the human mind. To have hit upon the
notion of making certain sounds, which should convey the
idea of external things this was much ; but much more
is it if he can contrive to convey the ideas which are
passing in his own mind. Exactly how this was done we
cannot know; no doubt it was a development which pro-
ceeded by very slow degrees. Sometimes the internal
idea might be conveyed as the simple expression of some
outward object, just as the name of some dreaded animal
might come to be used for fear, or else for the same
feeling men might employ some of its outward expres-
sions, trembling and the like. But, as for the expression
of most internal ideas, it seems pretty clear that there was
in the mind of primitive man some subtle and necessary
connection between them and external phenomena. For
the same reason which obliged the first words to have
physical meanings the necessity for a consensus or agree-
ment in their use must operate still, in determining the
transfer from physical to metaphysical uses. It could be
no fanciful connection which associated certain mental
ideas virtue, right with physical roots, and but for the
fact that there was the connection in the human mind no
words for mental or moral conceptions would ever have
been invented.
The deaf and dumb, when they desire to express a
good man, do so by moving the hands forward in a
straight line ; the wicked man they express by motion in a
crooked line. This sign is recognised as one of those
which are spontaneous and common to human nature. It
is with them no acquired metaphorical association between
right and straight, but a spontaneous association of ideas.
An example such as this seems for a moment to lift the
veil from before the history of man's development in
thought.
The habit of confounding and involving the two orders
of ideas, the physical and the moral, was general only in
primitive stages of thought, but survivals of the same
SIGNIFICANCE OF 'GREAT' AND 'HIGH.' 15
habit are found among us, and even these are hard to
explain. Great and high, low and base are used, and so
far back as we can trace language have been used, in such
a double sense. One hardly sees how there can be any
pleasure to the moral feelings gained from taking a longer
rather than a shorter time in moving over a given surface
or up to a given point ; and no more than this is implied
in the words great, high used in their literal meaning.
What is there more moral in motion upwards than in mo-
tion downwards? Yet it can scarcely be maintained that
it is an accidental association of ideas which makes high
imply good, and low evil, in face of the peculiar attribute of
man that he alone among the animals can look upward,
and that he has always chosen an upward gaze for his
attitude of prayer and worship.
It is impossible to do more than note these one or two
examples of a process which goes on throughout the
whole range of human development, a process which, to
sum it in gross, is nothing less than the recognition of a
something behind the material world which man learned
the first to know. It is true that with the knowledge of
good comes the knowledge of evil, and words for good and
high imply words for evil and base. But still it is through-
out a growth of the moral capacities of man. Between
the perfect conception of the moral abstraction and the
condition of mind in which no moral idea has yet been
thought of there is a vast interval, which the human
faculty of development has slowly over-bridged. It is the
history of the transition from one state to another, which
I would call the Early History of Belief.
In the conception of right, for example, we have, after
its first meaning 6 stretched,' the secondary and partly
moral one of fit and suitable. Few would be inclined to
question the assertion that right had once this meaning
and no higher one. Yet when man has got so far as this
he has scarcely yet attained a complete moral sense.
What moral feeling mingles with his use of the word
16 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
applies only to particular occasions. He has no thought
of a general law. Still he may have moral ideas. Though
he calls it unsuitable to injure his neighbour or to desert
nis tribe, he deems it so in obedience to an instinct of
clanship teaching him to love his kind. Or again, to come
to matters more directly relating to religion, though the
savage worships a visible physical object, a tree, a river,
or a mountain, he may do so in obedience to an instinct of
admiration for what is great and high, and in dim recogni-
tion of moral greatness and height. We have in Sanskrit
a root ri, and in the sister language, the Zend, the root
ere, from which we may argue back to a lost proto- Aryan l
word which meant (at first) motion, but more especially
motion upwards, such as we understand from the same root
when it appears in the Latin orire. But that same root ri
comes to mean in the Sanskrit to move, to excite, to raise ;
and finally it enters into the word cm/a, which means,
as an adjective, excellent, beloved, and as a substantive
master, lord. As soon, then, as a word, which originally
meant movement only, comes to be used especially in the
sense of movement upwards, the moral meaning begins to
develope therefrom : it absorbs into itself gradually the
idea of quite internal emotions, excitement, elevation, and
comes at last to mean noble, beloved. Is not such an
example as this the chronicle and brief abstract of the
growth of human thought?
Now transfer this method of thought from words to
things, and we have the first and most important chapter
in the history of Belief. I have said that Belief covers
the range of things which are believed to exist ; but it is
1 The word Aryan is commonly used as a designation for the forgotten
ancestors of us and of the whole Indo-European family. The use is not
quite a correct one, for Aryan has never to our knowledge been applied
save to the Eastern (Indo- Persic) division of the race. We have every
reason to believe, however, that our ancestors once called themselves
Aryas or by some word closely akin to that one. Proto-Aryas, proto-Aryan,
are the most scientific terms we can find, but it will often be convenient
to use the shorter words Aryas, Aryan in the same sense.
THE CAPACITY FOR WORSHIP. 17
something beside the recognition of what exists in outward
sensation. It is the answering voice of human conscious-
ness, or conscience, to the call of this something behind.
The call is from the outward beauty ; the response is from
inward seeing, or the sense of moral beauty. Without the
inward development the human mind would be incapable
of even the outward pleasure of beauty, and without the
outward call, without the influence of the charm or wonder
or the terror of nature, man would never have acquired the
capacity for discerning a something beyond nature. It is
this capacity which I call Belief, and the more we con-
sider it, the more clearly we shall see that it is essentially
the capacity for worship. For what I have only called the
recognition of a something behind the physical object is,
in reality, a worship of the something (or Some One) be-
hind it. Primitive man has a belief in the great thing, the
tree, river, mountain, or what not.' This belief is an affec-
tion of the mind, very different from the simple sense that
the thing is physically broad and high. Along with the
physical sensation goes a subtler inward feeling, a sense
not easily measurable as physical sensations are, but still
discoverable. We know it to be there by the answer
which the material sensation has called out of man's heart,
and which makes itself audibly known in his worship.
Perhaps, therefore, if we were pressed for a single and
concise definition of that human faculty called belief,
which we have taken for our study here, we could hardly
find a better one than this, that it is the ( capacity for
worship.' For if you will consider the nature of man you
will find that with him it always has been and still is true,
that that thing in all his inward or outward world which
he sees worthy of worship, is essentially the thing in which
he believes ; and conversely that he who worships nothing
believes in nothing. Wherefore it has been truly said that
'the man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually
wonder and worship,' though he hold all the results of
scientific knowledge in his single head, ' is but a Pair of
G
18 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
Spectacles behind which there is no Eye.' l This definition
of Belief will be found to serve us in the investigations
which we have undertaken. And even if it be objected to
by anyone, I may fairly fall back upon the proved impos-
sibility of getting- all men to agree upon a definition in
these vexed questions of religion and belief. All that can
fairly be asked is, that our studies should continue to be
what they profess to be at starting ; that is to say, that the
same definition of belief should be adhered to throughout.
The real importance of history does not lie in the in-
terest of the separate events, the battles, sieges, treaties,
speeches, which it records ; for the events themselves are
often commonplace enough, and might be matched with
little trouble elsewhere. There have been savage wars
numberless among unhistoric peoples as full of incident,
of strange turns of fortune nay, perhaps as full of heroism
and devotion as the great wars of history. But we pass
by the doings of African savages or of Red Indians without
heed, because these races are of such a nature that their
experience of life has never reacted in any effective way
upon their national character. Their haps, their tides of
fortune, have left them where they found them, because they
have not the power of profiting by the past, or of carrying
its teachings forward to form part of a new present. And
as it is with the events of history, so is it with the com-
monest physical sensations ; the importance these have in
the history of man's growth is not limited to his actual
experience of them. So far, indeed, as that experience
goes, its past history is no matter worth recording. We
do not care to be reminded that primitive man, or man in
any stage of his upward development, felt that the fire was
warm, that stones were hard, that water was soft and
bright. It is the reflection, as it were, of these experiences
in the mind of our race which is still living ; for out of
such physical sensations man created a world which was
not physical. And he has passed on this aftergrowth of
1 Sartor Resartus.
LOVE, HUMANITY, AND BELIEF. 19
experience to be the inheritance of all future ages. ( No-
thing of it that doth fade/ but it suffers a * sea change.'
And the fashion of that change the lessons of philology
which we have just learned can partly tell us.
There is nothing mystical in such a doctrine as this of
the origin of belief ; it does but make belief at one with the
whole upward progress of the human mind ; it can be de-
monstrated step by step from the history of language that
is to say, by an undesigned testimony which cannot lie.
As surely as love, hate, right, and ivrong have had their
physical antecedents, and as surely as these sensations
have developed in time into thoughts and feelings, so surely
have the outward things, as the mere rocks and trees,
which were in themselves objects of worship, grown in
time to be abstract gods, or to be One abstract God. We
cannot explain further the instinct or the inspiration whicli
does this. But if it is a stumbling-block to us in religious
matters, it must be a stumbling-block throughout the
whole range of the moral faculties.
As regards an ideal life those aims, I mean, which,
for the satisfaction which they give to our aspirations,
may be put forward as a fall and sufficient reason for life
itself this ideal and these aims seem to be threefold, and
to spring out of three separate instincts which man and
beast have in common. The difference, however, between
man and the lower animals lies in this, that the instincts
of animals are in what science calls a position of stable
equilibrium ; if you move them, so soon as the emotion
is passed they return to the state they were in before.
But man by each emotion is pushed towards something
better, and never remains constant to the position he holds.
His instincts develope into passions, into ideals of life, and
the grosser parts of them fall away. Now the three
instincts which seem to have chiefly worked to push man
forward on his path are these. First there is the sexual
instinct, which we know both in its brute form and also
(happily) in that ideal state which in modern times and in
c 2
20 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
Christian countries it has been able to reach. Next there
is the gregarious tendency, which makes men and animals
collect together in bands, for purposes of mutual help, and
which, still advancing, raises men up to a perfect love of
country or of humanity. Last of all there is this still
more subtle instinct of Belief, which lies at the root not
of religion only, but of all imaginative creation, for all
poetry and art (as the actual history of poetry and art
abundantly testifies) have their roots in wonder and in
worship. This faculty, too, is perhaps shared by the beasts
in some measure. Even animals have a certain capacity
for looking upward : as Bacon says, the beasts look up
to man, as man to God. But their eyes are, we know,
commonly bent down to earth; and if the instinct of
belief is shared by beasts, it is so in but a small degree.
It is essential to belief that it should believe, not make
Relieve. And this furnishes a certain distinction between
the history of belief and the history of art and poetry,
which, in the lighter kinds, are often engaged rather with
fancy than conviction; though, in truth, these are far
less often so engaged than some would suppose. Sidney,
in his ( Apologie for Poetrie,' gives graceful expression to a
common but untrue opinion touching poetic creation, sup-
posing it to consist in mere fancy, and to be quite independ-
ent of a belief in the reality of its creations. ' There is no
other art,' he says, 'but this delivered to mankind that hath
not the works of nature for his principal object, without
which they could not consist, and on which they so depend
as they become actors and players, as it were, of what
nature will have set forth.' And then he goes on to claim
that ' only the poet, disdaining to be tied by any such
subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention,
doth grow in effect another nature, in making things
either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite new
forms such as never were in nature, as the Heroes, Demi-
gods, Cyclops, Chimeras, Furies, and such like : so as he
goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the
POETIC CREATION. 21
narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging only
within the zodiac of his own wit.'
The view itself is false : the warrant of nature's gifts,
be it narrow or not, has been wide enough for man ; and
the instances which Sidney has chosen to support his
view only confirm the contrary. The Cyclops is a personi-
fication of the stormy sky ; his one eye is the sun looking
red and angry through the clouds, as we so often see it at
the end of a tempestuous day. 1 The Chimacra is herself
the cloud which drops rain as the goat drops milk. 2 The
Furies (Erinyes) are descended from the Vedic Saranyu,
the dawn. 3 Beings like these are the first fruits of man's
poetic faculty in its commerce with nature. But they are
not spun out from his imagination independently of such
prompting: they are in the most literal way the actors
and players of what nature will have set forth. And it is
with such creations, with beings whose character is deter-
mined for them to a great extent by the phenomena
which they personify, that the student in the history of
Belief has first to do. It is long before he need be con-
cerned with a god or a supernatural being who is a pure
abstraction: he first gains acquaintance with those simpler
divine ones of primitive days who are gods of the sunshine
and the storm, of the earth glad in its greenery or stripped
bare by wintry decay, of the countless laughing waves of
the sea, of the wind which bloweth where it listeth.
Before abandoning this discussion over the definition
1 The Cyclops is not, as some mythologists loosely say, a personification
of the storm ; for ' the storm ' as so used is an abstraction, whereas the
thing personified in 'this and the other cases is some actual phenomenon
of nature. Therefore each one of the Cyclops must be thought of first of
all as the stormy sky. Afterwards they become separated into different
parts of the phenomenon of the storm: one is the roll (fyrfvTqs), another
is the flash ((rrepdTnjj), a third the bright whiteness of sheet lightning
apy.
2 x'V a 'P a > a sne g a t i s derived from xeijua, winter (also storm),
being a winterling, i.e. yearling.
8 There is some dispute over the real nature of the Erinys. In another
chapter I have sought to reconcile the opinions of Kuhn and Max Miiller
on Sarawyu (Ch. III.) See also below, p. 28
22 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
of belief, it may be as well to compare it with those other
definitions of religion which we noted jnst now. It does
not, it must be confessed, quite square itself with these ;
certainly not quite with those two sharply contrasted ones,
Mr. Herbert Spencer's and Mr. Matthew Arnold's. Mr.
Herbert Spencer's definition in full is this :
4 Leaving out the accompanying moral code, which is
in all cases a supplementary growth, a religious creed
is definable as an a priori theory of the universe. The
surrounding facts being given, some form of agency is
alleged which, in the opinion of those alleging it, accounts
for these facts. . . . However widely different speculators
may disagree in the solution which they give of the same
problem, yet by implication they all agree there is a
problem to be solved. Here, then, is an element which all
creeds have in common. Religions diametrically opposed
in their overt dogmas are yet perfectly at one in their
conviction that the existence of the world with all it con-
tains and all that surrounds it is a mystery ever pressing
for interpretation. On this point, if on no other, there is
entire unanimity.'
How stands our instinct of belief in relation "to that
something which is made up of a conviction that the
world with all it contains and all that surrounds it is a
mystery ever pressing for interpretation ? Evidently the
mystery which hangs around their origin and extent is a
great element in the fear with which most parts of nature
are regarded by primitive man ; and fear is, I suppose, of
all the inward feelings which man acquires consciousness
of, the most primitive. The history of words bears witness
to this fact. Other metaphysical words, such as right,
courage, show how, at a comparatively late time, the
abstract notions have worked their way out of physical
sensations. But the only physical root connected with
fear is the visible effect of it, trembling and failing of the
limbs. We are justified in arguing from the evidences
of language that neither sense of right nor courage were
VHE
UNIVERSIT
MR. SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 23
Imitive elements in human experience, but that fear
s so. No doubt, then, but that this mighty affection
the mind, which in time softened down into awe and
worship, has been among the earliest and chiefest of the
emotions which have contributed to the shaping of belief.
The sense of the unknown concerning the origin of things
is necessarily a concurrent cause of the fear which they
inspire. The sense of the unknown must, therefore, be a
great feature in all primitive creeds.
By these considerations we seem to be led towards Mr.
Spencer's conclusions, but we are not brought to them.
For it is not the sense of the unknown as an instinct or
an emotion which in fact, according to this writer, has
contibuted to the -formation of creeds. According to him
it is not the mere feeling of mystery which is paramount
in belief, but the desire to explain away that mystery.
For him religion is before all else a Theory of the Universe.
Now such an assertion cannot pass unchallenged, unless
religion be a thing having no foundation in Belief.
Belief comes into existence when man is not reasonable
enough to have a theory about anything, while he is still
mainly a feeling animal, possessing only some adumbra-
tions or instincts of thought. It is not possible that, for
man in such a condition, either his belief or his religion
could be the kind of theorising which Mr. Spencer sup-
poses it. Out of Mr. Spencer's definition of religion
proceeds directly his theory of the origin of religion. All
worship began, he says, in the worship of ancestors. The
ghosts of dead men were the first objects of religious
belief. It is no doubt natural that, starting with the
definition which he gives, the philosopher should have
been led to the conclusion which he has arrived at con-
cerning the origin of religion. We can understand pretty
well that if man had before all things else desired a theory
of the universe, a theory of the origin of the sunshine
and the rain, had he been scientifically minded and given
to reasoning from the analogy of outward experience, he
24 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
might have been led to think that these phenomena were
caused by human agents. His natural conclusion, pro-
ceeding on such grounds, would be that other beings like
mankind were at work up there in the heaven and among
the clouds. Man is the only agent detected in the process
of acting and intending : reasonable analogy would suggest
that man, though invisible, was the author of other acts
even when remote from our earthly sphere. This is just
what Mr. Herbert Spencer thinks the primitive savage did
believe. The men who sent the rain and sunshine were
only different from the men on earth in the fact that their
sphere was different; their power, perhaps, was more
extended. This different sphere and wider power were
reached through the portal of death. .All agents in the
world not human, or at least not mortal, were the dead
ancestors of the tribe. Hence the worship of ancestors
is, according to our author, the origin of all religion.
All this is consistent with Mr. Spencer's definition of
religion ; but it is not, I venture to think, consistent with
the facts. Such might well have been the form of primi-
tive belief, had man started with his theory of the universe,
and tried to reason of the origin of all things from the
knowledge he possessed. But man is not so reasonable
a being at the outset, and this truth the history of
language shows us well. Man's instincts far outweigh his
reasonings, and religion is the child of instinct, not of
logic. It is, I venture to think, because Mr. Spencer has
neglected the teaching of comparative philology upon this
point that he has been led to the conclusions he has
reached. The abstract words which express a power of
reasoning are among the last which attain their place in a
language ; the intermediate ones are those which tell of
the instinctive recognition of an abstract side to physical
sensation. Man's first belief and worship were things
very different from a ' theory of the universe ; ' and these
bein so much more instinctive than reasonable, it fell out
that at first the physical parts of nature were worshipped
MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD'S DEFINITION. 25
mtially for themselves. It was at the first the very
essence of the divine thing that it was not human. We
shall see in the early history of belief how necessary is
this condition of the non-humanity of the nature gods. 1
Nor, again, could Mr. Matthew Arnold's definition of
religion be made to serve us for a definition of belief.
That was, it will be remembered, that religion was
f morality touched by emotion.' Such a definition is very
far from holding good for the instinct which we are con-
sidering. For a long time belief has so little to say
to morality, that throughout the chapters of this volume
we shall scarcely ever have to contemplate religion in its
distinctly moral aspect. When a belief has become
anthropomorphic, and the nature god has changed into a
divinity like unto man in character, then the laws of being
which apply to human actions become his laws also. The
gods, then, should grow, and do for the .most part, into
ideals of human nature, and the worship of them becomes,
in effect, a worship of goodness. This, however, only
takes place after a great lapse of time. God, when the
word was first used, was not synonymous with good. The
1 Nothing but Mr. Herbert Spencer's great name, and the value of his
researches in other fields (and perhaps some unsuspected influence of the
otl'ntin anti-theologiinim), could have ma'ie his theory of the origin of
religion, and his arguments in support of his theory, so eagerly accepted
as they have been by a large number of intelligent students and thinkers.
It is natural for many persons to like even to be 'damned with Tully.'
But, in truth, Mr. Spencer's researches in other fields do not give him the
weight of a special authority in this one. There is but one key to psycho-
logy of this kind, and that is philology ; and to this the philosopher has
never turned any special attention. Physiology, and even ethnology, are
guides far less safe than the undesigned testimony given by the history of
words. Accordingly, as he is really treading in a sphere which is unfamiliar,
Mr. Spencer's footsteps are here far less firm than in other places. Mr.
Spencer, upon any other subject, would hardly use the ' totem theory' in
the way he does to support his views. The totem is the name of the dead
ancestor who is supposed to have become the ruler of any special part of
nature. Mr. Spencer accounts for the apparent fact that men do actually
worship the cloud and sea and sky by supposing that some ancestor had
received as a totem the name of ' cloud ' or ' sea ' or sky.' Surely by such
a wide method of supposing ' anything may be made of anything,' to use
a happy phrase of Mr. Matthew Arnold. (See Sociology, p. 385 sqq.)
26 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
idea of the divinity has ever responded to the instinct of
worship, and that worship was given first of all to things
which impressed the senses. While the things of nature were
still the gods, the in oral law could scarcely apply to them.
Whatever Butler may argue to the contrary, there is no
direct moral lesson in nature's works. She brings to
death, she brings to life ; and that is all we see in her. The
essence of primitive belief lies in the same outward world
and in its changes ; not in any likeness to humanity, but in
their very difference from it, lie the wonder and the charm
of these external things. I will not say that there is no
hidden teaching in this kind of nature worship. It is true
enough that all things which excite the wonder or the
awe of man, whatever quickens his perception of inward
and spiritual things, all that awakens his thought and
imagination, are his masters. When fear shall in time
have changed into awe, and wonder into worship, then
man will have passed beyond the region of Nature to a
spiritual nature, and what is great outwardly will have
given place to what is great in virtue. But such a con-
summation is not at the beginning.
We may, indeed, to a certain extent, conciliate Mr.
Arnold's definition of religion in this way. We may agree
to consider as religious only those beliefs in which the
moral element 1ms become clearly established. Professor
de Gubernatis intends some such distinction when, in his
lectures on the Yedic mythology, 1 he separates what he
calls the mythologic and the religious periods of the Yedic
creed. The first period is that in which the divinities
worshipped were strictly nature gods, the second stage
begins when the god is something more than a mere visible
appearance. He may still be worshipped in phenomena ;
but he is separated from them in the thought of his
votaries, and can be contemplated as one apart, living in
and by himself. The visible world, the heavens, or the
cloud, or the sunshine, is - deemed only his dwelling-place
1 Letture sopra la Mitologia Vedica, pp. 28, 29.
MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION. 27
or his enfolding garment. And because the god has now
become an abstraction, and can be worshipped as such,
Professor de Gubernatis calls this condition of a creed its
religious phase: the earlier phase he calls the mytho-
logical one. A distinction like this is without doubt
somewhat in accordance with Mr. Matthew Arnold's defi-
nition of religion ; but it does not really go hand in hand
with it. For still the chief feeling in the mind, either
during the first stage of belief or the second, is not
morality ' touched by emotion,' or otherwise ; still the
mainspring is the instinct, and morality, when it enters,
comes in by the way.
"We may have occasion hereafter sometimes to make
use of that distinction which Professor de Gubernatis has
drawn between the mythological and the religious phases
of belief; meaning by the first the period during which
the gods are essentially material things with a nature
remote from human nature, and by the second the period
during which they are essentially idealised beings with
natures more or less in conformity with ours. But in
giving these names I never mean it to be thought that
either religion is totally excluded from the earlier (the
mythic) age, or myth excluded from the religious age.
There is always mythology alongside of the more religious
kind of worship, and religion growing up beside mytho-
logy. Only at first there is a preponderance of myth-
making, and later on a preponderance of the religious
feeling. While the gods are purely of nature's belongings
it is easy to see that it will be a time for the growth of
stories concerning them. The myths are, be it ever
remembered, the creatures of real belief, not of mere
fancy, as Sidney would have them be. The conception of
the Cyclops was founded on what men had seen ; and the
myth of the Cyclops could only grow in natural wise, so
long as men really believed that the stormy sky was a
being and the sun his eye. When the Cyclops had be-
come a mere one-eyed giant, then all new tales told of
28 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
him would be but inventions, and would deserve a much
lower place in the history of belief. When the gods have
become like men, and have lost all memory of the pheno-
mena out of which they sprang, they have laid aside the
individuality of their characters ; henceforward they will
tend more and more towards uniformity of nature ; and
this uniform nature will more and more adapt itself to a
godlike ideal. Thus the influence of moral ideas will
become paramount while the influence of the experience
of outward nature fades away.
Of the growth of morality in belief, and of the way in
which it may develope along with the contemplation of mere
external phenomena, we have an excellent example in one
among those mythic beings which Sidney enumerates.
All the three the Cyclops, the Chimsera, the Furies are
fearful creations ; but the first two draw all their terror
directly from the things which they personify ; they are
fearful because the storm itself is fearful. No natural
dread surrounds Erinys, who is the Dawn ; l her terrible-
ness arises solely from a moral character which the Dawn,
is led to take upon her. She is the detector of crimes ; at
first in the merely passive way in which we say that all
crimes will some day come to light, afterwards in a more
active sense. In time the Erinyes become altogether
moral beings, and purely abstract ones, ' the honoured
ancient deities, supporters of the throne of Justice, dear
to Zeus,' whom .ZEschylus knows. Yet all this moral cha-
racter springs out of their natural character. They become
the detectors of crimes solely because the daylight must
be a detector of crimes.
These three examples are fairly typical of the whole
range of beings who play the mythic dramas of a people.
Though all must have had a beginning in outward nature,
1 This is Max Mullet's explanation of the origin of the Erinyes (Chips,
ii. 153) ; and it seems to me a valid one, despite the criticisms of Welcker
(Griech. Gotterl. iii. p. 75, &c.) and the different origin found for Sararayu
by Kuhn (Zeitscli. fiir verg. Sp. i. 439). Gubernatis makes some suggestions
which tend to reconcile these discrepancies (Mitel. Ved. p. 156).
EARLY PHASES OF BELIEF. 29
some (as the Greek furies do) will have strayed far, others
less far from it. Some will keep the whole nature which
belongs to outward things, some will half clothe them-
selves with a human personality. But never in early
times shall we have a god unlinked to external phenomena.
Wherefore if we read of some primitive race retiring to wor-
ship in its rocky fastnesses or woody solitudes, as Tacitus
says the Germans retired to their forest haunts and wor-
shipped an Unseen Presence there, we must not think of
them going to meditate upon the riches and goodness, nor
yet upon the power and wonder, of God. The presence
made known to them may be an unseen, it is certainly not
an unfelt one ; it is in the breath of the wind or in the mur-
muring of the stream ; it is in the storm or in the whirl-
wind, but it is not yet in the voice of the heart. The
sensations of this external nature stir man's imagination,
they raise his awe; and this stirring of the inner senses
constitutes his worship. And let those doubt that religion
may have had such beginnings who have never listened
to the voices which arise from the solitudes of nature;
those who have never known the brightness of sunny fields
and streams, the sad solemnity of forests, and the majesty
of mountains or of the sea.
2. Early Phases of Belief.
Thus much to show the mere existence and the essential
character of this faculty of Belief. We have now to say
something concerning the phases of it. Here the history of
language will still be our guide. What we have at present
learned of the parallel histories of religion and of language
is this : That, as at first all words expressed only the
ideas of definite material objects, but many of these words
which had once a purely material significance came in
time to have a purely moral or metaphysical significance,
so throughout all the natural world, though men at first
gained from it only ideas of outward sensation, these in
time changed, and metaphysical and moral ideas came to
30 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
take their place. In the case of words the change from
the physical to the metaphysical use was not, we may be
sure, made at a bound. Stretched did not suddenly come
to mean right, nor heap to mean truth.
Now one stage in that slow process of change we can
certainly detect. The first step was 'made when the name
for an individual thing had expanded its meaning to take
in a class of things. When words, from being individual,
or what we now call proper names, had grown to be generic
terms, they had already become half abstractions, for they
had become names for aggregates of qualities and not for
individual things. I took just now stretched as the example
of a word in its most material form ; but in reality a. word
was in its most material form only so long as it was not
an adjective, but expressed some single object. If we could
imagine for a moment the word straight or stretched as the
name, not of any string, but of some particular string,
then we should have a word in its most primitive possible
condition. The next stage would be when the same word
was used to express a class of objects in this case all
strings which had been stretched. The stage which would
immediately follow would be that the word should come
to be an adjective (an attribute), and no longer an indi-
vidual name. We have every reason to suppose that the
process of the human thought, exemplified by the history
of words, is traceable equally well in the development of
belief; whence it would follow that belief too has passed
from individual objects to groups of things, and thence
has fastened upon some attribute, still physical, but no
longer apprehensible by all the senses, which belonged to
the whole class. In a word, religion began with fetichism,
with the worship, we will suppose, of an individual tree ;
it passed on to the worship of many trees, of the grove of
trees, and it soon proceeded thence to a worship of some
invisible belonging of the grove. This might be the sacred
silence which seems to reign in the wood, or the storm
which rushes through it, or any of the dim, mysterious
MEANING OF 'FETICH.' 31
forest sounds. From the visible and tangible things of
earth religion looked farther away to the heavenly bodies,
or to the sky itself. And then at last it emerged from the
nature-worshipping stage, and the voice of God, which
was heard once in the whirlwind, was now heard only
in the still small voice within.
With the last phase of all we shall in these chapters
have nothing to do ; nothing directly, at all events. It
scarcely needs to be said that no one of the three phases
of belief which I have described is to be found in its purity
among any of the peoples whose religious career we are
going to study. Each phase is found mingled with some
other. All the Indo-European races have arrived at some
point in the third condition of development ; that is to say,
all have achieved some idea of an abstract god, who is
separate from phenomena. Bat few or none of them have
completely left behind any of the other two conditions of
belief. Wherefore it lies in our hands which phase we
choose to study. The strata of belief are like the geolo-
gical strata; primitive ones may be discovered sometimes
quite near the surface ; the nature of the former are no
more to be told by measuring their distance from us in
time than that of the latter by any measurement from the
surface of the earth. It is the character and not the
actual time of the formation which allows us to call it
primitive; and both the first two phases of belief, both
pure fetichism and that which, to distinguish it from
fetichism, we may call nature worship, both, wherever they
are encountered, may fairly be called phases of primitive
belief.
The same kind of difficulty over the meaning of a word
which has obscured discussion upon the nature of religion
itself has been stirred up, in a minor degree, about the
word fetich ; and here with less excuse, for this word
carries with it no strength of old association. It was never
during the days of its early use applied with scientific ex-
32 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
actness, and it was first employed at a time when the study
of belief had, in any effective way, hardly begun. If,
therefore, we were to wrest the word, a little from its first
application, in order to make it serve us in a scientific
sense, there would be no great harm.
Mr. Max Miiller has, with many strong arguments,
called in question the very general assumption system a-
tised somewhat in the hands of Comte that fetichism lies
at the root of all religion. His arguments have certainly
been sufficient to make us reconsider our use of the word
fetichism, and in future to define it more exactly ; but I
do not think they have really shaken the position which
Comte has taken up on this point. It is one thing to show
that the great positive philosopher has not used f fetichism'
in its etymological significance, or even that he has not
always attached to the term the same meaning, and that
others who followed him have been yet more vague in the
use of the word ; it is another thing to show that there
has been no primitive belief clinging to the worship of
visible external things.
Fetich (feitiqo) was, it is known, the general name by
which the Portuguese sailors in African seas called the
charms and talismans they wore their beads, or crosses,
or images in lead or wood. Seeing that the native
Africans likewise had their cherished amulets (their gri-
gris), deemed by them sacred and magically powerful, the
Portuguese called these by the same name of fetich.
Then, in 1760, came De Brosses, with his book on ' Les
Dieux fetiches,' proposing this condition of belief as an
initial state of religion. His term as well as his views
were adopted, and fetichism assumed a fixed place in the
history of religion.
Neither ihefeitigo of the Portuguese mariner, nor any
Christian amulet or relic, is distinctive of a primitive phase
of belief; and if it were a in ere. question of etymology this
would be enough to show that 'fetichism' did not cor-
rectly describe the phase of belief which we do intend to
FETICHISM AND MAGIC. 33
designate by that word. The power which is possessed by
the little image of a saint or of the Virgin, by a bit of the
true Cross, or any other fiiti$o, is not inherent in the wood
or metal itself, but has been given it from elsewhere. The
sailor does not imagine that the thing he carries is the
actual author of the gale or the calm. However ignorant
the Christian may be, and however superstitious may be
his attitude before the image of his saint, he never adores
that as a thing existing of itself ; he must have a notion
of something else standing, as it were, behind it, and, in
one way or another, giving it the power to act. The real
test of his belief lies, not in what he thinks about the
fetich, but in his conception of this Something behind.
It is superstitious, no doubt, to believe that an image
may move, may sigh and groan, but it is not primitive
fetichism ; for the very sighing and groaning are noted
as miraculous, and that they are so thought shows a know-
ledge that the thing is after all but dead matter. There
would be nothing wonderful in the movement of an image
possessed of vitality, and yet the belief in the possibility
of such a vital image would savour far more of the earliest
phases of thought. Even the Italian peasant woman who
beats her idol does not so, I imagine, with the intention
of hurting it, but with the dim belief that she can, through
it, hurt some other being who seems to have played her
false. The life of this being is, in some way, bound up
with his likeness, but the saint and the image are not one.
In the same spirit of superstition did persons, in the
Middle Ages, make likenesses in wax of some enemy, say
incantations over it, pierce it with pins, set it to melt
before the fire, in the firm conviction that they were
wreaking their vengeance upon him when far away. All
this is, if you will, the grossest superstition ; it implies a
very low conception of the supernal powers ; but ft is
not an example of fetichism in its really primitive form.
That many persons, Comte included, have spoken of this
kind of superstition as belonging to the earliest phase of
D
34 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
belief lias greatly tended to confuse men's ideas of what
fetichism is to be taken to mean, and has led others justly
to question as Professor Max Miiller has done whether
fetichism is so primitive as it is said to be.
Others again have confounded fetichism with magic,
and so have come to speak of all religion as founded upon
magic rites. This too I conceive to be an error. No
belief can go so far as to think that everything possesses
magical power; this would be the very bull of credulity,
comparable to that extreme doctrine, of (Irish) republican-
ism, that one man is as good as another and better too.
But if all things are not alike magical, whence arises the
superiority of one thing over another in this respect ? Does
the magic power rest with the thing itself? If this is so,
what distinguishes magic from a rude form of natural
science? It maybe a mistake to imagine, for example,
that a piece of salt or a lion's tail can cure a fever, but
the mistake is scarcely in itself a superstition. And why
should the piece of salt be chosen as the repository of this
strange power, and not rather a piece from the bark of a
tree of the Cinchona tribe which really possesses it ? Is
it not evident that the superstition of magic arises from
the belief that their potencies are arbitrarily implanted in
certain selected objects ? And the very word c arbitrarily '
implies the recognition of a power outside the object.
Without such a tacit belief in a power behind the phe-
nomenon magic would be nothing else than a rude experi-
mental science. The modern and more cultured magician
pronounces his charm over the thing he designs to use ; he
never imagines that the magical qualities are inherent in
the thing, but always that they come through the agency
of the incantation that is to say, from a supernal being,
be he but the Devil. The unscientific character of his
belief lies just in this : that he looks for the attributes of
a substance elsewhere than in the substance itself. If
fetichism were a superstition of this kind, we should have
to look beyond the fetich-worshipper's views concerning
FETICHISX AND MAGIC. 35
the material things to his views about the power which
sent the magic. Only when we had discovered these, could
we tell what place the savage had attained in the stages
of religious development.
To sum up in one example the whole difference between
early fetichism and late superstition : The Portuguese
sailor prays to his fetich to save him from shipwreck, be-
cause he believes that he is somehow thus influencing nn
Unseen Being who has power over the winds and over
the waves. The African, too, has a notion of such an Un-
seen Being when he prays to his cjri-yri to save him from
the storm. Had he no such notion he would pray to the
winds and waves themselves not to drown him.
De Brosses* fetiches are of the late or magical kind.
Anything, according to this writer, may be a fetich a lion's
tail, a piece of salt, a stone, a plant, or an animal. And
yet, as we have shown, everything cannot be a fetich. The
worship paid to the lion's tail, to the piece of salt, to the
flower, or what not, implies, though it does not outwardly
express, a belief in something beyond the visible things.
Therefore it would be very unsafe to assert that the African
gives us an example of the earliest conditions of religious
growth. Nevertheless that primitive fetichism has existed
we cannot doubt.
If the facts which we gathered from the history of
words, and arrayed in the first part of this chapter, go for
anything, there must have been a time when man was in-
capable of conceiving supernal forces, such as are required
for the magical kind of fetichism ; for his whole thoughts
were centred in the actual. Now it must be that many of
the qualities which objects of the material world were in
primitive times thought to possess had been reflected back
upon them from the feelings which those objects stirred in
the beholder. -We saw a while ago how this was continu-
ally the case. The high thing was endowed with moral
qualities, because looking upward aroused some moral
thoughts. In a general way all material things share in a
D 2
36 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
certain vitality, which is shed upon them by the subject ; 1
in a more particular sense certain objects are selected for
worship on account of the special emotions which they
excite. All worship of the fetich must have arisen out
of that subtle connection between things and thoughts of
which we have already said so much ; a thing which was
great and high was on that account alone admirable, calling
out from man a faint fore-note of the moral sense. The
very fact that there was as yet nothing but material nature,
and no thought or emotion recognisable in itsfclf alone,
tended to surround all the world of sense with a thin
atmosphere of thought and emotion ; an instinct of belief
attached itself to these outward things. The seeds of
future poetry and ethic were being carried on the wings
of sensation, but had not yet settled and taken root.
It is to signify this condition of thought that we can
alone fairly use the word ' fetichism/ if we intend it to
express an early stage of belief. This fetichism, which is
really primitive, owns no thought beyond the material
object. Here the fetich was not the means of concentrating
the mind upon an internal idea of God; because man, in
the days when religion first began, had no idea of God at
all. God is a notion of the most abstract character, and
our race, we well know, did not start upon its career fur-
nished with a stock of abstract ideas. Man did not say
to himself, 'That mountain or that river shall symbolise
my idea of God ; ' still less did he say, ' These things are
the abode of God; ' he only made the objects themselves
into gods by worshipping them.
Although in this condition of thought nothing was
wholly divine, and yet everything was in a fashion divine
for a voice spoke to man out of each object of sense it
not the less necessarily followed that worship, to any ob-
servable extent, could only attach itself to certain con-
spicuous objects, which should in time develope into what
1 It is this capacity of reflecting vitality on immaterial things which
Mr. Tylor calls animism. Primitive Culture, passim.
FROM FETICHISM TO NATURE WORSHIP. 37
we may fairly call gods. It is not in the case of this kind
of fetichisrn as it is in the case of the magical fetichism,
where any object, however insignificant, may be the re-
ceptacle of potency from without. Here the worship must
be proportionate to the impressiveness of the thing ; we
may even say that it must be proportionate to the great-
ness or the height of the thing. In. truth, it would seem
that the great fetich gods of the early world were three,
and three only the tree, the mountain, and the river. 1
Lesser fetiches took their holiness from the greater the
stone from the mountain, the branch or the block of wood
from the tree. But such lesser fetiches were not wor-
shipped in the prime of fetichism. They are in almost
every case where they are to be met with the survivals
from an earlier belief.
Names, we know, from being individual become generic.
The first word for river must have indicated some par-
ticular stream ; later on it came to imply all those quali-
ties which rivers have in common, and with the benefit of
a wider scope for language man lost a certain distinctness
and picturesqueness in it. The word tree, when for us it
meant only the single tree outside a nursery window, was
in a fashion far more expressive than it has since been.
While the generalising process of language goes on, it
leads to a gradual detachment of their attributes from the
individual things, and the formation of these attributes or
adjectives into a class of ideas by themselves. The mind
learns to separate the brightness and the swiftness of flow-
ing water from any one example of these qualities, and
the result is that we get the conception of the attributes
brightness and swiftness by themselves. The same change
took place in belief. The holiness which once belonged
to a single object was distributed over the aggregate of
existences of the same kind, and the idea ' holiness ' was
1 The sea, as will be presently more fully explained, is by primitive man
reckoned in the class of rivers.
38 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
thus abstracted in a certain degree from the particular
holy thing in a certain degree, but not entirely. The
tree, for example, became less personally sacred than sur-
rounded by an atmosphere of sacredness ; and this sanctity
now belonged, not to one tree, but to the whole grove of
trees. The general idea in this way replaced the indi-
vidual one ; and in the course of time the sense of holiness
was transferred to other belongings of the grove far less
tangible and real than the trees. As I have suggested
above, the sacred silence, the murmuring of streams, the
rushing of the wind, may constitute the next hierarchy of
gods.
The stage of belief, when no worship was bestowed upon
pure ideals that is to say, upon qualities we may call the
second stage in the development of belief. It is a phase
which was far from having been quite abandoned even in
the historical ages of most among the Indo-European folk,
and which has, in consequence, more often come under
the notice of casual observers than has fetichism. We
often enough come across traces of the worship of trees
in the creeds of Aryan races ; but we still more frequently
hear the grove spoken of as having preceded the temple.
( Trees,' says Pliny, ' were the first temples. Even at
this day the simple rustic, of ancient custom, dedicates his
noblest tree to God. And the statues of gold and ivory
are not more honoured than the sacred silence which reigns
about the grove.' 1 It was the same sacred silence of the
grove which, according to Tacitus, the Germans wor-
shipped in their forest fastnesses. Aristophanes, in a
revolt against the image worship and the superstition of
his day, proposes half seriously to revert to such earlier
customs as that of worship in the grove ; he calls upon the
Athenians to leave their closed shrines and to sacrifice in
the open air, and in place of the temple, with its golden
doors, to dedicate the olive tree to new gods. 2
Such a state of feeling as this was, when it arose, a
1 H. N. xii. 2. 2 Aveg.
NATUEE WORSHIP. 39
decided advance upon the gross conceptions of fetichism.
Then, on every side, the more material things were loosen-
ing their hold upon men's imagination and falling from
their former place, and worship was transferred to things
either more abstract or more remote from common expe-
rience, things which were wide, far-reaching, or heavenly.
Instead of the tree, the mountain, and the river, man
chose for his gods the earth, the storm, the sky, the sun,
the sea. 1 Men were well upon the road towards a personal
divinity that is to say, to the deification of qualities or
attributes. The idea of personality (and by personality I
mean all which constitutes the inner being, the I), the idea
of personality apart from matter must have been growing
more distinct when men could attribute personality to such
an abstract phenomenon as the sky.
It is of the existence of this second stage in the
development of belief that Comparative Philology fur-
nishes us with such decisive proofs and such interesting
examples. And as it is chiefly with beliefs in this stage
that the chapters of this volume are concerned, and as the
nature of the general testimony to the existence of this
special phase of belief which is afforded by language can
so easily be shown, it will be well if we turn aside an
instant from an historical enquiry in order to glance at
the method of Comparative Philology when dealing with
questions such as these.
We know, of course, nothing directly of our Aryan
ancestors themselves, but we know the various tongues
which have descended from their primitive speech the
Sanskrit, the Zend, the Greek, the Latin, the Teutonic,
1 It is, of course, obvious that the phenomena here enumerated do not
all show an equal remoteness from fetichism, nor an abstraction of the
same sort. The earth, taken as a whole, is a general notion of a very wide
kind ; but, as it is actually considered in mythology, it is perhaps the
nearest to a fetich god of all the five phenomena given above. It always
tends to coincide with some particular bit of the earth, some individual
mountain or valley. The sea begins by being a mere river fetich, but when
men have learnt something of its boundless extent it becomes distinctly an
abstract idea.
40 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEP
the Celtic, the Slavonian and which all stand in a rela-
tionship more or less intimate with it. By examining the
relationship which exists between words of the same
meaning in different Indo-European languages, we draw
one most valuable conclusion touching the life of these
ancient Aryas. If the names of anything in the children
languages all appear to have sprung from one root, we
argue that the thing was known to the Aryan progenitors,
and by them endowed with a name which is the parent
of the names which have come down to us. If the Aryas
had not known the thing, they could not have given it a
name ; and conversely, if they have not given it a name
they could not have known the thing. Once more : if the
name existed among the Aryas it will be found again
(somewhat changed, no doubt) among their children ;
conversely, if the same word does not pervade the
children languages it has not pre-existed in the parent
one. These are the general principles on which we build
up the sum of our knowledge of prehistoric times. When,
for example, we find such a word as the Sanskrit go (cow)
corresponding by proper laws of change ! to names for the
same animal in Greek, Latin, Persian, German, &c., we
argue that the ancient Aryas were acquainted with horned
cattle. The words in the offshoot languages point back
to a word not unlike them, in the parent tongue ; and as
the word has continued to denominate the same thing to
the children, it must have denominated the thing (viz.
horned cattle) to the parents.
Further than this, if we want to get the nearest ap-
proximation to the lost Aryan word 2 we turn first to the
Sanskrit to give it us ; because we both know historically
that Sanskrit is the oldest among the brother languages
and likewise find, upon examination, that Sanskrit can
1 Skr. go (gaus), Zend gao, Gr. ftovs, Lat. bos, Germ, kuh, Eng. cow,
Irish bo, Slavonic gov-iado (ox).
2 It has been already said that proto-Aryan is a better word to express
the lost speech of our ancestors than Aryan, though, for the sake of short-
ness and simplicity, the latter will be for the future employed.
DYlUS, THE SKY GOD. 41
generally show us how a word acquired its meaning, when
the other tongues are silent upon this matter. Our word
daughter is a good instance in point. It corresponds to
the Sanskrit duhitar, the Persian dochtar, the Greek
Bvydrrjp, 1 &c. ; and so we come to the same conclusion
about daughter which we arrived at concerning horned
cattle, namely, that the old Aryas had a word from which
ours is a descendant. But, in this instance, we have a
clear proof thai, among the various forms which have
come down to us, that preserved in the Sanskrit is the
oldest, because in that only can we see how the word was
formed. We connect duhitar with a verb dtih, to milk,
and recognise the origin of our ' daughter ; to have been
* the milker J the milkmaid of the family.
Now let us apply the same method of research to
mythology. We find a Zeus, chief god among the Greeks,
a Jupiter 2 among the Romans; we have a Zio (Tiv or
Tyr), an important divinity with the Teutons, and a
Dyaus with the old Indians. All these words are from
the same root; and as we reasoned in the case of go,
so must we reason now namely, that the root of these
words was the name of an Aryan divinity. As, moreover,
this name is the most widespread of all *the mythical
names in the Indo-European family, we are justified in
assuming that the lost parent-word betokened a chief, if
not the chief, Aryan god. We might call him Dyaus,
because Dyaus, we conjecture, most nearly replaces the
lost name. But more than this. As was the case with
duhitar among all the words for daughter, so Dyaus,
among all similar names, is the only one whose origin
can be accounted for. Dyaus means sky. 3 No doubt
1 F-->r Svxdr-rjp, by change of aspirates.
2 From Uyii us-pi tar, father Dyaus, gen. Jovis, dat. Jovi (Aiovffi
Mommsen, Unterital. Dial., p. 191).
3 The bright ski/ especially, as it is connected with the word dir, to
shine. Most philologists, yielding to their too common habit of treating
the abstraction or generalisation (adjective or verb) as the parent of all
the concrete words of the sarne class, have spoken of Dyuus (Dyo) as derived
OF THK
UNIVERSITY
42 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
therefore but that the lost proto-Dyaus was also the sky.
Nay, if any further proof of this were needed, Zeus and
Jupiter, though their names no longer recalled the heavens, 1
nevertheless largely did recall the sky in their natures.
And how could this have been unless the god from whom
they sprang had possessed the properties and the powers of
a sky god in a more eminent degree than they? In
truth, the old Aryan god was the sky. Whenever the
Aryan used the name of this his divinity, the -sky must at
the same time have been present in his thoughts, and in
the most literal sense he worshipped that portion of nature
as a god. Doubtless the old Aryas worshipped other
phenomena likewise ; but these too they adored under
their physical names and not as separate entities.
When we have not the direct help of etymology, as in
the case of Dyaus, to determine the original nature of a
divine being, we have the help scarcely less valuable if
rightly used of comparative mythology, In the various
pantheons which spring from one parent creed we find
the same gods recurring in slightly different guises ; and
here and there they betray the substance on which their
being is grounded.
It is not' difficult to see that the clothing of these
things with human form is the last stage of the three
initial ones in the history of belief, and that anthropo-
morphism, when it has once arisen, can never degenerate
into nature worship. If Zeus or Odhinri is once conceived
clearly as an unseen being, as some one sitting apart in
Olympus or in Asgard, there is little danger that lie will
come to be confounded with the visible storm. He may
be the storm-sender, but he cannot be the actual pheno-
menon which he rules. Yet even such gods as Zeus and
Odhinn drop here and there a token to show that they
from the root div, to shine. It would be quite as reasonable to speak of
die derived from dyb. Probably, however, neither comes directly from the
other, both from a lost parent- word which may also have meant sky.
1 Or only occasionally, as in the phrase ' sub Jove.'
NATURE WORSHIP THE CAUSE OF HENOTHEISM. 43
were once not unseen beings, but visible things, bound
within the limits which included their special phenomena.
The indication in this or the other instance may be slight ;
it accumulates, as we find a hundred examples ; and when,
following the creed back to its more primitive forms, or
comparing it with some kindred system which is less
advanced, we see the god, whose personality at one time
seemed so clear, fading gradually away till he dissolves in
air, or cloud, jor rain, or sunshine, the inference with respect
to the total genesis of belief grows so exacting that we
cannot choose but receive it.
If it be true and who will deny it ? that no idea can
be clearly grasped unless there be a word to express it, we
must confess that the Aryas, in the condition in which we
now suppose them, were still without a god. The word
which expressed the thing they worshipped meant also the
sky, or it meant the wind, or the sea, or the earth. When
they saw these things they worshipped ; when the pheno-
mena were absent they were forgotten. For the memories
of savages are short ; their emotions are very transitory,
and are almost always under the immediate influence of
outward sensations. Even in later times, when the god
is a personality and has a name of his own, so long as he
is associated with phenomena, he will suffer the same
kind of alternate reverence and neglect. Gubernatis
notices concerning Indra, the . storm god, that in some of
the Vedic hymns he is only reverenced when he is active ;
when he is inactive he is scarcely thought of. 1
As one by one the phenomena pass in review each one
while it is present seems to be the god, and is worshipped
with all the ardour of which the suppliant is capa,ble.
When we read the votary's prayers to any part of nature,
we might fancy he worshipped no other part. But this is
not the case. The explanation of this seeming changeable-
ness from god to god lies in the shortness of the savage's
memory and the difficulty which he finds in realising any-
1 Letture sopra, la Mittologia Vcdica, p. 28.
44 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
tiling but his present sensation. The sun is at one moment
his only god ; but it sinks to rest, and now he prays to the
heaven, studded with its thousand stars. Again these are
overclouded, and from the clouds issues the blinding flash
or the awful roll of thunder ; and then the pure sky is for-
gotten and he prays to the lightning and the storm. A
stage of belief such as this, when each divinity seems for
the time to stand by himself and to be prayed to alone, has
been called by Mr. Max Miiller henotheism. 1 "The cause of
henotheism, then, lies in the worship of actual physical
phenomena. The same nature origin of the gods affords
a satisfactory explanation of polytheism ; and polytheism
is a state of belief not so easily accounted for as some
suppose.
The belief in one god is a thing not difficult to under-
stand ; for whether it be true or false it is a belief
of which we have a hundred examples around us. The
god-idea is a distinct creation of the human mind : it is a
conception in itself. The very essence of this conception
is the difference between god and man. But to what
instinct does the belief in many gods respond? The
difference between god and god cannot be an observed
difference, as that between tree and tree or between man
and man. The general terms tree and man express an
aggregate of qualities found to be common to a great
number of different objects, as these objects come within
the range of our experience. But god is not a general
term of this class. The god-idea does not include any-
thing which is a part of outward experience. If there were
a great many different gods, our knowledge of them would
not be of an external, experimental kind. Our abstract
word c god' would not have been obtained by means of a
generalisation of the qualities which the polloi theo'i had
in common, in the same way that 'tree' is a generalisa-
1 ' If we must have a general name for the earliest form of religion
among the Vedic Indians, it can be neither monotlielsm nor polytheism, but
only henothffigm.' Hibbert Lectures, p. 260.
NATURE WORSHIP THE CAUSE OF POLYTHEISM. 45
tion of the qualities of many trees. On the contrary, the
many gods would owe their common name to the fact that
they shared in some inward quality which we had pre-
viously determined was essential to divinity. But to what
in this case would the polloi theoi owe the difference of
their natures ? Why should Zeus be unlike Hermes, and
why Apollo different from both? The explanation once
universally given, and even now thought c generally suffi-
cient,' is that the characters of the gods are the result of
mere invention, and in fact, the children of fancy. But
such a notion is, as we have before agreed, inconsistent
with the seriousness of true belief. It was the explanation
which Sidney gave of the birth of the Chimsera and of
the Furies ; and if the explanation was insufficient for
the beings which people the outer circles of mythology,
far less sufficient is it for those who occupy the central
place in a creed.
When, however, we realise that the gods were once
confounded with natural phenomena, all difficulty in
accounting for their characters is taken away. Apollo is
not like Hermes, because the sun is not like the wind.
Just so long as the natures of both are connected with out-
ward nature will their characters remain apart, and yet
the belief in both remain real. When they become alto-
gether abstract conceptions, either the two will merge in
one or one of them will lose his divine character. He will
then become a subject for fancy and for the invention of
poets ; he will no longer be an object of worship.
This nature- worshipping stage of belief, then, is, so
long as it remains pure, the stage of the most pure and
unmixed polytheism. So long, and only so long, as the
name of the god and the name of the element, the portion
of nature, are one; so long as the being is thus identified
with earth, or sky, or sea ; and so long as no being is wor-
shipped under a name which has ceased to be the expres-
sion of an outward thing the polytheistic belief remains ;
for while this state continues it is impossible that the
46 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
deity of one element can have control over the god of
another, seeing that each is, of necessity, confined to his
own province.
Evidently the nature-worshipping stage of belief is a
change and an advance upon fetichism. The more the
deity is raised above the level of common things, the more
great and high does he become; and becoming thus
greater, the more does he tend to absorb into himself the
thoughts of the worshipper. He approaches so much the
nearer to an abstract god.
The third and last stage in early religious development
is the anthropomorphic stage, which links nature worship
on to monotheism. We have seen how, while the nature
worship remaine'd, the creed was purely polytheistic ; how,
as the sea could have no control over the sky, nor the sky
over the earth, the gods who represented these things
must remain apart. But in time the change does come.
Then Zeus and Zio no more recall to those who use their
sacred names the overspreading heaven ; all they suggest
is the idea of beings having, in some way, the character
of the sky, in an obscure and mystic way not obvious to
the sense of the worshipper. Zeus and Zio have grown
into proper names, designations of persons and not of
things ; and the gods stand out as clear and as thinkable,
in virtue of this name, as any absent friend may be. The
Aryans have made an immense step forward when they
have arrived at this point.
Through the natural changes which time works in
every mythic system may be traced this process of finding
a name for that aggregation of ideas which is gradually
settling into what we understand by the word god. With
the Greeks and Romans Dyaus remained the chief god,
because in his changed names, Zeus and Jupiter, he no
longer represented the sky ; in India, on the contrary,
because Dyaus did recall some natural appearance he
ceased to be the chief divinity, and his place was supplied
ZEUS AND THEOS. 47
>y Indra, for Indra's name has not a direct physical
meaning. 1
Had the Indians and the Greeks continued always in
the same spiritual condition -the name of their highest
god might indeed have changed such changes are in the
nature of mythology but no change would have been
effective to abstract their thoughts from the phenomena
of sense. The alterations would have been in a direction
the very opposite to that which they actually took. Dyaus
would have remained the chief god of the Indians, and
another old Aryan god, Varuna (in the form Ouranos),
would have become the chief god of the Greeks ; because
Dyaus and Ouranos, in Sanskrit and Greek, still stood for
the sky.
Suppose Dyaus, then, to have become a proper name.
We have not yet seen how it grows to be a generic
one. This last consummation cannot be far off. When a
phenomenon, a thing, is changed into a person, and bap-
tised with an appellation of its own, the tendency will
arise to call other phenomena of nature by the same
name. We shall have a sea Zeus, an earth Zeus, while
men will mean thereby only what we understand by the
words sea god, earth god. We do see survivals of such
a method of nomenclature in the pantheons of Greece and
Rome in such a name, for example, as Zeus Chthonios,
which is really synonymous with Hades, and designates a
different personage from the Zeus Olympios ; in the Zeno-
poseidon, of whom weThave some traces, 2 and in the use by
the Latins of the word Junones as a synonym for god-
desses. An example of the same kind is the association
of Indra's name with almost all the other gods of the
Veda e.g. Indragni, Indrasomo, Indravayu, Indravaruno.
These must mean merely God Agni, God Soma, &c. But
of course the essential part of the process had been com-
1 For the suggested etymologies of the word Indra see Ch. III. v
2 Athenseus, ii. 42. Cf. also the Zei/s MyXctxrios of Paros and Corcyra ;
Boeckh, Cm-pus In. Gr. ii. 1870, 2418 ; and Maury, Rel. de la Grece, i. 63.
48 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
pleted before any one of the Aryan creeds had emerged
into the light. Yet as Dyaus, Zeus, Jupiter, 6sos, deus^
Sanskrit deva, Persian div l (dens), are all from the same
root, we can scarcely doubt that as the personal names
Zeus and Jupiter were derived from the sky god, so were
likewise the abstract or general terms Osos, deus, ' god.'
It is just as if at first the Aryas said 6 sky, sky ' to the
object of their adoration ; then changing the word a
little, they called their god Skoi, and, lastly, invented a
third abstract word, skey, for a god. I assume that Skoi
was invented before skey, Zeus before ilieos, because this
seems the most conformable to the natural process of
thought. It must be said, however, that comparative
philology gives us no information upon this point. The
mere absence of any certain indication tells us this much
only, that the one change came treading close upon the
heels of the othp.r.
With the growth of the personal god sprang up the
distinctly ethic parts of the creed those moral laws
which, us Mr. Spencer says, are subsequent to the be-
ginninq- of worship. There is little moral teaching in
the works of nature : the thunder and the lightning are
not bound by the laws which bind us ; the wind bloweth
where it listeth ; and it is wasted breath to cavil at the
doings of these things. The character, therefore, of the
early gods is discovered by observing what they are, not
by considering what they should be.
I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own.
But when the god has clothed himself in human guise he
ha,s taken therewith the responsibilities of human nature ;
he must, in the end, conform to one code of right and
wrong. It will be long, no doubt, before -he does this.
1 The fact that the Persian div means devil is a matter of no conse-
quence here. The change of meaning, in fact, came chiefly accidentally.
That at least is Darmesteter's view (Avesta, Introd.) Others attribute it
to the reforming spirit of Zoroastrianism.
STRATA OF BELIEF. 49
Zens cannot, if he wonld, shake off his former nature.
His shameless amours were innocent when he was, in very
fact, the heaven which impregnates all nature by its fer-
tilising rains. All the race of men are sons of heaven and
earth, so all are born of Zeus. Earth has many names,
being not uniform, but different in different places; so
Zeus has many wives.
No religion which we shall encounter among the Aryan
folk has stopped short before it reached this third stage,
that of practical monotheism. Each one, that is to say,
has got its general name for god. But phases of belief are
not to be measured by the mere lapse of time, no more than
geological strata are to be measured by their distance
from the centre of the earth. Some primitive formation
may lie quite near the surface, side by side with another
formation which is of yesterday. Wherefore along with
quite modern notions on religious matters we may trace
the forms of primitive belief. It is in our own hand which
parts of the science we choose to make our study.
We shall find examples sufficient of all the early phases
of religious growth in the creeds of the Aryan peoples ;
and, what is better, we may study these phases not as
petrified remains, but in a continual process of growth
and change. Just as in Highland or in Irish cottages,
among the fishermen's huts of Brittany, or in the Russian
mir, or among the peasants of Greece, we may listen to
stories whose prototypes were told long centuries agone
upon the banks of the Oxus and the Jaxartes by the remote
fore-elders of our race, so among the same people of to-
day we shall detect the signs of a creed which the more
enlightened among those far-off Aryas were already be-
ginning to leave behind. The countryman who conies to
his well-dressing, or dances round his may-pole, pays
ancestral vows to the power of tree and stream. He
cherishes his piece of wood or scrap of linen as zealously
as the African his gri-gri, though he may call the one a
piece of the true Cross and the other a fragment of the
E
50 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
linen napkin ; he worships his misshapen images and his
Black Virgin in the same spirit whereby the ancient Greek
held sacred his Black Demeter, his Ephesian Artemis, and
thought them more worthy of honour than the finest ex-
amples of Greek art. Such an one as he is our best friend
when we want to tread in the ways of a past belief. As
we see in his mind the alternations between superstition
and something higher than superstition, so we believe that
in him the race renews its ancient conflict, its struggles
and questionings, before the slow advance of thought ; and
if his better instincts gain the day, then the victory of all
humanity is won once more.
There is one other point which we must touch upon in
enumerating the motive causes of belief touch upon, but
110 more. All beliefs have had their origin in sensation,
but those sensations have been most efficient which have
called forth most of the inward response, which have given
rise to the strongest emotion. Emotion, in truth, is so
much at the root of all worship that a kind of emotional
worship (or ritual) seems often to precede any definite form
of creed. Men worship they know not what. The current
of human thought and feeling does not run smoothly<|
men are subject to moments of ecstasy when, without
knowing why, they obey an influence from outside them
which they cannot gauge. Tennent, in his description of
that degraded race of Ceylon the Veddahs, 1 after telling
us that they have no knowledge of a god nor of a future
state, no idols nor temples, yet goes on to give an account
of a ceremony practised among them which, in the proper
1 Tennent's Ceylon, ii. 437. The Veddahs, when Tennent saw them,
were divided into three different classes, the rock Veddahs, the village
Veddahs, and the coast Veddahs, of whom the first onjy p r esented something
like an image of primitive life. They, as the name implies, lived in caves
or beneath trees, never in houses. I do not know whether they were really
so primitive a race as he supposes whether, I mean, their culture may not
have declined. This is always the point difficult to decide about savage
races.
INFLUENCE OF THE PASSIONS. 51
sense of the word, we may call religious. It was a wild
dance executed by one who professed to drive out disease,
and who must have thought by this performance to gain
some supernatural power or a kind of inspiration. ' The
dance, 5 says Sir E. Tennent, ( is executed in front of an
offering of something eatable placed on a tripod on sticks.
The dancer has his head and girdle decorated with green
leaves. At first he shuffles with his feet to a plaintive
air, but by degrees he works himself into a state of great
excitement and action, accompanied by moans and screams,
and during this paroxysm he professes to be inspired with
instruction for the curing of the patient.' The description
of the Veddah dance might be transcribed for that of any
Oriental darweesh or fakeer; it would not be much mis-
placed if it were applied to the orgies of the Bacchantes
or the worshippers of the Phrygian Mother Goddess.
When the belief in any dogmatic creed that is, in any
theory of the world and of God and man seems to be
breaking up, men return as if by natural instinct to these
wild forms of worship, which are earlier than any dogma.
So in Greece the rites of Eleusis, and the mystic worship
of Isis in Rome, outlived the genuine belief in the Greek
and Roman divinities; and when men felt the creed of
mediaeval Christendom trembling beneath their feet, they
too broke out into like orgies of emotion. Such were those
which swept over Europe in the fourteenth century, the
processions of penitents, of flagellants, and the strange
Dance of Death.
All this shows how much worship is an affair of in-
stinct. Certain excitements are more especially allied to
strong emotion ; and foremost among all these we must
place the incitement of love and wine ; wherefore we need
not be surprised if these indulgences play a great part in
every primitive creed. Indeed, as ecstasies are earlier
than pantheons though not, I suppose, earlier than any
sense of supernatural existence it might seem as if
Phallic and Bacchic worship were more essential than any
K 2
52 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
other part of the early religion. What are degrading uses
for a people at all advanced in culture are not so for the
lowest of mankind ; and, were the subject suitable for dis-
cussion here, it would be easy to show that these indul-
gences, as they are the main authors of a formulated
worship, and so one may say of religion, are likewise great
instigators to the growth of morality. '\sp6s^ holy, is from
a root which means to agitate; and if Eros be, as some
say, the same with Hermes, he is a god of agitation, of
rapid motion, as well as of love. The saying of a Papuan
Islander (quoted by Mr. Spencer) suggests the origin of
the worship of the vine. When spoken to concerning
God he replied, * Then this god is certainly your arrack,
for I never feel so happy as when I have had my fill of
that. 5
Wherefore all through the history of belief we shall
find one or both of these two gods the god of love or
th.e god of wine possessing a mighty power. For one
class of people and for one climate the one indulgence, for
other sorts the other. Aphrodite for the southern Greeks
and the Greeks of the islands, and for the Asiatic people of
warm Semitic blood. Dionysus for Thrace and the shep-
herds of the north, and chiefly too for the Aryan Indian l
.and Persian. 2 Wine for the German, 3 love for the Celt. 4
' For beauty and amorousness, the sons of Gaedhil.'
This part of the history of religion needs only to be
hinted at here. It is not a subject suitable for a popular
treatise. Moreover, it has little direct bearing upon the
subjects of the following chapters, which are not, as a rule,
concerned with creeds in their emotional aspect.
1 The place which is occupied in the Vedic ritual by the intoxicating
plant soma is a sufficient proof of this.
2 Herod, i. 134.
3 See Tacitus, Germ. 22. The custom of deliberating when drunk,
common to Persians and Germans, arose no doubt from a belief in the in-
spiration of the vine.
4 Cf . Diodorus Sic. v. ; Strabo, iv. ; Athen. xiii. 8.
U JN IVJ^JA^i-JL :
ARYAN FETICH WORSHIP. 53
CHAPTER II.
THE EAELY GROWTH OP BELIEF.
HAVING now dealt with and done with (for the rest of the
present volume) a preliminary psychological investigation
into the nature of belief, we may turn all argument and
discussion being for the future laid aside to the actual
phases of it selected for study ; that is to say, to an
enquiry which is of a strictly historical kind. In the last
chapter we saw that human thought in this matter of
belief might be considered as passing through three
important stages. The first is the fetich- worshipping
stage, when man's thoughts are concentrated purely upon
visible concrete substances. The second we called the
nature-worshipping stage. In it the objects of belief are
still external and sensible, but they are also, in a certain
degree, generalised, and are not often tangible. The
third is the anthropomorphic or ethical stage, when the
divinity is conceived as a being like .mankind, and the
ethical qualities of that being have to be taken fully
into account. This third condition of belief lies quite
beyond the sphere of the present enquiry.
The first condition that of fetichism might likewise
be thought outside* our studies, seeing that none of the
Indo-European creeds, of which we have any cognisance,
are found in that primitive condition. But yet we know,
not by theory only but by a hundred proofs, that our fore-
fathers have been in the fetich-worshipping phase ; and,
therefore, the traces of fetich worship among the Indo-
European races cannot be altogether left out of account.
The proofs of that pre-existing state are still visible, and
54 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
it is not to be supposed that the later forms of Aryan
creeds have been uninfluenced bj these foregone expe-
periences. We have, therefore, in this chapter to note
some of the traces of fetichism in the Aryan creeds ; and,
having glanced at these, to mark, where we can, the pro-
cesses by which that fetich worship developed into the
worship of nature in her less material shapes.
I need not revive the discussion raised in the last
chapter over the various uses of the word fetichism, nor
repeat the distinction which was there drawn between that
fetichism which is a distinct phase of belief and fetichism
which is thaumaturgic merely, and which may coexist
with widely different creeds. Fetichism which is really
primitive chooses for worship only the greater and more
imposing objects of sight and sense. The gods of the
early world are the rock and the mountain, the tree, the
river, the sea. 1 Lesser fetiches get their sacredness from
the greater a stone from the mountain ; a stump, or
block, or stick, from the tree.
Tennent, we noticed, after assuring us that the
Veddahs had no religion, no knowledge of a god or of a
future state, yet went on to describe the dance of the
medicine man, which, was certainly of a ritualistic cha-
racter. The charmer seemed to invoke some kind of
inspiration in order to drive out disease. During the per-
formance of his dance he was girt, we were told, with
branches about the head and loins. This is almost the only
part of the ritual observance which is given in detail. Is
it too much to assume that these leaves and branches were
fragments from the Veddah's fetich tree, and that the
medicine man deemed that they helped him to gain his
inspiration ? The use of these fragments was, in that case,
certainly thaumaturgic ; but it points directly to a belief
which lay behind.
1 In fact, the sea, as was said in the first chapter, is at first thought of
only as a mighty river. Wherefore we get, as the three great fetichisms of
the world, tree, river, and mountain worship.
TREE GODS. 55
As the home of man must first be found in the caves,
or beneath the shelter of a mountain, or under the branches
of a tree, I can imagine the tree and mountain fetiches to
have been the most primitive of all.
In the last chapter I said that the original man might
be credited with any goodliness of outward form, but that
his intelligence must be supposed the most limited con-
ceivable. In reality we know that man's body is stunted
and deformed when his mind and spirit are so ; and that
we must think of our earliest ancestors as being not very
far (at least) removed from the brutes, herding together
in woods and caves, gleaning a precarious subsistence
from roots and berries and wild fruits, and what of game
they could kill with their rude weapons ; in constant dread
of the fiercer beasts of the forest, and always at war with
them ; never stirring far from the common home, ignora.nt
of all things beyond that narrow bound, fearful always,
and, through fear, credulous especially concerning things
remote. When man became first conscious of himself he
knew himself a social being. Marriage was not, but there
was a tribal life ; and we can picture this first small em-
bryo of future commonwealths forming itself under a
tree. Its branches are the resting-place at night; and,
when the members of the tribe have separated during the
day in search of food, the tree is the rendezvous for their
evening return. Their first approach toward house-
building is to pull down some branches as a screen against
wind and rain ; these they fasten into the earth, wattling
other dead branches through them, and a kind of .hut is
made. 1
Certain it is that, among people who live in woody
lands, we find long continuing the habit of using a tree
trunk for the main pillar of the house, of building cir-
cular walls round that tree, and sloping the roof down
1 The picture with which M. Violet-le-Duc begins his Habitations of
Men in all Ages, though fanciful, is surely not pure imagination. Some
such beginning of the tree house must have occurred.
56 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
to them from it. Of such kind was the house of our
northern ancestors. Those who have read the saga of
Volsung will remember how, when that king was enter-
taining the Goths in his palace, came in the god Odhinn,
likened to an old man, and how he left sticking in the
branstock, the tree which supported the roof of the palace,
the famous sword Gram, so fruitful a source of sorrow in
after years. In the elder Edda, Brynhild hails Sigurd
with the title 'brynpings apaldr,' literally apple tree of
war, 1 using the term as synonymous with pillar of war a
chance phrase which shows how universal was the use of
trees in the way I have described. Nor was that use con-
fined to the German races, though it was most conspicuous
among them. There must certainly be an allusion to the
same habit of building grown old-fashioned and mis-
understood in Homer's day in that description of the
wonderful chamber and bed of Odysseus, whose secret he
and Penelope only knew. We remember how, when the
hero had come to his house, and his wife still hesitated to
recognise him, he bade her try him by questions, and
Penelope spoke concerning a certain room and a certain
bed in the well-wrought chamber which Od} r sseus him-
self had made. Then the hero said, ' No living mortal
among men, strong in youth though he were, could well
remove it, for a wonder bides in that well-made bed.
There was a thick-leaved olive tree in the court, vigorous,
flourishing. It was thick as the pillar of a house. And
round this I built a chamber, finishing it with close-
fitting stones, and roofing it above. . . . And I made
smooth the trunk with brass, right well and masterly, and
planed it with a plane, working it into a bed-post. And
from this I made a bed, polishing it all brightly with gold
and ivory. . . .' 2 This is the description of a tree-built
1 Sigrdrifiimdl, 5. It does not take away from the significance of this
phrase that apple trees were new things to the Norsemen when the above
Eddaic song was written.
2 Od. xxiii. 187 sqq.
THE WORLD TREE. 57
house. But in this case the ancient forms of building had
become overlaid with other uses : the tree trunk no longer
stood simple and bare ; it was hidden in brass, and polished
smooth like a pillar.
All this is mere prosaic fact ; but soon we pass on to
the region of belief and mythology. The -Norseman on
the image of his own house fashioned his picture of the
entire world. The earth, with the heaven for a roof, was,
to him, but a mighty chamber, and likewise had its great
supporting tree, passing through the midst and branching
far upward among the clouds. This was the mythical ash
called Yggdrasill, Odhinn's ash. ' It is of all trees the
greatest and the best. Its branches spread over all this
world of ours and over heaven. Three roots sustain it, and
wide apart they stand ; for one is among the ^Esir (the
gods), and another among the Hrimthursar (frost giants),
where once lay the chasm of chasms ; the third is above
Nifl-hel (Mist-hell).' So speaks the younger Edda; 1 and
the elder in still more beautiful language, but to the same
effect :
I know an ash standing Yggdrasill bight,
A lofty tree laved with limpid water ;
Thence come the dews into the dales that fall ;
Green stands it ever over Fate's fountain. 2
Deep down are the roots of Yggdrasill in gloomy
Nifl-hel, the Northern Tartarus ; and yet from under
these roots wells up the fountain of life. In obedience, no
doubt, to the same original belief in an earth-supporting
tree do we read in classical mythology of the mystical oak
($7770$) of Dodona, which had its roots in Tartarus, 3 while
1 Edda Snorra, D. 15. Pn the worship of trees by the Scandinavians
see the passage quoted from Adam of Bremen in Ch. VII. And compare
with that (for other heathen people) what is said in Zonoras, Annal. 3 ;
Leon Isaur. 82.
2 Voluspa, 19. On the Teutonic earth tree see Kuhn, Herabk. des
Fevers, 118-137 ; Windischmann, Zor. St. 165-177 ; Mannhardt, Germ. Myth.
641-671 ; and Kuhn's Zcitschr.f. verg. Sp. xv. 93 sqq.
8 Schol. ad Virg. Georg. ii. 291.
58 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
at the roots of this same tree there was likewise a magic
fountain, which by its murmurings gave forth the
oracles of Zeus. Yggdrasill stood ever green over Fate's
fountain ; this oak of Dodona never changed nor shed its
leaves.
In such cases as these, because the people have
advanced far from primitive thought, mythology and
experience, the real and the ideal, are kept separate.
But to savage men it may well seem that the tree which
is his home does touch the sky and hold it up. The
Maoris have a tale how that the earth and sky were once
so closely embracing that the children whom they had
begotten found no room to live ; how those took counsel
together by what means they might separate their two
parents, and how the first tree Tanemahuta, 1 the father
of trees accomplished this feat by pressing continually
upwards, until with great pain he had rent apart the sky
and earth. An idea like this is the origin of the mythical
earth tree.
It has often been noted how man, alone among all the
animals, has the power of gazing upward to heaven, while
the rest of moving things have their faces bent ever
towards the earth. This faculty like our sense of
morality, our sense of God came to us not all at once,
but gradually through lapse of time. Savages are said
scarcely ever to raise their eyes, and their heads are
naturally inclined with a downward gaze, so that it must
be an effort for them to look at the sky and the heavenly
bodies. Primeval man lived upon roots and berries, or 011
the lesser animals and the vermin which he gathered from
the soil, and so habit as well as nature kept his eyes
fixed upon the ground. We need not therefore wonder if,
in their half-glances upward, our forefathers had not
leisure to observe that the tree-top was not really close
against the sky, and that what childish ignorance still
1 Sir George Grey, Polynesian Myth. pp. 1-4.
SACRED BIRDS. 59
fancies ! was more certainly believed by them. They may
well have deemed that the upper branches hid them-
selves in infinitely remote ethereal regions. If it be true
that ' high ' is the word most expressive of moral perfec-
tion, we are not at liberty to doubt that with such upward
gazes as primitive man could take there went a dim sense
of elevation of mind and character, high instincts which
his mortal nature could only half understand.
Man abode on the ground, beneath the tree-shade, or
in the tree's lower branches ; the denizens of the upper
regions were the birds. These last must therefore, very
early in the history of belief, have seemed wonderfully
sacred and wise. Before man had advanced far enough
to worship the heaven itself or the heavenly bodies, while
he was still bound to a narrow phase of belief, birds
became expressive to his mind of height, and of intimacy
with those far-off branches of the tree or with that
unsearched mountain summit which were then his
heaven. Later on, when the gods had become celestial,
and, leaving the earth, had gone to dwell in the heaven
itself, the birds still were seen flying thither. The
worship of birds as divine existences, therefore, belongs
of right to men of the prime, before statues were carved
or shrines were built. * No need to raise for them temples
of stone nor doorways witli golden doors ; for they in
fruit trees and dark oak shall dwell, and in the olive tree
receive our vows.' 2
When the birds ceased to be divinities they remained
still the best diviners, for they, it was thought, shared
most intimately in the counsels of the gods, and were the
1 I remember, I remember
The fir trees dark and high:
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky.
It was a childish ignorance ;
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm further off from heaven
Than, when I was a boy. HOOD.
Aristoph. Aves, 615, &c.
60 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
most trustworthy of omens. Each of the greater gods
among the Greeks had his own special bird, which he sent
on missions of a prophetic nature. From Zeus came aii
eagle, from Apollo a hawk, and from Athene a crane ; l
Aphrodite had her doves. It was, with the Greeks, the
very acme of profanity to. fright away the denizens of a
sacred enclosure. 2 With the Germans and the Celts
divination from birds was as common as with the Greeks
and Eomans. Odhinii (or Wuotan) had his two hawks or
ravens whirling round his throne; and every morning
they flew ' earth's fields over ' 3 to watch the ways of men.
We also know that among the Norsemen it was the
greatest gift of prophecy to understand the language of
birds though a man might sometimes wish he had not
known it ; for they told of the future, its evil as well as
its good. In one of the Yolsung lays of the elder Edda
there is a beautiful passage which tells how Sigurd, when
he had eaten Fafnir's heart, had his ears opened in this
wise, and heard the eagles above telling one another of
his own deeds, and what would be his end. 4
The 4 wise women ' of many different systems of mytho-
logy seem to possess in common the gift of being able to
change themselves into birds. Perhaps the more im-
mediate prototypes of the angels of mediaeval Christianity
were the maidens of Odhinn, 5 at once amazons and
prophetesses, who were called Valkyriur (Walachuriun).
They were likewise called swan maidens, because they took
sometimes the form of swans. In the Bible the Spirit of
God Himself, when it becomes visible to man, appears in
the shape of a dove.
The worship of birds is of all forms of animal worship
the most exalted and spiritual, because it has to do with
1 Homer, passim, esp. 11. x. 274 ; xii. 200.
2 Herod, i. 159. Grimnismal, 20.
4 Fafnismal, 31 to end.
5 I do not mean their prototypes in art, but in popular belief, at any
rate in northern Europe. Concerning these Valkyriur, see Chs. VII.
and X.
PROPHETIC POWEK OF FETICH. 61
regions remotest from common earth. This is why the
holy birds linger long in late forms of belief, and survive
generally as the symbol of those gods-and goddesses whose
proper dwelling-place is the heaven. A bird, for instance,
would come appropriately from Zeus, or Athene, or Apollo,
the sky, the air, the sun, or from Odhinn, the storm wind,
but less appropriately from Demeter, the earth goddess,
or from Poseidon, the god of the waves. And I suppose
that when we encounter the figures of winged beasts in
ivligious art, as we do so conspicuously in the religious
art of Assyria, we .are to take it that the gods whom the
beasts symbolise have been raised from earth to heaven.
These mythic beings combine the majesty of the beast
chosen the courage of the lion, say, or the strength of the
bull, or the swiftness of the horse with the spirituality
and special sacredness of birds. Such winged creatures
are not unknown to Greek art. 1 They have made their
way into the religion of the Hebrews, and thence into
Christian belief; the cherubim, it seems, were the same
as the Assyrian and Phoenician griffin. 2
Seeing that birds have attributed to them a gift of
prophecy, partly in virtue of the antiquity of their worship,
it is natural that all fetiches should be themselves oracular.
Prophecy belongs to the region of magic, and magic rites
are almost always a survival from some old form of belief,
1 E.g. Pegasus. The griffin, too, is tolerably common in some Greek art.
Both come through Asiatic influences. Cf. Layard, Nineveh, ii. 461, for
Pegasus, and for the griffin next note.
- I mean etymologically the same, as well as the same in their original
representation. Kuenen supposes that the cherubim who stood upon the
ark of the tabernacle had the shape of griffins (Rel. of I&rael, i. p. 280).
The cherubim are, he says, embodiments of the clouds ; they are, therefore,
essentially the same as the Yalkyriur of the North, who, I say, foreran the
Christian angels in the popular belief of northern Europe. It may be well
to add that the double eagle which in Christian art was designed to repre-
sent the double greatness of the Holy Koman Empire (spiritual and material
rule combined in one, or perhaps only the united Empires of East and
West) is likewise drawn from Eastern iconography. Texier, Aide Mineure ;
also A. de Longperier, Revue Arch. O. S. vol. ii. p. 76. The monument
bearing representations of this and other fabulous winged creatures was
appropriately discovered on the site of the ancient Pteria.
62 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
the meaning of which, has been forgotten, and the use in
consequence distorted. The earlier gods, which were near,
and visible, and tangible, and a part of nature, became a
natural means of communication between man and the
later gods, who were supernatural and unseen. Wherefore
the power of divining remained with the tree itself, and
with the mountain and the river. The oracles of Zeus
were conveyed by the whispering leaves of the oaks of
Dodona; and the laurel of Apollo at Delphi is another
instance of an oracular tree. We should not be far wrong
in supposing that the fabulous ash, Yggdrasill, was magical
in this way. We know, at any rate, that the wise women
of the North, the Norns, lived hard by one of the roots of
this tree of life. The divining rod has inherited its qualities
from the divining tree.
The prophetic powers of mountains resided generally
in their caves. The wise women, or witches, of heathen and
mediaeval legend had their homes always either in a wood
or in a cave. 1 Among the Romans we know how a voice
from a cave used to bring the prophecy of the sybil. 2 It
was in a cave or cleft between two steep rocks that the
Pythoness received her divine inspiration.
Finally, more than either tree or mountain, waters
have been great in gifts after this kind. Rivers, foun-
tains, and wells have, in all ages, been accounted sacred
and prophetic. From our wishmg-wells back to the foun-
tain of Urd, from which the Nornir watered the roots of
Yggdrasill, or to Mini's well (if this be not the same), whither
Odhinn went to buy wisdom, is one continuous stream of
illustration of this belief, which need not be here set forth
in full. That the notion was as familiar to the Greeks,
the fountain of Parnassus, by which Apollo's priestess
stood, the poetic inspiration (jj,avrsla) of prophet and poet
from Parnassus and Helicon, may serve to remind us.
It is no strained imagination, but almost a statement
of sober fact, that belief so common among the nations,
1 See Chaps. VII. and X, 2 ^n. vi.
DESCENT FROM TREES. 63
bher that all mankind or that some particular races cf it
were descended from a tree ; for it is certain that tribal
life very often began under one, and such tribal life in all
probability preceded any distinct division of the family ;
it preceded marriage rites or much recognition of chil-
dren by their parents. When at last the tribe began to
distinguish itself from other tribes the consciousness of
O
the ego, as in all cases, arising out of contact with the
non-ego its members had to assume a common parentage.
From whom 9 From whom more likely than from the
great fetich of the race, so much longer-lived than man
(nay, perhaps immortal ; for who could remember when it
had not been there ?), so kind, so protecting ; surpassing us
in size and strength, even as a god surpasses mortals ?
That man was born of a god has always seemed a natural
way of accounting for his existence; and in primitive
times there was no god beside the fetich. Among the
Greeks certain families kept the idea of a tree parentage ;
the Pelopidse, for example, were said to have been descended
from a plane. Among the Persians the Achsemenidao be-
lieved the same concerning their house. Cadmus was
born of Myrrha after she had undergone transformation
into a tree. 1 Even Ares, according to one legend, had a
like descent. Romulus and Remus had been found under
the famous Ficus ruminalis* 'In the legend which we have
received it is in this instance only a case of finding ; but
if we could go back to an earlier tradition, we should pro-
bably see that the relation between the mythical twins
and the tree had been more intimate. The origin of the
Myrmidons was perhaps really of the same kind. Ovid
relates how when JEacus had prayed to Zeus to give him
a new race of men, who might fill the place of a nation
destroyed by pestilence, he fell asleep beneath a tree. As
he slept he thought he saw myriads of ants dropping
1 Ovid, Met. x.
2 According to tradition the twins and their mother were cast into the
Tiber, the former in a cradle, which was stranded beneath a fig tree the
Ficus ruminalis which was held sacred for long ages afterwards
64 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
from the branches or issuing- from the roots ; and these,
when he awoke, had changed into men l The introduction
of the ants is, I suspect, a fanciful later addition. And
yet the myth, as it now stands, not ill expresses the con-
trast between man in the days when he lived beneath the
tree or hung upon its branches, and nourished himself
partly on its fruits a pygmy compared to all the rest of
nature and that later humanity, his descendants, which
counted in its ranks such a race of heroes as Achilles and
his comrades.
In other myth systems, notably in the Norse, the idea
of a descent from the tree has been applied to the whole
human race. According to the Edda, all mankind are
descended from Ask and Embla, the ash and the elm. The
story is that Odhinn and his two brothers were journeying
over the earth, when they found these two stocks ' void
of future,' and breathed into them the power of life.
From out their following Spirit they owned not,
There came three Sense they had not,
Mighty and merciful Blood nor vigour,
^Esir to our home. Nor colour fair.
Tbey fonnd on earth, Spirit gave Odhinn,
Almost lifeless, Thought gave Hoenir,
Ask and Embla, Blood gave Lodr
Fntureless. And colour fair. 2
The following story, too, I find in mediaeval legendary
lore. It seems to spring directly from the myth of the
Yggdrasill tree of life and from the Ask and Embla myth,
though there may be other Oriental sources for it which I
do not know. The Tree of Life, says a trouvere of the
thirteenth century, was, a thousand years after the sin of
the first man, transplanted from the garden of Eden to
the garden of Abraham, and an angel came from heaven
to tell the patriarch that upon this tree should hang the
Redeemer of mankind. But first from the same tree of
life Jesus should be born, and in the following wise. First
1 Met. vii. 683. Voluspa, 17, 18.
TREE OF THE TRIBE. 65
was to be born a knight, Fanouel, 1 who, through the scent
merely of the flower of that living tree, should be
engendered in the womb of a virgin ; and this knight,
again, without knowing woman, should give birth to St.
Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Both these
wonders fell out as they were foretold. A virgin bore
Fanouel by smelling the tree ; and Fanouel, having once
come unawares to that tree of life, and cut a fruit from it,
wiped his knife against his thigh, in which he inflicted a
slight wound and thus let in some of the juice. Presently
his thigh began to swell, and eventually St. Anne was
born therefrom. 2
So from all these instances we see that there was once
a fuller meaning than metaphor in the language which
spoke of the roots and branches of a family ; or in such
expressions as the pathetic, ' Ah, woe, beloved shoot ! ' of
Euripides.
Even when the literal notion of the descent from a
tree had been lost sight of,the close connection between the
prosperity of the tribe and the life of its fetich was often
strictly held. 3 The village tree of the German races was
originally a tribal tree, with whose existence the life of the
village was involved ; and when we read of Christian
saints and confessors that they made a point of cutting
down these half-idols, we cannot wonder at the rage they
called forth, nor that they often paid the penalty of their
courage. 4
Trees of the same kind were the two called the
patrician and the plebeian, which stood before the temple
of Quirinus in Koine, and whereof we are told the folio w-
1 Also called Fanoiaix in the poem. The name of the poem is Notre
Dame Kte. Marie. It is taken from a rhymed Bible of the thirteenth
century.
2 Leroux de Lincy, Lc Livre des Legendes, p. 24.
3 ' Bei den Romern wie jede Kultusstatte, jeder Tempel seinen Gottes-
baum, so hat jeder Staat, jede stadt, jeder Familiensitz, jeder Zweig einer
Familie einen solchen.' K. Boetticher, JJaumhultus dcr Hcllenen u. Itomer,
p. 20.
4 See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, ch. iv.
P
66 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
ing story. The two trees were myrtles (sacred to Venus),
as signifying the amity which existed between the two
orders of society of which the city was composed ; and at
first, we may believe, they grew up side by side, in equal
strength. But when the fathers began to increase their
power at the expense of the plebs, the patrician tree
waxed greater, overgrowing the other, which seemed to
wither beneath its hurtful shade. After the Marsian war,
however, the patrician myrtle grew old, its vigour returned
to the tree of the plebs, and the power of the Senate
diminished from day to day. 1
To that from which all races sprang, to that they may
again return. Wherefore arises that common superstition
that the souls of the dead have gone to inhabit trees.
Empedocles says that there are two destinies for the souls
of highest virtue to pass either into trees or into the
bodies of lions. 2 Philemon and Baucis were rewarded
by the former lot for their charity to Zeus, who came a
poor wanderer to their house. And this story is the more
worthy of remark because it bears no inconsiderable
resemblance to the story of the three Norse gods wander-
ing over the earth and finding Ask and Embla, from whom
they created mankind. 3 Philemon and Baucis lived till
extreme old age, serving in the temple of Jove, and then
at the last, both together, they were transformed into
trees. 4
Frond ere Philemona Baucis,
Baucida conspexit senior frondere Philemon.
'Yaleque,
conjnx ! ' dixere simul, simul abdita texifc
Ora frutex.
The same poem relates how, to the prayer "of penitent
Pliny, H. N. 2 .Elian, ffigt. Anim. xii. 7.
8 The'resemblance between the classical and the Northern myths appears
the closer if we take the Rigsmdl as a connecting link between the history
of Baucis and Philemon and the verse of the Voluspa quoted just now.
* Met. viii. 714.
THE MOUNTAIN GOD. 67
Myrrh a, the gods granted that she should be turned into
a tree. Though she has lost understanding with her
former shape, she still weeps, and the drops which fall
from her bark (i.e. the myrrh) preserve the story of their
, mistress, so that she will be forgotten in no age to come. 1
Her child was Cadmus. How the same myth has been
preserved and repeated in after ages, and has survived in
the greatest poems of the world, needs not to be told here.
No one will have forgotten Dante in hell passing through
that leafless wood, in the bark of every tree of which was
imprisoned the soul of a suicide. Unwittingly, from one
of these trees he plucked a little twig. Then from the
wound thus made (as from green wood burning) came,
with bubbling, steam and blood, and last of all a voice,
which was the voice of Pietro delle Vigne, the minister of
Frederick. Tasso and our Spenser have given us pictures
founded on the same old-world belief.
What has been here sketched out concerning tree
worship will apply, changing what should be changed, to
the worship of mountains.. The mountain is higher than
the tree, more majestic and remote, and in a manner
more abstract. It is of the two the less fitted to be the
parent of a race or tribe ; and we do not, in fact, tind so
often the belief in a descent from mountains as in a
descent from either trees or rivers. Mountain worship is,
in most respects, an advance on tree worship ; for when, to
the growing intelligence of mankind, the tree becomes
relatively small, the high hill is still immeasurable and
has its head buried in the clouds. And from this cause
mountain worship is more often to be seen persisting into
later phase.s of belief, and is less characteristic of the
earlier ones. Zeus may, in times relatively far advanced,
still be worshipped in the actual form of a mountain. 2
Of the oracular character which belongs to the
mountain fetich I have already spoken. Some of the
most venerable and ancient temples among the Greeks
Met. xx. 4, &c. 2 See Ch. IV.
F 2
68 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
were situate in a deep gorge between high rocks, as, for
example, the shrine of Apollo at Tempe and the temple
of Demeter at Eleusis. The gods themselves, when they
were not throned high on the mountain summits, as on
Olympus, often found a dwelling-place in its deep clefts. 1
The river fetich has some special qualities and asso-
ciations which I shall speak of presently. It has others
which it shares with the tree fetich. Among the latter is
its position as a progenitor, and of this belief we have the
most conspicuous examples in Greek mythology. In
truth, worship of the river and mountain fetiches has
found its chief partisans in Greece and in Italy, while the
cult of trees was especially cl*aracteristic of the Teuton
and the Celt. 2 The nations of Northern Europe lived in
regions, as Tacitus describes them, f either rugged with
forest or dank with marsh, 3 but the Greeks in a bright
land not much wooded. Wherefore a difference of creeds
followed this difference of surroundings. In Greek mytho-
logy Oceanus is found to have many of the attributes
which in the Norse mythology belonged to the mythic
world-tree Yggdrasill. It corresponds in many respects to
the world ash, the symbol of life and of time, and to that
other ash (if another it really were) from which the human
race proceeded. For example, Oceanus was the beginning
of all things, the parent alike of gods and of men. He
was the first and the last, the Alpha and Omega of life.
The etymology of the name Oceanus seems to" show that
the very foundation of his nature was as a primeval exist-
ence, a forefather. 4 Oceanus was the parent of all waters,
' Cf. II. i. 495, v. 753 ; Hesiod. Th. 113 (VT^XOS oAtWoio).
2 There are frequent references to river worship in Homer (cf. II.
xi. 726, xx. a council of the gods which rivers attend : ^xi. 130 ; Oil. v.
446), but, so far as I remember, none to the worship of trees. It is very
probable that fountains were much worshipped by the Celts. We find in
the Middle Ages numerous ordinances forbidding this form of paganism.
See Capitularies, i. tit. 64, 789, c. 63, and viii. tit. 326, c. 21. Leges Luit-
prandi, ii. tit. 38, 1. Vita Miff. ii. ]5.
3 < Aut sylvis horrida aut paludibus fceda.' Germ. 5.
4 See Ch. VI. Ogyges.
FETICH ISM AND LOVE OF COUNTEY. 69
the encircler of the world. 1 He included in his circle all
living nature, for beyond this river lay only the land of
darkness and of death. 2 Oceanus, again, was complete in
himself, and so for ever returning upon his own course. 3
Other rivers were the progenitors of special families
Asopus, Inachus. A descent from rivers is not at all
uncommon among Homeric heroes : witness Asteropseus,
whom Achilles slew beside Xanthus ' he was the son of
broad-flowing Axios ' and Menesthios, the son of Sper-
cheios, and others. 4
Fetichism discharged a great duty in that it first
formed the patriotic instincts, by giving to men a notion
of fatherland and an attachment to a particular soil. The
fetich gods could not be moved, and in the worship of
them, in the sense of safety and sacredness which they
spread like an aroma round one spot, there was found just
the force needed to awaken a sense of nationality and of
fellowship among men. The value of a safe, protected'
spot must be great in proportion as all other places are
strange and fearful ; by the fetich worshipper the outer
world is not dreaded only on account of its visible
dangers for the wild beasts who hover round, for the
savage men of a different tribe and an alien creed who
may be near it is likewise ghost-haunted, and may be the
home of evil spirits and unseen unfriendly powers. And
so, moved by this fear, all those who are akin draw near
together. It has often been noticed how the sense of
kinship among nations springs more from a common
faith than from any other tie ; this outweighs the bonds
of blood, of language, and of country. We see examples
enough of this even now, when the orthodox Slav is the
bitterest enemy of the Catholic Slav, when the Shiah
Persian or Afghan is more hateful than any common foe
to his Sunni brother. It was well, therefore, that at first
1 TL. xiv. 246, xxi. 196 ; JEsch. Prom. 636, &c. 2 See Ch. VL
tyoppoos. 11. xviii. 399 ; Od. xx. 65.
* 11. xxi. 141, &c. ; xvi. 173.
70 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
the ties of country and of kinship and of creed should have
been inseparably united.
Greek national life sprang up around some local shrine.
For the guard of the temple and the honour of the god,
towns or villages entered into Amphictyonies associa-
tions of the neighbours to it and these Amphictyonies
in time grew into States. 'Only one form existed in
ancient Greece for the combination of peoples namely, a
common religious worship, which at fixed times assembled
a number round a generally acknowledged sanctuary, and
laid upon all the participators in it the obligation of
certain common principles. Such festivals associations
or Amphictyonies are coeval with Greek history, or may
even be said to constitute the first expression of a common
national history. 5 1 The principle of the Amphictyony was
conceived in the genuine spirit of fetichism ; for, to unen-
lightened minds, the temple itself is a kind of fetich. The
temples of paganism were, as an orator of the latter days
of paganism declared, ' the life and soul of the country ; 2
under their protection the peasant planted and sowed ; to
their guardianship he committed his wife and child.' We
can guess, then, how dear in times far more ancient than
these must have been the river by which a tribe had settled,
the mountain in whose caves they lived, or the tree which
sheltered them.
So much for the characteristics of fetichism in its
prime. A hundred more examples might be given
of the worship of trees and rivers and hills, and of the
traces of such worship in later creeds. But the main
characteristics of the faith would return again and again,
and only grow wearisome by repetition. Nevertheless,
before we quite leave the subject we have to notice one
peculiar form of worship which seems to be connected with
fetichism and more peculiarly with the cult of rivers.
1 Curtius, Hist, of Greece, i. 111.
2 Vvxb, & fiaffi\ev, rots aypols ra tepd. Libanius in a speech to Theodo-
sius on behalf of the ancient temples.
ANIMAL WORSHIP. 71
I do not propose to enter into a discussion concerning
the religious significance of animal worship, taken as a
whole. The origin of it has never yet been satisfactorily
explained, 1 and until it has been made more clear we are
not justified in adopting arbitrary theories concerning it.
Some peoples have furnished themselves with elaborate
reasons for their worship of animals : they have made them
symbolical of moral qualities, or even of some natural phe-
nomena. Sekhet, the bright-eyed cat or lioness goddess
of the Egyptians, was made to stand for the sun, or else
for the moon, because the cat's or lioness' eyes shine at
night ; the eagle, in like manner, symbolised the sun. Ex-
planations like these have always been given by people
who had themselves advanced too far beyond the sphere of
animal worship to understand its meaning. Such notions
may have seemed satisfactory to Egyptian priests in the
days of Herodotus; they cannot possibly seem so to a
student of the history of belief to-day. Failing some
better interpretation, we may assume that, beside that
honour which was paid to superiority in size or strength,
the reason for animal worship lay in some human feature
or quality the majesty of the. lion, the walk of the bear,
the human cry of the cat suggesting thus the doctrine
of the migration of souls. This would reserve for animals
a great amount of reverence, such as that paid to dead
ancestors, though this would still fall short of actual wor-
ship ; and, perhaps, the cult of animals has always been
rather an element in other creeds than a distinct creed
itself.
From other kinds of animal worship, however, the
worship of the serpent stands apart. It is of all forms
probably the widest spread and most deeply rooted ; and
yet its origin is, of all perhaps, the hardest to understand.
Fergusson suggests its great longevity as one reason, its
deadly power both mysterious and deadly as another.
1 For I think, as I have said, the totem theory quite insufficient to
explain it ; or perhaps I should rather say it is too sufficient a way.
72 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
Tlie first, by itself, is certainly not reason enough ; besides,
it would not be easy for man to ascertain this fact without
paying close attention to this reptile, which would be in
itself peculiar. And the objection to the other reason is
that serpent worship as Fergusson admits l is not one
which is strongly marked by fear.
For my own part, I believe in this one instance that
the use of the animal is symbolical, and that in almost
every case the serpent stands for the river. It would, of
course, be impossible, or even if possible unsuitable, to
produce in this place all the reasons which have led me to
such an opinion. But there can be no harm if we turn
aside for a moment to glance at the chief among them.
The river of rivers to the Greeks and Romans was that
great Oceanus of which I spoke just now the earth-
encircling stream which flowed between the world of men
and the kingdom of Hades. 2 The belief in that stream,
as we shall see more clearly in a future chapter, was by no
means confined to the classical ancients, but was shared
in by all the members of the Indo-European family. It
has been already said more than once, and shown, that
the most primitive belief concerning the sea is that it is
only a mighty river ; wherefore it .follows that if in any
system of mythology a sea is found in the place which a
river occupies in some other system, the myth concerning
the sea is later than the myth concerning the stream.
Now in the creed of the Teuton races we find generally
th.it instead of the whole of man's earth being surrounded
by a river like Oceanus, it is girt in ' by a wide and deep
sea.' 'The gods,' says the younger Edda, ' made a vast
sea, and in the midmost thereof fixed the earth.' 3 What,
then, we are tempted to ask, has become of the river?
Have the traces of that earlier myth quite disappeared ?
I believe that that river has been transformed into the
mid-earth serpent ('inrSgarSsormr'), called Jormungandr,
1 Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, beginning.
* Od. xi., &c. 3 Edda Snorra, D. 8.
THE SERPENT JORMUNGANDR. 73
who, in the later form of the mythology which we know,
is described as lying at the bottom of the rnid-gard sea
curled up with his tail in his mouth.
Jormungandr has been generally considered the per-
sonification of the mid-earth sea ; I say he is rather the
personification of the mid-earth river. Now the difference
between a sea and a river is precisely this, that one is
still and the other is continually flowing. But how is a
river to lie all round the earth and yet be for ever flow-
ing, unless it flows into itself? Here was the first diffi-
culty which arose when men tried to reconcile the old and
vague ideas of primitive belief with the exacter know-
ledge of later times. They generally met the difficulty
by making the river flow in upon itself. The Greek
Oceanus was imagined to flow in this returning way ; it
was, as we have seen, dyfroppoos, returning everlastingly in
its own bed. Jormungandr lies, we are told, with his
tail in his mouth, and that tail is continually growing
into his body. This image certainly suggests the idea of a
river flowing in upon itself like Oceanus. 1
In this case, then, we seem to have discovered a river
which is certainly transformed into a serpent. In the
battles between Thorr, the hero god of the North, and this
Jormungandr we seem to see the prototypes of most of
those dragon fights whose relation delighted the ears of
Middle Age Europe, from the fight of Sigurd with Fafnir
to that of our St. George. Here then are a large number
of serpents and dragons whose connection with rivers is
tolerably certain.
Now turn to Greece. The serpent fights of Hellenic
mythology the combats of Apollo with the Python, or of
Heracles with the Lernean hydra, or with the serpent
Ladon, who guarded the apples of the Hesperides show,
even at the first glance, a close resemblance to those
1 I have discussed this origin of Jormurg-andr at greater length in a
paper on the ' Mythology of the Eddas, 1 Trans, of the Roy. Soc. of
Literature, vol. xii.
74 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
of Thorr with Jormungandr. This alone would suggest
that the above-mentioned serpents might have had an
origin similar to the origin of the Norse sea-serpent. We
are not, however, limited to this argument by analogy.
In the case of the Python, at any rate, the close associa-
tion between her and a river can be demonstrated. We
remember that the fight between Apollo and the Python,
as told in the Homeric hymn, springs directly out of the
enmity of the fountain goddess Telphusa to the sun god.
This Telphusa (or Delphusa) was, unquestionably, some
ancient fetich river, whose worship the Dorian cult of
Apollo displaced ; and so the myth describes her contriving
a stratagem to rid herself of her rival. She sent him to
the deep cleft of Parnassus, where the Python, her other
self, dwelt ; when Apollo had slain this monster, he
returned and polluted the fountains of Telphusa. M.
Maury, in his ' Religions de la Grece,' l quotes from Herr
Forchhammer an ocular experience of the death of the
Python beneath the arrows of the sun god. In the great
amphitheatre of Delphi, whose very name was taken from
the concavity of the valley (&s\<j)vs, belly) which was the
site of the town, is poured, during the rainy season, a
rapid torrent which passes between the two rocks formerly
called Nauplia and Hyampeia. During spring the
waters dry up and evaporate, so that in summer the
torrent brings no water to Delphi. The fountains of
Castalia and Cassotis are supplied simply by the subter-
ranean flow of the waters from Mount Parnassus. The
drying up of this torrent, through the heat of the sun
(Apollo), is the death of the great serpent. The writer
goes on to point out how the name of this serpent is first
AsX^w?? that is, full of water (from 8e\(f>vs and vvos for
olvos; in this connection any liquid) and afterwards
Astylwrj, empty-belly (8s\^>vs y Ivdw). Ovid says that this
Python was born from the earth after the deluge of
Deucalion 5 Claudius tells us that he devoured rivers, i.e.
1 i. 134.
THE PYTHON. 75
his tributaries. We must not, of course, consider the
slaying of the Python as a local myth only ; but it was
localised at Delphi and there spoke of a particular
stream.
The dragon fights of Heracles seem to group them-
selves in pairs; he strangles two serpents in his cradle,
and in later life he kills the hydra and the serpent Ladon ;
but we must remember also that he fights with and
conquers two rivers, Peneius and Alpheius.
The two great Vedic serpents are Ahi and Vritra. In
the form which they wear in the hymns they seem to be
symbolical of the clouds rather than of any thing terrestrial.
But, I think, it is quite possible that they were rivers
before they became clouds, and afterwards were trans-
ferred from earth to heaven. Ahi and Vritra are still
designated generally the ' concealers ' or ' containers of
the water.'
I will not go so far as to assert that serpents had
originally no more than this symbolical meaning. I can-
not pretend to account for their primitive worship. Only
I take it for certain that, at a very early time, rivers
became, through symbolism, confounded with serpents ;
that in all the mythologies which we have opportunities
of studying, this identification has gone. so far that the
worship of the two is inextricably involved ; and hence
that the cult of serpents, in any wide extent, is dependent
upon one among the three chief forms of fetichism. We
have already 'disposed of the great original serpents the
Urschlanyen, if I may so call them of Greek and German
mythology : the more we see of the countless tribe of
their descendants, the more we shall be reminded of the
progeny of Ocean us.
A characteristic of the river, noted in it more than in
any other fetich, was that of being the ( oldest inhabitant '
of the country where it flowed : the notion of the river
having been there before man came, and possessing the
land in its own right, was ever upheld. To this notion
76 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
the river owed, in part, its title of king. Just so the
snake was pictured as autochthonous, first dweller-in the
soil, whereby it became the guardian of ancient treasures,
whether these treasures were life-giving fruits, apples of
the Hesperides or of Eden, or, as in the vulgarer and
later German myths, only a great primeval hoard. 1 The
snake is a child of earth, and symbolises the oldest dwellers
011 the soil. When Cyrus was marching upon Sardis,
a wonder was reported to Croesus as he lay in that city.
The town was suddenly seen to be full of snakes, and the
horses on every side were trampling them to death. And
this was taken for a sign that the new comers, the Per-
sians, would overcome the men of Lydia. 2 In Arcadia
rivers were addressed by the title of king (ava%), z perhaps
as progenitors of the race or as first possessors of the
land. The serpent, too, is often styled a king, and wears
a crown ; this still more frequently in German and Celtic
than in Greek tradition. The ' serpent king ' is still one
of the most popular characters of modern folk-lore. 4 In
Germany upon those days which are now become the fes-
tivals of the Church great honours are paid to him. If he
comes and partakes of the cakes or sweetmeats prepared
for him and left upon the hearth, he brings luck to the
house. He is thus a sort of guarantee, of stability, like
the house tree itself. Or we may fancy him some ancestor
of the house, who still watches over it.
The connection between tree and serpent worship is
very close, though not so intimate as some writers would
have us suppose. 5 But, however intimate, it says nothing
1 The term ' heathen hoard ' (' hae'Snum hord ') is used to describe the
buried treasure which Beowulf gained by slaying the fiery serpent (Beowulf,
4546). The meaning, of course, is that the treasure was of immense
antiquity.
2 Herod, i. 77-80.
3 As by Odysseus, Od. v. 445.
4 A. Wuttke, Deutsche Vollisabcrglau'be^ pp. 50-5.
5 Mr. Fergusson has, I think, given a quite false impression by treating
of Tree and Serpent Worship as if the two were always associated in belief,
He is obliged himself to acknowledge that such is not the case.
SERPENT WORSHIP. 77
against the symbolic character of the mythic serpent, and
its origin in the river ; for the worship of trees and of rivers
is likely to go more often together than that of either of
these fetiches combined with mountains ; for this reason,
among others, that the tree can scarcely grow save in a
land where streams abound. It is a fact that we cannot
let our thoughts rest upon any familiar religion without
at once recalling a dozen examples of tree and serpent
worship, which are as many instances of the survival of a
still more ancient fetichism. I am, however, ready to
admit that in the later form of creed the serpent often
plays a part which does not seem of right to belong to
the river. The fetich river is nearly always a life-giving
power : it is the predecessor of the fontaine dejouvence ; it
is the Urdar fount from which were watered the roots of
the world tree Yggdrasill. The serpent is, on the contrary,
often a destructive and evil power, as was* that ' subtle
beast ' of Genesis, and Jormungandr himself, with all the
dragons his descendants ; as was the Python, or those an-
tagonists of Heracles the serpent Ladon and the Lernean
hydra. But even these destructive serpents are found
in close association with the tree of life. The serpent
of Genesis entwines it ; Ladon guards the apples of the
Hesperides ; NrShogg, another Eddaic snake, is twined
round the roots of Yggdrasill.
Among instances of a more direct worship was that of
the brazen serpent set up in the wilderness which was
still worshipped by the Jews in the days of Hezekiah ; or
(to confine ourselves to our proper province) the serpents
which were to be found in most of the temples of Greece ;
one in the Erechtheum at Athens, which was kept close
beside the sacred olive tree, another in the temple of the
Great Goddesses. The reptile was, we know, before all
things sacred to Asclepios, arid was kept in his house ; as,
for example, in the great temple at Epidauros. It would
seem that the sun god has the special mission of over-
coming and absorbing into himself this form of fetich ;
78 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
this is why Apollo slays the Python and why the snake is
sacred to Asclepios. 1
We now leave this anomalous form, serpent worship,
and return to the direct history of fetichism. It is evi-
dently essential to the true fetich I mean to the fetich
which is worshipped and not used only as a charm that
it be a natural product and not the work of man. Men
could not begin by themselves creating their own gods : a
fact sufficiently obvious (though it has been lost sight of
by many writers) to anyone who considers what man's
creations really are. All making that is to say, all art
is no more than imitation and reproduction, and has, in
Sidney's phrase, ' the works of nature for his principal
object ; to become, as it were, but the actor and player of
what nature will have set forth.' We cannot conceive the
process of mind by which man, who had never seen a god,
could make* one, or how he could give bodily shape to
what had hitherto been but an abstraction of his mind.
Obviously, the made fetich must be an imitation of some
thing, and if that made fetich is held sacred it must be
because the thing which it resembled had been first
worshipped.
The later fetich, then whether it be an imitation of
the earlier one or a portion of it, like the stick or stone
which an African savage sets up in his forest exists only
in virtue of the earlier unmade one. It is impossible at
least it has proved so as yet to fathom the degree of
worship the African savage pays to this stock or stone,
or to say what ideas his mind associates with it. This
alone is certain, that his creed is a survival from earlier
phases of belief, and, like other survivals, is a thing
anomalous in itself. It may coexist with various different
shades of intelligence and of religious perception. The
stick or stone may still (in virtue of survival) be con-
sidered as in itself a thing divine, or it may be used as a
1 Pausanias (ii. c. 28, 1 ; see also x. 45, xxii. 11) says that Asclepios
was adored under the form of a serpent at Epidauros.
STOCKS AND STONES. 79
means of concentrating the mind on an unseen presence.
Those fetiches which have a distinctly magical character
such, for example, as pyrites not only allow of, but re-
quire the belief in unseen gods at the back of the visible
phenomena which give them birth ; a thunder stone
could not be sacred till men had come to believe in a god
of thunder. Therefore this kind of fetiches, of which
writers have often spoken as if they were the products of
the earliest fetich-worshipping phase of belief, are not
really so.
The later fetiches are not without interest to our study
as survivals. I can imagine that the nations among whom
fetichism was once most rife have a special tendency to
reverence these concrete material objects. Fetiches of
this sort have always been very common in the Asiatic
religions ; for which reason the highest Asiatic religion,
Hebraism (and Mohammedanism after that), set its face
against the imitation of anything which was ' in heaven
or earth, or in the water under the earth.' But not with
entire success. The conical- shaped stones (mag$ebas) and
the stumps (asheras ; the word also signifies a grove)
which were conspicuous in the religions of the Syrians
and Phoenicians were often adored by the chosen people.
An example of a Mohammedan fetich exists in the black
stone which is the central object of reverence in the
Kaaba at Mecca, and which all pilgrims salute.
The fetiches last spoken of may have had some connection
with phallic worship. But when this was the case they
were used as symbols only ; and it is impossible to believe
that the origin of their use lay in symbolism. Far more
reasonable is it to suppose that everything of this sort has
taken its place in worship because it was a survival and a
representative of the once divine mountain or divine tree.
Of course, in the instances just given, it is a case of sur-
vival that is to say, of superstitio only. We know enough
of the creed of the Syrians and of the Phoenicians to be
in no danger of supposing that these asheras and
80 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
bas were their very gods ; nor is there any fear lest the
Mohammedan should confound with the veritable Allah
the black stone of the Kaaba, though he kisses this at
the crowning rite of his long pilgrimage.
Of the same kind with these Asiatic stones and stumps
were the holy objects (agalmata not yet images) of the
Greeks. Take, for example, the two stumps joined by a
third in the shape of the letter II, which was worshipped
as the image of the Dioskuri (Castor and Pollux). 1 A
rough piece of wood, called the sceptre of Agamemnon,
was worshipped at Argos ; another * which had come down
from heaven ' was worshipped at Thebes as the Cadmeian
Dionysus. The thyrsus of this last god and the Palladium
(agalma of Pallas) are other instances in point. Nor
were the stone agalmata less numerous. There was the
column which represented the Zeus Meilichios of Sicyon; 2
at Hyettus, in Bceotia, was a rough stone which men
called the agalma of Heracles ; 3 at Thespise, an antique
agalma of Eros (chief divinity of this Phryne city) of the
same kind ; 4 and at Pharse (Achaia) were thirty stones of
quadrangular shape, each bearing the name of some god.
' In truth,' Pausanias adds, when he has spoken of these
last, ' among all the Hellenes rude stones once received
adoration as things divine.' 5
Objects such as these may, I have said, have been
chiefly used to concentrate the mind on some inward idea,
as children use sticks and stones to play with, and endow
them with the names of real or imaginary persons. Savages
will do the same in a most serious fashion ; and the witch
of the Middle Ages, following the example of children
and savages in this, made a waxen image to represent an
absent person. Yet in every case the image ends by being,
1 Winckelmann, Hist, de VArt, i. ch. i. Pausanias imagines this to be-
the origin of the letter n (viii.). 2 Max. Tyr. and Clemens Alex. ii.
3 Pans. ix. 24, 3. 4 Id. ix. 27, 1.
5 Paus. vii. 22, 3. Cf. Lenormant in the Revue de VHist. des Rel. 1881,
Les B Styles.'
81
to some extent, confused with the being represented, and
so becomes endowed with a sort of vitality and, if it is the
image of a god, with a sort of sacredness. The habit,
therefore, of regarding such mere blocks and shapeless
masses with religious reverence might continue into the
days of a refined creed. It did continue among the Greeks
into the days of high artistic conception, and by so doing
had an important influence upon the development of
Greek art.
After a while, as religion progressed toward a personal
and more human conception of God, the stones or the
blocks (or the trees as they stood) began to be carved into
rough likenesses of human beings. When the image of
the god was made out of a tree still growing, he was
called endendros (EvS-svSpos). We have Zeus Endendros,
Apollo Endendros, Dionysus Endendros. The thyrsus of
Dionysus, made out of a vine prop, was sometimes shaped
at the end into the image of a rude bearded head. The
terminus of still later times was a relic of this curious
and noteworthy stage of belief.
This was in truth eminently a transition period of
thought ; it was marked, as transition times always are,
by much confusion, by an attempted adaptation of the
older elements of belief to those new ones which had in
reality superseded them. When the thing the stone or
stump was no longer an actual god, it was still to men's
thought permeated by a divine essence as by a sap. So
that when a statue had to be made, a substance of such a
kind that it was in itself holy, that which had once been
a fetich, was found far more suitable for the purpose than
any chance fragment of wood or stone. Wherefore we
see many instances of oracular command to carve an
image out of some particular holy tree. 1 Clearly a higher
order of divinity would reside in an ill-made statue of this
1 See Bcetticher, Baumcultus, p. 214. The original image of Athene
Polias was made from her sacred olive tree (Plutarch, T/iemist. 10).
G
82 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
sort than in the finest work of art which had no mystery
or holiness mingling with its substance.
The tree fetich was a thing prayed to of itself: its
existence independent of man, its nature not human
nature. The carved tree shared the sacredness of the
uncarved one, and the face upon it only implied this
much, that the fetich confessed a likeness to mankind. It
was never meant to assert an identity between the divine
and human characters. As these rude images (agalmata)
must have been the beginning of sculpture among the
Greeks, 1 it cannot but have followed that the remains of
the fetichistic spirit deeply affected the early development
of Greek art. We musb not look upon the rude archaic
statue as in any way representing man's ideal of human
nature, or even his nearest approach to such an ideal.
The mouth with its fixed smile, the eyes with their dull
stare, were put there in the spirit in which they might be
suggested by writing the words mouth and eyes upon the
block ; or as ' the plaster, or the loam, or the rough-cast '
stood for ' wall ' with the performers of that ' tedious brief
play of Pyramus and Thisbe.' 2 The real life, I mean, of
the agalma, and its real influence upon the imagination,
1 Greek national art was not, of course, a pure creation of the Greek
mind, but, in a certain degree, a legacy from Assyrian, Egyptian, and
Phoenician art ; for, no doubt, the mere delight in the representation of life,
as displayed in the earlier art of these lands without any special considera-
-tion for the thing represented, was the first thing which stirred in the
Greeks their aesthetic taste. But the art which was merely imitative was
not yet Hellenic. What was needed was that the Greeks should use the
power acquired by imitation for the expression of Greek ideas. As we
know, they did use it chiefly to express their belief about the gods and
heroes.
2 It is well worth noticing about archaic art that it has a double way
of expressing itself, partly as a complete representation of the thing
designed and partly as a sort of catalogue of the parts which make up the
thing. Thus in a profile face the eye is always drawn as if seen full, not
because the artist ever saw it in that way, but because he knew there was
an eye at this place, and his full drawing of an eye was the only thing
which expressed ' eye ' to his mind. In the same way the joints are
articulated in a very curious way. To borrow a term from heraldry, we
might call this ' canting art.' It forms, I think, an important stage in the
growth of hieroglyphics.
FETICH WORSHIP AND ART. 83
lay in the thing itself. That would quite alone be
wondrous and mystic, whereas the expression given to it
was but an accessory. With us it is the very opposite.
The only meaning of the statue is in its expression ; with-
out that the marble is lifeless indeed.
If we succeed at all in realising a state of mind such
as that of the worshipper of shapeless agalmata, we shall
understand how an interest and a veneration might attach
to the objects as things far greater than any which in later
times attached to a statue as the realisation of an idea.
This explains why we find so many instances in which an
archaic image has been enshrined in the most holy place
of a temple ; while all around, used as accessories only,
were the triumphs of a later art. None of these later
statues albeit they were statues of gods, and in some
cases of the same god as he who dwelt within the shrine
could rival the ancient image in the popular affections.
Twenty lesser instances of such a state of things will at
once occur to the reader. The great typical instance is
that of the Artemisium at Ephesus. Some remains of
this wonder of the world have, in quite recent days, been
recovered and brought to this country ; and we may judge
from them (if we were in doubt before) that in outward
decorative art it was inferior to no production of its own
age. In the holy of holies still stood the time-honoured
image of the Ephesian Artemis, that hideous figure only
part human, part bestial or worse, and part still a block.
This had been the central object of all, from earliest to
latest days. For the sake of this the three temples had
risen one upon the site of the other. 1 A real Greek Ar-
temis might adorn the sculptures of the walls, might be
allowed presence as an ornament merely, but the popular
worship was paid to the deformed figure within.
It seems not improbable that when an artist, such as
Pheidias or Polycleitus, was commissioned to execute the
* > J. T. Wood, Discoveries at Ejthcsvs, p. 263.
G 2
84 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
great statue of any temple, as the Athene of the Par-
thenon, the Zeus Olympics at Elis, the Hera at Argos, his
representation was more archaic and stiff than what the
artist would have produced if left to his own fancy merely.
I think the descriptions which we have of the greater
statues suggest such a custom in art. There can be no
doubt that there was, relatively, far less room for the
sculptor's talent in the figure of the great Athene
Partheiios clad, as she was, in full armour with spear
and helmet than in that other figure of the same goddess
which adorned the frieze of her temple. 1 It is certain,
again, that we see this influence of tradition in early
Italian art. The greater divinities if I may use that
expression are more stiff and conventional, more archaic,
than those who accompany them. The Virgin and Child
remind us more of the primitive Byzantine type than do
the angels who fly around. So late as down to the time
of Botticelli this difference of treatment can easily be
detected.
By far the most important and deeply interesting of
all the chapters in the history of design is that which
shows us the Greek sculpture passing away from these
traditions, leaving its archaic work behind it, and making
its thoughts really speak in the productions of its hand ;
when the features no longer remain so many labels
expressing the fact of vitality, but are fashioned to show
the depth and meaning of life. A supreme moment, for
example, I would call it in the life of the world when the
old archaic mouth, fixed and meaningless, has the lips
turned downwards, and begins to take that curve which
1 It is of course obvious that a draped figure would be more seemly for
worship than an undrapedone. It is known that the people of Cos refused
Praxiteles' statue of the nude Aphrodite, and that it was in consequence
transferred to Cnidus. On the other hand (at a much earlier date than 1 he
time of Praxiteles), nude Aphrodites were portrayed on the friezes of
temple walls. This witnesses, at any rate, to the distinction made in
popular thought between the great statue and those others which were
merely ornamental.
THE GROWTH OF
ever since has served to express depth of feeling and
greatness of soul. Sometimes we almost seem to detect
the moment of this transition. 1 When the step has once
been made, the change goes rapidly on, and soon the
human form keeps but slight and not entirely unpleasing
traces of its archaism. The stiff, expressionless face is
replaced by one which is only so far stiff that it shows
not the passing wave of emotion, but the fixed character
of the wearer. The limbs which formerly could neither
stand, nor sit, nor kneel with grace, 2 can do all these things
naturally, but they do not readily change from one atti-
tude to another, and there is not in the figures of this
time the portrayal of quick or dramatic movement any
more than of transient thought. This firmness of atti-
tude and expression, implying a certain self-reliance and
stability of character, is therefore in part an inheritance
from archaic tradition, but it not the less constitutes the
characteristic of the highest art.
And, Vithout doubt, this age in representation, as
compared with any which follow it, is that in which the
thing portrayed is the most real and living to artist
and beholder ; as what is ingrained and firm and seems
perpetual must always be more real, and so more vener-
able, than what is fleeting and passionate. The archaic
statue, in spite of its absence of expression, was always
looked upon as a thing quite real and living. And this
from two causes : first, because of the relic of fetichism
which made the mere thing block of wood or stone a
living existence ; and secondly, because the carved image,
rude as it was, was still the first representation of a human
being yet put before the world. To us it is shapeless
enough, a thing of nought ; to primitive man it was a
wonder. The stone, alive in itself and merely as a stone,
1 I could point to two coins of JSnus, in Thrace, closely resembling each
other in style, which yet have this distinction, that the moulh of one is
essentially the archaic mouth, that of the other essentially the Greek rnouth.
2 See, for instance, the ^Eginetan marbles.
86 - OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
had in addition pat on a likeness to human kind ; it was
endowed with eyes, a mouth, a nose, could touch and
taste and smell. With some of the stiffness of the bygone
times the early fine sculpture inherited a sense of reality,
of wonder too and awe, attaching to the image itself, such
as could never belong to it when art grew more familiar.
All this was of a piece with early Greek belief, which
was at first unquestioning, taking the world as it found it,
arid attracted with an intenser love for individual objects
in that world than other men had been. The grand style
of sculpture may be said to belong to the age of intense
and true belief in the divinity of nature.
We have thus seen two ways in which, outside its own
sphere, fetichism affected the development of thought.
One was in the direction of politics, by infusing into men
the germs of patriotism and a special attachment to the
soil on which they were born ; the other was in the di-
rection of art, by giving men a sense of the sacredness of
things as things, out of which reverence was m time to
grow the sense of the beauty and holiness of all parts of
nature.
The last effects of fetichism in the history of belief
were not done with even when the fetich had quite disr-
appeared. If the worship of the river or mountain left
deep traces in the hearts of the people, then the river
and mountain gods, or gods who suited best with such cha-
racters, would still hold sway with the people. Wherefore
beings who seem to have been born in this way from the
earth and the things of earth, often outlive all the other
members of a pantheon, and show themselves again when
they are least to be looked for. We shall see in another
chapter how such divinities seem sometimes longer lived
than all other portions of a creed.
When beings of the fetich kind make their reappear-
ance under changed conditions of thought, it is like
the birth (which sometimes happens) from two white-
SUKVIVALS OF FETICHISM. 87
skinned parents of one who bears all the marks of the
yellow-skinned races an instance of what is called atavism,
or reversion to the original type. To the lower orders of
Egypt their great fetich god, the Nile, was probably more
worship-worthy than the elemental deities who were
honoured by the priests and upper classes. And it is no
doubt on this account that we have to note the strange
appearance as late as the end of the sixth century of our
era, when Egypt and all Northern Africa had been long
since Christianised, of the Nile god. 1 Ka and Amun,
Thoth and Ptah, Osiris and Horus, had been long since
slain by Christ and buried in oblivion; but this Nile god
was imprinted deep in men's hearts, and was not yet for-
gotten. We find the Khone worshipped in France down
to the twelfth century, and the dead committed to its care
as the dead still are to the care of the Ganges. Fetichisin
survives in the honours paid to wells and fountains,
common in Germany and in some parts of France, and in
England known under the name of ' well-dressing,' a simple
rustic festival, wherein procession is made to the well or
fountain and flowers as offerings are cast therein. Some
slight ritual, a rustic dance or something of the sort,
accompanies the ceremony. Tree worship is preserved in
the Christmas tree, 2 in which the boughs of the tree (like
the oak of Dodona, green still though it is winter) are
hung with flowers and ribbons. Tree worship survives in
the dance round the maypole.
The fetich is essentially a local god ; it is, therefore, a
survival of the spirit of fetichism that habit among the
Greeks (of which Plato complains 3 ) of speaking of the
statue as the god, and thus of speaking of particular
shrines and particular places as being under the protection
of the local god, who was really the local statue. Men
1 Simocatta (vii. 1C) relates the appearance in the Nile of a huge man,
who was seen rising out of the river as fur as his waist. He was believed
to be the Nile god. Maury, 'Magic.
2 Though this is for us only a recent importation from Germany.
8 fojmblic.
88 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
spoke Of laying 1 an offering on the knees of Athene,
because it was laid upon the knees of her statue. They
spoke of their Apollo Lyksens, Apollo of Triopium, of their
Ismenean Apollo, as if these were all separate divinities ;
as a Catholic might have spoken, or might speak, of Our
Lady of Loretto, Our Lady of Lonrdes, as if each were
a special local Virgin. When, before the battle of Platsea,
the Greeks and Persians stood face to face, an oracle
promised victory to the Athenians if they would pay their
vows to certain divinities, including Hera of Citheron, and
to some local heroes, and if they fought in their own
country, especially in the plain of Demeter Eleusina and
Persephone. The Athenians were perplexed with this
answer. ' For,' said they, ' we are directed to fight upon
our own soil, and yet to pay our vows to Hera" of Citheron
and to the local nymphs and heroes. 5 How could these
help them, they thought, if they moved away from the
territory over which their power extended, and yet this
was Platsean and not Athenian soil. The difficulty was
removed, we remember, by the gift of the district from the
Platseans to the Athenians. 1 The existence of the diffi-
culty shows the localisation of such a great goddess as
Hera. This is one of the survivals from the days of fetich
worship.
The last faint echoes of this belief are fonnd in the
uses of objects such as the relics of the Roman Catholics,
the very feiti$os from which the belief has received its
name. The bone of the saint, the nail from the true
Cross, are fetiches of this sort. In such instances as
these the creed is so far dying out that it is degenerating
into mere magic.
Every creed has its special kind of superstition, which
is in fact superstitio, or the standing over of some ideas
derived from the old belief into a new stasre. The special
o i
superstition of fetichism is magic ; wherefore we find
magic common among savage races, many of whom, it is
1 Plutarch, Vita Arist.
. VITALITY OF BELIEF IN MAGIC. 89
probable, are emerging from the earliest phase of belief.
What I mean by magic is the belief in exceptional
qualities residing in particular parts of matter, along with
the recognition that these things are matter and have not
a will of their own. As has been before pointed out, when
any stone or any lion's tail may be magical it is impossible
to suppose that the inherent power belongs by right to the
thing. If a stone merely as a stone were endowed with
power and will to do hurt or good, then by analogy every
stone would be endowed with this power. There would
then be no exceptional power in any, and magic would
become swallowed up by the very commonness of it.
Magic, of course, exists along with almost any form of
belief, but also it may exist unaccompanied by anything
which we can fairly call belief. It may be a mere survival.
Travellers have often believed themselves to have dis-
covered examples of magic rites without any religion.
Tennent, we have seen, believed so. 1 We cannot, however,
say whether the other element is really absent, whether
these travellers have encountered a creed in a state of decay,
or whether the deeper belief has been only hidden from
them. On the other hand, we can point to some cases in
which belief has been actually abandoned and the sense
of magic has remained behind. In such a phase the be-
lief in magic presents before us an exceedingly anomalous
condition of mind ; it is scepticism plus the superstition
of fetichism. But, anomalous as it is, it is not infrequent.
Magic generally becomes more or less prominent when
belief is in a state of decay. We know how well this
truth was illustrated by the practice of magic in Rome in
the days of the Empire. In Italy in the days of the
Renaissance we have not the same frequency of definite
magical rites, but, on the other hand, we have the com-
pletest example on record of the prominence of the magic
sense in belief. 2
1 Supra, p. 50.
2 I do not think that magic and witchcraft should always be classed
90 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
Sisinondi has given us a picture of the popular belief
in Italy at this period. We see how there religion had
become divorced not only from morality but almost from
all recognition of a Personality at the back of the world
of sense. What was recognised was the thing called
priesthood, with certain mysterious rights which it pos-
sessed. The highest of priests, the Pope, was nothing
as a man, and other potentates might make war upon
him, cheat him, be cheated by him, and yet never touch
the sacerdotal part. The disgraceful conduct of a prelate
did not seem more disgraceful because of his ecclesiastical
dignity; a Pope might use the basest treason, and
men were not more scandalised because he was a Pope ;
and, on the other hand, his enemy might employ what
force or artifice he chose to rob him of his earthly terri-
tories. 1 All this was only dealing with the priest or pope
upon his civil side that is to say, as a man. But touch
the side of doctrine that is to say, attempt to interfere
with the stream of magical power which flowed into pope
or priest and you at once made yourself an outcast from
all human sympathy. ' The very persons who, in secular
affairs, put so slight a rein upon their ambition and upon
their political passions, trembled only at the name of the
Hussites. They did not ask if their doctrine was damnable,
if it was opposed to the f undanrental doctrines on which
are based the structure of society and the relationship of
man and God: all they cared to know was that the
teaching was condemned ; then their only desire was to
destroy it by fire and sword.' It was not in these days, as
in the Middle Ages it had been, a misconception of what
the heretic believed that made men desire his destruction ;
it was really no question of belief at all. The Hussite
was one who threatened to tap the sacred founts of power
together. The essential feature of the witch's craft is the compact with
Satan ; magic of the sceptical sort is a kind of bastard experimentalism
empiricism.
1 See Sismondi, Rcpub. Ital. vol. ix. ch. Ixx.
TRANSITION TO NATURE WORSHIP. 91
not material power, but immaterial, magical which
hitherto had flowed in through the Church; and men
were naturally willing to light for their share of the gift,
which they honestly believed themselves to possess, quite
independently of their personal character. The relation-
ship of this fount of magic to a Supernal Being was
almost utterly lost sight of. Its source was no longer
thought of. Eather was it deemed of a nature like the
wind, of which men cannot tell whence it cometh. This
alone they knew, that from old time it had belonged to
the Church, to the priesthood, and had been transmitted
from man to man by a regular rite, a kind of incantation.
And now these Hussites would try and pollute or turn the
sources. Should they not at all sacrifices be hindered
from so doing ?
I do not know that the whole history of human thought
can offer us a better example than this of the belief in
magic, unalloyed by any other kind of belief.
The clearly marked creed which follows next after
fetichism is the worship of the great phenomena of the
world, those phenomena, as I have before said, which are
to a certain degree abstractions. The wind and the storm
are not definite things, .as trees and mountains are. In
the' class of phenomena we must place the heavenly bodies
for they are not only celestial, but in a manner abstracted
also. In this stage of belief it is not so much the disc
of the sun which men worship as all the phenomena asso-
ciated with sunlight its brightness, warmth, vitality, and
so forth. The sky god includes in his nature more ap-
pearances than are visible at any particular moment ; the
dawn too is, in part, an abstraction. All these existences
belong to the second order of divinities. Most of the gods
of this order are further distinguished by the fact that
they reveal themselves only to one or two of the senses,
while the fetich gods can be explored by all at once ; the
wind can be felt and -heard only, the sun only felt and
92 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
seen. It belongs to the mystery of our nature that of
those things which we know least we can imagine most ;
and it is a part of the second stage in the growth of belief
that the mind begins to supply from within what is no
longer given by the senses without.
The earth and sea may seem doubtfully to belong to
the higher class of divinities. But it is evident that
neither earth nor sea, when thought of as a whole, is a
finite object, but each an abstraction, or at least a gene-
ralisation. Nevertheless the sea may be narrowed in
imagination to some particular bay; the earth may be
confined to some particular mountain or valley. Where-
fore these terrene divinities lie nearer to the race of
fetiches than any celestial phenomena do; and we find
they often slide back into the earlier class. When the
creed has reached its higher developments the earth and
sea gods and goddesses remain behind, to be cherished and
specially worshipped by the lower strata of society. 1
As all the following chapters of the volume will deal
with divinities of this second and higher order, there is no
need to say more about them here. There is, however,
a small intermediate class of beings whom we, in the
study of religious systems, are scarcely disposed to speak
of as gods, who have yet in their, time received no small
share of worship, and who have filled in ancient creeds a
wider space than we perhaps suppose. They belong,
strictly speaking, to neither camp, and therefore they
have been left behind in the march. We cannot call
these gods anything better than the generalisation of the
old fetiches. They thus form an exact middle term be-
tween these fetiches and those wider generalisations of
nature worship. We spoke of them in the last chapter.
They are the fetiches transformed just as the word tree is
transformed by coming to mean not one particular tree but
all the members of the grove. Supposing, for example,
that the men who have once worshipped only trees come
1 See Chapter V.'
NYMPHS AND DKYADS. 93
in time to worship the wind as the spirit of their forest,
then, as a middle term in this transition, they will have
worshipped the forest itself. If from having worshipped
the river they come (as we shall see they do) to worship
the cloud and then the air, as a middle term they will
have worshipped the generalisation of their rivers, or,
perhaps, for something more intangible than the rivers
themselves, the mists which rise up from them. The
divinities of this transition class are now lost to us that
is to say, they survive only in a distorted form in the Un-
dines, nymphs, and dryads of the creeds we know.
I imagine that the tree oracles of Greece portray this
stage of transition rather than real fetichism. The power
of divination which belonged to them was common to the
whole grove, and not to any particular tree in it ; this, at
any rate, seems to have been the general rule. All the
trees of Dodona, for example, carried the message of
Zeus ; nay, it was not so much the trees themselves
which did this as the wind which moved them. And yet
there was likewise here a remnant of individual tree
worship ; for we read also of one particular oak, peculiarly
sacred to Zeus, bigger than all the other trees of the
wood, and remaining ever green all the year round.
Even a fragment of this tree could prophesy, for it was a
piece of this which Athene placed in the prow of Jason's
ship 'Argo,' and that figure-head was as a pilot to the
Argonauts throughout their voyage.
The rivers change in their way as the trees in theirs.
They turn first into the mists which rise from the stream,
no longer tangible and fixed in form, but formless beings
apsaras, as they were called in Indian mythology, who
anon float up into heaven and mingle with the clouds.
The apsaras (which means the formless ones) are, in later
mythologies, spoken of as if they were nymphs ; but this
is after the anthropomorphic spirit has touched them ; at
first, as their name well shows, they were nothing so cor-
poreal as the nymphs. In this stage of belief, man's
94 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
worship is passing on to a race of beings who are at best
but half embodied; who are not wholly ideal, and yet not
in the strict sense material. The mist rises up, becomes
the cloud, mingles with the air. While still on earth it
was the nymph or faun. The clouds in heaven are the
gandharvas (Vedic), the centaurs; in the North they are
the Valkyriur, Odhinn's swan maidens. Aphrodite, the
foam-born, and Athene, at first Tritogeneia (water-born)
and afterwards the Queen of the Air, are of the same
confraternity. 1
As it was the mist arising from the Delphic stream
which sent the priestess into her holy madness, we may
in the matter of oracular gift liken these exhalations of
the rivers to the winds which blow through groves such as
that of Dodona.
No need to tell how numerous were and are these
half-earthy divinities in India, in Greece, in heathen
Germany, among the Celts and Slavs. Their name is
legion fauns, dryads, nereids, nymphs, Undines, gand-
harvas, and (more expressive than all other names)
apsaras, formless ones. 2 They are presented to us by
art as beings with human shape, sometimes mixed of
human and animal ; others (the dryads, for example) are
of human and vegetable nature conjoined ; in the heart of
the people they have scarcely a shape, but ara a presence
only the presence of their old friends the forest and the
stream. The doubtfulness of art concerning their shape
and nature portrays the uncertainty of popular thought
1 See Chapter IV.
2 It is, on the whole, exceptional to find these fountain beings of the
masculine gender. In Greece, however, the rivers were generally male,
the lakes female. This, I say, must be looked upon as rather peculiar. It
is noticeable that the gandharvas of Indian myth may be of both sexes,
but the centaurs are always represented as males. When the fountain
nymph is associated with that idealised fount which is known in myth as
the fountain of life, she becomes the Fate (Parca, Mcera, or Norn). The
Scandinavian Norn is not distinguishable from the Valkyria ; Fates, as
fees, fairies, returned again to their simpler universal character. The
Mome are connected with the Celtic Maine, from mar, meir, simply a ' maid.'
MUSIC BORN OF STREAMS. 95
about them. Atalanta is one of the most typical of these
stream maidens. She was born on Mount Parthenon by
the banks of a river. By a stroke of her lance she once
made water spring from the rock. 1 Her name (drdXXw)
expresses the leaping water.
Arcadia, where the old beliefs were the longest lived,
was the great home of nymph worship. Of the same race
as the nymphs were the Muses. They were called nymphs
sometimes. They too were originally streams. 2
Certainly one of the most beautiful among ancient
beliefs is that which has associated the discovery of music
with the sound of waters. Next in importance after the
invention of writing comes, it seems to me, this art, the
production of harmonised sound. In respect of its sponta-
neity it stands midway between drawing and writing.
The first is a purely imitative art, and, so far as we can
tell, spontaneous from human nature. Writing is so little
spontaneous that it has been invented almost accidentally,
and once found has been passed on from nation to nation
and not rediscovered. Music is more simple than writing,
and may have several different sources. The melody in
the vibration of a single stretched string, as of a strung
bow, might easily be noticed. Traditionally, music has
always been considered an imitative art, like drawing;
the vibrating string was supposed to mimic some melo-
dious sound in nature ; and among the many which we
hear rustling of leaves, the cries of animals in hollow
distance, echoes from caves, and the wind amid pine trees,
or any of those softened murmurs which come to us from
the depth of the forest none have been found so impres-
sive as the music of waters. The moaning of the waves
round the shore gave rise to the myth of the sirens ; and,
whatever the truth may have been, the Greek undoubtedly
believed that some stream of Pieria or of Helicon had given
1 Pans. iii. 24, 2.
2 The Lydians called the Muses vv^ai (Steph. Dyz. s.v. T6pfa&os ; Pho
tius, S. V. Nu/i</>cu).
96 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BE ,IEF.
birth to Greek music. By these banks the Doric shepherd
first learnt to string his lyre.
Or be it that music arose with Pan and the Arcadians,
where too the worship of streams most prevailed. The
flute of all instruments best suggests the bubbling sound
of brooks. Perhaps the use of the lyre, the instrument of
Apollo and Hermes, was only a higher order of music
which came in with the worship of these gods and super-
seded the music of the pipe. If that be so then the
contest with Marsyas is the rivalry between the old music
and the new, expressing a deeper rivalry in creed and
manners ; 1 for the melodies of the flute or the pan-pipes
are those of contemplative lives and dreamy ease, but
Apollo was the introducer of war music and of the prean.
The sober truth about Marsyas' skin was, I suspect,
that it was a sheepskin placed in a certain river in Asia
Minor in such a way that the water running through it
gave it a tuneful sound ; not less, however, is Marsyas the
typical river god, who sets up his earthly music in despite
of the airs of heaven.
The sound of this plaintive early music of nature, and
the thought of the simple Arcadian worship of the
nymphs and satyrs, might well give men a fondness for
the days gone by, and make them contrast favourably the
old nature worship with the worship of gods after they
had become transformed into personalities. I will not say
that the gods/ when they had grown personal and active,
were at first, in any moral sense, the superiors of these
peaceful deities of stream and mountain. At first the god
who represented merely the power of will without its
moral responsibility was a bad substitute for those early
will-less things, the deified phenomena of nature ; just as a
child is a better thing to contemplate than a young man
under the sway of his passions in their force. We can
have small reverence for the new usurping Zeus of the
1 See Prof. Percy Gardner, ' Greek River Worship,' Trs. of Rvy. Soc, Lit.
vol. xi.
MUSIC BORN OF STREAMS.
97
' Prometheus Vinctus.' And this is why the poet in that
play gives us so beautiful a picture of the nature god,
Ocean, and the nymphs, which are the river mists, coming
to sympathise with the Titan in his sufferings. And, as
against Zeus the usurper, Prometheus appeals to all the
divinities who are the pure expression of outward things to
the swift-winged breezes ; the deep, uncounted, laughing
waves ; the all-seeing eye of the sun ; and earth, the mother
of all.
98 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
CHAPTEE III.
THE ARYAS.
ONE of the singers of the Big- Veda relates to us the birth
of Agni, the fire, and its attendant circumstances. The
fire itself is produced by the rubbing of two sticks ; and
so, naturally enough, we are told that these are the
parents of the god. But, behold! the fire seizes upon
these same sticks and consumes them ; so Agni is scarce
born when he devours those who brought him forth.
This is a terrible truth to be obliged to tell.
This deed now make I known, earth, O heaven
The son new-born devours his parents. 1
poet is shocked, as he well may be, at the thought of
such a parricide, and would fain not tell the story but
that he knows it true. And so he only adds, with
humility of heart
But I, a mortal, cannot gauge a god ;
Agni knows and does the right.
Could anything better than such a passage as this
express the condition of a belief which is dealing still
with the phenomena of sense, and which has nevertheless
got some way in the apprehension of moral truths ; which
is, in fact, well advanced in the second phase of belief, but
not yet past it ? First observe how completely we have here
got beyond the earliest fetich worship and those beliefs
akin to fetichism which we discussed in the last chapter.
Agni is not simply a material thing. He is certainly
1 Big- Veda, x. 7, 9.
AGNI THE PIKE GOD. 99
nothing which can be touched and handled; he cannot
even be fully apprehended by the senses ; he is a generali-
sation, and therefore in part an idea only. Agni is not
one single flame, but then neither is he an abstract god
of fire. He is both one and many flames, and to his
character still clings the character of his element. It is a
fact that the flame consumes the wood which gave it life
the father who created it and the mother who bore it.
Being so certain a fact, it must be told. Still Agni is a
divinity and knows what is right. The notion of righteous-
ness attaches to the god before he has clothed himself
in a human character or become subject to the 4aws of
man.
To the fetich worshipper the stick which produced the
fire would have been a god. Nay, there can be no doubt
that many among the contemporaries of this poet of the
Rig-Veda, and many in long subsequent times, did worship
as a god the fire drill, or swastika. This became in after
years personified in the person of Prometheus. 1 While to
that same fetich worshipper the fire itself would have
been too abstract and intangible a substance to be made
into a divinity. To the poet priest who chaunted this
Yedic hymn it was quite otherwise. The wood itself was
mortal, for the wood itself was material; and just because
the fire was not material, but so subtle and mysterious,
just because it appealed so much to his imaginative
faculties, it was made into a god, and Agni was
worshipped. In the Vedic hymns Agni is often called
c an immortal born of mortals.' 2
I do not pretend that the Vedic worshipper is always
1 See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, where the myth of Prometheus
springing from the pramantha, or fire drill (also ' butter churn '), is very
beautifully worked out ; also in the Zeitschr. fiir very. Spr. xx. 201. The
swastika symbol ^fi, so well known on Buddhist monuments, has been
interpreted as this fire drill ; it has also, however, been interpreted as the
symbol of the sun. See E. Thomas and Percy Gardner, in the Numismatic
Chronicle for 1880. Schwartz (Urspr. der Myth.) connects Prometheus
with the whirlwind.
2 B. V. iii. 29, 13 ; x. 79,1.
H 2
100 OUTLINES .OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
a perfect example of man in the state of nature worship.
Nor do I mean to say that Agni always adheres so strictly,
as here he does, to his true character. The Yedic hymns
are a miscellaneous collection of poems composed at
various times intervals of hundreds of years even be-
tween some of them and handed down from age to age
by oral tradition only. They therefore express many dif-
ferent phases of belief. Agni sometimes makes us forget
that he is the fire. Sometimes he seems quite human as
he comes down to drink the libations which are poured out
for him and joins Indra in his battles against the enemy.
Still we shall scarcely find in any historic creed such
speaking examples of nature worship as are to be met
with throughout the pages of the Yedic hymns. Nor,
perhaps, does any Yedic god illustrate more fully in his
character the various influences of sensation upon belief
than does this god of fire.
In the instance 'just chosen we have seen the curb
which external experience puts upon the satisfaction of
the moral sense. Let us now look at the matter from the
other side, and see what a point of spiritual and moral
idealism may be reached without any departure from need-
ful adherence to outward fact, without leaving the region
of externals and ' those things which nature herself will
have set forth.' In another hymn, earlier in date probably
than the hymn previously quoted, there is again allusion
made to Agni's birth from the wood. But in this con-
nection we find that the god had likewise a parentage in
the clouds, where he was born in the form of lightning.
6 1 will tell (or have told), Agni, thy old and new births.' !
The new birth is from the wood ; the old birth was from
the clouds. The god, we see, lived first in heaven, and
was there doubtless long before the race of man was seen
here below. But somehow Agni descended from heaven
1 R. V. i. 20. Notice in this hymn also for immediate and future use
how Agni was born of the seven streams (vv. 3, 4), did not lie concealed
there (9), and became a protector by his shining in the house (15, 18).
AGNI. 101
and became imprisoned in the wood, whence the act of
man first taught him by Manu ' can set Agni free. This
re-birth from the wood is in very truth an incarnation of
the fire god, for man too, we know, was descended from the
tree ; his flesh is made from the wood. Wherefore Agni
clothes himself not only in a material but in a carnal form
when he comes to earth.
Agni's birth in heaven was wondrous, miraculous
even. ' Scarce born, he filled the two worlds ' that of the
heaven, namely, and of the earth. This is an image,
perhaps, of the lightning flashing suddenly, and seeming
to fill all the space of air ; or, perhaps, it is the red of
morning, for that too is called Agni ; or may be, again, it
is the fire of the sun itself. In such an aspect of his
being, the heavenly aspect, Agni is everything that is
great : in moral strength as in physical force he stands
next to Indra, far before any other divinity. And yet,
for all that, Agni consents to become imprisoned in the
wood ; he has a life on earth and shares the toils and
troubles of man. He is, on this account, among all the
celestials, the god who cares most for human kind. ' Pro-
tect us,' the priest calls out to him in need, f protect us
by thy shining in the house.' We know how dearly
cherished was that protection of the fire god. The most
sacred function in the domestic life of the Aryas was the
keeping alive the house fire ; the duty of doing this was
always assigned to the paterfamilias, and that which
made men most desirous for heirs male, and made them,
if they had none of their body, seek to gain one by adop-
tion, was the wish that the same fire should be kept
alive when they were gone. Luck would desert the house,
and the dead father would suffer in the other world, if the
1 Manu (the thinker) is the typical first man, and the same with the
Greek Minos (Benfey, Hermes, Minos n. Tartaros). If we do not accept
Kuhn's origin for Prometheus he too would be an equivalent of Manu.
Prometheus and Manu perform the same office in respect to fire. Manu
and Minos are of course lawgivers ; so are Yama and Yima (Zend) also
types of the first man.
102 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
fire went out; just in the same way that in earlier modes
of thought luck was fancied to desert the family or the
Tillage if the house tree or the village tree died down, or
if the water of the fetich stream ran dry.
Another sacred duty was observed when the flame of
sacrifice was kindled, and again, in another shape, Agni
appeared on earth. On this flame libations were poured
of the intoxicating soma l juice, the sacramental drink of
Vedic Indians. Agni was invited to partake of this liba-
tion ; and as the flame licked up the drink Agni was said,
in the language of the Yedas, to take his share of the
sacrifice, to drink of the soma. After this he sprang up
heavenward and vanished in air ; he had gone back to his
celestial home. Thus man having first set Agni free
from his prison house the wood, was likewise the means
whereby the god reached once more the mansions of the
blessed.
There was one sacrifice more rare and more solemn
than the daily enkindling of straw or pouring of soma
upon the flame ; this was when the dead man was burnt
upon the pyre and offered up, as it were, unto the god of
fire. Agni received the soul and bore it up to heaven. 2
Thus in every way Agni is shown as a messenger
between heaven and earth : he comes down in the light-
ning and he returns in the flame of sacrifice. He is
constantly invited to call the gods down to the feast
which is preparing for them at the altar. He only among
the heavenly ones is seen to devour what is offered to him.
And, again, Agni may be sometimes the internal
flame, the source of all 'passion, of the passion of passions
1 Asclepias acida is the botanical name of this plant. From its juice
can be concocted an alcoholic drink which was much cherished by the
Indians and Persians (by the latter called lioma}, and which played an
important part in their ritual. The soma drink was a sacramental draught,
and as such corresponded to the mystic millet water (kykeon) of the
Eleusinian celebrations.
2 Of burning the dead, and the beliefs which attach to that custom,
more hereafter (Ch. VI.)
AGNI. 103
to primeval man, the most sacred of his emotions, love.
Soma is the god of wine, Agni of the other great motive
power in men's lives and beliefs. 1 This emotion being
accounted in primitive language especially holy, therefore
Agni is essentially the holy one. I would not wrest to
any fanciful resemblance the points of likeness between
this ancient divinity and the later avatars of Indian and
Christian creeds ; but it is evident the god stands ready
to take the part afterwards given to Vishnu. And whether
or no we choose to consider that the ideals which Vishnu,
and still more Christ, express are implanted in human
nature, it is evident that, without passing beyond his
legitimate functions as a nature god, Agni is able to
realise some of the qualities of such an ideal. He is in-
carnate, after a fashion, being born of the wood ; he is, in
a peculiar sense, the friend of man ; he is the messenger
and mediator between heaven and earth ; and lastly, he is
in a special manner the holy one, the fosterer of strong
emotion, of those mystic thoughts which arise when in
any way the mind is violently swayed. Agni is all this
without laying aside the elemental nature in which he is
clothed. And this one example may prepare us for the
manysidedness of nature gods :
Agni is messenger of all the world *
Skyward ascends his flame, the Merciful,
With onr libations watered well ;
And now the red smoke seeks the heavenly way,
And men enkindle Agni here.
We make of thee onr herald, Holy One ;
* Bring down the gods unto our feast.
O son of might, and all who nourish man !
Pardon us when on you we call.
> See Ch. I.
104 OUTLINES OF PEIMTTIVE BELIEF.
Thoa, Agni, art the ruler of the house ;
Thou at the altar art our priest.
O purifier, wise and rich in good,
sacrificer, bring us safety now. 1
In one respect Agni is different from the other gods.
He alone, almost, is independent of climatic influences.
Not so the god of the wind, or of the sun, or of the sea.
People may live near the water, and see for ever before
them the broad, level, unploughed plain ; or they may
live inland in close-shut valleys, watered only by one
small stream, on whom ' the swart star sparely looks ; ' or
they may live in the perpetual shade of woods, or on
broad arid plains where the sun's heat is well-nigh
intolerable ; or in dark frosty lands, where the sun dies
during one part of his yearly round and is for this period
never seen by night or day. It is impossible that the
gods of nature can remain the same with peoples exposed
to such varying influences. With fetiches it is different.
The differences between fetich and fetich are noticeable,
indeed, within a small locality, but in the sum, among a
large body of people, they may be expected to balance
one another. The differences of climatic nature gods are
wide and cannot be bridged over. We have but to study
and interpret ^he characters of some of the great sun -gods
of Eastern lands Ra, say, or Moloch to Understand
the sort of sun these lands lay beneath ; and we have only
to remember the differences in latitude and in the face of
nature between these Eastern countries and the countries
of Europe to see why the sun god is so different a being
in the creed of the Asiatic to what he is in the creed of
the European.
It is desirable, therefore, that, before we come to
examine any of the known creeds of the Ind<*-European
race, we should try to gain some idea of the earlier
climatic influences to which its ancestors were subjected,
1 B. V. vii. 16.
THE CKADLE OF THE ARYAN RACES.
105
while they were still one people, at the time in which the
germs of later creeds were but beginning to put forth
shoots. Five distinct * languages,' in the Biblical sense
of that word, have, it is well known, issued from the
Aryan nest namely, the Aryas proper or later Aryas,
the Indo-Persic family, the Grseco-Italic, the Celtic, the
Teutonic, the Lithuano-Slavonic. Some of these have
kept no memory of that first home ; some have be-
lieved themselves autochthonous, or children of the soil,
in the land where history discovers them. Others (the
Norsemen, for example, out of the Teutonic family)
have had some vague tradition of an Eastern origin ;
and one people, the Persians, have a tolerably clear and
consistent legend of the changes of home which preceded
their settlement in Iran. But of course the story puts on
a mythic disguise. It is related by their Zend Avesta l
that the good and great spirit, Ahura-Mazda, created in
succession sixteen paradises ; but that the evil one, Angra-
Mainyus, came after him, like the sower of tares, and
polluted these paradises one after the other. It is impos-
sible to trace out a clear line of travel by the identifica-
tion of these places. Some cannot be identified; the
order of them has been misplaced. But interpreting the
story by the rules which must guide us in leading mythic
language, we are, I think, justified in seeing the evidence
of a passage at some former time from the high land of
Bactriana toward the Persian Gulf, and this theory of an
original home in Bactriana would suit with what we know
of the movements of other Aryan races.
To the weight of this traditionary evidence we must
add the cumulative testimony of a number of small coinci-
dences, which, though each is slight in itself, afford not
inconsiderable evidence in the sum. If we find that the
1 First Fargard. Pictet (Les Origines Indo-Europeennes, ch. i.) has de-
voted some space and much ingenuity to an endeavour to trace the course
of the migrations made by the Iranian people. With what success I am no
judge. Darmesteter repudiates the attempt (Avesta, Intr.)
106 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
species of metals, flowers, animals, trees, which the old
Aryans were acquainted with are those which are to be
fonnd in Bactriana ; if we find that the early life of these
Aryas was of the kind likely to be adopted in a country
such as that is, and under the influences of sun and sky
which that land is subject to, we are justified, I think, in
assuming the Persian tradition to be a true one. The
way in which we may rediscover the social and natural
surroundings of the proto-Aryas is that very method
whereby, in a former chapter, we arrived at certain con-
clusions touching the knowledge which our ancestors had
of horned cattle, of a sky god, Dyaus, and of the relation-
ship of a daughter. For the method which was there
applied to but one or two things may, it is evident, be
extended to all the region of possible knowledge. The
late M. Pictet has used this method with eminent talent
and success ; and amid many other conclusions concerning
the old Aryas he arrives at this, that their first traceable
home must have been in the Bactrian land.
This country is the one which lies westward from the
Beloor Tagh, northward from the Hindoo Koosh and all
the region of barren Afghanistan. It is a land once cele-
brated among the countries of the world for its fertility,
and though it has fallen now on evil days it is still one of
the best cultivated parts of Central Asia, in both a mate-
rial and a moral sense. 1 The high ranges behind them
cut off the inhabitants from all communication with the
east and south. In the hills innumerable streams are
born, which, flowing westward, go to swell the waters of
the Oxus and the Jaxartes. The hills, the streams, and
the valleys which these last have hollowed out give a
peculiar character to the scenery, a character of perpetual
change. 'Bactriana, 5 says Quintus Curtius, 2 * is in its
nature a very varied land. In some parts trees abound,
and the vines yield fruit remarkable for its size and sweet-
1 Bokhara is at this day a centre of Mohammedan learning. 2 vii. 4.
BACTRIA. 107
Innumerable fountains water the fertile soil.
lere the climate is favourable they sow corn ; else-
where the ground furnishes pasture for the flocks. 5 And
a traveller of more recent date, Sir Alexander Burnes
one of the very few who in modern days have penetrated
to this region speaks in much the same terms of the
variety in the aspect of nature, though he has less to say
about the fertility of the soil. 1 From his account it is
interesting to learn how many of the trees are familiar to
European eyes; even the maythorn is to be met with
there, though scarcely anywhere else in Asia.
Now it so happens that of the great monarchies of
the ancient world, the earliest, those which seem to have
passed on their traditions to all which followed, arose in
lands the very opposite of the one here described. Egypt
and Chaldsea have close resemblances in the main cha-
racteristics of their scenery and position. Each is by
comparison a narrow strip of cultivable soil cut out of the
desert, and each owes its fertility altogether to one cause,
the great river or rivers which flow through its midst. In
Egypt the irrigation from the Nile is natural ; in the land
of the Tigris and Euphrates irrigation is obtained by arti-
ficial means : this is all the difference between the two
countries. Both, too, are singularly rich, and their
riches seem the greater in comparison with the barrenness
and poverty which lie at their doors. For Egypt and
Chaldsea are, in reality, tracts reclaimed from one and the
same desert the groat infertile belt which extends half
round the world, stretching from the borders of China on
the east to the western coast of Africa. Wherefore in
such countries as Egypt and Chaldsea everything is
present which is likely to attach the people to the soil on
which they live, and to stay their imaginations from ever
wandering to regions beyond those which they know
1 For now irrigation has to be effected by artificial means, and where
the canals have fallen into disrepair drought has ensued. See Expedition
of Lieut. A.
108 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
familia,rly. Their fertile land is a land of life, but all
around them lies the country of death. Such a state of
things is likely to beget a certain dulness in the fancy and
a settled routine in life ; everything will determine men.
to a fixed society and government, and to a fixed religion.
The great river is at hand to serve for the oldest and chief
god of the land ; the impossibility of travel rivets tighter
that chain of association and of reverence and of fear
which holds men close to the neighbourhood of their fetich.
All these effects were produced in Egypt and Chaldsea.
Feeling themselves so securely fixed in their home, and
generally prosperous there, like men quibus Jupiter ipse
nocere non potest, 1 the Egyptians and Chaldseans, and the
successors of the Chaldseans, the Assyrians, gave them-
selves to a ' great bravery of building,' and the immense
temples and tombs which arose all over their lands became
a new race of fetiches, and also a kind of sentries and
watch-towers to keep the people where they were. They
were contented, but they were slaves. Their rulers were
tyrants the temporal rulers, their Barneses, their Tiglath
Pilesers, and Sennacheribs and the spiritual kings, their
gods, fiercest and most cruel of all of whom was the great
sun god, Moloch, c the king ' par excellence. 2
The home of the Aryas, on the contrary a land of
innumerable streams and separate valleys, naturally di-
vided into as many political districts would be incom-
patible with the formation of a great monarchy such as
those which sprang up in Egypt and Assyria. And we
know that the beginnings of social life among the Aryas
were not of the Asiatic kind ; their political unit was the
villao-e, a cluster of homesteads, that is to say, a sort of
miniature republic, associated under certain laws, and
1 The Egyptian priests, Herodotus tells us, descanted to- him of the
risk of depending upon Zeus for fertility. They were, of course, right
from a purely experiential point of view. Can we doubt that the respective
characters of the religions of Egypt and Greece were affected by the
different natures of their gods in this and other respects 1
2 Moloch is melek, a king.
THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. 109
each, one governed, subject to these laws and customs, by
its individual chief or head-man. This village community
is the germ out of which the later institutions of European
statecraft have had their rise. In the Indian village, in
the Russian. mir, and in the Swiss canton, we see it in a
condition nearest to its original purity.
The effects of this beginning of social life among
the Aryas has been visible in all their later history ; one
of the chief of these effects has been that they have
never been apt to form themselves into very great or per-
manent monarchies. The kingdom of the Medes and
Persians under Cyrus might, indeed, seem at first sight
a striking exception to this rule ; but it is not so much so
as it appears. Although the monarchy of Cyrus certainly
did resemble the autocracies of Egypt and Babylon, it
could never have come into existence if these last had not
preceded it. It was a distinct imitation of the great
Semitic and African kingdoms, not a natural growth ;
and it was only achieved by un-Aryanising the people.
The foundation of the permanent rule of Cyrus lay in the
older and more settled monarchies which the kingdom of
the Medes and Persians absorbed into itself. Chaldsea
and Egypt were full of ancient cities, and it was the
possession of such strongholds as were to be found there
which gave its stability to the rule of the AchscmenidsB.
The walled towns which had a short time before begun to
spring up in the land of the Persians themselves were built
in imitation of the older walled towns of Chaldsea. That
this was the case is very well shown by the picture which
Herodotus gives us l of the condition of the Medes at an
earlier time, when they had first shaken themselves free
from the Assyrian yoke, and his account of the founda-
tion of their native line of kings. For a long time these
Medes lived in separate villages, without any central
authority, and lawlessness prevailed throughout the land.
1 i. 96-98.
110 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
At length Deioces, the son of Phraortes, having attained
great influence by his justice and firmness, succeeded in
having himself raised to the throne. Desiring to secure
his power, he caused the city of Ecbatana to be built. It
was beneath the walls of this, its first city, that the foun-
dations of the Median kingdom were laid.
The conditions into which the Medes relapsed so soon
as they had shaken off the Assyrian yoke might be
matched in a hundred examples taken from the history of
people of Aryan stock at such a time as the pressure of
some firm hand had been removed.
Just in the same way, after the death of Charlemagne,
the Franldsh nation split up from one into many king-
doms and duchies. So did almost all the Teuton peoples
who had joined in the invasions of the Roman Empire in
like manner split up when the fear of an opposing power
no longer kept them together. The Goths of Spain or of
Italy, the Lombards, and the English all tell the same
story which is told by the history of the Medes.
The Aryan religion must have been as republican and
as manysided, as was the social life of the people. Each
small assemblage of houses which stood beside a rivulet
or a lake, in the clearing of a forest, or under the shadow
of a hill, was a world unto itself. And no doubt each
village had its own fetich, its supernatural protector, in
the stream or tree which was in its midst. The village
tree has survived, if not as a divinity, at the very least as
a recognised institution almost to our own time. The
local worship of mountains and of streams in like wise
has left deep traces in the creeds of Europe. If the
remains of fetichism could be so vital, fetichism itself
must have had a lengthened sway. But the people could
never have become the Aryan nation had their notions of
unity been confined to the local fetich and the village
commune. They acquired an idea of a wider fellowship.
They spoke a common tongue, and in that language they
acknowledged themselves as one people the aryas, or
DIVERSITIES OF CREED. ]11
noble ones in contradistinction to the barbarians, 'the
inarticulate, 5 or to the turanians, the ' wanderers,' who for
them filled up the roll of outer humanity.
The beliefs of the Aryas expanded with their policy; or
it were truer, perhaps, to say that their social life widened
as their creed widened. 1 And with the change there came
to the front the higher kind of gods who were pan-Ar} an,
and who at last put to silence the older but lesser village
gods.
Something has been already said of the obvious ad-
vantage which, in respect of a permanent hold on men's
minds, the elemental religion has over the fetichism
which precedes it the superiority which the worship of
clouds, or skies, or suns, or storms has over the worship of
trees and rivers and mountains. If a people change their
home they cannot take the fetich with them ; and there-
fore the nation will be without a god, unless either a new
fetich is at once found (which is scarce likely) or men are
willing to worship some part of nature which cannot be
BO easily abandoned. The nation is almost sure in such
circumstances to turn and worship the great elemental
gods.
But even if the people do not leave their homes, and
only coalesce somewhat in national life, the elemental god
has still an immense advantage over his fetich rival in
respect of his universality. He alone can be the god of
the whole people. Although in each village the people are
still most inclined to fetichism, and the village stream or
tree is in consequence more honoured than the sun or the
wind, still that tree or stream has no claim to reverence
from the men of another village. They have probably their
individual village tree, who, rather than a friend, is a
rival and an enemy to the other fetich. When neighbour
communities cease being at war and become friendly, the
union is likely to be signalised by the sacrifice to each
See p. 69.
112 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
others' prejudices of the rival gods : the thing they now
need is a divinity whom all have worshipped alike. He
must be something higher and more celestial than the
fetich, a wider Nature god. This is, in fact, an instance
exactly parallel to that seeming paradox of reputation
whereby we are met with the difficulty that the greatest
genius is never first in repute among his contemporaries.
Why, it may fairly be asked, should future times be always
so much more discriminating than present ones? To
which the answer, of course, is that the great genius would
never really have a majority of suffrages in any age, but
that his suffrages, such as they are, go on accumulating
from age to age, while his rival of one generation, the
popular writer of that time, puts out of memory his rival
of a previous generation. The popular writer, for the
purposes of our illustration, represents the fetich god, for
the elemental god stands the genius, and for the rivalry
of different ages we substitute the rivalry of different
localities.
Each separate village in old Bactriana had, we may
suppose, its fetich god, while the gods of all the Aryan
nations were the sky and the sun, the earth and the sea.
The more the people gravitated together, the more did
these universal deities come to the front, and the divini-
ties of fragments of the people fall into the background.
The decisive change was probably made when the migra-
tions of the Ayras began, and all the fetiches had to be
left behind.
For hundreds of years had the proto-Aryas inhabited
their fertile Bactrian home, until they grew into a con-
siderable nation ; the older tribes backed against the
eastern hills, the younger extending westward into the
plain as far as the borders of the Caspian. 1 At length,
either because they grew too large for the land they dwelt
in or because they felt more and more the pressure of alien
1 See Ch. VL
THE MIGRATIONS OF THE ARYAS. 113
peoples those Tartar races who still form the population
of Central Asia from what cause, indeed, we cannot de-
termine now, they broke up into separate nations, which*,
one by one, set off upon those long journey ings not de-
stined to come to a termination until some at least among
the people had reached the very ends of the earth. The
fetich god could be no protection in the new unknown
world to which the travellers turned. But the sun went
with them ; he even pointed the way they were to travel
as he passed on before them to the west. 1 The sky, clear
or cloudy, was still overhead ; the ruddy morn and evening
showed their familiar faces ; the pillar of cloud went
before them by day, and the pillar of fire by night ; the
storms followed them on their path, and the moon with
all her attendant stars. These, therefore, were the gods
to whom henceforward they must turn to pray.
The younger tribes, whom we saw settled to the west-
ward, were the first to migrate. They left behind them
the older inhabitants, the Aryas par excellence, from whom
afterwards descended the Indians and Iranians. But even
these had at last to abandon their country. Whatever
the reason for the others' departure, theirs, one would
suppose, must have been involuntary, under the force of
superior and hostile powers. For they did not go west-
ward, but crossed the steep hills which were behind them.
The Iranians, as we saw, struggled to the high table-land
of Pamir, which tradition afterwards represented as the
land made evil by Ahrimanes. The Indians crossed the
Hindoo Koosh and debouched upon the plain of the Indus ;
and it was during their residence in the territory of the
five streams, the Panjab, 2 that these Aryas of India com-
posed the body of their first sacred poetry those Vedic
hymns which are a memorial not of their faith only, but
also, in an indirect way, of the still earlier Aryan religion
of Bactria.
1 Ibid.
2 The Ganges is unknown to the Vedic hymn- writers.
I
114 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
But let the reader be upon his guard upon his guard
once for all against the notion that any distinct doctrine
of mythology can be gleaned from the poems of the Yeda.
Something has already been said of the difference between
mythology and religion, so far as to show how the pre-
sence of one must to a great extent preclude that of
the other. Mythology, in a manner, precedes religion.
Mythology is an interpretation of natural phenomena,
through the enkindiing of imagination indeed, and with
some sense of worship going along with the interpretation,
but by men not in that state of strong emotion which we
may distinctly call religious. The tales of mythology are
records of facts of .facts seen, no doubt, though an imagina-
tive atmosphere, but yet regarded as passing events and
not in a peculiar relation to the observer. The ego of the
narrator of myths is not vividly present in his conscious-
ness. With religion and with the literature of devotion it
is very different. These imply an intense concentration
of thought upon the spiritual (unsensuous) side of the
external phenomena : they imply a condition of feeling in
which the ego is of pre-eminent importance in relation to
all outward things, in which the external world is re-
garded or neglected in exact proportion as it calls out
an answering emotion from the human heart. The Vedic
poems are of the religious kind ; they are distinctly devo-
tional in character, and are therefore rightly described as
hymns. And thus being intended as vehicles of feeling,
not as the records of events, they offer a marked contrast
to those epic poems which are our earliest authorities for
the belief of most other members of the Indo-European
family to the epos of Homer, for example, and the eddas
and sagas of the German peoples. This gives the Yedas
a certain poverty on the mythologic side ; it also tends to
make the beliefs which they record seem more advanced
in development than they really are. Yet, for all that,
the Yedas reveal some aspects of belief more primitive
than are to be found either in Greece or in Scandinavia :
RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE VEDAS. 115
some facts without the light shed by which the religious
history of the Aryan folk would have remained for ever
obscure.
Professor Max Miiller has already called attention to
one remarkable phase of belief which the Vedas illustrate,
and which, but for its survival in these hymns, would
perhaps never have been noticed. He has called this
phase henotheism, 1 by which is meant the worship of one
god out of the pantheon as if he were the only divinity,
and the passing on then to pay the same vows and honours
to another deity. Henotheism expresses quite a different
tone- of mind from monotheism, and arises mainly, as in
the last chapter was pointed out, from the shortness of
memory which leads men to neglect and overlook that
phenomenon which is not actually present, and so to forget
for a time the god whose nature is bound up with this
phenomenon. Wherefore it is evident that in the Vedas,
where henotheism is so rife, we have got most near to the
condition of belief in which the god was identified with
that visible power of nature whence he took his name ;
to that state of things in which Indra was worshipped
while active, but forgotten when he was not so. Indra is
throughout the Vedas really the sky or the storm ; and
though he receives the general titles suited to a universal
ruler, yet when we see him in action his deeds are those
possible to a storm god only. Agni is in verity the fire,
and his ways are the ways of that element alone.
It is through the combination of this genuine poly-
theism with the language of devotion that henotheism
becomes conspicuous. Of course it was thought that the
god would be nattered by being addressed in such a style
of adulation as if he only were the lord and king. But
men to whom all the gods seemed equally present, would
What I have called pure poli/theism, is, as has been shown, a different
je of belief from that which is commonly called by the same name,
ris pure polytheism is in the most intimate relationship to hsnothcism
(Ch. I.)
12
116 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
have felt the risk of offending quite as much the god who
was really supreme. If there were anyone like Zeus,
who was so mighty that if a chain were suspended from
heaven, and he were at one end and all the other gods
were pulling at the other, they could not displace him,
then henotheism would not be safe ; nor would it be pos-
sible. If there were no personal god sitting apart and
directing all the rest, if every god were (more or less)
limited within his own sphere, then the immoderate desire
to obtain the special gift which this or that divinity held
in hand, the carelessness of the savages about the future,
and their natural forgetfulness that there were other
powers and other gifts beside this one, would far outweigh
the fear of losing some subsequent favour of a rival god.
Henotheism, then, is only possible in a certain condition
of belief; wherefore the discovery of it in a conspicuous
form in the Yedas is a guarantee that we shall find much
else that is really primitive in them.
We ought, before we speak of the actual Yedic creed,
to try and get some notion of the pre-Vedic one which all
our ancestors had in common, or at all events of that which
the Aryas brought with them to their Indian home before
the first Vedic hymn was raised. All the Indo-European
people possessed in common, as we have seen, a sky god,
Dyaus, whose name, connected with (if not sprung from) a
root div, to shine, points him out especially as the bright
heaven. The fact that those first cousins of Dyaus, Zeus
and Jupiter, have little in their natures to suggest the
bright heaven or clear sky, might lead us to suppose that
the Indian Dyaus had been originally the heaven in all its
aspects, the heaven by night as well as the heaven by day ;
but that his nature had been subsequently divided, and
his character in consequence changed. If this was the
case the rule over the night sky was given over to Yaruwa,
* the coverer.' Later on in Indian mythology Dyaus comes
to signify the sun, but when it does so the word is feminine
THE PRE-VEDIC CREED. . 117
the sun is feminine in Sanskrit and the masculine
Dyaus is still a different being from the sun itself. Essen-
tially, then, we must say that Dyaus was ever to the
Indians the bright upper sky, the sun's home ; but he was
not the sun itself.
Dyaus was evidently one among the greatest, probably
he was once the greatest god of the Indians in the pre-
Yedic age. But in the hymns Dyaus is much neglected.
Scarcely one is addressed exclusively to him, and the
mention of him, when it occurs, is rather incidental than
of the character of actual worship.
Dyaus has a proper companion and helpmeet in the
earth goddess, and she, too, belongs rather to the pre-
Vedic times than to the Vedic. It is so natural to
imagine the heaven and the earth as the two first beings,
the progenitors of all life in the world, that in evecy
system almost they stand at the head of the pantheon.
In a former chapter we saw how the New Zealand story
represented the heaven and the earth Kangi and Papa
they are there called as the begetters of all other living
things, who yet required to be torn apart that their
children might continue to live. This primary embrace
of earth and heaven is what most primitive people would
hit upon to account for the origin of all things. Where-
fore we may believe that far back in the Vedic creed stood
first of all the heaven father, and by his side the earth
mother.
The Yedic earth goddess is Prithivi. Whenever Dyaus
and Prithivi are made the subject of a hymn they are in-
voked together, almost as a conjoint being (Dyavaprithivi) .
In such hymns the ordinary characteristics of Dyaus and
Prithivi are held before our eyes : the two are represented
to us strictly in their phenomenal existence. They have
not the same power of choice and will, nothing of the
strong personality, which belongs to Indra and Agni.
Dyaus produces the rain, and sends down the fertilising
streams ; Prithivi bears on her bosom the immense weight
] 18 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
of the mountains, and from her womb sends forth the lofty
trees. 1
What is specially remarkable in the hymns to Prithivi
is that the singer, even while he is worshipping the earth
goddess, seems to have his thoughts still turned heaven-
wards, still to be thinking of the clouds ^ind of the rain.
It is a peculiarity of the Vedic creed that it is eminently
celestial, and scarcely ever concerned with mundane
things ; and the tendency seems to express itself even in
the worship of the earth goddess. This fact has led
Professor Gubernatis 2 to declare that the original signifi-
cance of Prithivi etymologically 'the large, the ex-
tended' was not the earth, but the heaven, and that
there were two Prithivis, the celestial and the terrestrial,
of which the celestial was the elder. This, I think, we
cannot say. In a former chapter we have seen how easily
divinities who were first known in the terrene days of
belief may get transferred from earth to heaven ; much as
the Assyrian bulls and lions, worshipped no doubt in days
of animal worship, had a pair of wings given them and
were straightway idealised and sent to heaven. I believe
that the great celestial serpents the clouds Ahi and
Vrita, the chief enemies of Indra, were once terrestrial
rivers ; 3 and I believe in the same way that Prithivi, from
being a mere earth goddess, got a place in the sky in order
that she might sit beside her spouse, the heaven god. We
shall see other instances of a transfer of this kind. 4
As Prithivi thus remained a distinct being, and at the
same time lost her connection with the ground, appearing
henceforth rather as the consort of the heaven than as the
goddess of the earth, she became by name distinguishable
from the soil, which last was, in Yedic Sanskrit, known
under the name of Gau. Gau is an older word than
Prithivi, and was itself once the name of the earth goddess
(whence the Greek goddess Gaia). Prithivi was then only
1 Cf. R. V. v. 84. * Letture sopra la M. Ved. pp. 59-64.
See Chapter II. * See Chapter IV.
DYAUS AND PtflTHIVI. 119
one of the epithets of Gau. But as religion changed Gau
sank into insignificance and Prithivi came to the front.
Just so in the Greek mythology Gaia (Ge) was the pure
and simple earth ; Demeter (Ge-meter) was the earth with
something more of personality added on. Ge, in Greek
mythology, continued to be a goddess, but she was charac-
terless ; the force of personality remained with Demeter.
In the Vedic hymns we see Prithivi in her turn losing
worship and losing individuality because the creed has be-
come too celestial for her.
We cannot explain so easily the neglect into which
Dyaus has fallen, which seems the more extraordinary
when we remember how once widely worshipped and how
ancient a divinity he was. Nevertheless the fact remains.
Part of his nature Dyaus passed over to Varuraa, who was
also a personification of the heaven, but most often, I
think, of the heaven at night. Varuna's name signifies
the encompasser or coverer (root var, to cover or conceal) ;
he is the same with the Greek ovpavos. Varuna, however,
did not succeed to the supremacy which Dyaus once
claimed. That, was transferred to Indra.
The raising of Indra to the place of highest god is the
great advance which Vedic religion has made upon the
older proto- Aryan belief. Dyaus is the father of Indra,
just as Kronos is the father of Zeus and Ouranos of
Kronos ; and this alone would lead us to suppose that the
heaven god was the older. 1 Now, however, Dyaus' chief
claim to reverence is through his son.
1 The sonship of Zeus to Kronos is a myth of comparatively recent
birth in Greek mythology, and arises, as Welcker has shown ( Griechische
Gotterlehre, i. 140), merely from a confusion of words. Kronion, which is
the same as Chronion, was at first an epithet applied to Zeus, showing him
as existing through all time not so much ' born of time,' but rather the
4 one of time,' the old one, a common way of speaking of gods (cf . the
Unkulonkulu of the Zulus, the ' old, old ' Wa'inamo'inen of the Kalewala).
When this meaning had been forgotten Zeus became merely the son of
Kronos, and Kronos became a new being. The notion of personifying the
abstract idea time would never have entered the minds of a primitive
people. When Kronos came into being he was endowed with a certain
120 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
Thy father Dyans did the best of things
When he became thy father, Indra, 1
sings one of the Yedic poets. Evidently Indra is acknow-
ledged as a later god, but also a greater than his fore-
runner.
If we succeed in understanding the condition of mind
accessary for that purely natural religion when the
livinity was by name identified with his visible counter-
part the sea or the sky, or whatever it might be we
can realise how, to become so deified, a phenomenon must
be constantly present to the senses; or, if not always
present thus, it must at least recur so regularly and so
often that the notion of its existence is firmly impressed
upon men's thoughts. The sun is not always seen, but he
rises and sets with the most perfect regularity, and in
fine climates his face is rarely hidden by day. He, there-
fore, is fitted to be from the first among the greatest of
the nature gods. Yet even the sun is not, in most my-
thologies, the supreme god ; very often he falls far short of
being so ; and that he does this is owing, in chief measure,
to his disappearance at night. When men's memories
character, and this was really taken from the old heaven god known as
Varurca, Ouranos who, as we have seen, belonged to an age before that
in which Zeus came to be worshipped as a god of storms. In fact, Dyaus'
nature divided in twain ; the heaven side went to Varuwa, the storm side
went to Zeus ; and therefore in the Greek creed Ouranos belonged to a
very early stage of worship, and corresponded almost exactly to the Latin
Saturnus. When Kronos appeared he assumed the character of Ouranos,
who was henceforward almost completely forgotten. The record of the
change, however, is distinctly preserved in the myths ; for the birth of
Zeus from Kronos, the treatment of his children by the latter, &c., almost
exactly reproduce the relative positions of Kronos and Ouranos. There-
fore, knowing as we do that Kronos is of later origin than either Zeus or
Ouranos, we are justified in removing this middle term, and we at once get
back to the birth of Zeus from Ouranos, the jealousy of Zeus entertained
by his father, and the way in which the newer god dispossessed the old.
If, therefore, I speak of the Greeks looking back to the Saturnian time of
their religion (Ch. IV.), I do not mean that there ever was a time when
Kronos was worshipped instead of Zeus, but that the Greeks looked back,
without knowing it, to the older worship of their Ouranos, which really
did precede the cult of their Zeus.
> B. V. iv. 17, 3.
ACTIVE AND PASSIVE GODS. 121
are very short it will fare still worse with phenomena
whose appearance is more uncertain or at longer in-
tervals.
The state of belief which has been characterised as
henotheism, and which consists in worshipping the phe-
nomenon which is immediately present and neglecting
those phenomena which are past, evidently arises imme-
diately out of that still earlier phase of thought (still
earlier and still more akin to fetichism) when the phe-
nomenon to be recognised as divine must be always
present to the senses. Henotheism is, in fact, a kind of
reversion to this state of feeling : it forgets all phenomena
which are absent, and makes a protest against the place
of memory in a creed. For these reasons a storm god (or
god storm) is not likely to have been placed high in the
pantheon during the earliest days of nature worship.
When, however, the divinity and the phenomenon were
not so absolutely identified, when the notion of the former's
possessing a separate existence has begun to creep in.
the god could be thought of without the aid of visible,
presentation. He was still perhaps identified with the
phenomenon in character, but he had now a different name
from it, and so could be contemplated alone. He might
be sitting apart. He might peradventure be sleeping or
upon a journey. And the personality now became more
impressive if the deeds of the god were somewhat
irregular and arbitrary. This is the time for a god such
as the storm god (Indra or Zeus) to rise to power.
We may suppose that in those climates where the
Indian sung his song of praise unlike ours the heavens
were most often seen in their garment of unblemished
blue. Nothing is certainly more divine and impressive
than such a sight at first. 1 But there is withal some-
1 I anticipate here some objection on the part of the acute reader.
'Such a phrase as at first,' he will say, < imagines man awakening suddenly
into the world, opening his eyes upon its wonders, and at once falling to
the invention of a mythology grounded upon these first impressions. But
122 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
thing monotonous about it. This god has not his chang-
ing fits, his passion and his kindness. He is too serene
to be very ardently loved or feared, for that eternal calm
can have small sympathy with the shorf, and troubled life
of man. With Indra it is very different. He is the god
of storms ; he is the sky, but the sky of clouds and rain
and lightning. His coining is rare, but it is terrible.
Sometimes, doubtless, Indra seems to be worshipped only
when he is present and seen. But throughout the whole
Yedic series we see the awe which he inspires when
he does come ; in them we seem to behold the very
flash of his arrows and to hear the reverberation of his
thunder.
I think that the evidences of a transfer of worship
from the older sky god to Indra are very clear in the
Vedic poems. There is a kind of rivalry between the two ;
or when Indra's contest is not with Dyaus it is with Yaruna
(ovpavos) . It is acknowledged by Yedic scholars l that
Yaruna was worshipped before Indra, and Yaruna is, in
one aspect, only another name for the older Dyaus. The
following hymn is a record of the rivalry between Indra
and Yarmia. The poet makes them both uphold their
such an imagination is quite inconsistent with the slow development of
human faculties. There is nothing shorter lived in the human thought
than the sense of wonder.' This last statement is, in reality, only par-
tially true. The sudden sense of wonder soon fades, but there is a slow
abiding sense which never leaves human nature, and which, if it did desert
mankind, would carry away with it all his power of poetry and all his
power of belief. Wherefore the at first of the worship of the sky must be
taken to mean that period during which man, having passed away from
fetichism, had not yet advanced beyond it far enough to be able to worship
any god who was not a constantly present phenomenon. The gradual
fading of the influence of the sky on belief is coeval with the slow de-
velopment of the notion of a being, to some extent, apart from phenomena.
It seems to us possible in a short time to grow familiar with and weary of
any particular phenomenon, because we can now run rapidly back through
the stage of thought which human nature has taken ages to make com-
plete. In this respect it was with Belief as it was with Reason : the
simplest and most obvious deductions which a child makes now in a few
hours took mankind centuries to make for the first time.
1 By Roth and by Gubernatis (Lettitre, &c., 189).
KIVALRY BETWEEN VARUA^ AND INDRA. 123
claims to worship, and then he himself sums up between
them, preferring the active and warlike god :
VARUXA SPEAKS. !
I am the king, to me belongetli rule,
I the life-giver of the heavenly host ;
The gods obey the bidding of Varuna,
I am the refuge of the human kind.
I am, Indra, Varuwa, and mine are
The deep wide pair of worlds, the earth and heaven ;
Like a wise artist, made I all things living ;
The heaven and the earth, I them sustain.
INDRA SPEAKS.
On me do call all men, the rich in horses,
Who through the hurry of the battle go ;
I sow the dreadful slaughter there ; I, Indra,
In my great might stir up the dust of combat.
This have I done ; the might of all the immortals
Restraineth never me, nor shall restrain.
THE POET SPEAKS.
That this thou dost, know all men among mortals ;
This to Varuwa makest thou known, ruler.
Indra, in thee we praise the demon slayer,
Through whom the pent-up streams are free to flow.
Such a change as that from Dyaus or Yarutia to Indra
is incidental to the transition from nature worship to the
personal god. That it is so is shown by the fact that
changes, identical in significance, have been made by
other peoples of the Indo-European family. All have
1 R. V. iv. 42. Vanma is the coverer, from root var (to cover, enclose,
keep). Cf. Skr. varana, Zend varena, covering. This is very suitable for
the night sky, and like that image of Lady Macbeth's
' Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold 1 " '
124 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
abandoned Dyaus. The Teutons took in his place Wuotan
or Odhinn, who is first of all a god of storm. The Greeks
and Romans kept the name of the older sky god Zeus
Dyaus but they modified his nature in the same direction
in which Indians and Germans changed the natures of
their divinities. Dyaus meant originally the bright
heaven ; Zeus was as essentially a god of thunder and of
rain vs^sX^spsra^ the cloud-collector. He, and Jove
too, corresponded as to their natures almost exactly with
Indra.
Yet the unmoved, all-embracing heaven better realises
some ideals of a divinity than these fitful storm-gods do ;
and if a people pass from the one to the other it will not
be without some loss. In its high moods the fancy will look
back to former days, when the gods were of a larger pattern
than those of to-day. Men will tell of some past Saturnian
reign when lives were longer and not so eager and bitter
as they have become, when their forefathers enjoyed the
fruits of earth without strife and labour. For, after all,
the sky of clouds is the lower sky. The Greeks, we know,
made a distinction between arjp and aWrjp, the lower and
the upper air. Dyaus, when he grew to be Zeus, did in
reality sink from the latter to the former : he descended
to the cloud regions. According to one theory of ety-
mology, Indra expresses the same change in his very
name. 1
The world over which the cloudy Indra ruled was the
world of farm and valley and low fertile pastures ; but the
mountaineer, whose way led him to higher ranges and on
to the great peak of the Himalayas, saw, as he climbed
upwards, that he had passed the heaven of rain and
thunder. The clouds, which used to seem so far overhead,
were now stretched beneath his feet like a carpet. The
storm flashed, but he was beyond its reach ; yet still, far as
1 This etymology is proposed by Gubernatis (Letture, &c., p. 188). I
am, I confess, inclined to look upon the derivation given with great sus-
picion, but I will not venture to pronounce positively against it.
THE UPPER AND THE LOWER HEAVEN. 125
ever above him, spread the highest vault of heaven, whence
shone the sun, or on him looked the everlasting stars.
Wherefore the earlier associations never quite lost their
hold, and the sky god asserted again and again his para-
mount influence upon men's imagination. As we are at
present dealing only with Indian mythology, it is enough
to notice how in time, in the Brahmin creed, Indra suc-
ceeded to the complete nature of Dyaus ; while his active
powers, along with his thunderbolts and lightning flash,
were taken from him and given to a younger divinity
namely, to Vishnu. Vishnu is the Brahmin saviour, the
incarnate god.
In truth, there is in this rivalry between Dyaus and
Indra an element which is universal and ingrained in the
religious instinct. At first, in such early times as these
Vedic ones, the instinctive feeling is not consciously ex-
pressed, but expressed unconsciously by these changes of
creed. We can now recognise the counter- workings of this
instinct as independent of any particular phase of belief,
as belonging not to this period specially, but to all time.
The contest between the heaven and the storm gods is an
expression of two diverse tendencies of the human mind
when dealing with religious ideas. There is first an im-
pulse upward, a desire to press the thoughts continually
forward in an effort to idealise the Godhead; but by
exalting or seeming to exalt Him to the highest regions
of abstraction, this tendency is likely to rob the Deity of
all fellowship with man, and man of all claims upon His
sympathy and love. Then comes in the second impulse,
which often at one stroke brings down the god as near as
possible to the level of mankind, leaving him at the last
no better than a demi-god or superior kind of man. One
we may call the metaphysical or the religious, the other
the mythological impulse ; and we shall never rightly
understand the history of religion until we have learned to
recognise these two streams of tendency interpenetrating
every system.
126 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF,
Indra, then, once rose to a supreme place because he
was more active and changeful than Dyaus, and better
satisfied those instincts which desire to see the deity like
mankind. Soon he assumed the qualities and title which
had belonged to his father, and clothed himself with the
character befitting a Supreme God. In the Vedic creed,
such as we see it, Dyaus has almost 'altogether faded away.
Indra there represents the ideal godhead : he is the Father
and the Supreme One, the god to whom all highest wor-
ship turns.
It results from this that in the Vedic hymns Indra has
to a great extent put off his mythological nature, in order
to clothe himself more completely with the majesty of
divinity. The instinct of worship is devoted to him ; the
story-telling parts of the creed are reserved for lesser
gods. Of Indra's deeds we shall have something to say
hereafter; but there is not very much variety in them.
On the other hand, we can have 110 difficulty in allowing
that he, among all the gods of the Vedic Indian, exercised
the deepest influence on belief. Next to Indra stood Agni.
To say that among the most genuine and ancient hymns
of the Rig Veda about 265 are addressed to Indra, 233
to Agni, while no other god can lay claim to more than a
quarter of this latter number, 1 is enough to show in what
direction, towards what parts of nature, the religious
thought of these Aryas turned. We have a further wit-
ness to the supremacy of Indra and Agni in the fact that
nine out of the ten books of the Eig Veda begin with a
series of hymns addressed to them, as though their wor-
ship must precede all other. The worship of Indra is the
central feature of Vedic mythology. As Dyaus has quite
resigned his throne before the beginning of the Vedas,
Indra must be looked upon in every way as the supreme
1 Soma, indeed, can apparently do so ; for the whole of one book (the
ninth) is devoted to him. But, in fact, the hymns of this book are all of a
ritualistic character : they are concerned with the ceremonies of worship in
which Soma plays so important a part, But they are not written distinctly
in praise of the Indian Bacchus.
THE MIGHT OF INDEA. 127
god. He is still a representative of the storm ; but as
he is also the highest god, it is needful that he should be
something more than this. He has already taken upon
himself a great part of the nature of the older god of
heaven. 'The might of all the immortals,' as we have
seen, 'restrains him never.'
It was the power of the god which was most wor-
shipped. He might be counted on for help as the special
god of the Aryas, 1 just as Jehovah was the special god of
the children of Israel. In a fine passage, which breathes
the spirit of the Hebrew psalm, we are told how ' he
shakes the heaven and the earth as the hem of his
garment.' 2 Indra is often called upon, as Jehovah is, to
show his strength and to confound those who have dared
to doubt his supremacy ; for here in India, as in Palestine,
* the wicked saith in his heart, There is no god.'
INDRA SPEAKS.
I come with might before thee, stepping first,
And behind me move all the heavenly powers.
THE POET SPEAKS.
If thou, Indra, wilt my lot bestow,
A hero's part dost thou perform with me.
To thee the holy drink I offer first ;
Thy portion here is laid, thy soma brewed.
Be, while I righteous am, to me a friend ;
So shall we slay of foemen many a one.
Ye who desire blessings, bring your hymn
To Indra ; for the true is always true.
* There is no Indra,' many say ; 'who ever
Has seen him ? Why should we his praise proclaim ? '
INDRA SPEAKS.
I am here, singer ; look on me ; here stand I.
In might all other beings I o'erpass.
Thy holy service still my strength renews,
And thereby smiting, all things smite I down.
1 R. V. vi. 18, 3. 2 Ibid. i. 37, 6.
128 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
And as on heaven's height I sat alone,
To me thy offering and thy prayer rose np.
Then spake my soul this word within himself:
' My votaries and their children call upon me.' !
The enemies against whom Indra fights are not, how-
ever, generally speaking, earthly foes. I have heard critics
speaking from the outside object to Vedic scholars the
improbability that any people would have their thoughts
constantly set to observe the heavenly phenomena and to
sing of them. And I must confess that, at the time I read
these criticisms, my prejudices or prejudgments went
altogether with the critics. But such predispositions must
give way to fact. We cannot determine -beforehand what
it is likely that a people will or will not think or believe. 2
And it is quite certain that almost all the Yedic hymns
are concerned with the skyey influences, with the heaven,
with day and night, with the sun, with morning and
evening twilight, with the clouds and with the wind. The
purely devotional parts of the Ii3 r mns have a certain same-
ness ; for the Vedic religion has already neared the con-
ception of a single ideal god. So long as we are concerned
with what Indra is we find that epithets are too few to
express his greatness and the many sides of his character ;
but we find also that the same expression, or nearly the
same, may be used of other gods, as of Agni or of Varuwa
or Mitra.
When we pass beyond the inward being and come to
the record of the deeds which Indra has done (not those
he is asked to do), we are face to face once more with the
fresh world of nature. Treated in this way, no longer
devotionally but historically, the nature of Indra is
limited to the phenomena of storm. He kills the enemy, ,
1 R. V. viii. 89. I have followed here, as in all other cases, the trans-
lation of Grassmann ; Ludwig gives a somewhat different complexion to
this dialogue.
2 See what Schoolcraft says concerning the minute attention paid by
the Algic tribes to the phenomena of the sky, Algic Res. p. 48.
THE ENEMIES OF INDRA. 129
it is true ; lie breaks down his strong citadel ; he destroys
his high hills. But who is this enemy ? He is Witra ;
he is Ahi, the serpent. ' Him the god struck with Indra-
might, and set free the all-gleaming water for the use of
men.' l What the serpent has done is to conceal the
waters of fruitfulness which Indra sets free. The hills
which Indra destroys are the mountains of ambara
'the shadowy cloud-hill of tfainbara ' 2 very evidently the
clouds themselves. The one great action of the god,
which is referred to again and again and constantly
prayed for, is the bringing the thunderstorm, and with it
the desired rain.
In reading the description of these conflicts, we detect
a slight confusion of mind on the part of the authors of the
hymns. This confusion arises from Indra's being in a
degree abstracted from those physical phenomena which,
are the substance of his nature ; so that the same pheno-
mena can be presented again to the imagination, and in a
new light. Thus, though there can be no doubt that the
great god is himself the storm, or still more strictly the
stormy sky, and though this idea of course includes all
the separate parts of the storm the black clouds, for
example, which hold in their bosoms the lightning or^
the rain still it is quite possible to regard these parts as
separate entities. The clouds may be the servants and
the companions of Indra. When they appear, in that
aspect they are the Maruts, his band of warriors. Or the
clouds may be enemies of the god. The darkness which
1 i. 165, 8. The name Vritra is, I believe, from the same root, var (or
vri), as Varuna. Possibly, therefore, it was originally only the darkness.
This reappearance of one central idea (shown in root) in two forms should
be compared with the identity of Thorr and Thrymr (Ch. VII.)
2 ii. 24. <Sambara ( = samvara), from am and vri, is a parallel example. It
had not originally an evil significance, only meaning he who covers up or
contains the source of abundance (s"am and samba> happiness ; but .same, to
collect). This is an epithet for the cloud. But when ambara grew into
an dpponent of Indra, the name was construed to mean the concealer, or
secreter, or thief of wealth and happiness.
K
130 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
follows their spreading over the heavens seems to proclaim
them powers of evil.
In this way the clouds become those deadly serpents,
Ahi and Yritra ; and now, behold ! Indra has sent his flash
and they are dissolved in rain. This water, long desired,
expected long, they have concealed in their folds or coils ;
and it is Indra who sets it free. Strong with his soma
drink, he hurls his bolt and strikes to atoms the stream -
concealing dragon. 1 In this aspect, therefore, the clouds
are very appropriately likened to Yritra, or to Ahi, or to
the mountains of $ambara.
Thus the storm and the constituents of the storm
are at once Indra and his companions, the Maruts,
and also che enemies of Indra. There is nothing more
common in mythology than such a double aspect of a
natural phenomenon, though at the same time there is
nothing more puzzling to the student, nor nothing which
seems to give a better weapon to the sarcasm of the
sceptic in comparative mythology, who accuses us of
making ' anything out of anything ' when we interpret
myths in this way. Zeus is a storm god scarcely less than
Indra is; but beings of the storm also are the Cyclops and
(possibly) the Gorgon. Or if Medusa be, as I hold, the
moon, so too is the goddess Artemis. The eye of the Cyclops
is the sun ; and yet the sun is not the less greatest and most
beneficent of gods. It is the same in the mythology of
the Teutons. Thorr, the god, is the wielder of the thunder-
bolt ; but one of Thorr's great enemies, the giant Thrymr,
is the thunder likewise. The sun is Balder, the Beautiful,
brightest and best of the .ZEsir ; or it is the eye of Odhinn,
which the god threw into Mini's well ; or else it is the
head of the giant Mimr himself, which Odhiun cut off.
Indra being promoted to be the supreme one among
the gods, Agni takes the place next to him, and becomes
the messenger between heaven and earth. How well and
how consistently with his elemental nature he fills this posi-
1 P-. V. ii. 19.
INDRA AND AGNL 131
tion we have already seen. Yet it is true that the being
who in most mythologies most Aryan mythologies, at any
ra te is the human-like god and the friend of man is not
the fire, but rather the sun. He is Apollo or Heracles,
Thorr or Balder. The promotion of Agni to this place
must therefore be reckoned a peculiarity of the Vedic
religion, but it is one which it is more needful to point
out than to attempt any elaborate explanation of the
causes of it. Indeed, in all such cases the record of the fact
itself is what we most want, not theories of how this fact
came to be theories which, as a kind of prophecies after
the event, are very easy to fabricate. As the thing was so,
we easily see that it would suggest a tone of thought in
conformity with the articles of belief. It is easy to
imagine the frame of mind which should choose an Indra
for the supreme divinity rather than a Dyaus, or an Agni
next to him rather than an Apollo or a Balder. But the
important thing to notice is that the inclination was pre-
sent among these particular people and at this particular
time.
The human god is he about whom myths oftenest arise,
and whose character is in consequence more varied than
the character of the Highest. This rule is illustrated in
the case of Agni, of whose many sided nature we have
already noted the most important features. Twice born,
once in the cloud and once again in the wood ; descending
from heaven in the lightning, and rising up again from the
altar or the funeral pyre^ Agni was, while on earth, always
at the service of man, watching over him in the house.
He was the eternal opposite of man's great enemy, the
darkness ; he was the chief protection against that and
its multitudinous terrors. We cannot now realise the
horror which men anciently felt of the dark, of its dangers
from wild beasts, of the still greater spiritual dangers to
which at night-time they felt themselves exposed. At night
ranged abroad those evil ones, those unseen deadly foes
who (in the words of one Yedic hymn) ' strike with hidden
K 2
132 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
but victorious powers.' Therefore Agni is never allowed
utterly to leave the worshipper : the house fire never goes
out. 1 This was the rule once among all the nations of the
Indo-European family ; but before historic times it had
been more or less abandoned by most, and was preserved
in its strictness only by Indians and Persians.
In other Indo-European creeds those at least of Greek
and Roman and Teuton 2 we never find the worship of
the fire in its intensity, only the traces of what it has been.
In Hestia and Yesta it is not the whole character of Agni
that is presented to us, but only the house fire generalised
or epitomised as a great state fire. 3 Hestia is called by
the Homeric hymnist the most revered of goddesses. 4 At
Olympia, Pausanias tells us, the first sacrifices were made
to her. 5 This surviving custom witnesses to the decay of
a higher kind of worship, as does the importance attached
to the maintenance of the fire of Yesta in Rome, 6 and to
the purity of the vestal virgins, and so forth.
In Germany traces of the same kind of fire ritual are
found, but diminished to a small compass. At the present
day popular superstition forbids the letting out of the fire
on the hearth during certain sacred nights Christmas
Eve, for example, New Year's Eve, or, according to some,
for all the nights of the ' Twelve Days.' ( If the fire goes
out on the hearth the money goes out of the coffer.' 7 And,
1 Concerning the laws and customs which have been founded upon the
need of this perpetual house fire, see, among many other writers, F. de
Coulange's Cite Antique. It is doubtful whether the classic Vesta and
Hestia are from the root vas, to shine, or from vas, to dwell (see Zeitsch.
f. v. Spr. xvi. 160). May it not be from both, and the identity of these
two roots witness to the importance of the house fire to the house ? No
man could dwell without a house fire.
2 The fire god, Agni, retained his name only among the Slavonic
branch of the Aryan race.
3 See above on root meaning of Vesta and Hestia.
4 Hymn, in Aph. 18, 22.
5 v. 14, 5. See also Plato, Leges, ix. 2. Let us add that in Crete her
name was pronounced in the solemn oath before that of Zeus Cretagenes.
6 These perpetual fires were not unknown in Greece. There was one
kept up, for example, at Mantinea.
Wnttke, Dcutselier Volksaberglaube, pp. 63, 66, &c.
INDO-EUROPEAN FIRE WORSHIP. 133
again, for a public recognition of the same duties we have
the custom of lighting bonfires on the hills on great days
of the heathen calendar the Easter or Ostara fire, the fire
on Walpurgisnacht (May-day* Eve), and the Johannisf euer
(St. John's Day fire), which was more anciently the bale-
fire of Balder. 1
The ritual of the fire is, in all these cases, but a faint
shadow of what among the Indo-European races generally
it had once been. Accordingly, the beings who are sup-
posed to represent Agiii represent but a small part of the
great personality of the fire god. Hestia or Vesta show
him as the house fire, the flame which has descended to
live on earth. Hephaestus and Vulcan show him in a still
meaner guise, as the forger's fire : this is the same cha-
racter in which Agni is called in the Vedas Twashtar, the
fabricator. In such a guise as Hephaestus or Vulcan the
fire god has sunk almost below the level of humanity ; for
he is a lame, deformed being, the laughing-stock of the
Olympians. 2 Nevertheless this lameness and deformity
are not themselves of recent origin, but have their place
in the character of Agni, and are associated with some of
the most beautiful myths concerning him. Of these, how-
ever, I cannot speak now. What is peculiar to Hephaestus
and Vulcan is that they present this side only and forget
the higher ones.
It is evident that the novelty and wonder of fire had
been lost sight of by the Greeks and Eomans and Teutons.
Fire had become an ordinary thing to them, and so they
were no longer in eager search for its presence throughout
the realm of nature. It is for some such reason as this
1 See Chapters VIII., X.
2 As for the northern Loki, he presents the fire in its worst aspect, a
being no longer divine, but one who never ceases to work evil against the
jEsir (Edda Snorra, D. 49). Nevertheless that Loki had not originally
this evil nature is witnessed by the Eddaic history itself. In a study on
the ' Mythology of the Eddas ' (Trs. Hoy. Soc. of Literature, vol. xii.), I
have discussed at some length the gradual deterioration of Loki, and
shown (I think the importance of the place he once held.
134 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
that, in the later creeds, the earthly fire is quite dissociated
from the" heavenly one. With Agni it was very different :
from his heavenly birth he drew all the greatness of his
character. The god who was ^o near to man was yet seen
far away, not in the lightning only, but in the red of
morning. The Indian saw in the dawn a sort of picture
or allegory, if I may so call it, of the total universe, and
of the limitless extent of time and space. The Vedic
psalmist called the place of the sun's rising Aditi, i the
boundless ; ' for as he looked through the long layers of
level cloud he was swayed by the sense of endless space
that sort of mental vertigo which seizes us sometimes when
we, too, gaze either upon the endless ranges of cloud on
the horizon or upward among the vista of the stars.
Through all the regions of morning and evening bright-
ness the worshipper saw Agni shining, and so he called
him the son of Aditi, the boundless one.
Side by side, then, stood these two contradictory
notions Agni, the endlessly extending vista of red clouds
at sun-rising or sun-setting, and Agni born from the
rubbing of two smaj] sticks. Between the two, from one
to the other, extends the vast pantheistic nature of the
god. And yet to this external being we must add some-
thing more. Agni is also the unseen god, the internal
fire ; he is the kiudler of all passionate longings, of inspi-
ration, of the intoxication of thought and joy, of anger
and the burning desire, of revenge.
Indra and Agni represent upon the whole, as has been
said, the strongly religious side of Indo-Aryan belief, as
opposed to the lighter mythological aspect of it. It
belongs to the scheme of these chapters to pass slightly
over this religious phase, which touches too closely upon
the later ethical development of belief. It is not our
object to discover what kind of emotion the gods called
forth from their votaries so much as what was the outward
aspect in which imagination saw the gods. Indra and
Agni, therefore, cannot occupy a place in our enquiries
AGNI AS A HERO. 135
proportionate to the place which they held in the creed of
the Indian.
Agni, however, has many claims upon our attention
on the heroic side. Being so human in some aspects of
him, he was not always kept at the greatest heights of
adoration, but descended often to the heroic level, and in
doing so became the subject of divers myths and stories.
His most striking appearance in this guise is that to
which reference has been already made, his great act of
parricide, which was acknowledged even by the singer to
be scarcely becoming a god, but concerning the performance
of which no doubt unfortunately could be raised. I will
not assert that this notion contains in it the germ of the
story related of so many heroes Cyrus, CEdipus, Perseus,
Orestes, Romulus, and others namely, that, voluntarily
or by accident, they have been guilty of this crime of
parricide ; but I think it possible that these personages
may have had some connection with Agni, and that their
story may be in part founded on the Agni myth. How-
ever, they are certainly not immediate children of the
fire god.
Prometheus, on the other hand, is a direct descendant
of the fire god. He was once not improbably the actual
embodiment of the fire drill; but to a mythology not
quite so literal he became an embodiment of fire, or the
fire god. Fire has its evil and destructive as well as its
beneficent aspect, and this bad side of the element is
embodied in the Titan Prometheus. Though not a parri-
cide, he is the foe of father Zeus ; and for his wickedness
he is punished. This, at least, I take to be the earlier
legend ; for it is one in which Prometheus closely resembles
the Scandinavian fire god, Loki, who is also the enemy of
the gods, and who, for his wickedness, is chained upon a
rock till the day of doom. Some returning thought of the
goodness of fire and its benefits has again changed the
Greek story, and restored the Titan by making him a
martyr to his love of human kind and a victim of the
136 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
jealousy of the Olympians. In the story, therefore, of
Prometheus stealing fire from heaven, and giving it to
man, we have unquestionably the trace of an old Aryan
myth, which gave a similar part to Agni. This story
placed the fire god in opposition to some supreme being
in the Indian pantheon may be to Indra or Dyaus. And
Agni was punished for his temerity. Perhaps he was
flung from heaven as Hephaestus was, and as, we know,
the fire itself is often flung. Perhaps he was chained to
a rock as Prometheus and Loki were chained.
From Agni and Indra we pass to gods less exalted in
the Vedic ritual, less near to realising the ideal of a god-
head, but yet with individualities of their own. There is,
it cannot be denied, a certain indistinctness about the
celestial phenomena with which we are dealing in Yedic
mythology, as compared with those terrestrial fetich gods
which we discussed in the last chapter. But this seems
not unnatural when we consider that we have reached a
less material and a more imaginative region than we were
in before. Moreover, in the Vedas we are not even in the
region of pure phenomena worship, but in an intermediate
state between that and the cult of gods who have the
nature of man.
As the worshipped river grows shadowy and shapeless
in the mist- like apsara, ' the formless one,' so the nature
gods, in their turn, before they emerge again as human
beings, become first the pale semblances of what they once
were ; while they are, at the same time, the faint fore-
shadowings of what they will be, they are the phantoms of
human kind. They are no longer things ; they are not even
pure phenomena ; they are not beings with completely human
natures ; and so they hover in a middle state, and hang,
like the coflin of the Prophet, suspended between heaven
and earth. Take the sun god, for example. He was once,
it is certain, merely the bright disk which travels up
heaven's arch. But in the Vedas he is no longer this
NATURE GODS GROWN SHADOWY. 137
only ; the disk itself may be the wheel of his chariot. The
sun god (Suryas) comes ' dragging his wheel.' l The sun
god is here something unseen and imagined, but he is not
yet humanised. Sometimes he is called a bull, sometimes
a bird ; 2 but it is not meant that he is really a bull or a
bird. Still he is as much like these things as he is like a
man. He is the great ruler of the day, the all-powerful,
the creator as it sometimes seems of all the world. (For
does not the world at his call become visible, and come out
of darkness which is nothingness ?) Yet for all his great-
ness the sun god has not such a free will as man has ; he
cannot rule and act in any way he chooses. He is com-
pelled to follow his daily round ; he * travels upon change-
less paths.' In one word, all his being is still united
to the phenomenon which gives him his name, and which
is to mankind his outward show.
It is essentially the same with the other divine parts
of nature as it is with this particular one, the sun ; the
morning goddess is not the simple dawn, though she must
be in all things like the dawn. The evening goddess
must be like evening ; the storm and fire gods must be
like storm and fire. But all these things are seen through
a medium of imagination, and not in the prosaic aspect
of mere fact.
In no mythic poetry are we lifted up to a higher region
of imagination than we are in the Yedas. It might seem
as if such flights were too airy and unreal to have been
made by genuine belief ; and they would be so, perhaps,
were it not that they start from the firm ground of a more
primitive creed, to which the new beliefs are still partly
tied. If a visible thing is no longer worshipped in them,
still the divine being is so near the thing the phenomenon
in all his ways, that the certainty which attaches to
what the eye can actually see and the ear detect becomes
his by inheritance. The worshipper was himself scarcely
R. V. vii. 63. 2 Cf. x. 177.
138 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
yet conscious of the distinction to be made between Indra
and the storm, Ushas and the dawn, Suryas and the disk
of the sun.
But it is harder still for us to understand such a state
of belief than it was for men of that time to create it,
seeing how much we have lost in these latter years all our
sense of the mystery and wonder of nature. Fetichisru
appears to us but senseless magic when we cannot make
the effort of imagination required to understand how the
lifeless things which it chose for its gods were once not
lifeless at all. The nature worship which followed fetich-
ism will seem still more extravagant until we realise some
part of the awe and splendour which were associated with
natural phenomena, and which, by a necessary reaction,
give to these vague appearances a character and being.
Turning now from the strictly religious side of Yedism,
and from the beings who best represent that, we come
first to two who stand next in majesty to Indra and Agni,
and next to them receive the greatest meed of praise in
the hymns. We want all the aid which imagination can
lend us to understand fully the characters of Mitra and
Yanma.
These gods are sometimes invoked separately, but far
more often together, combined, in fact, into one being,
Mitra- Yairma. When thus combined they become quite
different beings from what they are when single, and it is
in this combination that the peculiar refinement and diffi-
culty in the conception of Mitra and Yaruwa has to be
brought out.
Yariwa is properly the sky, meaning, as this word does,
the coverer, the concealer, and becoming, as it becomes
in Greek, ovpavos. Yanma is not, however, the same as
Dyaus, the bright heaven ; it is rather the sky of night,
and as such the god Yaruwa should be thought of when
he stands alone. By himself, again, Mitra seems to be the
sun ; such a nature is implied in the root of the name
mid, 'to grow warm' and also in an epithet which be-
VAK1LZVA AND MITRA. 139
longs peculiarly to him, ' the friend ; ' for the sun god in
all Aryan creeds is, in an especial sense, the friend of
man. 1 Mitra, moreover, has his counterpart in another
Aryan system, namely, in the Iranian. Mithras of the
Persians was, to all seeming, a solar deity. But then, as
the sun is so often called the eye of Mitra and Varuwa, 2
it is clear that when the two are joined Mitra cannot any
longer be the sun. Now in the Norse mythology the sun
is the eye of Odhinn, but in this case Odhinn is the heaven.
We are justified, then, in saying that, joined together,
Mitra and Vanma likewise express some aspect of the
heaven. They cannot be absolutely the same thing ; they
are, then, two heavens, the bright and warm and the dark
and concealing.
Let us note, again, that Mitra and Varuna are in a
special sense the sons of Aditi, ' the boundless,' the limit-
less vista of clouds which we see at sunrise. There is a
third Aditya associated with these two Aryaman. He
has no existence by himself, and seems to be brought in
for the sake of making up an orthodox trilogy, 3
In their fullest and most transcendental sense, then,
Mitra and Varuna, the day and night sky, may be taken
for personifications of day and night. When combined
into one being, Mitra- Varuna, they are the image of the
union of day and night that is to say, of the morning.
But the presentation of the ideas of morning and evening
the two are generally coupled together to the mind
are very various, and these take in mythology many dif-
ferent shapes.
1 In the Vedic creed, however, we must say that the sun god is this
next after Agni.
2 R. V. i. 50, 6 ; 115, 1 and 5 ; vii. 63, 1 ; x. 37, 1. Sometimes of Mitra,
Varuna, and Agni, i. 115, 1.
3 We may compare these three with the curious trilogy who are intro-
duced at the opening of the Younger Edda namely, Har, ' the high ; ' Jaf n-
har, ' the equally high ; ' and ThriSi, ' the third.' A being called Thrifti could
never have a separate existence apart from the other two. His very name
shows why he was invented. In like manner Mitra and Varuna are
evidently an equal pair, and Aryaman is Thridi, the third.
140 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, noticing a dispute between two
learned philologists Max Miiller and Adelbert Kuhn.
concerning the nature of the Vedic Sarama (which the one
authority claims as the dawn", and the other as the wind),
remarks upon the improbability of so unreal a phenomenon
as the dawn being made into a god. He has his own
explanation of the worship of the dawn, and although that
is a thousandfold harder to maintain in face of the facts
of mythology, we may admit the force of the objections to
another's theory. The truth, as I fancy, is that the original
god or goddess is not the dawn, but rather the wind of
morning which ushers in the light, and which, blowing
upon the face of the sleeper and awakening him so, may
well seem the real messenger of day. In some places
these morning breezes are very regular, and not less con-
stant are those which accompany the sunset. Curtius, in
the opening chapter of his e History of Greece,' gives a
beautiful picture of the regularity of the winds which
govern the .ZEgsean. Every morning a breeze arises from
the coasts of Thrace and blows all day southward; at
evening it goes down, and for awhile the sea is calm.
Then almost imperceptibly a gentle wind arises from the
south. We need not wonder if in early times the ideas
of morn and even are merged in the notions of the wind
at sunrise and sun-setting, and that they only after awhile
became abstracted. Therefore Sarama may be the wind
and yet the dawn.
There may be more or less of idealism, less or more of
simple sensation, intermingled in the conceptions of the
dawn and of the sunset. The most material sense is that
of the winds of morning and evening. These in the
simplest form Mitra . and Varurza are not. But that in a
more general way Mitra and Varuna represent the horizons
of morning and evening, or the morning and evening them-
selves, I do not doubt.
Here is one indication. Mitra and Vanma are to be
worshipped morning, noon, and evening ; and Aryaman is
MOEN AND EVENING. 141
but the ' third,' the supplement of their being ; so we may
say that Mitra, Varima, and Aryaman are to be worshipped
morning, noon, and evening. Aryaman would thus cor-
respond to the midday, Mitra and Varu?ia to the morning
and evening. Again and this is a stronger indication of
the natures of Mitra and Varuna Agni, says the Athar-
vaveda, in the morning is Mitra, in the evening (or at night)
is Varwia. Now Agni, as we have seen, is always present
in the clouds of sunrise and sunset : therefore to say that
in the morning he is Mitra, is to say that the red of dawn
is Mitra ; that he is Variwa in the evening means that
the red of evening is Varwia. There being two reds, two
meeting-places of the day and the night skies accounts
for the combination of Mitra and Varuwa into one Mitra-
Varuw-a.
I know that this attempt to fix for a moment the
shifting vane of popular belief cannot but create confusion
in the mind of the reader. The weathercock cannot be
held steady. But though it is always turning it never
shifts far from the normal point. I have but sought to
register each of these, rapid changes. Let us now free
our thoughts from this analysis. We have to picture
Varuraa and Mitra as a mighty Pair not, as I have said,
human and yet not pure phenomenal whose presence is
felt about the time when the division of the ' two worlds,'
the sky and earth, first becomes visible. This is all the
singer knows. He himself does not analyse and register
his thought. At the dim hour of twilight, before the sun
appears, he is aware of a mighty presence. In the
morning, so he tells us, when the sun's horses are being
unloosed, and while the thousand lights of the night
heaven are still to be seen, he catches sight of the princely
pair, the noblest of beings. 1 ( Heaven nor day, nor
streams nor spirits, have not attained your godhead, your
greatness. 3 2
1 Bead, for example, E. V. v. 62.
a Or, more literally, 'wealth'- (R. V. i. 151, 9).
142 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
For Mitra and Varutta, then, the singer the chorus
of singers and of priests stands watching before the
day break. Ere the actual Dawn herself, the goddess
Ushas, opens all her treasures, or, the sun appears, these
mystic Twain will approach, going together side by side
through heaven ; l ' possessors of three realms of air,'
' lords of the dew.' 2 They are coming ; and now we hear
the chorus rising in the still twilight. 3
If at thy rising, sun, thou shalt discover
Us blameless to the twain Varuwa, Mitra,
Then, Aditi, we singers stand in favour
With all the gods, and with thee, Aryaman.
Now fco the twofold world, Varuwa, Mitra,
Rises the sun god, gazing upon men,
Guardian of those who stay and those who wander,
Guardian of right and wrong among mankind.
From his high seat seven steeds with rein he governs,
Who bright anointed 4 him, the Light God bear.
Unto your throne, both loving, he approaches,
Summoning all things as his sheep the shepherd.
Up now have climbed your mead-besprinkled horses :
The sun god mounted up the flood of light.
The three Adityas made smooth his journey,'
Varuwa, Mitra, Aryaman, in concert.
For these are the avengers of much evil,
Varuwa, Mitra, Aryaman, together.
And in the house they cherish holy laws,
The faithful sons of Aditi, and strong.
1 R. V. i. 136, 3.' 2 R. V. v. 69; ii. 41, 6.
3 R. V. vii. 60. The meaning of the first verse is somewhat obscured
by the fact of its containing three vocatives, in the desire of the poet to
include many divinities within one canticle. The first line is addressed
to the sun by anticipation, for he has not yet risen. The third speaks to
Aditi or to the Adityas, Varuwa and Mitra. Line four includes Aryaman
in the address.
4 Literally butter dripping.'
HYMX TO VARILYA AND MITRA. 143
These are not to deceive, Varmia, Mitra.
The fool also shall they correct in wisdom ;
Good heart and knowledge giving to the righteous
Upon his way, and from 'oppression freeing.
As lively watchers of the heaven and earth,
As wise ones bear they safe the erring mortal.
(In every river is there not some ford ?)
And they can hold ns up in our affliction.
A sure, well-guarded shelter to the Sudas
Give Aditi and Mitra and Varmza,
Guarding their children, and their children's children.
Keep far from us thy wrath divine, Strong One.
The sun is but the eye of Mitra and Varu/ia ; and yet
they, like the sun, move for^ever upon fixed paths; they
will have their way made straight through heaven. 1
Wherefore, seeing that right is but straight, they who
move upon a straight road as Mitra and Varuna do, or as
Surya, the sun god, does, are likewise the lovers of justice
and of fixed law. * The lords of right and brightness,' 2
one poet calls Mitra and Yaruna ; and in the first
character, the lovers of right, they are perpetually ad-
dressed. They are pure from birth. 3 Moreover, they watch
over man, and they are, as the hymn just quoted. says,
guardians of right and wrong (of the laws of right and
wrong) among mankind. They come as spies into the
house 4 a beautiful image for the soft stealing morning
light- --and of man's home they are, like Agni, the
guardians. 5
The character of being messengers to man and his
friends belongs to the two Adityas in the next degree to
Agni; but of the two it belongs rather to Mitra than to
Vanwa.
There are not, it has been said, many hymns addressed
to Mitra alone. But here is one in which his righteous-
1 Cf. R. V. i. 136 2 i. 23, 5. i. 23.
4 ii. 67, 5. 6 vii. 61, 3.
144 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
ness and yet friendliness are expressed with, great sweet-
ness : l
To man comes Mitra down in friendly converse.
Mitra it was who fixed the earth and heaven.
Unslumbering mankind he watches over.
To Mitra, then, your full libations pour.
Oh, may the man for ever more be blessed
Who thee, Aditya, serves by ancient law ;
Sheltered by thee, no death him touch, no sadness,
No power oppress him, neither near nor far.
Prom sickness free, rejoicing in our strength
And our stout limbs upon the round of earth ;
The ordinance of Aditya duly following :
So stand we ever in the guard of Mitra.
Most dear is our Mitra, high in heaven,
Born for our gracious king, and widely ruling.
Oh, stand we ever in his holy favour,
- Enjoying high and blessed happiness !
Yea, great is Mitra, humbly to be worshipped,
To man descending, to his singer gracious.
Then let us pour to him, the high Aditya,
Upon the flame a faithful offering.
Sometimes instead of Mitra, Varrwa, and Aryaman we
have Agni associated with the first two and instead of the
last. Suryas, the sun, for example, is called the eye of
Mitra, Varima, and Agni. 2 And these three form an
appropriate trilogy in the second rank of worship after
Indra. For, putting aside that great god who, sometimes
at any rate, appears an absolutely supreme ruler, as much,
above all others as Zeus was superior to the rest of the
Olympians, putting aside Indra, Agni, Mitra, and Varuwa
are the most godlike of all the beings of the Indian
pantheon. They are, therefore, we may suppose, the most
nearly separate from the region of phenomena, the most
idealised of all the divine phenomena.
1 iii. 59, 7. 2 i. 116, 1.
THE ASVIff. 145
For an example of the difference between Mitra and
Vartma, as we see them in the hymns and that which
they would have appeared had they been nothing more
than the winds of morning in their physical sense,
we may compare the two Adityas with the two Asvin.
These last two were the Dioscuri of Indian mythology.
By name they were simply the horsemen, or rather
the charioteers no actual riding on horseback, as in the
later example of the Greek twin brethren, being imagined
in their case. 1 As they were specially noted for the
swiftness of their flight, they must, one would suppose,
have been embodiments of winds. I have, in fact, no
doubt that they were simply the morning and evening
breezes, and essentially the same as the Sarameyas, the
sons of Sarama, the dawn. They were, too, essentially
the same as Mitra and Varuwa (as morning and evening),
only that the latter were much more complex in nature
and much more idealised.
A third representation of the dawn is the maiden
Ushas, the sister of the Asvin, whom they carry away in
their swift chariots when the sun pursues her. We see
that the Yedic mythopcoist is never weary of personifying
this particular part of celestial nature. It accords with
this peculiarity of his creed that the dawn is almost
always the hour of his worship. The hymns sung at mid-
day or at sunset are very few compared with those which
usher in the day. Though it were perhaps ' to consider
too curiously ' should one attempt to give to each of these
various personifications of the dawn a distinct phenomenal
existence, yet for the sake of presenting them more clearly
before the imagination, so that each may play his part
1 They belong to a time when horsemanship, in the modern sense, was
not yet known. We find, that the word ahw, a horse, comes, from its con-
nection with the chariot of the sun (drawn by seven horses, the Harits-
Charites), to signify the number seven. This is as much as to say that to
the Vedic Indian the word ' horse ' naturally suggested the sun god. Where-
fore we cannot doubt that the Asvin had originally drawn the car of the
sun god. Before Suryas had seven horses he probably possessed two only
L
146 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
in the Indian's mythic day, I will dispose them thus :
The first white streak of light which showed the Indian
the separation between earth and sky opened before the
eye of fancy the illimitable space which seemed to stretch
beyond that break. This, which is what is called the
white dawn alba, aube was the entry of Mitra and
Varima, the revelation of the 'boundless' Adityas. It
was through a twilight air, a windless twilight morning
air, that the song we heard but now broke upon our ears.
Anon springs up the breeze, or" the twin winds (one, yet
double, because they are of night as well as of morning),
the Asvin, driving rapidly through the quickly lightening
space ; and after them comes their sister the Eed Dawn,
Aurora, allied to Aura, the breeze, but not identical there-
with. She is Ushas. Close behind her, in loving chase,
comes Suryas, the sun.
But let us leave this rapid catalogue of the morning
sights and follow at a slower pace the course of the
mythic day as its events are told us in the hymns. Let us
go back to our chorus* of priests, still waiting till the sun
shall rise. Yaruna and Mitra appear chiefly to the eye of
faith ; but other, lesser things are more real. These lesser
beings of the pantheon are, compared with the great
gods, like to heroes or demi-gods and goddesses. Even
the sun (Surya) we are compelled to place generally in
this category. First comes Ushas, the Dawn, opening the
dark gates of night. She brings forth her car and oxen
to run her course. With lovely dress she clothes herself,
like a dancer, and unbears her bosom to the sun god.
'Making light for all the world, Ushas has opened the
darkness as a cow her stall.' And once again uprises the
priestly chorus with its Muezzin call to prayer : *
Dawn, full of wisdom, rich in everything,
Fairest, attend the singers' song of praise.
Oh ! thou rich goddess, old, yet ever young,
Thou, all-dispenser, in due order comest !
1 iii. 61.
THE MYTHIC DAY. 147
Shine forth, O goddess, thine eternal morning,
With thy bright cars onr song of praise awakening.
Thee draw through heaven the well-yoked team of horses,
The horses golden bright, that shine afar.
Enlightener of all being, breath of morning,
Thou holdest up aloft the light of gods.
Unto one goal ever thy course pursuing,
Oh, roll towards us now thy wheel again !
Opening at once her girdle, she appears,
The lovely Dawn, the ruler of the stalls.
She, light-producing, wonder-working, noble,
Up mounted from the coast of earth and heaven.
Up, up, and bring to meet the Dawn, the goddess,
Bright beaming now, your humble song of praise.
To heaven climbed up her ray, the sweet dew bearing ;
Joying to shine, the airy space it filled.
With beams of heaven the Pure One was awakened ;
The Rich One's ray mounted through both the worlds.
To IJshas goest thon, Agiii, with a prayer
For goodly wealth, when she bright shining comes.
Unspeakably beautiful as poeins are all these dawn
hymns, but not, like those addressed to the greater gods,
full of awe and worship. The singer has passed out of
that region, when he compares Ushas to a dancer, and tells
of her unbaring her bosom like the udder of the cow.
Nothing is there either, we observe, in the above hymn
of a strongly moral cast no more mention of righteous-
ness and the guardians of the law. The blessings which
daylight brings are not of this sort. Daylight is the all-
dispenser, because, in making seen what was before hid,
she seems to give it to us once again. But she is not in
any other sense the creator or governor of the world.
Next after Ushas comes the sun god, Surya, himself.
Arise before us, Surya, again ;
As sounds our song, come with thy coursers swift. 1
1 vii. 62, 2.
i, 2
148 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
He comes for all men alike the ' just and the unjust,' as
the Bible has it dragging his wheel ; J the eye of Mitra
and Vartma ; he who rolls up the darkness like a garment :
he throws off his garment, his dark cloak. 2 e Thou risest for
the race of gods ; thou risest for the human race, risest for
all, thy light to show.' 3 The stars steal away like thieves
before the all-seeing god of day. He, like Agni and Mitra,
looks friendly down upon the world and the ways of men;
he sends the rays, his messengers, to earth. He is a
warrior, and comes waving his banner ; 4 he is a charioteer,
and drives seven mares the harits, or the charites of
Greek mythology. Sometimes his flight is winged by the
wind ; 5 and sometimes he, with the Wind (Yayu) and with
A.gni, forms another trilogy in the Yedic pantheon.
From heaven shall Savitar protect us,
And from the air the Wind,
And Agni from the earth.
O Savifcar, thy fiery ray
Is dearer than a hundred gifts.
Protect us from .the lightning crash.
God Savitar, thy bright glance send ;
And oh, thou Wind, do thou too send ;
And, Forger, 6 bright beams forge for us. 7
But that the sun god cannot, more than Asrni, escape
the consequences of his actual nature, and therefore can-
not conform to the law of mortals, we also see. Agni
devours his father and mother. Surya is the child of the
Dawn ; and yet he pursues her as a lover, and at the last,
just before the day ends, he weds her. This marriage
can only take place at the last hour of the day ; it is the
signal of the sun's own death. Here is the dark story of
crime which wrought the doom of Thebes : it is the
1 vii. 63.
2 iv. 13, 4, where the sun is addressed under the name of Savitar.
8 i. 50, 5. iv. 13, 2. 5 x. 170.
6 Agni as Tvashtar, the forger. 7 x. 158.
NIV]
THE MYTHIC DAY.
marriage of (Edipus and locaste. Here it is shadowed
forth in the pure poetry of natural mythology ; afterwards
it was crystallised into a legend.
We might stay for ever at this sunrise, unravelling
the myths which cling about this most human of the
gods. But time will nob stay ; the day presses onwards,
and each stage brings with it some new event. We saw,
in the language of a Vedic poet,
The watcher, him who never tires,
Who wanders up and down upon his path,
Veiling himself in things alike and unlike,
Who goeth here and there about the world.
And now we must let him pass on his way and note what
follows.
The breezes, which were gentle in the morning, and for
that reason were feigned to be the sons of Prishni, the
dew, 1 strengthen as the day grows older ; they overcloud
the sky, and the storm approaches. This is the coming
of Indra in his might. The calm of morning is forgotten ;
the battle of midday begins. Midday is the time of
labour and duty, and to the fiercer Aryas the word duty
meant war. It is for this great contest that Indra has
long been arming himself. The hundred citadels of $am-
baras, where the giant has hid the rains which were
meant to water the earth, are now seen towering in the
sky, peak above peak, battlement over battlement.
Against these Indra sallies forth to fight, but he does not
go alone. The sons of Prishni, who are the winds or the
storms, have been preparing themselves likewise. At
first they were things of nought ; now they are mighty
heroes armed with the flash and the thunder. 'They
spring up of their own strength ; they are dight in golden
armour ; their spears send forth sparks of fire.' 2 These
' Prokris. 2 ii. 34 ; vi. 66, &c.
150 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
are the ' unapproachable host ' of Marats, 1 who wander
through the paths of air in their swift cars ; sometimes
they come so near the earth that men hear the crack of
their driving whips. 2
Where is the fair assemblage of heroes,
The sons of Rudra, 3 with their bright horses ?
For of their birth knoweth no man other,
Only themselves their wondrous 4 descent.
The light they flash upon one another ;
The eagles fought, the winds were raging;
But this secret knoweth the wise man.
Once that Prishni her udder gave them. 8
Our race of heroes, through the Maruts be it
Ever victorious in reaping of men.
On their way they hasten, in brightness the brightest,
Equal in beauty, unequalled in might. 6
One hymn of the Eig Yeda seems to be adapted to this
storm hour of the day, and to describe the very moment
when Indra comes forth to battle, and there is joined by
his comrades. This hymn has been translated by Prof.
Max Miiller, and of his translation I avail myself. 7
First speaks the sacrificing priest :
With what splendour are the Maruts all equally endowed,
they who are of the same age and dwell in the same house !
With what thoughts ! From whence are they come ?
1 The Maruts are probably connected etymologically with Mars (cf.
Z. /. v. Sp. v. 387, &c. ; xvi. 162). 2 v. 63, 5.
s Rudra is also a storm god. His name means the flash ; that of the
Maruts the storm. 4 Unique.
5 Prishni being here and in many other places imaged as a cow.
8 vii. 56. This poem has quite an Eddaic ring ; it is curious, therefore,
to find that the truest counterparts of the Vedic Maruts are to be sought
in the Valkyriur of the North (see Ch. VII.") The hymns addressed to the
Maruts, which occur in the first book of the Rig Veda, have been completely
and admirably translated by Professor Max Miiller. I forbear, then, from
giving more than one example of these, beautiful as they are, and content
myself with referring the reader to Professor Muller's translation.
7 The hymn is from K. V. i. 165.
THE MYTHIC DAY. 151
THE MARUTS SPEAK.
From whence, Indra, dost thou come alone, thou. who
art mighty ? lord of men, what has thus happened unto
thee ? Thou greetest (us) when thou comest together with (us)
the bright (Maruts). Tell us, then, thou with thy bay horses,
what thou hast against us.
INDRA SPEAKS.
The sacred songs are mine, (mine are) the prayers ; sweet
are the libations ! My strength rises ; my thunderbolt is hurled
forth. They call for me ; the prayers yearn for me. Here are
my horses ; they carry me towards them.
THE MARUTS.
Therefore in company with our strong friends, having
adorned our bodies, we now harness our fallow deer with all our
might; for, Indra, according to thy custom, thou hast been with us.
INDRA.
Where, Maruts, was that custom of yours, that you should
join me, who am alone in the killing of Ahi ? I, indeed, am.
terrible, strong, powerful. I escaped from the blows of every
enemy.
THE MARUTS.
Thou hast achieved much with us as companions. With
the same valour, O hero, let us achieve, then, many things ! O
thou most powerful ! Indra ! whatever we, Maruts, wish
with our heart.
INDRA.
I slew Yritra, Maruts, with (Indra's) might, having grown
strong through mine own vigour ; I, who hold the thunderbolt in
my arms, I have made these all-brilliant waters to flow freely for
man.
THE MARUTS.
Nothing, powerful lord, is strong before thee ; no one is
known among the gods like unto thee. No one who is now born
will come near, no one who has been born. Do what has to be
done, thou who hast grown so strong.
152 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
INDRA.
Almighty power be mine aloiie, whatever I may do, daring
in my heart ; for I indeed, Maruts, am known as terrible ; of
all that I threw down I, Indra, am the lord.
Maruts, now your praise has pleased me, the glorious
hymn which ye have made for me, ye men ! for me, for Indra,
for the powerful hero, as friends for a friend, for your own sake
and by your own efforts.
Truly, there they are, shining towards me, assuming blame-
less glory, assuming vigour. Marnts, wherever I have looked
for you, you have appeared to me in bright splendour. Appear to
me also now.
THE SACRIFICER SPEAKS, AND so ENDS.
Who has magnified you here, Marnts ? Come hither,
friends ! towards your friends. Ye brilliant Maruts, cherish
these prayers, and be mindful of these my rites
We see from this that the Maruts have no very dis-
tinct existence or purpose alone ; and, indeed, their
appearing always in the plural number would be enough
to show us that they are regarded rather as heroes than
as gods. It is very possible they were often confounded
with the dead ancestors. 1 Wherefore their coming to the
fight must be taken as prototypical of the coming of the
Greek heroes to the great fields of battle to Marathon,
for example, and to Platsea. It is interesting to see in
the Greek legends that the Dioscuri are often associated
with the heroes and dead ancestors ; for the Dioscuri are
the same witb the Asvin, and therefore, as the winds of
morning and evening, are the proper companions for the
storm gods. The Maruts are all equal : none is before or
after another ; none is greater or less than another ; ' of
the same age, dwelling in the same bouse, endowed witb
equal splendour. 5 2 Their proper sphere is the midday ;
sometimes, though, they come awakening the night. Tbey
slay the elephant, the buffalo, the lion ; they are unerring
marksmen; they draw milk from heaven's udder; they
1 Gubernatis, Lettwre, &c., p. 150. 2 i. 166.
THE MYTHIC DAY. 153
milk the thunder cloud. 1 * To whom go ye, ye shakers,
and by what art, along these airy paths ? Strong must
your weapons be, and mighty ye yourselves, not like the
might of wretched mortals.' 2
And so they play their part. The last scene shifts to
day's ending, when the sun god is again prayed to ere he
leaves the earth, for he is going to that other world, his
nightly home, where he will meet the dead fathers (pitris)
of the tribe. Savitar is especially the evening sun. He
unyokes the steeds who have borne him along his tedious
path ; he calls the wanderer to rest from his journey, the
housewife from her web, and all men from their labour ;
he watches all things ever dim, and dimmer and a glory
done. And now, in a more subdued note, the singer pays
his final vows to this god, and commits himself and all
that he holds dear into his care.
Savitar, the god, arose, in power arose,
His quick deeds and his jonrney to renew.
He 'tis who to all gods dispenses treasure,
And blesses those who call him to the feast.
The god stands up, and stretches forth his arm,
Raises his hand, and all obedient wait ;
For all the waters to his service bend,
And the winds even on his path are stilled.
Now he unyokes the horses who have borne him ;
The wanderer from his travel now he frees ;
The Serpent-slayer's 3 fury now is stayed ;
At Savitar's command come night and peace.
And now rolls up the spinning wife her web ;
The labourer in the field his labour leaves ;
And to the household folk beneath the roof
The household fire imparts their share of light.
1 i. 64, 8. 2 E. V. i. 39.
8 India's 1 I have, to avoid monotony, taken some slight liberties with
the voices of the verbs in this poem.
154 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
He who to work went forth is now returned ;
The longing of all wanderers turns toward home ;
Leaving his toil, goes each man to his house :
The universal mover orders so.
In the water settedst thou the water's heir, 1
On the firm earth badst the wild beast to roam,
And in the wood the fowl. Nothing, god,
Great Savitar, thy will dares violate.
And, as he can, each fish in the womb of water
(Who restless flits about) seeks now his rest ;
The bird 2 makes for his nest, cattle for their stall :
To their own home all beasts the sun god sends.
'Tis he whose ordinance none dare slight ; not Indra,
Rudra, Yaruwa, Mitra, Aryaman,
Nor evil spirits even. Savitar,
On him, on him, with humble heart I call.
> The fish. 2 Lit. ' the egg's son.'
MANYSIDEDNESS OF GKEEK BELIEF. 155
CHAPTEE TV
ZEUS, APOLLO, ATHENA.
At yap, Zsv TS irdrsp KOI 'AOrjvalrj teal "
WOULD that it were more easy to draw out of the bright
and varied fabric of Greek religious thought those threads
which form the main substance of the tissue ; those deep
and essential beliefs over which the rest of the religion
and mythology of Hellas is but a woven pattern. But
for many reasons this is very hard to do. First, because
Gieece or Hellas can scarcely be looked upon as the
country of a single people, while it holds such a variety of
national sentiment, and shows as many instances of
national discord as of unity. And secondly, because the
shifting and subtle fancy of the people afforded a very
unstable foundation for the building up of any creed ; so
that what was believed among them one day might very
likely be laughed at the next. Just by reason of this same
subtlety and swiftness of thought, Greek religion, at the
time of our first contact with it, has already passed
through its earlier stages, and polytheism is seen no
longer in a condition of growth, but of decay. Homer
and the writers of the Homeric cycle alone show in the
formation of their mythology anything approaching to
a direct contact with nature. They crystallise belief, and
the later poets draw from them ; yet even with Homer
the age of creation has ceased, the age of criticism and
scepticism has begun. At any rate the gods have strayed
far away from the region to which by nature they belong.
They have become anthropomorphised : imagination is
occupied in following their lives and deeds as it would the
156 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
lives of mortals. Fancy and the dramatic and creative
faculties have as much to do with them as has genuine be-
lief; there is no longer a warranty that the character and
actions of these gods will follow the simple lines of fact.
Once, when a god was truly a nature god, and when
the phenomena of nature were all truly divine, the light-
ning and the hail, the frost and the dew, the wind and all
the waves of the sea, were alike strange and mystic ; and
the alternations of these things were chronicled with
reverent awe. Ifc was inconceivable then that man should
set himself to invent stories of their doings, because all
invention must fall infinitely short of the wonder of truth.
In Homer we discover that much of this feeling has
already died away. The thunderer is still the thunderer,
but he is also a quarrelsome husband, a tyrannous and
capricious king. Hera, his feminine counterpart, is queen
of heaven ; but she is also the very type of a shrewish
wife. It follows that in spite nay, in part because of the
wondrous richness and variety of Greek religious myths,
it is not in these that the character of nature worship can
be most effectually studied; wherefore, perhaps, the con-
stant battle which rages round the interpretation of Greek
mythology. The Teutonic myths are simpler and far more
meagre ; but they show us, more clearly than the Greek
do, the history of their growth. The Vedic hymns, though
they tell us no tales, are more deeply imbued than the
Iliad and the Odyssey are with a conviction of the reality
of all they describe, and the gods themselves are nearer to
nature. Let it be, then, with an eye often directed to
these neighbour systems to the Teutonic and Celtic
beliefs upon the one side, and upon the other to those dis-
cernible in the Yedas that the student set himself to
the task of unravelling the intricacies of Greek mythology.
The comparative method we require is something
much deeper than the comparison of mere words and
phrases. The more we look into the history of Aryan
creeds, the more are we struck by the recurrence in them
ZEUS, APOLLO, AND ATHENE. 157
of certain fixed sentiments or forms of belief, which
express themselves through different personalities in the
different system?. And we soon come to see that thought
has in these cases been governed by laws scarcely less
rigid than those which have determined it in the formation
of language. It is probable too that, as in the case of
language so in the case of mythology, a great number of
the laws of development are confined to the special race
with which we are dealing, and have been different among
Semitic people, different again among Mongols or Negroes.
Unless we can fathom the deeper sources of religious
thought in Hellas, we can never understand her mytho-
logy, which is but a stream flowing from those deep
fountains ; we must first find out where lay the real
belief that is to say, the germ of genuine emotion then
we shall be able to understand of what nature was the
Aberglaube which imagination and poetry fostered from
that seed. Now, so far as the later and historic Greece is
concerned, I have no doubt that the invocation quoted a
moment ago
Would Father Zens, and Athene, and Apollo
occurring so frequently in Homer, 1 really gives an answer
to our first enquiry, and that the trilogy or trinity, thus
specially united, represents the highest attainment of
Hellas in the idealism of belief. And if we imagine a
Greek, in the solitude of his chamber, or in the more
moving solitude of woods and meadows, stirred with
some sudden strong religious impulse, we may guess that
the image of one of these three greater divinities, the
image of Zeus, of Apollo, or of Athene, would be likely to
rise before his mental sight. These three deities, there-
fore, are they who have in the end given the tone to
Greek thought on religious matters, and to their natures
those of the other divinities have insensibly been obliged
1 II. ii. 371 ; iv. 288 ; vii. 132 ; xvi. 97. Od. iv. 341 ; vii. 311 ; xviii.
235 j xxiv. 376.
158 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
to conform themselves. And though, we have special
divinities locally honoured, and in particular places held
to be supreme, as Hera at Argos, Aphrodite in Cyprus,
Hermes in Arcadia, Dionysus in Thrace ; such local wor-
ship must not be taken as evidence against the universal,
the pan-Hellenic character of the other. Because in the
Middle Ages at Tours St. Martin was more often invoked
than Christ or the Father, and at Cologne the Three Kings,
St. Remigius at Rheims, St. Ambrose at Milan at each
place, that is to say, its special patron saint it does not
argue that any of those who practised these special forms
of worship supposed that in the governance of the world
at large the saints were more powerful than the Trinity.
No more must we suppose that, though the rivalry of the
Greek cities led to the upholding of each city's patron in
opposition to some other god, the Greeks had not like-
wise their points of religious unity, or that there were no
personalities specially selected for contemplation in that
universal sense, who must of necessity have been the chief
gods of Hellas.
In the Greek images of the gods there is often so little
individuality that, if we took away some external attributes
or symbols which accompany the figures, and which are
no more than a kind of labels to them, we might be in
danger of confounding one divinity with another ; of mis-
taking Athene for Hera, Hermes for Apollo, Poseidon or
Hades for Zeus. In the case of the Panathenaic Frieze,
for instance, that sculptured procession which once
adorned the second wall of the Parthenon, we do really
find ourselves in such a dilemma. In the centre of the
composition is a group of persons, whom, by their size,
above the mortal stature, we know to be intended for gods,
but for what particular ones among the Olympians it is
still a matter of dispute. In the case of one or two we
are able to fall back upon the helping symbol as the
shoes and petasos of Hermes; the aegis of Athene; the
wings of Eros but we shall never get beyond a probable
KEPKESENTATION IN AET. 159
conjecture for the greater number. The difficulty does
not arise solely nor even chiefly from the disfigurement of
the faces in this case. Some of them, at all events, are
well preserved ; yet we cannot say that these are dis-
tinguishable by the countenance alone. Poseidon, for all
the character which he displays, might as well be /eus. 1
I do not say that in general the antiquarian is left
quite at a loss. His skill is to interpret small signs which
would be unnoticed by common observers ; to read, as it
were, the mind of the artist, and not look from the posi-
tion of those for whose sake the artist wrought. But the
existence of such means of discrimination does not affect
the general truth of the proposition, that to the ordinary
glance, to anyone not initiated into the secrets of the
worker, there would be such a class likeness among certain
orders of the divine beings that no single individuality
would seem to step out from among them. And if we
take this art to reflect as art always seems to reflect the
best the popular religion of the day, we must confess
that no very strong individuality would have been felt to
attach to any one among the gods.
But art itself comes at a late epoch in the history of
Greece, and no condition of thought which existed then
is proof of like thoughts in the heroic age, centuries
before, when as yet Greek sculpture was scarcely born.
The religion which finds such an expression as in the
sculpture of the days of Pheidias is very different from
the creed of primitive times. Polytheism has come near to
its latter days when the gods have grown so much alike,
and when all seem to express the same ideal. So far as
the Greek gods are now not men, so far as they contain
some divine nature in them, this nature is the same for
all. And the god-like idea, or, to put it more in the
1 See Guide to the Elgin Room, British Museum, by C. T. Newton,
Michaelis' Parthenon, and Flasch's Zum Parthenon. Some of the points
in dispute are very curious; that, for example, between the maiden
Artemis and the sad matron Demeter as the bearer of the torch.
160 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
language of philosophy, the abstract conception of a god,
will soon attach specially to some particular member of
the pantheon, who, like the later Zeus of the Greeks, will
thus become the god par excellence, o 6zos ; then the mono-
theistic goal will have been reached. For when in character
the gods have become much the same, the difference be-
tween one and another of them must depend altogether
on external surroundings. Some may have a greater ma-
jesty in the eyes of their worshippers, and receive more
reverence; but it is because their rule is wider, not be-
cause they are in themselves different from their brothers.
But for the limit of their various domains all the gods
would be alike ; they are many kings, whose empires are
not of the same extent, yet still all kings. And the most
powerful anon becomes in heaven, as he would become on
earth, an over-king to all the others, the bretwalda, as it
were, of the Olympian realm, until at last he brings the
rest under him, and reigns alone. He is the single god ;
the other divine powers sink to positions like those which
occupy the saints of the mediaeval calendar.
Amid this general uniformity in the representation of
the Greek divinities there is nevertheless one point of
separation. The goddesses are all alike and all young;
the matron cannot be distinguished from the maid : but
among the gods there is the difference between the bearded
and the beardless one, the mature god and the youthful
god in a word, between Zeus and Apollo. And it is the
Zeus and Apollo images that convert to a likeness to them-
selves those of the other gods. That fair young face which
we see in its dawn in archaic sculpture, and follow down-
wards, as it grows continually in beauty and dignity, is
most often the face of an Apollo. Zeus is just as much
the ideal of the grave, mature ruler, the divine counsellor
and just judge, the <yspwv of the heavenly assembly. 1
1 Not, of course, precisely the Spartan yepiav, member of the jepova-ia,
who must be sixty years of age. Zeus we might imagine from thirty-five
to forty. He would then be five to ten years above the lowest limit for the
Athenian ftov\-f).
CHARACTERISTICS OF ZEUS,
161
Now concerning the artistic type of the Zeus coun-
tenance, which became in late historic days the ideal one
for all Greece, that, we know, was stereotyped by Pheidias
in his great statue of the Olympian Zeus at Elis; and
we remember too the story which Strabo l repeats of how,
when the sculptor stood in doubt as to what were the
truest and noblest attitude in which to portray the King
of Heaven, his thoughts were turned (by inspiration, as
he deemed) to that passage in Homer wherein Zeus is
described as inclining his head in answer to the prayer of
Thetis, while Olympus trembles at the sign
T IJ, KOI Kvaj'fyffiv TT' otypvffi vevae Kpoviw.
t <$' upa ^curat tTreppwoavro a'acro
oe UTT* aOai'aroio' p-iyav ft c\f\i^i'' / O\u//7roj'. a
Whether Pheidias or whether Homer, even, knew it or
not, in the picture of the nodding or frowning Zeus,
making the heavens tremble at his nod, while the hair
falls down over his shoulders, we have an image of the
sky itself at the moment of the thunder. The hair of the
god is nothing else than the clouds which rush together,
and as they meet there comes the clap which shakes the
earth and heaven.
So, too, do the locks of Apollo bespeak his natural
origin. These, which are in the early statues always
carefully, and in the latter ones abundantly, arranged,
are the rays of the sun. For Apollo was in the beginning
a Sun God.
Athene, again, or, as she is always to be distinguished,
Pallas Athene, maid Athene, 3 seems at first, perhaps, to
be no more than the ideal of maidenhood, the type of the
womanly element in the world.- But she too has her
origin in external nature. She is, as Ruskin has named
her, the ' Queen of the Air ; ' and further back in her
1 viii. 353 ; see also 396.
2 11. i. 528. Thorr, too, the thunder god of the North, used to draw his
brows over his eyes. See Edda Snorra, 50.
' Pallas, the same as 7rcc\Ao|, a girl.
162 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
history she was the cloud which first arose from earth
that is, from the river mist and then became absorbed in
ether.
It is, indeed, to be expected that those divinities,
whose influence was the deepest upon the religion of
historic Greece, should be likewise those who bore about
them the strongest aroma of their earlier condition as
nature gods.
The truest nature gods must needs be those whose
influence has been the most lasting ; for the very reason
which has been dwelt upon so often, that their actions
are real, those of the other gods are only invented, and
therefore fanciful. Zeus and Apollo bear in their human
features traces of the substance out of which they were
formed. If Athene does not so clearly display hers, it is
perhaps because she belongs to that creation of misty
beings rightly called by the Indians the apsaras or form-
less, who rise out of the rivers or from the sea. She is a
more ideal being, less substantial than her father and her
brother ; yet she too is a growth from sensible nature.
The chief thing which we have to discover, in order to
determine the character of a creed, is in what part of
nature its deities take their being : are they gods of the
earth, or of the sea, or of the air ? Not only Zeus, Athene,
Apollo, but almost all the gods of the Greek pantheon
were supposed to reign in heaven. Hades only had his
kingdom beneath the earth, and Poseidon his in the
sea. The Olympians, however, had not all their origin in
celestial phenomena ; and so, when we find a god or
goddess whose proper sphere is the earth exalted to
heaven, we may be sure that this change took place
through the influence of the celestial divinities. To the
nature of the celestials, therefore, this earth god must con-
form ; he will lose his own individuality, and put on
theirs. For it will no longer do to say, as mythologists
once said, that man has always looked up to heaven, and
made the heaven the home of his gods. Man of the
MIGRATIONS OF THE GREEKS.
163
prime looked down to earth and found his gods on earth,
in rock, and tree, and stream ; nor did he soon forget
these his first divinities. Wherefore it becomes a matter
of highest importance, in testing the nature of man's
belief, to find out how far his Olympus is really celestial,
and how much of earthiness there is mingled with the
conception of his heavenly gods.
The main influence, it has been already said, which
must have shaken the Aryans loose from the chains of
fetichisni was the first migration from their cradle land.
It has been already noticed how, before there arose a
complete separation of the various nationalities Indians,
Persians, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Celts, and Slavs
our forefathers were first divided into two bodies ; one of
these comprised the ancestors of the Indians and Persians,
while the second was the aggregate of those tribes which
afterwards composed the nations of Europe. So that the
word Indo-European will express pretty accurately these
nationalities as they were known to history, if 'Euro-
pean* stand for the races who were in time to people
Europe, and ' Indian ' be expanded to mean Indo-Persic
that is to say, the peoples who in the end migrated to
India and to Iran. That the separation of the two
groups, the Indo-Persians on the one side and the Euro-
pean group upon the other, had preceded any more
minute separation of nationalities, is proved by the early
use of distinguishing names for these two great divisions.
The ancestors of the Indo-Persians claimed for them-
selves alone the old title Aryas, and they gave to the
other body the name of Yavanas, or young ones, or other-
wise the * fighting ' members of the community. 1 From
this root we get the Javan of Scripture, the Greek Ion,
lonis, Ionian.
The people who at last migrated westward must have
1 Juvenis and juvare, both from the Skr. root yu, to ward off, whence
Skr. yuvan, juvenis, young. In the Edicts of Asoka, 33rd cent. B.C., we have
the word Yona (Ed. Princep. ii. 4) = Gr. Ia/oves, laovfs, Iwves.
M 2
164 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
had their settlements on the western side of the old home;
and as those of the Aryas were backed against the Beloor
Tagh and the Hindoo Koosh, the Yavanas would stand as
a belt between this highland country and the plain or the
sea in front of it. They would be the first to encounter
any strange tribe whose wanderings brought them to the
land of the Aryas, and to this fact no doubt they owed
their name of Yavanas.
After this followed the dark period of the migrations.
The Yavanas in their turn split up into two divisions.
Three of the races, the Celts (probably), the Teutons, and
the Slavonians, passed in succession north of the Caspian
Sea and so into Europe. The remaining portion, from
which were to spring the Greeks and Romans, travelled
southward till they settled in the table-land of Asia
Minor, where it is likely they remained for some time.
It was in this central district, Phrygia, that in later his-
torical ages there ^vas to be found a people allied to the
Hellenes by language l and by many religious rites. 2
Some never left this seat, and, after they had mingled
with the indigenous people of the land, left behind them,
in Phrygia, a race half Greek in character, and with cus-
toms and beliefs which down to late times could assert
a claim of kinship to the Hellenic. Another division
travelled to Europe by the Hellespont, and from this
section descended the main body of the nations inhabiting
the two eastern peninsulas of Europe. A third made its
way to the sea coast of Asia Minor, and in that region,
favourable for all development in arts and social life, they
advanced rapidly in culture and far surpassed their
brethren of European Greece.
Of the above divisions of race, the Phrygian people
we may put out of all account. The Greek nation was
1 The Phrygian tongue is apparently more closely allied to the Hellenic
than is the Gothic to the Middle High German (Curtius, Griecli. GescJi.)
2 Especially in the worship of the ancient earth goddess, Rhea or
Cybele. See next chapter.
THE IONIANS. 165
made up of two sections those who went round by the
Hellespont and those who came down to the coast of Asia
Minor. It was these last who were known to the Semitic
nationalities, certainly to the Phoanicians, perhaps to the
Canaanites and Israelites; it was these who were designated
by the name Javan. The word Javan we may translate into
Ionian. Wherefore, in calling these Asiatic Greeks (as a
body) lonians, I would not be thought to make a nicer
distinction than their neighbours the Phoenicians made.
It is true that the word was not understood in so wide
a significance by the Greeks themselves, at least not by
those of historic times. In these historic days we find
the Asiatic coast divided among three Greek nationalities,
only one of whom retained the ancient name of lonians.
The others called themselves Dorians and ^Eolians, and
all three, even the lonians, imagined themselves to have
been planted there not by migrations from anterior Asia,
but by colonisation from the opposite coast of European
Greece. The Dorians had been planted in this way.
Many even of the lonians may have been brought, by a
backward wave of migration, from the West to the East.
But the name of the lonians was far anterior to these
recorded migrations : so, too, was the, first settlement of
Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor.
The Yavanas, or lonians of Asia Minor, mingled with
the Oriental nations whom they found there, some of
whom had attained no small degree of civilisation. And
the lonians doubtless acquired many of their arts. Espe-
cially from the Phoenicians, the seafarers of those days,
do they seem to have learnt the art of navigation, which
was known only in an elementary form to the older
Aryans. There are, common to the Indo-European family
of languages, words for oar and rudder, but none for sail ;
and we may conclude from this that sea voyages were
unattempted by the Aryas of the prime, or by the
Yavanas when they formed one nation. Those of the
Grseco-Italicans who crossed the Hellespont could well
166 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
have accomplished that feat with only such boats as had
plied upon broad rivers. But the Greeks of the Asiatic
coast soon learned a higher art of navigation. Presently
a great part of the people passed on, and settled upon
the countless islands of the ^Egsean and upon the eastern
coast of European Greece. One of the Greek words for
sea is quite peculiar to that language not shared, I
mean, by other Indo-European ones and is likewise pecu-
liarly significant. It is TTOI/TOS, which means literally
a path. 1 Can we doubt that the habit of looking upon
the sea as a 'path,' a way, was first opened to the minds
of the Greeks when they from their Phoenician neighbours
had learned to make the water their road to new lands ?
In the formation of the Greek nation, then, there were
two elements. The earlier and ruder people, who
travelled by the Hellespont, were the first to set foot
on the mainland of Europe; the other body came by
immigration from the coast of Asia Minor, and brought
some civilisation with them, and all the elements of a
higher life.
Of course this was not accomplished in a day : the
passage into Greece of the men from the Asiatic coast
must have been especially slow, for they had nothing to
tempt them to leave the rich land in which they were.
The settlers on the other side of the JEgsean could have
been no more than the overflow of their population.
Each successive wave which came overlapping the pre-
vious one was more deeply imbued with tne nascent
1 Connected with the Skr. pantha, patha and our path. It may be that
there is a Teutonic name for sea from the same root, viz. the A.S. fait hi
(Pictet, o. c. i. 113). No nautical terms were originally common to the
Greek and Italian languages, save those that are also common to the Indo-
European family. This shows that the Greeks discovered the art of sea
navigation after they had been separated from the Italian stock.
In reference to the effect of movement upon the development of belief,
the decay of fetichism, &c.,it is worth noticing that the very active nature
of the whole Greek race is exemplified by the number of verbal roots in the
Greek language.
The Latin pontus is, I believe, borrowed direct from it6vros. Pons is
related to pantJia.
THE PELASGIANS.
167
civilisation of the Asiatic Greeks, more nearly Hellenic in
character as compared with the character of those who had
wandered far round by the Hellespont. These last formed
the Pelasgic element l in Greek society.
The migrators from the Asiatic coast found people
of more or less Semitic extraction settled in many of the
islands, and in those parts of the eastern shore of European
Greece which they first occupied. It is hardly to be sup-
posed that the other travellers (whom, we have called
Pelasgians), after they had gone round by the Hellespont,
found the lands into which they debouched quite bare of
inhabitants. But of these earlier people we know little or
nothing. They were probably a peaceful pastoral race.
Their very existence had been forgotten by the men who
ousted them from their homes ; for, in historic days, the
Greeks of Europe generally looked upon themselves as
autochthones that is to say, sprung from the earth on
which they dwelt.
The later travellers from Asia, who had grown to a
more complete self-consciousness and to a stronger sense
of nationality than their Pelasgic brethren could feel,
came later than the others had done to the European
coast. When they did come, they found in European
Greece a race somewhat like to themselves in language
and character, but much ruder in manners, with no
memory of the time when they all together left their
Aryan home, but, on the contrary, deeming themselves
children of the soil and firmly settled there. These people
had developed a certain civilisation, marked by solid
stone architecture unless this were, as I rather sup-
pose, the work of a still earlier race, and only adopted
by the Greeks and they had some cities. The name,
Pelasgians, which they received from the new comers
1 Pelasgic, according to a recent derivation, which seems to me sound,
is from the root of the Skr. parasja (paras far ja go), and means not, as
was by the Greeks supposed, 'the old,' but ' the far wanderers.' See paper
by K. Pischl, Zcitschri.fi fur vcrglcichende SprachforscJiung, vol. xx.
168 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
from Asia, whatever its original meaning, came in time
to distinguish the older and ruder civilisation, which had
first appeared in Greece, from the newer or truly Hellenic
civilisation, which came from Asia. The Hellenic culture
superseded the Pelasgic culture ; and, but to a less extent,
Hellenic belief superseded Pelasgic belief.
It is needful to take into account these details of the
prehistoric existence of the Greek people, so far as they
can be reasonably conjectured ; because the character of
their existence, and the scenes among which that life has
been passed, must go far to determine the people's future
creed. When the proto-Greeks entered upon their life of
change and migration they were still in the main a nation
of shepherds. They had lived in a land of hill and valley
and rushing mountain stream, and after their wanderings
had begun their lot still lay amid scenes not dissimilar.
They travelled first to the hilly Caucasus, and thence to
the central table-land of Asia Minor, a region compounded
of barren heights and more fruitful lower lands ; and
thence they passed (many of them) into Thrace and
Macedon and Epirus. Here, even in the cultured and
historic ages of Greece, the inhabitants remained amid
wild scenes a rude bucolic race. Those who settled on
the western coasts of Greece proper, though now in
sunnier regions, were, in days near to historic times, con-
fined to the most barren and stormiest parts of them ; for
the mild eastern coasts had fallen into the hands of the
Ionian peoples. 1
The western people it was who first gained from their
Italian neighbours the name of Graeci (TpaiKot), 12 which
1 The character of Macedon and Thrace the region beyond Mount
Olympus is admirably described in the beginning of the seventh book of
Curtius' GriecMsche GescMclite, The distinction which I have drawn
between the two orders of civilisation, the Pelasgic and the Ionian (or
Hellenic), is geographically between the kingdom of the JSgasan, which
included the islands and both coasts of that sea, and the regions to the
north and west.
2 Connected with the Gaelic word crwach, a hill. This name forms a
OLDEST GREEK DIVINITIES. 169
means the dwellers on the heights. Homer's description
of Ithaca might serve for all this part of Greece. It was
'rough, not fit for use of horses, yet not too btirren.'
Now, as the older Greeks were by degrees pushed back-
wards and backwards from the south and east by the
more enterprising lonians, and as the lonians must in
historic, or nearly historic, times have departed much
more than the old Greek people had done from their
primitive faith, it is in the north and west of Greece that
we must look for the traces of the earliest creed of the
Greek race.
During their days of wandering the gods of the Greeks
were doubtless chiefly those heavenly bodies who travelled
with them as they travelled, and some elemental substances
one of the chief among these fire which they had learned
to worship while they were in Bactriana ; their fetich-
worshipping instincts remaining, from necessity of travel, 1
in a sort of abeyance, until in a new settlement fresh
objects of reverence should be found to take the place
of the others. The protecting Heaven, and next to the
Heaven the Sun, who shed his brightness on their path,
and when he rose in the morning ran before them on
the road they were to take, were their ever-present gods.
The first of these we know they worshipped, him whom,
under the name of Dyaus, they had known in their
cradle home. This Dyaus-Zeus remained the chief god
of all.
One may fancy that the Germans and the Slavs, during
their migratory period, underwent an actual degeneracy
natural contrast to"E\\r)vfs, the inhabitants of low-lying and marshy lands ;
just as the old Greeks of Greece proper form a contrast to the lonians, who
imparted their civilisation to the Hellenes of later date. For when the
marsh is drained it becomes fruitful, like the rich Argos.
Compare the description of Ithaca, given above, or of ' black Epirus '
(Od. xiv. 97), with the description of hollow Lacedaemon, 'where, in the
wide plain, is wealth of lotus and cypress and rye, and broad fields of
wheat' (Od. iv. 601-608 ; of. also Od. xiii. 414, ' Lacedasmon of broad
.lands').
1 See Chapters II. and III.
170 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
in culture. Their condition, when they first emerge into
the light of history, seems more barbarous, nearer to the
condition of a nomadic and hunting people, than the
state of their Aryan forefathers in their settled home.
Whether, in their time of want and difficulty and struggle,
the Greeks likewise passed through a period of degeneracy
we cannot be sure. They could not, at any rate, have
advanced much during their wanderings, for they were
still a savage people when they obtained a lasting settle-
ment in Greece. Their gods, too, were doubtless of a
rude and savage kind. Dyaus underwent the same change
of character which, in the last chapter, we followed
out in the growth of Indra worship, when we saw the
heaven god giving place to a more human and active god
of storms. We see that this happened by noting what
character belongs to Zeus and Jupiter, when they appear
in the creeds of Greece and Rome. The nature in which
Zeus and Jupiter most agree must have been the character
of the Dyaus-Zeus of the proto-Greeks and proto-Komans.
These gods are essentially the pictures of the stormy sky.
They are both alike the wielders of the thunderbolt, and
guardians of the wind and rain. Even in Homer the Ionian
Zeus, though he has grown to be much more than merely
this, is essentially a storm god. We have seen how the
very imagery which described his nod was drawn from the
natural imagery of the cloudy sky ; and it is needless to
recall all the passages wherein Zeus shows in this cha-
racter. The Greeks, for all the beauty of their sky and
air, had many opportunities for watching the phenomena
of storms ; for their land is varied in its character, subject
to sudden atmospheric changes, nursed upon the bosoms
of the two seas upon which it looks. Nor, I think, is
anything more noticeable in Homer than the number and
the beauty of the similes which he has gathered from such
watching.
Over all such doings in the air Zeus has as close and
special a control as Poseidon over the waves. Zeus is not
ZEUS, THE STORM GOD. 171
the thunderer alone, he is the cloud-collector ; l he alike
sends the rain and the snow, the prospering wind to
sailors or the blast which hurries the drifting scud across
the face of the sea ; he sends a storm from land, such as
that which came from Ida to confound the Greeks ; 2 like
Jehovah, he places his bow in the cloud a sign to man, or
makes the cloud stand steadfast and calm upon the moun-
tain-top, while the might of Boreas sleeps.
Ol c Kat avrol
Ovre /3mc Tpwtav vTreltiSiffav, ovre (WMie*
'AXX' eftefOff vHftiKriaiv loutoref, fie rt KpoWwv
IVTrjfftV tV UKpOTToXoifflV OptfffflV
e Bopeao, teal
This is the god as he was known on the eastern shore
of the .jEgsean. In the special home of the old Greek race
the land was far more wild and storm-bound, and there the
special god of that race, the Pelasgic Zeus, assumed a still
gloomier aspect. Here it was that the wind, driving in
from the Mediterranean, rolled up great masses of cloud
which broke upon the high inland ridges, such as Ithome
and Lykseon, 4 so that these mountains, visible cloud-
collectors as they were, became the very embodiments of
the god. It is in these regions that we find the deepest
traces of the worship of the Pelasgic Zeus, the god of
rugged mountains and of gloomy forests. On coins of
consider the force of such an address as /cv5i<rre
, /c\aivf<^)fs, aidtpi vaiw.
2 II. vii. 4 ; xii. 252 ; xi. 27 ; xii. 279, where Zeus sends the snow.
3 11. v. 520-5.
* The epithet of Zeus, Zevs \VKCUOS (Paus. i. 38, 5 ; viii. 2 ; 1 Callim. //".
in Jov. 4), is probably a reminiscence of the ancient meaning of his name,
dijaux, the shining. The title is also applied to Apollo. Nevertheless
there is evidence that Zeus was specially worshipped on Mount Lykaeon.
May not, then, the name of this mountain have been taken from the name
of dyaus, of which lykoeus is a simple translation 1 If this be so, it suggests
an example of a relapse into fetichism. The mountain was first masculine,
6 AVKOIOS : later neuter, r5 \VKCUOV. Other epithets ^of Zeus show him to
have been specially worshipped on mountain- tops, e'.g. &Kpios,
172 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
Ithoine and of Megalopolis this last place was under the
shadow of Mount Lykseon, the highest peak in the Pelo-
ponnese we see the Pelasgic Zeus seated upon a rock;
whereby we learn where his dwelling was. There is
a similar representation of the Olympian Zeus upon the
coins of Elis ; and this indicates that here even the Olym-
pian Zeus kept the character of his Pelasgian forerunner.
The Zeus of Dodona was worshipped in much the same
fashion on Mount Dicte, in Crete. Zeus, like Odhinn, the
wind god of the Teutons, loved to haunt the darkest and
most inaccessible groves. One of these was at Elis ;
another, more awful still, at Dodona. The oak, which
was Odhinn's tree, was also Zeus's. 1 The wind which
whispered through the oaks of Dodona brought the oracle
of the god. He is commonly portrayed with a crown of
oak leaves.
In all this we see the mingling of an older fetichism
with a new creed. The mountain Lykseon or Ithome
preserved its former godhead when it was worshipped as
the very Zeus. It was not only the grove of Dodona that
was holy, but a certain evergreen oak in it was peculiarly
so. This oak no doubt was confounded in popular imagi-
nation with the deity.
It is not to be supposed that either the European
Greeks or the Asiatic Greeks, either the Pelasgians or the
lonians, were uninfluenced by the creeds with which they
came in contact. If the Pelasgians met with men in
quite a primitive state of fetich worship, this would tend
to stir in them reactionary leanings towards the primitive
religion which they had left behind them in Bactria, and
once more local gods would spring up, local mountains and
streams would be worshipped; indeed, we have already
1 Especially the edible oak (</>?j7^s). From this Zeus received the
epithet ^yuvaios, which he sometimes bore. See Zenodotus apud iSteph.
Byzant., Frag, de Dodona. Jupiter had the name Jupiter fagutalis (Varro,
De Lingua Lot. iv. 32, 1), which may have belonged to him before the
fagus changed from an oak into a beech.
THE GODS AND THE TITANS. 173
seen such things long continued to be worshipped in
Greece. Gradually, no doubt, there came to be a separa-
tion between the creeds of the more active and intelligent,
those who were truer to their own nationality and to their
gods, and those who sank down in the social scale and
mixed with the earlier natives of the land. The peasantry,
who had in their veins the blood of this older stock, came
to have a separate code of belief, connected with the cult
of Pan and of the Arcadian Hermes, and of many a local
satyr and nymph, and this creed, if it was not hostile to
the worship of Zeus and Apollo and the other Olympians,
at any rate passed it by without much attention.
Often we find the two religions existing side by side,
and at peace ; but this peace could hardly have been
gained save through previous war. In such a case, when
the gods of the new comers put to flight the esta-
blished fetich gods of the land to which they came, it
might seem to the eye of history like some great combat
between the visible things of nature, the Titanic moun-
tains and trees, and the subtler, unhandled, but greater
celestial powers. That memorable gigantomachia, or war
between the gods and Titans, does in truth lie at the
threshold of all advances in culture ; only by breaking up
the peaceful, settled life of the prime do men begin to
advance in civilisation. We cannot wonder if between
such mighty forces the battle was grievous ; so that, as
Hesiod tells us, the tramp of the contending armies shook
the earth, and echoed far below to the depths of shadowy
Tartarus. 1
Seen by peasant eyes, the same combat and the in-
coming of Zeus and his army were the inroad of .a fierce
new power into the woods and valleys of the land. In
such eyes, the age before Zeus was a golden time ; those
days were days of peace and plenty, and the memory of
them was cherished at rustic firesides. The husbandmen
1 Tlieog, 664.
174 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
believed in them, and called them the Saturnian age, the
age of gold, to which had succeeded an age of bronze, i.e.
of war ; l after which had followed a still worse age, the age
of iron, and of slavery, with its iron chains. It is Hesiod,
who sympathised at heart with the peasant state, and
had no love at all for war or adventure, who has given us
this tradition, a peasant's legend of the three ages of the
world.
From whatever side we view the contest, the result
was the same Kronos, who represented the earlier time, 2
and with him all the Titan brood, had to flee far away to
the extreme borders of earth, where stands Atlas, the
Titan's son, and keeps the gates of the outer world, and
where Day and Night, treading upon each other's heels,
alternate pass the brazen threshold ; and beyond Sleep and
his brother Death, the sons of murky Night, have their
home ; there must the giant race abide. 3 There sits la-
petus, the father of Atlas and of Prometheus, and with
him Kronos, joying neither in the splendour of Helios
Hyperion nor in the breath of winds, for deep Tartarus
is all around. 4 Zeus it was who dispossessed these of
their rule, and who took a dreadful vengeance upon one
Titan, only because he had been too much the friend
of the human race. Apollo contended with the shep-
herd Marsyas type of the Arcadian life and inflicted
upon him a cruel punishment. These new comers are
the gods of will, no longer the simpler divine things of
nature. 5
But as, when an invading nation has subdued another,
the war of extermination is arrested by marriage, and the
1 Weapons having been made of bronze in the epic age.
2 Kronos was essentially a Pelasgic god, as the form of his name, Kronos
for Chronos, shows. Pelasgic words take K for x> e.g. Kp-rjffr&s for xpriards.
See Maury, B^lig. de la Greee, i. 263. Maury likens Kp6vos to yepcait. It is
possible the name may have been a name for Dyaus (or Ouranos), and not
have arisen in the way Welcker supposes (see p. 119, note). In either case
we may take the actual form of this divinity to have sprung up in Pelasgic
days.
3 Hesiod. * Iliad. * See p. 96.
THE WIVES OF ZEUS. 175
wives of the conquerors, taken from out of the inferior
race, preserve its blood ; so I suppose that there was some
compromise effected between the new deities and the old,
and that the compact was solemnised by the marriage of
the god of heaven to the goddess of earth. The earth
goddess, though her worship is allied to fetichism, is of a
nature far more abstract than any mere fetich. In every
creed she stands as the natural counterpart and partner
of the heaven, representing the principle of production,
as he does that of generation. Thus in the New Zealand
tale of Tanemahuta, which was referred to in the second
chapter, the great productive principles were called Kangi
and Papa, the Earth and Heaven. The closeness of their
embrace threatened to destroy all the children whom Papa
had brought forth. In the Vedas by the side of Dyaus
sits Prithivi, the Earth.
Each of the wives of Zeus, therefore, I imagine to have
been at one time or another the goddess of the earth.
These wives are many.
Zsv<a de QeaJy pa.6i\.v<-> Ttpoorrjv aTioxov Qe'ro Mrjriv.
dsvTEpov Tfydyero \ntapi)v Qefj.iv .....
rpelS Si oi Evpvyojur/ xdpiroA TKKE
Avrdp 6 drjuETpoS TiotLvcpopfirfi 1$
Ipd66o.ro
o S 7 'AxoXXoova. nai "Apreuiv
ap 7 alyioxmo Aio^ q)iXo
To Hesiod many of the persons here enumerated were
embodiments of qualities that is to say, of abstractions
merely. Metis was Thought, Themis was Law. Almost
all of them, however, were originally personifications of
some part of nature, and the greatest number were earth
goddesses. Thernis was so, for she was a Boeotian earth
goddess. 2 Eurynome is a counterpart of the 'wide' Pri-
thivi. Demeter (yn-^rijp) is another representative of
Prithivi-matar, mother Prithivi, mother earth. She,
1 Hesiod, Theog. 886 sqq. * Maury, I. c. i. 81.
176 OUTLINES OF PKB1ITIVE BELIEF.
perhaps, inherited most of the character of the old Aryan
goddess. Hera, too, was once the earth.
Not only the wives but the mother of Zeus also was an
embodiment of the earth. She was Khea, the wife of
Kronos. As Kronos was, we have seen, probably only an
older form of Zeus, a middle term between the Zeus whom
we know and the Dyaus who was worshipped by the
Aryas, so Rhea may be an older form of Hera. Khea was
originally goddess of the Phrygians, 1 and the Phrygians
represent the earliest form of that nationality which gave
birth in time to the Hellenic race. As the Phrygians
gave birth to the Greeks, so did Rhea to Hera. The
former of these two names is unquestionably connected
with the Sanskrit root ira, earth, which in Irish becomes
ire, whence Erin, Ireland. 2
Concerning the worship of the earth goddess it is not
my cue to speak in this place ; for of this we shall have
something to say in the following chapter. All that we
need do here is to take account of this form of worship,
as constituting an integral part of the religion of the
early Greeks.
But Hera, whatever her origin, was in many ways
different in character from the other wives of Zeus. And
that she was different shows that in her person the wor-
ship of the earth, goddess had undergone a change. It is
one of the signs of the change and the advance of a creed
when the celestial divinities come to displace the terrestrial
ones, or else to effect a change in the natures of the latter.
In this instance the heaven god has absorbed the individu-
ality of his consort, and has given her instead of her old
character a nature modelled upon his own. It is simply
as the Queen of Heaven that Hera appears in the Iliad.
1 Such at least is the opinion of Maury. From Phrygia Rhea was
brought to Crete, where in the historical clays she is first met with.
2 One etymology proposed for Hera is 'lady,' connected with the
Latin herns, the German Herr. See Maury, I. c. Welcker (6fr. Gotterleh.
i. 302) adopts that from l^a, earth, the Sanskr. ira. Herodotus tells us
that Hera was a Pelasgic goddess (ii. 50).
POSEID6N AND HAIX&S PLUT6N. 177
In Norse mythology we have just another such example of
the development of an earth goddess into the simple femi-
nine of the supreme god. Frigg, the partner of Odhinn,
and Freyja, the goddess of the earth, were originally one
person j 1 but their individualities became separated in
order that they might fulfil the requirements of a double
nature. One, as the wife of Odhinn, was the counterpart
of the heaven god ; the other was not divorced from the
functions which belonged to her own being. Hera, then,
changed her character from what it was in Pelasgic days ;
but still we must reckon Hera as one of the divinities be-
longing to that early time. There is a Pelasgic Hera as
well as a Pelasgic Zeus.
Another god whose worship is also as antique,
according to my theory, as that of Zeus, or Demeter, or
Hera, is Poseidon. 2 Poseidon I suppose to have been the
first sea god of the Greek nationality. The people could
not have arrived at the borders of Asia, they could not
have crossed the Hellespont, nor have settled in their new
homes in European Greece, without learning to worship
the dark waste of water which hemmed them in on every
side. Poseidon was the first embodiment of this pheno-
menon ; he it was whom the first mariners made their
patron god. But afterwards Athene in a way which we
shall presently trace out became the goddess of sailors,
and the newer generation of navigators worshipped her
and neglected Poseidon. Hence the rivalry between the
two. Odysseus is the type of the newer generation, and
Odysseus is persecuted by Poseidon and saved by Athene. 3
There is in most creeds a god of earth as well as a
goddess, with a certain difference between them. The god
1 The name Fri-gg is not improbably connected etymologically with
Prithiri (Grimm, D. M. i. 303).
* Kuhn believes Poseidon to have been originally a god of heaven, and
to have undergone the same change which passed over the Vedic Varrwa
(see Zeitsch. fur vcrg. Sp. i. 455, c.) This question does not concern the
character of Poseidon as the god of the Greeks.
3 See below.
N
178 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
of earth represents the active powers of generation, the
goddess the passive. The former is the god of the seed
or of the power of the seed in the ground rather than the
mere receptive power of earth. The receptive power of
earth such deities as Prithivi or Demeter represented. The
earth god of the Greeks was the god of the hidden trea-
sures of generation and of growth (Plouton). Plouton
came to be confounded with Hade's ; but I doubt whether
Hades or Aidoneus are the proper names of this Pelasgic
god. Rather I should suppose him to be represented by
Zeus Chthonius, earth Zeus ; a title equivalent to earth
god. 1 Hades was originally only the personification of
the tomb ; afterwards, however, he entered into the in-
heritance of the forgotten earth god and became Hades
Pluton. Another part of the belongings of this earth god
were given over to one of a younger generation, to
Dionysus.
It would seem, then and this is quite natural that
the Pelasgic gods for the most part belong to the elder gene-
ration of the Olympians. They are Zeus, and Demeter,
and Hera, and Poseidon, and Hades. In addition to these
it is impossible to believe but that the older Greeks had
their sun god. The sun is too important a being to be
left out of any system in which the celestial gods are
worshipped at all. In no system does the sun appear as a
parent god, but always in a relation of son ship to the sky,
out of which he seems to spring. Therefore the sun god
of the earlier time must have been one among the younger
generation of the Olympians. He was not Apollo, who
represents the later culture of the Hellenic race. Nor was
he Helios. We must look out for some one among the
second generation of the gocls who could have been the sun
god of this age. He must be one who afterwards fell some-
what into the background, because he had at last to give
place to Apollo. Two gods, I think, represent this divinity
1 Zeus being in this case a general, not a proper name (fleos). See
Ch. I.
THE PELASGIAN SUN GODS. 179
Ares and Heracles. The sun of western Greece was not
that bright being who shone over the .ZEgsean and its islands.
His character was adapted to that of the Pelasgic Zeus ;
he was the day star, shining red in the storm or battling
with the clouds, rather than the same sun shining in
pellucid air. The traces of this first sun worship which
was displaced by the cultus of Apollo are to be sought
first in the person of Ares the fighter, %a\Ksos "Aptjs, brazen
Ares, who ruled in warlike Macedon and Thrace; next in
Heracles the labourer, who was the god of the Pelopon-
nese and of its peasants. There can be no question that in
prehistoric times the worship of the first of these two was
far more widely extended than we should suppose from
reading Homer or the poets after Homer. Traces of Ares
worship are to be found in the Zeus Areios, who was
honoured at Elis, and in the name of the Areiopagus of
Athens. 1 But of course the god's real home was farther
north. He was the national deity of the Thracians ; 2 his
sons led to Troy the men of Aspledon and Orchomenus
in Boeotia, and his daughter Harmonia was the wife of
Cadmus. 3
The Ares who appears in Homer has no longer a
foundation in the phenomenal world. He has become little
more than an abstraction, the spirit of the battle, to be
placed by the side of such beings as Eris, strife, Phobos,
fear, Deimos, terror, and the rest.
The adventures of Heracles are precisely those most
commonly ascribed to a sun god. Eead side by side with
those of the Teutonic Thorr 4 (Donar), they show how
1 For the chief traces of the worship of Ares in historic days see Pau-
sanias.
2 Cf. especially Herod, v. 7, where we are told that Thrace was the
principal seat of his wor: hip.
8 See Welcker. Gr. Gotterlehrc, i. 413-424, on Ares as a sun god. For
some curious evidences of his worship in Macedon and Thrace, furnished
by the coins of these districts, see Num. Ckron.for 1880, p. 49, by Prof. P.
Gardner.
4 I think it is because they have not studied the Greek mythology side
by side with the Norse, that most writers have spoken of Heracles as almost
N 2
180 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
primitive must have been the worship of Heracles and
the myths which gathered round that worship. He per-
haps differs little from some god known to the ancient
Aryas. But when Apollo came and showed a higher ideal
of the god of the sun, Heracles' divinity suffered much
abatement until he sank at last to be a demi-god, holding
only by sufferance a place on Olympus.
These Pelasgians were half-savage men. The gods of
tempest whom they honoured the Zeus of the stormy
heights and wind-grieved forests ; the black Demeters,
fit images of the unsown earth ; Ehea, worshipped in hol-
low caves ; the red and angry sun ; dark-haired Poseidon,
the god of tempestuous seas these were well fitted to their
needs of worship ; they could never have satisfied the reli-
gious wants of Hellas. In the person of the Greeks, it has
been well said, humanity becomes for the first time com-
pletely human ; before, it was half bestial, like the satyrs of
Arcadia or the centaurs of Thrace ; its creed was unformed
and unsightly like its gods, who were still represented by
blocks of wood and stone.
But, as Greece grew to perfect manhood, the gods
became softened in nature. The Pelasgic Zeus changed
into a god of Olympus, the true image of a king in
heaven. Elis and its groves opened to the new sovereign,
who took his seat there unopposed. None were more
instrumental in this change than they who introduced
the new sun god, Apollo, in the stead of Ares or Heracles,
and a new heaven-born Athene, who outshone the earth
goddesses, Ehea, or Demeter, or even Hera herself. The
revolution, however, was a quiet one, like those slow
changes we learn to think of as creating new worlds or
new systems of planets. In the nebulous mass of the old
Pelasgic society, as yet without coherence or national
identical with the Tyrian Melcarth. See Curtius, Griecli. Gesoh., for a
recent example. So far as concerns the representation of Heracles in art,
I can well believe there was an indebtedness to Phoenician influence ; and
this extended, perhaps, to some special myths, but not to the whole concep-
tion in the popular mind.
THE DOKIAN APOLLO. 181
existence, a vortex of more eager life was set up ; and this,
ever widening, drew into itself the best part of the race,
until a new Hellas arose to take the place of Greece.
As for the processes whereby the Apollo worship and
the Athene worship were introduced, at these we can do
little more than guess ; and yet concerning the first of
these tradition does seem to afford us some clue ; and that
which tradition appears to sketch out we may making
due premise that the story is not to be taken for certain
fact present in something of the form of a continuous
narrative.
The authors of Apollo worship as a Hellenic belief
were, it would seem, the Dorians at first a small tribe, not
worthy to be called a nation, who lived in the extreme
north of Greece, where Mount Olympus separates Macedon
from Thessaly. They were Zeus-worshippers ; by their con-
quests and settlements they carried the cult of the
Olympian Zeus over the whole land of Greece ; and
because they worshipped Zeus, the old chief god of the
Pelasgians was never deposed from his throne. But the
Dorians were before all things the votaries of the sun god,
Apollo; and with them the religion of Apollo travelled
wherever they went. The outbreak of these men of the
north from the bosom of the Pelasgic world, was in some
respects like the outbreak upon the Roman Empire of
certain Teutonic peoples from the vast unexplored forests
of Germany, and from the shores of silent northern
seas. Like the Scandinavians, from being mountaineers,
these men took to the sea, and became pirates. They
haunted the islands of the Archipelago, and passing
onward, sometimes resting where they came, sometimes
defeated and forced to retire, they got at last to Crete, and
founded the first Dorian kingdom there.
The tradition of Minos points not obscurely to the
time when Crete was the ruling state in the Greek world.
The kingdom of Minos extended, no doubt, over most of
the islands of the JEgsean, and over part of its Asiatic and
L82 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
European shores. And Minos was a Dorian, Crete a
Dorian land. 1 At this time, therefore, it was that the
great extension of Apollo worship probably took place,
whereof the deepest traces were in after years discovered
in Caria, in Lycia, and in the Troad. It is likely enough
that Apollo worship was not moulded into its final shape
until such time as the Dorians of Thessaly had been long
in contact with the lonians of Asia, and that it passed
through many lower forms before it reached the condition
which we admire. There is evidence of the existence of a
sun worship of a not exalted character in the same land of
Crete. The bull-headed Minotaur can hardly have been
anything else than a sun god, one of the Asiatic stamp :
the Cnossian labyrinth has a totally Oriental appearance,
and reminds us of that celebrated garden of Mylitta in
Babylon which Herodotus describes. 2
There is no doubt that it was through much com-
merce with other peoples, through much friction and inter-
change of ideas, that the Greek religion in its entirety,
the cult of Apollo and of Athene alike, grew to be what
they were. But let us not say that Athene and Apollo
were on this account less truly Hellenic. It was with the
history of belief as it was with the history of art ; the first
forms were borrowed from the East, from Phoanicians,
Assyrians, or Egyptians. But that which infused life into
these forms, which placed a spirit in their bodies, and a
breath in their members, that was wholly Greek.
Even before the time of Minos that is, before the
Doric kingdom in Crete had put to silence the older
1 I do not mean to say that the original Minos was a Dorian. Minos
was really to the Greeks no one else than what Adam is to us, what
Yama was to the Indians, and Yima to the Persians. But as Yima grew
into the hero, Yamshid (Jamshld), so Minos became the typical earliest
king. The first Mngdom of the Greek race was the kingdom of Minos,
in Crete. This was, perhaps (as suggested, p. 166), originally an Ionian (or
Yavan) kingdom, but at the time to which Greek tradition points back it
had become by conquest a Dorian one.
2 Herod, i. 199.
THE BIRTH OF APOLLO.
183
Doric rule in Olympus the shrine of Apollo had been
founded on Delos. Delos was afterwards deemed to be
the navel of the earth ; because, being in special favour
with Apollo, it might be thought to stand under the
eye of the midday sun. It was also deemed the birth-
place of the god, because it lay in mid-^Egaean and the
sun is born from the sea; and also probably because it
was one of the earliest shrines of the deity. This island,
standing as it does half-way between Europe and Asia,
and half-way between Olympus and Crete, is a type of
the cult of Apollo, which was the meeting-point between
the Oriental and the Occidental Greeks.
Last of all, the Dorian migrations which took place
about the tenth century before our era, starting from the
Doric tetrapolis, the cities of Erineus, Bceum, Find us, and
Cytinium for to this neighbourhood the Dorians of
Olympus and Tempe had gradually moved carried the
Delphic worship of the god over the whole Peloponnese.
Thus by example, or more direct enforcement, the new
creed spread on every side, until the god was honoured
wherever the Greek tongue was spoken
Through the calf-breeding mainland and through the isles. 1
The old poems those two hymns, for example, which
have been joined into one and called the Homeric hymn
to Apollo have not very much which is reliable to give us
out Df their tradition. The mythic journeys of the god have
but few grains of history interspersed in them, and these
grains are not easily discoverable. On the other hand,
the Homeric hymn tells not obscurely other facts which are
in their way historical ; it relates the nature and the deeds
of the sun god as he presented himself to the eyes of
those who composed the hymn. We know how nearly
the sun god has always touched the sympathies of man-
kind, and how he has generally assumed an office more
1 Hymn, in Apol. 21.
184 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
h-uman than that of any other nature god. The sun
itself has many aspects. There is therefore enough in
the nature of the sun god to furnish more than one in-
dividuality. There are high sun gods and low sun gods
and suns who are bnt demi-gods or heroes. The manhood
of Apollo never sinks him low. He is human in his sym-
pathies, and in many incidents of his life, but he is also
completely god-like in dignity.
Son of the ' Concealed ' (Leto), or, in other words, of
the Darkness, Apollo was born in suffering upon the
island of Delos. The hymn tells how his mother first
wandered from land to land, and how one coast after
another refused to receive her, dreading to give birth to
the Far-Darter because of the anger of Hera. But at
last she came to rugged Delos, and to her prayer that
island listened : there for nine days l she laboured in pain
and could not be delivered, because Hera hindered the
birth. But at length the hour was accomplished, and
then the bright one leaped into light, and all the attend-
ant goddesses gave a shout (we have here an echo of
an old belief petrified in the myth of Memnon that at
the hour of sunrise the horizon sends forth a sound 2 )
and Delos grew all golden. Then the goddesses washed
him in fair water, purely and holily, and (beautiful picture
of the sun wrapped in the golden- threaded clouds of
dawn) they wrapped him in a white robe, and around it
did a golden band. Thus arose the Far-Darter, the god
of the silver bow, whose arrows are the rays, whose
golden sword is the heat of the sun.
The hymn has much to tell us concerning the tradition-
1 The mystical number nine is especially connected with Apollo (cf. the
nine muses) and with the sun ; its curious repetition in the Odysseus myth
(see note to p. 303) is the best justification for those who would interpret
the wanderings of that hero as a sun myth. I think, however, I have
shown in Ch. VI. that the sun myth may have had its influence upon the
story of Odysseus without be'ng in any sense its real foundation.
2 I imagine that the origin of this myth is the realisation of the Hrtli of
the sun, and the cry of pain which mother Nature (or mother Earth)
at that hour.
APOLLO AT DELPHI. 185
ary spread of Apollo worship, mingling these details
with others which belong purely to the nature myth.
But we have not a complete biography of Apollo, as we
have of Heracles, and for the reason that a life implies a
death, and Apollo does not die. He is immortal, un-
changeable among the Olympians, next in majesty to his
father. All the gods fear him as he goes through the
house of Zeus, and all rise from their seats when he
passes, stretching his wondrous bow. He is in this hymn
a terrible and proud god, who lords it over mortals and
immortals. If Apollo's name do really mean 'the de-
stroyer,* we cannot doubt that once he was as fierce and
dangerous as Ares himself. The sun hero is ever a war-
rior. The dark coils of cloud against which Indra
launched his thunderbolt wait to devour Apollo, unless he
can destroy them first. The cloud serpent Ahi is in this
case the Python ; and the serpent destroyer is not now
the god of storm, but the sun. No sooner has the god
been born than he begins his life of adventure and of
war.
His first journey was that which broiight him to
Delphi. The bright open country pleased the god, and he
wished to found a temple there. But he was turned from
his purpose by the river goddess, Telphusa, who fraudfully
persuaded him that the place, with its flocks and herds of
wild horses and its races and charioteers, was an unfit
place for the solitude of his shrine, and would have him
pass on to the gorge of Parnassus. This she did because
she desired to keep her renown in the land, and she
hoped that Apollo would be killed by the serpent who
inhabited the ravine. The god then passed on, and
founded a shrine at Crissa (whence it was afterwards
moved a little inland to the historic Delphi). Here he
discovered the great serpent. Hera had brought this
monster forth, like neither to gods nor mortals, a bane to
men. And her the Far-Darter slew with his arrows, and
she writhed among the woods, and gave up her life, spout-
186 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
ing forth blood. And the sun rotted her carcass, whence
she was called Pytlio after death.
This last myth has a general and a local significance.
The general significance is the war which, according to
many different mythologies, the sun god carries on against
the river god. The great river which is the sum of all the
lesser fetiches of this kind is the earth river, which flows all
round the world and which the Greeks knew by the name
Oceanos. Perhaps in its widest significance the contest
between the sun god and the river is a combat with this
earth river. For this is the destroyer of the sun.- Into
Oceanos the sun sinks every night and dies. The river
smothers him in its coils and puts an end to his life ; and
before that could happen there must have been a battle
between the two. This, I suppose, is the general signifi-
cance of the fights between the sun god and the river ;
combats which come forward so conspicuously in the case
of the Norse god Thorr and the earth-girding serpent
Jormungandr. And yet this typical battle is enacted
again every time the sun dries up some local stream ; so
that in the story of the Python- slay ing, beside the deeper
significance which made it the same as the contests of
Thorr with Jormungandr, of Heracles with the Lernean
hydra, and the combats between Indra and Ahi, there is
the relic of a lesser local myth which recorded only the
drying up of the stream of Mount Parnassus.
Much might be said in this place of the myths re-
lated of Apollo ; for the myths which belong to the sun
are in most systems more numerous than those which
attach to any other phenomenon. But the subject of sun
myths has perhaps received an undue amount of attention
in comparison with the myths of any other part of nature ;
and therefore there is no need to stay long upon them
here. Among the sun myths which characterise best the
nature of Apollo we will glance at one or two.
In the whole repertory of folk tales there is none more
touching nor none which is a greater favourite in popular
HIS WANDERINGS. 187
lore than that which tells of the hero hiding his great-
ness for a while in a servile state, or beneath a beggar's
gabardine, receiving the sneers and slights of his com-
rades in patience, because he knows that his time will
come and he can afford to wait. The story naturally at-
taches to the sun, as his life is the type of the heroic
one ; and, as we see from the above history, it does not
pass over Apollo. For the god was born upon the smallest
and ruggedest of all the jEgsean islands ; all other lands
rejected him because he was under the ban of Hera. And
like the prince when he throws off his disguise and gilds
all things with his greatness, and arms himself for heroic
deeds, so does Apollo seem when he makes Delos most
honoured of all places and rich with many gifts. Accord-
ing to another tale, Apollo was, after the slaughter of the
Python, for purification from blood, condemned to become
a servant and to feed the horses of Admetus ; at another
time he served Laomedon and built a wall for him round
Ilium. All these stories have the same intent.
Again, the sun is the wandering god. No sooner was
Apollo born than he started upon his travels. He went
to rocky Pytho, playing upon his harp. From Olympus
he descended to * sandy Lecton to the Magnesians, and
went amid the Perrhsebians.' Or, according to another
part of the hymn, taking the shape of a dolphin, he guided
men from Crete to Crissa, that they might spread abroad
his fame in that region. This plunging of the god into
the water, and his taking the shape of a fish, is the set-
ting of the sun ; and the birth of Apollo in the mid-2Egsean
is his rising. Both are alike parts of the sun's daily
journey.
Another example of the connection between Apollo's
history and popular lore is to be found in the story told us
by Apollodorus, how soon after his birth he was carried
away on the back of swans to the country of the Hyper-
boreans, where he remained until a year had run out.
This is in no way different from that common Teutonic
188 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
legend of the swan knight who as a child is borne away by
birds of the same species to some distant land, some
earthly paradise, and returns at last in the like fashion.
In the case of Lohengrin the knight comes in a barge
which a swan is dragging along as he swims ; and so, in
this example, Apollo's dolphin voyage and his swan flight
through the air are, in a manner, combined into one
picture.
The wandering Apollo led the Dorians to Crissa. But
I do not think this was the only occasion on which he
became their guide. The sun, in all migrations and in all
wanderings, is ever the leader ; and I have no doubt that
Apollo had been at the head of all the adventures of the
Doric race. But when these last had adopted Heracles
from the men of the land to which they came, they trans-
ferred this character of leader from the god to the denii-
god. As K. O. Miiller says, f everything which is related
of the exploits of Heracles in the north of Greece refers
exclusively to the history of the Dorians, and conversely all
the actions of the Doric race in their earliest settlements
are fabulously represented in the person of Heracles.' 1
To account for the migrations of the Dorians, a so-called
'return of the Heraclidse' was invented and placed under
the special guidance of Heracles.
The transfer to this last god or demi-god of some of
the deeds of Apollo had two causes, and has two aspects.
In one aspect it was a reassertioii of the importance of
the older demi-god, o him, that is to say, whom the
Pelasgic Greeks had worshipped before they knew Apollo.
But it has another significance beside this. Heracles re-
mained essentially the lower divinity, the peasants' god ;
Apollo was the god of the higher race. Wherefore it was
natural to ascribe to the former those deeds which were
most essentially human in character. Apollo was raised
to a loftier and remoter sphere so soon as he had been
1 Dorians, Eng. translation, p. 56.
DEATHS OF APOLLO AND HERACLES. 189
purged of the more human parts of his nature, and these
had been passed over to Heracles.
We note the effects of this change in one matter of
supreme importance belonging to the mythic history of
the- sun. We have already seen how necessarily it belongs
to the sun's nature that he should be born weak, and
suffer hardships in his childhood ; how it belongs to him
that he should be a wanderer and a fighte t r. But not less
than all this it appertains to his character that he should
die. It is this last act which makes the nature of the
sun god approach the nearest to human nature. Where-
fore it is an action sure to be brought into prominence in
the case of a sun god who has sunk some way toward the
human level, and is sure to be as much as possible sup-
pressed in the case of a god who has come to be raised
very high above the level of mankind. This truth is illus-
trated in the persons of Heracles and Apollo.
The dea.th of Heracles is the most impressive incident
in all his varied history. No one who reads the account
of it can, I think, fail to be struck by the likeness. of the
picture to an image of the setting sun. The hero return-
ing home, has reached the shore of the JEggean, when
Lichas comes to meet him, bearing the fatal shirt poisoned
with the blood of Nessus. At starting upon his voyage
Heracles puts it on, and straightway the burning folds
cling to his body, just as the sunset clouds cling round
the setting sun. 1 Feeling that his end is near, Heracles
orders Lichas to make him a mound upon Mount (Eta
on the western shore of the ^Egsean, as we note and there
is he burned. The flame of his pyre shines out far over
1 All this has been better said in Sir G. Cox's Mythology of the Aryan
Nations, and. in the same writer's Tales of Ancient Greece,. I am, I confess,
among those who think that the learned writer has used too much in-
genuity in hunting out possible ' sun myths.' But that this story and
many others are sun myths I feel no manner of doubt. The universality
of folk tales argues nothing against the existence of nature myths of this
kind. Even if many of the tales had been invented before nature worship
began, they would inevitably get transferred to those gods whose characters
they fitted.
190 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
the sea as the sun's last rays shine out in the light of the
fiery sky. So, too, in a Northern myth, Hringhorni, the
funeral ship of Balder that is to say, the barque of the
sun is described as drifting out burning into the west.
The Northmen never upheld the idea that their gods were
immortal, and therefore it was no difficulty to them to tell
of the death of the sun. Neither was it difficult for the
Greeks to tell of the death of Heracles, because Heracles
was not one of the true Olympian gods. He had only by
sufferance his place on Olympus, and had left behind him
in Hades (as a sort of pledge) his shade, which still stalked
about those darksome fields. 1 It was far harder to realise
that Apollo could ever have suffered death, and accord-
ingly we find that the memory of that part of his career
was almost forgotten in the latter days.
Yet there are relics of myths which were myths of
Apollo's dying. One is this. When Apollo had slain the
Python, he had, as we have seen, to purify himself ; and
part of his purification consisted in serving in the stables
of Adrnetos, and in tending his horses on the sides of
Pierus. 2 Now Admetus, as Otfried Miiller has shown, is
really one of the by-names of Hades; so that Apollo's
service in this case is a descent to the under world. No
doubt but this is some relic of an earlier myth, which
gave to the great battle between Apollo and the Serpent
a different ending from that now known to us, making the
god worsted and not victorious in his fight with the powers
of darkness. Another indication of a descent to hell is
found in the share which Apollo takes in the recall of
Alcestis from the realm of Death and her restoration to her
husband. It is here that the likeness between the Greek god
and the Christian Saviour which has been insisted on by
1 Od. xi. 601. Heracles also makes a temporary descent to Hades,
and brings back Cerberus. This combat, and that of Heracles with Thana-
tos, in the story of Alcestis, are instances of victory over death on the part
of the hero.
2 II. ii. 766.
RSITY
ZEUS AND APOLLO IN THE ILIAD.
many writers reaches its culminating point. Of course
every sun god must descend to the world of shades, but
all do not rise again: none rise more victoriously than
Apollo does, harrowing Hell, as it were, and bringing
back the spoils in the person of Alcestis. Just so, accord-
ing to Middle Age tradition, did Christ, after going down
into Hell, spoil from its clutches the patriarchs of the Old
Testament, Adam and Abel, Noah, Moses, Abraham, and
the greatest among the seed of Abraham.
lo era nuovo in questo loco,
Qnando ci vidi venire nn Possente,
Con segno di vittoria incorronato.
Trassaci 1' ombra del Primo Parente,
D' Abel suo figlio, e quella di Noe,
Di Moise legista, e ubbidiente
Abraarn Patrarca, e David Be,
Israel con suo padre, co' sui nati,
E con Bachele per cui tanto fe*
Ed altri molti ; e fecegli beati.
The history of the development of Apollo's character,
then, is the gradual exaltation of his nature to suit the
growing needs of men. All that was lowest in it, and all
that seemed inconsistent with the highest degree of power,
all that was fierce and rude, all that was too human in
weakness, could be transferred to one of the older sun gods
to Heracles, say, or to Ares until at last the god of Hellas
became the prototype of the highest development of Greek
culture. In Homer he is not only the greatest of all the
sun gods ; he is superior in character to almost every
other deity. In the Iliad, though Zeus is the most mighty
of the two, Apollo's is certainly the more majestic figure.
There is something very suggestive in the remoteness of
Apollo from the passion of partisanship which sways the
other Olympians ; first the terror of his coming to revenge
a slight done to himself, and then his withdrawal for a
long time from all part in the combat after that injury
has been thoroughly atoned for.
192 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
One cannot help seeing a certain analogy in the
characters and positions of the chief actors in the drama
of the Iliad, Agamemnon and Achilles, and those two
heavenly spectators Zeus and Apollo. 1 Zeus is the king
of gods, as Agamemnon of men, and, despite the fact that
Zeus sides with the Trojans, there is a bond of union
between the god and the mortal. Agamemnon always ad-
dresses himself first to Zeus, even to the Zeus who rules
on Ida, and when the Achseans are sacrificing some to one
god, some to another, his prayer is to the King of Heaven. 2
The likeness between Apollo and Achilles scarcely needs to
be pointed out. Achilles is a sun hero and Apollo is a sun
god; that is really all the difference between them. Each
is the ideal youth, the representative, one might fairly say,
of ' young Greece, 5 that which was to become in after years
Hellas. Achilles is from the very primal Hellas, whence
the whole country eventually took its name. Apollo and
Achilles have the same sense of strength in reserve and
an abstinence from participation in the battle going on
around : each is provoked to do so only by some very near
personal injury.
M. Didron, in his interesting work on Christian icono-
graphy, gives us a sketch of the relative positions in art
occupied during the Middle Ages by the two first persons
of the Trinity, whence we can gather their positions in
popular belief, of which art is the mouthpiece. We find
that at first God the Father never appears ; His presence
is indicated by a hand or by some other symbol, He has
no visible place in the picture ; and when at last He takes
a bodily shape, His form is borrowed from that of His
Son. It is Christ who, in the monuments of the fourth
to the tenth centuries, is generally portrayed performing
1 On the whole it must be noticed that Zeus and Apollo, unlike Athene
and Hera, do not engage personally in the fight Apollo does so once or
twice but use their powers as nature gods. Zeus especially acts in this
way : Apollo does so in the case of the demolition of the Achaeans' wa.l
(bk. xii.) 8ee also the great tight of the gods in the xxth book.
2 Cf. II. ii. 403, 412 ; iii. 276.
ZEUS AND APOLLO IN THE ILIAD. 193
those works which, in the Old Testament are ascribed to
Jehovah ; Christ makes the world, the sun and moon, and
raises Eve out of the side of Adam. Before the tenth cen-
tury the usual type of Christ is a very young man. After
that century He is some thirty years of age ; and then the
Father begins to be seen. He is fashioned in nearly the
same manner, and is no older and no younger than His Son.
This implies that, during the early ages of Christianity,
Christ had quite excluded the Father from the thoughts
of most men ; and I think we have only to read the
literature of this time the profane literature especially,
the histories or memoirs to see that such was the case.
The reason of th is was that Christ was the active Divinity ;
the history of His life and death, His labours and
sufferings, was constantly before the popular mind. He
absorbed all characters of the Trinity into His individual
person.
A similar thing, we have seen, happened in the case of
Indra and Dyaus, and of Zeus and his predecessor ; the
change might have been enacted once more in the case of
Zeus and Apollo. And perhaps this would have happened
if the Dorians had worked out their religious history for
themselves. For the Doric Zeus was an abstract and in-
active god ; he alone never would have received, never did
receive, great religious honours. 'The supreme deity,
when connected with Apollo, was neither born nor visible
on earth, and was perhaps never considered as having any
immediate influence on men.' l
As this Doric religion met with the Pelasgic creed, and
the active and the passive Zeus had to be rolled into one,
and the Apollo to conquer a place for himself in the belief
of all Hellas, there was at first, I doubt not, seme conflict
between the rival systems; much like that conflict be-
tween the earthly Agamemnon and Achilles. Sometimes
Apollo appears higher and sometimes lower than Zeus.
1 Miillcr, Dorian*.
O
194 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
In Homer's picture the father is far more susceptible of
human passion, far less self-contained and self-reliant,
than his son : but then on the other hand Hesiod, writing
in the mainland of Greece a century or two later, neglects
Apollo almost completely. So that the view which
Homer presents of Zeus and his son may have been ex-
clusively an Ionic one. And, concerning Zeus, I think
we can see that very late as far down, for instance, as the
time of .ZEschylus two very different pictures might be
presented to the popular mind, the one that of the usurp-
ing god of the Prometheus, the other the Zeus to whom
the Suppliants pray.
The mountains have given way to Zeus in a Titan
struggle against the new gods ; the trees have been carved,
into images of unseen powers ; the fountains, dissolving
themselves into mists, have floated heavenwards, and thus
a new race of ethereal beings has supplanted those who
were born on earth.
An in tei mediate stage it was while the mist still
lingered above the river and the cloud upon the sea. At
such a time took place the birth of some among the great
goddesses of Greece. Aphrodite, for example, is one
among this sisterhood of the mist-born ones, rising as she
does from the foam and coming as she comes over the
waves of the far-sounding sea, borne on the soft spray ;
and another sister is Artemis, who is in reality a river
nymph. But chief of all that company is Athene Trito-
geneia, the daughter of Triton. 1 Triton means not water
in the abstract, but some definite form of it, as a par-
ticular inlet or river or strait, and the Athene of each
place had no doubt her parentage in the particular piece
of water known to that place. It were not too much to
say that the Athene of Athens was the child of Ilissus
no mean god even in late times, for he had his place
1 She is called also TrovTia, Ba\a<ra-ia, etin\oia sea-born, in a word, like
Aphrodite.
ATHN. 195
on the pediment of the Parthenon and that out of the
worship of that very river first sprang the conception of
the Athenian goddess. For of course each place had its
local fountain and local nymph. It was a matter of
chance which of the fountain goddesses attained pre-
eminence and extended her name over the rest. This
alone is certain : whatever the history of Athene's origin,
whichever among the worshipped mists it may have been
who was her prototype, the subsequent career of the god-
dess was such as to make her peculiarly adaptive to Greek
ideas ; so that she became at last the most truly Hellenic
of all the watery divinities.
The same fate did not attend all. Aphrodite was born
in some region where she was subject to Oriental in-
fluences ; from which she received into her nature most
of the peculiar characteristics of the neighbouring Eastern
goddesses, such as the Astarte of the Phoenicians, the
Mylitta of the Babylonians. These were properly earth
goddesses, and had all the sensuous character which
belongs to this order of beings. And so Aphrodite be-
came earthy and sensuous. Yet she is to be seen in
other guises. She was sometimes represented armed like
Athene, and in such guise she was scarcely distinguish-
able from Pallas.
If, then, it was an accident of birth which transformed
Aphrodite into Kupris, an accident of birth and of edu-
cation, it was an accident also which rescued Athene
from such blighting influences. There are two genea-
logies for the race of goddesses. One is of the earth, and
then the deity is Prithivi or Demeter, who marries the
heaven god, and becomes either the ideal mother goddess
or else, like the Mylitta of Babylon, the Cybele of Phrygia,
the Astarte. of Tyre, a goddess of sensuous delights.
The other birth is from the stream or the sea, and then,
if she follow her natural instincts, the goddess rises
heavenward, and becomes first the cloud, and after merges
into the wind or the air. It belongs to the essential cha-
o 2
196 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
racter of such an one that she is not sensuous. Her
special characteristic is her maidenhood. Athene is ever
called in Homer Maid Athene (Pallas- Athene). Parthenos,
another word for virgin, was her peculiar title. Indeed,
it was so recognisedly a sufficient designation of her at
Athens, that her temple was called the Parthenon simply,
instead of the more natural Athenaion (Athenaeum). In
the Homeric hymn addressed to her she is called Core
(/covprj). In another Homeric hymn, addressed to Aphro-
dite, it is said that there are but three whom the Queen
of Love has never subdued, and these are Hestia, Athene,
and Artemis.
And here let me turn aside a moment to point out to
the reader how the essential identity in the characters of
Athene and Artemis is indicated by their virgin natures.
We know how universally the latter goddess was cele-
brated for her chastity and modesty, so that even to see
her naked, as Actseon did, was a mortal offence, which did
not fail to meet with mortal punishment ; while, on the
other hand, it was a sin no less deadly for Artemis'
maidens to offend against the moral sense of the goddess
by breaking their vows of maidenhood as in the case of
Callisto. Now we find Athene sufficiently designated as
Parthenos, the maiden par excellence. And yet those who
had known both Athene and Artemis could never have used
the names Pallas and Parthenos as synonyms for Athene.
Seeing, then, that chastity is the leading characteristic of
Artemis (as the most important myths about her show),
and that the chastity, i.e. the maidenhood, of Athene was
so necessary and distinctive a part of her nature that she
was known as the maiden, we are justified in saying that
Artemis and Athene were of identical nature.
Artemis was originally a stream ; she was of the same
nature as her attendant nymph the c leaping ' Atalanta, 1
one of the great mythic huntresses of antiquity and un-
to leap.
AND AETEMIS. 197
doubtedly a fountain. Athene, too, was originally born of
the stream. Both were, on account of this birth, pure
maidens; and being such, both became afterwarda con-
founded with the moon. 1 Apollo and Athene are neces-
sarily closely connected, as the idealisations of the young
male divinity and the young female divinity ; still closer,
however, is the relationship between Apollo and Artemis.
Artemis, then, was at first the same as Athene. The
two had the same origin in the outer world of phenomena,
and for awhile their characters must have unfolded side
by side. But the circumstances of their after lives were
very different. Artemis was a goddess chiefly of the less
cultured populations of Greece that is to say, of those
who dwelt in the interior of the Peloponnese. Athene,
on the contrary, became the tutelary divinity of the most
highly civilised city in all Hellas. She daily waxed
greater, and the other waned. Athene's history was pre-
served by the best literature of Greece ; Artemis was left
in the shade among her Arcadian shepherds, and fell
down to the second rank of goddesses. This difference in
their respective histories was partly accidental : it was, at
all events, independent of their essential natures, and
arose only out of the varied fortunes of their votaries.
Therefore what we have to say of the birth of the tutelary
goddess of Athens, of her first issue from the phenomena
out of which she was formed, and the earliest pages of her
history, may apply in great measure to Artemis as well.
I have said that at first there may be as many Trito-
geneias as there are separate pieces of water to give them
birth. Pallas- Athene, j] TrapOsvos, was once the special
maiden goddess of Athens, sprung from the water which
watered Athens : no more than this. Or, if more than
this, she was at all events the goddess of only one section
1 Athene's relationship to the moon appears in many ways. As a
mariner's goddess she was confounded with Astarte. She was also identified
with the Gorgon (cf. the expression yopywwis), and, whatever Medusa was
at first, she came to be thought of as the full moon.
198 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
of the Greek race. Aphrodite was the water deity of
another section of the Cypriotes, for example, and those
Greeks who came most under the influence of Asiatic
thought. Artemis filled the same place with a third
division the shepherd races of the inland. Athene stood,
in a fashion, between the two ; she was more Asiatic than
Artemis, more Greek than Aphrodite. So she was de-
stined to lord it over all her compeers. One of the Trito-
geneias must inevitably have risen to pre-eminence, and
have thrust the others into the shade. When this event
did happen, Aphrodite became the goddess of an abstrac-
tion Love. Artemis became the moon.
Gods and goddesses who once ruled over much greater
phenomena often seem to find a last refuge in one or other
of the heavenly bodies. Even Jupiter lived to be con-
founded with a star. Astarte, who was originally (I sus-
pect) an earth goddess, came to be, like Artemis, identified
with the moon. The great Mitra and Vanma, of whom
we spoke in the last chapter, descended first to become
the Asvin of Yedic mythology, and then descended further,
to be in the persons of the Dioscuri confounded with the
morning and evening stars. But to return to Athene and
her history.
This goddess succeeded in absorbing in herself the
highest parts of the characters of Artemis and Aphrodite.
She also in a certain measure subdued Hera to follow her
nature. It has been said that Hera was more a goddess
of heaven than of earth. But she was this, not in virtue
of her own nature, but of her being the wife of Zeus.
And in leaving her rightful element, she left behind her
some of her individual character. Hera had not the same
rights in the heavenly regions which Athene possessed.
When we see Hera and Athene acting in concert, as we
do throughout the Iliad, we must regard Athene as being
actually, if not in name, the leader. Hera's being is
merged in Athene's : she forgets that she is a wife ; she
acts of her own will and not in proper obedience to her
HYMN TO ATHN. 199
husband. Hera is a cloud when she and Pallas come
flying down to the Grecian ranks side by side like two
doves sailing through the air. She is a heaven goddess
when she steals the thunders of Zeus. But Athene does
not need to steal from Zeus ; she wears the aegis by right ;
and the segis is the thunder cloud.
Zeus, from being the heaven, became the stormy sky
and even the cloud; Athene, in a contrary way, being
first the cloud, was refined as time went on into the air
and into the sky. She came eventually to be the Queen
of the Air : but we must not so think of her at first. She
was originally a stormy goddess ; and when not the cloud
itself, then the wind or the thunder storm, which are
born of the cloud. To her and to Zeus alone did the
aegis belong by right : each, it would seem, had their own
aegis, that terrible corselet fringed with Horror and girt
about with Fear, whose true nature is not difficult to
divine. 1 The origin of the cloud in the water is soon for-
gotten, and so was the first birth of Athene. To Homer
the epic Homer she was only Tritogeneia, daughter of
Triton. But to the author of the Homeric hymn and to
all later mythologists Athene had another and a higher
parentage : she was born again to be the daughter of Zeus.
The story of this Athene's second birth (it is really a
second birth and like that of Agni from the wood, only
she ascends from earth to heaven and he comes down
from heaven to earth) is that which became so favourite
a subject for vase paintings and sculpture, and which is in
the hymn thus told :--
' I begin my song to Pallas-Athene, the glorious grey-
eyed goddess, wise in counsel, having an untender heart,
the revered virgin, our city ward and mighty; Tritogeneia;
1 'And about her shoulders she threw the aegis fringed with Horror,
which Fear rings round ; thereon was Strife, and Might and chilling Rout '
(/Z. v. 738 sq.) And again, in II. xv. 229, alylSa, Owvavfaffffav. The fringe is
the lightning which issues from the cloud.
200 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
whom counselled Zeus alone brought forth from his re-
verend head, clothed in her warlike golden panoply, shining
on every side. And awe possessed all the immortals who
saw this thing. But she quickly leapt from the immortal
front of aegis-bearing Zeus, shaking her bitter spear, and
great Olympus quaked in fear before the wrath of the
grey-eyed one. And round the earth a horrid sound re-
sounded, and the sea was stirred and tossed its purple
water. Then suddenly the salt wave stood still, and Hy-
perion's glorious son (the sun) stayed long the going of
his swift-foot steeds until the maid (KovpTj) took from her
immortal shoulders that godlike armour ; and counselled
Zeus rejoiced ! '
6 Having an untender heart ; ' and why ? What is
this wrath of the grey-eyed goddess which all fear? It is
the rage of the storm. The very word used here (ftpi^r))
is expressive of the grinding thunder. It means literally
not so much the mere emotion of anger as the outward
expression of it, such as snorting. Athene is cruel
because the lightning is cruel, grey-eyed because the
cloud is grey. She has been the river and the river mist ;
but that is forgotten. What she seems now is the storm
cloud begot in the heavens in the head of Zeus. Her
golden panoply is the storm all armed and ready with the
flash. For see how the old nature meaning of the myth
peeps out under its thin disguise. Dread possessed all the
immortals when she ' leapt forth in a moment ' as the
lightning leaps from heaven brandishing a sharp spear ;
and great Olympus shook before her snorting. The storm,
we see, had begun. 'And all about the earth a horrid
din went round. . . .'
Presently we pass to another image closely allied to
these images, but somewhat different from them. Just
now Athene was the storm itself, almost the lightning
itself, when she leapt forth from heaven. But change the
image a little ; let her be simply the cloud ; then her arms
THE STOKM. 201
are the thunder and the lightning. The Vedic Maruts
have the same panoply. * They put 011 golden armour ;
their spears send down sparks. They lift the mountains ;
the forest trees shake before them.' When the lightning
has gone forth and the thunder rolled, then Athene, the
cloud, has laid aside her weapons. Who does not know the
stillness with which nature awaits that moment of flash
and crash ? Here it is recorded how the salt wave stood still
and the glorious sun stayed the going of his steeds, until
the maid put from her shoulders that immortal panoply :
and counselled Zeus rejoiced the sky itself grew clear.
It is in her aspect as a grim storm goddess that Athene
first appears to us in Greek poetry. It is in virtue of this
fighting power that she is troXids, city guardian. We see
that well enough by the epithets which follow one another
in the hymn. Athene is ' untender-hearted ' (a^uXi^ov
r)Top s^ovcra), and therefore 'revered ' (alBoirj ) ; and because
she was so dread and so revered she was the best of
guardians for the city. Wherefore it was that the oldest
temple to Athene at Athens was the temple of Athene
Polias, and therefore was it that she was worshipped in so
many towns under that name.
There is so much likeness between the natures of Zeus
and Athene, both being at one time personifications of the
sky and at another time personifications of the storm,
that it need not surprise us to find that the epithet
iro\ivs belonged especially to Zeus. But we do not appre-
ciate the full force of such a phrase as applied either to
father or daughter, if we only think of the polis of
historic days. Let us turn for a moment to think of pre-
historic times that is to say, of days when Zeus and
Athene partook much more of the elemental nature from
which they had sprung, than they ever seem to do in
literature. In such days the TroTus- was not the ordered
city, the centre of a busy life, suggestive only of the ' sweet
security of streets,' and remote from fear of the unseen
power of the storm. It was, on the contrary, a little
202 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
palisaded village, situate in a wild country, surrounded by
lonely tracts of forest and of marsh. Each village was a
tribe and a nation to itself; and there was war slumbering
or awake between each community and its neighbour.
Over the wild region which surrounded this little oasis
of human life presided the God of Storms. If he was
friendly to the village, if he was a true city-ward to it,
then he howled with destructive vengeance round the
tribe which was coming to its attack. This was the
ancient character of the Zsvs nroKisvs. When we come to
study the beliefs of the German races, we shall find in
their social condition a better example of the community
which I have been imagining, descended from the village
community of old Aryan days. We shall see how among
the Germans each collection of houses cut itself off from
neighbouring villages by a mar k or forest* track, and how
this mark was ever placed under the guardianship of the
God of Storms.
It seems strange that Athene and Zeus should have
remained such distinct individualities, and yet that there
should have been really so little distinctive in their two
natures. If we compare either their possessions and attri-
butes, or their most characteristic deeds, we shall see that
very many of these are partaken of by both. There often
is no clear distinction between Zeus and Athene. She
is then little else than the feminine counterpart of her
father. As we have seen, each was essentially a city
guardian ; and Athene alone beside her father possessed
the segis and wielded the thunder. 1 There is something
very appropriate in the way that in Homer the goddess
and the god are made to take opposite sides in the Great
Siege. The storm may well have seemed to range itself
now with one camp, now with another. The thunder
might come from Ida, and then it was sent by Zeus ; 2 or
1 In II. ii. 447 Athene is shown as possessing an aegis of her own ; in
v. 733, &c., she borrows that of her father ; in xi. 45 Athene and Hera
together thunder. 2 Cf. viii. 170; xvii. 593.
THE GODDESS OF WISDOM. 203
it might come from the west, whitening the waves of the
sea, and then it was Athene and Hera flying together from
Olympus. But in the double natures of both Zeus and
Athene there is full scope for a difference in their outward
appearance. Zeus is not only the stormy sky ; he is like-
wise, and more rightfully, the clear heaven. He may be
a passionate and changeful being, or he may be the all-
knowing, the wise counsellor, the just judge.
Such changes as these belong partly to the change of
Athene's natural character, partly to the development of
her ethical nature. They can be observed passing over
the goddess of Homer, and they become more noticeable
when we pass on to poets later than Homer. In the
Iliad the goddess appears essentially as the fighter, 'A #771/77
Trpo/Aa^oy, 1 a character which is, as we have seen, inti-
mately connected with her old name of Athene Polias.
In the Odyssey another side of her nature becomes con-
spicuous. She is there the wise counsellor (7ro\v/3ov\os,
7ro\vfjLr)Tis)y and a divinity. appropriately adored by the
cunning seafarers and merchants for whom the Odyssey
was written.
I will not say, however, that this side of Athene's
character, ' the wise one,' was not of very ancient origin,
and has not as much as her fierce, stormy character its
origin in the phenomenon from which she grew. Nay, in
some respects it even seems to have the oldest birth. We
have seen how Athene was first of all water-born, whereby
she was called TpiToyevsia, irowria, 6a\daa-ia, sv7r\oia. She
was also a daughter of Metis, who was in later times
' Counsel' (an abstraction), but in her earlier days a water
nymph, a daughter of ocean. 2 This birth from Metis had
a certain connection with the epithet TroXv/jLrjns ; and it is
1 Athene is not called PromacJios in the Iliad, but that word more than
any other expresses her character there. Compare especially Iliad, iv. 43 ( J,
where Athene is coupled with Ares and with Deimos, Phobos, and Eris ;
v. 29, where she is again in special opposition to Ares ; v. 333, where her
name is coupled with that of Enyo.
2 Preller, Griech. Myth. i. 160.
204 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
not difficult to show what that connection was. Metis was
an Oceanic!. The Oceanids were not the waves, but the
rivers. And rivers have always been associated with pro-
phecy. Every mythology has its wise women, who are
the guardians of a fountain or stream. In the Eddas
such beings are to be seen in the ' weird sisters three '
who keep the well of Urd, which stands under Yggdrasill.
Originally these three maidens were themselves personifi-
cations of wells or streams. The Pythoness was the water
of Delphi, and was one with the nymph Telphusa ; later
on she was the wise maiden of the sacred stream. The
wells of knowledge or of magic, or the fountains of youth
which we meet with in myth and legend, are no more
than the narrowing to particular instances of the magic
and sacredness and healing gifts which were once uni-
versally attributed to streams. And it so happens that of
the many kinds of supernatural power which these as
fetiches once possessed, their knowledge and cunning re-
mained with them the longest. Wherefore the serpent,
which is in every mythology symbolical of the river, is
everywhere held to be e more subtle than any beast of the
field.' It is not difficult, then, to see whence Athene
draws her cunning and wisdom.
By the process of the survival of the fittest, this was
the part of the goddess' nature which lived the longest ;
because, as men advance in civilisation, they set more
value upon intellectual gifts and less value upon mere
animal courage and capacity for fighting. Hence the
very noticeable change which, as we shall presently see,
has passed over the character of Athene when we turn
from the Iliad to the Odyssey.
An important deed of Pallas beside those which she is
made to perform in Homer, was the help which she gave
to Perseus in his expedition against the Gorgons. Besides
the aegis, Athene possessed the shield into which Medusa's
head had been fixed, and which was hence called the gor-
goneion. The adventure of Perseus is most evidently a pure
MEDUSA. 205
nature myth, and the gorgoneion jnust therefore belong
to Athene in her nature character. Concerning Perseus
there is no doubt. He is the sun, the hero who, like
Surya, 'wanders up and down upon his path,' 1 veiling
himself in things alike and unlike (i.e. hiding his form
in the petasos of Hermes). We have first to note him on
his western journey, how by the fitful winds he was borne
through endless space, and from the lofty sky looked down,
on the far-removed earth, and sped over all the world ;
how he saw Arcturus cold and the claws of Cancer, and was
carried now to the east, now to the west. And then, fol-
lowing him on his journey, we may see him at day's
decline staying on the borders of Atlas' kingdom, upon
the edge of earth, where the sea is ever ready to receive
the panting horses of the Sun and his wearied car. 2 Here
Perseus is not the sun seen as the god who travels upon
right ond changeless paths, but as the sun hero who is
essentially a wanderer. The Medusa head, as we see it
in early art, presents a hideous face, with the tongue
lolling out and sharp teeth agrin. It is, in fact, the
strange misshapen waning moon, which before dawn we
may see hanging over the western horizon. Soon the
rising sun will strike it dead. Medusa herself is a kind
of goddess of death, the queen of that western world of
shades. As art advanced, she grew milder, until she
became like Hypnos, a soft embodiment of rest. But
she was Death for all that.
Some have supposed, however, that the Gorgon was
not originally the moon, but the storm, and to this notion
her connec tion with Athene gives some colour. For the
truth is, Athene and Medusa are one and the same being
seen under different aspects. Athene herself is called
gorgon-faced (yopy&Tris), 3 and I have little doubt that she
1 Rig Veda, *. 177, 3. 2 Cf. Met. iv. 622 sqq.
8 Topy&iris or yopywir6s is of course a general synonym for fierce-looking,
and as such is applied to Hector "E/crwp . . . Topyovs 6/j.fj.aT' ex wj/ (^. viii.
348, 9). But as a special epithet of Athene it has a deeper meaning than
'fierce' only.
206 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
was once represented by a face not unlike that archaic
gorgon one. Such an instance of absorption by a divinity
of his or her earlier being is very common in the history
of mythology. The Gorgon must, then, have been at first
the storm, and afterwards the waning moon. The battle
of the sun god and the cloud is universal ; and this may
have been the first meaning of Perseus' slaying Medusa.
Afterwards a more fanciful mythology would convert it
into the death of the moon.
Athene's being the daughter of the cloud and also of
the water to inland men of the river, but to those by
the coast of the sea gave her a peculiar connection with
navigation, and made her the special patroness of those
among the Greek nationality who first practised such an
art. There was an additional reason for her becoming the
goddess of sailors, and that was a certain amount of
confusion between her and the Phoenician Astarte. To
inland men she or I would rather say the maiden
goddess, the Parthenos, the Pallax came to be represented
by Artemis ; to those who were most orientalised she was
merged in Astarte or Aphrodite ; while to the intermediate
class she kept her proper individuality.
Now this intermediate class was formed of precisely
the men who made Hellas what it was. They were the
Javan, the lonians, the dwellers by the sea of either coast,
the adventurers, the merchants, the lovers of art. Where-
fore Athene became patron of all these pursuits. She
was the sea goddess of the newer men, in opposition to
Poseidon, who was the sea god of the Pelasgians. Whence
the contest between them.
These I take to be the chief constituents which go to
make up the character of the water-born goddess. Some
essential features of this character are to be traced all
through the history of Athene worship, until (shall we
say) she reappears in neo-Platonist and Christian mytho-
logy as the Divine Sophia or as the Yirgin herself. But
of course Athene's ethic being tends continually to dim
THE SEA GODDESS. 207
her natural being. We shall do well to adhere generally
to the rule laid down that we ought to seek in Homer
alone for anything like a nature god or goddess ; where-
fore, in concluding this sketch of Athene, we will turn
back again to recapitulate in a few words the leading
features of her character as that is portrayed in the Iliad
and in the Odyssey.
We have first to remember that Athene is always Trito-
geneia here, and we must therefore think of her always as
the cloud in some form. In the Iliad she is the storm
cloud especially. Zeus thunders from Ida 1 that is, from
the Troy side and his seat is there ; 2 while that of the
rest of the gods is on the European side namely, upon
Olympus. 3 Thus Zeus becomes an image of the storm
which from landward bears against the Greeks. Apollo
(the sun), too, came from the east, and so he seemed to
be ranged upon the side of the Dardanians. Apollo came
from Pergamos to oppose Athene coming from Olympus ;
but when the sun had sloped toward the west, Apollo's
power to help his allies failed him. ' So long, then, as
the sun was climbing to mid-heaven the weapons reached
both sides with equal power, and the people fell ; but when
the sun had passed on towards eventide, then were the
Greeks the mightier in despite of fate.' 4
And now for the Greek befriending deities. 5 Athene
is meant to be the chief and leader of these. Hera seems
sometimes the leader, for this is suitable to her place as
Queen of Heaven ; but her genius is really overpowered
1 viii. 170; xvii. 593. 2 viii. 397, &c. 3 viii. 438, &c.
4 H. xvi. 777, &c. The morning is more taken account of than the
evening. This is perhaps why both Apollo and Ares seem on the side of
the Easterns. The sun was really so till midday. The other deities who
side with the Trojans are Artemis and Lcto (who go with brother and
son) ; Xanthus, a local river god ; and Aphrodite", of Eastern origin.
5 The divinities who side with the Greeks, the Westerns and the in-
vaders, are Hera (only because her nature is overpowered by Athene's),
the two rulers of the sea, Athene and Poseidon (one as the storm, the
wind, or cloud, the other as the sea itself), Hermes (god of the West and
of Death ; see Ob. VI.), and Hephaestus. See book xx.
208 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
* rebuked, as it is said Marc Antony's was by Caesar ' bj
the genius of Athene. We see this the more plainly when
we have followed the history of the goddesses into the
second epic ; for there we find that Hera has sunk to in-
significance, while Athene retains all her ancient power
with something added. Even in the Iliad Athene some-
times orders and Hera obeys ; l and this seems a very re-
markable thing when we remember the difference of their
nominal positions and the actual difference of a generation
between them. Generally Hera and Athene go side by
side, flying together, 2 or driving side by side in the chariot. 3
Wherefore we may take them for two embodiments of the
storm or the storm cloud coming ( in speed like doves ' to
meet Zeus, who conies up from the other side, whitening
the .ZEgsean as they pass over it. It has been already
noted how both Athene and Hera can wield the thunder.
Before we leave Athene's character in the Iliad we
must notice the epithets which attach to her. Tritogeneia
has been spoken of; Polybulos (7ro\vftov\o$) is the same
as Poly metis (TroXu/^Tts-), and belongs of right to this
river-born goddess. Agelia (a/e\evrj) she is frequently
named, a word of doubtful significance which may be ren-
dered 'forager' or 'shepherdess' (aye\rj) 9 both epithets
connecting Athene with Artemis ; but the second probably
the original one. In this case the clouds may be the
sheep, and Athene may be likened to the wind. Gorgopis
1 viii. 381.
2 v. 778. Athen often takes the form of a bird (especially of a
swallow). Moreover, the winged sandals (TreStXa), which characterise
Hermes in sculpture, are Athene's property as well. Now, Hermes is the
wind (see Ch. VI.) As Athene has the ireStKa, so has Freyja, the chief
among the Valkyriur (see Ch. VII.), a feather robe (fiatSrhamr). The
Valkyriur correspond to Athene in nature.
Next to the wind the sun may be presented in the form of a bird. He
is addressed as one in the Rig Veda. On II. vii. 57 Heyne comments,
' Ridiculum hoc, si Minerva et Apollo in vultures mutantur aut vulturum
speciem assumunt. Comparatio spectat ad hoc solum, quod in arbore consi-
dunt et pugnam inde prospectant ' (vol. v. p. 318). Heyne, however, did
not suspect the nature origin of these divinities. See Zeitsch. f. verg. Sp,
xv. (1866), 88 sqq. s viii. 1 c.
ATHN AND POSEIDON. 209
, fierce-eyed, may also be rendered Gorgon-
faced, and affords in either signification good reason for
supposing that Athene and the Gorgon were once the
same.
Now we pass on to the Odyssey, where Athene reigns
almost supreme. Odysseus is, in the language of the
German legends, Athene's Lielliny ; his failures and
successes typify the fortunes of Athene's special votaries.
And who are these ? They are the merchant pirates, the
sea rovers, the discoverers, the Greek Hawkinses and
Drakes, whose time of power succeeded to the older aris-
tocratic days commemorated in the Iliad. The poet of the
Iliad sang to the rich and powerful princes of the .ZEgsean
shores ; the poet of the Odyssey, too, sang in coast towns
of the JSgsean, 1 but no longer to petty kings, rather to the
merchantmen and the loungers in the market. Of these
cunning ' many-de viced ' traders Athene is the patron
saint. The worship of her is so fervent that it admits no
rivalry in her own domain, and therefore she has driven
to the background the older god of the sea. Athene and
Poseidon had been friendly in the Iliad ; in the Odyssey
they are constantly opposed. And because Odysseus puts
out the eye of the Cyclops, who is Poseidon's son, and yet
eventually escapes the vengeance of the Sea God, Athene
must be held to triumph in the end.
' Once,' says the author of the ' Imitation,' ' the children
of Israel said to Moses, Speak thou to us, and we will hear
thee. But let not the Lord speak unto us, lest we die. This,
O Lord, is not my prayer, but with humility and with
fervour I say to Thee, as Samuel the Prophet says, Speak,
Lord, for Thy servant heareth.' The awfulness which
enwrapped the God of the Jews disappeared in the milder
nature of Christ. The greatness of a prophetic mission
is no longer needed to gain a hearing of the Deity ; and
1 He is quite ignorant of the geography of Ithaca, and indeed of all
coasts beyond Cape Matapau. See Bunbury's Geography of the Ancients.
P
210 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
the voice of the Lord is now still and small and uttered in
the human breast, not amid the thunders of Sinai. This
characterises the change from the older to the newer
creed; something of the same kind was the revolution
which the worship of Apollo and of Athene brought about
in the religion of Greece. It was in this case, as in
the other, a meeting-point between God and humanity;
and though there is little moral resemblance between
Christianity and the religion of Hellas, yet there was
in this particular matter a likeness in the development of
each.
The belief of Christianity is a belief in the beauty of
' holiness ; the creed of Hellas was a belief in the beauty of
the world and of mankind. Nature was no longer terrible
to those who had grown to understand her better. They
were not only in a new nature, but they looked upon nature
with new eyes. Once Zeus had embodied all that seemed
most impressive in the world around the dark rugged
land, the storm heard in the forests, and the sea raging
against the shore. And he was in himself the soul of such
scenes. To him might have been addressed the words of
Patroclus to Achilles
Grey ocean bore thee, and the lofty rocks; for cruel are thy
thoughts.
But when Apollo and Athene had taken their place
beside Zeus, men saw the sun rise in a milder majesty, and
the airs grew calmer, and the hills were clothed with
purple brightness. From the bare mountains of Thrace,
from windy heights and perilous seas, the Greeks had passed
to the .ZEgsean, to its safe harbours and its thousand laugh-,
ing islands ; they had exchanged the lonely life of shepherds
for the security of streets, for commerce, and for luxury.
Apollo was a lover of nature, but not in her most terrible
aspects ; ' the high watches pleased him and the far-reach-
ing mountain-tops, and the rivers that run into the deep,
and the shores stretching dmvn to the sea, and the sea's
APOLLO AND ATHENE THE MEDIATORS. 211
harbours.' l Wherever on the Asiatic coast some promon-
tory extended commanding a wide horizon there was sure
to have stood from old times a temple to the sun god.
From such places, from those high watches, men saw him
as he rose, and prayed to him when he sank into the
waters. He went, they deemed, to an unseen divine land
whither the dead heroes had gone before. And before he
quite descended he seemed to stand as a messenger between
men and that future world. It was not so much the far-
off heaven of the gods to which he was going, as to the
happy land of the blessed set apart for mortals ; and the
two worlds between which he stood were both human
habitations, though one was the world of the living and
the other of the dead. Therefore Apollo was always the
friend of man and accessible to human prayer.
Hear me, O King, who art somewhere in the rich realm of
Lycia or of Troy ; for everywhere canst thou hear a man in
sorrow, such as my sorrow is. 2
The rare capacity for art, which was the inheritance of
the Greek race, must soon have lightened its first fear
of nature, both in making -the latter more familiar and
in raising man in his own eyes by showing him himself
able in a way to fashion nature, and therefore possessed of
some part of the creative faculty which belongeth to God.
Athene and Apollo were not associated only with the
beauties which sunlight and calm air can give, but with
those fashioned beauties which are the aim of all artistic
striving. Athene was the patroness of the goldsmith's
art, of cunning workmanship and of embroidery down to
the housewife's skill. All the arts were Apollo's care ; but
most of all music that is to say, rhythmic movement of
limbs or of words with the harmony of sound accom-
panying such movement ; for such the Greek understood
by his word music, which meant for him the sum of all
culture. The Pelasgic Zeus had chosen for his home the
1 Hymn in Apol. 2 Prayer of Glaucus, II. xvi. 514 sqq.
p 2
212 OUTLINES OF P1UMITIVE BELIEF.
groves or the bare mountain-tops. But Apollo's dwelling
was a house made with hands; to him were dedicated
some of the earliest temples. Apollo gave the Greeks the
first need of surpassing the shapeless images which had
been sufficient representatives of the other deities. Among
early sculptures the statues of Apollo are by far the most
frequent ; and we must consider the later images of other
youthful gods of Hermes, for example, or the beardless
Dionysus as no more* than variations upon the original
Apollo type.
The wonderful ideal type of Greek manly beauty may
thus in a manner be ascribed to the worship of this sun
god ; the ideal of womanhood, to the worship of Athene.
For it were unreasonable to suppose that the perfections
of Greek sculpture represented the realities of life. The
humanity of the god or goddess was always an exalted,
idealised manhood.
We have, then, traced the history of these Hellenic
deities through a series of changes corresponding to certain
definite phases of religious growth, and in these phases we
have seen how a change of outward circumstances implied
a parallel change in ethic and in inward development.
The first appearance of Zeus upon the scene the Greek
Zeus, I mean, as distinguished from the Indian Dyaus is
indicative of the dawn of the anthropomorphic spirit,
when the phenomenon which moves and acts has obli-
terated that which was constant. As yet there was no ques-
tion of an ideal man, no desire for ethic or for any moral
law ; all that was needed was that the god should have
that one human quality of will and power ; and this the
Pelasgic god essentially possessed. Then came the rise of
morality ; the gods not only became men, but they became
ideal men ; and in this change Apollo was the conspicuous
figure. The statues of Apollo express the very perfecting
of an anthropomorphic creed. But after a while this in
its turn failed to satisfy the needs of men, for they
required their divinity to be something more than human,
THE HIGHEST IDEAL OF GOD.
213
more even than the ideal human nature ; he must be an
abstract being, an idea which could find no embodiment in
visible form. And with this wish arose again the old
supreme god of the whole Greek race to give a name to
the abstraction. The Zeus whom JEschylus' suppliants
invoke is neither the Zeus of the East nor of the West, of
grove nor temple ; he is not the god of Olympus any more
than of Dodona ; he is merely the God, the King of kings,
like the Hebrews' Jehovah.
'King of kings, happiest of the happy, and of the
perfect, perfect in might, blest Zeus.'
And we know how the very priest of Dodona called
upon him in the same strain :
Ttsvs rjv, Ttsvs sa-ri, Zsvs ea-csrai, o> /jieydXs Zsv, C
mighty Zeus, which was and is and is to be.' 1
1 See Bausanias, x. 12, 5.
214 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
CHAPTER V.
MYSTEEIES.
THE greater gods of Greece those at least who, in the
heyday of worship, had the deepest influence upon
national belief were the intrusive gods, the divinities of
new comers into the land, the patrons of warriors and sea-
faring men. Such gods were the Olympian Zeus and the
Apollo of the hardy mountaineers of Tempe, and Athene,
who had brought the lonians from Asia to Greece, who
had shown Greek colonists the way to new countries, and
who taught men skill in arts and cunning in trade. But
behind these gods stand, half hidden in shadow, other
deities of older birth, they who had been worshipped in
ancient days by the simple and settled folk of the same
lands, by the mere peasant, the shepherd or the planter.
Such were Pan or Hermes of Arcadia, Dionysus of Thrace
and Macedonia ; such were Demeter and Dione and
Themis. The names of the beings are for the most part
distinctly Aryan ; but in character the gods are pre-
Aryan, for they belong of equal right to all nations whose
lives are of a quiet kind. Like gods, if with different
names, must from age to age have been worshipped on
the soil of Greece. If Athene and Apollo called out a
greater measure of enthusiasm and took a larger share in
the fostering of Hellenic culture, Pan and Demeter had,
in humbler fashion, a scarce less assured sway over the
hearts of their votaries.
This is why in every land a mystery hangs about the
worship of the gods of the soil : it is because of their
great antiquity. At a time when other creeds are novel
THE DIVINITIES OF THE EARTH. 215
theirs is still antique, and many strange, dim associations
cling about that creed which the worshippers themselves
can scarcely understand. It Hes nearer than do other
parts of the religion to the primal fount of all religion.
It was said in a former chapter that almost before we
arrive at any definite belief among men, and certainly
before we reach their developed mythology, we find them
giving expression to their wild emotions by dances and
gestures not less wild. Almost before there is a worship
of things there is a sort of worship of emotion ; and this
gathers especially about two phases of strong excitement,
the one created by love, the other by wine. Passion,
mental or bodily, is the soul of all religious excitement ;
that is to say, it is the soul of all belief. The Veddic
charmer does after a fashion shadow forth the religion of
all mankind; the darweesh and the fakeer display in their
strange dances something which is older and more of the
essence of human nature than the dogma of Islam ; the
Christian Flagellant, he who joined in a Procession of
Penitents or in a Dance of Death, was the brother in faith
of these two, and had got back to a point where no differ-
ence of creed could divide. And just in "the same way,
before the creation of any formulated myth touching the
gods of Greece, earlier that the constitution of any Olym-
pus, must have come some ritual observance of this unre-
strained, passionate sort. When the pantheon was made,
this emotional worship associated itself with those divini-
ties in it who were of oldest birth that is to say, with the
chthonic ] or earth gods. In after times, when the primal
1 We use this word chthonic with some freedom when we apply it to
the first earth gods of the Greek pantheon. The chthonic divinity was
essentially a god of the regions under the earth ; at first of the dark home
of the seed, later on of the still darker home of the dead. But at first an
earth divinity was not worshipped under this aspect. It was and this is
especially true of the earth goddess not the underground region, but the
surface of the earth that was worshipped. Therefore, when we speak
of Prithivi, or (Jaia, or Demeter, or Tellus, or Ops, in their earliest forms
we cannot call them chthonic divinities. Later on they become more
nearly so.
216 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
condition had been passed, the same rites, unexplained and
mysterious, were reverently preserved.
The earth itself is a woman : Prithivi, Demeter.
Perhaps, however, it is neither as Prithivi nor Demeter
that we ought to think of the goddess to whom the first
chthonic rites of Greece were paid. For the rituals which
grew into the mysteries may have existed in the land
before the coming thither of Zeus and his pantheon. But
the older names are gone ; we must needs use those which
have been handed down to us. In time Demeter came to
hold a place as near to the hearts of the lower orders of
the population, the descendants of the conquered nation-
alities, as she ever held to the hearts of their conquerors,
and a far nearer place than she held with these latter in
their conquering days. For it is only by a peaceful and
settled race that the earth goddess is ever held in high
esteem. This is why it was that the Dorians, the most
warlike among all the nations of new Greece, were ever the
most hostile to the cult of Demeter. After their invasion
of the Peloponnese, the worship of that goddess had to
hide itself in the rustic retirement of Arcadia, and for long
years so Herodotus declares 1 Arcadia was the only por-
tion of the Peloponnese where it was preserved.
There is in most creeds an earth god as well as an
earth goddess, though the former is the less important
personality. He represents rather the germinal power of
the ground than the simple earth, and he is therefore less
essential to primitive belief than the goddess is. This is
why he always holds an inferior place. He is sometimes
the son, sometimes the husband, of the earth. In Roman,
mythology he appears as Liber, who is the son of Ceres
and the brother of Libera, who is a kind of second Ceres.
In some of the Asiatic creeds, to which we shall- refer
anon, he is the husband of the earth goddess, but he is also
almost on a level with human nature ; he is the Adonis
1 Herod, ii. 171.
THE DIVINITIES OF THE EARTH.
217
to the Cyprian Aphrodite, the Anchises to the Aphrodite 4
of the coast of Asia Minor. Of Greece proper the earth
god is for some places Dionysus, for others Ploutori, for
others Pan. Dionysus was not, I suppose, a god of native
birth, but became Greek by adoption, and was worshipped
especially in the north. Plouton, or Hades-Plouton, must
not be confounded with that later Hades the embodiment
of the tomb. Plouton is often spoken of as the son of
Demeter. 1 In the Eleusinian myth the same divinity,
Hades-Plouton, was her son-in-law. Dionysus held the
same relationship.
Zeus himself had to take upon him part of the nature
which had belonged traditionally to this god of the soil.
Just as there was, as well as a Zeus Olympics, a Pelasgian
Zeus to embody the worship of the older race, so there
was, as the representative of a creed still earlier, a Zeus
Chthonios, or Zeus of the Earth. Such a title implies a
complete reversal of Zeus' character as the ruler of
heaven. Zeus is indeed husband of the earth goddess,
but by right only because the heaven is married to the
earth. Nevertheless, we notice that in the Greek pantheon
there is no god to whom the surface of the earth is as-
signed for his special kingdom. In the division of the
universe by lot among the three sons of Kronos, to Posei-
don was given the hoary sea, to Hades the pitchy darkness,
to Zeus the wide heaven in the clouds and air. The earth
was common to all three. 2 The reason of this probably is
that these three sons of Kronos are all later comers than
the original earth god.
The divine beings who in the historic ages of Greece
were the heads and representatives of chthonian worship
were Demeter and Persephone, the Great Goddesses, as at
Eleusis they were called. It was no doubt because of the
high antiquity of their cult that to them belonged in a
1 Demeter was said to have brought forth Pluton in a thrice-ploughed
fallow in the island of Crete.
* II. xv. 187 sqq.
218 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
special degree the title o-zpval, reverend, holy ; tliere was
something awful and mysterious about them which the
other gods had not. The god who was most associated
with these in worship was Dionysus, who was in historic
days but the pale shadow of what he (or his predeces-
sor) had been when invested with their full character
as earth gods. Nevertheless the shape which he took
in Greece seems to be one which the earth god has
generally assumed in the later forms of the Aryan reli-
gious systems. The association of three beings of the
same kind as these three that is to say, a mother, a
daughter, and a male divinity who is husband or brother
of the last seems generally to belong to the scheme of
Aryan earth worship. The same trilogy appears in the
Ceres, Libera, and Liber of Rome, and in the Frigg,
Freyja, and Freyr (Freke, Frowa, and Fro) of the Teutons.
More primitive, perhaps, than the formulated worship
of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus in Greece was that
form of earth worship whereof we catch faint glimpses in
the legend of Pan "and his rustic compeers. These were
honoured by country dances and unelaborate rites wild
dances and processions, no doubt, suiting the tastes and
tempers of those who used them, but not yet turned into
any distinct ritual. In the Greece of historic times these
early rites had been already supplemented by very defined
ceremonies, called by the name of mysteries.
The celebrations which have handed on their title for
a general name in future ages, the Greek jjiva-r^pia., are,
when we first catch sight of them, great religious revivals,
for even then they preserve in tradition a something which
has been half forgotten. They have already departed far
from their original use, and this we see when we compare
them with like ceremonies observed among less cultured
races. We cannot translate /-IUCTTT;?, nor any of its deriva-
tive words, quite into the primitive sense of them ; and our
modern translations, 'mystic and the rest, are separated
from this primitive meaning by a gap which centuries of
THE MUSTERIA. 219
religious growth have made. A writer upon the myth of
Demeter and Persephone 1 the story which formed the
foundation of the mysteries which were enacted at Eleusis
computes that we can trace its history for a thousand
years. No portion of a creed, no ceremonies connected
with that belief, could remain unchanged so long. For
example, the element which we naturally associate first of
all with the idea of mystery is its secresy, and yet this
element the early mysteries contained only in a secondary
degree. In the Eleusinia, it is true, the pledge to silence
concerning the holy rites was strictly exacted, and is said
to have been strictly observed ; yet Plato, we know, com-
plained of the easy accessibility of the rites themselves,
and Plato lived in days when the motive cause for secresy
and exclusiveness had been long in operation.
When Greek thought had been aroused to speculation
upon the origin of the world, upon primal existences,
upon the difference between good and evil, upon the cause
of either, upon a hundred subjects, in fine, whereof it had
formerly no conceit, men fancied that during the ecstasies
of emotion to which the mystic rites gave rise they caught
sight of a solution to the difficulties which oppressed them.
And perhaps not wholly without reason ; for at such times
imagination anticipated the slow steps of logic, and seized
hold on new truths almost without knowing how. But
these men chose to believe further that the same truths
had been revealed to their ancestors and had been by them
obscurely handed down in an ancient ritual. Tlfe fore-
fathers themselves had no thought of such depths of philo-
sophy; these were added in later times, when the old
significance of the rites had been obscured or quite for-
gotten. Those which they instituted were the natural
expressions of human emotion ; scarcely more complicated
and abstruse than the <1 im-e of our Veddic devil charmer,
or than a war dance of Africans or Maoris.
1 Foerster, Raub u. Riickkehr der Perseplwnt.
220 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
It is because of the original simplicity and naturalness
of such rites as these that, on whatever side we look,
within the bounds of Hellas or abroad, rituals of the same
kind meet our eye. The Eleusinia of Attica had their
rivals in the Thracian and the Samothracian mysteries in
honour of Dionysus and of the Cabiri : nay, we know that
almost every town of Greece had its own circle of cere-
monies, and its formal worship of one or other or of all of
the earth divinities. Outside the bounds of Greece are
first to be noted the Phrygian rites of Cybele, most near
among Oriental rituals to those of Hellas.
There was in Asia Minor the worship of Cybele and
Sandon, and in Cyprus that of Aphrodite and Adonis ;
there was the wounded Thammuz mourned by Tyrian
maids, and in Egypt the dead Osiris wept and sought for
by Isis. * The rites of Ceres at Eleusis differ little from,
these ' the rites of Osiris and Isis (it is Lactantius who
is speaking). 'As there Osiris is sought amid the plaints
of his mother, 1 so here the quest is for the lost Persephone ;
and as Ceres is said to have made her search with torches,
so (in the Osiris mystery) the rites are marked by the
throwing of brands.' 2 The closer we examine into these
various rituals and their attendant myths, the more shall
we be struck by their general similarity and the more
clearly shall we see that in origin and first intention they
were all the same.
What is the meaning of this likeness? The Greeks
suppos'ed that many of their beliefs and forms of worship
had been received from the Egyptians. But we know now
that an adoption of this kind from another race is very
rare in any mythology, and may be left out of account in
this case : so that, when resemblances such as those we
1 The writer is mistaken here, for Isis was the wife, not the mother,
of Osiris.
2 Lactantius, i. 21-24. Though this writer is not an authority for the
early ceremonial of the Isis rites, still, from what we know of the conserva-
tive nature of the Egyptians, we may fairly conclude that these had not
changed much even so late as in the days of Lactantius.
UNIVERSALITY OF MYSTERIES. 221
have noticed are to be found in the religions of many
different peoples, they spring out of the fundamental
likeness of all religions, as being products of human
thought. This was the case with the mysteries : they had
their root in instinctive expressions of emotion, not in any
particular story nor in any traditional worship. When
we find the Eleusinia adopted and initiated in later times
and in distant places, we are not to assume that these
phenomena are the result of direct missionary efforts on
the part of its votaries, but rather that all men had a
natural inclination to this form of worship.
No more ought we to suppose that these rites them-
selves were transplanted into Greece or into Attica from
any earlier home. It was in part true, no doubt, that the
rites of Dionysus were introduced into the Eleusinian
mysteries from Thrace ; but it was only a partial truth.
For though Dionysus himself may not have been originally
known at Eleusis, some other earth god, for sure, was
known. Dionysiac worship was said, we know, to have
been founded by Orpheus. And then men went further,
and attempted to find a derivation, also from Thrace, for the
Eleusinian worship of Demeter and Persephone. Eumolpos,
the fabled introducer of those rites, is called by late writers
the son of Boreas (the north wind), or else of Poseidon
and Chi one that is to say, of the sea and of the snow. By
this was meant that Eumolpos had come from northern
Greece. The ancients always made things happen in the
way of importation and personal influence : the worship
of a god in their traditions is generally said to have been
introduced into a land by some particular hero. But such
is not the usual history of religious ideas. Either they
spring up naturally or they never flourish at all.
The truth is that mysteries of this kind are almost
universal, and it is a matter of chance which among many
birth-places of them attains celebrity, and comes to be
thought the mother of all the rest. Eleusis, which
means the place of ' coming ' that is to say, the coming of
222 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
the New Year cannot originally have been a designation,
of one or two particular spots only; for each locality must
have had its special place at which the spring and spring's
greenery were thought to come back and appear once
more to the world. In a Norse mythic poem which really
tells the story of the marriage of Persephone and Dionysus
in a different guise, it is related how a maiden, Ger$ (the
Earth), 1 agrees to meet the sun god, Freyr, 2 ' in the warm
wood of Bam,' where Barri signifies simply 'the green.'
Thus any green wood might be the meeting-place of Freyr
and GerS : but no doubt each locality fixed upon its special
Barri wood. Just so each place had once its Eleusis, or
the place of spring's coming; but one place eventually
outlasted and outshone all the rest. Yet even in late
days there were more places with this name than one :
there was an Eleusis in Bceotia as well as in Attica.
We can account in this way for the fact which has
sometimes been commented on as strange, that .the
Eleusinia are not spoken of by Homer (the epic Homer)
nor by Hesiod. The reason is to be found, not as some
have alleged in the lateness in time of the Eleusinian
form of worship, but in the commonness of such festivals
and the number of places in which they had their seat.
The importance of the special Attic celebration was of Jate
growth, for it was due in chief measure to the supremacy
of Athens. So far as the institution of the rites went,
that was too old to be followed back in the history of
belief.
Three or four hundred years ago men had a use for the
word mystery which we have since laid aside. It was
applied to those primitive representations which were the
first divergence from the old miracle plays in the direction
of the secular drama. Guilds used to be formed out of
the laity for the enactment of these * mysteries,' which,
becoming a little more secularised still, were afterwards
1 GerSi = earth.
8 At first an earth god, and afterwards a god of summer and of the sun.
ORIGINAL INTENTION OF THE MYSTERIES. 223
called f moralities.' It has been questioned whether the
word, when thus used, had any etymological connexion
with the Greek fivarripLov. 1 But that is a matter which
concerns us nothing. This much is certain : that the
mystery of the Middle Ages represented in many ways the
character of the early Eleusinia and other celebrations of
the same order. All these were essentially dramas. They
were, if you will, miracle plays ; for the miracle which they
played was that old, long-standing wonder of nature, the
return of the New Year and of all that it brings with it,
the reclothing of Earth in the greenery which Winter has
stripped off and hidden away. Goethe, counting the stages
by which melancholy gains a sway over man's mind, notes
how at last it begets in him such a distaste of life, such an
intense ennui, that the very return of spring strikes his
fancy only as a thing foregone and wearisome through
constant repetition. To man in primal days (but it need
not be so to him alone) the same event appeared ever new,
and so wonderful and joyful that no colour could paint, no
language could dignify it enough. Man sought to present
the glad coming of summer in such a way that it should
appeal to all the senses at once ; he sang it in endless
rhymes, he made myths about it, and then he enacted the
story in a drama ; and thus he laid the foundation not of
the mysteries only, but of all dramatic representation.
We do not, it is true, know much of those other rites,
Egyptian, Asiatic, or half Hellenic, which I spoke of just
now ; but what we do know is enough to convince us that,
like the Eleusinia or the Dioriysiac festivals, they took
their rise in the same desire for the symbolic portrayal of
two great events: first, the sorrow of Nature when the
warmth of the sun is withdrawn and the fruitful growth
of plants and grasses is stayed, and then her joy when
these are all restored. The advent of spring was the
1 The terms moralities mysteries, sprang up only at the end of the
Middle Ages. Mystery is supposed by some to be derived from ministerium,
i.e. a guild, and to have had the spelling changed by false analogy.
224 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
' good spell ' of the heathen peoples ; the death of summer
was their book of doom.
As the Eleusinia constituted the chief Greek festival
in this kind, and the one concerning which we have most
information, though even here our information is meagre
enough, I will take this alone as a sample of the Greek
mystery, and allow a slight sketch of that to stand for the
rest. We all know the story upon which the drama was
founded. The tale has come down to us in a hymn, which
was, we may suppose, chaunted at such time as the rites
of Deineter and Persephone were celebrated. Plays then,
as in later days, required their prologue, which set forth
the history of the piece about to be enacted. So this
Homeric hymn tells the tale of the rape and return of
Persephone almost in the form in which her history
formed the subject of a mythic drama at Eleusis.
It tells us how the girl Persephone was wandering with
her companion maidens in the Nysian plain, gathering
crocus, and rose, and hyacinth, and fair violets, and,
more beautiful than all, the narcissus. 1 The deceitful
earth sent up this flower to allure the goddess a.way from
her fellows ; it was a wonder to be seen, for on it grew a
hundred blossoms, which sent forth their fragrance over
the laughing earth and the salt waves of the sea. But,
as the maiden stooped to seize the prize, the wide earth
gaped apart, and the awful son of Kronos leaped forth and
bore her away shrieking in his golden chariot. But none
of mortals or immortals heard her call, save only Hekate
(the moon) in her cave, and Helios (the sun), who sat apart
from the other gods in his own temple receiving the fair
offerings of men. . . .
But an echo of the cry reached Demeter, and grief
seized her mind. She rent her veil and put from her her
dark blue cloak, and like a bird hurried over land and
sea seeking her daughter. For nine days she wandered
1 The name of this flower is supposed to bear a special allusion to the
sleep of death, or of the winter eartti ^dpKrj, numbness or d-eadness).
STOEY OF THE EAPE OF PERSEPHONE. 225
thus, a torch in her hand ; until at last Hekate came to
meet her, likewise bearing a light. And these two, carry-
ing their torches, sped forth together until they came to
Helios ; and the goddess spake to him. * Do thou, O
Sun, who from the divine air lookest down upon all earth
and sea, tell me if thou hast seen any one of gods or
men who against my daughter's will has forcibly carried
her away.' And he answered, ' Queen Deiueter, I grieve
much for thee and for thy slender-footed daughter. But
know that Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, has done this thing,
giving thy daughter to his brother Hades for his fair wife.
Cease then, goddess, from immoderate grief. Aidoneus,
who is king. of many, is no unseemly kinsman am6ng the
immortals. . . . '
When Demeter had heard this she was filled with
sharper grief and with anger against the cloudy son of
Kronos, and quitting Olympus, she wandered among the
cities and rich fields of men, obscuring her godhead. At
length she came to the house of King Keleos, the ruler of
Eleusis. There she sat down by a well in the guise of
an old woman. And the daughters of Keleos saw her as
they came out to draw water, and they knew her not, but
spake to her. . . . And Demeter became nurse to Demo-
phoon, the son of Keleos and of his wife Metaneira. She
fed him on ambrosia and breathed sweetly upon him as
he lay in her breast. At night she concealed him in the
strong fire, like a brand, secretly, without his parents'
knowledge. And she would have rendered him immortal ;
but Metaneira, foolishly watching at night, saw it, and
smote her side and shrieked out. . . . And fair-haired
Demeter put from her in anger the child, and laying him
upon the ground, she spake to Metaneira. ' Oh, foolish
thou ! how hast thou erred ! For by the gods' oath I
swear, by the unappeasable water of Styx, I would have
made thy son immortal and given him unending fame.
But now he cannot avoid death and his fate. But un-
226 OUTLINES OF TKIMITIVE BELIEF.
dying glory shall be his, because he has sat upon my knee
and has slept in my arms. Know that I am Demeter. . . .'
Then, as she spake, the goddess changed her guise, and
cast off from her her eld. Beauty breathed round her,
and from her fragrant garment spread a sweet odour ; far
shone the light from that immortal flesh, and on her
shoulders gleamed her yellow hair, till the house was filled
with the sheen of it a,s with the lightning. And she left
the palace. . . . And when morning came Keleos sum-
moned his people and told them what had happened, and
bade them build a costly temple to fair-haired Demeter.
And here the goddess sat down, far apart from the councils
of the gods. Nor while she was there did the earth yield
any seed ; in vain men ploughed, and white barley fell
into the furrows in vain ; until Zeus sent his messenger,
Iris, to entreat her to return. And, one after another,
came all the immortals with gifts and honours, but she
obstinately turned from all their words.
Then at last Zeus sent down unto Erebus his golden-
wand ed messenger to lead away Persephone from the
murky land, that her mother might be comforted. . . .
And Hades did not disobey the command of Zeus the
king. Persephone rejoiced and leaped up in joy. But
he (Hades) had craftily given her a seed of pomegranate,
that she might not remain for ever above with holy
Demeter. Now Hades yoked his steeds to the golden
chariot, and Hermes seized the reins and the whii) and
drove straight from the abodes of death, and, cutting
through the deep darkness, they came to where Demeter
stood. . . .
But because Persephone had eaten the fruit of the
pomegranate she must still pass one-third of the year
below with her husband ; two-thirds she spends on earth
with her mother.
The history which we have just narrated, and which
occupies the first portion of the Homeric hymn to
Demeter, commemorates a nature myth of unfathoin-
THE NATURE MYTH WHICH UNDERLIES IT. 227
able antiquity. Towards the end of the hymn the poet
strays into legends which have more to do with the sup-
posed origin of the Eleusinia and with the teaching to man-
kind of the use of agriculture elements neither of them,
as I shall presently point out, belonging to the earliest
myth of the earth goddess. Wherefore, over this latter
portion of the Homeric hymn telling how the goddess
Demeter came again to earth, to the Rarian plain, and
how the corn sprang up as she passed, how she made the
whole earth blithe and fruitful, how she at last appointed
the ' law-dispensing kings,' Triptolemos, and Diocles, and
Eumolpos, and Keleos, to preserve her rites over all this
we will pass.
Demeter is yq-MTiip, mother earth. Persephone was
called at Eleusis Core, the maiden, or, more literally still,
the ' germ/ Eleusis is * the coming,' not originally, I
suspect, of Demeter to earth, but of the returning spring.
And we may see how truly in this poem, even though it
has an epic form, all the dramatic instincts are satisfied.
The Norsemen had their celebrations (a kind of mystery,
too) of the death of the earth in winter, or perhaps one
should rather say of that visitation which is peculiar to
Northern climates the total extinction of the sun himself
during the coldest months. The festival (or fast) was
called the bale or death of Balder. It was kept by the
lighting of great fires, called the bale fires. 1 But, strange
to say, the season chosen for this celebration was not
winter, when the sun was really hidden, but summer nay,
the very height of summer, Midsummer's Eve. It was
thus, by taking the sun at the moment of his greatest
power, that a dramatic * force was given to the miracle
play which enacted the sun's own overthrow. Just the
same spirit is visible here. Persephone, the maiden, the
1 In the Middle Ages the bale fires changed their names, and became
St. John's fires (Johannisfeuer, feux de St. Jean), and under these names
are still kept up in Germany and some parts of France, and in the west or
extreme north of Scotland. St. John's Day of course occurs at Mid-
summer.
Q2
228 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
image of spring 1 , is found playing in the meadows and
gathering the flowers of the early year at the moment
when Aidoneus comes to carry her below. Eightly this
rape should have been made to happen in the autumn ;
but then the force of contrast between life and death
would have been lost. So it happens in the spring ; and
probably the chief Eleusinian feasts were originally at
this season. 1
On the other hand, though the changes of the year
are gradual, those between day and night are rapid and
impressive. Granted that the time of year is fixed as it
is, both here and in the Northern myth, the drama will be
the most effective if the time of day in which its action
falls is made to be the evening. Balder 's bale fires were
lighted at sundown, and kept burning all through the
night. And here also, reading a little between the lines
of the hymn that is to say, making allowance for some
extension of time in a story which is told epically, not
dramatically 2 we can gather, I think, that the rape of
Persephone was originally thought to happen just at
sunset, and then the search for her to extend throughout
one night. Behind the expanded season myth lies the
more primitive myth of light and dark. For see how the
positions of the sun and moon are incidentally told us :
And her companions all vainly sought her.
Of gods or mortal men none heard her cry,
Saving two only, the great Perseus' daughter,
The goddess of the cave, mild Hekate,
And bright Hyperion's son, King Helios,
He too gave ear unto that call ; for he,
Taking from men their offerings beauteous,
In his own home sat from the gods away.
1 Originally. As is afterwards suggested, it is probable that their
transference to autumn denoted a change from a feast which merely cele-
brated the return of the year to one which was more distinctly a farmer's
festival.
2 Such allowances in interpreting any particular form of a myth we
must always be prepared to make.
THE YEAR AND THE DAY. 229
The sun is away from Olympus because he is near his
setting ; he is sitting in his western tent by the homes of
men. Hekate, the moon, hears from her cave ; for she is
still below the earth. And now Demeter, who has caught
a faint echo of that cry of anguish, hurries over the earth
with a torch in her hand, seeking Persephone : it is night.
Anon she encounters Hekate, who comes to meet her,
likewise carrying a light : for now the moon has risen.
There is no reason why the Eleusinia, or some festivals
of a like kind, may not have existed before the familiar
use of agriculture. Demeter is much more than the
patroness of the husbandman's art ; she is the earth
mother herself, the parent of all growth. The coming of
spring would be not less welcome in days when men lived
upon the proceeds of hunting, upon flocks and herds, or
upon wild fruits. All life is in the hands of the fruit-
bearing goddess.
Tala KdpirovQ a >'/i, to K\ijtTe fjirjTepa yaiav
chaunted the Dodonian priests. 1 And they might have
sung the same to Gaia or to Demeter (Mother Gaia) ages
before corn had been first sown.
But agriculture was introduced ; and the special im-
portance of earth's fruitfulness as the cause of the growth
of the grain came in time to throw into the background
the earth's other miscellaneous gifts. Nevertheless this
change was long in taking place. The myth which is
connected with this aspect of the Eleusinia that is to
say, their aspect as celebrations of the new birth, not so
much of the year as of the ear, and as the special glorifi-
cation of the husbandman's art is the myth of Triptole-
mus. He, said the legend, was charged by Demeter to
spread abroad her worship, and to teach men the mystery
of sowing corn. His name explains his position in the
myth : he is rpLTroXos, the thrice-ploughed furrow. In
1 Pausanias, x. 12, 5.
230 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
later days Triptolemus grew to be a very important
character in the Demeter legend. But in the Homeric
hymn, which is probably almost contemporary with
Hesiod that is to say, not later than the eighth century
before Christ 1 Triptolemus plays no very leading part.
He is one (the first, it is true) among many kings who are
said to have received the command of Demeter to institute
her rites. ' She went,' says the hymn, 6 to the law-giving
kings, to Triptolemus and horse-driving Diocles, and the
might of Eurnolpos, and to Keleos, leader of the people,
and to them she told how to perform her holy service.'
Moreover, all this history of the institution of the mysteries
forms a separate part of the hymn, and is in no way con-
nected with the main legend which was related just now.
The worship, therefore, of Demeter in her character of
goddess of husbandry has a second place in the intention
of the mysteries. In later times, say from the beginning of
the fifth century, when the history of the great goddesses
begins to be common in art, Triptolemus is rarely absent
from such representations. He commonly forms one of a
group which contains Demeter and Persephone, Hades,
Hekate, and Hermes. In one part of the picture may be
the god of the under world ; in the other is Triptolemus in
snaky chariot, scattering abroad the grain. When this
change had taken place, and the character of Triptolemus
had become an essential in the Persephone legend, the mys-
teries had come to be much less rejoicings at the return of
the spring than a sort of harvest homes, rejoicings for the
in gathered wealth which earth had yielded.
When agriculture is in its infancy men do not sow in
the autumn. They plant some quick-growing corn, which
takes a few months only to ripen ; and what is sown in
the early spring is reaped before the summer. The
.French name for buckwheat, lie sarrasin, is derived from
the use by the Tartars of this grain, which can be sown
1 Lenormant, however, puts it later. See Daremberg and Saglio's Die-
tionnaire des Antiquites,'axt. Ceres.'
THE HARVEST HOME. 231
during the short sojourn which the nomadic people
make in one spot. Therefore m early days the festival of
Demeter and Core would naturally fall in the spring.
Later in time there came to be two festivals the one
dedicated to the coming up (anodos, avo&os) of Core or
the germ, the other to her descent (kathodes, /cdOoSos)
into the infernal realms. The second was Persephone's
marriage with Pluto that is to say, it was concerned with
the most germane matter of the Eleusinian myth it was,
beside, the festival of the sower, and was for these reasons
the greatest. Yet we observe that in being held in the
autumn it runs counter to the picture which is presented
to us in the Homeric hymn. The anodos was associated
with the worship of Dionysos ; it was celebrated in his
month, the flower month, and was supposed (it was an
addition to the old legend) to celebrate the marriage of
Persephone with that god.
Whether the mysteries were, as at first, feasts to the
spring, or, as later on they became, feasts to the goddess
of agriculture, harvest homes, they were, before all things,
peasant festivals. They belonged, I have said, to the
autochthones, the simple early inhabitants of the soil.
To that belonging they owed their vast antiquity. Con-
quering nations passed over the land and left these rustic
rites unchanged, adhering to one place, handed on by an
everlasting tradition from generation to generation. 1 At
1 Enough has, I imagine, been said in this and in the previous chapter
to show that Demeter was one among the oldest divinities worshipped in
Greece. Herodotus tells us so much (ii. 171). Pausanias says that she
was known as Demeter Pelasgis (ii. 22, 10). She was called by the same
title in Arcadia, the very home of all that was most ancient in Greek
culture (Herod. I. c.) We have seen how obstinately her worship was
maintained there.
Persephone is not really to be distinguished from Demeter. For
Demeier herself often appears as a maiden as Ar)n-f)Tr)p \K6t\ (Paus. i. 22),
and this is identical in meaning with the name K6pr} given to Persephone.
Demettr is spoken of as daughter of FT) KovpoTp6<f>os (the nursing earth).
Moreover in artistic representations it is very hard to make a distinction
between mother and daughter. (See on this subject Gerhard, 6fr. Myth.
240, 4 ; and in Akad. Abt. ii. 357 ; and Overbeck, Gr. Kunstmyth. ii. 442,
232 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
last this creed, which had rested quiet * under the drums
and tramplings ' of many conquests, began to rise again.
The down-trodden race vindicated its old power; and the
stone which had been overlooked in the first building of
the Greek and Eoman religions became the headstone of
the corner.
All the charm of the unknown belongs to celebrations
such as these, whose beginnings lie covered up by so many
centuries of neglect. In Rome the festival of the Lupercalia
kept alive the memory of a society of shepherds and hunts-
men who lived before cities had been built or even agricul-
ture established. The same feast lived to witness the fall of
the Republic, to see a * kingly crown' thrice presented to
the Republic's destroyer ; l and, lasting far beyond that, it
saw the fall of the religion of Rome after the fall of its old
government ; it survived the introduction of Christianity,
and was celebrated as late as in the reign of Anthemius.
One may almost say that it is commemorated still at the
Carnival. The Eleusinia had as long a life. They were
finally crushed out by the monks who entered Greece in
A.D. 395 in the train of Alaric's invading army ; and that
these proselytists should have exerted themselves in the
448. See the Harpy Tomb of Xanthos for an example of the likeness be-
tween the two goddesses.)
From this I am led to believe that some parts of the myth of the two
Great Goddesses may be repetitions, as the same adventures would have to
be attributed to each. Thus I imagine that the wanderings of Demeter
belong of necessity to her as a goddess of earth, and quite alone express
the notion of the change from summer to winter the change in appear-
ance of ihe earth being mythically represented as a change from place to
place, a change in space. This will become more clear when we compare
with the Demeter mysteries those of which we have some traces among
the Teutonic folk (see Ch. VII.) It follows that the rape of Persephone
and the wanderings of Demeter are mythic repetitions of the same
notion.
This leads us back to a still earlier form of the mysteries when
Demeter and Persephone were not united, but separate.
See Daremberg and Saglio's Diet, des Ant., art. ' Ceres,' by F. Lenormant,
for the traces of Demeter worship in Greece.
1 * You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse.' Julius Ctesar
THE ORGY. 233
matter shows that the faith had still a hold upon the
affections of the people.
It has been said that there is in these rites another
element beside the mere joy of living and of seeing the
earth live again, or one may at least say a more
eager and passionate expression of that joy. The sub-
stratum of phallic worship, which lies at the root of many
elaborate rituals such as these, accompanies them in their
after development. Therefore is it that in close relation-
ship to the mnsterion stands the. orge. Both words have
been handed down for perpetual use in later ages. In
historic times the orgy belonged more especially to the
later Dionysus, the wine god. The mystery still belonged
to Demeter.
In such conceptions as this Bacchus, or the Yeclic
Soma, or Agni, are worshipped beings half physical,
half abstract. On the one side is the thing, the honey-
dew, the wine, which excites passion, or the fire which
symbolises it ; on the other side, the emotion itself. But
men do not analyse their complex feelings into their
different elements ; they do not recognise that fire is a
symbol of the passion, or that the wine is only a cause- of
the tumultuous emotions which they feel. The wine or
the fire they believe enters into them and itself consti-
tutes the mental condition which they know. Therefore
in worshipping the vine men did in fact worship the
strength of their feelings, and these produced in them
that emotional state which is necessary to belief, and
which lies at the foundation of all religions. To produce
such a condition of mind was the object of the orgy ;
which, in giving a more distinctly emotional, gave in the
end a more distinctly religious character to the mystic
festivals.
In another way also, pleasanter to contemplate, reli-
gious excitement was maintained namely, by the supreme
influence of music. Tradition shows us how early was the
use of this stimulus in the Eleusinia. There was at Eleusis
234 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
a family which claimed the hereditary office of chief priest
(hierophant) in the celebrations. They were the Eumol-
pidse; and they pretended an eponymous ancestor, Eu-
molpos, who was supposed to have been- the first priest of
Demeter and Dionysus at Eleusis, and to have introduced
their mysteries there. In reality Eumolpos is nothing
more than the * sweet- voiced one,' the leader of the choir.
The name Eumolpidse is that of an office, not of a family :
it must have been in later times that the office became
hereditary and gave its designation to a single house.
But that these sweet singers (eumolpoi) sho.uld have
claimed the credit of originating the Demetric worship
argues a vast antiquity for the choral performance therein,
when the leading singer was likewise the officiating priest.
The excitement which is wrought of old observances,
imperfectly understood, the halo at once of mystery and
of antiquity, grew up rapidly around the ritual of the
Eleusinia. Strong emotion not much restrained, fostered
by music and a kind of holy drama, and surrounded by much
that is ancient and unexplained these are ingredients
which in all ages will produce the same effects. Let us note
that all the c mystics ' in the modern purely religious sense
all those, I mean, who have enshrined their thoughts of
God in a halo of rapt emotion have turned to such dra-
matic pictures as the Greeks rejoiced in at Eleusis ; and the
converse holds good, that wherever we find these dramatic
celebrations we may be sure that the doctrines which
they contain will take sooner or later a genuinely mystic
complexion. St. Francis of Assisi is the typical ' mystic '
of the Middle Age. His biographer * has recorded the
care with which he prepared, and the pleasure he took in
the enaction of, a drama representing the birth of Christ,
as nearly like the drama we have been describing as the
difference between their two subjects and the lapse of
intervening centuries would allow.
1 Thomas of Cellano in Acta SS. Octobris, torn. 2.
CATHOLIC MYSTERIES. 235
c The day of joy approached, the time of rejoicing was
near. The brothers (of the Order of Franciscans) are
assembled from many places ; the men and women of the
country round, according to their capacities, prepare
candles and torches for illuminating the night, that night
whose shining star lit up all future days and years. * At
length came the Saint, and finding everything prepared,
saw and was glad. Even a manger is got ready and hay
procured, and an ox and an ass are brought in. Honour
and praise are given to simplicity, to poverty and humility,
and Campogreco is made as it were a new Bethlehem. . . .
The night is illumined like the day, and is most grateful
to men and animals. The peasantry approach and with
new joys celebrate the renewal of the mysteries. He
(St. Francis) imitates the voice of woods, and the rocks
rejoicing answer. The brothers sing, paying their meed
of praise to the Lord. The Saint stands before the pro-
cession, heaving sighs, bowed with emotion and suffused
with a wondrous joy. They celebrate the solemn service
of the Mass.'
Is it not by a true instinct that the Church which
claims to be built by a mystic power, and to transmit its
spiritual influence through channels unsounded by reason,
shrouds its acts of worship even now in a veil of half-
explained drama, and wraps its dogmas round with a
garment of melodious sounds P
There can be no question that the mystae in the Eleu-
sinia, with precisely the same intention as St. Francis, re-
enacted in a certain defined series of dramas the chief
details of the myth above narrated that is to say, the
loss of the maiden (Core), the journeys of her mother, the
sorrows of the goddess by the well, the honour done her
in the house of Keleos, the preparation of the mystic
drink by which Demeter was delighted and which became
the sacrament of her votaries, 1 and finally the restoration
1 This mystic drink, kykeon (Kureifr), is described as having been made
of meal and water flavoured with mint.
236 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
to her of her daughter Persephone. And then perhaps
came, as a pendant to this, the institution of her rites and
the command to Triptolemus to spread abroad the worship
of the Great Goddesses.
In this history of Demeter there are some features
which constantly recur in the myths of earth goddesses
wherever they are found ; others are peculiar to the Greek
legend. It has been already said that the mission of
Triptolemus belongs to the later, and therefore less essen-
tial, parts of the legend. There are, again, some parts of
the Demeter myth as describrd in the Homeric hymn
which have been somewhat distorted from their original
and universal shape, and made to take a peculiar character.
This has been the case with the history of the wanderings
of Demeter. In the Greek legend they are represented as
if undertaken solely in search of Persephone. In reality
the earth goddess is by virtue of her very nature a wan-
derer, and is always represented as passing from place to
place. Demeter's journeyings are of the very essence of
her character, and could not have been omitted from any
myth concerning her. But at the same time they could
not have depended entirely upon the doings of Perse-
phone, for this conclusive reason, that Persephone and
Demeter are only different forms of the same individuality.
We see that the earth goddess is a wandering goddess
when we come to examine the myths which concern her
and the ritual observances which have sprung up in her
honour in many different lands. We have compared
Demeter with some of the chthonic divinities of the East,
of Egypt or of Asia. Among these it is well known that
Isis is supposed to have wandered from land to land, and
in the ritual observances dedicated to this goddess no
small part consisted in dragging her image from place to
place. The Ephesian Artemis, another earth goddess, was
also borne about. When we take occasion, as in a future
chapter we shall do, to confront with the myth and ritual
of Demeter the myth and ritual of the earth goddess of
THE WANDERINGS OF DMTR. 237
the Teutonic races, we shall see that the latter divinity
was also noted for her wandering nature. The essential
meaning of the myth in every case is this: the earth
goddess becomes identified in thought with the green
earth, and in spring she is deemed to come back again to
those who are waiting and longing for her. And the idea
is made more real by a dramatic representation, which in
spring time carries the goddess from village to village,
from farm to farm, as though her coming there did in-
augurate the new year. 1
But in course of time the earth goddess becomes sepa-
rated in mythology from the divinity of spring, and then
a Persephone, or an Osiris, or an Adonis, or a Freyr, or an
Odhur, 2 a daughter, a lover, or a husband, has to play a
second part in the ritual beside the earth mother. Owing
to this kind of change, the wanderings of Demeter have
taken a new character in the Greek myth. They are there
represented as being undertaken in the search for a lost
daughter that is to say, as following after the departing
spring, rather than as announcing its coming to the earth.
Agreeably with the change in the story, the received myth
about Eleusis itself was that it was only the place to which
Demeter had come in the course of her wanderings in
search of Persephone. That which allows us to correct
this account is, first, the comparison of this myth with
the myths of other earth goddesses ; and, secondly, the
appreciation of the fuller meaning which the early form
of the story would give to the name Eleusis. 3
The Homeric hymn speaks of Demeter going over land
and sea, but in language somewhat vague ; in the drama
the details of these wanderings were doubtless repre-
sented. All we know from the hymn is that the goddess
went like a bird over the land and water ; that for nine
days she traversed all the earth. Prom a comparison of
this myth with those preserved in the Eoman form of Isis
1 This idea is beautifully put forward by Lucretius, ii. 597-64
2 See Chapter VII. * See supra.
238 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
worship or the Teutonic earth worship, we gather that
in all these cases the sea voyage was a very important
element. A boat was dragged about during the Isis
festival in Home, and a boat was the symbol of the
Teutonic earth goddess. This part of Demeter's journey
was, 1 imagine, alluded to in the phrase a\a$s /xucrrat,
' To the sea mystics ! ' which was called out on the second
day of the Eleusinian celebrations. As none did betake
themselves to any sort of sea voyage, the phrase has,
naturally enough, been found puzzling to commentators.
Some have said that it meant that men were to wash
themselves in the sea ; but that explanation is surely in-
adequate. The day itself of the festival was called by the
name aXaSs /^vo-rat; the mere act of ablution could hardly
have filled up the chief part of that day's ritual. I rather
imagine this name to have been a relic from a time when
the supposed sea voyage of the goddess was literally imi-
tated by her votaries, though this custom was afterwards
omitted and the journey was made by land.
Next after this followed certain sacrifices made in the
city of Athens, and then was formed the procession to go
from Athens to that holy spot Eleusis. This journey might
be matched by those other ritual observances alluded to just
now, the bearing about of Isis, or of the Ephesian Artemis,
or of the Teutonic goddess. It was in itself a sort of drama :
it represented in its way the wanderings of Demeter, and so
in a degree anticipated the drama which was afterwards
to take place at Eleusis. In this initial procession, how-
ever, it was not an image of Demeter which the mystse
carried with them as they went, bufc an image of the boy
lacchos, who was identified with Dionysus and here stood
for the young year. It is this initiatory procession which,
as I suppose, contains in it the most primitive elements of
the ritual of the chthonic divinities. The wild dances
and processions in which all these rituals take their rise
precede the building of temples or the possibility of any
more formal dramas.
THE ELEUSINIA. 239
As the accounts which have come down to us of this
great Greek festival are- from the latter days of heathenism
nay, the best account is from the pen of a Christian
father 1 they necessarily exhibit the confusion of those
elements which time had brought together to form a latter-
day mystery. And we have before us the task of distin-
guishing what is new from what is ancient in them.
There are descriptions of some processions such as might
have been made a thousand years before, and there are
symbolic phrases and rituals which betoken an age not
long before Christ. But it so happens that the order of
introduction into the ritual of each element in it roughly
corresponds with the place of that portion in order of
performance ; so that the first days of the mysteries
contain the most antique constituents, and we gradually,
as we approach the end of the festival, come to newer and
newer additions.
The half- forgotten drama of the procession was more
ancient than the conscious formulated drama which took
place at Eleusis ; yet even these later additions did little
else than repeat, with elaborations, the story which the first
parts were designed to set forth. On the whole the wonder
rather is that the simpler myths and earlier rites should
remain so clearly distinguishable than that they should be
here and there overlaid and hidden.
The greater mysteries, the Eleusinia properly so
called, began in the autumn, in the middle of the month
Boedromion. 2 The first day was called the day of the col-
lection (aysppos) or assembling. It was in truth a carnival
which preceded the nine lenten days of the regular
celebration : the noise and tumult on this day contrasted
strangely with the silence and seriousness which were
enjoined upon the mystse when the festival had begun.
The second day was called a\aSs pva-TaL, the meaning of
which has been explained. The sea voyage was commuted
1 Clement of Alexandria.
2 The month which commemorated the defeat of the Amazons.
240 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
to a mere bathing and purification in the sea. The third
day was that of sacrifice to Demeter in the temple at
Athens; the fourth, also of sacrifices of h'rstfruits to
Dionysus in fris temple there ; the fifth, of sacrifices to
Asclepios a god who in those latter days had come
to be confounded with lacchos, and so with Dionysus.
Then on the sixth day was formed the processional cortege
to Eleusis, carrying along with it the image of lacchos,
represented as a boy bearing a torch like the Egyptian
Horus. 1
These initial days of the festival reproduce its character
in the earliest times when peasants and shepherds did
service to the universal mother. The dress of the mystse
up to this time seems to show a consciousness of the
antiquity of the ceremonies which they renewed. This
dress was a simple fawn or sheep skin (vsftpls).* On the
sixth day this costume was exchanged for a more civilised
dress to be worn at the inner mysteries. During these
inner mysteries the door is closed to us. Only the
initiated might partake in them, and they were forbidden
to speak of what they had seen and done. The eighth and
ninth days, which ended the feast, were devoted to the
initiation (fjuvrja-is and sTTOTrrsla) and to the grand dramatic
performances in the great temple at Eleusis.
But though we have been left outside the sacred
enclosure,, shall we be far wrong if, in picturing what is
doing within (while making allowance for the difference
of age and the difference of subject), we allow our minds
to wander to St. Francis and his brethren assembled from
1 Horus is the image of the rising sun, in contrast with Osiris, who is
the setting sun, or the sun after setting. In a wider sense that is to say,
in the great myth of the death of Osiris Horus seems to be taken for an
image of the new year. lacchos also undergoes changes of meaning.
Sometimes, perhaps, his torch-bearing image was deemed only the morning
star, for this thought is expressed in the apostrophe in the ' Frogs ' -
VVKTfpOV TeXeTTJS <p<0<T<[>6pOS CffTTJp.
2 Ncfyn's is of course properly a fawn skin. It was the general dress of
the Bacchantes. It is probable that a sheep-skin often did service for it.
PEOCESSIONAL CHAUNT. 241
all Italy, with their torches alight, the manger prepared,
with the ox and the ass in their stall, the hymn rising in
the still night, the solemn excitement of the Saint as he
administers the holy mystery of the mass ? . The Greeks,
too, had their torchlight procession, their veiled figures
moving from side to side in mimic quest of the lost
Persephone ; they had a sort of eucharist in the mystic
drink kykeon ; and for a processional chaunt let us listen
to an ancient chorus which has come down to us, perhaps,
from these very Eleusinia : l
STROPHE.
Over the wide mountain ways
The Holy Mother harrying went,
Through woody tracts her steps she bent,
By the swift river-floods' descent,
Or where upon the hollow coast
The deep sea- waves their voice upraise,
Loud in her lament
For her nameless daughter lost.
And the Bacchic cymbals high
Sent abroad a piercing cry.
So ever in her car, along
By yoked wild beasts borne,
She seeks the virgin who was torn
From her virgin choir among.
In the quest, by her side,
Fleet as storms two others go
Artemis of the bow,
And armed Athene, gorgon-eyed.
ANTISTROPHE.
Now with many wanderings worn,
Her daughter's foot-prints, hope-forlorn,
The goddess stayed from following.
The snowy Idsean heights she passed,
Pitifully sorrowing,
And in the snows herself down cast.
1 Though misplaced in the Helen of Euripides.
242 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
And all the while from earth's broad plain
Men reap no more the golden grain,
Nor for the flocks green pastures grow,
No leafy tendril sprouts again.
She will the human race o'erthrow,
The city streets to desert turn.
No victim dies ; no longer burn
The altar cakes ; the fountains now,
By dews unfed, no longer pour ;
She hath forbid their crystal flow
For the maiden sorrowing so
Now and ever more.
It is evident that Persephone was naturally little con-
nected with thoughts of death, of the next world and of
future judgment. The allusions to her myth which we
have gathered together and these are the most important
to be found in the range of Greek literature the remains
of the Eleusinian festival which have come down to us,
make it clear that it is essentially as a goddess of spring
that Persephone was worshipped, and that the mysteries
speak far more of the sorrows of Demeter above the earth
than of Persephone beneath it. We are not brought face
to face with the kingdom of Hades, as (for example) we are
in the myth of the death of Balder, a story which in other
ways nearly resembles the myths of Persephone. What
likeness is there between this queen of the shades and the
Norse goddess Hel, whose table is Hunger, Starvation her
knife, Care her bed, and Bitter Pain the tapestry of her
room ? Of course Persephone was acknowledged as a ruler
of the dead. She and her story are often painted upon
cinerary urns and upon tombs. Still we must confess that
in her nature there is far more of Core, the maiden, than
of Persephone ; and that this latter name, which means
light-destroyer, is as little appropriate to her whole character
as Apollo, the destroyer, is appropriate to the sun god. 1
1 Preller has discussed at some length and with much learning the
probability of their being two Persephones, whose diverse natures became
united into one (Demeter u. Persephone, Introd.)
THE RESURRECTION OF THE SEED. 243
Moreover, where the Homeric story comes to an end
the arrangement was that Persephone (albeit she is called
Persephone there) should spend two-thirds of the year
above the earth, one-third only below it. To the author
of this hymn she was evidently not first of all a goddess
of death ; the god of torment has not yet taught her how
to frown and how to chide. I think, therefore, that we
may determine without much hesitation that the myth,
and the mysteries which preserved that myth, had at first
only a very slight connection with theories about death
and a future.
Of course the image of the seed, perishing that it may
rise again, speaks with a natural and simple appropriate-
ness of the hope which may accompany the consignment
of a dead man to the all-nourishing earth. But it speaks
only through the voice of an allegory ; and if there is one
thing which the history of belief teaches us more clearly
than others, it is that allegories of such a kind as this, the
parables of nature, are not among the first lessons which
man learns from her. Man's earliest myths are direct
histories ; they are meant at least to tell only of what
happens before his eyes or what he credulously believes to
be among the doings of the physical world. They are not
mystical interpretations from these actions, or images
transferred from the world of sense to the region of feeling
and thought.
It is not the less true, however, that we can trace along-
side of the simpler and earlier story of De meter and
Persephone the growth of a deeper mystery which touched
upon thoughts of the other world. And when the goddess
of the very fulness of youth and of spring had come to be
confounded with the ruler over the shades, men had
before them, no doubt, a lesson of the deepest signifi-
cance. ' In the midst of life we are in death.' This was
now the texb which came at the end of the fasting and
feasting, the torchlight processions and triumphant hymns,
and the nameless 'orgies after them. Has a more solemn
B2
244 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
trumpet sound of warning ever rung in the ears of
humanity than this ? Were these things, then, only a pro-
logue to a dance of death ? How changed must have
become the mysteries when such a belief had found
entrance !
The world seemed not the place it was before.
We wrongly credit the Hellenes with a complete care-
lessness of their destiny in a future state. Such may have
been their prevailing tone ; such must have been the
prevailing tone of a life so vigorous and joyful as their life
was. Greek art has little to tell us of thoughts about
another world. 1 But there must always have been a
minority who were not indifferent to these things ; and a
little before the historical period their views (upon the
speculative side at least) gained a measure of strength.
Greece had been long connected by some tie with Egypt,
whose inhabitants, among all the nations of antiquity,
were most deeply imbued with thoughts about death and
the other world. Pythagoras, however, was the first Greek
writer who professed to have drawn much from the wisdom
of the Egyptians. Another source to which Pythagoras
and some of his followers have evidently been indebted is
Persia. We still feel, and in great measure through the
medium of the Platonic philosophy, the effects of Persian
teaching upon that great primal crux of religion the
origin of evil ; a teaching which has spread its influence
over every Western land. Before the second age of Hel-
lenic literature, the age of the drama and of lyrical poetry,
of ^Eschylus and Pindar, Greece had greatly altered irom
its first simplicity. Colonists had gone out far and near,
had settled in Italy, in Gaul, and on the far shores of the
Pontus or at the mouth of the Nile. Even before the days
of contest with Persia, Greek soldiers were held in such
1 It would have had more to tell had the paintings of Polygnotus come
down to our time. He covered two walls of the Cnidian pilgrims' house
(lesche) at Delphi with paintings representing the world of shades and the
punishment of the wicked (Paus. x. 25-31).
DECAY OF THE HOMERIC RELIGION. 245
esteem that they went as mercenaries .to the capitals of
the greatest Asiatic monarchies, to Nineveh and Babylon
as well as to Thebes. Greek merchants too traded with
these countries, and Greek noblemen and philosophers
frequented their courts.
Many questions which to the Eastern mind and in these
time-worn States were quite familiar, were almost new to
such a young people as the Hellenes ; and the result of
this intermixture of ideas was that Greece entered upon
its philosophical stage ; its mind became questioning and
sceptical, which had once been simple and credulous. As
the new ideas passed from State to Sta-te they saw the old
Homeric religion crumble beneath their tread. And as
the fixed faith of former times decayed, it left an unsatis-
fied craving for religious emotion of all kinds.
The mysteries had by this time gained every requisite
for answering to feelings so excited. They were very old ;
but, as the origin and true meaning of them had been
forgotten, they could not be exploded as easily as could
the plainer teaching of the Homeric religion. All the
stimulants to emotion which we have dwelt upon before,
the secresy of the mystery, the tumultuous excitement of
the orgy, were to be found within them ; and, in addition
to these motives, they now added a new one, a hint con-
cerning the great mystery of mysteries, the mingling of
death with life. The worship of ancestors and the
sacrifices to the departed went hand in hand with festivals
of flowers and the honours of Dionysus. 1 All this must
have given to the ceremony a new character. It must
1 The Anthesteria, the festival of flowers, was especially set apart for
honours to be paid to the dead (see Pauly, Real-Enajvlopadie s. v.
Mytteria and Bacchusi). A black cock is the victim most often associated
with the deities of the under world, and Persephong is very frequently
represented (especially so upon urns) with this bird in her hand. Now as
the cock is the herald of morning, it belongs rather to the goddess Core"
than to the infernal deities. It is, in fact, also sacred to Apollo. It is
probably, therefore, only an after-thought which makes the cock a black
one, a change corresponding to the change in Persephone's nature. In
the Northern mythology three cocks are to proclaim the- dawn of the Last
246 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
have thrown over the festival a quite new air of sadness,
which was very different from the emotion with which
men had looked upon the play which told only of the
death of earth's greenery. The seeds which were now
planted were the bodies of beloved relatives ; they would
not spring up again with the returning year. The
mysteries entered upon a fresh phase. It was after this
transition from the old to the new mysteries that art
began to busy itself much with the story of the Great
Goddesses. The artistic representations of the myth occur
frequently on cinerary urns. Demeter herself became more
a picture of maternal sorrow than she should naturally
have been. In some of the statues of Demeter as, for
example, in that. beautiful one from Cnidus in the British
Museum- -we have an image of the true mater dolorosa of
the Greek creed. It is evident that the mother mourns
for her daughter as for one dead. Nevertheless the ulti-
mate consolation of the goddess was suited to teach men
that they need not sorrow as those that have no hope.
The teaching concerning the expectation of a future
life may have been the real substance of the latter-day
mysteries ; it may, I mean, have been the special subject
on which silence was so important the boon of know-
ledge to which initiation opened a door. It was perhaps
then, when this doctrine crept into the Eleusinia, that the
strict oath of secresy was instituted. On the first day of
the ceremonies the sacred herald, by public proclamation,
enjoined silence and reverence on the initiated. 1 After-
wards those who were about to witness the holy drama
were required one by one to swear secresy. Wherefore
Demosthenes says that those who have not been initiated
can know nothing of the mysteries by report.
Day, that great Armageddon of Teutonic religion called Ragna-rok, the
Doom of the Gods. Over Asgard Gods' Home a golden cock crows, over
Man's Home a red cock, and over Hell a cock of sooty red.
1 EvQwt'iv xpb Ka^iffraffQai TO?S TjfjLfTfpoiffi xP^, 'Speak reverently,
and stand aside from before our holy choir,' as Aristophanes parodies the
ceremony.
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. 247
One would fain know why the mystse deemed secresy
so important. Did they think that they could, as it were,
keep the privilege of immortality to themselves by not
divulging too freely how it was won ; that the envious
upper powers might withdraw it from mankind if all
rushed in to share the gift ? ! Such a gift might well
seem a strange one at the hands of the jealous gods, as
it was indeed most precious. Would ifc be wise to dis-
tribute its benefits broadcast? When, owing to many
circumstances, but chiefly owing to this, that they were
the mysteries of the most thoughtful and spiritual nation-
ality of Hellas, the Eleusinia became the mysteries of
Greece, and all sought admission to their privileges, this
admission was at the outset charily granted. At first only
Athenian citizens might ' partake ; ' anyone born out of
Attica needed to get himself adopted by an Athenian
family. Afterwards initiation was allowed to all Hellenes.
' If these things contain some secret doctrine they ought
not to be shown to all at no more cost than the sacrifice
of a common pip; : ' so Plato complains of their easy ac-
cessibility. Subsequently the same rites were granted to
the Romans. Barbarians were always excluded.
Again, one would like to know what ideas the initiated
had touching that future for which they were in some
unknown way preparing themselves. I should not think
it strange if, in the height of their mystic rites, in the
midst of blazing torches, of the sounds of music, of wild
cries to Dionysus,
(f>ti)ff<f)6pO a
in the gloom of night, among sacrifices and the memories
of friends not long since departed, the enthusiast became
transported to think that he was no longer in the upper
1 In the same spirit a woman of the Orkneys, when asked to repeat a
charm which she had for driving away evil spirits at night, expressed a
fear that the auditor would publish what she told him. 'And then,' said
she, all the gude o' it to me wad be gane.'
248 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
workaday world, but had really been carried across the
dreaded Styx to the asphodel meadows and the banks of
the forgetful stream. In the Middle Ages, during the
fever of those darker mystic rites, which used at times to
sweep over the people like an epidemic, and which cul-
minated during the fourteenth century in the horrible
Dance of Death, it was common enough to find the per-
formers fully persuaded that they had passed the limits of
mortality. Sometimes they deemed they were in heaven,
more often that they were damned in the world below ;
some fancied they had got into an intermediate state
which was neither purgatory nor heaven nor hell.
Aristophanes, in his wild way, shows us a picture of
this kind of belief. The portrait is distorted certainly, but
not perhaps very unlike the original. The picture occurs
in the ' Frogs ' when Bacchus is preparing to descend to
the lower world, in order to fetch thence his favourite
Euripides. And before making the journey he goes to ask
the way of Heracles ; for Heracles, as we well know, had
been more than once into the land of shades. The hero then
forewarns Dionysus how, when he has descended beneath
the earth and crossed the Styx, he will find himself in a
new world in no way distinguishable from that where he
now is sunny meadows like those he is leaving, and
the bands of the initiate singing their songs to Demeter
and Dionysus, just as they sing them at the mysteries.
In truth, it is the damnation of Peter Bell :
It was a party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on earth were crammed ;
Some sipping punch, some sipping tea ;
And by their faces you might see
All silent and all damned.
There is a fine Aristophanes-like touch of genius in
putting this force upon our fancy. In the original play
the scene would be imagined 1 to shift for a moment
1 The change of scene during the Greek plays was never more than
indicated to the imagination, not forced upon it, as with us.
PICTURE OF THE UNDER- WORLD IN THE 'FROGS.' 249
to the banks of Styx, and to show Charon and his boat ;
and then the meadows which men could actually see from
their seats, and the sun-light which fell upon them where
they sat, would be transformed (by imagination) tor a
scene in Hades.
When Dionysus has been standing a little while in
these meadows * a mystical odour of torches breathes
round him,' and behold the chorus of the mystse come in
calling upon lacchos without knowing that he is present
and imitating in all respects the .action of the mystse
upon the upper earth, though the chorus which they sing
is (agreeably to the character of the comedy) a burlesque
of the chaunts which might have been heard during the
Eleusinian celebrations. 1
It was not, however, concerning the future state alone
that the priests of the mysteries professed to impart a
revelation. There were a hundred questions undreamt of
of yore which in the latter days began to press for solution
upon the sharpened intellect of the Hellene. His age of
faith had gone ; his age of philosophy had begun. As the
1 Keep silence, keep silence ; let all the profane
From our holy solemnity duly refrain ;
Whose souls unenlightened by taste are obscure ;
Whose poetical notions are dark and impure ;
Whose theatrical conscience
Is sullied by nonsense ;
Who never were trained by the mighty Cratinus
In mystical orgies poetic and vinous ;
Who delight in buffooning and jests out of season,
Who promote the designs of oppression and treason ;
Who foster sedition, and strife, and debate
Are traitors, in short, to the stage and the State.
Who surrender a fort, or in private export
To places and harbours of hostile resort
Clandestine assignments of cables and pitch ;
In the way that Thorycion grew to be rich
From a scoundrelly, dirty collector of tribute.
All such we reject and severely prohibit.
Frogs, Frere's translation. This admirable translator only errs occa-
sionally by throwing too strong an air of burlesque over Aristophanes' lines.
This has been the case here.
250 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
firm belief of former days decayed it left behind an un-
satisfied craving for emotion of all kinds such longings
are the residuum of dying creeds and these the mysteries
were by their nature peculiarly fitted to satisfy. They
alone could raise men out of themselves until in the ecstasy
of their holy rites all the difficulties of life and of thought
seemed to fade away. Without the aid of much definite
dogma they formed a natural counterpoise to the growing
scepticism of the age.
And then this age of growing scepticism was in a sense
likewise an age of growing morality. The notion of a
moral law, at least, was more constantly present than it
had been of old time. I do not say the practice was
an improvement upon that of bygone days; but the
development of man had reached that stage when right is
no longer a thing of instinct or habit ; when righteous-
ness is seen not to be an affair of this or that occasion,
but to stand apart from all occasion, abstract and eternal.
The 'categorical imperative' of this sense of right and
wrong had risen, as it had never risen before, to be a force
in the world. And beside this power that of the old
supernatural beings seemed shadowy and unreal. Even
the scoffer Aristophanes witnesses to this important
part of what we may call the new mysticism. This con-
sisted not of religious excitement, still less of physical
excitement or orgies only, but rested in some measure
upon purity of morals. It may seem strange that a form
of worship which still included many obscene rites and
tLe Eleusinia, in common with all other mysteries, seem to
have done this could have set itself up as a preacher of
morality : it must seem strange to us, who have so long-
associated purity of morals in this particular with purity
of morals in every relationship, till the phrases ' an
immoral life,' <a moral man,' have gained a technical
significance. The ancients acknowledged no such neces-
sary interdependence between different kinds of goodness.
Excesses, licensed excesses, as they were, during the cele-
NEOPLATONISM. 251
bration of the holy rites, did not afford a reason why the
priest should refrain from warning away from the celebra-
tion all those who were stained with usury or avarice, or
other vices of bad citizenship.
But, in truth, had the inconsistency been greater than
it was, it would not be a thing to wonder at in the new
mysteries. All the simplicity of the early festival had
passed away, and in its place had come a strange compound
of definite doctrine and of fancied revelation ; of unex-
plained and unexplainable excitement; of some hope of
the future combined with much fear of the mysterious
upper powers who were but symbolised under the names
of Demeter and Hades, of Dionysus and Persephone. Of
such kind were the mysteries of historic times.
The final stage of Greek religion we may call it the
third stage, that of Homer being the first, the age of
j33schylus and Pindar and of the rise of philosophy being
the second was that during which Platonisra faded into
Neoplatonism. It was in this last condition that the
worship of Demeter came to mingle with the time-hon-
oured mysteries of Isi& The likeness between the two
goddesses had been acknowledged from of old, but this
similarity was not the result of a transmission of religious
ideas from Egypt to Greece. It was only a likeness which
sprang from the identity of the impulse which produced
both mysteries. It was not until the days of the Alexan-
drian kingdom that the Oriental creeds first began to exer-
cise a strong attractive power upon Greek thought.
Whatever effect the learning and the religion of the
Egyptians may have had upon individual historians, such
as Herodotus, and upon individual philosophers like Pytha-
goras, it is certain that it had no deep influence upon the
Greek belief during the latter's heyday of development.
It was after the decline of belief in Greece and in Eome
that men were found seeking new forms of mystic excite-
ment in the dark places of Oriental creeds. Before the
time of Alexander the Great, Greece had no doubt absorbed
252 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
something of the philosophy of Persia and of Egypt ;
but these first lessons were as nothing compared to those
which came to her after her conquests in Asia and Africa
had been completed. In this old world the energy and
culture of the Greeks transformed the dull life which they
found there, and now Greek scepticism, which had perhaps
first been awakened by contact with the East, paid back
with interest all it had received, and began to unmoor the
Asiatic peoples from the anchor of their former creeds.
But then, again, the Hellenes in their turn received in
exchange some of the mystic spirit which by this process
they had set free to wander through the air. Ifc was easier
to take from the Asiatic his positive belief than to quench
his religious nature itself, and his love of emotion and
mysticism. It was through the marriage of Greek phi-
losophy with Oriental mysticism that there sprang up in
Alexandria that strange system of teaching to which has
been given the name of Neoplatonism.
It is no part of my purpose to attempt here to follow
this new philosophy so unlike the calmly reasoned
systems of Plato and of Aristotle along the dark laby-
rinth through which it chose to wander. Inferior as Neo-
platonism is to Greek philosophy, properly so called, in
intellectual breadth and logical capacity, obscured as it is
throughout by a turbid atmosphere of mysticism and fan-
tastic creation, it has this element of superiority over the
older philosophy, that a keener moral sense displays itself
everywhere in it. It possesses a certain spiritual insight
which to the other would have been impossible. For this
keener moral perception belonged to the age in which
Neoplatonism sprang up, and to the conditions to which
the development of human thought had attained. Yet, as
has been said, this spiritual insight was not incompatible
with any actual backsliding in the sphere of positive duty.
There needed Some One who, by example as well as by
precept, should vivify and bring to practical fruit the
doctrine of right for its own sake ; and He was yet unborn.
MYSTERIES OF SERAPIS AND ISIS. 253
It is easy to understand why, amid all this confusion of
thought and the kind of anarchy which spread throughout
the sphere of moral life, now that the emotions were left
as the only guide to men, the mysteries should have held
their place with a redoubled tenacity, and exercised a
deeper influence than they had ever gained before. Now,
not the Eleusinia alone, but the mystic rites of almost
every nation were incorporated into the ritual of the
Greeks. What was the separate fascination which each of
these rituals held we cannot tell ; but we can well under-
stand that the times were favourable to those orgies of
feeling, that intoxication of the faculties, which all the
mysteries alike fostered, and in which all had their root.
It is from the time of the New Platonism that we
must date the growth of the mysteries of Isis and Osiris
into that form, of which Plutarch has left us a picture in
his treatise upon those two divinities. Nevertheless the
mysteries of Isis and Osiris could never have had an
importance calculated to rival the Eleusinia so long as
the Greek supremacy remained. But from Greece that is
to say, from the New Greece, whose capital was Alexandria
these mysteries spread to Rome. And it is chiefly as a
phase in the history of Roman belief that the later Isis
worship is interesting to us.
Under the Roman supremacy it would follow, as a
matter of course, that the Eleusinia should fall consider-
ably from their former consequence. Before the Roman
supremacy, though much of Greek intellect and enterprise
had deserted the original Hellas, though Athens had been
eclipsed by Alexandria, yet it was to Greece proper that
men's thoughts still turned with supreme reverence as to
the mother of all wider Greece. They honoured its ancient
festivals, its Olympia, its Eleusinia, as the institutions
under which their country had grown so great, and which
were most truly representative of Hellenic nationality.
But all this was changed when Rome became the ruling
254 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
power of the world, and when even the Greeks put off
their ancient pride of race to be enrolled in the number
of her citizens. The Eomans had no mysteries, properly
so called, of their own. They had had, indeed, in old days,
like all other nations, their festivals of the spring, such
as the Lupercalia. But these had never been developed, as
the Greeks had developed the Eleusinia, into a mystery of
what we have called the new kind. For the wants of
their new state of religious excitement their native
religious system was therefore unprepared. One would
have supposed the Eoman natures themselves were un-
suited to this phase of belief; but the event shows the
contrary. Almost every kind of Oriental mystery found
in the latter days of the Empire its enthusiastic votaries
in Eome ; but none more so than the rites of Osiris and
Isis, or of Serapis and Isis ; for under the latter names
these Egyptian divinities were there most frequently
honoured. 1
From the time of Alexander, when Greece entered
into such close relations with Egypt, and Alexandria
began to assume the supremacy which anciently belonged
to Athens, Isis worship began to spread in Greece,
and to rival in some degree the native Eleusinian rites.
Traces of Isis worship are found in Epirus, in Thespise
in Boeotia, in many of the Greek islands as, for ex-
ample, in Delos, Chios, and Cyprus 2 even in Athens
itself. To Eome this worship spread through the
Greeks, but was here at first discountenanced by law.
Apuleius says unless he has been misunderstood that
Isis worship was known in Eome in the time of Sulla
the Dictator. 3 And for a long period no Isis temple
might be built within the walls. Even in the time of
1 Serapis was originally a divinity quite distinct from Osiris ; but the
two came to be united into one being.
2 See Pauly, Real-Encyc. s. v. Isis (L. Georgii).
* Some read Sybilla for Sulla, which would make the statement useless
as a datum.
WORSHIP OF SERAPIS AND ISIS IN ROME. 255
Augustus this prohibition held good, though there was in
his day a celebrated temple of Isis without the walls. 1
Agrippa was strongly opposed to the new cult. He
forbade the worship of Serapis or of Isis within a mile of
the city. The cult was not received into general favour
until the time of the Flavian emperors. Domitian was its
special votary ; his life had once been saved by his assum-
ing the disguise of a priest of Isis. Marcus Aurelius
built a great temple to Serapis. Commodus was priest of
this cult ; so were Pescennius Niger and Caracalla. Thus
these mysteries went on growing in importance till
Christian times. It is strange to see these sober Eomans
throwing themselves as wildly as the rest of the world into
this wild game ; to find an Apuleius not a pious nature,
one would suppose pawning his last coat to buy initiation
into the rites of the goddess. There was not much belief
at this time, perhaps, in the efficacy of the rites to bestow
immortality ; no more than there was any longer a firm
belief in the existence of the gods commemorated. Still
the ceremonial remained, though the myths on which it
was founded had been rationalised and the belief from
which it once drew all its support had faded away.
We can only guess at the form which the original
myth of Isis and Osiris wore, or at the rites which com-
memorated the myth ; though we have every reason to
believe that both myth and ritual followed the usual course
of the worship of the earth goddess. Nevertheless there
are in Egypt some peculiar characteristics in the changes
which in certain seasons pass over the face of earth.
For there the whole country is submerged during the
Nile's overflow, and all life there is for a time destroyed.
These peculiar effects of Nature seem to be reflected in the
Osiris myth. Death takes in it a larger share than he
does in the corresponding story of Persephone ; and what-
ever note of triumph may accompany the conclusion of the
1 Dion Cassias, liii. 2.
256 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
history, it is pitched in a more subdued key than in the
Greek legend.
Plutarch, writing in the first century of our era, just
about the time when the Isis worship at Rome was in its
greatest ascendant, gives an account of the Lsis myth and
then a theological explanation of it. Both are charac-
teristic of the last stage in the religion of antiquity. The
earlier forms of the story which related the death of Osiris,
the mourning of his wife, her search for his body, and the
revenge for his death, are lost to us. In the hands of the
Greek the Egyptian tale stands evidently deeply indebted
to the Demeter myth. The main differences, however,
remain. The lost being is a man and not a woman (it is
so, as we shall see hereafter, in the Norse version of the
Demeter story), and this man is the husband of the earth
goddess.
Typhon (Seth), the Genius of Evil thus the story
runs in Plutarch made a conspiracy against the life of
Osiris. And this is how he accomplished his purpose.
He challenged the god to see if he could get himself
into a certain chest which he had previously prepared,
much as the fisherman in the Arab tale induced the
jinnee to show his power by returning into the bottle from
which he had just escaped. And, like that Arab fisherman,
no sooner had Typhon got Osiris well into the box than he
clapped down the lid and fastened it, and pouring melted
lead over it to make it secure, he carried it away. Then
begin Isis' wanderings in search of her husband. At
length she heard that the chest, which was now Osiris'
coffin, had been taken to Byblos, on the most eastern
mouth of the Nile, and hidden there in a tamarisk tree ;
and further, that the tree had grown all round the chest,
so as to hide it. Isis found, when she got to Byblos, that
the tamarisk had been cut down, and was now a pillar in
the king's palace. There she went as Demeter to the
house of Keleos, and became nurse to the king's son. She
STOEY OF THE DEATH OF OSIEIS. 257
let him suck at her finger instead of her breast, and by
night she placed him in the fire, that his mortal parts
might be consumed away. But the mother seeing the
child all aflame, screamed out, and by so doing robbed him
of the immortality which would have been his. Then the
goddess discovered herself, and asked that the pillar which
upheld the roof should be given to her. She cut open the
tree and took out the chest, wherewith she set sail to
Egypt. ' It was now morning, and the river Phaedrus
sent forth a bitter wind. . . .'
Isis went next to find her son Horus, leaving the
chest in an obscure and desert place. But Typhon, as he
was hunting by night (see how the day myth still lingers :
Osiris is brought back in the morning and lost again at
night), came perchance upon it, and knowing what it
contained, he took out the body of the god, tore it into
fourteen fragments, and scattered them hither and thither
over the land. Then Isis set out once more in search of
her husband, travelling in a boat made of papyrus reeds*
. . . When she met with any one of the scattered remains
of Osiris she buried it.
After these things Osiris came from the dead and
appeared unto Horus, exhorting him to avenge his father.
And Horus fought with Typhon and slew him.
The Eleusinia were devoted in about equal parts to
painting the sad journeys of Demeter, and her joy at again
beholding her daughter. Persephone spends a third of
the year only below, two- thirds upon earth. Joy and
sorrow are about equally tempered ; this is the lesson of
the Demeter myth. But in the Egyptian mysteries sorrow
has the foremost place. Osiris is only found when dead,
and found only to be lost again. And though Typhon
too is slain, and Horus victorious, this is like a second
part added on to the original story ; it cannot bring com-
pensation to the wife who has lost her husband. And so
Plutarch speaks of the sober air of grief and sadness '
258 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
which appears in these ceremonies. This was a cult which
had grown old in length of years. The gladness of heart
which inspired all the mysteries at their beginning had
passed away, and a sober sadness taken its place. In this
instance, moreover, we have clearly brought before us the
conflict between good and evil which in the earlier
mysteries not yet divorced from their close connection
with nature nowhere appears. Eites such as these rites
of Isis, pictured things more solemn than the changes of
the year. ' Her mysteries,' says our author, * were insti-
tuted by Isis to be the image, or indication rather, of what
was then done and suffered, as a right consolation to those
other men and women who might at any future time be in
a like distress.' A divine being suffering that her suffer-
ings should be a consolation to humanity ! Do we not
here seem to be drawing near to the mysteries of Chris-
tianity ?
Of the same late character is Plutarch's explanation
of the story. He discusses and dismisses other former
interpretations which do indeed preserve some features
of the original and natural origin of the tale in favour of
his own, which passes beyond and includes all these. Some
have said, he tells us, that Isis was Egypt, and Osiris the
Nile, and that Typhon was the scorching heat of summer,
which dried up the stream ; or that Osiris was the heaven,
and Isis the earth ; that he was the sun and Isis the moon ;
or lastly, that the god was the principle of productiveness
in nature, Isis the recipient of the seed. They are all or
none of these things. Osiris is the principle of good in
nature, or in the soul of nature and of men. 1 Typhon is
the opposite, the evil principle. The great Persian theory
of the dual government of the world is here invoked, and
referred directly to the teaching of Zoroaster and the
Magians. ' There are two beings equally concerned in the
ordering of terrene affairs, a good and a bad divinity, a
1 Vuxb TOV Uavrbs. Isis and Osiris, 49.
PLUTARCH'S EXPLANATION OF THE MYTH. 259
god and a dsemon. Out of the war of these two principles
for they are eternally united and yet for ever striving
one to subdue the other is produced the harmony of the
world.' As Euripides says, ' good and evil cannot be
parted, though they are so tempered that beauty and
order are the issue. 5 . . . And this opinion has been
handed down from theologians and legislators to the poets
and philosophers, an opinion which, though its first
author be unknown, has everywhere gained so firm and
unshaken a credence as not only to be spoken of both by
Greeks and barbarians, but even to be taught by them in
their ( mysteries ' and sacrifices tha.t the world is neither
wholly left to its own motions without some mind, some
superior reason, to guide and govern it, nor that it is one
such mind only that, as with helm or bridle, directs the
whole ; but that all the irregularities which in this lower
region we behold are due to the two great and opposing
powers, one for ever trying (as it were) to lead us to the
right and along a straight path, the other striving as
constantly to bring us in the contrary direction and to
error.
Certainly this great conflict between good and evil is a
riddle deep enough in the world's history. And men were
at this time beginning to learn how great and terrible a
mystery it was. The thought of it haunted all the philo-
sophy of the days in which Plutarch wrote, and only
partially cleared away with the triumph of Christianity.
This, it seems, was now the lesson which was taught by the
mystic rites of Greeks and Romans. Man had no more
to do with the fresh returning spring, with peasants'
festivals, or with harvest homes. What meaning would
such old rites have had for the city life and the elaborate
civilisation of those latter days ? And so their mysteries
were turned into epitomes of the teaching of philosophers,
or the speculations of moralists on the origin of good and
evil. To this the rustic festival of early days had grown,
to this its final stage.
8 2
260 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
Then came Christianity and silenced silenced ap-
parently both the newer mystic cnlt and the older nature
worship. The Mystics themselves became Christians, as
Clemens Alexandrinus did, and burnt what they had
adored. In the year A.D. 391 the great temple of Serapis
at Alexandria was set on fire by order of the government.
And about the same time the monks who came into
Greece in the wake of Alaric's invading army put a
perpetual finis to the worship of the great goddesses at
Eleusis. Yet how strange is the tribute to the vitality
of the ancient earth worship in this fact, that the last
blows which Christianity levelled at its rival, paganism,
should have struck at that form of creed. Zeus and
Apollo and Athene were far less dangerous to Christianity
than the gods who had in reality preceded Zeus and
Apollo and Athene, the gods of farm, and village, and
the cottage fireside, than Pan or Demeter, than Perse-
phone or Dionysus. This is perhaps the meaning of that
legend which said that before the birth of Christ a
mysterious voice ran along the shores of the ^Egean, pro-
claiming as a herald of the triumph of the coming creed,
not the death of Zeus or of Apollo or Athene, but that the
far older god of earth and earth's fruitfulness, that Great
Pan himself was dead.
THE OTHER WORLD. 261
CHAPTER VI.
THE OTHER WORLD.
1. The Under World, the River of Death, and the Bridge
of Souls.
THERE are some phases of past thought not far removed
from us in time into which it is all but impossible to
gain real insight ; difficulties and questions which were
new once, but have now been settled for ever, experiments
not long ago untried which have now become a matter of
daily experience, and conditions of life and society which
have not long passed, and yet seem to us infinitely remote.
But there are some questions, though they have been
asked continually through all the past history of man,
and though men will never cease from asking them as
long as the human race endures, which seem still as far
from solution as they ever were : there are some future
experiences upon which mankind is always speculating, and
which yet can never become present experiences so long
as we are what we are those questions, I mean, which
concern the destiny of man after death, the character of
his journey to the undiscovered country, and the sort of
life he will lead when there.
Some would dissuade us from the continuance of these,
so they deem them, unfruitful speculations ; but it is very
certain that man must change his nature before they will
lose their fascination for him ; and till he does so change
he can never read without sympathy the guesses which
past generations of his kind have made toward the solution
of the same problems. To them, indeed, these solutions
262 OUTLINES OF PIUMITIVE BELIEF.
have lost their interest, as ours will noon do for us. What-
ever lot that new condition may hold in store, eternal
pleasure or eternal pain, they have tried it now ; whatever
scene is concealed by the dark curtain, they have passed
behind it. This is certain ; as that we soon must. So
long, however, as we remain here upon this upper earth,
we must be something above or below humanity if we
refuse ever to let our thoughts wander towards the changes
and chances of another life.
Not, indeed, that questions of this sort have ever had
for the majority of men in one age, or for the collective
mass of humankind, an all-absorbing interest. If we
choose to look closely into the matter, and to judge of
men's opinion as it is displayed in their actions (the only
real opinion), we shall at first, perhaps, be struck by the
slenderness of the belief which they possess in a future
state. For it is slight compared with their ' notional as-
sent,' that which they think they believe concerning it.
With the majority of us faith upon this matter is at best
but shadowy ; of an otiose character, suitable for soothing
the lots of others, arid sometimes, alas ! called into requi-
sition to alleviate the stings of conscience for the pain
which our own misconduct or neglect has introduced
therein.
It will be said that there was once a time when one
aspect, at any rate, of the future, its. terror, was realised
with an intensity, and- exercised an influence over life and
conduct, such as are unknown in our days. Perhaps this
was so: certainly these times were not ordinary ones.
33ut in our estimate of the Middle Ages we are, I think,
apt to lay too much stress upon the force which faith had
over the men of those days. We forget the other side
of the picture. There was on the one hand the ortho-
dox teaching; and whenever the Church moulded com-
pletely the popular belief, this world was seen as if covered
beneath a pall, and the next shrouded in still darker
gloom. As the orthodox or monastic view of life was like-
OF THE
v r ERSm
BELIEF AND UNBELIEF. 263
wise the literary one, the picture of the world as it was
drawn by the Church has come down to us almost unre-
lieved by brighter colours. There was, however, another
spirit at work, the spirit of the laity ; and for laymen at
least, whatever priests might say to the contrary, life had
still its pleasures, and, in the indulgence of these, thoughts
about the next world were then, as now, laid to rest.
Beside the deeper course of the main stream of belief this
under current may be distinctly traced, a rivulet of ancient
paganism ; whether this were the genuine heathenism of
new-converted lands, or the sort of paganism or atheism
of countries which in comparison with their times were
almost over-civilised such countries, -for example, as
Italy or Provence. Provence began a kind of renaissance
of its own before the time for a renaissance had come ; it
ga*ve a new direction to the impulses of chivalry, it fos-
tered la gaie science, and sent out its companies of trouba-
dours, plying their art to call men away from thoughts of
the Day of Doom, and to drown with their songs the
perpetual chaunting of masses and the toll of bells. We
cannot overlook these elements in mediaeval life. The
Gothic cathedral is a lasting memorial of the genius of
Catholicism; but if we examine it closely, and look in
neglected corners or at the carvings beneath the seats, we
shall see strange sights, not provocative to holy meditation.
Dante strikes, no doubt, the truest note of his age ; but in
the pauses of his stately music you may hear the laughter
of Boccaccio.
In truth, that term ' dark ages ' overrides our fancy ;
' we can never hear mention of them without an accom-
panying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed
the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered to
and fro groping.' l On the other hand, neither have the
most light-hearted and sceptical of people been able to
shut their eyes utterly to the warnings of death. We are
1 Ella.
264 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
wont to think of the Greeks as a people of just such a
light-hearted and in a fashion sceptical temperament,
and to contrast the spirit of Hellas with the spirit of
mediseval Europe. Truly little thought of death or of
judgment after death seems to disturb the serenity of
Greek art such as that art has come down to us.
Thanatos (Death) is scarcely to be found ; l even the
tombs are adorned with representations of war and the
chase, and with figures of the dancing Hours. And yet
we know that Greek art was not without its darker side.
It had, like mediaeval poetry, its Dante Polygnotus,
namely who adorned the pilgrims' house at Delphi with
frescoes representing the judgment and the tortures of
the damned a Greek Campo Santo. 2 These, had they
been preserved, would have given us a different idea of
the Hellenic mind in the presence of the fact of mo % r-
tality, and shown us how easily we are led to exaggerate
the divergence in thought between different nations and
different times.
Where no knowledge could be gained from experience,
man has been driven, in solving such a question as that
of the character of our future life, to interpret the alle-
gory of nature ; and his interpretations have not varied
very much from age to age. Wherefore it is that, as far
back as we can test the belief of men, we find certain
theories touching the fate of the soul after death, which
represent in the germ at least the prevalent opinions of
our own day, and out of some of which our opinions have
arisen.
1 It has been suggested that among a group of figures sctilptured upon
the drum of a column brought from the Ephesian Artemisium, we have a
representation of Thanatos. The figure is that of a boy, young and comely
as Love, but of a somewhat pensive expression ; upon his thigh a sword is
girt, such as Eros never wears ; his right hand is raised, as though he
were beckoning. With him stand Deuaeter and Hermes, both divinities
connected with the rites of the dead.
2 Pausanias, x. 28.
THE UNDERGROUND HOUSE OF THE DEAD. 265
Belief sprang up at once from the mere effort of lan-
guage to give expression to the unseen. Casting about
for a name for the essential part of man, the soul of him,
and using for the abstract conception such a physical
notion as seemed least remote from the former, language at
first identified this soul with the breath. All the Aryan
tongues give us examples of this identification. The
Greek ^v^ij, spiritus, is allied to ^v^co, to breathe ; in
Sanskrit we have dtman, soul, in Latin animus, anima
all three derived from original roots an, anti, breath, and
allied to the Greek do), arj/ju, as well as to aadpa, a heavy
breathing. Spiritus has the same meaning: it is allied
to the Slavonic pachu, odour ; pachati, to blow. The Ger-
man Geist and our ghost are probably in part onomato-
poetic, and suggest the idea of breath by their very sound.
Like the vital spark itself, the breath is seen to depart
when the man dies. But whither has it gone ? This is
the first question concerning the habitat of the soul;
and the purely negative, purely scientific answer is but to
confess ignorance, and to say that the breath has dis-
appeared. The answer actually given advances a little
way beyond this toward the beginning of a myth. The
breath has gone to the ' unseen ' or the ' concealed
place;' as the Greeks said to Hades (d-siBrjs), 1 as our
Norse ancestors said to Hel. 2 Thus out of mere migra-
tion we have the beginning of a myth ; the spirit becomes
something definite, and the place it has gone to is partly
realised.
This Home of the I>ead, this ' unseen ' or ' concealed '
place, must needs be dark ; and it is, of course, natural
that there should be much confusion between the home of
the living soul and that of the dead body, so that the
1 It is true that another derivation has been given for Hades. It has
been associated with the Sanskrit Aditi, the boundless, which may be a
name for earth (cf. Prithivi), though I rather believe it (as Max Miiller
says it is) a name for the heaven or the expanse of the dawn. See Maury
Religions de la Grece, ii. 278-
2 Hel from Icl. at helja, to hide.
266 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
former becomes more or less identified with the grave.
In a more expanded sense the Home of the Dead may be
thought of as a vast underground kingdom to which the
grave is but the entry. It was always imagined that if
the dead man did return to the upper world he came
through this passage and out by the grave's mouth ; and,
apparently, it was generally thought that he could return
no other way. It was also deemed that for awhile for
a lesser or a greater while the dead man lingered about
the funeral mound: thus soon after death the man's
ghost might be seen, but not (generally) long after death.
Along with the earliest traces of human burial we find
tokens of the custom of placing food and drink with the
dead body. The object of this may have been to furnish
the ghost with the means for beginning his journey to the
underground kingdom, and so of hastening his departure
from the neighbourhood of living men ; for it is certain
that there was nothing of which primitive man stood more
in dread than of the appearance of a ghost. In the re-
mains of the second Stone Age we find proofs that the
departed were pacified by such like gifts of food and
drink ; they were in these days further honoured by the
erection of immense monumental tombs, which even now
present the appearance of small hills. The pyramids of
Egypt are a relic of the same custom of mound- raising
among primitive men. At the mouth of the Stone Age
grave mounds was held the death wake or funeral feast,
traces of which are still discoverable. Within the grave
was placed the body of the hero, or chieftain, surrounded
by implements of war and of the chase, by food and drink,
and also by dead captives and wives.
It is impossible for us to pronounce with certainty
what was the original intention of rites such as these,
which continue quite late in the development of civilisa-
tion. Was it supposed that the body itself came to life
and required the food which was left for it in the grave
before it arrived at its last home ? Had it a journey to
THE GEAVE THE ENTBANCE TO IT. 267
make to get to the underground land? Was the food
intended only for that intermediate condition of travel ?
Before we have any means of testing men's belief upon
these points, the rites which might have expressed it have
become in a great degree symbolical, and their simpler
meaning has been lost. 1
The prehistoric grave mounds witness in a curious
way to the prevalent notion that the grave mouth was the
gate by which ghosts returned to ' walk ' the earth. To
prevent these apparitions the men of prehistoric days had
recourse to a strange practical method of exorcism.
They strewed the ground at the grave's mouth with sharp
stones and broken pieces of pottery, as if they thought a
ghost might have his feet cut, and by fear of that be pre-
vented from returning to his old haunts. For unnum-
bered ages after the days of the mound builders the
same custom lived on, whereof we see here the rise.
Turned now to an unmeaning rite, it was put in force for
the graves of those, such as murderers or suicides, who
might be expected to sleep uneasily in their narrow
house. This is the custom which is referred to in the
speech of the priest to Laertes in Hamlet.' * Ophelia had
died under such suspicion of suicide that it was a stretch
of their rule, says the priest, to grant her Christian
burial.
And but the great command o'ersways onr order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
To the last trumpet: for charitable prayers
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.
The grave becoming in this belief ipso facto the en-
trance to Hades, burial was necessary for admittance into
the other world. The soul who had not undergone this
1 The funeral feast held in honour of the dead (of which the twenty-
third book of the Iliad gives a good example for prehistoric days) is of
course only a relic of the feast in which the dead partook. Of a still
earlier form of the ceremony we have fine examples in the tomb paintings
of Egypt. At these the dead is present.
268 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
rite flitted about aimlessly around the spot where his
shell, the body, lay. This is the superstition concerning
a murdered man. By the 'polluted covert' the ghost
stands, to show where the horrid deed was wrought. By
virtue of an easy transfer of ideas any other form of inter-
ment burning of the dead when that was customary
became also the needful passport to the land of shades.
Among the Homeric heroes we see every effort made to
secure the body for this purpose ; and when the corpse of
Hector cannot be recovered, some faint image of the
funeral rite is performed by burning his clothes.
This belief, too, explains why Elpenor, the comrade of
Odysseus, is found by the latter, when he goes to visit the
home of Hades, still wandering on the hither side of
Styx ; and why Patroclus' ghost comes to the bedside of
Achilles, and reproaches him that his funeral rites have
not yet been performed. In truth, the belief in the im-
portance of funeral rites is too widespread and too well
known to need further illustration in this place. 1
Among those nationalities with whom the belief in an
underground kingdom was most in force, the home and
the condition* of the dead must alike seem dark and cheer-
less. Enough of the old belief concerning the vanishing
breath remained to make the future itself shadowy ; and
so perhaps it was a place of emptiness and hollowness, a
no-life rather than one of positive pain, that made the
early hell. ' The senseless dead, the simulacra of mortals,'
Homer calls the shades ; and the same thought is ex-
pressed by Isaiah when he says
Sheol shall not praise Thee, Jehovah,
The dead shall not celebrate Thee ;
They that go down into the pit shall not hope for Thy truth :
The living, the living shall praise Thee, as I do this day. 2
1 So Virgil:
4 Haec omnis quam cernis inops, inhumataque turba est ;
Portitor ille Charon ; hi quos vehit unda sepulti.' ^En. vi. 325.
2 Isaiah xxxviii. 18, 19 ; cf. also Genesis xxxvii. 35, 1 Samuel xxviii. 19.
PERSONIFICATION OF THE UNDER WORLD. 269
But when this under world takes a form of greater
distinctness, and men begin to try and localise it beneath
particular spots of the earth, they imagine more definite
roads leading to it ; and names, such as Styx and Avernus,
which were purely mythical, assume a geographical cha-
racter. Approaches of this kind to the realm of dark-
ness are the Hollenthaler, hell's glens, and the like, of
which we meet so many in Europe. All very d^ep caves
and abysses are believed to lead thither. In a more
imaginative way, and in the language of a finer poetry,
the downward road is spoken of as the 'Valley of the
Shadow of Death.'
But no living man ventures to the bottom of this dark
valley ; or if he do go he shall scarcely return. Tlie
secrets of that place are well kept. And great was of old
the fear of the infernal deities, lest men should pry into
their prison house. Wherefore Hades cried aloud when
Poseidon was shaking the earth, lest that god should rend
it asunder and disclose his mansions to the day ' man-
sions dolorous fearful which the gods themselves loathe.'
The inanimate place, the very cavernous hollow, be-
comes anon gifted with life ; and the mere privation of
an earlier faith grows into ' a more awful and confounding
positive.' Hell becomes a being. Most likely this being
was at first endowed with the figure of some ravenous
animal, some bird or beast of prey, a wolf, a lion, a dog, a
hawk, as the experience of each individual people might
direct. Greek mythology had its Cerberus, Norse mytho-
logy its Fenris wolf. In a mythology a shade more elabo-
rate the same thing is represented by imaginary creatures
dragons, griffins, or what not. The dragons which we
meet with in mediaeval legend were once, most of them, in
some way or other, embodiments of Death. At the door
of Strassburg Cathedral, and in one of the stained windows
within, the reader may see a representation of the mouth
Sheol is misrendered ' grave ' in our version. It means ' the place of the
dead,' not the place of dead bodies only.
270 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
of Hell, in the form of a great dragon's head spouting
flame.
Anyone who is acquainted with mediaeval sculptures
and paintings knows how common it is to find this kind
of imagery, which exists in virtue of the reversion of
popular mythology to primitive forms of thought.
Of a like origin with this hell dragon are most of the
fabulous monsters, half human and half animal, whom we
meet in Greek my thology the harpies, for example, the
sirens, or the gorgons. If the underground kingdom is
seen in the form of a man, he is a monstrous man, such as
the ogre of our nursery tales. This ogre is a descendant
of the Orcus of classical times, and, I doubt, he better
shows us the primitive conception of that being than do
any representations in art of the god of hell.
No people have painted the destructive aspect of death,
the negative theory of a future, with a sharper outline than
did the Greeks and Hebrews. What a contrast to the"
teaching of modern religions is the line
They that go down into the pit shall not hope for Thy truth.
Yet Greeks and Hebrews have not abstained from en-
dowing the * unseen place ' with some personality. In
Greek literature we may almost trace the processes by
which Hades, from being impersonal, becomes personal,
and then returns once more to be merely a place. Of a
man dying it is not seldom said in Homer that 'hateful
darkness seized him : ' ] here was a half-personality which
was calculated soon to lead to a complete one. Hades is
accordingly generally a person in Homer. The Icelandic
goddess, Hel, went through the same transformation that
we can trace in the case of Hades. From being the con-
cealed place she grew to be the queen of the dead, and
then again degenerated to be only the home of the dead.
Of the thousand other images of horror to be met with in
1 B.g. II v. 45.
THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL. 271
different creeds devouring dragons, fire-breathing ser-
pents, or dogs who, like Cerberus, threaten those who are
journeying to the underground kingdom the most part
can, from their names, be shown to have arisen out of
the merely negative images of death, the ' unseen/ the
' coverer,' the ' concealer,' the ' cave of night.'
In contrast with all these myths stand those which
after death send the soul upon a journey to some happy
home of the departed, to a paradise which is generally
believed to be in the west. If the first are myths of hell,
the second series may be fairly described as myths of
heaven. Nor can it be clearly proved that the more
cheerful view of the other world is of a later growth in
time than the one which we have been describing, seeing
the evidence which the Stone Age interments seem to offer
upon this point. For if the dead man had need of his
weapons of war, of his captives and his wives, his life to
come could not have differed for the worse from his life
here. And if, among historic peoples, the earlier Hebrews
were the exponents of the gloomy Sheol, the most hopeful
picture of the soul's future finds expression in the ritual
service of the Egyptians. To come nearer home, among
all those peoples with whom we are allied in blood, the
Indo-European family of nations, we shall find the traces
of a double belief, the belief, on the one hand, in death as
a dim underground place, or as a devouring monster, and
the contrasting belief in death as a journey made towards
a new country where everything is better and happier than
on earth.
There is nothing distinctively Aryan in the notion of a
journey of the soul after death. Every nation has possessed
it, and almost every people, moreover, has associated it
with the travel of the sun to his setting. But there is
something in this phase of belief which makes it, wherever
it appears, more national and characteristic than the other
creed touching the under world ; and that is the necessity
272 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
which its mythology is under of changing according to
the geographical position of those who hold it. The para-
dise whither the soul was imagined travelling was certainly
in one sense * another world,' but it was not so in the sense
in which we use that term. The ancient paradise was in
no way distinctly separated in thought from the earth on
which men lived ; and the way to it was always supposed
to lie somewhere in this visible world. Therefore the idea
of heaven varied according to men's outlook over this
earth. The Egyptian, for example, saw the sun set behind
a trackless desert which he had never crossed and never
desired to cross while alive. This desert was in his belief
a twilight land ruled over by the serpent king Apap. 1 It
lay upon the left bank of his sacred Nile, while the cities
of the living were upon the right bank; and so the
Egyptian 'Book of the Dead' gives us a picture of the
dead man's journey, in which all the geographical features
of Egypt reappear. The ritual shows the departed twice
ferried across a sacred River of Death (the Nile), travel-
ling through the dark land of Apap or of Amenti, ever
advancing towards the sun, light breaking upon him the
while, till he comes to the Palace of the Two Truths, the
judgment hall of Osiris : Osiris being the sun which has
set. Last of all we see him walking into the sun itself,
or absorbed into the essence of the deity.
Our Aryans used the same imagery, with variations of
local colouring. In both myths there is the same childlike
confusion of thought between the subjective and the objec-
tive ; between the position of the myth-maker and that of
the phenomenon out of which he weaves his story. Because
towards sunset the sun grows dim and the world too, it is
imagined that the sun has now reached a dim twilight
place, such as the Egyptians pictured in their region of
1 Apap, the immense, a personification of the desert, and hence of
death. He may be compared v/ith the great mid-earth serpent (midgard
worm) of the Norse mythology, which is a personification of the sea and
death in one. See infra.
THE SEA OF DEATH. 273
Apap, or the Greeks in their Cimmerian land upon the
borders of earth. But when the sun has quite dis-
appeared, then inconsistently it is said that he has gone
to a land which is his proper home, whence his light,
whether by day or night, is never withdrawn. The twi-
light region is the land of death ; the bright land beyond
is the home of the blessed. Such are the general notions
which among a primitive people correspond to our Hell
and our Heaven.
In a former chapter we were able to present some picture
of the Aryas in their early home by the sources of the
Oxus and of the Jaxartes. We must once again recall
this picture if we wish to gain an insight into the origin
of their beliefs concerning the journey of the soul and the
other world. We saw how one division of the race, the
older portion, those from whom were to spring the Indians
and the Iranians, had their settlements close against the
eastern hills ; while in a circle outside these lay the tribes
who were to form the nations of Europe, and who before
they broke up and started on their wanderings bore a
common name, Yavanas, the younger or else the fighting
members of the community. At the present day a broad
belt of desert lies between the fertile valleys of Bactria
and the Caspian Sea. While Bactria is inhabited by
a settled and agricultural people, the great Khuwaresm
desert produces only vegetation enough to support a few
Cossacks and wandering Turkic tribes. But there is suffi-
cient reason to believe that this was not always the case ;
but that a great part of what is now dry land was once
the bed of the Caspian, which was joined on to the Sea of
Aral, and extended in every direction farther than it now
extends. The Caspian is known to have fallen greatly in
its banks, and not at a remote period, but within historical
times ; l the process of shrinking would in a double way
tend to the creation of desert, both by exposing the dry
1 Wood, SJiores of Lake Aral.
T
274 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
bed of the sea and by rendering the other land sterile
when so much neighbouring water was withdrawn.
The root- word which appears in the European class of
languages with the meaning of ' sea, 5 stands in the Indian
and Iranian tongues for ' desert.' Can we explain this
fact better than by supposing that after the European
nations had left their home, their brethren who remained
behind, and only long after migrated to India and to
Persia, came to know as a desert the district which their
fathers had known as the sea ?
Oysters, it is known, will not live save at the mouths
of rivers, and philology furnishes us with proofs that these
shell-fish were known to the European races while they
were still one people. There can be no question that the
Greek oa-rpsov, the Latin ostrea, the Irish oisridh or oisire,
the Welsh oestren, the Russian usteru, the German Auster,
our oyster are all from the same root. 1 Therefore the
Yavanas while they lived together must have lived by the
sea. Some have thought that the growth of the desert
coinciding with a parallel growth of the Aryan people first
set our ancestors upon their wanderings.
How much more roomy a place the sea occupies in
men's thoughts than is warranted by their real familiarity
with it ! Into the mass of sedentary lives themselves the
great majority it enters but seldom as an experience,
provided a man live only a few miles inland. And yet of
all countries which possess a sea-board how full is the
literature of references to this one phenomenon of nature !
The sun and moon with all the heavenly bodies, the num-
berless sights and sounds of land, are the property of all ;
and yet allusions to these are not more common in litera-
ture than allusions to the sea ; one might fancy that man
was amphibious, with a power of actually living in and
not only by the water. Charles Lamb acutely penetrates
the cause of a certain disappointment we all feel at the
1 Pictet, Oriffines, &c., i. 514.
THE CASPIAN SEA, 275
sight of the sea for the first time. We go with the
expectation of seeing all the sea at once, the commensurate
antagonist of the earth. All that we have gathered from
narratives of wandering seamen, what we have gained from
the voyages, and what we cherish as credulously from
romances and poetry, ' come crowding their images and
exacting strange tributes from expectation.' Thus we are
already steeped in thoughts about the sea before we have
had any sight of it ourselves, and only from the sea's great
influence acting through the total experience of mankind.
* We think of the great deep and those who go down into it ;
of its thousand isles and of the vast continents it washes ;
of its receiving the mighty Plata or Orellana into its
bosom without disturbance or sense of augmentation ; of
Biscay swells and the mariner
For many a day and many a dreadful night
Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape ;
of fatal rocks and the " still vexed Bermoothes ; " of
great whirlpools and the waterspout ; of sunken ships and
sumless treasures swallowed up in the unrestoring depths.'
This tribute which our expectation pays to the importance
of the sea in men's thought shows us that we must not
narrow the sea's influence in mythology by the limit of
man's mere experience of it. Few among the Aryans
lived by the Caspian shore. But still the tradition of the
Caspian appears in one form or another in the beliefs of
all the race. The tradition of the sea, of its real wonders
and its greater fancied terrors, must have passed from one
to another, from the few who lived within sight and sound
of the waters to many quite beyond the horizon to whom
it was not visible even as a faint silvery line.
Only the Yavanas lived by the Caspian shore. The
memory of the Caspian, however, is to be found more or
less distinctly in all Aryan mythology. For to the Aryan
race generally this sea stood in the same position which
T 2
276 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
the desert occupied to the Egyptian. Their backs were
towards the mountains, their faces towards the Caspian.
All their prospect, all their future, seemed to lie that way :
when their migrations began, they were undertaken in this
direction, towards the west. And, most important of all,
their sun god was seen by many quenching his beams in
the waves : the home of the sun is the home of souls.
What more natural, nay, what so necessary, as that the
Aryan Paradise should lie westward beyond that water ?
It has been said that the Indian word for desert corre-
sponds etymologic ally with the European word for sea :
that word must have been in the old Aryan something
like mara, from which we get the Persian meru, desert, 1
the Latin mare, the Teutonic (German and English) meer.
But from identically the same root we also get the Sanskrit
and Zend mara, death, the Latin mors, the old Norse mordh,
the German Mord, our murder, all signifying originally the
same thing. 2 What, then, does this imply? The word
which the old Aryas used for sea they used likewise for
death; and how would this have been possible unless this
Caspian, their first sea, were likewise the Sea of Death, an
inevitable stage upon the road to Paradise ?
Though I speak of a sea it must not be forgotten that
to primitive man, who has not yet explored its tracts, the
sea is but the greatest among rivers. The Greek Oceanus
was a river and yet the parent of all waters : the true
parent of Oceanus was the Caspian. It would be natural
for the Aryas to suppose that this measureless stream
surrounded all the habitable aarth, and that beyond it lay
the dim region of twilight, the Cimmerian land which
Odysseus visited.
The sunset and the ways were o'erdarkeDed, for now we bad
come
To the deep-flowing Ocean's far limit, the shadowy home
1 To the Vedic Indians the word Meru came to stand for Paradise.
2 Fick, Verg. Worterb. der I.- G. Sp. i. s. v. mar.
THE DEATH REGION IN THE EDDAS. 277
Where the mournful Cimmerians dwell; there the sun never
throws
His bright beam when to scale the high star vault in morning he
goes,
Or earthward returns from the midday to rest; for the gloom
Of night never ending reigns there a perpetual doom. 1
The cosmology of the Eddas has been, perhaps, partly
shaped by the peculiar circumstances in which the Eddas
arose, and the special character of the land (Iceland) in
which they had their birth ; but still we have traces in the
Eddas of a belief which was common alike to Greek and
Icelander. In the Norse poems the world is pictured as
supported in the centre by the great tree Yggdrasill, and
in the midmost of all is the city of the gods, Asgard, the
JEsirs'-(gods'-)ward. Around lies the green and fruitful
earth, man's-home ; and this in its turn is surrounded by
the mid-gard sea. Beyond that sea is a land of perpetual
fog and ice ; a weird and phantom land, possessed by
beings of another race, hateful to men. This Northern
Hades is called Jotunheimar, giants' home. The mid-
gard sea, which is a sea of death, and at a still earlier
time must have been a river of death, is personified in the
mid-gard worm, the serpent Jormungandr, who lies curled
at the bottom with his tail in his mouth, encircling the
world. He ever waxes in length, and his tail grows into
his inwards ; and this, as we noted before, is in exact
analogy with the Greek Oceanus, which returns to flow
into itself. If rivers are ever typified by serpents, then
the greatest river of all, the earth stream, is typified by
the mightiest of serpents, by this Jormungandr.
We spoke in a former chapter of the fight between the
sun god and the great river serpents of mythology, of
Apollo with the Python, of Thorr with Jormungandr.
That combat has a deeper significance when we take into
account that the serpents are images of death and personify
:
1 Od. xi. 12 sqq.
278 OUTLINES QF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
the River of Death. Thorr is slain by his adversary, and
Apollo (according to one myth) after his fight with the
other has to visit the realm of Hades. This is no more
than saying that the sun, like mortal man himself, has to
quench his beams and die in the mighty earth stream.
Gradually the notions of the River of Death and of
the Sea of Death from being one became two, and other
changes likewise sprang up through the natural confusion
of mythology between all the various types of mortality,
between the under world, Hades, which was reached from
the grave mouth, and the river passage or the long sea
voyage which were required to get to the land of souls.
Hades itself shifted between a place beneath the earth
and another far away in the west. Odysseus, to get there,
had to sail for many a day and many a weary night to the
extreme boundary of Ocean. But when he had got there
he met his companion Elpenor, whom he had left a little
while ago dead on Circe's island. Him the hero asked how
he could have come under the dark west more quickly
than Odysseus had done, sailing in a ship. 1 From such an
instance as this we see how far the original meaning of
the myths had been forgotten, and how a confusion had
sprung up between the Hades under men's feet and the
Hades at the end of the death journey, lying far away
in the west. It was in virtue of a similar amalgamation
of ideas that the mortal river soon found its way to the
under world. In the Greek mythology the one subter-
ranean stream expanded into four abhorred Styx, sad
Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon. These have all grown
mythopoetically out of ocean; as much as they were
feigned actually to flow from it. The Norse under world
had its subterranean river, named Gjoll, the sounding,
from gjalla, to yell, as Cocytus, from /CWKVCO, to cry. Of
Gjoll, as we shall meet with it again in another chapter,
I need say no more here.
1 Od. xi. 51 sqq.
EXPEDITIONS TO FIND THE EAKTHLY PARADISE. 279
A desert, such as the Egyptian desert, or a sea like
the Caspian, forms a natural barrier between the living
and the dead. Without such a bar, if men supposed that
some happy land lay to the west of them, it would be
hardly possible that they should refrain from an attempt
to get there, living. In the Middle Ages the myth of the
soul's journey was translated into this literal shape, and
became the myth of the Earthly Paradise, with an out-
come of frequent expeditions more by many than we
know of now to find it. At last these expeditions ended
happily in the discovery, if not of a deathless land, at any
rate of a new world.
They were not religious, heavenward-looking men who,
.in Mr. Morris's poem, set out in quest of the Earthly
Paradise ; and no doubt the bard has been guided by a
true instinct, and that of all those mediaeval mariners who
were lost in their search after St. Brandon's Isles none
knew that they had found what they were seeking Death.
Must we not, then, place among such journeys that of
the king Svegder Fiolnersson whom we read of in the
Ynglinga Saga 1 who made a solemn vow to seek Odhinn
and the home of the gods ? Asgard had lost its grand
supersensuous meaning in his days ; it was simply a city
of the earth, and a place to be got to. Snorri tells us
how Svegder wandered many years upon his quest, and of
the strange way he found what, unknowingly, he had been
seeking. One day he came to an immense stone, as large
as a house. Beneath it sat a dwarf, who called out to
him that he should come in there if he wished to talk
with Odhinn ; and being very drunk, Svegder and his man
ran towards the stone. Then a door opened in the stone,
the king ran in, and the door immediately closed upon
him, so that he was never seen again. Gorm the Wise
was another Norseman who jnade a great expedition to
the end of the world. 2 The Greeks eagerly cherished
1 Cap. 15. 2 Saxo Gramrnaticus, Hist. Dan. 1. viii.
280 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
delusions of the same kind; and long before they had
summoned up courage sufficient to navigate the Mediter-
ranean they had invented the myths of their western
islands of the blest, to which yellow-haired E-hadamanthus
was taken when expelled from Crete by his brother Minos,
or of those gardens kept by the daughters of the West, 1
where decay and death could not enter.
The two myths of the Sea of Death and of the River
of Death, which had sprung from the same source, became,
as time went on, divided in their characters. The wan-
derings of the Aryas would necessarily bring about this
effect: first, by showing to some peoples the difference
between the sea and a river; and secondly, by transferring
to other seas the myths which had originally gathered
round the Caspian.
The terrors of the Sea of Death, wherever it was, would
gradually diminish ; and though the early belief would not
be abandoned, there would grow up beside it the parallel
conception of a distinctly Earthly Paradise. The earliest
Paradise is, I have said, in a sense an earthly one, seeing
that its site is not absolutely removed by thought from the
earth. While somehow it cannot be reached save through
the portal of death, mythology never acknowledges that
the dead do actually leave the world of man. This incon-
sistency of thought if it is one could be preserved with-
out difficulty among a sedentary people. The Egyptian,
perhaps, never enquired why living men might not cross
the desert to the house of Osiris. But when a nation
begins to move, the thought springs into its mind, ' Why
is death the only road to the home whither our fathers
have gone ? May we not arrive at the immortal land by
an easier, or at any rate by a less painful route?' Come
what may, they resolve to try. All the Western Aryas
reached the sea at last ; wherefore it is in the mythology
of the European races that we must look for the best
1 Hesperides.
THE INDIAN RIVER OF DEATH. 281
examples of the Sea of Death and of the Earthly Para-
dise which lay beyond. The elder Aryas, the Indians and
Iranians, remained much longer inland ; wherefore their
River of Death never was confounded with the sea ; it re-
mained in clear colours and sharp outline in their creed.
We cannot doubt that from the belief in the River of
Death arose the custom of committing the dead to the .
sacred Ganges ; l for just as the Hindu kindles a funeral
fire on the boat which bears the dead down this visible
stream of death, so used the Norseman to place a hero's
body in his ship, and then having set fire to that ship,
send it out seawards on the tide. And again, as by the
Indian the Ganges is the being entrusted with the care
of the dead, so to the Gaul the Rhone was the river of
death. Nismes became the great necropolis of southern
Gaul; for at that place it was customary to cast the
dead into the river. The custom survived even into
Christian times. 2
In a more distinctly mythical guise the mortal stream
appears in the Indian mythology under the names Vija-
ranadi and Yaiterani. What the Vedas have to tell us
touching this river has been considerably amplified in the
Brahmanas. In one tradition we meet with both the
sea and the river of death. It is said that all who leave
this world come first to the moon, 'heaven's immortal
door.' This gate few only pass ; the rest, agreeably to the
doctrine of the transmigration of souls, return thence to
earth, some as rain, some as worms, insects, lions, tigers,
fish, dogs, men. But he who has known Brahma goes
along the god's way, and comes first to the world of Fire,
then to that of the Wind, then to that of the Sun, to that
of the Moon, that of the Lightning, that of Indra, that of
Prajapati, at the end to that of Brahma; and this last
1 The Indian Gangd (Ganges) is turned into a mythic river, and is
made, like Oceanus, the parent of all waters. This shows the Ganges to
be identified with the Kiver of Death.
8 Michelet, Histoire de France^ 1. iii. < Tableau de France.'
282 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
world is surrounded by a deep sea, deep as a hundred other
seas, and with black waves made by the tears of human
kind. From this sea flows a river, the ' eternal stream '
(vijara nadi), which makes men young again. It is, in fact,
the forerunner of our mediaeval and more modern Fontaines
de Jouvence. The true origin of the Fontaine de Jouvence
is the same as the origin of this vijara nadi : that is to
say, both are rivers of death, and men are made young by
passing them, only when they thus pass into a new life.
Near this ' eternal stream ' is the tree Ilpa, which bears
all the fruits of the world : the Tree of Life in all Euro-
pean (and Eastern) tradition stands beside the Fountain of
Youth. When the good man shall come to the world of
Brahma, Brahma will say to his attendants, ( Receive this
man with honour ; for he has passed the stream Vijara nadi,
and will never more be old.' Then five hundred Apsaras
will come to meet him, bearing flowers, and fruits, and
clear water. 1
This is the Eiver of Death seen in its sunniest aspect.
The reverse side of the picture is suggested by the other
name of it, Vaitaram, ' the hard to cross.' Into this
seething flood the wicked fall. On the other side is Para-
dise that is to say, the home of the Pitris, or ancestors.
That the dead man may gain a passage over this dreadful
stream, a cow (called anustarawi) was offered up. 2 Vaite-
ram, another poem says, lies e across the dreadful path to
the house of Yam a,' the king of hell.
So much for this river as it stands alone. A most
important change must have been wrought in belief when
the custom of burning the dead was introduced. It
would seem that our Aryan ancestors themselves were
the introducers of this rite. We can easily understand
1 Cf. Pindar, Olymp. Odes, ii. v. 75 sqq. ed. Boeckh. See Weber, In-
disclie Studien, i. 359 sq. ; Weber, Chamb. 1020.
2 Another cow is offered up twelve days after the man's death. This
last fact is important in connection with the myths of Hackelberg, told in
this chapter and in the tenth chapter. See Kuhn in Haupt's Zeitsch. fiir
deut. Alterthum, v. 379 and vi. 117, also in his own Z.f. very. Sp. ii. 311.
THE DEATH OF THE SUN. 283
how the custom may have arisen. When the god of fire
is such an important being as the Vedas show him to
have once been, the thought of committing the dead to
his care seems simple and natural. Agni, as we have
seen, was the messenger between gods and men ; he
called down the gods to feast at the altar, and he took
from the altar the smoke and odour of the sacrifice to
heaven. When the funeral fire had been lighted the
same divinity took with him the soul of man to his last
abode. Now, fire worship such as that of Agni was not
originally peculiar to the Indo-Aryas : it was in them but
a survival of a state of belief common to the whole Aryan
race, whereof we have seen in a former chapter numerous
proofs.
Or was it that the sun, who, as a wanderer, traced
out beforehand the journey of the soul, who himself sank
into the new world behind the waves of the jRiver of
Death, did also in another way suggest the burning of
the corpse ? The sun gods, Apollo and Heracles, Thorr
and Balder, do in sundry ways and in divers actions
present the ideal life of human kind. These are the
heroes of heroes ; whatever kind their death was it must
have been the one most worthy of imitation. The two
great fire funerals mentioned respectively in Greek and
Norse mythologies are the funerals of sun gods.
The one is that of Heracles. The hero, when he felt
the clinging torment of the shirt of Nessus, and knew
that his end was near, ordered his funeral fire to be
lighted on Mount (Eta, on the western shore of the
JEgean. 1 This myth must have been invented by Asiatic
Greeks, who saw the fiery sunset upon that sea. Again,
the body of Balder, who had been slain by his brother
Hoder, was placed upon the dead god's ship Hringhorni,
a funeral fire was lighted on the ship, and it was then
1 The funeral fire of many a hero is lighted near the sea-shore, as in
this case of Heracles. Cf. Achilles, II. xxiii. 124 ; Beowulf, 6297. In other
cases of Norse funeral fires they are lighted on a ship. See Ch. VIII.
284 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
sent drifting into the sea. This is the barque of the sun
sinking in the waves. Most of the great epic heroes
many of them sun heroes followed the same custom of
fire burial. Of the Homeric funerals we need not speak.
Sigurd and Brynhild mounted their pyre, and on it placed
their horses, dogs, and falcons, all they had prized most
on earth.
Burning the dead, however, never seems to have been
a universal practice; rather a special honour paid to
warriors and kings. But then we must remember that
immortality itself was not, in ancient belief, granted to all
men alike, only to the greatest.
We see at once that, .with the use of fire burial, many
of the old beliefs had to be given up all those, for in-
stance, which depended upon the preservation of the bodily
remains. Of old time men had buried treasures with the
corpse in the expectation that they would be some kind of
use to it ; the body itself was then imagined to descend to
the under world, or to travel the western journey to the
sun. But now the body was visibly consumed upon the
pyre, on which too were placed, by a curious survival of
old custom, the precious things which would formerly have
been buried with the dead man in his grave. The body
and these treasures were consumed, had gone ; but
whither ? Had they perished utterly, and was there
nothing more now left than that earliest belief of an
*A-eiSr]$ a nowhere ? Were none true of all those myths
which told of the soul passing to a home of bliss ? In-
stead of giving up this faith, the Aryas only transformed
it ; they spiritualised it and stripped it of the too material
clothing which in earlier times it wore. The thought
which had once identified the life with the breath came
again into force. Or if some visible representation of the
essence of the man was still desired, men had the smoke
of the funeral pyre, which rose heavenwards like an as-
cending soul.
In the Iliad, after Patroclus' spirit (^v^rj] has visited
BUENING THE DEAD. 285
Achilles in his dream, it is described as going away crying
shrilly and entering the ground like smoke:
We meet with the same imagery in long after years and
in a far distant land, when, in the description of the
funeral fire of Beowulf the Goth, it is said that the soul
of the hero ' curled to the clouds,' imaging the smoke
which was curling up from his pyre. There is even a
curious analogy betwen two words for smoke and soul in
the Aryan tongues. From a primitive word dhu, which
means to shake or blow, we get both the Sanskrit word
dhuma, smoke, and the Greek Qvpos, the immaterial part
of a man, his thought or soul. Svfj,6s was not a mere ab-
straction like our word mind, but that which had a certain
amount of separate individuality, and might even continue
to live when the body had been destroyed. 2
In these ways, by a change in the opinion of men
mingling with a survival of old custom, the funeral rites
were reformed, and the inanimate things the food, the
weapons, the clothes which would once have been buried
with the dead, were now burnt with him. Of such re-
formed rites we have a complete picture in the funeral of
Patroclus, and the picture is one which in all essential
details might serve for any of the Aryan folk. Oxen and
sheep were slain before the pyre of the hero, and with the
fat of their bodies and with honey the corpse was liberally
anointed. Then twelve captives were sacrificed to the
manes of the dead Patroclus ; they and his favourite dogs
were burned upon the pile. In this instance it is the
complete burning, as formerly it had been the complete
* 11. xxiii. 100.
2 The exact character of the Ovfi6s, how far it was an entity separate
from the body, I have discussed in another place, ' The Homeric Words for
Soul,' in Mind, October 1881. There is one example in Homer of the 6vn6s
continuing to exist after the body (II. vii. 131) ; but I believe this is the
only one.
286 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
sepulture, which constitutes the needful passport to Hades.
And so when the fire will not burn, Achilles prays to the
North and the West Winds to come and consummate the
funeral rite. All night as the flame springs up Achilles
stands beside it, calling upon the name of his friend and
watering the ground with libations from a golden cup.
Toward morning the fire dies down, and then the two
Winds, according to the beautiful imagery of the myth,
their work done, * return homewards across the Thracian
sea.' 1
Hector's clothes, as we have seen, were burnt as a sort
of substitute for his body ; Patroclus' treasures were con-
sumed with him. The same customs were observed at the
funerals of the Teutonic heroes and heroines, Sigurd,
Beowulf, Brynhild, and the rest. 2 Csesar tells us how the
Gauls burnt with the dead all that they had loved. 3 Evi-
dently, therefore, the inanimate things, the weapons or
garments, as well as the captives and dogs, were believed
to survive in a land of essences for the use of the libe-
rated soul.
To the question, ' Whither does man's essence go when
it rises from the funeral fire ? ' the answer, if a wish alone
urged the thought, would be, 'To the gods.' We find
that in the beliefs which were most associated with the
habit of burying in the ground the notion of a future
union with the gods was not strongly insisted upon. The
western land, for instance, whither the sun was thought
to go at night, must not be confounded with the real
home of the gods, with Olympus or with Asgard. The
Greek islands of the blest were not the seat of the gods ;
nor was the house of Yama, which the Indians spoke of
as their land of the dead ; nor, in fact, has any other
earthly paradise been so. But, among the myths which
sprang up in the age of burning the dead, the hope of
1 H. xxiii. 193-230. 2 Beowulf, 6020; HelreiS Brynhildar, &c.
8 B. G. vi. 19. See Pictet, Lcs Origines, &c. ii. 519, for examples of the
game custom among more modern nations.
THE BRLDaE OF SOULS. 287
union with, the heavenly powers gained a measure of
strength. The gods of the Aryan were before everything
gods of the air* As the soul, made visible in the smoke
of the funeral pyre, was seen by men to mount upwards,
to ' curl to the douds,' the notion of the soul's having
gone to join the gods chief god Dyaus, the sky was
impressed more vividly upon men's minds. 1 But as the
notion of the western journey was not abandoned, a natural
compromise was made, a.nd the soul was now sent upwards
to travel along the path of the sun : its journey now lay in
heaven, and it was led towards its final home by the Sun
or by the Wind. Still the path of the deceased lay west-
ward; the home of the dead ancestors was still beyond
the same western horizon ; there was still an Oceanus to
be crossed and a dark Cimmerian land to be passed
through.
The path thus taken by the soul becomes to the eye of
faith a bridge spanning the celestial arch, and carrying
men over the River of Death. And men would soon
begin asking themselves where lay this heavenly road.
Night is necessarily associated with thoughts of death
' Death and his brother Sleep ' and of the other world.
The heavens wear a more awful aspect than by day. The
sun has forsaken us and is himself buried beneath the
earth ; while at once a million dwellers in the upper
regions, who were before unseen, appear to sight, those
stars which in so many mythologies are associated with
souls. 2 Among the stars we see a bright yet misty bow
bent overhead. Can this be other than the appointed
Bridge of Souls? The ancient Indians called this road
1 ' If, after having left the body, thou comest to the free air, thou wilt
be an immortal god, not subject to decay and death ' (Phocylides, St/lb. p. 97).
In the case of the ordinary sacrifice, if the flame mounted upward the sacri-
fice was accepted (cf. 11. i. 462 ; Od. iii. 459 ; Sre also Maury, R. de la 6f.
ch. xiii.) The same idea would naturally accompany the burning of the
dead.
2 For example, in Hebrew belief (cf. Kuenen, Rel. of Israel) and in
Russian folk-lore (cf . Ralston's S^rtgs of tlie Russian People).
288 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
God's Path (panthano devayah), because, besides ita
being the way of souls to God, it was likewise the way of
God to men. They also called it cow path (meaning
possibly cloud path), and this designation appears again
in the Low German name for the same heavenly bridge.
Kaupat (Kuhpfad). From the ancient appellation, cow
path, it is probable that we get the more widely spread
name of the ' Milky Way.'
In the Vedic hymns the Indians oftenest speak of the
Milky Way as the path of Yama, the way to the house of
Yam a the ruler of the dead.
A narrow path, an ancient one, stretches there, a path untrodden
by men, a path I know of.
On it the wise who have known Brahma ascend to the world
Swarga, 1 when they have received their dismissal,
sings one. Another prays the Maruts, the Winds, not to
let him wander on the path of Yama, or when he does so,
when his time .shall come, to keep him, that he fall not
into the hands of Nirrtis, the Queen of Naraka (Tartarus). 4
The Maruts in this instance are appointed the guardians
of the soul ; and there is something very appropriate in
the performance of the office by these wind gods.
Agni, the fire god, is of course the one who first of all
takes charge of the soul when it leaves the funeral fire.
But next after Agni it seems appropriate that the soul
should be given in charge to the Wind. The duty is not,
however, undertaken by the Maruts only ; in other pas-
sages we find as guardians of the bridge two dogs, and
the dead man is committed to their care. But these dogs
are also personifications of the Wind.
Give him, O King Yama, to the two dogs, the watchers, tie
four-eyed guardians of the path, guardians of men. Grant him
safety and freedom from pain.
1 Swarga, the bright land of the blessed. The word is from the root war,
to shine.
2 R. V. i. 38, 5.
THE BRIDGE OF SOULS. 289
And it would seem from in any other instances that
these two dogs of Yama have the special mission of taking
charge of the dead who travel to tho bright paradise
beyond the bridge.
Thus stands out in beauty and completeness the myth
of the Bridge of Souls. A narrow path spanning the arch
of heaven, passing over the River of Death, or over the
dwelling of Nirrtis, Queen of Tartarus, it reaches at last
to the country of the wise Pitris, the fathers of the nation.
These Pitris have gone to heaven before, and since their
death have not ceased to watch over the men of their race.
The path is guarded by two dogs, the hounds of Yama,
wardens of the way, and likewise psychopomps, or
conductors of the soul along this strait road.
While the European races worked up into wondrous
variety, as we shall see anon, tho story of the soul's journey
over seas, the myths of the River of Death and of the
Bridge of Souls were cherished most by the Indians and
Iranians.
The two hounds of Yama recall in the first place the
primitive image of the underground world as a devouring
creature : thus in this respect they both of them resemble
the classic Cerberus. Their common name is Sarameyas,
which connects them with the wind of dawn, Sarama ; J and
this, as we have seen, was also the wind of evening. The
Sarameyas are said to be ( born of the evening wind '
that is to say, they are beings of the night. In this re-
spect they recall both in character and name the Greek
Hermes ; for the word '/>//,?}, 'Ep/^/as-, is nothing more
than a transliteration of the Sanskrit Sarameyas. Taken
together, then that is to say, under their common name,
Sarameyas the two dogs are like two Hermes; they
are two wind gods. Hermes combined in his being the
natures of both the wind of morning and the wind of
evening ; he wag the god who sent men to sleep or awoke
them from sleep, 2 the leader of shades to the under world,
1 See Chap. III. 2 Od. v. 47 ; xxiv. 4 ; &c.
U
290 OUTLINES OF PBIMITIVE BELIEF.
and also we shall see this more fully hereafter the
bringer back of men from the world of death. All these
characters belong to the dogs of Yama in virtue of their
common name. They are under this name not unlike the
Asvin, who, as we saw, were the two winds, that of morn-
ing and that of evening. 1
Individually, again, the dogs are called Cerbura, the
6 spotted,' and Syama, the ' black.' 2 The etymological
connection between the first of these two names and
Cerberus scarcely requires to be pointed out. It is evident,
therefore, that the dogs of Yama contain in their nature
the germs of two distinct but allied creations of mytho-
logy first the wind god, who is also a god of evening, of
sleep and of death ; and secondly the hell-hound, w r ho is
the personification of the yawning tornb. They may some-
times be simply images of night. The names ' spotted '
and ' black ' may seem to indicate the starry and the dark
night sky.
From being personifications of night it is an easy step
to becoming gods of sleep. Sleep and Death are ever
twins'; and the dead man is, in other creeds beside this
Indian one, given into the hands not of one brother only,
but of both.
fie fjnv TTOfJLirolfTiv dfjici KpcLiTD'olffi (ptpeaOat,
'W /ecu Qai'dra) Ci$v/j.ao(ri. 3
One of the hounds may have represented the temporal,
the other the eternal, sleep. Wherefore we need not be
surprised to find a single Sarameyas prayed to as a divinity
of slumber and the protector of the sleeping household,
as here in a beautiful hymn of the Eig Veda : 4
Destroyer of sickness, guard of the house, O thon who
takest all shapes, be to us a peace-bringing friend.
Bay at the robber, Sarameyas ; bay at the thief. Why bayest
thou at the singer of Indra ? why art thou angry with me ? Sleep,
Sarameyas.
1 Chap. III. 2 Wilford in As. Res. iii. 409.
U. xvi. 681; cf. also Theog. 758. 4 K. V. rii. 6
THE BRIDGE OF SOULS.
The mother sleeps, the father sleeps, the hound sleeps, the
clan father sleeps, the whole tribe sleeps ; sleep thou, Sarameyas.
Those who sleep by the cattle ; those who sleep by the wain ;
the women who lie upon couches, the sweet-scented ones all
these we bring to slumber.
Do not these verses breathe of the fragrant air of early-
pastoral life ?
Sleep and Death are twin brothers, and therefore it is
that, like Sarpedon in the Iliad, the dead man is given to
them to be borne along his way. ' Give him, O King
Yama, to the two dogs. . . .' As dogs the Sarameyas
represent the horrors of death and of the under world ; as
the winds they are the kind guardians of the souls. No
doubt their terrors were for the wicked only, and so they
are apt images of death itself.
The Persians knew the Bridge of Souls under the name
of Kmv&d (pul iHnvac?), and with this bridge are connected
one or more dogs. Wherefore it is evident that all the
essential parts of the Indian myth were inherited by the
Persians also. In one Fargard, or chapter, of the Vendidad l
it is narrated how the soul of the wicked man will fly to the
under world ' with louder howling and fiercer pursuing than
flees the sheep when the wolf rushes upon it in the lofty
forest. No soul will come and meet his departed soul and
help it through the howls and pursuit in the other world ;
nor will the dogs who keep the Kinv&d bridge help his de-
parting soul through the howls and pursuit in the other
world.' And again in another place ? it is told how f the
soul enters the way made by Time, open both to the wicked
and to the righteous. At the head of -the Kinv&d, the holy
bridge made by Ahura-Mazda, they demand for their
spirits and souls the reward for the worldly goods which
they gave away here below. Then comes the strong, well-
formed maid, 3 with the dogs at her sides. She makes the
1 Fargard xiii. The translation is from Darmesteter's translation of the
Zend-Avesta. 2 Fargard xix.
3 AVe meet with this maiden keeper of the bridge in Norse mythology
(see Chap. VIII.)
u 2
292 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
soul of the righteous go up above Hara-berezaiti ; l above
the Kinv&d bridge she places it, in the presence of the
heavenly gods themselves.'
From the Persians the bridge became known to the
Hebrews, and from the one or the other source it passed
on to the creed of Islam. Sirat is the name of the bridge
so vividly described by Mohammedan writers. 2 It is finer
than a hair and sharper than the edge of a sword, and is
besides guarded with thorns and briars along all its length.
Nevertheless when at the last day the good Muslim comes
to cross it a light will shine upon him from heaven and
he will be snatched across like lightning or like the wind;
but when the wicked man or the unbeliever approaches
the light will be hidden, and from the extreme narrowness
of the bridge, and likewise becoming entangled in the
thorns, he will fall headlong into the abyss of fire that is
beneath.
The Bridge of Souls cannot be always the Milky Way
even in the mythology of India; for in one hymn, 3
though not a Vedic one, we read
Upon it, they say, there are colours white and blue and brown
and gold and red.
And this path Brahma knows ; and he who has known
Brahma shall take it, he who is pure and glorious.
Here the singer is evidently describing the rainbow.
In the Norse cosmology the rainbow has the same name
as the Indian path of the gods. The Eddas call it As -bra,
the bridge of the .ZEsir, or gods. Its other name is Bifrost,
e the trembling mile, 5 and this name may have been origin-
ally bestowed upon the Milky Way, for this when we look
at it seems always on a tremble. Supposing the myths
which once belonged to the Milky Way to have been
passed on to the rainbow, the name of the former might
also have been inherited by the latter.
1 The heavenly mountain. 2 Sale's Koran, Introd. p. 91.
3 Vrhadarawyaka, Ed. Pol. iii. 4, 7-9. See Kuhn, Zevt.f. v. Sp. ii. 311, &c.
THE MILKY WAY. 293
Asbru, or'Bifrost, was the bridge whereby the Northern
gods descended to the world. One end of it reached to the
famous Urdar fount, where sat the weird sisters three
the Nornir, or fates. ' Near the fountain which is under
the ash stands a very fair house, out of which come three
maidens named Urftr, VerSandi, and Skuld (Past, Present,
Future). These maidens assign the lifetime of men, and
are called Norns. To their stream the gods ride every
day along Bifrost to take council.' l It was right that
these awful embodiments of time and fate Past, Present,
Future should have their dwelling at the end of the Bridge
of Death.
Odhinn is the natural conductor of the dead to the
other world, for he is the god of the wind, and therefore
corresponds, in a certain degree, to the two Indian dogs, the
Sarameyas. ' Odhinn and Freyja ' (Air and Earth) ' divide
the slain,' says one legend meaning that the bodies go to
earth, the breaths or souls to heaven. In the Middle Ages,
when Odhinn worship had been overthrown, and the gods
of Asgard descended to Hel-home that is to say, when
from being divinities they became fiends Odhinn still
pursued his office as conductor or leader of souls. But
now he hounded them to the under world. Odhinn the
god was changed into the demon Odhinn, and one of the
commonest appearances of this fiend was as the Wild
Huntsman. To this day the Wild Huntsman Hackelberg 2
is well known in Germany. The peasants hear his awful
chase going on above their heads. He is accompanied by
two dogs, and he hunts, "'tis said, along the Milky Way. 3
A gentler legend concerning the Milky Way is that
which we find preserved in a charming poem of the Swede
Torpelius, called the 'Winter Street' another of tho
1 Edda Snorra, D. 15.
2 This name, Hackelberg, shows the Huntsman to be really Odhinn.
The name is transformed from Hackel-biirend, which means ' cloak-bearing.
Now the cloak of Odhinn is one of his peculiar possessions.
3 Of this Wild Huntsman I shall speak more fully in future chapters
(Chaps. VII. X.)
294 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
names for this heavenly road. And with this in the form
in which it has been rendered into English l we may close
our list of legends connected with the River of Death and
Bridge of Souls. The story is of two lovers :
Her name Salami was, his Zulamyth ;
And both so loved, each other loved. Thus runs the tender myth :
That once on earth they lived, and, loving there,
Were wrenched apart by night, and sorrow, and despair ;
And when death came at last, with white wings given,
Condemned to live apart, each reached a separate heaven.
Yet loving still upon the azure height/,
Across unmeasured ways of splendour, gleaming bright
With worlds on worlds that spread and glowed and burned,
Each unto each, with love that knew no limit, longing turned.
Zulamyth half consumed, until he willed
Out of his strength, one night, a bridge of light to build
Across the waste and lo ! from her far sun,
A bridge of light from orb to orb Salami had begun.
A thousand years they built, still on, with faith,
Immeasurable, quenchless thus the legend saith
Until the winter street of light a bridge
Above heaven's highest vault swung clear, remotest ridge from
ridge.
Fear seized the Cherubim ; to Q od they spake
' See what amongst Thy works, Almighty, these can make ! '
God smiled, and smiling, lit the spheres with joy
c What in My world love builds,' He said, ' shall I shall Love
destroy ? '
The bridge stood finished, and the lovers flew
Into each other's arms : when lo ! shot up and grew,
Brightest in heavens serene, a star that shone
As the heart shines serene after a thousand troubles gone.
1 By E. Keary, Evening Hours, vol. iii. The name of the bridge, the
Winter Street, has a genuine Teutonic character. The story, however, can-
not be purely Teutonic ; not at least in the form in which Torpelius tells
it. The names of the lovers are Hebrew.
THE SEA OF DEATH. 295
2. The Sea of Death.
Of all the European races the Greeks were the first
who took in a friendly fashion to the sea ; a fact pretty
evident from what we can trace of the routes taken
by their brother nations, and indeed indicated by the
peculiarity of the Greek names for the sea, names not,
like mare and Meer, connected with death, but QaKaaaa,
salt water, or ir6vTos, a path. 1 The advantages of situa-
tion which Greece enjoyed are to be credited with this
circumstance. As Curtius points out so well, where
Europe and Asia meet in the JCgsean, Nature has made
no separation between the two worlds. * Sea and air
unite the coasts of the Archipelago into a connected whole ;
the same periodical winds blow from the Hellespont as
far as Crete, and regulate navigation by the same con-
ditions, and the climate by the same changes. Scarcely
one point is to be found between Asia and Europe where
in clear weather the mariner would feel himself left in
solitude between sky and water ; the eye reaches from
island to island, and easy voyages of a day lead from- bay
to bay.' It was in this nearness of shore to shore, from
the invitation of the islands spread out like stepping-
stones across the calm ^Egsean, that the Greek people,
when their wanderings brought them to the limits of
Asia Minor, did not hesitate long before they crossed over
to European Greece and joined the two shores under the
dominion of one race.
Very early in prehistoric days, long before the age of
Homer, they had become familiar with their own Greek
sea, with all its islands and all its harbours; but it was
long after this that their mariners had rounded Cape
Matapan ; longer still before the first Greek had sailed as
far as Sicily. Some tidings of the distant lands of the
Mediterranean were brought by Phcenician navigators,
and afterwards by their own more adventurous sailors ;
1 Connected with the Skr. panthas, patha and our path.
296 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
and with this slender stock of real knowledge, imagina-
tion was busy in mingling the stories of a mythic
world. Whatsoever had in former times been dreamt
of concerning the Caspian Sea, was now transferred
to the Mediterranean. And in this way among the most
poetic and imaginative of all the Aryan peoples was
formed the great epic of the Sea of Death. This is the
Odyssey. 1
The Odyssey is generally admitted to be of a more
recent date than the Iliad. The morality of it is ob-
servably higher in character; the gods have grown
better, more worthy of reverence. The conception of
Zeus, for example, is far nobler in the Odyssey ; here he
appears constantly as the protector of the poor, and of
wanderers and strangers. 2 All these are notable points
of difference between the two epics. But the essential
distinction between the two lies in the difference of the
subjects with which they deal, the diversity of interests
which they represent. The Iliad is a tale of land battle,
and the theatre of ifcs action is limited to the known world
of the Greek, the two shores of the -ZEgsean ; the Odyssey
1 The expedition of the Argonauts was always held in Greek tradition
to have preceded the expedition of Odysseus. It belongs to the ' antiquity '
of Homer. No circumstantial account of it, however, is to be found until
a much later date than that of the Odyssey ; therefore it is right to consider
the latter poem as the first great epic of the Sea of Death. That the
voyage of the Argonauts was originally of the same kind as the voyage of
Odysseus, and undertaken in the same direction, seems highly probable. In
after years the former was transmuted into an expedition to Cholchis and
to the river Phasis. But there is no trace of that form of the legend in
Homer. All that is there said is that Jason's voyage was made to the
house of 2Eetes (Od. xii. 70). Nowhere is it said that the land lay to the
eastward ; nothing in the earliest tradition points to that voyage in the
Euxine and up the Phasis, which we meet first in Pindar and afterwards in
a more elaborate shape in Apollonius Rhodius. The golden fleece might
seem (to a lover of dawn myths) to suggest the dawn ; but it does not so
any more than do the apples of the Hesperides. The myth of these latter
is a myth of sunset. ^Eetes is the brother of Circe, and son of Helios and
Perse. He is, like Circe, connected with the setting sun, and so with
death. He is a kind of god of death, and for that reason is called ' death-
designing' (o\o6(f>(wv~). Od. x. 137.
2 Cf. especially Od. vii. 165, 316; ix. 270; xiv. 57, 283-4; xvi. 422.
THE ODYSSEY. 297
is a song in praise not of war, but of seafaring adventure,
and the hero of it is not a type of the warrior, but of the
navigator. For Greece, in prehistoric days, had her
gallant band of Columbuses and De Gamas, of Drakes
and Hudsons, and it was these discoverers who paved the
way for Greek supremacy over seas. Such men had
different views of life and a different worship from
those of the settled nobility of Greece, the Ionian prin-
ces, for instance, for whom the Iliad was composed;
and this divergency in views of life and worship ap-
pears very strikingly on a comparison of the two great
poems.
The original sea god of the Greek race had been
Poseidon ; but in the Odyssey Poseidon is superseded by
Athene, 1 who, when we put aside Zeus, stands by far the
first among the remaining divinities. The Odyssey seems
to be written expressly to glorify Athene, and to display
her power ; for she is the active divinity throughout. She
wields all those forces of nature which in the Iliad are
made the peculiar possession of Zeus himself, controlling
the storm and sending the lightning. No other deity
appears actively upon the scene, saving the rival of
Athene, the older sea god, Poseidon, and he is defeated
in his endeavours to bring destruction on Odysseus. With
Athene the Odyssey glorifies the sailor and a sailor's life.
It celebrates all the luxuries which the voyager brings
home from foreign lands ; and chiefly among them those
treasures of art which, first introduced by the Phoenicians,
were beginning at the time in which the Odyssey was
composed to stir the spirit of young Greece. Of the sailor,
as goddess of the sea (Tritogeneia), of the merchantman,
to whom she gives prudence and the power to deceive, of
1 In the Odyssey we see a transfer to Athene" of some of the powers
over the sea, which in the Iliad belong exclusively to Poseidon. In the
Odyssey, moreover, we find that Zeus has to a great extent delegated to
lesser gods the control over the phenomena of nature which were once
specially his, and that the powers of wind and storm are swayed alter-
nately by Poseidon and Athene. See particularly bk. v
298 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF,
the artist, whom she endows with cunning of hand, Athene
is alike the patroness.
But there are further points of difference between the
Iliad and the Oydssey. The navigator had other dangers
to encounter than the warrior had, and different ad-
ventures to relate. The Western Sea, to which men's
thoughts were beginning to turn, and where Odysseus'
adventures lie, was not to their fancy fraught witli earthly
terrors only, nor with dangers that were measurable and
known; it was full of untried wonders, bordering as
it did close upon the other world ; nay, in a manner it
was the other world, for it was the Sea of Death. The
Odyssey is full of images of death, though they are not
self-conscious ones, only mythical expressions first used for
the passage of the soul from life, and then made literal by
their transference to the actual Western Sea. All this
produces a marked distinction in character between the
Iliad and the Odyssey. Long before the first outward-
bound navigator had rounded Cape Malea, all the coasts of
the j33gsean had become part of the familiar world of the
Greek; outside this only was the world of the unknown.
The Iliad tells us what the Greeks thought about the
known region. Myths no doubt mingled with the legend
of the fall of Troy ; but that story is, in Homer, essentially
realistic ; it is rationalistic even. The very powers of the
immortals and their deeds seem petty and limited.
And it may be that in this circumstance lies an element
of superior greatness in the older poem ; for a poet can
only attain the highest altitudes he is capable of when
the material of his art is composed, I will not say of fact,
but of belief which has become so constant and familiar
as to take almost the shape of fact. That sense of reality
which drags down prosaic minds is for him the proper
medium of his flight - t no sham beliefs or half-beliefs are
at his best moments possible to him. We should, perhaps,
never have had the ' Divine Comedy ' unless the vulgar
literalness of priestly minds, confounding metaphors with
THE ODYSSEY. 299
fact, had in its pseudo-philosophy mapped out the circles
of Heaven and Hell, as an astronomer maps out the craters
of the moon. The poet of the Iliad has over him of the
Odyssey an advantage, so far as the former is dealing with
the known regions of Greek life and as the other is cast
abroad upon a sea of speculation and fancy.
Not of course that even the later poern had not to its
hearers the air of a narrative of fact, or was without some
foundation in experience. Some writers have attempted
to explain the Odyssey as nothing more than a myth of
the sun's course through heaven. But there is too much
solidity about the story, too thorough an atmosphere of
belief around it, to suit with a tale relating such airy
unrealities as these. The Greeks who first sang these
ballads must have been thinking of a real journey made
upon this solid earth. But it is easy to see how many
itn.iges and notions which had first been applied only to
the sun god on his Western journey would creep into a
hisfcory like that of Odysseus. Undoubtedly the sun myth
had first pointed out the home of the dead as lying in the
West; and nothing is more natural than that a people
whose hopes and wishes carried them in the track of the
wandering sun should, when they came to construct an
epic of travel, make the imaginary journey lie the same
way.
They would interweave in their story such truths or
such sailors' yarns as Phoenician mariners or adventurous
Greeks brought home from the distant waters, with many
images which had once been made for the sun's heavenly
voyage, and others which had been first applied to death.
Their geography would be mythical ; for they could have
no accurate notion of the lands which they spoke of; l but
1 Mr. Bunbury, among more recent writers, has admirably shown how
completely mythical is the character of the geography of the Odyssey
(Geography of the Ancients). See also Volcker, Homerische Geographic; and
Welcker, in Rhein. Mm. vol. i. N.S. p. 219, 'Die Homerische PhJiaken,' on
the pretended identification of Scheria and Corcyra.
300 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
it would not be without a kernel of reality, a thin sub-
stratum of fact overlaid by a world of fancy. Euhemerist
geographers, like Pliny or Strabo, may try to give to the
Western paradises of the Greeks a local position by identi-
fying the gardens of the Hcsperides with the land near
Oeuta, or with some island in the Atlantic Ocean. Justin
Martyr says that these are one with the Biblical Paradise. 1
Each is in his way right. Can we say that the mythic
golden apples were not the first citrons brought to Greece ?
Beside some such slender threads of truth the adven-
tures of Odysseus are built upon what men's imaginations
told them might lie in the Western seas. Now in reality
there was only one thing which at the bottom of their
hearts they believed actually did lie there namely, Death ;
and beyond that death the home of the departed souls.
Therefore their stories of the Mediterranean do almost all,
upon a minute inspection, resolve themselves into a variety
of mythical ways of describing death, and upon this as
upon a dark background the varied colours of the tale are
painted. It need take away no jot of our pleasure in the
brilliant picture presented before us to acknowledge this.
Behind the graceful air of the poem, sung as a poem only,
we hear a deeper note telling of the passionate, obstinate
questionings of futurity which belonged not more to Greece
three thousand years ago than they now belong to us.
The tale of the great traveller could not at the first
have been so full as we find it in its present shape.
Evidently fresh adventures have continually been interpo-
lated in the history, to give it richness and variety. 2 Myths
at the outset are not rich nor varied; they are almost
always confined to a single theme, and the action in them
obeys the rule of e unity ' more strictly than do those of
the most classical dramas. It is probable, therefore, that
many single stories have been rolled into one to make this
great epic. We notice, moreover, that one series of events
occurs in a narrative related during the course of another
1 Coliort, ad Gracos, xxix. 2 Cf. Butcher and Lang, Od. 2nd ed. p. xxiv.
CALYPSO AND CIRC& 301
series. All the events which Odysseus recounts while
sitting in the hall of Alcinoiis, though they are supposed
to tell the earlier history of his voyage, are no doubt
additions to the original tale, which follows directly the
course of the poem till the wanderer is brought to the
island of the Phseacians, and then takes up its interrupted
thread when his story is finished and Alcinoiis prepares
his return voyage to Greece. An experience of the growth
of myths and epics teaches us to look upon the two series
as two distinct legends which have in this awkward way
been forced into one story; one being more expanded
than the other, and therefore perhaps of a later date.
Looking into the two series of adventures more closely,
and comparing them together, we discover that many
circumstances of one appear to be retold in a different
shape in the other. Take, for instance, the life of Odys-
seus with Calypso and with Circe, and the manner of
his deliverance from each. Both Calypso and Circe are
nymphs and enchantresses ; with each Odysseus passes a
term of months or years, living with her as her husband,
but longing all the while to return to his own wife and
his own home ; from each Hermes at last sets him free.
What if the Calypso and Circe episodes both repeat in
reality the same myth? And what if Odysseus' other
great adventure, the voyage to the Phseacians, have like-
wise its counterpart in the expanded story ? The question
of the real identity or difference between the two series
of adventures can only be decided when we have had
time thoroughly to test the significance which there is in
the points of their apparent likeness.
Meanwhile who is Calypso? Her name bespeaks her
nature not ambiguously. It is from Kakinrrsiv, to cover
or conceal. She is the shrouder or the shrouded place;
the literal counterpart of the Norse Hel, which word is, as
has been said, from the Icelandic helja, e to hide.' How,
then, can Calypso be anything else than death, as she
dwells there in her cave by the shores of the sea? How
302 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
can Odysseus' life with her, and his sleep in her cave, be
anything else than an image of dying? The gods have
determined that the hero shall not remain in his mortal
sleep for ever ; so Hermes is sent with their commands to
Calypso to let Odysseus go. Hermes is the god whose
mission it is to lead souls down to the realm of Hades
the psychopomp, as in this office he is called. But some-
times he comes upon an opposite errand, to restore men to
life ; the staff which closes the eyes of mortals may like-
wise open them when asleep. Therefore the interference
of Hermes between Calypso and Odysseus is full of sig-
nificance ; and we accordingly meet the same episode in
the Circe tale. If Circe's name do not reveal her nature
so nakedly as Calypso's name shows hers, yet we easily
recognise by it death in one of its many guises a ravenous
animal or bird, a hawk or a wolf. 1
For my part, I think that the tale divides at the point
where we see Odysseus in the house of one or other of the
two enchantresses ; and that, starting from the island of
Ogygia on the one hand, and from that of .SCoea on the
other, we have before us two successive pictures of the
fate of a man's soul after it has passed the house of death.
And I think, again, that the wanderings of Odysseus
before he comes to the island of Circe may be taken for
an image of the Western Sea on this side of the dark
portal, the Western Sea which, though full of suggestions
of mortality, has not yet quite become the Sea of Death.
One order of pictures we may call cosmic, or belonging to
this world ; the other is hypercosrnic, and appears only
when we have passed the boundary which separates this
world from the next. But of course this distinction
expresses only the general character of the two parts of
the epic. That general difference does not hinder the
1 KipKos (whence /ci'p/oj) is given as both hawk and wolf in L. and S. It is
most likely from a root krik, meaning to make a grating sound, and there-
fore probably originally applied to the bird (cf . our night-jar). We may,
then, compare Circe" with Charon, ' an eagle.'
ELEMENTS OF THE EPIC.
303
two orders of ideas, the worldly and the other-worldly, from
mingling at many points. They are, indeed, so closely
allied as to l>e not easily distinguishable. The whole
journey, including both images of death and images which
apply to the region beyond death, is foreshadowed in the
earlier parts of the voyage, in those parts which precede
the arrival at the house of the Queen of Shades. It is, in
fact, as if we had first to pass through the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, and while there to anticipate in a faint
show the clearer vision which will come after dissolution
itself. 1
1 There being, according to my view, only one essential idea at the
bottom of the myth of the Odyssean voyages namely, the idea of death
and the next world it follows that the chief adventures of the hero must
constantly repeat themselves in new shapes.
The essential myth of the Sea of Death divides itself into three parts
viz. Death, the Earthly Paradise, and the Return Voyage to the Land of
the Living. Of these the first two are the most important and the most
constantly repeated. They should always recur in the same order. It
may help the reader to a due understanding of the myths if I tabulate
them in the order in which they were supposed to occur under the heads
above mentioned. The Sea of Death is entered when Odysseus has left
Cythera.
The The Return to
Death. Earthly Paradise, the Land of the lAmng.
Odysseus' voyage to
First Series
The Lotophagi
I (or sleep preceding
death).
The Cyclopes.
Second Series -
Third Series
Laestrygones.
Hades.
Sirens.
Fourth Series | Calypso.
within one day's sail of
The JSolian Ithaca. This is broken
Island. short in order that the
subsequent adventures
may be tacked on.
This is the myth of the most gloomy
sort. Here we only distinguish three
stages in the journey of the soul to
the land of shades. There is no Para-
dise beyond death.
The voyage from
Thrinakia should have"
been to the land of the
living, but it takes a
different direction for
the same reason which
altered the course of
the voyage fromJiolia.
| Return to Ithaca.
Thrinakia.
| Phasacians.
These parts again coalesce somewhat, and the grand division remains
where I have put it at the adventures with Circe and Calypso. Of those
301 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
We have but to translate the story of Homer into a
simpler mythical language to detect the unreal character
of its events, and to feel fully the imaginative region into
which the poet has strayed. If the tale had been told
by our Norse fore-elders it would have been clothed in
such transparent language ; and we may for the nonce
rechristen the scenes of Odysseus' adventures with the
names which a Northern bard would have given them.
First, then, we have the voyage to Sleep Home. The
wind which bore him from Ilium carried the hero to the
land of the Cicones, and thence to Cythera historical
places within the compass of the ^Egean. After that he
rounded Cape Malea, and burst into the sea of wonders
where his course was to lie so long. The shore at which
Odysseus next touched was the shore of the Lotophagi,
who ate the lotus flower or fruit for food. ' And whoever
partook of that pleasant fruit no more wished to tell of
his coming home, nor to go back thither ; but they choose
rather to stay with the lotus-eaters and to forget their
return.' This is Sleep Home.
And now on to Giant Land, where the Cyclopes dwell.
The Norsemen, we know, had their Giant Home (Jotun-
heimar), on the borders of the world. Their gods ruled
over Asgard and Man's Home ; but the power of the JQsir
did not stretch beyond the world of men. They had only
so far shown their might that they were able to banish
the jotun brood from the ordered world. Outside the limits
of that the giants lived in defiance of them, and were for
ever threatening to invade the home of gods and men.
Something the same had been the history of the Titans
which follow one is essentially a story of the voyage to heaven, the other
essentially a story of the journey to hell.
The recurrence of the number nine has been remarked upon in the
adventures of Odysseus, and assigned as a reason for supposing it a sun
myth. The hero is nine days after first leaving the known world, i.e. after
rounding Cape Malea, before he sights land, the land of the Lotophagi ; he
is nine days again sailing homewards from the island of
THE CYCLOPS. 305
and giants of the Greek cosmology. Zeus had banished
these to a Tartarean land, unvisited by sun or breath of
winds, that land where lapetus l aJhd Kronos dwell for
ever.
The essential picture in Greek and Norse mythology
is the same; it is of a sunny world ruled by the gods,
beyond it the dark Giant Land. To this region and to the
Titan brood the Cyclopes belong. 'They care not for
aegis-bearing Zeus, nor -the blessed gods.' 2 They plough
not, nor sow. They have no assemblages for council nor
any public law ; each is a law unto himself and to his
household, and heeds not his neighbour. They live in
caves upon the mountain-tops and through the windy
promontories. 3
Odysseus landed first upon an uninhabited island close
by the island of the Cyclopes. There immense flocks of
goats fed undisturbed, for the Cyclopes had never reached
that near coast, because they had no art of ship- building
and no ' crimson-prowed barks.' This is a little touch
of reality, a reminiscence of some land where the ignor-
ance of the inhabitants in matters of seamanship displa} r ed
so clearly by such an instance of a neighbouring island
unvisited had struck the attention of mariners.
Next Odysseus and his comrades went on to the
Cyclops' island, and while the rest stayed in the ship the
hero and twelve others ascended from the shore to spy out
the land. Here we have the first detailed picture of the
Giant Land of Greek mythology. When they had gone
but a little way inland they saw on the land's edge a cave
near to the sea, but high up and hidden by laurel trees.
Around were stalled much cattle, and sheep and goats.
And. a high wall was built there with deep-embedded
stones and with tall pines and towering oaks. 'Twas the
dwelling of a huge man who by himself was feeding his
1 Father of Prometheus and of Atlas. (See Ch. IV.)
2 Od. ix. 275. * Od. ix. 105-106, 400.
X
306 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
flocks afar off. He did not fellow with his kind, but in
solitude fed upon evil thoughts. A horrid monster he,
not like food-eating men, but liker to the woody top of
some great mountain standing alone.
The name of this giant was Polyphemus. Odysseus and
his comrades hid themselves in the cavern to await Poly-
phemus' return.
'He came bearing a huge burden of dried wood to
light his evening meal. Inside th*e cave he threw it down
with a mighty noise, and we in terror hid ourselves in the
recesses of the cave. Then drove he into the wide cavern
of his fat flocks all those whom he would milk ; the males,
the rams and goats, he left outside that deep hall's door.
Then he fixed up a barrier great and weighty. Two-and-
twenty wains could not have moved that mighty rock.
And he sat down and milked the sheep and goats duly,
and to each one set its young.' And when he had lit his
fire he saw the wanderers and spake to them.
' strangers, who are ye, and whence have ye plied
o'er the moist ways hither 'P Was it for barter, or come ye
as pirates, who wander, their lives in their hands, bringing
evil on all men ? '
And Odysseus : e We are strayed Greeks from Troy,
driven by contrary winds over the sea's grea.t deep. And
now, in search of our homes, have we come another road
by other ways. . . . But do thou, best one, revere the
gods. We are suppliants to thee, and Zeus avenges the
cause of strangers and suppliants.'
And he with savage mind replied, ' Foolish art thou, O
wanderer, to tell me to fear or shun the wrath of the gods.
The Cyclopes care not for aegis-bearing Zeus nor the blessed
gods. . . .' Then he fell upon them and seized two of
the comrades of Odysseus ; seized them like whelps and
dashed them down to the ground, and their brains flowed
out and moistened the ground. f In despair, weeping, we
held up our hands to Zeus.'
In Saxon legend we shall hereafter meet with the
THE CYCLOPS. 307
counterpart of this giant, the f eotan ' Grendel, 1 and see
him snatching up his victims in the same manner and
devouring them. The Cyclopes personify immediately the
storm or the stormy sky, in which the sun, like an angry
eye, glares through the clouds. As a part of the giant
race the Cyclopes represent also the uncultivated and
uncultivable tracts of country, the out-world region, that
which was in the language of other times the heathen
world the world of heath and wild moor. To the Teutons
the jotun or eotan race had the same meaning; wherefore
is this Grendel's home f amoiig the moors and misty hills.' 2
First representing the outer regions of nature, the parts
remotest from men and from the safety of towns and
villages, the giant kind in all mythologies personify like-
wise the outer world or other world itself, the land of
death. As we shall see in a future chapter, there is no
distinct line of demarcation between the Norse Jotunheim
and Helheim Giant-home and Hel's Home. Many among
the inhabitants of Jotunheim are by their names seen to be
personifications of the funeral fire, or of the grave. The
Cyclopes do not display their character so nakedly as do
the giants of the North, but we easily admit that their
home also must lie by the Sea of Death and near the
borders of another world.
Or again, we may, merely looking upon the Cyclopes
as monsters, take them for symbols of the all-devouring
grave. We should then have to compare them with the
man-eating ogre of mediaeval European folk lore.
How Odysseus and his companions escaped from Poly-
phemus' cave does not need telling here. It is rather
with the imagery of the strange regions into which the
wanderers come, than with the details of their adventures,
that we have to do. Everyone knows too in what way
the wily Greek plotted revenge upon the giant, and his
1 Chapter VII. And very similar to Grendel is the giant tfushna of the
Rig Veda, ' who walks in darkness.'
* See Chap. VII.
x 2
308 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
own and his comrades' escape ; how he produced his wine
skins with a beverage never before tasted by the Cyclops,
how Polyphemus became drunk with the wine, and how
Odysseus and his fellows, seizing an immense bar which
they had previously heated in the fire, bored with that
into the Cyclops' single eye and blinded him so ; and,
finally, how, tied beneath the bellies of the sheep, they
eluded his vigilance and made their way into the open air.
They have been to Sleep Home, and thence to Giant
Land ; their next stage is to Wind Home. I have said that
the details of the earlier adventures are often a faint fore-
shadowing of the later ones ; and in the -ZEolian island I
see a sort of prediction of the^earthly paradise which we
shall meet again in larger dimensions and brighter colours
when we come to the land of the Phseacians. On this
floating land dwelt .ZEolus, son of Hippotas, dear to the
immortals. All round the island was a brazen wall, irre-
fragible ; and a smooth rock rose up to meet the wall.
To jiEolus had been born in his palace twelve children, six
girls and six strong sons. And he gave his daughters for
wives to his sons. And these feasted together continually
about their dear father and honoured mother, and dainty
food they lacked not. And the sweet-scented hall echoed
to tBeir voices by day, and by night they slept beside
their chaste wives on napery and bedsteads ornamented.
Are we not now getting nearer to the homes of Para-
dise ? For, see, the charm of the land of sleep lay only in
the ' pleasant food ' of flowers, which made men forget all
that they had suffered and what they had still to endure.
Prom this calm we awoke to find ourselves in the devour-
ing cavern of death; and the place we come to now seems
certainly a kind of paradise beyond death. Dante, it is
true, placed his Wind Home at the outside of Hell. But
then he spoke the thoughts of mediaeval Catholicism, which
darkened all the pictures of the future life. Wind Home
might quite as well lie on the borders of Paradise.
Of course this picture of the JEoliaii land is but as a
THE 7EOLIAN ISLAND. 30JJ
minor note anticipating the end of the piece. We have
by no means yet passed out of the mortal sea ; the giants
will appear again, and more images of death than any we
have yet encountered. Nevertheless it is true that in
these its first three scenes Sleep Home, Giant Home, and
Wind Home we get a faint picture of the whole drama
of Odysseus' voyage. But to continue the story.
In friendly wise JEolus entertained Odysseus for a
whole month, and enquired everything of him touching
Ilium and the Grecian ships and the Greeks' return ; ' and
all things I related as they were. And when at length
I asked for a journey and would have him send me away,
he did not refuse, but prepared my voyage. Of a niiie-
year-old ox's skin he made a bag. And in it he tied
the ways of blustering winds ; for Kronion made him the
keeper of the winds, to hush or raise whiche'er he would.
. . . With a bright silver chord he bound it in the hollow
ship, that not the smallest breath might escape. To me
he gave West Wind, to waft our ships and us. But he
was not fated to perform it : our own folly was our un-
doing. 5
The notion of a return home belongs not of right to
the drama of the Sea of Death. But in the Odyssey the
story has been rationalised ; and as it now stands we read
that Odysseus sailed for nine days, and was within one
more day's journey of Ithaca. 1 They could even see men
lighting fires upon the land. But unhappily upon
Odysseus, who had been steering the ship for all those
nine days, * sweet sleep on a sudden fell;' and, as he
slept, his comrades, deeming he bore away a treasure in
his bag, undid it, and all the storms burst on them at
1 The likeness between the place taken in this story respectively by the
2Eolian island and the land of the Phaeacians is conspicuous in this fact,
that the visit to each heralds a sail backwards to the east to Ithaca, in
fact. We can easily understand how, when various short myths were tacked
together to form one long story,, the episode of the journey to Ithaca from
JEolus' island was made to take a quite different termination from that
which it originally had.
310 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
once, till they were driven back to the island from which
they had sailed. And we need not wonder that -ZEolus
refused again to favour such ill-starred beings.
c Away ! off from our island quickly, vilest of men !
!N"ot for me is it to care for or speed on his way the man
who is abhorred of the blessed gods. Off ! for thou
comedst here a hateful one to the gods.'
For six days and nights they sailed continually, and on
the seventh came to Lamos' lofty city, Lsestrygonia.
This was only another land of giants. Perhaps this inci-
dent of the journey and the story of the Cyclops are two
legends which have been woven together. The descrip-
tions are slightly varied ; and on that account their points
of likeness are the more instructive ; for they must have
a distinct reason and intention. It is generally charac-
teristic of the giant to live in the earth ; especially so if
he be in a manner a representative of the grave itself.
The Cyclops lives in a cave. But the Lsestrygones are
much more civilised : they have cities and agorae.
6 Behind the high promontory where we lay,' says
Odysseus, continuing his narrative, ( I could see neither
the signs of cattle nor of men ; only smoke we saw issuing
as from the ground. So I sent forward three of my com-
panions to enquire what sort of men they were. And they
went along the smooth road whereby waggons carry wood
from the mountains to the city, and they met before the
town a damsel bearing water, the strong daughter of
Lsestrygonian Aiitiphates. Then they stood by and spake
to her, and asked her who was the king of these people
and who were those he ruled. And she straightway
showed to them her father's high-roofed house. When
they had entered the illustrious dwelling, they found the
mistress there lofty as a mountain-top ; and they were
afeared. And she called at once her husband, famous
Antiphates, from the assembly.'
There is much less of the true jotun nature about these
giants. They have houses and cities and assemblies. I
NIVERSIT-
311
think it probable that in this part of the voyage we have
more to do with legend than with ni} T th. Granting that
the myth had asserted that a giant race lived somewhere
in mid-sea, this special account of the giants may have
been taken from the actual experience of travellers. The
Lsestrygones have, however, all the savageness of their
brethren the Cyclopes. Antiphates at once seized one of
the comrades to prepare his supper; the other two ran
back to the ship. And the giant raised a clamour through
all the town. The strong Lsestrygouians came flocking
from every side in thousands not men, but giants who
hurled at them with stones torn from the rocks. And an
evil cry arose among the ships as the Greeks perished and
navies sank. . . ' At length, drawing my sword from my
thigh, I severed the rope of the blue-prowed ship. I
called on my comrades and bade them to throw themselves
upon the oars, that we might escape the evil. . . .'
Here for a moment let us pause. Far more important
and significant than any of the previous adventures is the
next which befalls the seafarers that is to say, their
coming to the home of Circe. Circe and Calypso, I sup-
pose, are the same ; and each is very Death herself. Images
of mortality lie scattered throughout the history of the
voyage ; but in these two only do we see the true personifi-
cations of the dreadful goddess. After the visits to their
homes the story changes somewhat. The latter part in
either case presents a picture of the destiny of the soul
one future after the habitation with Circe, another
future after the habitation with Calypso ; from .ZEsea to
Hades, from Calypso's island, Ogygia, to the earthly
Paradise.
Circe is Death first presented in the image of a hawk
or wolf. She is the child, as it seems, of the night sun, as
the Egyptians would have said of the dead Osiris; in the
language of Grecian fable, she is the daughter of Helios
and Perse (the destroyer), Perse herself being the daughter
of Oceanos, into which the days disappear. The name of
312 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
her island (it is also another name for Circe herself), 1
-ZEa3a, means a land of such wailing (alal) as men utter
by a grave. 2 Circe's palace is buried deep in forest gloom,
and over dense coppices of oak and underwood its smoke is
seen ascending. Around the enchantress are wild beasts,
mountain wolves and lions, which she herself has tamed.
But her attendant maidens are the personifications of the
simplest nature religion, the daughters of the fountains
and the groves and holy rivers, which flow into the sea ;
for she belongs to an old-world order of things ; before the
gods were she is. She is fate; and, like all the fates, she
weaves a thread, the thread of destiny. 3 It is a beautiful
image which is repeated in the case of Calypso, that when
this goddess of death is first discovered to us she is
weaving her immortal web and singing over it with a
lovely voice.
When the comrades of Odysseus have come to her
palace, they stand without the gates, shouting aloud, and
she comes forth and opens the shining doors and bids
them in. They do not keep men standing at that door. 4
1 Her son is JSanis, her brother JSetes. This ^Eetes is a kind of king
of death, for the labours of Jason and the Argonauts may be compared to
the labours of Heracles in the other world. (Sec ante, Chap. IV.) It is
noticeable, as witnessing to the likeness between Circe and Calypso, that
one is sister of 6\o6<t>povTos ^Eetes, the other of b\o6<ppovros Atlas. Atlas
is a being like lapetus, a King of the West, a King of Death.
2 Cf. what was said above concerning Cocytus and Gjoll.
3 I doubt if the metaphorical notion of weaving the thread of destiny
belongs to the earliest genesis of myth. It may be that the weaving or
sewing goddess (like the Frau Holda of the Germans) is originally only an
earth divinity ; hence a mother goddess, and so a patroness of all house-
wifery. Athene sometimes appears in this character. The earth goddess,
from being very old (uralt), becomes the goddess of prophecy, and so of
fate (see Chaps. II. and V.) With the notion of fate, again, may be connected
the quite physical one of the navel chord which unites the new-born child
to its mother. Man might be supposed in the same way united by an
invisible thread to the mother of all, to the Earth. This at death is cut.
4 See the fine lines of Christina Eossetti :
' Shall I meet other wayfarers by night ?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock or call when first in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.*
313
The lower road is not a hard one. Sed revocare gradus.
. . . She s.eats them upon thrones, and makes ready their
supper of cheese, and meal, and honey, and Pramnian
wine ; but with the food she mingles the fatal narcotic
drug which makes them forget their native land. And
last she strikes them with her rod, and they are trans-
formed into swine. ' They had the heads and voices and
hair and bodies of swine, but their understandings were
unshaken as before.' That turning the comrades into
swine is, however, a later addition ; the original Circe had
only to touch them with her wand which is one with the
sleepy rod of Hermes ' and they awoke no more.
By Odysseus, and through the council of Hermes,
the companions are freed from their enchantment. So
at least the story stands in Homer. But how freed?
Whither are they at liberty to go? To the house of
Hades, that is all. Odysseus is warned by Circe herself
that he must go thither, and in the dialogue between them
we are once again taught the lesson of the facilis descensus
Averno. 6 Who,' exclaims the hero, ( will guide me on
that way ? None has yet sailed to Hades' gate.' And she
answers, '0 wise Laertes' son, let the want of a pilot
on thy ship be cause of little care to thee. Eaise but
your mast and let your white sails fly, and Boreas' breath
will bring you there.' Then she describes the unknown
land. ' And when at length thou hast crossed the stream
of Ocean, where is the shore, and where are the groves of
Persephone, of towering poplars and fruitless willows,
there leave thy ship by Ocean's depths, and go thou thy-
self to Hades' drear halls. . . .'
Then they went down to the sea, and awful Circe sent
behind them a kindly breeze, which filled their sails. And
the sails, as they passed over the sea, were full- stretched
1 Him thought how that the winged god, Mercury,
Beforne him stood, and bad him to be mery.
His slepy yerdc, in bond he bare upright ;
An hat he wered upon his heres bright. . . . Knighfs Tale.
314 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
all that day. Then the sun set, and the ways were over-
shadowed. And now they had come to the far limit of
the deep-flowing Ocean, to the home in which live the
Cimmerians, covered with darkness and mist. Them the
sun never visits when at morning he climbs the starry
heaven, or when he returns backwards towards the earth ;
but hateful night broods there. There they drew up the
ship ; and there they passed through the groves of Perse-
phone, with the towering poplars and fruitless willows, to
the house of Hades. There Phlegethon and Cocytus,
which is a stream of Styx, join the Acheron ; and where
a rock marks the meeting of the loud-sounding rivers 1
Odysseus dug a trench and filled it with the blood of
sheep, and made a sacrifice and a libation, and besought
the unsubstantial dead to draw near. 2
In the version of the story which has come down to
us no valid reason is given for the journey of Odysseus to
Hades. He goes there only to invoke the shade of a
prophet, who is to tell what further adventures lie ahead
for him and his comrades. But Circe was herself a pro-
phetess. And, besides, the best of auguries would have
been to send him home ; and Circe, who could give him a
breeze to carry him to the west, could, one would have sup-
posed, have given him one which would have borne him to
Ithaca. We should suppose this, I mean, if we looked
upon Odysseus as merely a common adventurer, and the
wonders which he meets with as only the wonders inci-
dental to distant travel. But when we strip from all the
story its later dress, and see it in its original intention, we
perceive that there is a meaning in each detail; we see
1 Cf . Gjoll.
2 This feeding with blood the unsubstantial shades (i.e. images of the dead
such as are seen in dreams), in order that they may obtain something like
human capabilities, is very remarkable, and is a test of the psychology of
the time. The object of it is purely material, and it produces immediate
material results : each one who has drunk of the blood gains a voice and
also understanding (as in the case of Anticleia). The object is not senti-
mental, as that of a sacrifice is. It is in no proper sense a sacrifice to the
dead which Odysseus is making.
THE KINGDOM OF HADES. 315
too how many points have been retained in the later and
rationalised edition of the legend, when their full signifi-
cance is forgotten. Odysseus is not a common traveller.
He is either the soul escaped from life, or else he is the one
living man who has been permitted to visit the halls of
the dead, to sound the depths and shallows of the Sea of
Death, and has survived to tell the tale. Odysseus' going
to Hades is merely the legitimate bourn of his journey.
Circe can waft him there, but she cannot send him back
to the world. The importance, therefore, of the visit to
the Eealm of Shades does not lie in the alleged object of
Odysseus' coming, the prophecy which he hears from the
mouth of the seer Teiresias, but in the whole picture of
the dark land which he bears away with him.
Now, therefore, we behold the hero in the outer courts
of Hades' city :
' Much I prayed to the empty figures of the dead for
my return, vowing them a young heifer the best I had; and
to Teiresias I promised a coal black sheep, excelling all
the flock. And when I had called upon the nations of the
dead, I cut the throats of the sheep over the ditch, and the
black blood flowed out.
' And the souls of the dead came flocking forth from
Erebus brides and unmarried youths, and much-enduring
old men, and tender girls, new-sorrowing souls, and men
with many wounds, slain in battle and bearing their
bloody arras ; all these, with an immense clamour, were
wandering round the ditch. Then pale fear seized me. . . .
6 First came the soul of Elpenor, my comrade ; he was
yet unburied 1 beneath the broad earth, for we had left his
corse in Circe's house, unwept, unburied, for another task
was ours. . . .'
1 Or unburned, Ou . . eTeflaTrro. According to Grimm (IJeber das
Verbrennen der Leicheri) Q&irreiv means etymologically to ' burn.' It was
used for any funeral rites. As we see by a later passage (v. 74) it was
rather burning than burying that Elpenor wished for. Grimm's etymology
for Banreiv has been disputed.
316 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
'Elpenor,' cried Odysseus, 'how is it that to this
murky darkness thou art come sooner on foot than I, who
sailed in my black ship?' Then Elpenor gave an
account of how he died, and asked for his funeral rites to
be duly performed on Odysseus' return to .ZEsea. . . .
All the while Odysseus kept guard over the blood. His
mother, Anticleia, ' daughter of the noble-minded Au-
tolycus,' passed by ; but her he would not suffer to drink
at first. ' At length the form of Theban Teiresias came by,
grasping a golden sceptre; and it knew me and spake.
" Why, unhappy one, hast thou left the sun's light, and
come hither to see the shades and their drear abode?
Go back from the ditch ; put up your bright sword, and
let me drink of the blood; then will I prophesy unto
thee." . . .'
How dim this region is ; how shadowy and unsubstan-
tial the figures which haunt it. It is like to that outer
circle of Dante's hell where the shades move for ever aim-
lessly and in a ' blind life devoid of hope.' There is no
speculation in their eyes. Anticleia, Odysseus' mother,
sits all the while silent by the trench of blood with looks
askance ; she dare not look straight at her son nor recog-
nise him. Teiresias alone is possessed of his heart and
mind as' on earth, for he had been a prophet and was
wiser than common men.
6 Tell me, king,' Odysseus, speaking of his mother,
says to him, ' how can she know me for what I am ? '
And Teiresias answers
6 Whomsoever among the departed dead you suffer to
come to the blood, he will speak sensibly to you. But if
you disallow it, silent will he wander back.'
' So spake he, and the soul of King Teiresias turned
back to Hades' house. And I remained steadfast until my
mother came forward and drank the black blood. At once
she knew me, and wailing spake with winged words. . . .'
They conversed for awhile, and now follows a wonderful
touch, showing the nature of these shades of the departed.
THE KINGDOM OF HAD&3. 317
'I wished,' Odysseus goes on in his account of the scene,
( I wished to take hold of my mother's spirit. Thrice
my thoughts urged me to embrace her ; but thrice from
my arms like a shadow, or even a dream, she flew away.
And sharper grief arose in my heart ; and to compel her
I spake with winged words. "Mother ! why stay you not
for me to lay hold on you? So might we two, folded in
each other's arms, have joy mid our sorrow even in Hades.
Has Persephone deluded me with a shadow only, that I
might grieve the more ? "
6 So I said, and my honoured mother straight answered.
c " Ah, woe, my son ! Persephone has not deceived you ;
this is but the state of mortals when they are dead. They
have no more flesh, nor bones, nor sinews ; ! for the strong
force of fire consumed these when first the spirit left the
whitened bones. Then the soul itself flits aimlessly away
like a dream."
This condition of the dead is exemplified in the case
of all the others whom Odysseus in turn encounters.
Agamemnon knows him not till he has drunk of the black
blood. Achilles would change his life below for that of a
mean hired labourer, but yet he can feel delight at hear-
ing of the fame of his son, and after the dialogue with
Odysseus he passes on making great joyful strides through
the asphodel meadows. In some of the inner courts of
Pluto's palace the punishments of the dead are positive.
There Odysseus sees Minos the judge; there is Tityus
stretched on the rocks while the vultures are dipping their
beaks in his liver; there Tantalus stands in the water
which flees from his touch ; there too is the shade of
Orion perpetually hunting through the meadows ; and the
shade of Heracles (Heracles himself being on Olympus 2 ),
which moves darkly, seeming ever ready to let fly a shaft.
1 Lit. ' Their sinews no longer hold the flesh and bones,' i.e. they no
longer have sinews holding the flesh and bones.
8 See what is said in Chap. IV. concerning the double nature of
Heracles, (1) as a mortal and (2) as a god.
318 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
We have lingered somewhat over this picture of the
realm of Hades, the first vivid presentation of the under
world which meets us in the literature of the Aryan race.
And the beauty and solemnity of the picture may well
excuse this pause ; for it is a beauty and a power which
familiarity can scarcely lessen. We now retrace our steps,
and return with Odysseus once more to the portal of
Death, where he stood when he entered Circe's island.
But in this case Death is represented not by Circe, but by
Calypso.
First of all in the actual course of the poem we find
the hero upon the island of Calypso, called Ogygia.
Etymologists connect the word Ogygia with Oceanus, and
this connection shows us that the name was not originally
the name of an* island so much as the general one of the
sea. 1 Ogygia means, moreover, something primeval, so
that it is also the name of Egypt, the oldest land of the
world, and Ogyges is the name of the earliest Attic king ;
in this sense Osysria is likewise chosen to be the home of
&/ &
Time, Kronos. On this island Odysseus sleeps perforce
beside Calypso in her hollow cave ; and hither, when he
has been seven years in the embrace of the dreadful
goddess, Hermes comes, by command of Zeus, to set him
free.
It was, we remember, by the advice of the same
messenger that Odysseus overcame the spells of Circe.
Hermes in later times, partaking of the nature of Apollo
and advancing as Greek civilisation advanced, became the
god of merchandise and of the market as well as the
patron of agonistic contests. But in Homer he has his
primitive character ; he is the god of the wind. His name
is connected with those Yedic Sarameyas of whom we
have lately spoken ; it is also connected with the Greek
opfjudo), to rush. We have seen why the Sarameyas, as
winds, were the psychopomps or leaders of the soul over
was connected with the fabulous primeval deluges in Bceotia
and in Attica.
CALYPSO. 319
the Bridge of Souls ; and how they might also be the
representatives of the morning and evening breezes. All
these functions are united in the Greek messenger god.
His rod has a twofold power : it closes the eyes of men in
sleep and awakens them from sleeping. Or in a wider
sense it either calls men from the sleep of death or drives
them to the under world. Hermes is (like the Sarameyas}
most present when we are near the other world. This last
reason, perhaps, explains why he is the messenger of the
Odyssey but not of the Iliad. 1
As the wind of morning, the awakeiier, Hermes comes
now over the sea to rouse Odysseus from his fatal slumber ;
he comes, in the beautiful language of the poet, like a gull
fishing over the wide brine, now (so we fancy him) dipping
down to the wave, now rising again.
Windlike beneath, the immortal golden sandals
Bare up his flight o'er the limitless earth and the sea ;
And in his hand that magic ^Cvand he carried
Wherewith the eyes of men he closes in slumber
Or wakens from sleeping.
The divine messenger finds Calypso within her cave, at
the mouth of which burns a fire (we often meet with this
fire at the entrance to the house of death), 2 a fire of cedar
and frankincense, which wafts its scent over the island.
She is singing, and as she sings she moves over the web a
golden shuttle, and in the wood behind the birds are
brooding.
Then Calypso, seeing that the commands of Zeus might
not be disobeyed, instructed Odysseus how to make a raft,
and sped him on his way. For seventeen days he sailed
1 Hermes is always the messenger of the gods in the Odyssey ; but in
the Iliad this part is played by Iris, the rainbow. There is a natural con-
nection between the rainbow, the Bridge of Souls (in the Vedas, &c.), and
the wind (Sarameyas, Hermes), who is the leader of souls. In the
Odyssey (xviii. beg.) we hear of an Irus, who may be the same as
Hermes.
2 Chaps. VII. VIII.
320 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
upon that raft over the trackless sea, and sleepless watched
the constellations as they passed overhead, ' the Pleiads,
and late-setting Bootes, and the Bear, which they also
call the Wain.' l He was not fated yet to find his home.
On the eighteenth day, as the shadowy mountains of the
Phseacians began to appear, Poseidon, who still burned to
revenge the death of his son Polyphemus, raised a storm,
so that the raft was borne upon a rock and Odysseus was
all but destroyed. But a sea goddess, Ino Leucothea,
gave him her veil to buoy him up when he left the sink-
ing raft, and Athene stilled the waves. The appearance
of Ino in this scene is appropriate. For we are now close
to the Land of the Blessed, and she herself was once a
mortal who found a home in this heaven. 2
At length Odysseus, swimming, gained the shore. Be-
fore he reached this, his last haven, the troubles of
Odysseus had attained their climax. He had lost all his
comrades, his ships, his treasures, and now this last refuge,
the raft, brake beneath his feet. Nadus egressus, sic redibo,
'All come into this world alone; all leave it alone.'
Welcome, therefore (we may well believe), as is the father's
life to his children when he has lain long in suffering and
disease, and the Hateful Goddess has grazed close by him,
such to the wanderer was the sight of this new land.
The name of the land on which he was cast was
Scheria. The island of Ogygia means literally the ocean ;
this land with the same etymological exactness signifies
the shore -2%2/na, from o-^spds. 3 The contrast of mean-
1 We think of Dante's Ulysses.
' Tutte le stelle gia dell' altro polo
Vedea la notte, e il nostro tanto basso
Che non suggeva fuor del marin suolo.'
2 See Pindar, 01. 2.
3 It is in keeping with the principles of mythopoesis that Calypso's land
embodying the notion of the Sea of Death, should be in the midst of the
sea that is to say, should be an island. Scheria means shore. There is
nothing said of its being an island. Nevertheless the Greek paradise was
generally thought to be one, e.g. the Islands of the Blessed of Pindar, &c.
THE PH.EACIANS. 321
ing takes us back to a time when the mytji of the great
traveller was more simple than we find it in Homer, and
told only of his passing over the Sea of Death and arriving
at the coast beyond. This shore is the home of the god-
like Phseacians, and the king of it is Alcinoiis. In the
description of the people and of their country we easily
recognise a place such as is not in this world, and a race
not of mortal birth. Far away, says Alcinoiis
Far away do we live, at the end of the watery plain,
Nor before now have ever had dealings with other mortals ;
But now there comes this luckless wanderer hither.
Him it is right that we help, for all men fellows and strangers
Come from Zens ; in his sight the smallest gift is pleasing. 1
This place is the due antithesis of Hades. Like Hades
it lies at the extreme limit of the watery plain. But it is
a land of everlasting sunlight and happiness, instead of
one of darkness and death. Remote from, men, near to the
gods (dy%i0oi), as Zeus himself declares, 2 the Phseacians
live, like the blameless ^Ethiopians, somewhere on the
confines of earth. Hither it was that yellow-haired
Ehadamanthus fled when persecuted and driven from
Crete by his brother Minos the just Rhadamanthus,
who, by some legends, is placed as ruler in the land of
the blessed. Hither was come the fainting Odysseus.
How the wanderer hid himself at the river mouth, and,
having fallen asleep, was awakened by Nausicaa, the king's
daughter, when at play with her maidens, and how he dis-
covered himself to her, needs not to be retold. When
Odysseus had related his adventures to Nausicaii, she bade
him follow her to her father's house. This was a para-
disiacal palace, much like those which occur so often in
our Teutonic fairy tales. It is made as beautiful as the
Greek imagination of that time could paint it. 3 Built all
1 Od. vi. 204 sqq. 2 -Od. v. 35.
1 Mr. Pater, in his article on the ' Beginnings of Greek Art ' {Fortnightly
Review), has admirably followed out the exact artistic conceptions which
are implied in the descriptions by Homer of the palace of Alcinoiis.
T
322 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
of bronze, it had golden doors and silver pillars, and silver
lintels with a golden ring. On either side the entrance
were gold and silver dogs, f which cunning-minded He-
phsestus made to guard the house ; they were immortal,
and free from old age for ever.' We recognise in these
descriptions the dawn of the Hellenic love of art. But
the two dogs have, I fancy, a special meaning. I see in
them the descendants of the Sarameyas, or whatever in
early Aryan belief preceded those guardians of the house
of death, who are own brothers to the two dogs of the
Wild Huntsman, Hackelberg. The garden which sur-
rounds the palace of Alcinoiis distinctly presents the pic-
ture of a home of the blessed; it is just like the Gardens
of the Hesperides, and like all the pictures which before
and after have been drawn of an earthly paradise. Here
the trees and flowers do not grow old and disappear,
winter does not succeed to summer, but all is one con-
tinued round of blossoming and bearing fruit ; in one part
of the garden the trees are all abloom, in another they are
heavy with ripe clusters. 1
Nevertheless the Western Land, though a place of
Paradise, is also the land of sunset ; and by their name
the Phseacians appear as beings of the twilight (f>alaj;
strengthened from fyaibs, dusky, dim. Their most won-
drous possessions are their ships, which know the minds
of men and sail swifter than a bird or than thought. ( No
pilots have they, no rudders, no oarsmen, which other
ships have, for they themselves know the thoughts and
minds of men. The rich fields they know, and the cities
among all men, and swiftly pass over the crests of the sea
1 Compare Pindar's description of the Happy Isle :
* Where round the Island of the Blessed
Soft sea- winds blow continually ;
Where golden .flowers on sward and tree
Blossom, and on the water rest
There move the saints in garlands dressed
And intertwined wreaths of colours heavenly.'
ODYSSEUS' RETURN. 323
shrouded in mist and gloom. 9 1 Yet the Phpeacians them-
selves live remote from human habitation, unused to
strangers. 2 It would seem, then, that the ships travel
alone on their dark voyages. For what purpose? It is
not difficult to guess. Their part is to carry the souls of
dead men over to the Land of Paradise.
We can imagine these ships of the Phseacians sailing
into every human sea, calling at every port, familiar with
every city, though in their shroud of darkness they are
unseen by men. . They know all the rich lands ; for every
land has its tribute to pay to the ships of Death. They
are the counterparts of the c grim ferryman which poets
write of ;' 3 only that the last plies his business in the an-
cient underground Hades, and that the Phseacian barks
have their harbours on the upper earth ; albeit they can
pass from this life to the other. 4
Their business with Odysseus is to bring him back to
the common world to beloved Ithaca. He has passed
to the cave of Hel and through the gates of Death;
he has emerged to visit the Land of Paradise. Now he
returns that his adventures may be sung in the homes of
Greece.
What reports
Yield those jealous courts unseen ?
How could men ever tell tales of that strange country if
it really were a bourn from which no traveller returned ? So
when the hero has told all his tale in the hall of Alcinoiis,
the latter orders the sailors to prepare his homeward
voyage.
1 Od. viii. 562. 2 See ante, p. 321.
3 Charon is not known to Homer. It is not impossible that he may have
been imported from Egypt. These Phseacian ferrymen are of true Aryan
birth, and have a native place in Greek belief.
4 It seems to me that there is no ground for endorsing "Welcker's theory
(RJieinisch.es Museum fur Phllologie, N.S. vol. i.) that the Phaeacians were
imported from a Teutonic home. That the Teutons had a parallel belief
concerning the soul's voyage is true enough (Ch. VIII.) ; but in this chapter
it has, I think, been made clear that the notion was an universal Aryan one.
Y 2
324: OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
Here intervenes Odysseus' narrative of previous travel
before he had ever conie to Calypso's cave whence we
have already drawn some pictures of the soul's journey;
and for the continuance of the action we have to pass
from the seventh book of the Odyssey to the thirteenth.
And now the long and multiform sea adventures come
to an end. 'O Odysseus,' says Alcinoiis, 'since now
thou art come to my bronze-built, high-roofed house, I
deem that thou wilt return home, not wandering hither-
ward again. Now thou hast suffered many things.' And
Odysseus rises, and takes leave of Queen Arete with these
words : c Farewell, O queen, for ever ; till old age come,
and death, which are the lot of men. Now I go; but
mayst thou have joy here in thy children and in thy
people, and in King Alcinoiis.'
So saying the godlike Odysseus crossed the threshold,
and with him Alcinoiis sent a herald, to lead him to the
swift ship and to the sea- shore. And Arete sent women
servants with him to bear, one a clean robe and a tunic,
another a heavy chest ; and a third bare bread and wine.
They came to the ship and to the sea ; and his renowned
guides received the things and stowed them in the hollow
ship. And they made ready for Odysseus linen and a
blanket, that he might sleep there at the stern, without
v/aking. Then he embarked, and silently lay down ; and
they sat each one upon his bench ; and they heaved the
cable, loosened from the bored stone. Then leaning back,
they threw up the sea with the oar ; and as Odysseus lay,
anon deep sleep weighed down his eyelids a sweet, un-
wakeful sleep, most like to death. . . . Then as arose the
one bright star, the messenger of dawn, the ship touched
the shore of Ithaca.
Mythology cannot show, out of all the imagery which
has grown up around the Sea of Death, a finer picture
than this one of the wanderer who has been dead and is
alive again awakening, along with the day-heralding
star, to find himself once more in the world of living men.
THE BELIEFS OF HEATHEN GERMANY. 325
CHAPTER VII.
THE BELIEFS OF HEATHEN GERMANY.
1. The Gods of the MarJc.
WE have scattered notices of Gerin.an heathenism extend-
ing over many centuries. There are the few facts which
Tacitus collected, a passage here and there in other classic
authors, then the later histories of the Teutonic peoples
themselves Procopius, Jornandes, Paulus Diaconus, Gre-
gory of Tours, and lesser chroniclers which shed some
light upon the Germans' early belief ; the ' Danish History'
of Saxo, full of legendary history, which is but transformed
myth; the 'Historia Ecclesiastica ' of Adam of Bremen and
such like works of men, Christians themselves, but yet in
close proximity with the heathen ; and finally we have the
Eddas, the last voice of Teutonic paganism, rising up from
the land which was the latest to give admittance to the
creed of Christendom. These are as recent as the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. They have been, it is probable,
handed down for many hundred years, but they speak
directly only of the heathenism of the Norsemen. Despite
all the diversities of time and place which these different
sources imply, we can see that the belief is in essentials
the belief of one people ; a race whose life through all the
centuries had little changed, which was united not by
language alone, but was one in its institutions, in its
civilisation, and in its barbarism, one even in the climatic
influences to which it was subjected.
And this last is a great matter. The foregoing
chapters must have made it plain that the creed of a
326 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
people is always greatly dependent upon their position on
this earth, upon the scenery amid which their life is
passed and the natural phenomena to which they have
become habituated ; that the religion of men who live in
woods will not be the same as that of the dwellers in wide,
open plains ; nor the creed of those who live under an
inclement sky, the sport of storms and floods, the same as-
the religion of men who pass their lives in sunshine and
calm air.
The more sombre aspects of nature were revealed to
the German races from the Danube to the Baltic. Tacitus
has left us a picture of the Germans he knew, the dwellers
in Central Europe, and of the land they inhabited. He
describes their dark, lonely life under the perpetual gloom
of trees, and their country ' rugged with wood or dank
with marsh.' l The Norsemen had their homes amid
mighty pine forests and on rocky heights looking over the
main not such a sea as the ^gsean, but the sea of those
Northern regions, icy and threatening, not often tranquil.
Inland and sea-shore had their own beauties, but they
were of a wild kind. The Eddas tell us of the marriage
between a god of the sea and a daughter of the hills ;
each utters a complaint of the other's home. e Of moun-
tains I weary,' says one 2
Of mountains I weary.
Not long was I there
Nine nights only
But the howl of the wolf
To my ears sounded ill
By the song of the sea bird. 3
And the hill goddess answers
1 Tac. Germ. 5. And again, ' asperam coelo, tristem cultu aspectuque
(c. 2).
2 Edda Snorra, Gylfaginning, D. 23.
3 Lit. swan (svanr). Swan in Norse poetry seems constantly to be used
for a sea bird. Etymologically of course it would be merely a bird that
could swim. See also p. 341.
THE VILLAGE AND THE NARK. 327
I conld not sleep
In my bed by the shore ;
For the scream of the wild birds,
The seamewF, who came
From the wood flying,
Awoke me each morning.
But the child of this union between the mountain and
the sea was the religion and the poetry of the Teutonic
race ; beside the howl of the wolf and the scream of the
seamew it struggled into life.
As for the social condition of the Germans when first
described to us, to credit the accounts of classic authors,
the people seems to have been scarcely raised above the
earliest stage of society, the hunting state. They sowed
but little ; when they were not engaged in war or in the
chase, the men sat idle ; ! usefuller occupations were
abandoned to the unwarlike classes to old men, to
women, and to slaves. The Germans made very little
practice of agriculture, says Csesar, or (in some places)
they did not use it at all. 2 They ' lived chiefly on meat,'
&c. 3 Tacitus says that the men in time of peace sat idle,
and gave over household management to the women
and to the infirm and old. 4 And from these descriptions
we learn how far apart had drifted the lives of the various
peoples of the Aryan race, who } r et, when they separated
to begin their migrations, started from the same point on
the road to civilisation. The earliest recollections of
Rome and Greece pointed back to a time when men sub-
sisted altogether by the labours of agriculture, ere com-
merce with its attendant refinements and luxuries had
been introduced. In Rome the praisers of past days re-
1 Nor were they much engaged even in the chase, according to Tacitus
(Germ. 15).
2 ' Minime omnes Germani agriculture student.' Cassar, B. G. vi. 29 ;
Agricultural non student,' 22.
8 'Neque multum frumento sed raaximam partem lacte atque pecore
vivunt ( Sue vi).' Caesar, B. G. iv. 1.
4 Germ. 16.
328 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
called the glories of the Republic when a Cincinnatus had
to be dragged from the plough to become a leader of
armies. Yet even those pictures were partly imaginary,
for, as more recent historians have pointed out, Rome even
in prehistoric days must have been possessed of an import-
ant commerce. 1 By the Greeks in the time of Homer the
transition from a merely agricultural life to one which
knew commerce and art had already been made. Yet
hundreds of years after Homer or the early days of Rome
the Teutons and the Celts had not fully accustomed them-
selves to the condition of a settled agricultural people ;
and they preserved in an almost unchanged form some of
the institutions which characterised the life of the old
Aryas.
It has been already hinted that before the separation
of the nations the proto- Aryas had acquired a kind of
embryo states, miniature republics which afterwards
expanded into the states of Rome and Greece, of Germany
and France and England. The germ of the civitas and of
the TToXts is to be sought in the village community of the
Aryas, of which the representatives still existing are,
first, the village communities of India, and, at a farther
distance, the Russian mirs. The same institution dictated
the form of early German life with the division and the
disposal of property among the Teutonic races ; in a large
measure it lay at the foundation of feudalism and the
statecraft of mediseval Europe.
The village community consisted of a group of families
in the possession of a certain space of land ; and the prin-
ciple of property was based upon the division of this land
into three parts. First there was a tract immediately
around each house, and belonging to it ; there was another
portion of land set apart specially for agricultural purposes ;
1 See the fourth chapter of Mommsen's Rom. Gesck., wherein the historian
shows that Home must, even in prehistoric days, have been an emporium
for the productions of central Italy, and probably possessed a mercantile
navy. This was very likely afterwards destroyed by the growing power
on the sea of the Etruscans (Tyrrheni).
THE VILLAGE AND THE MARK. 329
and lastly, there was the surrounding open country, which
was used for grazing. No one of any of these three divi-
sions was possessed as an absolutely personal property, but
over some parts the rights of individuals, over other parts
the rights of the state, were paramount. The latter was
the case with the agricultural portion ; whereas the land
immediately surrounding the homestead belonged to the
household there. 1
Of such a kind as this village must have been the vicus
of which Tacitus speaks in describing the Germans. But
though these people were thus joined together in a common
society, it does not appear that even then they lived near
one another. ' It is well known,' says our authority,
6 that the Germans do not inhabit towns. They do not
even suffer their dwellings to stand near together; but
live apart and scattered, each choosing his own home by
stream or grove or plot of open ground.' 2
' By stream or grove or plot of open ground,' but most
of all by grove and tree. Life beneath trees was the great
feature of their existence, and tree worship the most im-
portant part of their primitive creed. The German's
house was built about a tree. That form of architecture, of
which we have some faint traces among more civilised
Aryas, as in the description of the chamber of Odysseus, 3
was in full use among the Teutons down to historic days.
The house of Yolsung was supported by the tree Bran-
stock, and the world itself was by imagination constructed
in imitation of a common dwelling, 4 and had its central
tree, YggdrasiH. The sacred trees and village trees long
survived the introduction of Christianity-; they survive in
our Christmas trees of the present day. In every raid
which the new faith made upon the old we read of the
1 Concerning the constitution of the village community among the
Germans see Von Maurer's Mark- u. Dorf- Verfassung ; see also Kemble
on the Mark (Saxons in England, i. ch. ii.)
2 Germ. c. 16.
See Chap. Ii.
4 The world from the house, the earth (Erd) from the hearth (Herd).
330 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
felling of these sacred trees. Near Gudensberg in Hesse,
formerly Wuodenesberg, stood the oak dedicated toWuotan,
the greatest of the gods, and this Boniface cut down. 1 In
a deep forest recess stood the famous Irminsul, which
Charlemagne destroyed.
But, beside the village trees which were in the midst
of every clearing and the house trees which supported
every house, there was the denser growth of untraversed
forest land which lay around. This dreary and waste
region, in which men might sometimes go to pasture their
horses and cattle, or more often to hunt the wild animals
who inhabited there, was called the mark. In after years,
when these tiny embryos of commonwealths, the villages,
had expanded into states, the marks grew in proportion,
until they became great territorial divisions such as our
Mercia (Myrcna) ; the marches between England and Wales;
Denmark, the Danes' mark ; La Marque, which separated
that country from Germany ; the Wendisch-mark, which
divided Germany from the Slavonic lands. And the
guardians of the marks were turned into marquises,
marchios, markgrafs. But at the beginning these last
were only the chief warriors of the tribe ; they had their
home in the waste, and stood as watchmen between the
village and the outer world ; so that none might come into
the village if they came to do it hurt. We know that it
was a point of honour with each community to make this
encircling belt as wide as possible : the greater the mark
the greater was its power.
It would be scarcely safe for the stranger to venture
across the solitudes ; no doubt the peacefuler among the
villagers rarely did so. The men who undertook some
predatory excursion against a neighbouring community
were avowedly entering a region which lay outside their
customary life. The more primitive the state of any
people, the narrower commonly is the space of earth
1 Grimm, Deutsche Mytlwlogie, i. 126. At Geismar also there was an
oak which Boniface felled and used in making a Christian church.
WORSHIP IN THE FOREST. 331
within which they are imbound ; their experiences are
more limited ; and their genius, as we should say, more
confined. For what we call the genius of a people is, in
truth (at least it is in early days), very near indeed to what
the ancients understood by that word ; it is, as the Greeks
would say, a daimon epichorios, a watcher of holy places,
which infuses into these places its spirit and partakes of
theirs. A genius of woods, that is forest-like ; a genius of
wells and streams, that is watery.
Kindly terrene guardians of mortal men,
Hesiod calls them.
So the genius of the German was narrowed within the
limits of his narrow world ; his primitive home with its
surrounding mark became, and long remained, for him the
type of all existence ; from this microcosm he painted his
cosmos ; and then, having made a picture of the world in
space, he used the same outlines to represent the world
in time, and upon one model constructed his history and
his prophecy.
The Germans are described as building no fanes,
making no images for worship, but in their forest recesses
calling upon the unseen presence (secretum illud), which
they honoured by the names of various gods. 1 The word
' grove ' is with the German races a convertible term with
' temple.' 2 ' Single gods may have had their dwellings in
mountain-tops, or in rocky caverns, or in streams; but
the universal worship of the people found its home in the
grove.' 3 Adam of Bremen has left us a description of a
holy grove, as it was to be seen in Sweden in the eleventh
century. It was at Upsala. ' Every ninth year,' he says,
'a festival is celebrated there by all the provinces of
Sweden, and from taking a part in this none is exempt.
King and people must all send their gifts ; even those who
1 Germ, 9.
2 O. H. G. ivih, grove ; O. S. n'ih, temple ; Norse ve, holy
8 Grimm, D. M. p. 56.
332 OUTLINES OP PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
have embraced Christianity are not allowed to buy them-
selves free from attendance. The manner of the sacrifice
is this : Nine of each kind of living thing of the male sex
are offered ; and by their blood the gods are wont to be
appeased. Their bodies are hung in the grove which
surrounds the temple. The grove itself is accounted so
holy that single trees in it are considered as a kind of gods
to the extent of receiving sacrifices of victims. There hang
the bodies of dogs and men alike, to the number, some
Christians have told me, of seventy- two together.' '
Whatever Tacitus may say, therefore, about the unseen
presence, there can be no question that the creed of the
Germans was largely founded upon a fetich worship of
the trees themselves.
And what is here said of the Germans applies, in
almost equal measure, to the Celts. Most classical writers,
who have spoken of these people, have borne testimony
to the large place which tree worship, or, at any rate,
which a worship in the forest, occupied in the Celtic
creed. Of one people, the Massilii, we know that, like the
men of Upsala, they offered human sacrifices to the trees; 2
and of other Celts the very name bestowed on their priests,
Druids (from Spvs, an 'oak'), is a proof of their addiction
to tree worship. The mistletoe gained its sacredness
from its being born in the bosom of the oak tree. Pliny
has left on record a description of the ceremonies which
accompanied the cutting of the sacred mistletoe from the
oak ; and this description is the best picture which
remains to us of the ritual of Druidisrn. It is probable,
therefore, that much of what we are about to unfold
concerning the nature of the Teutonic beliefs would
apply, with only some slight changes, to the creed of the
predecessors of the Germans in Northern and "Western
Europe. Undoubtedly, in prehistoric days, the Germans
1 Adam of Bremen, iv. 27.
2 Cf . Lucan, 13. C. iii. 405. 'Omnis . . . humardslustratacruoribusarbos.'
Maximus Tyrius (Dissert. 38) tells us that ' the Celtic Zeus is a high oak.'
THE GODS OF THE MARK. 333
and Celts merged so much one into the other that
their histories cannot well be distinguished. But no sure
records of the Celtic religion have come down to us ; so
we must be content to draw our picture from the litera-
ture of the Teutonic folk alone.
The Germans of Tacitus' day had certainly got beyond
fetichism and the direct worship of trees. But the
influence of tree worship still remained with them ; all
that was most holy they associated with the forest, or, to
use their own term, with the mark. Their greatest gods
were the gods of the mark; these, therefore, are the
deities whom we must first take into account.
Now the word ' mark,' which at first meant ' forest,' ]
came, in after years, to signify boundary. The mark was
always the division between village and village. When
the beginnings of commerce are set in motion among any
nation, it is in the midst of neutral territories such as
these, half-way between one community and another, that
the exchange takes place. The market is held in the
mark. 2 The Greeks and Komans, who had once their
village communities, had once too, I suppose, their sur-
rounding marks. And when we think of the origin of
their markets their agorse, their fora we must let our
imaginations wander back to a time when these barter
places were not in the midst of the city, but in wild spots
far away. The god who among the Greeks presided over
the agora, and over all which was connected with it
over buying and selling, over assemblies and public games
was Hermes. But Hermes did this because he was by
rights a god of the wind. Far more true, therefore,
was he to his real nature when he guarded the forest
markets and haunted their solitudes, as the wind god
must always do.
With the Germans, in the times whereof I speak, the
mark had not lost its original character. It was the most
1 Grimm, D. M. p. 56 2 Cf . merx, Mercury.
33-1 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
important because the least explored and most awe-
inspiring part of the German's world; wherefore the
god of the mark, the god of winds and storms, was the
greatest of his divinities. He was Odhinn (Wuotan).
Tacitus said of the Germans of his day that they worshipped
Mercury, Hercules, and Mars, and Mercury chief of all.
There can be no doubt that by Mercury Wuotan is meant ;
by Hercules and Mars, Thorr (Donar) and Tyr (Zio).
Wuotan stands in the centre, as Wodens-day stands
between Tewes-day (Tyr's-day) and Thors-day l in the
centre and far above the other two. His name is not
wanting from the pantheon of any Teutonic people. The
Germans of Germany called him Wuotan ; the Norsemen,
Odhinn ; the English, Woden (Yodan) ; the Lombards,
Gwodan. 2 The tree and the forest are the central points
of German life, and Odhinn is the spirit of the tree and
the breath of the forest ; for he is the wind.
We have followed out the process whereby the older
god of the sky, common alike to all the members of the
Indo-European family, gave place, in many cases, to a
more active god ; whereby Indra and Zeus, each in their
spheres, supplanted Dyaus. And when we were following
out that process something was said of how a similar
change could be traced in the Teutonic creed. The new
and active god is, in this case, Odhinn. The wind is a
far more physical and less abstract conception than the
sky or the heaven; it is also a more variable phenome-
non ; and by reason of both these recommendations the
wind god superseded the older Dyaus, who reappears, in
1 I shall, in future, use the Norse mode of spelling for the names of the
gods whenever these are such as are mentioned in the Eddas. The reason
for doing this is that the references to the Eddas are so much more frequent
than references to any other authority for German belief.
2 ' Wodan sane, quern adjecta liter;!, Gwodan dixerunt, et ab universis
gentibus ut deus adoratur ' (Paulus Diaconus, i. 8). This litera adjecta is
only in keeping with the Italian use in respect to German names as
Wilhelm, Guglelmo ; Wishart, Guiscardo, &c. Warnefrid is naturally speak-
ing of the Lombards after they were Italicised. Odhinn is from a verb
va'Sa, to go violently, to rush ; as "Epfirjs, from
ODHINN, THOKK, AND TYR. 335
a changed form, as Tyr or Zio. Tyr is one of the three
great gods mentioned by Tacitus ; but, for all that, he
was always far inferior in importance to both Wuotan and
Donar. Among the Norsemen he was frequently sup-
planted by another god, Freyr, and the trilogy then stood
thus : Odhinn. Thorr, and Freyr.
German religion, like most creeds, had its energetic
and warlike and its placid and peaceful sides; the first
one was here, as elsewhere, represented by the gods of air
and heaven, the other by the gods (and goddesses) of
earth. But, as we might guess from, the character of
the German people, with them the warlike part by far
outweighed the peaceful. This side of their creed was
represented by the gods of the mark. It seems especially
to centre in Odhinn. Beside Odhinn stood Thorr, very
like him in character, yet with a distinct individuality,
bearing something the same relation to his father which
Apollo bore to Zeus. Odhinn became so much the repre-
sentative god of the Teutons that he could not remain
wedded always to one aspect of nature ; for he had to
accommodate himself to the various moods of men's
worship. Still we need never imagine him without some
reference in our thoughts to the wind, which may be
gentle, but in thes6 Northern lands is generally violent ;
whose home is naturally far up in the heavens, but which
loves too sometimes to wander over the earth.
Just as the chief god of Greece, having descended to
be a divinity of storm, was not content to remain only
that, but grew again to some likeness of the olden
Dyaus, 1 so Odhinn came to absorb almost all the qualities
which belong of right to a higher God. Yet he did this
without putting off his proper nature. He was the heaven
as well as the wind ; he was the All-Father, embracing
all the earth 2 and looking down upon mankind. His
1 See Ch. IV.
2 Alfoftr ; originally, no doubt, as Eangi in the Maori tale is the All-
Father, because the Heaven begets all living things. But in the Norsa
belief this idea has become moralised.
336 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
seat was in heaven, and from heaven's window (hlid-
skialf J ) he could see not only the Gods' City (the .ZEsirs'
burg, Asgard) and Man's Home (Mannheimar), but far
away over the earth-girdling sea to icy Jotunheiniar,
where giants dwelt, and where was the Land of Death. 2
In this way Odhinn was a perpetual watchman, who kept
the dwellings of gods and men free from alarms.
For the giants, like the Greek Titan race, were the
enemies of the gods and of men, 3 and were for ever
trying to make their way against the city of the gods.
Fate had decreed that one day a great final battle between
the gods and giants was to ensue ; it was the Armaged-
don of the Norse religion ; but till that day s'hould come
Odhinn kept watch and ward, and kept the giants off.
Odhinn was the wisest of all the gods ('pa ert se visastr
vera OSinn Thou art the wisest ever, Odhinn ') ; he alone
could look into futurity; and mythology told a tale of
how Odhinn had won this priceless gift of prophecy by
coming to the Well of Wisdom, guarded by a certain
Mimir, 4 of the race of the giants, and by obtaining a drink
therefrom. But the god could only obtain the draught
at the price of one of his eyes, which he was compelled to
throw into the water. 5 The story was, no doubt, originally
1 ' Lid-shelf,' the window or seat of Odhinn. Grimnismal (prose) ; Hrafn.
O'S. 10 ; cf . with Gmml. I.e., Paulus Diac. i. 8.
2 See Chaps. VI. and VIII.
3 Much more so, in fact, than the Titans.
4 Or Mimr.
5 All know I, Odhinn. Where thou thine eye didst loose,
In wide- wondered Mimir's well,
*Each morn drinks Mimir, from Val- Father's pledge.
Know ye what that means or no ? Vb'luspd, 22.
This Mimir is a curious being. Etymologically he is connected with
/ju/j.vf)ffKa:, meminisco, memor, &c., and hence with Minos. Minos is the first
man (all these words from root md, to measure), and much the same as
Yama and Yima. (See Ch. IV., and Benfey's Hermes, Minos und Tar-
tarus.} Mimir seems also to be a personification of the sea, or earlier of
the earth-girding river, and therefore the same as Oceanus. (See Chs. II.
and VI. for Oceanus in character as parent of all root off, Ogyges, &c.)
The sons of Mimir who dance at the end of the world (Voluspa", 47) are
the waves.
ODHINN. 337
a nature myth. Odhinn's eye is the sun ; ] the well of
Mimir is the river of rivers which runs round the earth,
the father of all fetiches and of all wells of wisdom. 2 And
as Odhinn's eye is here the sun, Odhinn must, in this his
character of the Wise One, be the heaven.
Having become thus learned, Odhinn proceeded to
impart his knowledge to mankind ; and in this aspect of
him he was the gentle breeze which visits men in their
homesteads and sees them at their daily toil. Odhinn
taught mankind the great art of runes, which means both
writing and magic, and many other .arts of life. He
is represented as continually wandering over the earth
and coming to visit human habitations. In most creeds
it is too much the fault of the heaven god that he lives
remote from human affairs ; this fault does not lie at the
door of Odhinn, who is the wind as well as the sky.
In this gentler aspect of his character the visitor to
human homes, the wise friend and counsellor of men
Odhinn was called Gagnrad, 3 which means ' the giver of
good counsel.' Indeed, the two chief by-names of Odhinn
seem to express the wind in its two aspects either when
coming to men as the storm in which whole navies sink,
or coming as the gentler wandering breeze. These two
names are Yggr and Gagnrad. Yggr is the ' Terrible.'
It is as Yggr that Odhinn is the overseer and ruler of the
world; for the world tree, Odhinn's ash, is called Ygg-
drasill. 4 As Gagnrad Odhinn comes in a simpler fashion
to teach arts and magic.
It is not generally as the gentle wind, nor as a
messenger of peace, that the Northern god appears to
us in myth and saga. His chief business with men was
1 The sun is, as we have seen, called the eye of Mitra and Varuwa in the
Vedas. See Ch. III. 2 See Ch. II.
8 Probably this god is also the Gangleri, ' the ganger,' of the Gylfaginning,
4 Odhinn appears under the name of Ygg on those occasions especially
when he undertakes to visit the other world and the realm of giants, c.
(cf. Vegtamskvifta, 8 ; Vaf J>rut>nismal, 5). Ygg has those who fall by the
sword (Grimnismal, 53). These facts, taken in connection with the name
of Yggdrasill, show Yggr as the lord of life and death.
338 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
at tlie battle field ; and his duty there was to collect the
souls of all the brave who had fallen in battle, and to
transport these to the heaven prepared for them. This
home of dead heroes was called Valholl, the Hall of the
Chosen. In thus bearing souls away Odhinn was serving
the interests both of gods and men, for the more heroes
that were collected in heaven the stronger would be the
army of the gods when it sallied out to fight the great
last fight against the giant powers. f Odhinn, when he
came among men, was seen generally in the guise of an
old one-eyed man one-eyed because he sank his eye in
Mimr's well clad in a blue cloak (the mantle of the wind,
the air, or cloud), and wearing a broad-brimmed hat.
This last is the same as the cap of concealment, the
tarn-kappe, 1 known to the Nibelungen lay and to many
folk tales, and is in its physical aspect the v dark cloud or
the night. Odhinn's coming was rather to be dreaded
than longed for; seeing that, like the raven, he scented
slaughter from afar. He was, in this respect, like that
Norse king described in one of Fouque's tales, who, when-
ever he showed himself, was sure to be the forerunner of
misfortune, so that men got to dread above all things the
sight of his helmet with vulture wings. We have a pic-
ture of Odhinn coming to the house of Sigmund precisely
in this guise of an old one-eyed man. In the back of the
house-tree he left sticking the sword Gram as a prize to
whosoever should be able to pluck it out ; and that sword
was the cause of strife and of bloodshed to the Yolsungs
and Giukungs. 2
1 Tarn-Kappe, cap of concealment, from ternen.
" The scene has been admirably pictured by Mr. Morris :
Then into the Volsung dwelling a mighty man there strode,
One-eyed and seeming ancient, yet bright his visage glowed ;
Cloud blue was the hood upon him, and his kirtle gleaming-grey,
As the latter-morning sun dog when the storm is on the way.
So strode he to the branstock, nor greeted any lord,
But forth from his cloudy raiment he drew a gleaming sword
And smote it deep in the tree bole.' Sigurd the Volsung.
ODHINN. 339
When the battle has actually begun, Odhinn goes to
it not in this disguised manner, but in true wind-wise.
The picture we have is of him riding through the air on
his eight-footed horse Sleipnir, the swiftest of steeds.
Over sea and land he rushes, through mountain gorges
and through endless pine forests. He breathes into men
the battle fury, for which the North folk had a special'
name the berserksgangr, berserk's way. 1
The greater part of the forests of Northern Europe are
black forests that is to say, composed of pine trees and in
such the coming of the storm is made the more wonderful
from the silence which has reigned there just before. Who
that has known it does not remember this strange stillness
of the pine forest? Anon the quiet is broken by a distant
sound, so like the sound of the sea that we can fancy
we distinctly hear the waves drawing backwards over a
pebbly beach. As it comes nearer the sound increases to a
roar : it is the rush of the wind among the boughs. Such
was the coming of Odhinn. And now see ! far overhead
with the wind are riding the clouds. These are the misty
beings, born of the river or the sea, whom we have already
encountered in so many different mythologies. In India
they were Apsaras 2 (formless ones) or Gandharvas; in
Greece they were nymphs, nereids, Muses, Aphrodites,
Tritogeneias. In the Teutonic creeds they are the warlike,
fierce Valkyriur. 3
The myth of the Valkyriur, as it was developed by the
Teutons, became one of the most beautiful, and likewise
1 Zeus also did something of the kind. See the description of Hector
in 11. xv. 605, &c. :
Maivero ....
'A<f>Aoio>bs 5e irepl (n6{j.a ytyvero, rfc 8e ot offfft
Aa^7reV07jj/ f}\oavprjffiv UTT' cxppvcrw ....
. . . aurbj yd-p ol OITT' aldepos %et> a^vvTvp
Zfvs. ...
2 On the nature of the Apsaras see Chap. II., and compare Weber's Ind
Stud. i. 398.
3 Icl. sing. Valkyria, plur. Valkyriur, Germ. Walchwriiw.
z 2
340 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
the most characteristic, in all their mythic lore. In
essential features, however, the Yalkyriur resemble other
beings of like birth in the Indo-European creeds ; where-
fore the germ of the Yalkyriur myth may be discovered in
the earlier creeds of India and of Greece.
In one of the later Vedas we are told a story concerning
certain fairy maidens, Gandharvas, who can at will change
themselves into the likeness of birds. One of these, who
was called Urvasi, fell in love with a mortal, Pururavas,
and for awhile they lived happily together ; but the kindred
of the fairy laid a plot against her joy, and contrived the
separation of Urvasi and Pururavas. The wife left her
husband, and he wandered about to all lands seeking her
in vain. At length he came to a lake on which Urvasi
was sitting with her kinsfolk ; but they were transformed
into birds, and he knew them not. . . , J The story, in its
essential meaning, is the myth of the loves of the sun and
of the dawn ; and the dawn (Ushas-Urvasi) is here bodied
forth to sense as a cloud. The Gandharvas are beings of
the same kind as the Valkyriur, and in this particular
tale they are the clouds of morning. The idea of such
bird fairies is to be found in the mythologies of most
races of the Indo-European family. Athene and Hera, as
heaven goddesses, sometimes were seen as birds that is
to say, they sometimes became visible as clouds. In the
Teuton myth of the Yalkyriur these maidens of Odhinn can
transform themselves into swans, and in this shape they
fly through the air with the god. They are thus called
* Odhinn's swan maidens,' and also ' Odhinn's shield
maidens ' and ' helm maidens.'
Here is one description of these maidens from the
Yoluspa. The wise woman who speaks in that poem
tells us that
1 The story has been published and explained by Prof. Max Miiller in
his Chips from, a German Workshop, vol. ii. It is from the Brahmana of
the Yajur Veda.
THE VALKYEIUE. 341
She saw Valkyriur coming from afar,
Ready to ride to the gods' gathering.
Skuld held the shield ; Skogull was another.
Grran, Hild, Gondul, and Geirskogull
Now named are the Noras of Odhinn,
Who as Valkyriur ride the earth over. 1
And again
Three troops of maidens, though one maid foremost rode.
Their horses shook themselves, and from their manes there fell
Dew in the deep dales and on the high trees hail.
In which, their origin from the clouds is very clearly
shown.
Altogether we have a fine imaginative picture drawn
from the study of the wind and its accompanying sights
and sounds. By day, when the white clouds are sailing
overhead like white swans, these are the Valkyriur
shedding dew down into the dales. By night the scream
of wild birds mingles with the screaming of the storm ;
and this again is the sound of Odhinn and the Valkyriur
hurrying to the battle field, scenting the slaughter, hearing
from afar the din of arms.
The Valkyriur were called, it has been said, ' swan
maidens.' Swan is, etymologically, any bird that can
swim ; and though of course the word was never applied
so promiscuously as that, it may have been used for sea
fowl, which are like the swan in two particulars first, in
being white; secondly, in swimming. We find the sea
called the swan's road (swan-rad) in Beowulf. So in our
imaginary picture of the Valkyriur we may include sea
birds such as those who woke the hill goddess Skadi in
her bed upon the stormy Northern shore.
The Valkyriur were not always goddesses. They
might be mortal maidens; and in fact there are many
Northern tales in which they play the part of heroines.
The story of Urvasi and Pururavas finds its closest counter-
> Voluspa, 24.
342 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
part among the Eddaic myths in the history of Voltmd
and his brothers and of the three Yalkyriur whom they
wedded. Volund is the Hephsestus of the North, the
great smith, a being well known to Saxon legend as
Weland or Wayland Smith. 1 ' There were,' says the Edda,
' three brothers, sons of a Finn king. One was called
Slagfid, another Egil, and the third Volund. They went
on snow-shoes and hunted wild beasts. They came to the
Wolf Dale, and made themselves a house where there is a
water called Ulfsjar (Wolf Sea). One morning early they
found beside the water three women sitting and spinning
flax. Near them lay their swan robes, for they were
Valkyriur. Two of them, Hladgud Svanhvit 2 and Hervor
Alvit, 3 were daughters to King Hlodver ; the third, Olrun, 4
a daughter of Kiar of Valland. The men took them home
with them to their dwelling ; Egil had Olrun, Slagvid
Svaiihvit, and Volund Alvit. These Valkyriur lived with
their husbands seven years ; but at the end of that time
they flew away, seeking battles, and did not return. Egil
went off on his snow-shoes to seek for Olrun, and Slagfid
went in search of Svanhvit ; but Volund abode in Wolf
Dale.' 5
This story bears in one or two points a resemblance to
the tales of bird maidens in other mythologies. The find-
ing of the three by the water in the morning 6 is like the
meeting of Pururavas and the Gandharvas in the Vedic
tale. The marriage of Volund and Alvit is comparable to
the marriage of Hephsestus and Aphrodite or the attempted
1 See Beowulf, 914, &c.
2 Swan-white.
3 All-white.
4 Alrun (Aurinia, Tac.), the typical name of a prophetess.
6 Volundarkvifta, beginning.
6 These three Valkyriur have some relationship to the three Norns or
fates (see Voluspa, 24, just quoted, where the Valkyriur are called Norns),
who spin like them, and, like the Valkyriur, generally know the future.
All are essentially stream goddesses ; the connection between the Norns
and Urd's fount is unmistakable. The Valkyriur became clouds, having
been previously streams (see Chap. II.)
BRYNIIILD A VALKYRIA. 343
enforcement of Athene. Both Aphrodite and Athene
belong to the order of cloud goddesses. 1
More interesting still and more beautiful were the
adventures of another Valkyr ia, the famous Brynhild.
Of these it would take too long to tell the whole. But the
beginning of her history is that in which she appears in
her character of swan maiden, and this part is thus
narrated in the Sigrdrifumal and in the Fafnismal. In
the former of these lays Brynhild appears under the name
of Sigrdrifa. 2 There were, it is said, two kings who had
made war. One was named Hjalmgunnar (War Helm), an
old warrior befriended by Odhinn. The other was Agnar,
whose cause no one had espoused. And we learn from
this story that the Yalkyriur were not always attached to
the train of Odhinn ; for Sigrdrifa ranged herself with
Agnar and caused him to gain the victory. In revenge
for this audacity Odhinn pricked the maiden with a sleep
thorn and sent her into a slumber on Hindarfjoll. The
sleep thorn, as we shall see in the next chapter, is a symbol
of death ; and therefore, as the myth was at first under-
stood, the meaning of this pricking doubtless was that
Odhinn had slain Brynhild. But in the form in which
we read the story this incident has been softened down.
Sigrdrifa only fell into a sound slumber. The ingenious
reader has perhaps already detected in this adventure the
germ of one of our most familiar nursery tales. Anon
came the prince to awake the maiden from her sleep.
He was the famous Sigurd, and it was the incident just
related which was the prelude to his first meeting with
Brynhild.
Sigurd had just returned from slaying the famous
serpent Fafnir, who guarded the treasure of gold. When
1 Aphrodite is not the wife of Hephaestus in the Iliad ; but that pro-
bably only shows that the poet followed another tradition, not that her
marriage with the* Smith was unknown then.
2 Victory-giver (lit. driver} = Gr. Nike. I hope at another time to have
an opportunity of tracing the relationship between the Greek Nike, the
Norse Valkyria, and the mediaeval conception of the Angel.
344 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
Fafnir had been killed, Sigurd took out his heart and
roasted and ate it. At once he became possessed of pro-
phetic gifts, and could understand the speech of birds.
Then where he sat he heard the eagles speaking overhead.
They told one another of his deeds, and they prophesied
his meeting with Brynhild, which was presently to come
about and cause his after dule. As he listened they told
one another of the green paths which the Fates were
making smooth to lead him to the house of Giuki, and of
the fair maiden who there awaited him. An eagle said l
A hall is on high, Hindarfjoll ;
With fire without 'tis all surrounded.
Mighty lords that palace builded
Of undimmed earth-flame.
And another eagle answered
I know that on the fell a war maiden sleeps.
Around her flickers the lindens' bane. 2
Thou mayst gaze at the helmed maiden.
She from the slaughter on Vingskomir rode.
Sigrdrifa's sleep none awaken may
Of the sons of princes, before the Norns appoint.
So Sigurd rode, as it was said, and found Brynhild
lying asleep on Hindarfjoll. He opened her corselet with
his sword Gram, and she awoke and raised herself, and
said
Who has slit my byrnie ?
How has my sleep been broken ?
Who has loosed from me the fallow bands ?
And he answered
Sigmund's son with Sigurd's sword
But now has severed thy war weeds.
Then Sigurd besought her to teach him wisdom, and
the rest of this poem is devoted to the runes and wise
1 Fafnismdl, 42-44. 2 I.e. fire.
GLOOM OF THE TEUTON'S CKEED. 345
sayings which Sigrdrifa was supposed to hare repeated.
Whence we see how large a part the Valkyriur had in the
wisdom and magic power which belonged to the Fates and
prophetesses.
These cloudy beings, remote as they may seem from
the things of nature and from the experience of life,
filled a considerable space in Teutonic thought. They
represented the ideal of womanhood to the rude chivalry
of the North. Their functions were twofold; they pre-
sided over battles, and foretold future events. Tacitus
and Csesar have described how the German wives used to
urge their husbands forward in the day of the fight, and
how, on more than one occasion, an army which had
actually turned to fly had been driven back against the
spears of their opponents by the exhortations or the jibes
of their womankind. The same writers have told us of
the prophetic powers ascribed to women by the Teutons
of an Aurinia (a name which appears in the Olrun of the
VolundarkvrSa), who is taken for a single individual by
Tacitus. The name is probably that of a whole class of
wise women. These Valkyriur had some influence upon
the Middle Age conceptions of angels, and a greater
influence (as in a future chapter we shall show) upon the
conception of witches.
The German gods are if I may make such a com-
parative less immortal than those of Greece and Rome.
I do not know that the latter were really expected to live
for ever, seeing that there was a constant lurking expec-
tation that the reign of Zeus would end as it had begun,
and make way for the restoration of the milder Kronos.
In the myth of Prometheus the notion is very. clearly set
forth. Nevertheless to the Greek gods are constantly
applied such phrases as aOdvaroi, immortal, ol asl ovrss, the
ever-living. So it is evident that the idea of the Olympians
dying in a body, though it was not altogether extinguished,
was pushed quite into the background. In the Norse creed
346 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
this was not the case. The gloomy outer world of the
Teuton was so large as contrasted with the narrow limits
of his home and homestead that for him life itself seemed
to be surrounded by a veil of darkness, and at the end of
every aveune of hope there seemed to stand an immovable
shadow. The general idea of life in its relation to death,
and of the known in its relation to the unknown, which
appears throughout the Teutonic beliefs, has never been
more beautifully expressed than by that saying of a thane
of the Saxon king Eadwine, at the time when Paulinus
came to preach the Gospel to the Northumbrians. ' This
life,' said he, 'is like the passage of a bird from the
darkness without into a lighted room, where you, King,
are seated at supper, while storms of rain and snow rage
abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and straight-
way out at another, is, while within, safe from the storm ;
but soon it vanishes into the darkness whence it came.' l
It was in the spirit of these words that the Norseman
saw gloom in the past and in the future ; the world had
sprung out of chaos, and into chaos and darkness it was
to sink again. There was to be an end of the .ZEsir and
of Asgard, a ' Gods' Doom ' (Ragnarok 2 ), when the ^Esir
and the giant race were to meet in mutually destructive
battle, and chaos should come again. We have seen how
Odhinn, who knew most about the future, was for ever on
the watch against the coming of the giants ; and how he
continually recruited his band of heroes. Of these more
than four hundred thousand would, it was said, go forth
to fight on the Last Day. 3
1 Beda, ii. 13. A saying often quoted, e.g., by Wordsworth in his Eccle-
siastical Sonnets.
2 The usual writing of this word in the Edda Snorra is Ragnarokr, i.e.
' Twilight of the Gods.' This is evidently, however, a corruption from an
earlier form, Ragnarok, < Doom of the Gods.' See Vigf usson and Cleasby's
Icelandic Dictionary^ s.v. <R6kr.' This change of the word is, in my eyes,
a witness to the antiquity of the belief in Ragnarok. All modern writers
have (naturally enough) followed the corrupted form of the word made use
of in the Edda Snorra.
3 In exact numbers 432,000 that is to say, 800 out of each of the 540
gates of Valholl, as is said in Grimnismal, 23
THE TEUTON'S WORLD. 347
Beside the duty of their keeping themselves armed and
exercised against the day of trial, it would seem that the
gods must ride every day to tbe Urdar fount beneath the
roots of Yggdrasill, to take counsel about the future, and
perhaps also about the present governance of the world.
They rode together along the rainbow Asbru, the JE sir's
bridge, as it is sometimes called, or otherwise Bifrost, the
trembling mile. 1
This, then, is the world of the Norseman. Asgard is
far away, hidden in the clouds, or to be caught sight of,
perhaps, between the clouds of sunset a city glittering
with bright gold, set upon a hill. Now and again, more-
over, men may see, bright-shining and trembling between
earth and heaven, the .ZEsir's bridge, the rainbow. This is
the Kinv&d or the Sirat 2 of the Northern world ; and, that
it may not be an easy ascent for mortals or for giants, fire
is mingled with the substance and burns along all its
length : and that is the red of the bow. 3 Bifrost is the
best of bridges, 4 and will remain until the Last Day ; but,
strong though it be, it will break in pieces what time the
sons of Muspell (the Fire), who have crossed the great river,
come riding over it. 5 At one end of the rainbow stands
Heimdal, the Memnon of Norse mythology, who, at the
approach of any danger, rouses the gods with his sounding
horn. 6 Bifrost at night may have been confounded with
the Milky Way ; 7 it was imagined almost conterminous
' Five hundred gates and forty more, I ween,
In Valholl are ;
Eight hundred heroes shall from each gate together go,
When they go thence the wolf to fight.'
1 But on the meaning of these words see Chap. VI.
2 See Chap. VI. * Edda Snorra, D. 15. 4 Grimnismal, 44.
5 Edda Suorra, D. 13. Lit. ' who have crossed the great rivers.' What
is meant is the great earth-girding river of which I have spoken so often.
6 Gjallar-Jiorni. This horn must originally, I think, have sounded at
sunrise ; while the sound itself is the thunder. Heimdal lives at the hori-
zon of morning. He himself is the morning home of the sun (Home Dale).
Whether the Gjallar-horni be itself the sun (like Baldur's Hriny-horni} I
leave the reader to determine as he pleases.
7 See Chap. VI.
348 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
with the span of heaven's arch, and must, like the other
Bridges of Death spoken of in the sixth chapter, have
been thought of as overbridging the Midgard Sea.
That mighty tide which was for the Greek a ' shadowy
sea,' a ' sea calamitous,' was not less terrible here in the
North. The Norseman was at home upon common seas,
but this was no earthly one. e Bold must he be,' says the
Edda, ( who strives to pass those waters.' l If anyone
should be journeying toward this Sea of Death, even while
he was still on Mannheimar (man's earth) he Would become
aware, I suppose, of entering a region which was misty and
ghost-like and dangerous.
The Teuton needed not suppose himself to have reached
the confines of the habitable world, even though he had
strayed far from his village community and the protection
of his friendly gods. If the more or less known recesses
of the forest had their terrors, fearf uller still to the fancy
must the region have been which lay quite out of ken,
farther than any band of explorers had ever reached.
Wherefore in the imaginary world of the Norseman the
scene even on this side the Sea of Death grew dim and
threatening ; a wintry land stretched before the wanderer's
steps. These regions of cold lay especially toward the east
and the north, the coldest quarters. To the eastward of
Midgard stood the Iron Wood (JarnviSr), a gloomy place
with leaves and trees of iron, where dullness reigned.
' Here sitteth the old one ' a witch, called the Iron Witch,
emblematic of death ' and reareth the wolfs fell kindred.' 2
These wolf- kin are a race of witches and were-wolves.
And now suppose the Iron Wood passed and the sea-
shore reached. We might call the leafless wood an
emblem of approaching winter; that is, of late autumn.
Beyond the sea is full winter, a land of perpetual ice and
snow, and of frosty fog hanging over the ice, with all the
magic and all the sense illusions which could have their
1 Edda Snorra, D. 8. 2 Voluspd, 32.
THE TEUTON'S WORLD. 349
birth in such a misty world. Here the sun never shone
when he was climbing heaven in the morning or at evening
returning earthward to rest, any more than he shone upon
the gloomy Cimmerians' land. If any light was here in
Jotunheim, it must come from Aurora Borealis, which shed
sometimes a fitful gleam. This northern light was in the
Eddaic stories imaged as a girdle of fire, a ' far-flickering
flame ' ! which surrounded Jotunheim, and served it as a
wall to keep men from venturing there. Jotunheim seems
sometimes as if it only existed in the night and could not
be visited by day ; it is as it were born and cradled in
gloom, having no part in the light of the sun. Wherefore
when a messenger is sent thither from Asgard we find him
speaking thus to the horse who is to carry him thither :
Dark it grows without. Time I deem it is
To fare over the misty ways.
We will both return, or that all-powerful Jo'tiin
Shall seize us both. 2
* Is it safe for us to venture further ? Scarcely, seeing we
are Ibut mortal. If we desire to journey into Jotunheimar
we must attach ourselves to the company of a god and go
with him thither. Thorr is the one who is continually
making these journeys, ( faring eastward,' as the Younger
Edda;has it, 'to fight trolls.' 3 While Odhiim stays in
Asgar'd and keeps guard against the giants, Thorr the
sort, like those children of adventure who sally forth on
. their viking- goings, carries the war into the enemies'
country.
The following is a history typical of these journeyings
\ of Thorr to Jotunheimar :
/ The god upon this occasion set out with the intention
* of discovering a certain giant, tltgarSloki, who was
/ especially powerful and especially the enemy of the gods.
In truth he was a sort of king of the under world, and
>
1 .Fiolsvinn^mal. 2 For Skirnis, 10. 3 Edda Snorra, D. 42.
350 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
Thorr's journey to his hall is comparable to the descent of
Heracles to the realm of Hades. 1 After some travel the
god arrived at the shore of a wide and deep sea. On the
sea stood the bark of the ferryman, the Northern Charon,
Harbarft by name.
Steer hitherward thy hark : I will show thee the strand.
But who owns the skiff that by the shore thou rowest ? 2
Thorr was, on this occasion, travelling with Loki and
two mortals, his servants, called Thialfi and Boska. They
crossed the wide deep sea, and entered a boundless forest.
No sooner had Thorr and his comrades thus got well into
Jotunheim than they began to fall victims to its spells
and enchantments ; and the glamour increased the farther
they went, till at last their adventure ended only in
disastrous defeat. They came to what they took for a
hall, with wide entrance, having one small chamber at the
side ; and while resting they were disturbed by a noise
like an earthquake, which made all but Thorr run into
the chamber to hide themselves. In the morning an
immense man, who had been sleeping on the ground hard
by, and whose snoring it was that had so frightened all,
arose, and presently lifted up that which they had fancied
was a hall, and which now proved to be his glove. Then
Thorr and his companions and the giant, who was named
Skrymir, continued their journey together. But in the
1 This, by the way, is the only one among Herakles' labours which finds
a prominent place in Homer.
2 HarbarSslioiS, 7. I have combined this incident with the story of the
Younger Edda, because I have no doubt that the Harbarft of the Har-
bar<ssfio'5 is really the ferryman across the wide and deep sea which Thorr
crossed on his way to tltgarSloki (Edda Snorra, D. 45). This ferryman
will not bear the weight of living men in his boat. This is why Harbarfc
refuses Thorr, and why the ferryman in the curious fragment the Sinfjotlalok
refuses to carry Sigmund. The two instances are exactly parallel. Thorr,
it is to be noticed, generally, in these matters of crossing the Sea of Death
or of going over the Bridge of Souls, shares the disabilities of mortals.
The twenty -ninth verse of the Gfrimniamdl is usually explained as meaning 1
that Thorr may not cross As-bru.
THORR'S FARINGS TO JOTUNHEIM. 351
night Thorr, thinking to kill Skr^mir, hurled against the
giant's head his death-dealing hammer, Mjolnir, the force
of which none, it was thought, could resist. Yet, behold,
Skr^mir only asked if a leaf had fallen upon him as he
slept. A second time the god raised his hammer, and
smote the giant with such force that he could see the
weapon sticking in his forehead. Thereupon Skr^mir
awoke and said, ' What is it ? Did an acorn fall upon my
head? How is it with you, Thorr?' Thorr stept quickly
back and answered that he had just awoken, and added
that it was midnight and there were still many hours for
sleep. Presently he struck a third time, with such force
that the hammer sank into the giant's cheek up to the
handle. Then Skr^mir rose up and stroked his cheek,
saying, ' Are there birds in this tree ? It seems to me as
if one of them had sent some moss down on my face.'
Anon Thorr and his companions came to the city of
the giant t^tgar^loki, in whose hall, and among the
company of giants, feats of strength were performed, to
match the new comers against the men of that place.
First Loki vaunted his skill in eating, and was matched
against Logi (Fire). A trough was placed between them,
and, after each had seemed to eat voraciously, they met
just in the middle. But it was found that Loki had eaten
the flesh only ; whereas Logi had devoured the bones and
the wood of the trough as well. Then, again, Thialfi
stood to run a race with anyone, and was set to try
his speed against Hug (Thought), who, in three courses,
vanquished him utterly. And now the turn came to
Thorr. First he was challenged to drain a horn,, ' which,'
said tTtgaroloki, ( a strong man can finish in a draught,
but the weakest can empty in three.' Thorr made three
pulls at the beaker, but at the end of the third had
scarcely laid bare more than the brim. The next trial
was to raise a cat from the ground. ' We have a very
trifling game here,' said the giant, 'in which we exercise
none but children. It consists in merely lifting my cat
352 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
from the ground ; nor should I have dared to mention it
to thee, Thorr, but that I have already seen thou art not
the man we took thee for.' As he finished speaking a
large grey cat leapt upon the floor. Thorr advanced and
laid his hand beneath the cat's belly, and did his best to
lift him from the ground; but he bent his back, and,
despite all Thorr 's exertions, had but one foot raised up ;
and when Thorr saw this he made no further trial.
( The trial,' said the giant, ' has turned out as I ex-
pected. The cat is biggish, and Thorr is short and small
beside our men.' Then spake Thorr : ' Small as ye call
me, let anyone come near and wrestle with me now I am
in wrath.' tTtgardhloki looked round at the benches and
answered, f I see no man in here who would not esteem it
child's play to wrestle with thee. But I bethink me,' he
continued, there is the old woman now calling me, my
nurse Elli (Age). With her let Thorr wrestle if he will.'
Thereupon came an old dame into the hall, and to her
tTtgardhloki signified that she was to match herself against
Thorr. We will not lengthen out the tale. The result of
the contest was that the harder Thorr strove the firmer
she stood. And now the old crone began to make her set
at Thorr. He had one foot loosened, and a still harder
struggle followed ; but it did not last long, for Thorr was
brought down on one knee. . . .
The next morning, at daybreak, Thorr arose with his
following ; they dressed and prepared to go their ways.
Then came tTtgardhloki and had a meal set before them,
in which was no lack of good fare to eat and to drink.
And when they had done their meal they took their road
homewards. tTtgardhloki accompanied them to the outside
of the town ; and, at parting, he asked Thorr whether he
was satisfied with his journey, and if he had found any-
one more mighty than himself. Thorr could not deny
that the event had been little to his honour. ' And well I
know,' he said, 'that you will hold me for a very in-
significant fellow, at which I am ill pleased.' Then spoke
THOKE'S TARINGS TO JOTUNHEIM. 353
frtgardhloki : ' I will tell thee the truth now that I have
got thee again outside our city, into which, so long as I
live and bear rule there, thou shalt never enter again ;
and I trow that thou never shouldst have entered it had I
known thee to be possessed of such great strength. I
deceived thee by my illusions ; for the first time I
saw thee was in the wood ; me it was thou mettest there.
Three blows thou struckest with thy hammer ; the first,
the lightest, would have been enough to bring death
had it reached me. Thou sawest by my hall a rocky
mountain, and in it three square valleys, of which one
was the deepest. These were the marks of thy hammer.
It was the mountain which I placed in the way of thy
blow; but thou didst not discover it. And it was the
same in the contests in which ye measured yourselves
against my people. The first was that in which Loki
had a share. He was right hungry, and ate well. But
he whom we called Logi was the fire itself, and he
devoured the flesh and bowl alike. When Thialfi ran
a race with another, that was my thought, and it was not
to be looked for that Thialfi should match him in speed.
When thou drankest out of the horn, and it seemed to
thee so difficult to empty, a wonder was seen which I
should not have deemed possible. The other end of the
horn stretched out to the sea: that thou didst not
perceive ; but when thou comest to the shore thou mayest
see what a drain thou hast made from ifc. And that shall
men call the ebb.' He continued, 'Not less wonderful
and mighty a feat didst thou when thou wast at lifting
of the cat ; and, to speak sooth, we were all in a fright
when we saw that thou hadst raised one paw from the
ground. For a cat it was not, as it seemed to thee. It
was the Midgard worm, who lies encircling all lands;
and when thou didst this he had scarce length enough
left to keep head and tail together on the earth; for
thou stretchedst him up so high that almost thou reachedst
heaven. A great wonder it was at the wrestling bout
A A
354 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
which them hadst with Elli ; but no one was nor shall be
whom, how long soever he live, Elli will not reach and
Age not bring to earth. Now that we are at parting thou
hast the truth ; and for both of us it were better that thou
come not here again. For again I shall defend my castle
with my deceptions, and thy might will avail nothing
against me.' When Thorr heard these words he seized
his hammer and raised it on high ; but when he would
have struck he could see tJtgardhloki nowhere. He turned
toward the city, and was for destroying it ; but he saw a
wide and beautiful plain before him, and no city.
Thus is the veil lifted for us for a moment, so that we
may see into Giant Land. The picture held up before us
is not quite of the making of primitive belief. As we
shall see in another chapter, there was, in this story of
Thorr's visit to tTtgardhloki, once a serious meaning, which
has been here lost sight of; and the whole history is
converted into something like a fairy tale. The myths of
Scandinavia were beginning to seem like fairy tales in the
thirteenth century which was the time at which Snorri
Sturlason composed his Edda ; and while their old
substance is retained in this compilation of legends they
are dressed up in a new way and in a new spirit. Still
the picture of Giant Land which we have been looking at
is one which had been handed on from ancient days.
This essential characteristic still clings to the place ; it is
.a land of mystery and magic.
The full moon near its setting, gleaming through an
icy fog, this is the giant Skr^mir, 1 or the mountain which
Thorr took for him. In its face we still see the three deep
gashes which Mjolnir once made. How completely do all
1 I have little doubt that/the incident of the three gashes or valleys is
meant to refer to the face of the moon. Such a representation would be
quite in the spirit of mythology. It would be in the spirit of mythology
too that Skrymir should have been fir^t himself the moon, and that after-
wards in this story the moon should be the mountain which was mistaken
for him. Skrymir is thus as the full moon a relation of the Gorgon. The
name Skryndr means simply a monster (cf. skrimsl).
THOKR'S FARINGS TO JOTUNHEIM. 355
Nature's forces seem upou the side of the giant race fire,
the sea, Jormungandr, who id a personification of the sea ! .
Thorr is not always so unsuccessful as he was in
this adventure. Indeed, we may fairly say that he can
conquer all giants save Iltgardliloki. And why lie cannot
overcome him will appear in the next chapter. Here is
a more successful expedition.
In revenge for that disastrous journey to tTtgardhloki,
so the Younger Edda tells us, 1 Thorr once more sallied
forth from Midgard, and came, at dusk, to the dwelling of
the giant H^mir, and persuaded that giant to go out a-
fishing with him. For bait he wrung off the head of a
gigantic bull, and this he fixed upon a string, and let
down the line. The object of- his fishing was the great
Earth Serpent. Jormungandr saw the bait and took it,
so that the hook became firmly fixed in his jaw. Thorr
began to draw up the prize, while Jormungandr struggled
so violently that he all but upset the boat. And now
Thorr exerted .all his divine strength, and pulled so hard
that his feet went through the boat and reached the
bottom of the sea. Then the Sea Serpent lifted up his
head out of the water and spouted venom at Thorr.
Thorr now raised his mallet to strike, and would, perhaps,
have slain the enemy, had not H^mir, who grew afeard,
cut the line and let the serpent sink again into the
water.
Or take this story a rather better one from the
Elder Edda. 2 The giant Thrymr once stole the hammer
of Thorr, and Loki was sent to find where he had hidden
it. It had been buried deep in the ground, and Thrymr
would restore it only on condition that the ^Esir should
give him the beautiful Freyja to wife. But at such a
1 D. 48.
2 prymskvifta, or Hamarsheimt. prymr is a being of the same nature
as Thorr, as his name means Thunder. Concerning the double character
frequently given to a natural object see p. 130. Thrymr may, perhaps, be
an older thunder god than Thorr.
A A 2
356 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
proposal the goddess waxed wroth, and would in no wise
consent to it. So the gods took counsel, and, by the
advice of Heimdalr, one of the -ZEsir, they devised a plan
by which the giant could be cheated. The thunder god
dressed himself in Freyja's weeds, he adorned himself
with her necklace the famed Brisinga necklace- -he let
from his side keys rattle, and set a comely coif upon his
head. 1 Then he went to Jotunheim as though he were
the bride ; Loki went with him as his serving maid. The
god could scarcely avoid raising some suspicions by his
unwomanly behaviour; he alone devoured an ox, eight
salmon, and all the sweetmeats women love, and he drank
three salds of mead. Thrymr exclaimed with wonder 2
* Who ever a bride saw sup so greedily ?
Never a bride saw I sup so greedily,
Nor a maid drink such measures of mead.'
Sat the all-cunning serving maid by,
Ready her answer to the giant to give.
* Nought has Freyja eaten for eight nights,
So eager was she for Jotunheim.'
'Neath the linen hood he looked, a kiss craving ;
But sprang back in terror across the hall.
' How fearfully flaming are Freyja's eyes !
Their glance burneth like a brand ! '
There sat the all-cunning serving maid by,
Beady with words the giant to answer.
1 For eight nights she did not of sleep enjoy,
So eager was she for Jotunheim.'
In stepped the giant's fearful sister ;
For a bridejp gift she dared to ask.
' Give me from thy hand red rings,
If thou wilt gain my love,
My love and favour.'
i Then said Heimdalr, of jEsir the brightest,
' Woman's weeds on Thorr let us lay ;
Let by his side keys rattle ;
And with a comely coif his head adorn.' prymskv. 16, 17.
* rymskv. 25 sqq.
THE GIANT RACE. 357
Then spake Thrymr, the giants' prince :
* The hammer bear in, the bride to consecrate ;
Lay Mjolnir on the maiden's knee
And unite us mutually in marriage bonds/
Laughed Hldrrifti's l heart in his breast
When the fierce-hearted his hammer knew.
Thrymr first slew be, the thursar's lord,
And the race of jotuns all destroyed.
He slew the ancient jotun sister,
Who for a bride gift had dared to ask ;
Hard blows she got instead of skillings,
And the hammer's weight in place of rings.
Finally, in another poem of the Elder Edda, we find
Thorr engaging Alvis (All- wise), of the race of the thursar, 2
in a conversation upon the names which different natural
objects bear among men, among gods (^Esir and Vanir),
among giants, and among elvos, so that he guilefully keeps
him above the earth until after sunrise, where it is not
possible for a dwarf or a jotun to be and live. So Alvis
bursts asunder. 3
These stories are somewhat childish, and do not bear
all the characteristics of early belief; but we can look
through the outer covering to something more serious
within. How clearly, for instance, in this last story are
Alvis and his fellows shown to be beings of darkness, and
therefore their land to be a land of gloom. This aspect of
Jotunheim and of the giant race would be more apparent
if we were further to take into consideration all the stories
which connect Jotunheim with the Land of Shades. But
this is the subject for another chapter.
Let it suffice us in this to have gained some picture
of the actual world of the Teuton. We will forbear, as
yet, to pry into his land of death ; and we will forbear,
1 Thorr's.
2 Giant does not translate thurs. Most of the thursar were giants, as
opposed to the dvergar, dwarfs ; but this Alvis is spoken of as a dwarf.
8 Alvissmal.
358 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
likewise, to pry into the Future of the Teuton's world.
What we have been looking at hitherto has been the pre-
sent world, the actual living nature, in the light in which
the German saw it from beneath the dark shadow of his
forest. Is not this view likely to have had its influence
upon his future creed, even at a time when he had nomi-
nally put off Odhinn (put off the 6 old man,' one-eyed,
white-bearded, with his cap of concealment) and put on
Christ? In every feature of his belief, old or new, is
reflected the life of the mark its gloom, its wind, its
uncertainty concerning all beyond. In every tone which
speaks his creed we hear the echo of the words of the
thane comparing to the sparrow flying in for a moment
from the storm the brief life of man. Life was to the
Teuton in very truth the 'meeting-place between two
eternities,' l both unknown.
We have, fortunately for ourselves, the means of testing
further the creed of the Teuton race. We can set beside
the stories of the Edda, stories professedly heathen
indeed, but breathed upon and partly withered by the
breath of unbelief, born at a late time when the Christian
spirit had been too long familiar to the world to allow
the heathen doctrines to be any longer seriously held,
another story of a much earlier date, which, though pro-
fessedly Christian in tone, has about it far more of the
ancient spirit of Teutonism. The Eddas give us more of
the actual facts of Northern belief ; but Beowulf gives us
the spirit of the belief. This poem, in the form in which
it now exists, belongs to the eighth century. But the tale
was doubtless brought, in some shape or other, to our shores
by early invaders from Jutland or Denmark, or from the
south of Sweden. It has no direct connection with the
English race ; it recounts the deeds of a hero of Gothland,
in South Sweden, and of a King of Denmark. Doubtless
it is only one of many such poems, which may have been
1 Carlyle.
BEOWULF. 359
sung by gleemen in the brilliant court of Offa, or even
have cheered the sad heart of Eadwine when he ate an
exile's food at the board of King Eedwald. Other poems
would tell of Hengist and" Horsa, or of .ZElli and Cissa,
and such-like heroes, more genuinely English.
Even in Beowulf, a Christian poem, written for men
who were not unacquainted with the Latin civilisation of
their times, we must make allowance for the changed
condition of men's lives between the old prehistoric
German days and these more modern Christian ones.
The fear of solitude,, or perhaps I had better say the sense
of solitude, which had become ingrained in the Teuton
inind by centuries of forest life, did not at once fade away
when the Germans had advanced a little in civilisation ;
probably at the first it increased somewhat. There was
in old days a holiness as well as a terror about the
woody groves, for Odhinn and his fellow gods inhabited
there ; only round the extreme outskirts of the mark (the
Teuton's world) hovered the giants and evil spirits. And
this notion was expressed in the Norse religion by placing
the jotuns far away beyond the Midgard Sea. But when
the Msir were expelled by Christianity and the sacred
groves cut down ; when the old village Enclosure was re-
placed by the walled Town ; l when men no longer dwelt
differ eti ac diver si, but congregated in strong places then
an added horror attached to the outlands, to the moors
and fells, to their drear expanses, their dark valleys and
their misty, stagnant pools.
The outland men, the dwellers on the heaths (heathens 2 ),
were henceforward regarded as the worshippers of fiends ;
Odhinn was driven forth and became the Wild Huntsman,
or else Satan himself, the Prince of the Air. 3 The giants
1 The different meanings of the German Zaun and English town, both
etymologically the same, are very expressive of the change from German to
Englishlife, as experienced by our forefathers.
2 The analogy is shown still more strongly in the German Heide.
8 See Chap. X. The 'Prince of the Air,' which is one of the Biblical
names for Satan, was that most often made use of in Middle Age descrip-
360 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
were transformed into wild woodmen, 1 or became the man-
eating ogres of our nursery stories. This is the sort of
world described to us in the poem of Beowulf. For here
we have not to do with a mere nursery or popular tale, but
with a stern reality. One needs to read Beowulf through
to see how thoroughly realised is the horror which hangs
over the solitudes of the world. But, to give some idea of
this, let the following short summary of the earlier part of
the poem suffice us.
The poem of Beowulf after some genealogical stuff
such as these bards, but not we, delight in opens with
a certain Hrothgar, King of the Danes, who has built
him a house so famous a palace that the report of it has
gone into all lands. It is called Heort, which is Hart.
We hear of gold plates adorning it. These were days
when the plunder to be got from the Eomans of civilised
lands was almost unlimited, and we have proof that the
barbarians converted the wealth which they acquired to
the coarsest uses ; so the story of a house adorned with
gold plates may not be altogether fabulous. Hrothgar
had prepared Heort for himself and his thanes ; and at
night in the ' beer hall ' they held high revel, and listened
to the gleeman's song, which told the stories of the gods'
doings in ancient days, and ' how the All-powerful had
framed the earth plain in its beauty, which the water
girds round, and set in pride of victory the sun and moon
as beacons to light the dwellers on land.' But far away
from all this joy and revelry, deep in the stagnant pools,
or among the windy moors, dwelt a terrible and super-
natural being, named Grendel. He brooked not to hear
what was going on in the house of Hrothgar, for he was
the foe of men.
tions of the Devil. It is evidently very appropriate to a wind god who has
turned fiend.
1 The Waldmwnn or Wilde Mann was another popular character of
mediaeval popular lore. We see him upon the arms of Brunswick.
GRENDEL. 361
Grueful and grim this stranger called Grendel,
This haunter of marshes, holder of moors.
In the Fifel-race' dwelling, the fen and the fastness,
The wretched one guarded his home for awhile ;
Since by the Creator his doom had been spoken.
Thence he departed at coming of nightfall
To visit the house-place and see how the Ring Danes
After their beer bout had ordered it.
On the floor found he of ethelings a throng
Full-feasted and sleeping. Care heeded they never,
No darkness of soul nor sorrow of men.
Grim now and greedy, the fiend was soon ready ;
Savage and fierce, from sleep up he snatched then
Of those thanes thirty, and thence eft departed.
From that time Grendel waged wicked war against
Hrothgar and all his house. It was the old war of dark-
ness against light the darkness of rnisty moors against
the civilisation of those who dwelt in houses ; of heathens
only that this word got afterwards a special significance
against town men. Or it was the war of the gods of
German mythology against the dwellers- in that savage
far-off land across the ocean, Jotunheim. Here the race
of monsters, the Fifel Brood, seemed like to gain the vic-
tory. Hrothgar himself indeed, as the Lord's anointed,
Grendel could not touch; but the king and his men were
driven, out of Heort, which, in place of its song and feast-
ing, was given up to darkness and to Grendel. Nor would
this monster accept any truce with the Danes : but still
like a death shadow he roamed over the fens, and plotted
against the lives of warriors and youths.
The report of this was brought to Beowulf, the brother
of Higelac, king of the Geatas, or Goths. The heroes of
these stories are rarely at the outset kings themselves, for
it was the recognised duty of kings to stay at home among
their own peoples ; but the hero, true precursor of the
knight errant, must first wander abroad in search of ad-
ventures ; and very often he won a kingdom by his sword.
3C2 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
This was both the theory and practice of the Norsemen
and the more warlike among the Germans. They could
not all, it is true, find monsters and dragons to slay, but
as a substitute they contented themselves with going on
viking that is to say, upon a pirate voyage. Beowulf,
who had the fortune to live in quite prehistoric days,
when ' eotens, elves, orkens, and such giants ' (as Grendel)
were still on earth, needed only to sail from Gothland to
Denmark. So he made ready a good ship, and set out
upon the ' swan's path ' the sea to seek the good King
Hrothgar. The Scylding's (Hrothgar's) warder, who kept
the cliff, saw from the wall the gleam of arms upon the
vessel's bulwarks, and rode down to the sea to meet the
warriors ere they landed, brandishing his spear in his
hand. 'What armour-bearing men are ye, in byrnies
clad, who thus come with your foaming keel over the
water-ways, over the sea-deeps hither ? There at Land's
End have I ever held seaward, that no foes might come
with ship array to do us hurt/ he cried. And he was
answered, * We are of race Goths, Higelac's hearth friends.
We have come in friendship to seek thy lord and to de-
fend him. For soothly we have heard say that among the
Scyldings some wretch, I know not who, in the dark soweth
with terror unknown malice and harm and havoc. And
I may, in the depth of rny mind, give Hrothgar counsel
how he should in wisdom overcome the foe.'
Then Beowulf was allowed to proceed. He rode into
the town ; the men wondered at his kingly bearing, and
the greatness of his followers, and Hrothgar sent to ask
why he came, whether in peace or war. Great joy pre-
vailed in Hrothgar's house when Beowulf disclosed his
intention of himself meeting the foe face to face, and once
more the sound of feasting was heard in the deserted
palace ; the Queen Waltheow bare round the drinking cup
to the hero, and pledged him. At last night fell.
After that darkening night over all,
Men's shadow-covering, advancing came,
BEOWULF'S FIGHT WITH GKENDEL. 363
and Hrothgar knew the signal for retiring from the
haunted place, which was thus left to the Goths and
their leader. As for Beowulf, he had determined that he
would trust only to his own strength of arm, not to byrnie
or falchion indeed, Grendel was impervious to weapons
and he prepared for the death struggle in a speech just in
the character of all the poetry of this epoch. ' I ween
that he intends, should he prevail, to devour in safety the
people of the Goths, as he has often done the Danes.
Thou wilt have no need to bury me, for if I get my death
he will have eaten me all dashed with blood : he will bear
away my gory corpse ; he will taste me, the night stalker
will devour me without mercy : he will place my burial
mound upon the heath : thou wilt have no thought of
burning my body. Send to Higelac, if I fall, that best
of mail shirts which guards my breast, the choicest of
doublets ; 'tis Hrsedla's bequest and Weland's work.'
The finest passages, those wherein the poet seems
touched by the strongest inspiration, are always they
which paint the gloom and horror resting over Grendel
and all his actions: showing how the darkness and
mystery of the world about them laid hold on the imagina-
tions of these Northern seers. The author of Beowulf
never tires of presenting and re-presenting the image of
this shadowy being and of the places wherein he dwells.
So here, so soon as night has come, the note of revelry is
changed to one of grim expectation or of horror.
Then from the moor came, the misty hills under,
Grendel stalking ; God's anger he bare ;
Meant the dread enemy some one of man's kin
Here to entangle within the high hall.
He went 'neath the welkin along, till the guest house,
Man's golden seat, he recognised well,
With the plates that adorned it. Not now for the first time
Sought the destroyer Hrothgar's homestead ;
Yet never in life save now, after nor earlier,
Hardier men among hall thanes he found.
To the house door then the monster came prowling,
364 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
The house reft of joys ; soon flew the door wide
And wrought iron burst 'neath the strength of his hand.
Sleeping together full many a warrior,
Peacefully sleeping upon the hall floor,
Beheld he the kinsmen : his heart laughed within him,
For the foul fiend was minded before break of day
The soul from the body of each one to sever,
And hope of full feasting on his spirit there fell.
Then straightway asleep he seized one of the warriors,
Bit deep in his body and drank of his blood,
And the flesh tore in fragments, in small morsels swallowed,
Till all was devoured to the feet and the hands.
Then stepping up nearer, he took at his resting
The mighty-souled warrior, Beowulf, there :
But he stretching forward, on his elbow half rising,
Seized all on a sudden the ill-minded foe.
Full soon then discovered this keeper of crimes
He never had met in the mid-earth's wide regions
Among strangers a hero so strong in his hand-gripe.
And now he is minded to flee to his cavern
To seek out his devil's crew. . . .
.... But Higelac's kinsman
Remembered his evening speech : up he stood
And tightened his clutch. . . .
The liall echoed with the shrieks of the wretch. So
fiercely they strove that it was a wonder the house did
not fall, though it was held firm with iron bands. Over
the North Danes crept a ghastly horror when they heard
the cries of this hell's captive, and many of Beowulf's
earls drew their swords, but no steel had power over
Grendel's life. And still the Goth held his enemy by the
hand, tearing his arm : at last the sinews started in his
shoulder, which opened a gaping wound ; the flesh burst.
To Beowulf now was the fight's fury given.
Death-sick flies Grendel beneath the fen-banks,
Seeking his joyless home ; well must he know
That of his life's days the tale is o'ertold.
GKENDEL'S DEATH. 365
What were the rejoicings among the Ring Danes and
in the house of Hrothgar we may partly picture. ' I have
been told/ says the bard, 'that on the morrow many a
warrior came from far and near to that gift hall. The
clan-heads came over wide ways to see that wonder the
traces which the enemy had left behind. GrendeFs death
seemed not doubtful to any who saw the track of the
miserable one, and how heavy-hearted, conquered, death-
doomed, banished, he bare his death traces to the Nicker's
Mere. There the water bubbled wtth blood, the waves
surged and mingled with the hot clotted gore after the
outcast had rendered up his life, his heathen soul, in the
fenny haunt. Joyfully and proudly old and young turned
back from the pool and rode home. They sang the
praises of Beowulf and of their good king Hrothgar. At
times the young men ran* races on their well-trained
steeds ; at another time some old bard would sing either
in Beowulf's honour, or of deeds of prowess done long ago,
of Sigmund the Wselsing, and how the ring hoard was
guarded by the wondrous worm.
6 Hrothgar went into the hall, and, standing on the dais,
surveyed the vaulted roof adorned with gold, where hung
Grendel's hand. Then he spake : " For this sight to the
Almighty thanks be given : ever can God, the Shield of
Honour, work wonder after wonder. Not long ago I
never guessed that though my best of houses stood stained
with gore any revenge would be mine. Now this hero
hath, through God's grace, done a deed which with all our
wisdom we could not contrive. Henceforward, Beowulf,
best of men, I will cherish thee in my heart like a son.
Nor shalt thou have any want which it is in my power to
satisfy. For to deeds of less prowess I have given great
rewards and honour at my hearth." Then was Heort
cleansed and adorned once more by human hands, and
many men and women set to work upon the guest hall.
For the bright place was shaken in the wall and door ;
only the roof had remained uninjured. Now wonders of
366 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
gold-varied webs shone along the walls. And the son of
Healfdene gave to Beowulf a golden banner as a sign of
victory, and a sword of great price was borne to the hero,
.... a helmet, and eight steeds, on one of which lay a
saddle of cunning work. And beside, the lord of warriors
(Hrothgar) gave a token to each of those who had travelled
the sea road with Beowulf.'
All, however, was not ended with Grendel's race. It
was soon seen that an avenger had survived the foe
Grendel's mother. She came as her son had been wont to
come, when the thanes slumbered after their beer-drinking.
Wrathful and ravenous, she burst into Heort, where the
Ring Danes lay asleep. There was soon a terror among
them, but less than before. They seized their armour and
sharp swords, but she being discovered hastened to get
back. She hurried back to her pool one of the ethelings,
the best beloved of Hrothgar's warriors. Beowulf was not
there, for another dwelling had been assigned to him.
The witch took the well-known hand of Grendel, all bloody
as it was. Hrothgar was in a fierce mood when he heard
that his chief thane was slain, and quickly was Beowulf
sent for. Beowulf greeted the aged king, who spoke :
' Ask not of my welfare. Sorrow is renewed for the Danes
people. j33schere is dead, who knew my secrets, my
counsellor, my close comrade when we guarded our heads
in battle, in the crush of hosts. A wandering fiend has
been his undoer here in Heort. I know not whether the
ghoul has returned again. She has avenged the quarrel
in which thou slewest Grendel the other night.' And
he, described the two fiends and the place where they
dwelt.
A father they know not. nor if among ghosts
Any spirit before was created. And secret
The land they inhabit, dark wolf-haunted ways
Of the windy hill-side by the treacherous tarn,
Or where covered up in its mist the hill stream
Downward flows.
FIGHT WITH THE MOTHER OF GBENDEL. 367
To this pool Beowulf now went, and the king and
many warriors with him. The track of the destroyer was
soon found ; through forest glades and across the gloomy
moor they followed it ; into deep gorges, by steep head-
lands, led on the strait and lonely road, by the homes of
the nickers. Then Hrothgar went forward, accompanied
by a few, until they came to a joyless wood where trees
leaned over the hoar rock, and beneath stood water troubled
and bloody. Great was their grief when near it they
found the head of .ZEschere. The well bubbled red : their
horns sounded a funeral strain. Along this tank's edge
they saw many creatures of the worm kind, sea dragons
creeping along the deep, and nickers lying in the ness.
Beowulf did on him his warrior's weeds, a twisted mail-
shirt, and helmet begirt with many rings, and his biting
sword, which was named Hrunting. Then he plunged in,
and the whelming waters passed over his head. It was
some time ere he could discern what lay at the bottom,
but soon the old hag, who for fifty years had had her
home there, discovered that some one from the world
above was exploring the strange abode. She grappled
with Beowulf, seizing him in her devilish grip, but she did
not hurt him by that, for the mail shirt protected his body
against her hateful fingers ; next she dragged the Ring
Prince into her den, yet could he not, despite his rage,
wield his sword. At last he perceived he was in a hall,
where the water could not harm him nor the fatal embrace
of the witch, and by the light of a distant fire he saw the
old were- wolf. He struck a ringing blow upon her head,
but the steel would not hurt her. Then the warrior, the
Goths' lord, threw away his weapon and seized Grendel's
mother, and shook her so that she sank down. But she,
paying him back, griped his hand, and he, over-reaching
himself, likewise fell down. Grendel's mother leaped
upon him and drew a knife, seeking to find a way under
his corselet, but that held firm, or he would have perished.
At last Beowulf saw among the rubbish a victorious
368 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
blade, an old sword of giant days, with, keenest edge.
The Scylding's champion seized the hilt, and despairing of
his life he drew the blade and struck fiercely at her neck.
It broke the bone-joints and passed through her body.
She sank upon the floor. And he, rejoicing in his deed,
sprang up ; a light stole down into the water as when the
lamp of heaven mildly shines, and he saw throughout the
house. Then he perceived Grendel's hated body lying there,
and swinging his sword around Beowulf cut off his head.
When the wise men, who with Hrothgar were watching
the pool from above, saw the water all dabbled and stained
with blood, they made no doubt but that the old she-wolf
had destroyed the noble earl. Then came on noon-day, and
the Scyldings grew sick of heart; the king of men turned
to go homeward ; but still they gazed upon the lake,
longing for their lord to appear. And down below, behold !
in the hot blood of the giant all the sword had melted
away, like ice when the Father (He who hath power over
times and seasons the true God) looseneth the bond of
frost and unwindeth the ropes which bind the waves.
Then Beowulf dived up through the water : soon he was
at the surface. And when Grendel died, the turbid waves,
the vast and gloomy tracts, grew calm and bright.
So, too, after her centuries of gloom, the mild light of
Christianity shone down into the deep waters of German
thought, and in lime their tracts too grew calm and bright.
But this was not yet. We have still, in another chapter,
to try and see something of how the dark shadow which,
was an inheritance of so many ages hung over the creed
of mediaeval Christendom. By virtue of this inheritance
mediaeval Catholicism entered into the line of descent from,
the creeds of heathen Germany.
2. The Gods of the Homestead.
We have gained some insight into one side of Teutonic
belief; and that the most important side. We have been
THE CEEED OF FAEM AND HOMESTEAD.
standing with the warrior, who had his home in the mark
and who spent his time in hunting there. His world and
his gods are those who lie beyond the familiar ground of
the village farm ; still farther away, as the half-known
changes into the wholly strange, awe and gloom merge
into horror and darkness, and we pass from the homes of
the warlike Odhinn, Thorr, and Tyr to hateful Jotun-
heim. The joys of Odhinn's heaven were for the war-
rior. He only who had died by the sword could gain
entrance there. Every morning the heroes of Valholl rode
out to the field and fought till they had hewn each
other in pieces ; but at even they were whole again, and
they spent the night over their cups of mead. This per-
petual fighting was, as we know, a preparation for
Kagnarok.
A paradise such as this would ill have suited quiet folk :
and even among the Germans there were some of these
There was a simpler sort of religion which belonged to
those who in after years became the peasantry. 1 They
were averse from war, but fond of rustic life and its quiet
pleasures. There must always be in the midst of a society,
however warlike, a large class of those who have no taste
for the favourite pursuit, who have no desire for adventure
nor for change of home. These are the true children of
the soil. We trace their influence in every creed ; and
their religion is the faith of worshippers to whom no mere
change of creed is of vital importance. They have their
poetry of nature, which asks no aid from anxious thought
and aspiration. Whatever others may discover of the
secrets of life, they can find out this at least, that there
are still cakes and ale to be met with there, and open
sunny meadows, and grasses and flowers, and silvery streams,
and soft shy wood creatures, and fishes and innumerable
1 The old Germans had not precisely slaves after the Roman fashion,
but they had serfs, who cultivated the soil for them (Tac. Germ. e. 25,
and Guizot, Cours, &c., Hist, de France, i. p. 265). These serfs may have
been originally Slavonic by blood (slav = slave), but they spoke German,
and made up the lower population of the Germans.
B B
370 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
birds. For them, as the true bard of all this craft l in old
days said, < for them earth yields her increase ; for them
the oaks hold in their summits acorns and in their mid-
most branches bees. The flocks bear for them their fleecy
burdens, and their wives bring forth children like to their
fathers. They live in unchanged happiness, and need
not ply across the sea in impious ships.' There were such
men and women as these among our own forefathers ; and
the religion which the} 7 " made their own was of necessity
somewhat opposed to the creed of the Wodin-worshippers.
There are two gods who seein to belong to this faction :
both gods of summer and the sun. One is Balder, the
brightest and best beloved among the ^JEsir, who was the
very sun himself, the day star in his mild aspect, as he
would naturally appear in the North. Balder 's house was
called Breicablik, Wide-Glance that is to say, it was the
bright upper air which is the sun's home. This palace
was surrounded by a space called the peace-stead, in which
110 deed of violence could be done. 2 Balder appears to us
like the son of Leto in his most benignant mood. When
he died all things in heaven and earth, ' both living things
and trees and stones and all metals,' wept to bring him
back again : 3 as, indeed, all things must weep at the loss
of the sun, chief nourisher at life's feast.
The other sun god, or summer god, was Freyr, who was
connected with the spring and with all the growth of
plants and animals ; he was a patron of agriculture, and,
like Balder, a god of peace; 'to him must men pray for
good harvests and for peace ; ' 4 a beauteous and "mighty
god ' he was, like Apollo Chrysaor, girt with a sword ;
not so much for fight as because the sun's rays are ever
likened to a sword. Freyr can fight upon occasion ; and
he will engage in one of the three great combats of
Ragnarok. 5
1 Hesiod, Works and Days, 232
2 Edda Snorra, D. 49, and Frijnofssaga, beginning.
8 E. S. 1. c. 4 E. S. D. 24 See Chap. VIII.
FKEYJA AND GEKD. 371
The gentler side of the religion was in the North, as it
always is, associated rather with the goddesses than with
gods. Here, as among Greeks and Romans, the great
patron of the peasant folk was the earth goddoss. 1 In
Tacitus the divinity appears under the name of Nerthus,
which is perhaps Hertha. 2 A similar goddess among the
Suevi is called by him Isis. Other German names which
seem to belong more or less to the same divinity are
Harke, Holda, Perchta, Bertha. We must class with
these beings the Norse Frigg (German Freka). Her I
have alreacty taken as an example of the way in which the
earth goddess may lose her distinctive character and put
on that of the heaven god through becoming his wife.
Hera, we saw, did this in the Greek pantheon, and Frigg
does the same in the Northern. She is not a conspicuous
character in the Scandinavian mythology.
To Frigg Freyja bears the same relationship that
Persephone bears to Demeter ; wherefore we may say
that Frigg, Freyr, and Freyja correspond to Demeter,
Dionysus, and Persephone, and more closely still to the
Ceres, Liber, and Libera of the Eomans. After what was
said in Chapter V. touching the relationship of these latter
gods, no further explanation is needed of the character of
Frigg, Freyr, and Freyja.
It is strange, however, to see how the tale of the
wanderings and sorrows of the earth goddess in search of
the spring reappears in the mythology of every land, and
ends in every case in some form of mystery. There are
two stories in the Eddas 3 which especially correspond to
the myths commemorated in the anodos (up-coming) of
Persephone and her marriage with Dionysus and in her
1 See Chap. V.
2 The identity of Nerthus and Hertha is assumed by most writers who
are not specialists upon the subject of German etymology ; but, as it is
not admitted by Grimm, I hesitate to assume it, probable as, at first sight,
it appears (see Grimm, D. M. chap, xiii.) Nerthus, says Meyer, corre-
sponds to the Skr. Nritus, terra (Nachtrag to Grimm's D. M. iii. 84). Nritua
or Nirrtis became the Queen of the Dead (see p. 289).
* From E. S. D. 37, and Skirnismal.
B B 2
372 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
Jcathodos (down-going) and the sorrows of Demeter for her
loss. The first is the history of the wooing of Gerd by
Freyr, and it is thus told :
There was a man named G^mir, 1 and his wife was
Orbotfa (Aurboca), of the mountain jotuns' race. Their
daughter was Gerd, fairest of all women. Once Freyr
mounted the seat of Odhinn, which was called Air Throne ;
and looking northward into far Giant Land, he saw a light
flash forth. Looking again, he saw that the light was
made by the maiden Gerd, who had just opened her father's
door, and that it was her beauty which thus shone over the
snow. Then Freyr was smitten with love sadness, and
determined to woe the fair one to be his wife ; and so he
sent his messenger, Skirnir, to whom he gave his horse and
magic sword. Skirnir went to Gerd, and he told her how
great Freyr was among the JEsir, and how noble and happy
a place was Asgard, the home of the gods ; but for all his
pleading Gerd would give no ear to his suit. At last the
messenger drew his sword, and threatened to take her
life, unless she would grant to Freyr his desire. So Gerd
promised to visit the god nine nights thence, in Barri's
wood.
Here a very simple nature myth is told us. The
earth will not respond to the wooing of the sun unless he
draw his snarp sword, the rays. Freyr himself it must
have been who in the original myth undertook the journey
into dark Jotunheim. 2 In very northern lands we know
that the sun himself does actually disappear in the cold
North, the death region. When he is there the earth con-
1 Gymir is a name of the sea god Oegir = Oceanus etymologically and
actually. See Oegisdrekka, beg. The relationship between such a being and
the earth is not quite plain, though the explanation may certainly be
suggested by what has been said of the nature of Oceanus in Chapter II.
and in various places. Gymir is by Simrock connected with Hymir, who
is the winter sea (EtymiskvrSa). (Handbuch der deutschen Mythologie, p.
61.) Simrock also says that Gymir is an under-world god (p. 398).
2 Skirnir is in fact only a by-name of Freyr (see Lex. Mythol. 70GJ).
The same authority says that Skirnir means the air, which somewhat com-
plicates the solution of the story. The Icl. sldrr is our slider.
ISIS AND NEKTHUS. 373
sents to meet him again with love nine nights hence that
is to say, after the nine winter months are over. They meet
in Barri's wood, which is the wood in its first greenness. 1
We turn now to the Norse version of the /cdOoSos of
Persephone, which is shorter than the history of the
wooing of Gerd, and which, it will be seen, bears more
resemblance to the history of Isis, who lost her husband,
than to the history of Demeter, who lost her daughter.
The part of the earth is taken here by Freyja. Freyja,
we are told, had a husband, Odhur, 2 who left his wife to
travel in far countries and never returned. Freyja went
in search of him, and in that quest passed (like Demeter)
through many lands ; so that she has many names, ( for
each people called her by a different one/* 3 But all her
journeyings were vain ; e and since then she weeps continu-
ally, and her tears are drops of gold. 5 4
We know that one of the essential parts of the mystery
of the earth goddess was that part which celebrated her
' coming ' in the form of spring, and how this advent was
represented to the sense as a journey of the image the
rude agalma or the statue of the goddess from place to
place. For this reason was Isis carried in a car or in a
boat, 5 and in a car was drawn the Ephesian Artemis, like
many another earth goddess of Asiatic birth; for this
reason once was dragged Demeter in that car harnessed
with panthers and lions to which the chorus of Euripides
makes allusion ; or the image of the spring god, lacchos,
1 Barri is ' green.'
2 Odhur is really identical with Odhinn, as Freyja is (this tale among
others, and her name too, showing her to be so) with Frigg. It is worth
noting that whereas Frigg has generally to conform her nature to
that of her husband, in this particular story Odhinn (Odhur) takes upon
himself a character foreign to the heaven god, in order to complete the
myth of the earth.
3 Edda Snorja, D. 35. See what was said on p. 49 and in Chap. V.
touching the different names of the earth goddess.
4 The rains of autumn, so rich for future gain, yet which are shed by
the Earth as she looks upon the decay of summer and searches in vain for
the verdure of spring.
5 Apuleius Met. xi. ; Lactantius, i. 27.
374 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
was borne from Athens to Eleusis. In these forms of
mystery the mythic journey was translated into a real one.
We have the best reason for believing that as similar
ceremonies were observed in the case of the German earth
goddess, among the Germans also there existed a mystery.
This was not indeed a celebration of the highly developed
kind, such as the Eleusinia, but one of that primitive
rural order of mysteries such as are still traceable within
or behind the more elaborate ceremonial of the Greek
mysteria. 1
Tacitus appears to mention two German earth god-
desses, Nerfchus and Isis ; it is probable that the two names
really connote the same personality. When the historian
calls one of them, the divinity of the Suevi, Isis, he assuredly
bestows this name upon her on the same principle by
which he gives the names Mercury, Hercules, and Mars to
Wuotan, Donar, and Zio namely, because there was that
in the character of the German goddess which recalled to
his mind the Isis known to the Romans. In truth, one of
these points of likeness he immediately afterwards men-
tions the fact that the image of the German goddess was
carried from place to place in a boat. We may conclude
from these data that the Suevian goddess had her mys-
teries, which were not unlike those of the Roman Isis. 3
Again, concerning the other earth goddess, Nerthus, Tacitus
is still more explicit. In the first place we learn that she
was recognised as a personification of the earth Nerthus
id est Terra Mater. Some have thought that for Nerthus
in this passage we should read Hertha.
This Nerthus had, it seems, her home in an island of
the Northern Sea Riigen, as is supposed, or Heligoland. 3
Her secret shrine in the centre of the island was sur-
1 See Chap. V.
2 I use the term Roman Isis, because there can be no question that^the
Isis as worshipped in Home differed much from the goddess of the ancient
Egyptians. See Chap. V.
3 Heligoland = Heilige Land. Riigen, however, is the most probable
conjecture for the identification of the island in question.
SURVIVALS OF RUSTIC WORSHIP. 375
rounded by a dense thicket, which none but priests might
enter. Thence every year she was taken to be shown for
a season to the people, and in order that her wanderings,
like those of Demeter, should be made the subject of
dramatic representation. When brought to the mainland,
she was dragged from place to place in a closed waggon
which was probably fashioned like a ship mounted on
wheels l and wherever she came she brought gladness
and peace. ( Happy is the place, joyful the day, which is
honoured by the entertainment of such a guest ; no war can
go on, no arms are borne, the sword rests in its scabbard.
This peace and rest continue till the priest takes back the
goddess, satiate of converse with mortals.' 2
Evidently we have here the trace of mystic celebrations
riot unlike the beginnings of the Greek Eleusinia ; rites
of a simple kind such as are suited to the feelings of a
primitive race.
Now ifc is to be expected that the rustic side of
heathenism, the woiship of the peasant class, should have
kept its observances more free from the destructive in-
fluence of Christianity than was possible to the fiercer part
of the creed, that side of it which was represented by the
great divinities Odhinn, Thorr, 3 and Tyr. The worship of
the gods of the mark might be called the Church militant
of heathenism. The votaries of these gods were the men
who first sallied forth to conquer in the territories of Rome,
and who, having been victorious in arms, were again them-
selves conquered by Christianity. Those who remained be-
hind, when they had to submit to the new religion, quietly
fashioned it to suit their own ideas. They strove to make
Christianity a creed fit for rustic folk concerned with few
cares, unless to secure good harvests, and with offerings to
1 The reasons for this supposition may be best studied in Grimm, D. M.
ch. xiii. 2 Tac. Germ. c. 40.
3 Thorr had a certain relationship to peasant life which Uhland has
brought prominently forward in his interesting and poetical Mythiis von
Tkorr. Nevertheless he belonged "originally to the fighting gods. As a
god of the peasant folk he appeared later.
376 OUTLINES QF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
ward off the threat of hail and thunder. And the Christian,
priests, who sprang from the peasant class, could not find
it in their hearts altogether to condemn the ancient rites ;
rather they glossed them over as tributes to the honour of
the Virgin or of some saint. Wherefore it happens that
in one form or another, whether as a survival of heathenism
or as a heathen festival christianised, we have constant
proof of the great vitality of the cult of the old earth
deity, whether we call her Nerthus, or Frigg, or Berchta, or
Holda ; and we find her rites surviving in popular religion
from the Middle Ages down even to our own times.
One example, perhaps the most striking of which any
record remains, of the appearance in the Middle Ages of a
ritual observance allied to the ancient rites of Nerthus is
worth quoting. The record of it is to be found in the
chronicle of Rudolf, Abbot of St. Tron, a place between
Liege and Lou vain. 1 The ceremonial for such we must
call it which in this passage the chronicler describes,
arose out of the rivalry between the rustic population near
Aachen and the weavers of the' neighbourhood, and took
the form of a distinctly heathen revival. Weavers have
generally been noted for their piety, and not least so the
weavers of the country of the Lower Ehine, who have
counted among their ranks, on the one hand, some of the
devoutest spirits of Catholicism, as Thomas of Kempen,
and, on the other, some of the most zealous champions of
the Reformed Creed. It is conceivable that the weavers
of Abbot Rudolf's history combined with their attachment
to Christianity no small contempt for the uncultured and
half -heathen rustics who lived around. These last, who
were in a numerical majority, determined to have their
revenge. So in a neighbouring wood they constructed a
ship, which they placed on wheels, and carried in procession
from place to place. Multitudes joined the concourse,
both men and women, and they proceeded with heathen
1 The date of this chronicle is circa A.D. 1133. It is published by Perz,
xii. 309, and is quoted by Grimm, D. M. i. 214.
EASTER AND MAY. DAY. 377
and licentious songs and unrestrained gestures, until the
whole celebration must have assumed the aspect of a Diony-
siac orgy. The weavers, willy nilly, were compelled to drag
the heathen thing about. 1 It was taken from the village
where it had first been made (Cornelimiinster, near Aachen)
to Maestricht. There it was furnished with a mast and
sail, and thence dragged to Tongres, and from Tongres to
Loos. Some of the nobility favoured the movement,
which grew to the proportion of a small tumult and
could not be put down without bloodshed.
There are many other examples of rustic festivals of
a soberer kind, such as were approved by the Church. One
of these was the festival or fast of the death of Balder,
which has been preserved down to modern days in the
St. John's Days' fires, Johannisfeuer, feux de St.-Jean.
But of these I shall speak again in another chapter ; for
the story of Balder 'a death has yet to be told. The
Midsummer fire of Balder, though the greatest among
Teutonic celebrations of this kind, is only one among
several which are preserved in the popular customs of
Teutonic and Celtic peoples. Three other seasons were
specially set apart for this sort of festivity. One was
Easter, now a Church festival and movable, originally a
stationary feast in honour of Ostara (Sox. Eastre), a goddess
of spring, who is scarcely distinguishable from Ereyja.
Another was the first of May, now SS. Phillip and James,
in German Walpurgistag ; the third was the festival of
1 Pauper quidam rusticus ex villa nomine Inda" hanc diabolicam ex-
cogitavit technam. Accepta" a judicibus fiducia" et a levibus hominibus
auxilio qui gaudent jocis et novitatibus, in proximo" silvd navem com-
posuit, et earn rotis suppositis affigens vehibilem super terrain effecit,
obtinuit quoque a potestatibus, ut injectis funibus textorum humeris ex
Inda Aquisgranam (Aix) traheretur. . . .
4 Textores interim occulto sed praecordiali gemitu deum justum judicem
super eos vindicem invocabant, qui ad hanc ignominiam eos detrudebant
.... Cumque hsec et eorum similia secum, ut dixi, lacrymabiliter con-
quererentur concrepabant ante illud nescio cujus potius dicam, Bacchi an
Veneris, Neptuni sive Martis, sed ut verius dicam ante omnium malignorum
spirituum execrabile domicilium genera dlversorum musicorum turpia
cantica et religwni Christiana concinentium, . . .'
378 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
the New Year, or of Yule. On each of these occasions
great bonfires were lighted, and kept burning all night
through.
Easter was specially the season of new birth ; whence
arose the custom of baptising at Easter, and also the
symbolism of the Easter egg. 1 These Easter eggs are
coloured red and yellow, in reference to the Easter fire, or
else to the sun. 2 The ceremonies which are appropriated
to any of these bonfires are generally the same. Girls
who wish to be married during the year must dance round
them three times (or nine times), or give three leaps over
the flame. 3 Youths must do the same. The Walpurgis-
feuer has a special mission in keeping off the witches, for
Walpurgisnacht is a great night for the witches' Sabbath.
On that night fires are kindled on all the hills ; and super-
stition holds that so far as the light of each fire extends,
to that distance the witches are banned. 4 This season, also,
is a time of new birth and of a sort of heathen baptism ;
to wash in May dew guards against bewitchment. 5 The
Nativity of the Virgin Mary is another festival of the
spring, of the anodos ; the Virgin here standing in popular
superstition for Persephone or for Ger<Sr.
The way in which the maypole is or was honoured in
our village festivals recalls to some extent the ancient tree
worship, which preceded even the cult of Odhinn or of
Nerthus ; but the ceremonies are also specially connected
with the worship of the earth goddess.
The author of the ' Anatomie of Abuses ' has drawn
for us a picture of the way in which Mayday Eve and
May Morning were spent in the villages of England in
1 It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that, until the change in the
style, the civil year began on the 25th of March.
2 So at least says Wuttke, Deutsclte Volfaaberglaube.
3 Called in Germany Freudenta/nz and Freudensprung .
4 Wuttke, 1. c.
5 May was also sacred to Thorr, and to the hammer, of Thorr, the symbol
of law. It was the time for Folk-things, the Cliamps de Mai, c., the fore-
runners of our May Meetings.
OF THE
MAY DAY. 379
the sixteenth century ; drawn it, doubtless, with an un-
friendly pencil, 1 but, we may well believe, truly as to the
main details.
' They goe some to the woods and groves, some to the
hills and mountaines, when they spend the night in plea-
saunt pastime, and in the morning they return, bringing
with them birche boughes and branches of trees to deck
their assemblies withal. But their chiefest jewel they
bring thence is the maypoale, which they bring home with
great veneration as thus : they have twentie or fourtie
yoake of oxen, and everie oxe hath a sweet nosegaie of
flowers tied to the top of his homes, and these oxen drawe
the maypoale, the stinking idol rather. ... I have heard
it crediblie reported that of fourtie, three score, or an
hundred maides going to the wood, there have scarcely
the third part returned as they went.'
By the severity of this picture of the stinking idol and
its licentious abuses we are perhaps brought all the nearer
to the ancient rites out of which the May dances had their
rise ; I mean to that primitive earth worship which begins
so far back and lasts so long. For orgiastic rites had no
small share in this primitive ritual.
In being present at such ceremonies nowadays, and in
watching the dance round the maypole which might
rather be called a sort of rhythmic walking of interlacing
figures than an actual dance I have had my thoughts
forcibly led to that mimic search for the lost Persephone,
a search from side to side with lighted torches, which was
part of the dramatic celebration of the Eleusinia. The
simple music which accompanied the dances might have
been given forth by a choir of the Eumolpidse, or by the
shepherd pipes which led the procession in the Eoman
Lupercalia.
But again, to turn the picture a little, although the
midnight festival which formed part of the old Teutonic
1 Stubbs, in his Anatomic of Abtises, 1595.
380 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
earth worship was still kept up in the ' pleasant pastimes '
of Mayday Eve, yet in it we may likewise detect the germ
out of which mediaeval superstition was to foster its belief
in the terrible Brocken dance of the Walpurgisnacht.
Another among the customs which belong to spring
time is that of dragging from place to place a plough upon
wheels. This plough is the changed form of the ship
which we have seen carrying the image of Nerthus, a
form suitable to settled folk and to agricultural lives. 1 In
some places where this festival of the plough takes place
the young men who drag about the car compel any girl
they meet (who has not previously furnished herself with
a lover) to join their band. And in this custom we detect
a faint shadow of ancient orgiastic rites. Shrove Tuesday
is the day generally set apart in Germany for the dragging
of the plough ; in England it is the previous Monday,
hence called Plough Monday. 2
The tradition of the Wandering Jew he is Odhinn
transformed is that he can rest one night in the year
only namely, on the night of Shrove Tuesday and that
then he rests upon a plough or upon a harrow. Shrove
Tuesday is of course the day when all sins should be
absolved (Shrive Tuesday) ; but, in addition to this notion,
I cannot but see in the resting of this sinner (who is also
the fierce war god) upon the plough a reminiscence, how-
ever faint, of the joyful and peaceful day when the earth
goddess came round drawn in her car.
Where the image of this earth deity would once have
been borne, that of the Virgin (the Marienbild) was in the
Middle Ages, and is now, carried about to bless the fields.
1 Our word plough, the German Pftug, is etymologically connected with
the Greek TT\OVS, a sailing, or irXolov, a ship. Therefore ploiujli probably
originally meant a ship.
2 ' They plough up the soil before any house whence they receive no
reward ' (Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, 260). This writer says that Plough
Monday was the first Monday after Epiphany. My own recollections of
the festival are associated with the day before Shrove Tuesday. We also
read of a Fool Plough (Yule Plough ?) dragged about at Christmas (p. 259).
YULE-TIDE. 381
The days sot apart for this journey are the Bogation
Days, corresponding, no doubt, very closely to the time of
year in which Nerthus would have appeared, bringing
fruitfulness with her. During these Bogation Days, or
upon Ascension Day, takes place that charming relic of
old heathenism (Celtic, I should suppose, rather than
German) called in England ' well-dressing.' In Brittany
the choirs of the churches, headed by the priests, make
(or used to make) solemn procession with flowers and
chaunts to the fountain-head. 1 In England well-dressing
is common chiefly in the midland counties or toward the
west, in the districts which were once part of Mercia or
of Strathclyde. At , Lichfield well-dressing is celebrated
with choral processions as jn Brittany.
The task of tracing the remains of German heathenism
in popular lore and popular customs is fascinating, but it
is endless. We will therefore let our attention rest only
on one other season beside those which have been already
spoken of, the most important season of all. I mean the
twelve days (die Zwolfen). With us this phrase 'twelve
days' always means the days which follow Christmas.
In Germany that is likewise the usual reckoning; but
sometimes the days are all counted before Christmas, and
made to end on Christmas Day. Sometimes they are the
twelve days which precede the New Year (Yule) that is to
say, those extending from St. Thomas's Day till New Year's
Day. Sometimes, again, they are the twelve days which
follow New Year's Day. The Easter feast was in honour of
Freyja or of Ostara ; the Midsummer feast was in honour
of Balder ; but that of Midwinter, the Yule, was sacred to
Odhirin, as such a season might well be to a god of storms.
According to the most usual disposition of the days, there-
fore, this Odhinn festival of Yule fell in the very midst
of the twelve days, and the season took its character from
Odhinn. 2 Twelfth Day is, in Germany, dedicated to the
1 Cambry, Voyage dans le Finistere, Ed. Souvestre.
2 "Winter and wind ; an etymological significance which appears again
in
382 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
Three Kings of Cologne, and hence called DreiJconigetag.
The Three Kings are, it is well known, supposed to be
the three Magi, and their names Gaspar, Melchior, and
Balthasar. Frederick Barbarossa is said to have brought
their remains from Milan to Cologne. 1
This is oiily a tradition, however, which the Italian
historian has repeated. We have proof that the Three
Kings were worshipped long before the days of Frederick, 2
and I have myself little doubt that the original Three
Kings were Odhinn, Thorr, and Tyr, or, to give them
their proper German names, Wuotan, Donar, Zio. This
is why the Three Kings were so widely honoured in the
Middle Ages, and why the superstitions which still attach
to them are so many. They are still a great feature
in the observances of Yule. The initials of their names,
followed each by a cross (thus, G -f- M + B + ), are placed at
this season upon all the doors for a charm against evil
spirits. 3 Thus may the twelve days be regarded as a
season of contest between the Christian and the heathen
powers, between the new creed and the old. Of old we
know how Odhinn used sometimes to walk the earth, alone
or in company with his brothers Hoenir and Loki ; now it
is Christ who is said to revisit earth at this season of the
twelve days, alone or with one or more of His disciples, very
often accompanied by Peter and Paul. The man who on
Christmas Eve stands under an apple tree (but for this
apple let our memories of an earlier belief supply ash)
sees heaven open. At this time, too, witches dance and
hold Sabbath, and the Wild Huntsman 4 goes his round.
Then is all magic rife. The Wise Woman ( Weise Frau) is
seen at such times : she may be Frigg or Holda, for she
often brings men good luck ; or she may, in her evil aspect,
1 Villani.
2 They are mentioned in the Clianson de Roland, which is of the
eleventh century, a hundred years before Frederick Barbarossa (1152-
1190).
8 Wuttke, 1. c.
4 Hackelberg. See also Chap. X.
YULE-TIDE. 383
be one of the witches. The beasts in the stall at this
time speak and foretell the future. Dreams and all other
signs of fate are more sought after, and they are more
frequent at this season than at any other of the year.
All that is dreamt in the twelve nights becomes true.
Arid it is also said that the whole twelve days are a sort
of epitome of the following twelve months ; so that, what-
ever be the character of any individual day, fair or stormy,
lucky or unlucky, of the same kind will be the correspond-
ing month of the ensuing year. Wherefore the proverb
says, ' The more fearfully the storm howls, so much the
worse for the young year.' The Yule-tide storm is the
last voice of Odhinn in men's ears.
384 OUTLINES OF PEIMIT1VE BELIEF.
CHAPTEE VIII.
THE SHADOW OP DEATH.
1. Visits to the Under World. The Death of Balder.
THE shadow of death which we have seen in the German's
outward world, his world in space, so closely surrounding
all life, hemmed it in not less straitly in the world of time,
even the gods themselves not being able to escape final
destruction. There is a much closer relationship between
Asgard and the Scandinavian nether kingdom than there
is between Olympus and Hades ; so that, while among the
Greeks only some few among the gods visited the lower
world, and of those who went all came back victorious,
having overcome death, several among the ^Esir visited
HePs abode, and one conspicuous figure in their body went
there not to return. Though we have already said much
concerning the gloominess of the German mythology,
much more remains to be said ; for that mythology can-
not be understood until we have passed in review the
numerous images and myths of death which it contains.
But we must remember, on the other hand, that the
German could often win out of his saddest celebrations
occasion for mirth and merriment, as an Irishman will do
at a wake, and his very familiarity with sombre thoughts
and images gave him a kind of desperate cheerfulness in
the common affairs of life.
The very term funeral feast is, indeed, a kind of
paradox : yet funeral feasts hare existed among all nations
Among the Teutons not only were the private occasions
>f mourning turned into seasons of hilarity, but the very
THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 385
funerals of the gods themselves for some of the gods
had funerals were so used. And this habit strikes
the key-note of much that is characteristic of Teutonic
heathenism.
In a former chapter we passed in review the principal
myths and figures whereby the Aryan races have repre-
sented to themselves the idea of death. Each one of
these is to be found in one or more shapes in the Teutonic
mythology. These people preserved all the legacy of
thought upon such matters which had been bequeathed
to them by their forefathers, and they further added
some which were their peculiar creation. The devouring
beast or dragon, the man-eating ogre, the pale Goddess of
Death with her Circe wand, the mortal river and the
mortal sea, the Bridge of Souls, the ghostly ferryman all
these are to be found in the belief of the Teutons ; all
these through the Teutons became afterwards part of the
mythology of the Middle Ages.
As the greater number of these creations are in a
certain degree familiar to us, it will not be necessary to
spend much time in pointing out their characteristics.
Rather we will let them appear in their proper places when,
in this or the other narrative, in company, as the case may
happen, of a human hero or of a god, we shall ourselves
make the journey to the Norseman's under world. But
there is a series of personifications of death which are
strange to other systems of belief beside the Teuton
system, and of which, therefore, we have had as yet no
occasion to speak. These we must first consider.
The images of mortality whereof I speak are those
which are personifications of the funeral fire, and which
therefore spring directly out of the custom of burning the
dead. We have seen how the rite of cremation very pro-
bably arose from the worship of the fire god and the
desire to commit the dead into his charge. It was, no
doubt, the sense of the special friendliness and human love
of this divinity the Agni of the early Aryas which
c c
386 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
induced men to entrust him with, the care of the dead
body rather than commit it to the care of the universal
mother, the earth. But it is easy to understand that if the
rite of corpse-burning had become an ancient one, and if
its original meaning had become obscured by time, men's
feelings toward that same Fire Divinity might come to be
the, very reverse of what they had once been. He might
come to be for them a symbol of death, a genius of destruc-
tion, a hateful rather than a beneficent being. When the
ordinary uses' of fire had grown familiar through long
possession, this peculiar aspect of the fire, that it was used
for the consumption of the dead bodies, might still stand
out in clear relief. And when the worship of the ordinary
god of flame fell into abeyance, a sort of new being would
rise up, who symbolised only the funeral fire. This seems
to have happened among the German races, or at any rate
among the Teutons of the North.
The personification of the funeral fire was Loki. 1 His
name means simply fire (logi), and he was once doubtless
a kind and friendly deity. Even in the Eddas he some-
times shows in this character. We read in the second
chapter of the great creative trilogj r who came from among
the JLsir, and created man out of the stumps Ask and
Embla, of how
1 I have not thought it advisable, in speaking of the Norse mythology,
to enter into any discussion of the views put forward upon the subject of
the mythology of the Eddas by Prof. Bugge and by Dr. Bang. Anyone,
however, who has read Prof. Bugge's paper will at the mention of Loki
have his thoughts directed to the passage in that paper wherein the
learned writer endeavours to derive Loki from the Biblical Lucifer. I have
detailed elsewhere (Trans. l?,oy. Soc. Lit. vol. xii., ' The Mythology of 'the
Eddas ') some of the chief points in which I am compelled to dilfer from
Prof. Bugge's conclusions, and my reasons for these differences ; and I
hope, when the time comes, to continue the subject further. Altogether I
see nothing which has yet been brought forward by Bugge which tends
to shake materially the foundations of the Edclaic mythology. Nor, again,
can I give much weight to the arguments by which Dr. Bang has en-
deavoured to prove that the whole of the Voluspa is an importation into
the North from foreign sources. And in this opinion I am glad to have
the support of so learned a writer as Dr. C. P. Tiele in a recent> article in
the Revue de VHixt. des Rcl. vol. ii.
LOKI. 387
From out of their assembly came there three
Mighty and merciful ^Esir to ma 's home.
They found on earth, almost lifeless,
Ask and Embla, futureless.
The names of these three were Odhinn, Hoenir, and
Lodr, and Lodr is generally identified with Loki. 1 Nay,
if Loki had not once been a friendly power he could not
have been classed among the ^Esir, as he generally is.
Nevertheless the more common appearances of this
being are in a precisely contrary character. In most of
his deeds he has quite forgotten his kindly office and
become an enemy to gods and men. The change which
the personification of fire underwent between the days of
Agni worship and the days of Loki worship is very remark-
able, and can only be explained by the fact that the Norse-
men looked with such gloomy thoughts upon the funeral
fire. Agni, the companion and friend of man, the
guardian of the house, the one who invited the gods
down to the feast, was the same who bore away the dead
man's soul from the pyre. But in this case his kindly
nature overrode his more terrible aspect. In the Norse
creed it was quite different. Loki was essentially a god of
death.
Loki is represented siding sometimes with the gods, 2
more often with the giants. 3 He has a house in Asgard and
yet he is called a jotun. 4 There are, therefore, in reality
two Lokis. One is the As-Loki, who must once have been
friendly to men, as all the .ZEsir were ; the other is the giant
Loki, who has a home in Giant Land. But in the account
which is preserved of Loki in the Eddas he appears almost
always as unfriendly to both gods and men. ' Loki,' says
the Younger Edda, * never- ceased to work evil among the
1 Simrock, Ifandbuck der dent. Myth. 31 ; Thorpe's Edda, Index, &c. ;
Grimm, D. M. i. 200.
2 prymskvrSa, Thorr's journey to Jotunheim, &c.
3 Voluspa, (Egisdrekka, &c., Death of Balder, Punishment of Loki,
Ragnarok, &c.
4 Voluspa, 48, 54 ; see also 50.
cc 2
388 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF. .
Therefore the giant nature has overborne the
Asa nature; but both exist in him. This duplicity of
being marks him on every occasion. He had two wives,
we are told. One was in Asgard, but the other was of
giant kind. The name of this last was AngrboSa (Angst-
lote, pain messenger), and by her Loki begat the Fenris
wolf (Fenrisulfr), the Midgard serpent, and Hel.
Now of this family of Loki each member is a personi-
fication of death in one or other of its forms. The Fen-
risulfr, or wolf Fenrir, is a familiar image enough ; he is
the Cerberus of Greek mythology, the Sarameyas of In-
dian mythology ; he is, in a word, the devouring tomb.
Jormungandr is his own brother, almost his counterpart.
The name of Jormungandr means the ravening monster;
his nature as the earth serpent shows him to be nearly
allied to the River of Death. 1 Angrboda is a personi-
fication of darkness and of death. We shall anon meet
with her sitting at the entrance to the House of the Shades.
Her daughter Hel, the very Queen of the Dead, asks the
help of no commentary to explain her nature.
There are other ways in which the funeral fire came
to take its place in the Teuton's eschatology, or belief
concerning the way to the Land of" Shades. Seeing that
the dead man had to pass through the funeral fire to get
there, it was natural that the place should be imagined
surrounded by a circle of flame, a kind of hedge of fire.
Indeed, a combination was effected between two ideas, the
idea of the world-encircling Sea of Death and the notion
of the hedge of fire through which men musL pass to win
1 Fenrir and Jormungandr, like the man and the serpent whom Dante
saw, seem to have joined their beings and then appeared apart clothed each
with the other's proper nature. For while the second is recognised as
the earth-girding river, the name of him is literally ' monstrous wolf.' On
the other hand, Fenrir is shown by his name to be a watery being (fen);
so that his name rather than Jormungandr's is connected with the earth-
girding river, which notwithstanding the other personifies. Fenrir '
(Fenris) is, I believe, connected etymologically with the Sanskrit Pams.
The Parcis were water beings, perhaps originally not unlike Ahi and Vritra,
the great Vedic serpents.
THE BELT OF FLAME. 389
their way into another world. The former image came to
be replaced by the latter ; and men now imagined a belt
of flame lying between them and Helheim. And as Jo'tun-
heim was in thought scarcely distinguishable from Hel-
heim, the girdle of fire was made to surround that land.
We may combine this scattered imagery into one
simple picture, and see thereby what an added gloom and
marvel is imparted to the Teuton's world so soon as we
have fully realised the shadow of death which lay upon
every side of it.
The cold region of Jotunheim was all around. But to
appreciate its horrors let us think of it as lying in the
North, on the other side of an icy sea. We travel on and
on ; the air grows colder and the scene more desolate at
every step. Anon, stretching its gaunt arms heavenward,
we see the iron wood, which starts out in blackness from
the surrounding snow. From its recesses come the dismal
howls of the witches and were-wolves who have their home
therein, the kindred of Fenrir and of Garni. Then on to
the borders of the wintry sea 'Bold wilfbe he who tries
to cross those waters.' Its waves are made the blacker by
the floes of ice which lie in it.
Somehow the region beyond, the true Land of Shades,
cannot be reached in the day-time for the same reason,
doubtless, that in the belief of every people the sun
himself had to travel through a twilight region before
he quite withdrew from earth ; for the same reason that
the kingdom of Amenti, through which the soul of the
Egyptian journeyed to Osiris' house, was a twilight land.
For so it is here. Skirnir, the messenger of Freyr, had
to journey to the Land of Shades, when he went to seek
out GerS (the winter earth), who had been carried thither. 1
1 Like Persephone. See last chapter. This myth is, as was there said,
the story of the anoclos of Persephone and of her marriage with Dionysus.
The story of Freyja and Odhur was in the same place compared with the
ItatJiodns of Persephone and the sorrows of Demeter for the loss of her
daughter. This last is, of course; far more like the companion history of Isis
and Osiris. There are also in classic mythology stories which in actual
390 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
He waited till it was nightfall before he set out. First,
knowing that he had to ride through a hedge of flame, he
had required that Freyr, the god who sent him on his
message, should give him his own horse.
Give me thy swift steed then, that he may bear me through
The far flickering flame.
And afterwards in the beautiful passage before quoted
he addressed the horse
Dark it grows without ! Time I deem it is
To fare over the misty ways.
We will both return, or that all-powerful jotun
Shall seize us both.
To mortal eyes, perhaps, this flame surrounding Jotun-
heimar appeared as the Aurora Borealis lighting up the
wintry sky. Men gazed upon the shooting fires as they
shone upon the horizon, and shuddering they thought of
how their souls* might need l one day to pass that awful
barrier and wander into the dark, cheerless region beyond.
According to the fancy of the moment, this hedge of flame
could be pictured as surrounding all Jotunheimar, or only
some particular giant's house. This latter notion is the
one most commonly presented to us in the Eddas. But
when this is the case the giant's house becomes ipso facto
the House of Death, and the giant, whatever his name, is
himself transformed into King Death. The mythic fire
is recognised as the fire of the other world, or, as it is
form more nearly represent che myth of Freyja and Odhur than does the
tale of the parting of Demeter and Persephone for example, the history of
the loves and sorrows of Amor and Psyche, which again corresponds to the
Indian myth of Urvasi and Pururavas (see last chapter), and in a remoter
degree to that of Zeus and Semele (see Liebricht in- the Zeitsch, f. v. Sp.
xviii. 56). All these stories, however, are less intimately connected with
the chthonic divinities than are the histories of Demeter and Persephone"
or of Freyja and Odhur.
1 Might tieed. Whether they in reality would need to do this depended,
as they deemed, upon their being elected among the band of Einheriar
(heroes), who were after death translated to Valholl.
SIGBUX AND HELGI. 391
generally called, the out- world or outward (
fire. And when the flame is personified the proper name
for the personification must be tTtgar^loki, Out-world
Loki.
Still onward, and we come to the very House of Death,
guarded by the two dogs whom we know so well in Indian
mythology. At the entrance to Helheim, at the ' eastern
gate,' as it seems, sits in a cave Angrbodha, the wife of
Loki a.nd the mother of Hel ; she sits there in a cave or in
a tomb. Then past that gate we reach the court of Hel
herself.
In the Eddas many, both of gods and men, make their
way to these abodes of death. Some come back again;
but some, both of gods and men, never return. We will
take tlie chief among these in the order of their import-
ance that is, of the amount of knowledge which they
impart to us concerning the other world.
The first story which I shall take leaves us even at the
end still but at the entry of the tomb ; but, at all events,
it shows us one way by which the dead man went to
another world, and it shows us, too, how the ghost might
return to earth. The images which are presented to us
in this lay the Second Lay of Helgi Hundingsbane are
not those which have been dwelt upon just now, but
those connected with the Bridge of Souls and the passage
of the dead to Paradise by that road. Helgi, the hero of
the poem, was a great warrior of the race of the Yolsungs,
and his wife was named Sigruii. She was a Valkyria. She
had been first betrothed against her will to Hodbrodd,
prince of Svarinshaug ; but not liking the match, she flew
away to Helgi at Sevafjoll and married him. Helgi lived
not to be old, for Dag, the brother of Sigriin, slew him. 1
It happened that a woman slave passed one evening by
1 This is in effect the story of Sigurd and of Siegfrit in the Nibelungen.
Helgi seems to be the same as these two heroes. This poem proves, it
seems to me, that the one-eyed Hagan of Troneg is Odhinn ; for in this
poem Odhinn lends Dag his spear to slay Helgi.
392 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
Helgi's tomb, and she saw his ghost ride into the mound
with many men. Then she spake
Is it a delusion, that which I ween I see ?
Is it the Last Day ? Dead men ride.
Ye goad the horses with your spurs.
Is this the coming of heroes to earth ?
And Helgi's ghost answered
It is not a delusion, that which you deem you see, .
Nor the world's ending,
Although you see us our swift horses
Goad with spurs.
To the heroes is a home-going granted.
Then the woman went home and told Sigrun
Go hence, Sigrun, from Sevafjoll,
If thou wouldst see the people's prince.
The hill is open ; out has come Helgi :
Their spurs bleed. The prince prays for thee,
To stanch for him his bleeding wound.
Then Sigrun went to the hill to Helgi, and spake
Now am I fain to find thee again,
As Odhinn's hawks are to find their food,
When they scent the smell of corpses and warm blood,
Or, drenched with dew, the dawning day descry.
Now will I kiss the lifeless king,
Ere thou cast off thy bloody byrnie.
Thy hair is clotted, Helgi, with sweat of death ;
The chieftain is steeped in corpse dew.
Ice cold are the hands of Hogni's child ;
Who shall for thee, king, the blood fine pay ?
Helgi speaks
Thou, Sigrun of Sevafjoll,
Now becomest the bane of Helgi ;
Thou weepest, golden one, cruel tears,
HELGI'S GHOST. 393
Sunny one, southern one, ere to sleep thou goest ;
Each one falls bloody on the hero's breast,
Ice cold, piercing, sorrow-laden. 1
Well shall we drink a precious draught ;
Together we have lost life-joy and lauds.
No one shall sing o'er me a funeral song,
Though on my bosom wounds he may behold.
Here are brides in the hill hidden ;
Kings' daughters beguile me, who am dead.
Sigrun prepared a bed on the mound, and spake
Here have I, Helgi, for thee a bed made,
A painless one, son of Ylfing !
And I will sleep, prince, in thy arms,
As by my king while living I would lie.
Helgi
No one now shall deem us hopeless,
Early or late in Sevafjoll ;
For thou f-leepest in my arms,
Fair one, Hogni's daughter,
In the hill;
For thon art quick [I dead], king's daughter !
Time it is for me to ride the ruddy road,
And my pale horse to tread the path of flight ;
I to the west must go, o'er Wind-helm's Bridge,
Before Salgofnir 2 the heroes awakens.
Helgi rode his way, and the women went home.
Another night Sigrun bade her maid keep watch by the
bill; and at sunset Sigrun came to the hill, and spake
Now would come, if he were minded,
Sigmund's son from Odhinn's hall ;
Of the hero's return the hope I deem dwindles.
On the ash's boughs the eagles sit,
And to the dreaming- stead 3 all men betake them.
1 That is to say, her tears were cruel because they pierced him like drops
of ice. A common belief this, that the tears of a wife give physical torture
to the beloved one in his grave.
8 ' Hall-gaper,' a mythic cock ; probably the cock who crows over Valholl
before Ragnarok. See infra. 8 The place of dreams.
394 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
The maid
Be not so rash as to go,
king's daughter, to the dead men's honse
Stronger are at nightfall
The ghosts of heroes than by day.
' Sigrun was short-lived, from hurt and grief. It was
believed by our fore-elders that men were born again, but
that they now call an. old wives' tale. He was Helgi,
Hading's hero, and she Kara, Halfdan's daughter, as is
sung in the lays of Kara. She was a Valkyria.'
We have already seen Skirnir start out upon his
mission to the flame-girt house in which the maiden GerS
lay imprisoned. The house was the house of Gymir.
When Skirnir arrived there he found fierce dogs at the
door within the hedge, 1 which protected Gerd's hall. He
rode to where a cowherd sat upon a hill, and spake to
him
Tell me, cowherd, who on this hill sittest
And watchest the ways,
How may I come to speak with the fair maiden,
Past these dogs of G^ mir ?
The cowherd's answer is noticeable as expressing the
nature of the place which Skirnir had come to-
Art thou at death's door, or dead already ?
Ever shalt thou remain lacking of speech
With Gymir 's godlike maiden.
Then GerS heard Skirnir's voice. She sent a maid
forth to bid him enter the hall. At first she refused to
grant the prayer of Freyr, but at last she yielded to the
instance of Skirnir. The earth at length grew green before
the heat of the sun's rays.
Another story which seems to enclose the same ger-
1 Notice for future use the fact that Gymir's house is surrounded by a
hedge as well as by a circle of flame.
FIOLSVITH AND VINDKALD. 395
minal idea in fact, tlie same nature myth as the story of
Ger3 is that told in the Lay of Fiolsvith. Fiolsvith is
a devil's porter like G^mir. The maiden whom he wards
is called Menglod. 1 By Fiolsvith's side are two fierce dogs,
called Gifr and Geri. The lay tells how this giant porter,
looking out into the night, saw approaching the lover of
Menglod, who came disguised under the name of Vind-
kald. 2
From the outer ward he saw one ascending
To the seat of the giant race.
And so he cried out
On the moist ways hie thee off hence ;
Here, wretch, it is no place for thee.
What monster is it before the entrance standing,
And hovering round the dangerous flame ?
After awhile the wanderer and the warder fell into
talk, and the former asked of the latter many things
concerning the house before which he was standing. The
significance of some of the things is quite lost to us ; but
there is enough left to show that there was some mysterious
importance which attached to what they spoke of. Many
of the names mentioned have connection with Eagnarok,
the Gods' Doom ; 3 and I should not wonder if all the things
1 Menglod means ' glad in a necklace ' (men). It is evidently another
name for Freyja, who wears the famous Brising necklace (Brisinga men).
Freyja is GerS (Chapter VII.) Menglod may have been, like Persephone,
sometimes a Queen of Death. She is so, I think, in the Grougaldr, where
the son says to his mother (step-mother ?), Groa
' A hateful snare thou, cunning one, didst lay
When thou badest me go Menglod to meet,'
which is to be interpreted that this witch step-mother had sent her son to
his death (to meet Menglod), and afterwards finds him at her own tomb.
See Grougaldr.
2 ' Wind cold.' I suppose as Vindkald he is the winter sun, which
cannot get sight of Freyja (the germ). As Svipdag, ' Swoop of Day,' he is
the summer sun. Originally this was a day myth.
8 The things chiefly spoken of are : 1. The world tree, and what is to be
396 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
enumerated were associated with the under world. At last
it was made known that the wanderer was Svipdag, the
betrothed of Menglod. The iron doors flew open and let
him in. This is like the ' swoop of day ' after night has
passed.
These are but slight notices of the under world. More
vivid and more detailed is the history of Odhinn's descent
to Hel, to enquire of the wise Vala, whose tomb stood at
Hel's gate, touching the impending fate of Balder. 1 The
Msir and the Asyniur (goddesses) were in council how
they might avert the evil which seemed to hang over the
beloved Balder, and which was forewarned to him in dreams.
So Odhinn determined to make "this journey to the house
of Hel. 2
Then the Allfather saddled his horse Sleipnir and rode
down to Niflhel (Mist-hell).
He met a qjog from Hel coming ;
Blood-stained it was upon its breast.
Slaughter-seeking seemed its gullet and its lower jaw.
It bayed and gaped wide ;
At the sire of magic song
Long it howled.
Onward he rode the earth echoed
Till to the high Hel's house he came.
Then rode the god to the eastern gate,
Where he knew there was a Vala's grave.
To the wise one began he his charms to chaunt,
Till she uprose perforce, and death- like words she spake.
' Say, what man of men, to me unknown,
Trouble has made for me, and my rest destroyed :
Snow has snowed o'er me ! rain has rained upon me !
Dew has bedewed me ! I have long been dead.'
its en<L This will only happen at Ragnarok. 2. The golden cock Vidofnir,
which is, I imagine, the cock which crows at Ragnarok (Voluspd). 3. A
heavenly mountain, Hyfjaberg. 4. The maidens (Norns ?) who sit by
Menglod's knees. i VegtamskviSa.
This poem, the Vegtamskvi-Sa, is probably familiar to most readers in
the form m which it has been rendered by Grey under the title of the
Descent of Odin.'
THE DESCENT OF ODHINN. 397
He answered
I am named Yegtam, and am Yaltam's son :
Tell thou me of Hel ; I am from Mannheim.
For whom are the benches with rings bedecked,
And the glittering beds with gold adorned ?
She spake again
Here is for Balder the mead-cup brewed,
Over the bright beaker the cover is laid ;
But all the ^Bsir are bereft of hope.
Perforce have I spoken ; I will now be silent.
The dialogue continues upon matters relating to the
approaching death of Balder, and ends thus. She said
Not Yegtam art thon, as once I weened, ,
But rather Odhinn, the all- creator.
And he answered
Thou art no Yala nor wise woman,
The mother rather of three thursar.
Who are these three thursar (giants) P Who else can
they be than that mighty trinity Fenrir, Jormungandr,
and Hel? This supposed Yala must be Angrbodha, the
wife of Loki.
We have now passed through all the stages which were
necessary to show us the way to the Norseman's under
world. We have seen the ghost come from out of the
mouth of the grave, and then enter it again. We have
ridden down the dark valley which leads from that grave-
mouth to the nether kingdom ; we have met the fierce
hell-hound coming towards us, blood-stained on mouth
and breast. Farther on we have ridden, and have found
at the eastern gate of Mist-hell a Yala's grave, and in this
Yala we have recognised the very mother of the Queen of
the Dead. We shall have anon to penetrate Hel's own
house.
But before we do this we will turn to a story of a
398 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
descent to the nether world, in which the characteristic
features of that place are represented in rather a different
guise from the ordinary one, and of which, on account of
this variation, the true meaning has been obscured by time.
We have already told the incidents of this story ; for
it is the history of Thorr's journey to the house of tJt-
gardhloki. But because we were not then concerned with
the myths of death I did not stay to point out its full
significance. It requires, however, no greafc penetration to
discover that this tTtgardhloki is nothing else than one of
the forms of the god Loki, who we know generally per-
sonifies the funeral fire. The Utgardhloki of this myth is
simply that fire expanded into a hedge of flame surrounding
the world of death, and that again personified as a being,
a King of Death. IJtgardhloki is the personification of
the fire which the porter in the Fiolsvinnsmal had around
him in his outer ward, or that f far flickering flame ' through
which Skirnir rode.
It is for this reason that the journey of Thorr to
tTtgardhloki's hall is so much like the descent of Herakles
to the house of Pluto ; though there is this great difference
between the two myths, that the Greek hero is always
victorious, while the Norse god is by no means victorious.
Each one among the feats which Thorr performs in
iTtgardhloki's palace is appropriate to the place and the
occasion ; each is in reality a contest with death in one of
its forms, death represented by one among the children
of Loki. The first attempt of Thorr was to drain a horn ;
but in doing that he was really draining the sea, and in
fact the Sea or Eiver of Death. Wherefore this wa,s in
reality a contest with Jormungandr, who is the Sea or
Eiver of Death. The second was the endeavour to lift up
tTtgardhloki's cat, which turned out to be really Jormun-
gandr, the Midgard worm, himself. This scene reminds
us of Heracles bringing Cerberus from the under world. 1
^ * It should be remembered that this among the twelve labours ' of
Heracles is the only one known to Homer. It is evident that the descent
THE DESCENT OF THORK. 399
Cerberus corresponds most nearly to Fenrir ; so we may
imagine Thorr's struggle with this cat to have been ori-
ginally a struggle with Fenrir. Fenrir and Jormungandr
are continually exchanging their natures. 1 Each one of
these accounts has, as I imagine, been perverted from its
original form by the fancy of an age to which all the deeper
meaning of the myths had become obscured. But of all the
three the story of the third contest has suffered the most
vital change. In the story, as we now read it, a wrestling
bout takes place between Thorr and an old woman called
Elli-*-fchat is to say, Eld. But this is a fanciful idea ; the
personification of Old Age is not a notion characteristic of
a period of genuine mythic creation. It is most probable
that the old dame was at first Hel, the daughter "of Loki
(i.e. of Otgardhloki). So that the three battles of the god
were with the three children of the death giant, to whose
house he came. The wrestle of Thorr and Hel is exactly
parallel to the fight of Heracles and Thanatos, of which
Euripides speaks. 2 This, it has been shown, is one form
.of an ancient legend.
The journey of Thorr to tTtgardhloki is therefore the
second story of the descent of one among the j3Esir to the
lower world, the first being the descent of Odhinn,
commemorated in the Vegtamskvra.
The third history is far more interesting and important
than the other two, being the descent of Balder to Hel-
heim. In this the gloom deepens gr^itly. The o.ther two
gods only went down for a time. Odhinn came back with
a certain measure of success ; for he had, at any rate,
gained the information which he went to seek. Thorr
of the hero into the nether world was the incident in his history which
was most essential to his character. We know too that Heracles fought
with Hades himself, and 'brought grief into the realm of shades.' The
struggle of Heracles and Thanatos, which will be presently compared with
one of the ' labours ' of Thorr, is only another form of the same idea.
Lastly, Homer knows of a fight between Heracles and a sea monster.
Therefore the three labours of the Norse god are represented by three of
the oldest labours of the Greek hero.
1 Supra, p. 388, note. 2 Alkestis.
400 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
returned back defeated; but these two both did return*
Balder went to Helheim and returned not.
The whole story is told in Snorri's Edda (Dsemisaga 49),
and is briefly this. It happened that Balder the Good
dreamt a heavy dream, which was told to the JEsir,
whereon when they had taken the auguries the responses
were that Balder was destined for death. Then went all
the gods (^Esir) and goddesses (Asynior) to counsel how
they might avert this calamity from gods and men. And
Frigg took an oath from fire and water, from iron and all
metals, from stones, from earths, and from diseases, from
beasts, birds, poisons, and creeping things, that none of
them would do any harm to Balder. And, when they had
all given oath, it became a common pastime with the
j*Esir that Balder should stand in the midst of them, to
serve as a mark, at whom they were wont some to hurl
darts, some stones, whilst others hewed at him with swords
or axes. Yet, do what they would, not one of them could
harm him. And this was looked upon among the -ZEsir
as a great honour shown to Balder.
But when Loki the son of Laufey saw this, it vexed
him sore that Balder got no hurt. Wherefore he took the
form of a woman and came to Fensalir, the house of
Frigg. Then Frigg, when she saw the old dame, asked of
her what the JEsir were doing at their meeting. And she
said that they were throwing darts and stones at Balder,
yet were unable to hurt him. ' Aye,' quoth Frigg, ' neither
metal nor wood can hurt Balder, for I have taken an
oath from all of them.'
6 What,' said the dame, ( have then all things sworn to
spare Balder?' 'All things,' answered Frigg, 'save a
little tree which grows on the eastern side of Valholl and
is called mistletoe, which I thought too young and weak to
ask an oath of it.'
When Loki heard this he went away, and, taking his
own shape again, he cut off the mistletoe and repaired to
THE DEATH OF BALDER. 401
the place where the gods were. There he found Hotter
standing apart, not sharing in the sports on account of his
blindness ; and he went up to him and said, ' Why dost
thou not also throw something at Balder ?' 'Because Ii
am blind,' said HoSer, 'and see not where Balder is, and
have beside nothing to cast with.' ' Come then,' said Loki,
'do thou like the rest, and show honour to Balder by
throwing this twig at him, and I will direct thine arm
toward the place where he stands.'
Then HoSer took the mistletoe, and, under the guidance
of Loki, darted it> at Balder ; and he, pierced through and
through, dropped down dead. And never was seen among
gods or men so fell a deed as that.
When Balder fell the JEsir were struck dumb with
horror, and they were minded to lay hands on him who
had done the deed, but they were obliged to stay their
vengeance from respect to the Peace-stead where the deed
was done. . . .
.... Then the Msir took the body of Balder and bore
it to the shore. There stood Balder 's ship Hringhorni
(the Disk of the Sun), which passed for the largest in the
world. But when they would have launched it to set
Balder's funeral pile thereon, they could not. Where-
fore they called out of Jotunheim a giantess named Hyr-
rokkin (Fire Smoke), 1 who came riding upon a wolf, with
serpents for reins. And as soon as she had alighted Odhinn
ordered four berserkir to hold her steed fast, but this they
could not do till they had thrown the animal upon the
ground. Hyrrokkin then went to the prow of the ship, and
with one push set it afloat, and with such force that fire
sparkled from the rollers and the earth shook all around.
Thorr, enraged at this sight, grasped his mallet, and, save
for the jiEsir, would have broken the woman's skull.
Then was Balder's body borne to the funeral pile, and
when his wife Nanna, the daughter of Nep, saw it, her
1 She is another embodiment of the funeral nre.
D D
402 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
heart brake with grief, and she too was laid upon the pyre.
Thorr then stood up and hallowed the pile, and therewith
he kicked a dwarf named Litr, who ran before his feet, into
the fire. And many people from all parts came to the
burning of Balder. First to name is Odhinn, with Frigg
and the Yalkyriur and his ravens. And Freyr came in
his car yoked to the boar Gullinbursti or SlrSrugtanni.
Heimdalr rode on his horse Gulltoppr, and Freyja came
drawn by her cats. And many folk of the rime giants
and hill giants came too. Odhinn laid on the pile the
gold ring named Draupnir, which since that time has
acquired the property of producing every ninth night
eight rings of equal weight. Balder's horse was led to the
pyre and burnt with all its trappings.
Meanwhile Odhinn had determined to send his mes-
senger HermoSr to pray Hel to set Balder free from
Helheim. For nine days and nine nights Hermo'Sr rode
through valleys dark and deep, where he could see nought
until he came to the river Gjoll, over which he rode by
Gjoll's bridge, which was roofed with gold. 1 A maiden,
called Modgudr, 2 kept that path. She enquired of him his
name and kin, for she said that yestereve five bands of dead
men rid over the bridge, yet did they not shake it so much
as he had done. 'But/ said she, ' thou hast not death's
hue on thee. Why then ridest thou here on Hel's way ? '
6 1 ride to Hel,' answered Hermo^r, * to seek Balder.
Hast thou perchance seen him on this road of Death ? '
6 Balder,' answered she, ' hath ridden over Gjoll's bridge.
But yonder northward lieth the way to He!.' . . .
Hermodhr then rode on to the palace, where he found
his brother Balder filling the highest place in the hall, and
in his company he passed the night. The next morning
he besought Hel that she would let Balder ride home with
1 Treasures of metal belong to the under world. So the Persian Yama
is a god of treasure, and so is Plouton, who is not to be distinguished
essentially from Ploutos (see Chap. V., also Preller, G. M., Demeter, &c.)
2 Soul's Fight.
THE DEATH OF BALDER. 403
him, assuring her how great the grief was among the gods,
Hel answered, ' It shall now be proved whether Balder be
so much loved as thou sayest. If therefore all things',
both living and lifeless, mourn for him, then shall he fare
back to the ^Esir. But if one thing only refuse to weep,
lie shall remain in Helheim.'
Then Hermodhr rose, and Balder led him from the
hall and gave him the ring Draupnir, to give it as a
keepsake to Odhinn. Nanna sent Frigg a linen veil and
other gifts, and to Fulla a gold finger ring. HermoSr
then rode back to Asgard and gave an account of all he
had seen and heard. And when Hermodhr had delivered
Hel's answer, the gods sent off messengers throughout the
world to beg everything to weep, in order that Balder
might be delivered out of Helheim. All things freely
complied with this request, both men and every other
living being, and earths and stones and trees and metals,
c just as thou hast no doubt seen these things weep when
they are brought from a cold place into a hot one.' As
the messengers were returning, and deemed that their
mission had been successful, they found an old hag named
Thokk sitting in a cavern, and her they prayed to weep
Balder out of Helheim. But she said
Thokk will weep with dry tears
Over Balder's bale.
Nor quick nor dead for the carl's son care I ;
Let Hel hold her own.
The nature myth out of which this story has grown is
very easily traced. Balder is the sun ; his ship Hring-
horni is the sun's disk, and as it 'floats out into the west
it shows the picture of a burning sunset. After awhile
out of the day myth sprang the myth of the year.
Balder's Bale commemorates the death of the summer, or
the actual descent of the sun for some weeks' or months'
duration into the realm of darkness; a phenomenon
known only in Northern lands. The witch Thokk sitting
404 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
there in her cave is undoubtedly the same whom we have
met many times at the eastward entry of hell. She was
originally simply the darkness the same as Dokkr, dark. 1
So Shelley sings
Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of night,
Oat of the misty eastern cave.
Being originally no more than a nature myth, the story
of Balder's death came in time to exercise a most import-
ant influence upon men's beliefs concerning death and the
future.
In the story as it has just been related the hope which
was for a little while held out of Balder's again returning
to earth was defeated through the machinations of Loki.
But I do not fancy that it was by most people thought
that Balder stayed in Helheim for ever. In the Voluspa,
as we shall presently see, there is the prophecy of a new
world which is to follow the destruction of the old world
at Ragnarok ; and to that new world it is said Balder shall
return, to reign supreme in it. True, it is likely that
these concluding verses of the Volupsa have been written
under the influence of Christian ideas ; but even so they
point to some early foundation for the belief that Balder
would reign as the king of paradise. 2 There must have
been some legend which made Balder, like others, sail
away to a land of the blessed beyond the western horizon
and the kingdom of shades. It was, we may well sup-
pose, in virtue of some such belief that there arose the
custom of burning the. hero in a ship, in the same way
that Balder was burned in Hrinofhorni. Before historic
O
times, however, the meaning of this rite had 'been generally
forgotten, and scattered remains of it only survived.
1 That is to say, the name has probably /been changed from Do'kkr to
pokk.t/umfo, in obedience to an allegorising spirit like that which changed
Hel into Elli.
2 See also next chapter.
NORSE FUNERAL RITES. 405
Yet the very fragmentariness of these remains is the
best witness we could wish for to the importance once
attaching to rituals which commemorated the burial of
Balder. For example, we find in historic times that men
were often buried in a ship that is to say, in a coffin
made in the shape of a ship. Not many years ago was
unearthed from a Norwegian burial ground a large vessel
which had served as a resting-place for the dead. Of
course to use the vessel in this way was to defeat the very
purpose for which the ship had been at first called into
requisition ; for the body, when buried, could not sail away
in the track which Balder had made. But the use of this
form of coffin shows that men had once understood the
meaning of laying the dead man in his ship. It shows
incidentally this also : that the belief commemorated in
the story of Balder's bale belongs to a date earlier than
the date of this use of the ship as a coffin.
It is highly interesting to find, in the accounts of a
traveller among certain Northern Teutons in .the t^nth
century, the description of a funeral which is evidently a
close copy of the funeral of Balder, with just such an
omission or change of one or two features in it as may
serve to show that the funeral rites in question had been
long in use, and had had time to degenerate here and there
into empty forms.
The account to which I refer is in the ' Kitab el Meshalik
wa-1 Memalik' ('Book of Roads and Kingdoms') of the Arab
traveller Ibn Haukal. The book was written during the
tenth century : the Arab's travels, I believe, extend from
A.D. 942 to 976. The people whom Ibn Haukal visited
were the Russ or Varings, dwelling in the centre of Russia
(near Kief), to which country they have bequeathed their
name. For all that they were a Gothic and not a Slavonic
race.
In his description of the funerals of these Russ, Ibn
.Haukal has first to tell us that the bodies even of the poor
were Iturmd in a ship made for that purpose; those of
406 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
the slaves were abandoned to dogs and birds of prey ; that
the Russ were wont to burn their dead with the horses,
arms, and precious metals which belonged to them; and
that ( if the dead was married they burned alive with him
his wives. 1 The women themselves desired to follow their
husbands onto the pyre, thinking that they went with
them to Paradise.'
The narrative then proceeds, c As I had heard that at
the deaths of their chiefs the Russ did even more than to
burn them, I was anxious to see their funeral rites. I soon
heard that they were going to render the last duties to a
rich merchant, who had died not long before. The body
of the defunct was first placed in a ditch, where it was left
ten days. This interval was employed in making him new
robes. His property was divided into- three parts : one
part passed to his family ; the second was spent on his
robes, and the third in the purchase of drink to be con-
sumed at the funeral ; for the Russ are very much given
to strong drink, and some die with a flask in their hands.
Then the family asked of the slaves of both sexes, " Which
among you will die with him ? " Whoever answers " I "
cannot go back from his word. Generally the female
slaves are those who thus devote themselves to death. In
this case they asked the female slaves of the dead man
which of them chose to follow him. One answered, "I."
She was given into the charge of two females, who were
bidden to follow her about everywhere and serve her, and
who even washed her feet. This girl passed her days in
pleasure, singing and drinking, while they were getting
ready the garments destined for the dead and were making
the other preparations for his obsequies.
' The day fixed for the funeral was Friday. I went to
the bank of the stream on which was the vessel of the
dead. I saw that they had drawn the ship to land, and
men were engaged in fixing it upon four stakes, and had
placed round it wooden statues. Onto the vessel they,
1 This statement is only partially confirmed by what follows.
NOKSE FUNEEAL KITES. 407
bore a wooden platform, a mattress and cushions, covered
with a Roman material of golden cloth. Then appeared
an old woman called the Angel of Death, who put all this
array in order. She has the charge of getting made the
funeral garments and of the other preparations. She, too,
kills the girl slaves who are devoted to death. She had the
mien of a fury.
4 When all was ready they went and took the dead from
his sepulchre ; whence too they drew a vase of spirituous
drink, some fruits, and a lute, which had been placed beside
him. He was clad in the robe which he had on at the
moment of his death. I noticed that his skin was already
livid, owing to the cold of this place ; otherwise he was not
at all changed. They clad him now in drawers, trowsers,
boots and tunic, and a coat of cloth of gold ; his head they
covered .with a brocaded cap furred with sable, and then
they carried him to a tent which had been erected on the
ship. He was seated on the couch and surrounded with
cushions. Before him they placed some drink, some fruit
and odorous herbs, some bread, meat, and garlic ; around
him were ranged all his weapons. Then they brought a
dog, cut it in two, and threw the portions into the ship.
They made two horses gallop till they were covered, with
sweat ; then they cut them into pieces with their sabres,
and they threw the fragments onto the vessel ; two oxen
were cut up, and their fragments thrown on in the same
manner. Lastly they killed a cock and hen, which they
threw on in the same way. Meanwhile the female slave
went and came. I saw her enter a tent, where a man
said to her these words : " Say to thy master, I have done
this for love of thee." Towards evening she was led to a
sort of pedestal, newly erected. Onto this she climbed,
placing her feet in the hands of various men who stood
round, and said certain words. Then they helped her
down: They made her ascend a second time : she spoke
some more words, and came down again. She mounted
a third time, and when she had said some more words
103 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
they made her descend once again. Then they gave her
a fowl, whose head she cut off, and this she threw down.
The men about cast the body into the ship. I asked my
interpreter for an explanation of what had passed. He
said, " The first time that she climbs up the pedestal she
speaks these words, 'I see my father and mother;' the
second time, 'I see all my dead re]ations seated;' and
the third time, ' I see my master in Paradise, who is most
fair and crowned with green, and beside him I see men
and slaves. He calls me ; I will go and join him/ " Then
they brought her to the ship. She drew off two bracelets
and gave them to the woman called the Angel of Death.
She undid the two rings which she wore on her limbs and
gave them to the two slaves who attended her. Then they
made her ascend the ship, and thither she was followed by
men armed with shields and staves, who gave her a vase
of spirituous liquor. She began to sing and drink.
The interpreter said that she was bidding adieu to
those dear to her. They gave her a second cup; she
took it and began intoning a long chaunt; but the old
woman pressed her to drink and enter the tent where
her master was, and, as she hesitated, the old one
seized her by the hair and dragged her in. Thereupon
the men began to strike their staves upon their shields, to
drown the cries of the victim, fearing lest other women
slaves should be terrified thereat, which would prevent
them some day from asking to die with their masters.
At the same moment six men entered the tent, surrounded
the victim, and placed her Iving beside the dead. Two
held her by the feet, two by the head; 'the old woman
passed a cord round her neck, and gave it to the two
remaining men who stood near, and these strangled her.
At the same moment the old woman, drawing a large
knife, struck it into the wretch's side.
'Then the nearest relative of the dead man came
forward quite naked, set fire to a fragment of wood, and
walking backwards towards the vessel, holding in one of
NOESE FUNERAL RITES. 409
his hands the kindled wood and having the other hand
placed behind him, set fire to the pile under the ship;
then other Euss advanced, holding each a kindled staff,
which they cast upon the pile. It took fire, and the ship
was soon consumed with the tent, the dead man, and his
woman slave. A terrible wind which had arisen stirred
the fire and increased the flame.'
Not the least interesting part in Ibn HaukaPs account
of the Russ funeral is the incident with which it concludes.
'Hearing,' says the Arab, 'a Russ speaking to my in-
terpreter, I asked what he said. "He says," was the
answer, " that as for you Arabs, you are mad, for those
who are the most dear to you and whom you honour most
you place in the ground, where they will become a prey to
worms; whereas with us they are burnt in an instant,
and go straight to Paradise." He added, with laughter,
" It is in favour to the dead that God has raised this great
wind : He wished to see him come to Him the sooner."
And in truth an hour hud not passed before the ship was
reduced to ashes.'
Observe that in the creed of these people burning is
the necessary gate from earth to heaven; if a man is
buried he falls a prey to worms and perishes utterly.
We see in this ritual all the concomitants of the great
drama of Balder's death. The old woman who is called
by Ibn Haukal the Angel of Death is certainly either Hel
herself or else she is the witch Thokk (or Angrbodha), who
sits at the entrance of the nether kingdom. In the death
of the slave we have a poor substitute (no doubt the best
attainable) for the beautiful incident of the death of
Nanna, the wife of Balder. ' And when Nanna the
daughter of Nep saw it ' (i.e. the funeral pile prepared) ' her
heart brake with grief and she too was placed upon the
pyre.' 1 The theory doubtless was that the slave wife's
heart too brake just when she saw her husband placed
1 Edda Snorra, D. 49.
410 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
upon his bier ; but, as the fact could not be made to hold
pace with the theory, the girl had to be strangled before
she was burned.
But there are some points in which the ritual has
decayed. The funeral fire lighted in the ship has here
sunk to be an unmeaning rite ; for not only were these
Russ not settled by the sea no longer by the sea, we may
say, for they had migrated inland from the Baltic shores
so that there could be no drifting westward to the
setting sun, but the ship was not even launched in a river.
It was dragged up upon the bank and then made firm with
stakes before lighting. We may believe that the Russ
had carried their old custom inland when they left the
coast. The very senselessness of the rite in this its later
form bears witness to the potency of the associations which
had given it birth and of the myth out of which it sprang.
The relics of Balder's bale are not to be looked for
only in funeral rites. We have said that with the Teutons
more than with any other people the saddest occasions
seemed to exchange places with times of festivity and
joy. In festivals .which lingered long after the worship
of Balder had been forgotten we can recognise the remains
of this great funeral feast of the sun god. The later
commemorations were the St. John's fires, of which some-
thing has already been said.
The celebration of Balder's bale was to some extent
confounded with a feast of a different origin, a feast held
in honour of the sun ; but that the two should have thus
mingled shows that Balder's bale fires must very early
have been made occasions of festivity. These bale fires
were lighted at Midsummer, taking the moment at which
the sun began his decline to commemorate the story of the
sun's death. 1 On the same principle the Teutons chose
the time of the year's shortest days to announce the advent
of the new spring, -Wherefore the same season was fixed
upon by the Church to celebrate the advent of Christ.
1 See p. 227.
ST. JOHN'S FIKES. 411
Though Balder's bale fires were at first occasions of mourn-
ing, they very early took an opposite character. The
festival still survives ; it has lived on all through the
Middle Ages to our own times ; only, after Christianity
supplanted heathenism, the fires, instead of being Balder's
fires, changed their name into the St. John's fires, feux
de St. Jean, Johannisfeuer, which are known in the
principal countries of Europe.
' On this day,' says a writer of the twelfth century, 1
describing the St. John's fires, ' they carry brands and
torches for the lighting of great fires, which typify the
Saint John, who was a light and a burning fire and the
forerunner of the True Light. In some places they roll
wheels, which signifieth that, as the sun riseth to the
height of his arc and can then rise no higher, so the fame
of St. John, who was at first thought to be the Christ,
lessened ; according to the testimony of his own words
when he said, " He shall increase, but I shall decrease."
Rather a strained analogy, as one must allow ; and yet if
we were to put Balder back again in the place that had
been usurped by St. John, these words would express, not
inaccurately, the place which their ancient sun-god held
in the hearts of men who were Christians but who still
kept a kindly memory for their old creed. ' Balder,' they
might have said, f seemed to us like a Christ before we
knew Christ ; but as the other increased so his fame de-
creased.' The rolling of the wheel which did really, as
this twelfth-century writer sees, typify the rolling of the
sun up to its highest arc, and its descent through heaven,
was far more appropriate to Balder than to the Scriptural
St. John the Baptist.
Not very different from this description of the twelfth
century is one of the nineteenth. It is of the St. John's
fire at Konz, 2 on the Mosel, in the year 1823. Here the
1 Johannes Beleth, Summa de Divinis Offitiis (circ. 1162), cap. 137,
quoted by Grimm, D. M. 516.
2 Not far from Thionville, and then in French Lorraine; but a German-
speaking place then as now.
4.12 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
custom was that every house should furnish, a bundle of
straw, which was carried to the summit of a neighbouring
hill, the Stromberg, where in the evening the men, old
and young, assembled, while the women and girls stayed
below by a stream called Burbach. With the straw an
immense wheel was made, with a strong stake running
through the axle and standing out three feet on either
side. What remained of the straw was twisted into brands.
The mayor of Sierck gave the signal, and the wheel was
lighted, and with much shouting was then set rolling.
All threw their brands into the air. Some of the men
remained on the top ; some followed the burning wheel
down the hill to the Mosel. The wheel might go out before
it reached the river ; if it did not, then men augured a
good year for the vines.
Tn accounts such as these we are naturally brought to
think of the Eleusinian and Dionysiac festivals, or of the
mystery of Isis accompanied by a ' throwing of brands.'
Unquestionably, in the ceremony above described, there
does lurk some element of earth worship and of Dionysus
or wine-god worship, as the prediction about the vintage
testifies. Interesting, too, is it to see in this case, as in
so many others, the magical element of the myth lingering
when the meaning of it has been forgotten. Though men
have quite, or almost altogether, lost sight of the connection
between their fiery wheel and the sun, they still keep hold
on the notion that the length of time during which the
former burns will affect their vine harvest. The length of
time during which the sun continues to give out his heat,
before he sinks into his winter sleep, of course is a matter
of importance.
In Finistere the feux de St. Jean present, or did pre-
sent for the writer from whom I quote * complains that,
even at that time, 1835, the old customs of Brittany were
rapidly on the wane a unique sight. 6 Cries of joy are
1 Souvestre in his edition of Cambry's Voyage dans le Finistere.
ST. JOHN'S FIEES. 413
heard from every side. Every promontory, every rock,
every mountain, is alight. A thousand fires are burning
in the open air, and from afar off you may descry the
shadow-like figures moving round the fire in their dance :
one might fancy it a dance of courils. 1 The fires are often
lighted by the priests, who make processions through the
villages with consecrated tapers. At St.-Jean du Doigt
an angel is made to descend from the church tower,
bearing a torch in his hand. He sets alight the principal
fire, which burns in the churchyard. On every road you
meet companies of maidens coming out to dance round the
fires. They must not return until they have danced round
nine of these, if they wish to be married within the twelve-
month.' At Brest, again, as at the Johanhisfeuer at Konz,
'people whirled round torches, to look like wheels. . . .'
' On the vigil of St. John the Baptist, commonly called
Midsummer Eve,' says Strutt, 2 'it was usual in most country
places for the inhabitants, both old and young, to meet
together and make merry by the side of a large fire, made
in the middle of the street or in some open and convenient
place, over which the younger men frequently leapt by way
of frolic, and also exercised themselves with various sports
and pastimes.' And he quotes from a rhymed English
version, made in the sixteenth century, of the ' Pope's
Kingdom,' by Tho. Neogeorgius, wherein the same fes-
tivities are described.
Then doth the joyful feast of John the Baptist take his turne ;
When bonfires great, with lofty flame, in every street do burne,
And younge men round about with maides doe daunce in everie
street,
With garlands wrought of mother wort, or else of vervaine sweet.
The leaping over the flame recalls the leap of Skirnir
(or of Sigurd, as we shall presently see) through the death
fire. It is a sort of vaunt on the part of the youth that
1 A race of fairies native in Brittany.
2 Sports and Pastimes.
414 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
Loki has not yet gotten them. At Burford, in Oxfordshire,
they used in these ceremonies of Midsummer's Day to carry
a dragon through the town, to which was added the image
of a giant. 1 In these we see Loki and Jormungandr.
On popular tales, from the great epics of the German
race, the tales of Sigurd and Siegfrid downwards, the
imagery of death, drawn from the funeral fire, has left a
peculiarly vivid impress ; and in these stories, as in many
of the rites above described, the true meaning of the myth
has been forgotten, and therefore the incidents which
should have expressed that meaning exist in garbled forms,
as survivals only. This is markedly the case with the
Volsung. saga. The story must once have been in part
at least a nature myth, being, as it is in parts, almost
identical with the story of Freyr's (or Skirnir's) ride to
Jotunheim to seek out GerS. In its present shape there
is this difference between it and the Ger5 myth, that in the
latter the meaning of each element of the tale is brought
very plainly forward, whereas in the Volsung legend a
great portion of the meaning has been obscured by time,
so that the narrator only records incidents without under-
standing their special significance. By comparison of the
two myths not forgetting the story of the Fiolsvinnsmal,
which we spoke of above, and which furnishes, in some
matters, a link between the legends of Skirnir and Sigurd
we can recast the history of Sigurd and Brynhild in its
original form. We have seen how Freyr or Skirnir had
to ride through the flickering flame into the courtyard of
G^mir, in whose house GerS was for the time imprisoned ;
and how in the Fiolsvinnsmal Svipdag had to pass through
the same circle of flame to come to Menglod; and we
know that without question this fiery barrier is symbolical
of the funeral fire that is, of death. 2
Now read the description of Sigrdrifa asleep on the
hill :
1 Strutt, 270. 8 Fafnismal, 42-4.
SIGURD AND BKYNHILD. 415
A hall is on high Hindarfjoll ;
With fire ivithout 'tis all surrounded.
Mighty lords that palace builded
Of dire undimmed flame.
I know that on the fell a war maiden sleeps ;
Around her flickers the linden's bane, 1
With his thorn-thrust Odhinn through her weeds has
pierced her,
The weed of the maid who for heroes contended.
The pricking by Odhinn with a sleep thorn is really a
sending into mortal sleep ; for the thorn had become an
image of death from its connection with the funeral pyre.
Therefore the death of Brynhild is doubly expressed in the
above passage. Sigurd eventually found Brynhild as he
had been directed. He rode up the Hindarfjoll and thence
into Frankland. On the fells he saw a great light, as if a
fire were burning and casting its light high up into the
sky. He found there a ' shield-burg ' 2 and entered it, and
there he saw one whom he took for a warrior lying asleep
in complete armour. It was Brynhild or Sigrdrifa. Her
corselet had grown quite tight upon her body. 3 Sigurd
ripped it open, and so awoke her. After Sigurd had
plighted his faith to Brynhild he went to the court of
King Griuki, whose wife was Grimhild and his daughter
Godrun. Grimhild gave Sigurd a draught which made
him forget his love and all his promises. He then married
Godrun, the daughter of Giuki and Grimhild. Grimhild
now counselled her son Gunnar to woo Brynhild. Brynhild
had vowed to wed him only who could ride over the blazing
fire which lay around her hall. Gunnar could not make
his way through the fire ; so Sigurd changed forms with
him and then rode through. The description of this flame
might stand for a description of the great Muspilli, the
Fire
2 SJijaldborg, which generally means an array of battle ; here, perhaps,
used for some palisaded place full of slain, among which lay Brynhild.
3 Sigrdrifumal, Introd. See also Sigur>akv. Ffnb. I., 16.
416 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
earth-consuming fire. 1 ' Sigurd rode, having in his hand
his sword Gram ; his horse Grani plunged forward, feeling
the spur. Now was there a great noise, as it says
The fire began to rage, the earth to shake ;
The flame rose high as heaven itself ;
Few of the people's princes ventured forth
The fire to ride through or to overleap.
Sigurd with his sword compelled Grani,
And the fire quenched before the hero ;
The flame was dimmed before the glory-lover,
On the bright saddle that Rok 2 had known.'
Brynhild was compelled to receive him, but Sigurd
gave himself the name of Gunnar. When the marriage
bed was prepared, he laid his sword between himself and
the bride, and when Brynhild nsked why he did this he
answered that he had been enjoined so to do. But they
exchanged rings. Then Sigurd rode back through the
fire, and he and Gunnar took their right forms again.
Notable are the likenesses and the points of difference
between this story and the Ni.belun gen-Lied. In the latter
Siegfried, who has made himself Gunther's man for love
of Criemhild, sister to Gunther, performs an office for the
bridegroom almost the same as that which Sigurd did for
Gunnar. That is to say, he overcomes the unwillingness
of Brunhild to receive the embraces of her husband, and
then he gives place to Gunther without dishonouring his
bed. But there is nothing said of the feat of riding through
the flame. For at the time at which the Nibelungen was
composed all shadow of meaning had been taken away
from this incident.
Yet the same incident still lingers on in popular lore,
though in a form different from that which it wears in the
Norse poems, and in one which without some previous
explanation would be scarcely recognisable.
1 See infra.
2 Rok is Doom. The meaning of this passage is not, however, quite
clear to me.
SIEGFRIED AND BRUNHILD. 417
We owe to the researches of Grimm the proof that
some among the common thorn trees were by the Teuton
races so intimately associated with their use for lighting
fires that they received names from this use. 1 They were
sufficiently identified as 'burning plants.' The Gothic
word aihvatundi, which, generally means simply white-
thorn, has etymologically the signification of the * burner.'
If, then, the ideas of thorn and fire were so . intimately
associated in the German's mind, it is not wonderful that
a hedge of fire should sometimes have been replaced by a
hedge of thorn. This we find has happened in many
myths. The circle of flame which in earlier legends was
seen surrounding the house of death becomes converted,
in later German marchen, into a thorn hedge. When this
transformation has taken place the true meaning of the
hedge has, however, been forgotten. It is by this process
of change that even in the Brynhild myth the thorn makes
its. appearance. The maiden was pricked by Odhinn with
a sleep thorn. This means that she was sent to the house
of death. Accordingly, when we next see her on the
Hindarfjoll, she is lying on a mound surrounded by a
circle of fire.
This story, reappears in a household guise which is
familiar enough to us. The maiden whom we call the
Sleeping Beauty, 2 and the Germans Dornroschen, Thorn-
rose Bud, harmless and childlike as she seems, is in reality
no other than the Valkyria of the North, Brynhild herself.
This we easily see by examining the details of her history.
1 Veber das Verbrenncn der Leichcn.
2 Grimm, Kinder- u. Haus-Mahrchen. In the same mediaeval poem, Notre
Dame Ste. Marie, from which, in Chap. II., I quoted a passage which
showed the vitality of the belief in the parent tree and in descent from a
tree, we find another incident which seems to have arisen in the same way
as the hedge of briar in Dornroschen. Part of this history relates how the
mother of St. Anne, while a visgin, became with child only by smelling the
fruit of the life-giving tree (see Chap. II. p. 64). She was accused of
immorality by the Jews, and to prove her innocence she consented to walk
through the fire. As she passed, the flames turned into roses.
E E
418 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF,
The angry fairy, who had not been invited to the chris-
tening, foretold that when the Eose Maiden had reached
her fifteenth birthday she would be pricked with a spindle
and fall down dead ; but this terrible sentence the other
fairies were able to commute to a sleep of one hundred
years. All happened as it was foretold, although, to
escape from fate, the king had, after the decree of the
fairies, ordered every spinning-wheel throughout the land
to be destroyed. The king and queen chanced to go out
upon the very day on which the maiden attained her
fifteenth year, and she, wandering about alone, came to an
unused tower of the castle, and there found an old dame
sitting alone and spinning. This dame is Fate. 1 'What
are you doing there ? ' said the king's daughter. ' Spinning,'
said the old crone, and nodded her head. ' How prettily
the wheel turns round.' Then the princess took the
wheel and began to spin; but scarcely had she done so
than the prophecy was fulfilled. She pricked her hand
and fell down in a deep sleep. And all the court fell
asleep too, and at last a thick thorn hedge grew up about
the palace and quite hid it from view. But still the tale
lived on in the neighbourhood of how there was a beautiful
maiden sleeping behind the hedge. At last, when her fate
was accomplished, came the prince, the Sigurd of this
fairy story, and broke through the hedge of thorn and
kissed the maiden back into life.
So much for the visits of gods and men to the world of
death. We have now to look on a still more awful picture,
which we might call the visit of the World of Death to
Mannheimar and Asgard. This is, in fact, the long-
foreseen, long vainly guarded against Last Day, when the
powers of darkness and chaos are to rise agakist order and
light, and bring destruction on the whole earth.
1 But she is also the same as Angrbodha. See what was said in Chap.
VI. of the spinning of Circe and of Calypso.
RAaNAROK. 419
2. RagnaroJc.
A. gaping gap and nowhere grass. This is the primal
condition of things whereof the Edda speaks ; or of no-
things, for the gaping gap (Ginnungagap) is a translation
almost exactly of the Greek chaos, 1 and means but void
space. But imagination cannot dwell with mere negation,
so that the picture of Ginnungagap actually given us is of
a deep pit in the midst of which welled up, * at once and
ever,' a mighty spring called Hvergelrnir. From Hver-
gelmir flowed many streams, which rolled venom in their
course, and anon these hardened into ice, and the vapour
which rose^rom them hardened into rime. Thus on one
side of Hvergelmir were peaks of snow and ice ; but on
the other side was a fiery region called Muspell's-heim,
old as the great gap itself, and old as Niflhel (Mist-hell),
which lay beneath the earth. This MuspeH's-heim was a
land too glowing to be entered by any save those who
were native there. 'He who sits on the land's end to
guard Muspell's-heim is called Surtr (Swart). He bears
a flaming sword in his hand, and one day he shall come
forth to fight and vanquish all the gods, and consume the
world with fire.' 2
Fire and ice, which are thus shown as earlier than the
ordered world, were destined to outlive that world, and be
the chief agents in its destruction. Fire and cold were to
the Norseman the two great symbols of cleath one the
funeral fire through which men passed to the other world,
and the other the chill of the tomb. It was from the
meeting of the heated air from Muspell's-heim with the
icy vapour from Hvergelmir that the giant race came into
being ; and that swart god Surtr, who was the leader of
the sons of Muspell, was himself a king of death. In the
account of Ragnarok we see ranged under the leadership
1 xw, aor. exaSoz/, to gape. Thus Simrock derives ginnung.' Vig-
fusson, however, prefers to connect it with the A. S. beginnan, Eng. begin.
Vigfusson and Cleasby's Id. Diet. s. v. ginn.
2 Edda Snorra, 4.
B E 2
420 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE SELIEF.
of the giants of cold and fire all minor images of destruc-
tion, the sun- and moon- devouring wolves, the sea mon-
ster, the Fenrisulfr, and Gar in the hell hound.
The forewarning of the end of the world was to be the
great winter, three years in duration, which the Eddas
call Fimbul winter. 1 ' Every man's hand shall be turned
against his brother, and sisters' children shall their kin-
ship rend asunder ; no man shall another spare.' 2
An axe age, a brand age ; shields shall be sundered ;
A wind age, a wolf age, ere the world welters.
Three cocks, it is said, are to proclaim to^ the world
the dawning of the Last Day : over the ^Esir shall crow the
gold-bright Gullinkambi ; 3 in the bird wood over Mann-
heimr, a bright red cock ; and beneath the earth, to rouse
the troops of ghosts, a cock of sooty red. When he hears
these, the giantesses' watch, the eagle, makes reply. 4
There on a hill sat, and his harp struck,
The giantesses' watch, glad Egdir. 5
Before him crowed, in the bird wood,
The blood red cock, Fiallar called.
The giant race rejoices and the central tree takes fire.
Heimdal, who had been set to guard the rainbow, now
blows loud his gjallar-horn 6 to warn the gods that danger
is near; for in truth Surtr is hastening with his fiery
bands from Muspell's home towards the fairs' bridge.
Then the gods take counsel together, and ride down to
meet the foe on Vigrid's plain. Odhinn consults Mini's
head. Can the danger yet be averted ? Time is drawing
to an end.
1 Curiously enough, the same tradition of the awful winter which was
to herald the Last Day existed among the Persians.
2 Voluspa, 46 (Liming). s Gold-combed.
< Voluspa-, 34. 5 The storm eagle.
Loud-sounding horn. Heimdal is a kind of Memnon.
KAGNABOK. 421
Yggdrasill trembles ; though the ash still stands,
Yet groans that ancient tree. The jotun ! is loosened ;
Loud howls Garm 2 from the Gnupa cave ;
The fetter breaks and the wolf 3 runs free. 4
Now from the east comes sailing a ship; Hrym (Rime)
steers it, and all the frost giants are within. Another
ship, Naglfar, made of the nails of dead men, brings the
troops of ghosts, and that Loki steers. 5 Surtr rides over
Asbru, which takes fire beneath his tread and is burnt up ;
men tread hell's way, and heaven itself is cloven in twain.
Surt from the south fares, the giant with the sword ;
The gods' sun shines, reflected from his shield.
Rocks are shaken, and giantesses totter.
Heroes fare to hell, and heaven is cleft atwain. 6
The opposing powers meet in middle earth. On the
one side are Odhinn with the other JEsir and the Ein-
heriar that is to say, the heroes who have been taken to
Valholl on the other side are the giants and the ghosts
with Loki and his progeny, and with Surtr and his band
of fire. The field of battle is Vigrid's.plain.
How fares it with the ^sir ? how with the Alfar ?
Jotunheim roars ; the JEsir come to council ;
And the dwarfs are moaning before their stony doors,
Know ye what that betokens ? 7
The three great combats of Ragnarok are between
Odhinn and the wolf Fenrir, between Thorr and the Mid-
gard serpent, and between Freyr and Surtr.
1 Loki.
2 Garm, a hound who will devour the moon, and who is in nature com-
parable to Fenrir.
8 Fenrir. * Vol. 48 (Liming).
5 The two Eddas give different accounts of the sailing of Naglfar. The
Younger Edda confuses this ship with the one steered by Hrim, the King
of Frost Giants, the power of cold.
Vol. 51 ' Ibid. 52.
422 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
Now arises Hlin's second grief,
When Odhinn goes with the wolf to fight
And the bright slayer of Beli with Sort.
Then shall Frigg's beloved one fall. 1
Hlin is Frigg ; the bright slayer of Beli is Freyr. In
each of these battles there is a fitness. Fenrir is the type
not so much of destruction as of emptiness and the wide
mouth of the tomb, and so he is the natural antagonist of
Odhinn, the fount of all existence. Thorr is a kind of
sun god, analogous to Apollo or Heracles, and like them
ha combats the great sea or river serpent. Still more
appropriate is it that Freyr, god of the spring-time and of
the newness of life, should be opposed to Surt, the god
of death. 2 ' Freyr,' says the Younger Edda, ' would have
been victorious had he not given away his sword to Skirnir
what time he was a- wooing GerS ; ' and the nature myth
underlying this saying is not difficult to interpret. To
these three combats recorded in the Yoluspa the Younger
Edda adds a fourth namely, of Tyr with Garni and iii
this instance, as in so many others, Tyr is but a pale shadow
of Odhinn, for Garm cannot be essentially different from
Fenrir.
When Odhinn has been killed by Fenrir he is revenged
by Yidar, who strikes his sword into the heart of the wolf.
Thorr kills Jorinungandr ; but, suffocated by the dragon's
poisonous breath, he recoils nine paces and falls dead. Tyr
and Garm slay one another. Last of all Loki and Heimdall
fight ; each kills the other. And now Death (Surtr) stalks
unhindered over earth and, spreading flame on every side,
consumes it all.
The sun darkens ; the earth sinks in the sea.
From heaven fall the bright stars.
The tire-wind storms round the all-nourishing tree ;
The flame assails high heaven itself. 3
> Vol. 53.
8 Surtr is scarcely to be distinguished from Loki ; each of them conducts
the sons of Muspell (Vol. 50 ; Edda Snorra, 4). Vol. 56.
RAGNAEOK. 423
The original myth of Bagnarok perhaps ended here,
drawing a veil over all things, plunging the earth again
into darkness, as out of darkness it had emerged. As the
old proverb said, 'Few can see farther forth than when
Odhinn meets the wolf.' But the Ecldas do pass beyond
this picture, and, influenced thereto perhaps by Chris-
tianity, they lift the veil again upon a new world, which
rises out of the ocean of chaos, peopled by a new race of
mankind and a younger generation of ^Esir. In a passage
of the Voluspa, of unrivalled beauty, we are told how the
prophetess, with an eye which pierces beyond Eagnarok, 1
Sees arise, a second time,
Earth, from ocean, green again ;
Waters fall once more ; the eagle flies over,
And from the fell fishes for his prey.
The ^Esir come together on Ida's plain ;
Of the earth-encircler, the mighty one, they speak.
Then to the mind are brought ancient words a
And the runes by Fimbultyr 3 found.
Then will once more the wondrous
Golden tablets in the grass be found,
Which in the ancient days the ^Esir had,
The folk-ruling gods, and Fiolnir's race.
Unsown shall the fields bear fruit-
Evil shall depart, Balder come back again;
In Hropt's 4 high hall dwell Balder and Hoder,
The happy gods.
A hall I see brighter than the sun,
With gold adorned, on Gimil ;
There shall noble princes dwell,
And without end the earth possess.
Then rides the Mighty One, to the gods' doom going,
The Strong One from above who all things governs.
He strifes shall stay and dooms shall utter,
Holiness establish which shall ever be.
1 Vol. 57 sqq. 2 Or perhaps ' deeds of might.'
* The great Tyr, i.e. the great god. 4 Odhinn's.
424 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
Yet even now all is not well !
Then comes the dark Dragon 2 flying,
The serpent from below, from Niflhel.
Nidhogg bears fipon his wings that fly
Earth's fields over,
A corpse. . . .
Nidhhog, serpent of death, is still not dead. Is, then,
the old course of life and death to be repeated for ever ?
We cannot say.
The impression of this great myth remained in Ger-
many, but it was in Christian times overshadowed by other
more distinctly Biblical pictures of the Day of Judgment.
Nevertheless some of the names and incidents were pre-
served. Ragnarok was by the Germans called Muspilli.
This word, in the sense of the fire of doom, has been pre-
served in many different dialects of the German language,
notably in Saxon and in Bavarian.
We have a long poem in Bavarian bearing the name
Muspilli. The personages of the poem have undergone
the same kind of transformation which turned Balder
into St. John the Baptist ; but the character of the old
battle and the combats recorded in it are to a great extent
the same as those of the Eddaic Ragnarok. The place of
Loki is taken by the old fiend ; that of Surtr is taken by
Antichrist, with whom fights Elias, a veritable sun god,
though not a Northern one. 3
* This have I heard the wise ones declare. Elias shall
1 Vol. 64.
2 Drcld, an unusual word, the presence of which affords one reason for
supposing this passage of late insertion.
8 In Greek popular tradition the deeds of the sun god (Apollo, Helios)
are transferred to Elias. The chief motive for the choice of this Old
Testament prophet lies in the likeness of his name to that of Helios.
Besides that Elias drives in a chariot up to heaven. I take Elias here to
be Freyr; Simrock, however, says he must be Thorr (1. c. p. 130; see also
Grimm, s. v. Mias). Elias is undoubtedly the thunderer, and has a chariot.
Still Antichrist must be Surtr, the antagonist of Freyr.
MUSPILLI. 425
strive with Antichrist. The wolf is prepared ; a battle
there shall be. Mighty the combat; mighty the reward.
Elias strives for everlasting life ; of the righteous will he
the kingdom establish ; wherefore all heavenly powers to
his help shall come. Antichrist upholds the old fiend,
Satan. . . .' Both Antichrist and Elias will fall. The
blood of the latter is to set the world afire. t The hills
burn ; no tree in all the world remains. The seas dry up ;
the heaven is consumed in flame. The moon falls from
heaven ; Mittelgard burns. No rock stands firm ; the day
of vengeance is at hand. . . .'
We might fairly say that the old heathen hell or
Helheim lived on in men's belief in the form of purga-
tory; while the gloomy thought of Catholicism added a
hell which was infinitely more terrible than Helheim.
Purgatory formed a middle term, which helped men to
measure the horrors of eternal punishment. But, as a
fact, it happened that the gloomy teaching of the Church
overreached itself ; the most terrible picture was beyond
the capacity of imagination, and men recoiled from it
and kept their eyes fixed upon purgatory. I doubt if the
notion of eternal punishment was really very often present
to men's thoughts in the Middle Ages; for we find that
the indulgences were always offered in the profession of
saving men from a longer durance in purgatory; they
were offered even to the living on that plea ; whereas it
might have been supposed that men's first thought would
have been how to escape the place of eternal pain. We
find too a thing most significant that mediaeval legend
is full of visions of purgatory ; but that, before the time of
Dante, we hear little of visions of hell.
It is in the purgatory legends, therefore, that we must
search, if we wish to discover traces of the beliefs of
heathenism touching the nether world in the Middle Ages.
And it may be added that it is in visions of journeys to
the earthly Paradise that we must look for like information
426 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
concerning the survival of the old heathen Paradise. We
do find many traces of both these orders of belief. It is
certain that the essential features of the heathen under-
world reappear in the Christian purgatory legends ; but it
is not so easy to say that these have been handed down
directly from the beliefs of German heathenism. Many
images taken from classic antiquity, and many drawn from
the Bible, are to be found mingled in the picture. Never-
theless there are some elements which are especially charac-
teristic of German thought, as we shall presently see.
At first the visions are meagre in details, because, as I
suppose, the marriage between Christian and heathen belief
was not yet completed ; gradually they expand in variety,
until they reach their perfect form in the vision of the
Florentine.
The heathen belief in hell cannot be kept altogether
apart from the belief in heaven ; and no more can the
purgatory legends be kept quite apart from those of the
Earthly Paradise. Nevertheless we must leave to speak
of the latter, in any detail until the next chapter. We
shall in that chapter see more fully the reasons which
made Ireland (the most western island known to mediaeval
Europe) a home for all myths connected with the future
of the soul. We shall see how that the great Middle Age
legend of the Earthly Paradise was the legend of the voyage
of St. Brandan, an Irish monk. The great Middle Age
legend of purgatory was that of the purgatory of St.
Patrick ; and of the lesser visions which prepared the way
for the myth of St. Patrick's purgatory, or for the still
more awful vision of Dante, a very large number indeed
had their origin in Ireland.
One of the earliest visions of the other world vouch-
safed to a Christian monk was that of St. Fursey, an Irish
monk, said to have been the nephew of St. Brandan ; his
story is mentioned by Bseda, and reported at length in the
' Acta Sanctorum.' l
1 Acta SS. Jan. ii. 36.
VISIONS OF PURGATORY. 427
Once it happened that Fursey was sick nigh to death.
He was being borne back to his monastery, wishing to die
there. Upon the journey they began to sing a vesper
hymn, and suddenly while he was singing a darkness
seemed to surround him ; he felt four hands placed beneath
him to lift up his body, and he could discern that four
white wings bore him along. As he grew more accustomed
to the darkness he saw that two angels were carrying him,
and that before them went a third, armed with a white
shield and flaming sword. The angels, as they flew,
sweetly chaunted ' Ibunt sancti de virtute in virtutem ;
videbitur Deus deorum in Sion ; ' l and he heard the choir
of angels answering in song from above. This was all he
knew. Another time the same two angels bare him to
the mouth of hell, where he saw nothing but heard the
howling of demons. Afterwards he saw the four fires of
purgatory, at the four corners of the earth.
There is scarcely any link, saving the fact that the
vision was seen in Ireland, which connects this story with
the older notions of heathen mythology. It is pure
Christian throughout, and of great beauty in its simplicity.
Yet may we not say that the two white-winged angels of
this vision are not greatly different from those other two,
Hypnos and Thanatos, who bore Sarpedon to his tomb in
Lycia ? 2 who in their turn only present in a fairer form
the belief in the two dogs, ' the four-eyed guardians of the
path, guardians of men.'
Another vision recorded by Bseda is the vision of
Drihthelm, a Northumbrian monk. This story too came
from Ireland. 3 First we have the appearance of the dark
valley which we know so well in all visions of the under
1 Ps. Ixxxii. 8, Vulg.
2 //. xvi. 681, &c. ; see also Chap. VI.
3 bee Wright, St. Patricks Purgatory, p. 18. The story was said to
have been told by Drihthelm to Ilsemgils, a monk of Ireland, and by him
to Bffida. Wright says, ' The vision of Drihthelm, like that of Furseus, was
the subject, of ji homily in the Saxon Church, of which a copy is preserved
in a MS. of the public library ' (University Library) 'of Cambridge, Ti, 133.'
428 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
world. Then a curious touch follows. Passing along
this valley, they found that one side was filled with roar-
ing flames ; the other side was not less intensely cold, and
was swept by storms of hail and rain. Here is that com-
bination of frost and heat to form a complete picture of
the horrors of the place of torments which we afterwards
meet with in so many visions of hell and purgatory. For
we find the ancient Sea of Death transformed in the
Catholic legends either into a lake of fire or into a lake of
ice. This combination of heat and cold is in accord with
Norse belief, which placed hell in the North, which made
Loki, the god of fire, come from icy Jofcunheim, and Surtr,
the swart King of Death, fare from Muspelheim. The
jotuns themselves were born of the mingling of fire and
ice. 1 St. Brandan found hell in the North. Drihthelm
for his sight of purgatory travelled north-east. This too
is in accord with the tradition of Norse mythology. At
the end of the valley of heat and cold Drihthelm came to
the mouth of a pit from which arose an intolerable stench,
and thence came a wailing and a laughter ; and he saw
devils dragging souls into the pit. In both these visions,
as in almost all which follow, purgatory is imagined on the
earth, but hell beneath it. The latter is in a pit, reaching
far down, of which the visionary sees the mouth only.
Purgatory we might liken to Jotunheimar, hell to Hel-
heiinar.
In the vision of Charles the Fat, King of France,
which is a couple of centuries at least later than that of
Drihthelm, 2 more details have grown into the picture of
the other world, as, for instance, a labyrinthine valley of
death, along which the soul, like Theseus in the Cnossiaii
labyrinth, must guide itself by a thread. In his vision the
Emperor saw giants, serpents, rivers of molten metal, and
1 Edda Snorra, 5.
2 It was first published by William of Malmesbury (114:3), and may
be no earlier than the twelfth century. Charles ascended the throne in
884.
\
ST. PATEICK'S PURGATORY. 429
many pits in which the wicked were punished ; but there
is nothing very distinctive in the picture.
The great era for the record of journeys to the land of
shades was the twelfth century, and in these all the be-
longings of purgatory and of hell which we have become
familiar with from studying mediseval art or from reading
Dante begin to appear. There are at least half a dozen
accounts, more or less detailed, of visions of purgatory ;
and these culminate in the legend of Henry of Saltrey
touching the visit of a certain knight to St. Patrick's
Purgatory in Lough Derg, Ireland. From the tenth to
the fourteenth century constitutes an important era in
the history of Catholicism ; for during that time the con-
ceptions both of this world and of the next grow steadily
darker, until the mythology of that age is consummated
in the ' Divine Comedy.' Prom the time of Henry of
Saltrey to the time of Dante (1153-1300) the ruling in-
fluence which moulded the popular conception of the nether
world is to be looked for in the legend of St. Patrick's
Purgatory. There is moreover one point of marked differ-
ence between this narrative and the purgatory legends
which preceded it. The earlier stories were founded on
mere visions ; the spirit was believed to have been snatched
away during an illness of the visionary or in his sleep.
But the legend of Henry of Saltrey relates the descent of a
living man. This man was Sir Owayne, who went down
in the body, remained, like Dante, in the nether kingdom
during one night, and returned unscathed the following
day. There can be no question that the ground ideas
which went to the shaping of the s Comedy ' are to be
traced to the legend of Owayne Miles.
The idea of the descent of the living man is a very
important element in the belief, because this descent itself
is recognised as a sort of expiatory act. Wherefore Sir
Owayne is not in the place so much of one who (as in a
vision) sees the punishments of others, as of one who shares
in those punishments. He has, in fact, actually been to
430 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
the nether world in every sense just as Odysseus in the
earlier legend concerning him must have been imagined
actually undergoing death and not merely visiting Hades'
kingdom. Such is the idea which lies concealed in the
notion of St. Patrick's purgatory a.nd in the promise
which Jesus made to the saint that this purgatory should
be for anyone to go down into who would, and whosoever
dared to go there it should be for him as if he had passed
through purgatory after death.
* What mon,' he sayde, ' that wylle hereyn wende,
And dwelle theryn a day and a nygth
And holde his byleve and rygth,
Whether he be sqwyer or knave,
Other purgatorye shalle he non have. 1
The journey of Owayne, therefore, may fairly be com-
pared with journeys of the old Norse heroes and gods to
the nether world, such as those which we traced in the
earlier part of this chapter.
The purgatory of St. Patrick received its name because
the entrance to it had been revealed by Christ to St. Patrick,
with that promise attached which I have just quoted. The
saint built a monastery about the entrance, and secured
the way with a strong iron gate. One day came the knight
Owayne and obtained leave for penance' sake to make the
journey into that purgatory. The door which the prior
opened for him led to the long dark Valley of Death, and
at ' the deep ditch's end ' Owayne emerged from pitch
darkness to a sort of twilight. This dim region, which we
might call the land of the setting sun, was the fore- court
to the place of punishment. It corresponds well enough
to the limbo in which Dante met the poets and philosophers
of Greece and Rome ; as these lived in a ' blind life ' bereft
of hope, so was the first place to which Owayne came a
1 Owayne Miles, Cotton MS. Calig. A. ii. f . 89. See St. Patrick's Purga-
tory, p. 66. This is a metrical version of the legend of Henry of Saltrey.
ST. PATRICK'S PUEGATORY. 431
desert, a ' wildernesse, for ther grewe nother tre ner gresse.'
And, somewhat as Dante met in limbo the comrades of
Virgil, did Owayne meet in this place fifteen men in white
garments, who warned him of all that he would have to
undergo. After that there broke upon the knight's ears
the din of hell, which, hinted at long before in the names
of the infernal rivers Cocytus and Gjoll, became from this
time forth a very conspicuous feature in the mediaeval
visions of the under world. We know how that din broke
upon the ears of the Florentine.
Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,
Parole di dolore, accenti d' ira,
Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle,
Facevano un tumulto, il qnal s' aggira
Senipre in quell' aria, senza tempo tinta,
Come la rena quando il turbo spira.
In Owayne's case it is
As alle tlie layte l and alle the thonder
That ever was herde.heven under,
And as alle the tres and alle the stones
Shulde smyte togedyr rygth at oones.
And now farther on into the region of Jotunheim ; for
it became presently * derke and wonther colde,' where a
man
Hadde he never so mony clothes on
* But he wolde be colde as ony stone.
Anon the fiends led him into another field of punishment,
where the pains were all from burning fire and where were
many pits full of molten metal, in which men stood. Some
were in up to the chin, some to the paps, some to the
middle, some only to the knees. This imagery too has
been of service to Dante. 2 The journey still continued
till the knight reached the mouth of hell. He came, says
the narrative, to a great water, broad and black as pitch.
1 Lightning.
2 As in his description of the Eiver of Blood, Inferno, canto xii.
^
OF THK
DIVERSITY
432 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
Over the water a "brygge there vras,
Forsoothe kenere than ony glasse:
Hjt was narrowe and hit was hyge.
And that made the bourne of his journey in that direction.
Afterwards he had a sight of Paradise.
Contemporary with this history of Sir Owayne is the
vision of Tundale, also an Irishman and a monk. This is
not a journey, but a vision. The same concomitants to the
orthodox under-world appear here a dark valley, a stink-
ing river, and a lake, and over these a bridge. One side
of the valley was burning, the other side frozen. In this
case, moreover, there was a windy place which was a kind
of fore-court to purgatory, and which in a certain sense
corresponds to the second circle of Dante's hell, where
the souls of carnal sinners are whirled round in a perpetual
storm of wind and hail. 1
Dante once more brought hell, and with it the notion
of eternal punishment, prominently before men's eyes.
But in doing this he had considerably to lighten the
colours in which purgatory had been depicted by other
hands. For all the purposes which concern our enquiry
that is, for everything which concerns the picture of the
under- world presented to the thoughts of men the train
of association runs as we have traced it, from the heathen
Helheim to the mediaeval purgatory and from that to the
hell of Dante. I have said that in this matter the con-
nection between German heathenism and Christianity is
not very close; but yet in certain points it has been
clearly traceable.
THE EAETHLY PARADISE. 433
CHAPTER IX.
THE EARTHLY PARADISE.
WHEN Christianity drew a curtain in front of the past
creeds of heathen Europe, a veil through which many an
old belief was left still faintly visible, she succeeded more
than with most things in blotting out the images which
in former days had gathered round the idea of a future
state. It is as if the new religion were content to leave
this world under much the same governance as before,
provided only she were secured the undisputed possession
of the world beyond the grave. So the heathen gods were
not altogether ousted from their seats. The cloak of
Odhinn that blue mantle, the air, of which the sagas tell
us fell upon the shoulders of St. Martin ; his sword
descended to St. Michael or St. George : Elias or Nicholas
drove the chariot of Helios or wielded the thunders of
Thorr. 1 They changed their names, but not their characters,
passing for awhile behind the scene to be refurnished for
fresh parts : just as when the breath of the new creed
blew over the fields, the old familiar plants and flowers
died down Apollo's narcissus, Aphrodite's lilies, Njord's
glove, or Freyja's fern to grow up again as the flowers
of Mary, Our Lady's hand, the Virgin's hair. 2 But it was
different with the beliefs which passed beyond this life.
The whole doctrine of a future state, which for the
European races had formerly belonged to the region of
languid half-belief, 3 now suddenly became a stern reality.
1 Wuttke, Deutsche Volksaberglaube, p. 19, and Grimm, Deut. Myth. pp.
127, 946, and 68 n., 371, 4th ed. Elias, id. p. 144.
2 Cf. Johannis Bauhini, De plantis a di-cis sanctisve nomina habentibus,
Basiliae, 1521. Cf. also Grimm, D. M. 4th ed. p. 184 (Balders hrar).
3 European races. Among the Indo-European nationalities the Persians
P F
434 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
This doctrine grew greater while earthly things grew
less, until at last it seemed to take a complete hold upon
the imagination, and to gather round itself all that was
greatest in the poetical conception of the time. Then,
from having been so impressive, the idea of eternity
became familiar by constant use. At last it took, in the
hands of dull unimaginative men, a ghastly prosaic
character, whereby we see the infinities of pleasure and
pain, of happiness or woe, mapped oat and measured in
the scales.
It is on this account not easy to trace back the belief
of Northern and Western Europe on such matters to that
state in which it was while yet untouched by the doctrines
of Christianity. Beside the dreadful earnestness of the
two great pictures of Catholic mythology, the mediseval
heaven, and the mediaeval hell, the less obtrusive notions
of earlier days fell into the background. The older idea
of a future state was not of a place for rewards or punish-
ments so much as for a quiet resting after the toils of life,
as the sun rests at the end of day. If such a creed were to
live on at all in the Middle Ages, it must do so in defiance
of the dominant religion. It must survive in virtue of
the Old Adam of pagan days, not yet rooted out. It must
find its home in the breasts of those who had not really
been won over to the dominant creed ; who resented as
something new and intrusive the presence of a restraining
moral code, or who would fain believe that the neglected
gods were not really dead ; that they were, peradventure,
asleep, or upon a journey and had not for ever given up
their rule. It was through such influences as these that
the pagan notions concerning a future state survived in the
mediaeval pictures of an Earthly Paradise. This was a
home of sensuous ease, unblessed perhaps with the keenest
enjoyments of life, but untouched also with the fear by
which these pleasures are always attended that they will
raised the doctrine of heaven and hell to supreme importance, and in so
doing greatly, though indirectly, affected the creed of Christendom.
THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 435
soon be snatched away. The saints and confessors might
have their heaven and welcome. Their rapturous holy
joys were not suited to the heroes of chivalry. There
must therefore be, men thought, another home set apart
for them, for Arthur and his knights, for Charlemagne
and his paladins ; where, untroubled by turbulent emo-
tions, they should enjoy the fruit of their labours in a
perpetual calm.
Catholicism of course made some concession to this
spirit. A way for doing this was opened by the Biblical
account of the garden of Eden ; for though the Mosaic
record says that man was turned out of the garden, it says
nothing about the destruction of Paradise. And accord-
ingly we find lay and clerical writers alike speculating
upon the nature of this place and the road by which it
was to be reached : and presently we find accounts of both
real and mythical voyages to the east in search of the
desired land. But there still remained a question in dis-
pute between orthodoxy and ancient heathenism. The
former naturally insisted upon the fact that Eden was in
the east, but heathenism had an obstinate prejudice that
its Paradise lay westward ; so on this point there was a
battle between the two faiths.
In truth, we find that, like the needle when a neigh-
bouring magnet has been withdrawn, popular belief on the
matter of the Earthly Paradise, when not subject to the
influence of ecclesiastical teaching, tends constantly to veer
round from the orthodox tradition. And this fact would
alone be enough to convince us that the myth which we
traced in the story of the voyage of Odysseus has had its
echo in other lands. But we are not left to this inferential
proof. We have seen how the notion of the earth-girding
Sea of Death permeated the beliefs of heathen Germany;
and though, because of the gloomy character of that creed,
the darker side of the conception seems always to lie
uppermost, we have no reason to question that there was
another and a brighter side.
F F 2
436 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
Whether even in the case of the storj of the death of
Balder some picture of a paradise did not follow after the
scene of death I am much inclined to doubt. We know
how universal among the Norse people was the desire
for a funeral which should imitate as closely as possible
the funeral of Balder ; and I cannot but believe that the
Norsemen fancied that in this way they went to join the
sun god in a far-off happy land. And the vision which
succeeds the Yala's account of the destruction of all things
at Ragnarok, the vision of a new and better earth arising
once more from the sea, and Balder coming again from
Helheim to rule there, seems to express the hope in which
men went to death. 1
But, as we well know, the belief in an earth- encircling
Sea of Death was not confined to the Teutons of the North,
nor even to the German race. There are visible traces of
it among all the nations of Europe ; it and the belief in
the soul's passage over that sea have been the property of
all the Aryas. With some among the races of our stock
these myths existed only as parts of a vague and general
belief. But among all those who lived near the Western
Sea that is, beside the Atlantic or the Mediterranean
the belief grew to be a precise one. Most of these peoples
could have pointed out some spot in their country whence
the ghostly cargo set out upon its voyage, and most had
some special tradition of the locus of their home for the
departed spirits. One among such resting-places for the
shades was the little island of Heligoland. This was the
belief current. among Germans of the north of Continental
Germany. To the Germans of the Rhine mouth, the
Ripuarians or the Frisians, our own island at one time
occupied the same place in popular mythology, and from
being Angel-land became Engel-land, wherein no living
man dwelt. It was this, too, to still nearer neighbours of
1 Though the colours of this picture have been much deepened through
the influence of Christianity, I doubt not but that the belief was grounded
upon heathen tradition.
ENGLAND THE HOME OF SOULS. 437
ourselves, Procopius gives us a picture of the belief which
by the sixth century had grown up among the peasants
of northern Gaul concerning Britain. Britain in his nar-
rative has become changed into a fabulous island, Brittia ;
one half of which was thought to be habitable by living
men, while the other half was set apart to be the home of
ghosts. Between the two regions stretched a wall, which
none could pass and live ; whoever did cross it instantly
fell dead upon the other side, so pestilential was the air.
But serpents and all venomous things dwelt on that other
side, and there the air was dark and spirit-haunted. It
was said that the fishermen upon the northern coast of
Gaul were made the ferrymen of the dead. To them was
assigned the office of carrying the souls across the Channel
to the opposite island of Brittia, and on account of this
strange duty Procopius declares they were excused from
the ordinary incidence of taxation. Their task fell upon
them by rotation, and those villagers whose turn had come
round were awakened at dead of night by a gentle tap
upon the door and a whispering breath calling them to
the beach. There lay vessels to all appearance empty and
yet weighed down as if by a heavy freight. Pushing off,
the fishermen performed in one night the voyage which
else they could hardly accomplish, rowing and sailing, in
six days and nights. When they had arrived at the strange
coast, they heard names called over and voices answering
as if by rota, while they felt their vessels gradually growing
light ; at last, when all the ghosts had landed, "they were
wafted back to the habitable world. 1
Claudian makes allusion to the same myth, referring
it to the same locality and connecting it with the journey
of Odysseus to Hades.
Est locus extremum pandit qua Gallia littus
Oceani praetentus aquis, ubi fertur Ulixes
Sanguine libato populum movisse silentem.
1 Procopius, Bell. Goth. iv. c. 20, pp. 620-5, ed. Paris ; ii. p. 659 sqq.
ed. Bonn.
438 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
Illic Timbrarum tenui stridore volantTim,
Flebilis auditur questus. Simulacra colon!
Pallida, defunctasque vident migrare figuras. 1
And I cannot heln associating with the same super-
stition a story which we find in Paulus Diaconus. 2 When
Pertaric, the dethroned King of the Lombards, was fleeing
from the power of Grimvald the Usurper, he went first to
France; but finding that Dagobert II., the Merovingian
king, was friendly to Grimvald, and fearing lest he should
be delivered over to his enemy, he took ship to pass over
to Britain. He had been but a little while upon the sea,
when a voice came from the hither shore, asking whether
Pertaric were in that ship ; and the answer was given,
* Pertaric is here.' Then the voice cried, ' Tell him he may
return to his own land, for Grimvald departed from this
life three days ago.' Surely this must have been the
ghost of Grimvald himself, arrived at the point of his sea
transit. Perhaps he could not pass over until he had
made this reparation for the injury done.
It must, one would suppose, be in memory of these
legends of the dead crossing the Channel that the men of
Cape Raz in Finistere still call the bay below this point,
the most westerly in France, ' la Baie des Trepasses,' the
Bay of the Dead. 3
Here again is a variation upon the same myth, taken
from the mouth of a peasant of modern Brittany. The
difference is that a certain river in Brittany has replaced
the British Channel, and that the shores of the departed
now lie along that river's banks. Saving that change we
have the essential parts of the older legend ; we have the
souls snatched away in a boat by the grim ferryman, just
such an one as he who .plied across the Styx or across the
Northern Midgard Sea. I reproduce the story here not
because it is considered as a story specially curious for
1 In Rufin, i. 123. 2 Gest. Long. v. 32, 33.
8 Cambry, Voyage dans le Finistere, ii. 240.
THE FERRY OF CARNOET. 439
there are similar legends of the Rhine ; and the Erl Konig
himself is a kind of King of Death but because of the
interest which belongs to the locality where the legend is
found lingering. All sorts of people have had their myths
of the Mortal River ; but those Bretons who live upon the
borders of what was once deemed the Sea of Death have
a special right to treasure this myth in their familiar folk
lore. 1
6 Many years ago there lived in the village of Clohars
a young couple called Guern and Maharit; they were
betrothed, and were to be married two days after the
" Pardon of the Birds," which, as everyone knows, happens
every year in the month of June at the forest of Carnoet.
6 One evening after sunset the lovers came home from
a visit to some relatives in the parish of Guidel. When
they reached the ferry of Carnoet, Guern shouted for the
ferryman.
'"Wait for me, Maharit," he said, "while I go and
light my pipe at my godfather's cottage : it is close by."
' The boatman of the ferry was a mysterious being,
who lived alone in a hut beside the river. . . . He soon
appeared. He was tall and wild-looking, and long grey
hair floated over his shoulders.
6 " Who wants me ? " he growled. " It is too late. Are
you alone, maiden ? "
4 " Loik Guern is coming ; he has only gone to light
his pipe."
' " He must be quick, then. Get into the boat," said
the ferryman impatiently.
6 The girl obeyed mechanically. But she was surprised
and frightened to see the ferryman jump and push the
boat off from the bank without a moment's delay.
' " What are you doing, my friend?" she cried. "We
must wait for Loik Guern, I tell you."
1 Pictures and Legends from Normandy and Brittany, by Thomas and
Katherine Macquoid, p. 19 sqq. For a similar German legend see Kuhn,
tinge //, Geb. u. Marclien, i. 9.
440 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
c There was no answer, and now the boat reached the
current, and, instead of passing across to the opposite
shore, they shot rapidly down the river.
' " Stop, stop, my friend, for pity's sake ! " cried Maharit
in an agonised voice. . . . She clasped her hands im-
ploringly; but the ferryman neither spoke nor looked at
her, and the boat, still impelled forward, descended the
river more and more rapidly.
' Maharit bent towards the shore. " Loik ! Loik ! " she
cried. The words died away on her lips, for she saw
shadowy forms standing on the gloomy banks ; they
stretched their arms towards her with menacing gestures,
and she drew back shuddering. She knew they were the
spirits of the murdered wives of Commore. . . .
6 Lo'ik Guern lit his pipe, said a few words to his god-
father, and hastened back to the ferry. But Maharit was
gone, and the boat was gone too ! He gazed anxiously
across the river and up and down its banks, now cold and
sombre in the gathering darkness. There was no sound
or sight of living thing.
< "Maharit! Maharit! "he cried, "where art thou?"
From far away a cry came to him on the night
breeze. . . .
' Suddenly, from amidst the tall weeds and rushes, rose
up the gaunt figure of an old beggar woman. 1
' " You waste your breath, young man," she said.
"The boat and those in it are already far from here;"
and she pointed down the river.
' " What do you mean, mother P What has happened
to Maharit?"
' " The young girl has gone to the shores of the departed.
She forgot to make the sign of the cross when she got
into the boat, and she also looked behind her. . . ."
'He set off running like a madman along the river
banks in the direction the old woman had pointed out,
1 The counterpart of the Norse Thokk, &c.
ST. BKANDAN'S ISLE. 441
waking the silence of the night with cries for his beloved
Maharit.
' " Come back to me ! " he cried, " come back ! " but all
in vain.' l
Ireland, more westerly still, inherited in still larger
measure the glamour which popular superstition in the
dark ages shed over Britain. Ireland was thought to be the
very Earthly Paradise itself, and was therefore christened
with a name the exact counterpart of Pindar's /jba/cdpayv
vfjcroi, ; it was the ' Island of Saints.' But then, according
to other legends, it was likewise the home of the damned.
Here was the entry to St. Patrick's purgatory, the most
famous mouth of hell known in the Middle Ages ; and in
this island it was that Bridget saw in a vision a place
where souls were falling down into hell as thick as hail.
But the Irish themselves supposed the Island of the
Blessed lay to the west of their land ; and they told how
a monk of their own country, a descendant of St. Patrick,
having set out to make the voyage to Paradise, had lighted
upon this happy island, which henceforward went by
the name of St. Brandan's isle. Though the legend
itself the priestly version of it at least, which has alone
come down to us represents the saint as sailing eastward,
tradition insisted upon believing his land lay in the west.
Sometimes it was to the west of Ireland ; it could be seen
in certain weathers from the coast, but when an expedition
was fitted out to go and land there, the island somehow
seemed to disappear. Or it was localised in the Canaries.
It was, as the Spanish and Portuguese declared, an island
which had been sometimes lighted upon by accident, but
when sought for could not be found (quando se busca no
se halla}. A king of Portugal is said to have made a
conditional surrender of it to another when it should be
found ; and when the kingdom of Portugal ceded to the
Castilian crown its rights over the Canaries, the treaty
1 For the rest of the story I refer the reader to the delightful book from
which I have made this extract.
442 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
included the island of St. Brandan, described as c the island
which had not yet been found.' 1
Dante, we know, did not accept the Greek story of
Odysseus' return from the Phseacians. In the eighth
chasm of Malebolge it is that the poet meets Ulysses, and
learns from him the narrative of his death. The same
motive influenced this Ulysses and this is the fact of
supreme importance to us to venture into the Atlantic
which doubtless Dante knew had influenced many sailors
of his time the hope to find a new land away in the
west.
'When I left Circe,' the much-enduring Greek says,
' when I left Circe, who held me a year or more near
Gaeta before ^Eneas had given that place its name
neither my fondness for my son, nor piety towards my aged
father, nor the love with which I should have lightened the
heart of Penelope, could conquer the strong desire which
swayed me to gain knowledge of the world and of human
wickedness and worth. So 1 set forth upon the open sea
with one ship and with that small band by whom I had
never been deserted. One shore and the other I saw, as
far as Spain and Morocco, and the Island of Sardinia, and
other islands which that sea washes round. I and my com-
panions were old and slow when we gained the narrow
strait where Hercules has set up his sign-posts, that
men should not venture beyond. On the right I passed
Seville ; I had already passed Ceuta on the left. " Oh !
my brothers," I cried, " who through a hundred thousand
dangers have reached the West, refuse not to this brief
vigil of your senses which is left the knowledge of the un-
peopled world beyond the sun. Consider your descent; ye
were not made to live the life of brutes, but to follow virtue
and knowledge." I made my comrades with this short
speech so eager for the voyage, that had I wished it I
could scarce have held them back ; and turning our backs
upon the morning and bearing always towards the left we
1 Wright, The Voyage of St. Brandan. Percy Soc. Pub., vol. xiv.
DANTE'S ACCOUNT OF ULYSSES' VOYAGE. 443
made our oars wings for our foolish flight. Night saw
already the other pole and all its stars, and our pole so
low that it did not rise above the ocean floor. Five times
relit and quenched as often had been the light which the
moon sheds below, since we entered on the steep way,
when there appeared before us a mountain, dim with
distance, which seemed so high as I had never seen
mountain before. We rejoiced ; but our joy was soon
turned to grieving ; for from the land came a tempest
which struck the fore part of our vessel. Thrice it whirled
her round with all its waters, and the fourth time the poop
rose up and the prow turned downwards such was the
will of God and the sea closed over us.'
Dante, we see, had no sympathy with the hopes of those
who thought to win by mortal means to the Earthly Para-
dise. He calls the west ' the unpeopled land beyond the
sun ; ' for he was upon the side of orthodoxy, and in his
confession of Ulysses doubtless meant to cast reproach upon
those obstinate ones who, against the teaching of Scripture,
still hoped to find a place where they could avoid death.
The mountain which he places in the Atlantic, the high
mountain, bruna per la distanza, which Ulysses sees, is the
Mountain of Purgatory ; and only by ascending that could
men reach the Earthly Paradise. Other land he recog-
nises none there. But he bears witness to the belief that
the west was not unpeopled. How without such a belief
could the traveller have been urged to seek the west by a
desire of knowing more of human wickedness and worth ?
Columbus, it is well known, was not uninfluenced by
the purely mythic stories of a western world. These tales
had in his day been so long repeated and so much changed
that they often wore the face of commonplace fact; and
numerous were the successors as well as the predecessors of
Columbus who fancied they were going to find an Atlantis
or other fabulous place more wonderful than any they
really lighted upon. Fancy and superstition here, as in
the researches of astrologers and alchemists, commanded
444 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
the aid of more exertion and of greater enthusiasm than
would have been at the service of sober truth. Thousands
of voyagers perished before any end was reached. But the
journeys did at last end happily in the discovery, if not of
a deathless land, at any rate of a new world.
Another story of a voyage over the Sea of Death is the
one recorded by Saxo Grammaticus to have been made by
Gorm the Wise, King of Denmark. In many particulars
the legend as it has come to us in the pages of Saxo and
in its Latin dress is clearly copied from the great Greek
epic. But there are other incidents for which no originals
could be discovered in the Odyssey ; and the picture of
the other world which it presents is on the whole quite in
accordance with that which from other Northern sources
we traced in the last chapter. It might, perhaps, be said
that the history of the voyage of Gorm belongs rather to
descriptions of hell than to accounts of the earthly Para-
dise. It records a journey undertaken rather to the Land
of Death than to any heaven. But because we have had
so much to say here concerning the passage of the soul
over seas, and had so much less to say on this head in the
last chapter, and because the feature of the sea voyage is
put forward very distinctly in the Gorm legend it cannot
be amiss if we give one glance at this history. 1
One of Gorrn's subjects, a certain Jarl Thorkill, was
reported to have previously made a voyage of the same kind
as that which on this occasion Gorm proposed to himself
that is to say, a voyage to farther Biarmia, beyond any
known region of land, to one where many giants dwelt,
and as king of these giants Utgarthilocus. Thorkill,
then, we may take to be in reality the god Thorr, and it
is interesting to see that in changing the god into a man
the name should have been changed into a not unusual
proper name. 2 Gorm set sail with three ships, holding
1 Saxo Grammaticus, Historia Danica, ed. Miiller and Velschow, 1 839-
58, p. 420.
2 Thorkill is a very common Norse name for men. What the etymology
VOYAGE OF GOKM THE WISE. 445
three hundred men, under the command of Thorkill. Their
first adventure is evidently a plagiarism from the Odyssey.
They landed on a certain island covered with flocks and
herds, but, as these last were under the protection of the
gods, Thorkill forbade the men to take more than was
needful to satisfy their immediate wants. They were not
to store away in the ships. This order the sailors dis-
obeyed ; and, in consequence, when night came on, a band
of fearful monsters came flying round the ships, and the
terrified sailors had to expiate their crime by sacrificing
three men, one for each ship. When this had been done
the expedition sailed away.
And now with favourable breezes they reached the
coasts of farther Biarmia, 1 a land where constant cold
reigned and where the ground was buried deep in ancient
snow. It had thick untraversable woods, not abounding
in fruit, bat in wild beasts of strange kinds. Ther& they
drew up their boats ashore 2 and went forward afoot.
As evening came on, a man of huge stature suddenly
appeared before them. He was Gunthmund, the brother
of Geruth, to whose palace they were faring. Anon they
reached a river which was traversed by a golden bridge. 3
But when they would have gone over, Gunthmund showed
them that this river separated the world of men from the
world of monsters, a,nd that no living man might traverse
it. ... It is curious to trace in these descriptions the
admixture of ancient Norse belief and classical myth.
The bridge is the Gjallar-bru, and could not have been
borrowed from the Odyssey. But soon we get back again
to the Odyssean legend. If they partook of food at the
table of King Gunthmund the same fate would overtake
of it is I do not know possibly Thor-ketill. It is curious that one of the
monkish visions of purgatory current in the twelfth century was the visit
of Thurcill.
1 A sort of Utgard, as we shall see.
2 Like Odysseus when he came to the shore of Ocean and to the groves
of Persephone.
Gjallar-bru (see Chap. VIII.)
446 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
them which fell upon the feasters in Circe's hall. They
would, as Thorkill told them, become as brutes, losing all
memory. Thorkill was not wanting in excuses when the
giant complained of the discourtesy of him and his com-
rades in not partaking of the meal. The food is strange
to them ; they cannot eat,' c. Some, however, could not
resist the delights offered, and fell victims to the enchant-
ment. The rest journeyed further still to the dwelling of
King Geruth, 1 and came to a black, barbarous-looking
town, which seemed to them ' like a vaporous cloud.' Two
dogs exceeding fierce guarded the entrance. Within the
gates were horrible black spectres, and they were oppressed
with the putrid stench with which the air was heavy.
Thorkill made for a stone fortress, which was the palace
of Geruth, but ere they reached it he warned his com-
rades to keep from their minds all avaricious longings ;
for if 'they took aught away they would fall into the
power of the king. Then is reference made to the visit
of the god Thorr to the same place, and to some of the
feats which he performed while there. . . .
This picture is almost the same as that given us of
the ancient Jotunheim, but it is re-dressed in a later form
and furnished with some images borrowed from Homer.
There is no need to follow further the adventures of Gorm
and his comrades, many of whom, of course, perished as
the comrades of Odysseus did, while the leader of the ex-
pedition and Thorkill got back home.
The story which was up to the end of the thirteenth
century the most influential in sending men upon Odyssean
voyages was probably that to which allusion has been
already made the legend of St. Brandan. 2 The account
must be classed among the legends of the saints ; it was
told by priests, and has been committed to writing by a
1 The Geirrod of the Edda Geirrod is a sort of giant and an enemy of
Odhinn. Grinmismdl.
2 The name Brandan is probably allied to Bran, the Celtic hero and
sun god ? For him see Matthew Arnold, Celt. Lit. The word means chief
or head : it is the same as Brennus.
VOYAGE OF ST. BRANDAN. 447
priest. It offers, in fact, a happy mixture of heathen fable
and Biblical legend. It should be remembered that the
cycle of the legends of the saints made up a literature more
distinctly popular than even the stories of the legendary
heroes of early chivalry, such as the paladins of Charle-
magne and the knights of the Round Table.
These last were the theme of minstrels ; they were told
in the castle hall and bower to knights and ladies. The
lives of the saints were repeated by the priests, who were
of the peasant class, and by them spread abroad among the
peasantry. They formed the great popular literature of
the Middle Ages. In them many of the old gods came to
life again, and walked more easily in the garb of peasant
saints than in the armour of knights and paladins. There-
fore it is no exaggeration to say that the great legend of
the Earthly Paradise from the eighth century to the four-
teenth is the story of the voyage of St. Brandan. This
is true, as that before the time of Dante the locus classicus
among the purgatory myths was the story of St. Patrick's
purgatory. Both these legends arose, as we have noticed,
in Ireland, the legitimate ' Home of Souls.'
We have already seen how in the case of the story of
St. Brandan's voyage popular prejudice was more powerful
than the ecclesiastical tradition; and how even after it
had become the accepted history of the journey to Para-
dise the same popular belief quietly garbled the text and
modified the legend to suit its theories. The myth did
not originally speak of a journey to the west, but of one to
the east ; yet common tradition succeeded in making the
island of St. Brandan veer round from its eastern site to
lie off the west coast of Ireland or off Portugal. It is evi-
dent that there will be some portions of the legend which
express better than do others the popular belief concern-,
ing the Western Paradise. To find these, we must, there-
fore, read a little between the lines of the ecclesiastical
story. It is not the eastern land to which St. Brandan
finally attained which could have represented to men's
448 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
imaginations their western i St.. Brandan's Isle,' but some
one among the islands which the saint met with in the
course of his long voyage. There were many of these
islands : each one, no doubt, possessed some features which
were thought to distinguish the home of the blessed.
One was the ' Ylonde of Sbepe ' we think of Odysseus
on Thrinakia e where is never cold weder, but ever sommer,
and that causeth the shepe to be so grete and whyte.'
Another island contained an abbey of twenty-four monks,
4 and in this londe,' the monks told St. Brandan, * was ever
fayre weder, and none of us hath been seke syth we came
hyther.' But I take the following to be one of the best
descriptions of an earthly Paradise to be found in Middle
Age romance. It is the Paradise of Birds : l
c But soone after, as Giod wold, they saw a fayre yloiide,
full of floures and herbes and trees, whereof they thanked
God of His good grace, and anone they went on londe.
And when they had gone longe in this, they founde a full
fayre well, and thereby stode a tree full of bowes, and on
every bow sate a fayre byrde; and they sate so thycke
on the tree that unneath ony lefe of the tree nayght be
seen, the nornbre of them was so grete ; and they sange so
meryly that it was an heavenly noyse to here. . . . And
than anone one of the byrdes fledde fro the tree to Saynt
Brandan, and he with flyckerynge of his wynges made a
full merye noyse lyke a fydle, that hym. semed he herde
never so joyfull a melodye. And than Saynt Brandan
commaunded the byrde to tell him the cause why they
sate so thycke on the tree and sange so meryly. And than
the byrde sayd, " Sometyme we were aungels in heven, but
whan our mayster Lucyfer fell down into hell for his high
1 The notion of the soul entering into the shape of a bird is of course
one among the most common in mythology. The wings of the bird naturally
express the freedom and spiritual condition of the soul (see Chap. II.) In
Lithuanian tradition the soul escapes along the Milky Way in the form of
a bird. Hence the Milky Way is by the Lithuanians called ' the Way of
Birds.'
VOYAGE OF ST. BRANDAN. 449
pryde, we fell with hym for our offences, some hyther and
some lower, after the qualite of theyr trespace." ' l
This might be a fall from heaven, but it was a rise
from earth. A place suited to the character of any who
were, like these angels, of a temporising nature. For
such the Earthly Paradise existed, for it was the creation
of their own brains. They did not judge themselves so
severely as Dante judges them. He, too, shows us the
same angels who fell f for no great trespace,' but he calls
them
II cattivo coro
Degli angeli,-
'the caitiff choir of angels, who were neither rebellious
nor faithful to God, but were for themselves '
A Dio spiacenti et a nemici sui,
'hateful to God and to His enemies.' ... As the
mediaeval purgatory was nothing else than a survival of
the Greek Hades or Norse Helheim into the creed of
Christendom, to the thought of which the terrors of the
heathen place of punishment seemed to offer but an in-
adequate representation of hell, so this probationary
Paradise of Birds is the truer survival of the heathen
heaven than is the Eastern Paradise to which St. Brandan
at last attained.
This legend I take to be one of the lingering foot-
prints of a past Celtic mythology ; other traces of it in
this matter of the Earthly Paradise and of the Sea of
Death are those stories which we gathered from Procopius
and Claudian of a journey made by the souls from the west
of Prance over sea, to our island. It is fortunate that
though the Celtic mythology as a whole is lost to us, some
gleanings can still be had therefrom.
One other relic of Celtic belief survives in the account
of the death of Arthur in the Arthurian Romance ; for
1 The Legend of St. Brandan, by T. Wright. Percy Soc. Trs., vol. xiv.
G G
450 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
herein appears the name of the old Celtic Paradise,
Avalon, which means the 'Isle of Apples.' 1 There is a
shade of sadness thrown over the story ; the loss of the
hero from earth is too great to allow the poet much thought
of Arthur's joys in the future state. Still he is going to
Avalon, and Avalon is certainly the Celtic Paradise. It
is the island of Hesperides, or the land of Phseaceans,
under another name, distinguished not less specially than
the Greek Paradises were by its wealth in fruits. For this
is implied by the term ' Isle of Apples.' The battle in
which Arthur was mortally wounded was Camelot, which
Malory describes as ' on the downs by Salisbury, not far
from the sea-shore.' Sir Bedivere bore Arthur from the
field, and laid him in a chapel by the sea. Then Arthur
sent his knight to give a signal to the fairy powers that
they were to take him away to Avalon.
6 My time hieth fast,' said the king. ' Therefore take
thou Excalibur, my good sword, and go with it to yonder
water-side, and when thou cornest there I charge thee
throw my sword in that water, and come again and tell
me what thou there hast seen. . . .' When Excalibur
was thrown into the sea, ' there came an arm and a hand
above the water and met it and caught it, and so shook it
thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand
with the sword in the water. . . . Then Sir Bedivere
took the king upon his back, and so went with him to
that water-side. And when they were at the water-side,
even fast by the bank hoved a little barge, with many faire
ladies in it, and among them all a queene, and all they had
black hoods, and all they wept and shrieked when they
saw the King Arthur. "Now put me into the barge,"
said the king; and so did he softly. And there received
him three queenes 2 with great mourning, and so these
three queenes set him down, and in one of their laps King
Arthur laid his head, and then that queene said, " Ah, dear
Therefore it corresponds to the Garden of Hesperides.
2 The Nornir ( = Valkyriur) ?
AVALON. 451
brother, why have ye tarried so long from me ? Alas ! this
wound on your head hath caught over much cold." And
so they rowed from the land ; and Sir Bedivere beheld all
those ladies go from him. . . . And he then said, " I will
to the vale of Avalion to be healed of my grievous wound.
And if thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul."
But ever the queens and ladies wept and shrieked that it
was pity to hear.' l
Afterwards Malory says
' Thus of Arthur I find never more written in books
that be authorised, nor more of the certainty of his death
herd I never tell, but thus was he led away in a ship
wherein were three queenes : that one was King Arthur's
sister, Queen Morgan le Fay; the other was Queen of
North Gales ; 2 the third was the Queen of the Waste
Lands. . . . But some men yet say in many parts of
England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the
will of oar Lord Jesus Christ into another place. And
men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the
holy cross.'
The story of Arthur's going to Avalon is told here in
no high key of triumph ; but a little hope lingers about it.
The circumstances in which arose the Arthur legend were
not suitable to notes of exultation. The story is the epic
of a defeated race ; it was the inheritance of the Britons
after the Saxon conquest. But if every myth is beautiful
which tells of the dying hero going to the Happy Land of
the Sunset, and which promises his return when his people
a.re at its sorest need, twice as touching is the form which
the legend takes in the mouth of a people whose hopes
are dying aut, and whose sun itself is sinking towards its
western eclipse.
Much more full is the account of the visit of Oger le
Dannois (Holger Danske) to the same Paradise of Avalon.
The account which I here translate is only a sixteenth-
1 Sir T. Malory, Morte d'Arthwe, c. 168. 2 North Wales,
a o 2
452 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
century version of the tale, but it is copied directly from
the poetic version of the well-known troubadour Adenez,
chief minstrel at the court of Henry III. of Bavaria (1248
1261), and for his excellence in his art called Le Roy or
king of all. 1 There can be no doubt that in its chief par-
ticulars the story is far older than the days of Adenez.
It is thus that the prose version from which 1 have trans-
lated tells the history of the adventure of Oger at Avalon :
Caraheu and Gloriande were in a boat with a fair com-
pany, and Oger had with him a thousand men-at-arms.
When they were a certain way on, there arose so mighty
a tempest that they knew not what to do, only to commit
their souls to God. So great was the storm that the mast
of Oger's ship brake, and he was constrained to embark in
a little vessel with a few of his comrades ; and the wind
struck them with such fury that they lost sight of Caraheu.
Caraheu was so sore troubled that he was like to die, and
he began to mourn the noble Oger ; for he wist not what
was become of the boat. And Oger in like manner la-
mented Caraheu. Thus grieved Caraheu and the Christians
in his company, saying, ( Alas ! Oger, what is become of
thee ? This is, I ween, the most sudden departure that I
heard of ever.' 'Nay, but cease, my beloved,' said Glo-
riande ; ' he will not fail to come again when God wills,
for he cannot be far away.' 'Ah, lady,' said Caraheu,
' you know not the dangers of the sea ; and I pray God to
take him into His keeping. . . .'
Now I will leave speaking of Caraheu, and return to
Oger, who was in peril, yet was ever grieving for his
friend and saying, ' Ah, Caraheu, hope of the* remaining
days of my life, thou whom I loved next to God ! How
has God allowed me to loose so soon you and your lady ? '
At that moment the great ship, in which Oger had left his
men-at-arms, struck against a rock,, and he saw them all
1 He is likewise the author of the Cleomenes, which is by some supposed
to be the original of Chaucer's incomplete Squire's Tale.
OGER THE DANE. 453
perish, at which sight he was like to die of grief. And
presently a loadstone rock began to draw towards it
the boat in which Oger was. Oger, seeing himself thus
taken, recommended his soul to God, saying, ' My God,
my Father and Creator, who hast made me in Thine image
and semblance, have pity on me now, and leave me not
here to die ; for that I have used my power as was best to
the increase of the Catholic faith. But if it must be that
Thou take me, I commit to Thy care my brother Guyon,
and all my relatives and friends, especially my nephew
Gautier, who is minded to serve Thee and bring the pay-
nim within Holy Church. . . . Ah, iny God ! had I known
the peril of this adventure, I should never have abandoned
the beauty, sense, and honour of Clarice, Queen of Eng-
land. Had I but gone back to her I should have seen too
my redoubted sovereign, Charlemagne, with all the princes
who surround him.'
Meanwhile the boat continued to float upon the water
till it reached the loadstone castle, which they call the
Chateau d'Avalon, which is but a little way from the
Earthly Paradise whither were snatched in a beam of fire
Elias and Enoch, and where was Morgue la Fee, who at
his birth had given him such great gifts. Then the mari-
ners saw well that they were drawing near to the load-
stone rock, and they said to Oger, 'My lord, commend
thyself to God, for it is certain that at this moment we
are come to our voyage's end ; ' and as they spake the bark
with a swing attached itself to the rock, as though it were
cemented there.
That night Oger thought over the case in which he
was, but he scarce could tell of what sort it might be.
And the sailors came and said to Oger, ' My lord, we are
held here without remedy ; wherefore let us look to our
having, for we are here for the remainder of our lives.'
To which Oger made answer, ' If this be so, then will I
make consideration of our case, for I would assign to
each one his share, to the least as to the greatest.' For
454 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
liimself Oger kept a double portion, for it is the law of the
sea that the master of the ship has as much as two
others. But if that rule had not been he would still have
needed a double quantity, for he ate as much as two
common men.
When Oger had apportioned his share to each he said,
'Masters, be sparing, I pray you, of your food as much as you
may ; for so soon as ye have no more be sure that I myself
will throw you into the sea.' The skipper answered him,
'My lord, thou wilt escape no better than we.' Their
food failed them all, one after another, and Oger cast them
into the sea, and he remained alone. Then he was so
troubled that he knew not what to do. ' Alas ! my God,
my Creator,' said he, ( hast Thou at this hour forsaken
me ? I have now no one to comfort me in my misfortune.'
Thereupon, whether it were his fantasy or no, it seemed
to him that a voice replied, f God orders that so soon as it
be night thou go to a castle after thou hast come to an
island which thou wilt presently find. And when thou art
on the island thou wilt find a small path leading to the
castle. And whatsoever thing thou seest there, let not
that affray thee.' And Oger looked, but wist not who had
spoken.
Oger waited the return of night to learn the truth of
that which the voice foretold, and he was so amazed that
he wist not what to do, but set himself to the trial. And
when night came he committed himself to God, praying
Him for mercy; and straightway he looked and beheld the
Castle of Avalon, which shone wondrously. Many nights
before he had seen it, but by day it was not visible.
Howbeit, so soon as Oger saw the castle he set about to
get there. He saw before him the ships that were
fastened to the loadstone rock, and now he walked from
ship to ship, and so gained the island ; and when there h(f
at once set himself to scale the hill by a path which he
found. When he reached the gate of the castle, and
sought to enter, there came before him two great lions,
OGEK THE DANE. 455
who stopped him and cast him to the ground. But Oger
sprang up and drew his sword Curtain, and straightway
cleft one of them in twain ; then the other sprang and
seized Oger by the neck, and Oger turned round and
struck off his head.
When Oger had performed this deed he gave thanks
to our Lord, and then he entered the hall of the castle,
where he found many viands, and a table set as if one
should dine there ; but no prince nor lord could he see.
Now he was amazed to find no one, save only a horse
which sat at the table as if it had been a human being.
We need not follow the adventure in full detail. This
horse, which was called Papillon (Psyche?), waited upon
Oger, gave him to drink from a golden goblet, and at
length conducted him to his chamber, and to a bed whose
fairy-made coverlet of cloth of gold and ermine was la
plus mignonne chose qui fut jama is vue.
When Oger awoke he thought to see Papillon again,
but could see neither him, nor man, nor woman, to show
him the way from the room. He saw a door, and, having
made the sign of the cross, sought to pass out that way ;
but as he tried to do this he encountered a serpent, so
hideous that the like has scarce been seen. It would
have thrown itself upon Oger, but that the knight drew
his sword and made the creature recoil more than ten feet;
but it returned with a bound, for it was very mighty, and
the twain fell to fight. And now, as Oger saw that the
serpent pressed hard upon him, he struck at it so doughtily
with his sword that he severed it in twain. After that
Oger went along a path which led him to a garden, so
beauteous that it was in truth a little paradise, and within
were fair trees, bearing fruit of every kind, of tastes divers,
and of such sweet odours that never smelt trees like them
before.
Oger, seeing these fruits so fine, desired to eat some,
and presently he lighted upon a fine apple tree, whose fruit
was like gold, and of these apples he took one and ate.
456 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
But no sooner had he thus eaten than he became so sick
and weak that he had no power nor manhood left. And
now again he commended his soul to God and prepared to
die. . . . But at this moment turning round, he was aware
of a fair dame, clothed in white, and so richly adorned
that she was a glory to behold. Now as Oger looked
upon the lady without moving from his place, he deemed
that she was Mary the Virgin, and said * Ave Maria ' and
saluted her. But she said, 'Oger, think not that I am
she whom you fancy ; I am she who was at your birth, 1
and my name is Morgue la Fee, and I allotted you a gift
which was destined to increase your fame eternally through
all lands. But now you have left your deeds of war to
take with ladies your solace ; for as soon as I have taken
you from here I will bring you to Avalon, where you will
see the fairest noblesse in the world.'
And anon she gave him a ring, which had such virtue
that Oger, who was near a hundred years old, returned to
the age of thirty. Then said Oger, ' Lady, I am more
beholden to thee than to any other in the world. Blessed
be the hour of thy birth ; for, without having done aught
to deserve at your hands, you have given me countless gifts,
and this gift of new life above them all. Ah, lady, that
I were before Charlemagne, that he might see the con-
dition in which I now stand ; for I feel in me greater
strength than I have ever known. Dearest, how can I
make return for the honour and great good you have done
me ? But I swear that I am at your service all the days
of my life.' Then Morgue took him by the hand and
said, c My loyal friend, the goal of all my happiness, I
will now lead you to my palace in Avalon, where you will
see of noblesse the greatest and of damosels the fairest.'
1 The fairies were, like the Parcae or Moerae, especially frequent attend-
ants at births. This fact our fairy tales have made sufficiently familiar to
all. Among the instances of the attendance of the classic fates at birth
we have the births of lamos (Pindar, Olym. vi.) and of Meleagros (Ovid,
Met. viii. 454), &c.
OGEE THE DANE. 457
And she took Oger by the hand and led him to the Castle
of Avalon, where was King Artus, and Auberon, and
Malambron, who was a sea fairy.
As Oger approached the castle the fairies came to meet
him, dancing and singing marvellous sweetly. And he saw
many fairy dames, richly crowned and apparelled. And
presently came Arthur, and Morgue called to him and said,
' Come hither, my lord and brother, and salute the fail-
flower of chivalry, the honour of the French noblesse, him
in whom all generosity and honour and every virtue are
lodged, Oger le Dannois, my loyal love, my only pleasure,
in whom lies for me all hope of happiness.' Then Morgue
gave Oger a crown to wear, which was so rich that none
here could count its value ; and it had beside a wondrous
virtue, for every man who bore it on his brow forgot all
sorrow and sadness and melancholy, and he thought no
more of his country nor of his kin that he had left behind
him in the world.
We leave Oger thus 'bien assis et entretenu des
dames que c'etait merveilles,' and return to the earth,
where things were not going so well ; for while Oger was
in Fairie the paynim assembled all their forces and took
Jerusalem and proceeded to lay siege to Babylon (i.e.
Cairo). Then the most valiant knights who were left on
earth Moysant, and Florian, and Caraheu, and Gautier
(Oger's nephew) assembled all their powers to defend this
place. But they lamented greatly because Oger was no
more. And a great battle took place without the walls
of Babylon, in which the Saracens, assisted by a renegade,
the Admiral Gandice, gained the victory.
Oger had been long in the Castle of Avalon, and had
begotten a son by Morgue, when she, having heard of
these doings and of the danger to Christendom, deemed it
needful to awake Oger from his blissful forgetfulness of all
earthly things and tell him that his presence was needed
in this world once more. Thereupon follows an account of
Oger's returning to earth, where no one knew him, and
458 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
all were astonished at his strange garb and bearing. He
enquired for Charlemagne, who had been long since dead;
the generation below Oger had grown to be old men, yet
he still had the habit of a man of thirty. We need not
wonder that his talk excited suspicion. But at length he
made himself known to the King of France, joined his
army, and put the paynim to flight. He had now forgotten
his life in Fairie, he was beloved by the Queen of France
(the King having been killed) and was about to marry
her, when Morgue again appeared and carried him off to .
Avalon.
It need not bo said that this story of the return of the
hero to earth is an essential in the legend of the Earthly
Paradise. In this way among others found expression
that favourite myth of the Middle Age of the sleeping hero
who, though withdrawn for awhile from the world and its
combats, was yet to come back again some day, and at the
hour of his country's supreme need stand in irresistible
might at the side of her warriors, ready to strike a final
blow for her deliverance. This myth, I say, was universal
and fondly cherished. Probably the sleeping hero was at
first the old national god, still dear to peasants' hearts.
That old god might serve for a symbol of the time when
these peasants themselves were freer and more warlike
than they had become. For gradually arms were taken
from the hands of the freemen and the bonders, and they
sank to the condition of serfs. They were buried, like
Thorr and Wuotan, beneath a mountain of new laws which
they could not shake off.
When the national god was forgotten a national hero
became the symbol of the sleeping past. Where Wuotan
had once slumbered there now lay Charlemagne or Frede-
rick Eedbeard ; and on his heart weighed the mass of an
immense mountain, which yet moved with his breathing.
Or otherwise it was said that the hero had gone, like
Oger, to the far-off Earthly Paradise, and would return
again when most needed, as Oger did.
THE PARADISE KNIGHT. 459
From tne legends of this class are to be derived some
of those bright but misty figures the Paradise Knights,
who move across the field of popular lore, coming no one
knows from whence and when their work is done going
away no one knows whither. But there is another order of
these half- celestial beings the knights who are born in
Paradise. Of Oger himself it is recorded that he became
by Morgue the father of Mervain, and that this Mervain
was a valiant knight in the days of Hugh Capet.
Indeed, as human beings, knights and dames, may be
transported to the deathless land without undergoing death
or changing their earthly nature, taking their soidas arid
all the enjoyments of our world, children, it is clear, may
be born in that place ; and these Paradise children, though
they have powers above the range of common mortality,
yet are in no way separated in interests from their fellow
men. They may long to come to the common earth and
perform here deeds of knight-errantry, and then to go
back again if their work is over or they themselves un-
thankfully treated, as such celestial messengers often are.
Hence we have that beautiful and universal German myth
of the child who comes earthward from the immortal land.
As the hero goes away to Avalon in a boat, so this child
comes wafted in a boat to some shore, or down some
river. The child is sleeping; no one knows whence it has
fared. 1
In the introduction to Beowulf it is said that his
father, Scyld, was after his death borne to a ship and
placed in it with no less gifts provided than they gave
him who at the beginning sent him forth over the wave,
being a child.' The legend here alluded to is that this
child had bee a borne in a boat without sail or oar to the
' In certain legends of saints a ship floats against stream, bearing
their remains to a fit resting-place. The remains of St. Marternus were in
this way carried up the Rhine in a rudderless boat and deposited at
Rodenkirchen. The remains of St. Emmeranus were carried from the Iser
to the Danube, and thence up stream to Ratisbon. See Simrock, Handbuch
der D. M., 285
460 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
shore of Scandinavia, 1 and that he was afterwards chosen
to be king of that land. There is a mistake made by the
author of Beowulf when he attributes this history to Scyld,
for the name should be Sceaf, the father of Scyld ; but this
is of no consequence. The outlines of the legend stand
clear ; and this legend gives the normal form of the myth.
The child born in Paradise is wafted by an unknown bark
from that unknown shore ; he becomes king of the people
of his adoption. After death (or before it, when his work
is done) he is again carried away in a boat to Paradise.
Among the many mediseval forms of this myth one is
the legend of the Swan Knight, of which one special form
is the story of Lohengrin of Brabant. 2
Lohengrin was son of Sir Percival, who, having been
while in the world long in search for the Holy Grail, had
been snatched up to a Fellowship of the Holy Grail in
another world. In this Paradise Lohengrin was born..
Then, at the prayer of Else of Brabant, he was sent into
the world to be her champion and to prove her innocence.
He married her and became Duke of Brabant. But the
condition of his staying by her side was that she should
never ask his name, and this condition she disregarded.
So once again the mystic boat came sailing down the
Rhine ; and Lohengrin entered it once more, and was then
lost, for ever to the world of men. But there is no need to
retell this tale to-day. Since this swan knight left the
world of popular lore he had slept in men's remembrance
till yesterday, when the wand of the magician again called
him back from the Paradise or Limbo of forgotten legends.
And now he has been reborn for us ' with no less gifts pro-
vided,' surrounded with a no less splendid halo of poetry
and beauty than they gave him who first sent him to
wander through the seas of human thought.
1 ' Insula oceani quae dicito Scania.' Chron. EtMltv. in. 3.
'In quamdam iiisulam Scanzam, de qua Jornandes historiographus
Gothorum loquitur.' Wm, of Malmesbury.
2 See Grimm's Deutsche Sagen, ii. 256 sqq., for this legend, and several
others of the same kind.
SURVIVAL OF HEATHENISM. 461
CHAPTER X.
HEATHENISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
THE heathenism of Northern Europe cannot fully be
studied if we confine ourselves to heathen literature and
to heathen times alone ; for its beliefs are to be detected
lurking in many secret places of the Catholicism of the
Middle Ages ; na} r , for that matter, they are to be dis-
covered in contemporary creeds. We have already seen
this in part, for while tracing out some special phases of
belief those, namely, which were concerned with the
future state we found ourselves insensibly being carried
on from the mythology of the ancient Germans and Celts
and of the Norsemen to similar myths which were cur-
rent during the Middle Ages. We found ourselves pass-
ing, almost without intermission, from Helheim to the
mediaeval purgatory, and from the heathen notions touching
the Earthly Paradise to the notions concerning the same
place which were in vogue in the tenth and twelfth cen-
turies.
What we have thus done in part and for particular
elements of belief we ought to try and do for the whole.
In a rough way we ought to try and discover what strain
of heathenism still lingered in the Christianity of the
Middle Ages, and how far the life and thought of the
men of those days was a legacy from the past life and
thought of the heathen days which had been before them.
But this subject is an immense one, and cannot possibly be
duly dealt with in one chapter. It can, at the very best,
only be sketched in merest outline, and presented in a
most fragmentary form. Wherefore what is set down in
462 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
the concluding pages of this volume is meant as a help to
the reader to recover for himself the threads of heathen
beliefs which run through mediseval Catholicism rather
than an attempt .to draw out these threads in due order or
to trace their various interlacings. Be it remembered,
too, that it is not into the ethical parts of Catholicism
that we are going to make enquiry. It were far too great
a task to attempt to decide what elements in the moral
creed of the Middle Ages can be traced back to heathen-
ism, and truly affiliated to the beliefs of heathen Europe,
and what elements are really Christian. Moreover, though
our space were unlimited, that enquiry would always lie
beyond the sphere of this work. At the very outset of
this volume all intention was disclaimed of wandering
into the domain of morals. The kind of belief which has
throughout been our study is that which is in its essen-
tials independent of the moral code. If ethics have en-
tered here and there, they have come in, as we said they
would do, only by the way.
But another thing which was laid down at the outset
of the volume was this : that very early phases of belief
may subsist side by side with phases of much higher
development ; and that we are quite at liberty, if we
choose, to stray into these later fields in search of the
early ' formations ' and nothing more. Much, no doubt,
of mediseval Catholicism nay, by far the greater part of
it shows an advanced stage of religious growth. As a
whole the creed lies far beyond that initial phase of mono-
theism which elsewhere we posed as the limits of our
special field of enquiry ; but there is yet something left in
Catholicism as a legacy from early days. It is in quest
of thes*e elements only that we turn to the study of it
now.
To say that we abandon the ethical parts of the creed
is the same thing as to say that we turn to search in
mediaeval Christianity for those parts of it which spring
most directly from the contact of man with outward
MYTHOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 4Go
nature. For it is by contact with outward nature that
primitive phases of belief are formed. It is essential to
the existence of these early strata of creeds that man
should be still in a direct communion with external things,
just as it is necessary to the growth of the later and
ethical strata that man should be, to some extent at least,
withdrawn from outside nature into himself; that he
should have become, in a certain degree, self-conscious
and introspective. Wherefore we must look to the outer
regions of belief only. We must neglect all the higher
aspects of Catholicism in neglecting all its ethical and
reflective side. But this is the only way to bring the
creed within the sphere of our present enquiry.
It is a thing to be remembered that the Middle, or, as
we call them, the dark, Ages are essentially ages of
mythology and not of history. To this they owe their
character of darkness. They are dim to the historian,
or, at any rate, to that historian who goes to them in the
quest of naked fact. In the chronicles of these times we
search in vain for anything which will help to form a
complete or a true picture of the Catholic world of
society in those days, of its life and thought and aspira-
tions. Each separate chronicle has been written in a
corner by one who had no conception of the world beyond
his own horizon. His outlook was generally that of a
priest confined to a narrow cell. Few as are the actual
facts which have come down to us, even these are robbed
of the best part of their significance from appearing so
disjointed as they do and without perspective. For we
need- to see not single objects but a succession of things
before we can form a conception of the size or the distance
of any one thing among them. In the histories of this
time isolated occurrences loom for a moment out of the
mist and then disappear into it again. There is no
grand panorama of events. And all the characters who
figure in these dramas are dim and shadowy, like the
creations of a dream.
464 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
In place, however, of what we can fairly call history,
there was, during all the dark ages, a copious growth of
myth ; and mythology is itself a kind of history. In the
mythology of the Middle Ages we are allowed to see much
,of what the chroniclers keep from us. The myths hold
up before us the world picture of the time. It is certainly
an ideal and not an . actual world which they present, but
then the most ideal creations have somewhere a foundation
in actuality and fact. The legend and the belief of this
age is of more value than its naked history, for legend and
belief then formed almost the greater part of men's lives ;
out of legend and myth their world was constructed. The
dark ages of medieval history are, in reality, pre-
historic ages, though it may seem paradoxical to say so
much. And the time before history begins, the time
when men are less engaged in noting what does happen
than in fancying what might happen, this is the golden
age for myth and legend.
German folk tales delight above all things in that
portrait of the youngest son of the house he is the youngest
of three who is left behind despised and neglected when
his brothers go forth to seek their fortunes. He is too
childish or too lazy to be trusted with the magic wallet or
staff which the father has bequeathed as their sole fortune
among his sons. So the other two go forth. Each in turn
tries his luck, and each returns with failure. Then it
comes to the turn of the youngest. He tries and does not
fail. In English stories we call this hero Boots. ' There
he sits, idle whilst all work ; there he lies, with that deep
irony of conscious power which knows that its time must
one day come and till then can afford to wait. When
that day comes he girds himself to the fight amidst the
scoff and scorn of his flesh and blood ; but even then, after
he has done some great deed, he conceals it, and again
sits idly by the kitchen fire, dirty, lazy, despised, until
the time for final recognition comes, and then his dirt and
THE HEARTH CHILD. 465
rags fall off lie stands out in all the majesty of his royal
robes, and is acknowledged once for all a king.' l
The Germans of Germany, who, in their folk tales,
have made this character so especially their own, might
well have been led to do this by a lingering memory of
their own history. They are the ' Boots ' of Teutonic his-
tory during the era of the fall of Rome and of the barbarian
invasions of Roman territory. The elder brothers that is
to say, the grown-up sons of the tribe first went forth.
Behind, in the ancestral village, beneath the immemorial
shade of the village trees, they left the old and the very
young, the father of the family and the ' hearth child,' as
the youngest son is still described in our law of Borough
English. That youngest son was to have a destiny of his own,
different from theirs. From his loins were to spring the
modern Germans of Germany. But this Boots and his
doings we will, as the stories do, for the present leave, and
go forth with the elder brothers upon their travels. The
stalwart sons of the house collect under their leaders
(heretogas), throw up into the air a lance or a feather,
and let Fate, in directing its fall or flight, show them the
way they are to go.
At the time when the era of invasion first dawned the
German people had so long led a settled life that their
gods must have seemed to grow settled too, and even
Odhinn, the wandering wind, must have been by each
tribe narrowed into the wind which haunted its special
corner of the forest. It must, therefore, have been that
the Germans who quitted their homes and made their
way southward or westward into Italy, or Gaul, or Spain,
felt that they were leaving their ancient deities behind,
and were migrating into the territory of new gods. 2
They fared forth much as Thorr had fared into Jotunheim,
unknowing what magic spells might be weaving for them
there.
1 Dasent, Norse Tales, introd. p. cliv.
2 See Milrnan, Hist. Lat. Christ, i. 338.
H H
466 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
It happened ill with their ancient gods, as it had
happened with Thorr ; for though the German invaders
overthrew the power of the Roman Empire, they were in
their turn overthrown by the God of the country into
which they came ; they all, one after another, abjured
the faith of Odhinn and adopted that of Christ. More
than that, they were, to a certain extent, subdued by the
nations whom they conquered ; they became denationalised
and ceased to be Germans, exchanging their rough Teu-
tonic speech for the softer language of the Latins. It
was by these conversions that the foundations of mediseval
history were laid.
Between the beginning of the Teutonic invasions of
Roman territory and the actual dawn of mediaeval history
occurred a long dark period of transition, which was
occupied in the gradual and complete destruction of the
Roman Empire by the barbarian hordes. At one time in
many simultaneous streams from different quarters, and
anon in successive waves of invasion from one direction,
the sea of barbarism submerged the ancient fabric of the
Roman Empire. From Msesia came the Visigoths und&r
Alaric, who thrice invaded Italy and laid siege to Rome,
and who at last took the imperial city and sacked it. To
their invasion, which did eventually flow away in a side
stream without completing the destruction of the Western
Empire, succeeded the more permanent conquests of the
Ostrogoths, to be in their turn succeeded by those of the
Lombards. And in the meantime to the north of the Alps
there first came, from beyond the Rhine into Gaul, the
miscellaneous army of the Suevi, Alani, Burgundians, and
Vandals. Some (the Burgundians) settled in Gaul; the
others passed on into Spain, and some from Spain to
Africa. Then followed the stronger power of the Franks,
who eventually overcame all their kindred German peoples,
arid wrested from them the whole of Gaul, with the excep-
tion of a small district in the south. 1
1 Narbonne, which long remained in the possession of the Visigoths.
THE NIBELUNGEtf. 467
The details of the contemporary conquest of our own
island by the Angles and Saxons do not need to be
recalled. The history of this era must needs seem to
the student little less than a shifting of scenes or a
pageant of players. By most writers it has been passed
over as if it were no more than this. It is not an attractive
epoch of history. It would be difficult, as Hallam says, 1
to find anywhere more vice or less virtue than in the
records of this time. Along with the tragic dramas of
these days there mingles sometimes a ghastly air of
comedy, which suggests the idea of beings with the intel-
lects of children inflamed by the fury of fiends. 2 But,
despite the meanness and the horror which meet together
in the history of this age, it was an epoch of great im-
portance in the development of the German race. Out of
it was born at least one great thing namely, the greatest
surviving epic in the German tongue. 3
For I hold that the foundations of the Mbelungen
poem were undoubtedly laid at this time. Nor, if we con-
sider what a time of stir and excitement it was for the
invading nations, will it appear strange that anything so
considerable as a national epic should have been the
result. Myths arise at many periods of a nation's life,
and these myths weave themselves into the nation's early
history and belief. But an epic springs up only occa-
sionally, and in times which, whatever else they may be,
are not ordinary ones.
We can hardly assign any period which seems so
1 Echoing the words of Gibbon.
2 Take for an example the account which Gregory of Tours gives us
of how Theodoric, the son of Clovis, sought to compass the death of his
brother Clotaire. He invited Clotaire to a conference in a room wherein
he had meant to conceal behind a curtain a band of assassins. But the
curtain was too short, and the men's legs were visible ; so Clotaire got
wind of the matter and came armed with a great company of his own
people. Greg. Tiir. iii. 7.
3 The conversion of the Germans to Christianity might be deemed the
great event of this era. So in one sense it was. But no fruits of it were
visible until the succeeding age.
H H 2
168 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
appropriate to the growth of the Mbelungen epic or
let me say the Nibelungen cycle of epics, for there are
many poems which belong to this class as the era of the
Teutonic conquests. Some relics of the traditions of that
day may be traced in the events and the characters of the
drama. And we must confess that while, on the one hand,
no time was so likely to give birth to a great German epic
as the time I speak of, so also there is no other creation of
the German genius which can with reasonable probability
be held to have sprung up at that time. When a national
epic has begun to take shape, it inevitably follows that
many ancient myths, which were when alone comparatively
commonplace, group themselves about the hero or the
circumstance which the epic commemorates ; like common
people wanting a leader, who range themselves under the
standard of a renowned chieftain. I do not say that no
songs and no stories like the Nibelungen had been sung in.
earlier days than these great days of invasion and conquest ;
but I say that it needed some mighty and sudden move-
ment of society before these fragments could crystallise
into a single epic poem. Tacitus has left on record the
Germans' inveterate habit of composing war songs to
celebrate the deeds of ancient days. Some of these stories
may have gone to form a part of the Nibelungen. But
we may fairly suppose that at the time of which we are
speaking the era of the barbarian invasions the greater
number of the old legends gave place to new ones, suggested
by the fresh life into which the Germans entered.
The actual poem which has come down to us with the
name of the Nibelungen- Lied, or Nibelunge-Not (Slaughter
of the Nibelungs), is of quite a late period in mediaeval
history. It belongs almost to the era of the Revival of
Paganism in the Renaissance. It is of the time of the
Hohenstaufen Emperors of Germany. The main object of
the story seems to have been to a great extent lost sight
of in the more modern extant poem, and subsidiary events
to have been enlarged so as to occupy the chief space in
THE NIBELUNGEN. 409
the canvas. It is only by comparing this poem with
others which contain similar actions that we can recognise
the features of the original story. The incidents common
to all are of course the most antique. The other poems
beside which I place the Nibelungen are those of the
Volsung Saga in the North, including lays which ha,ve
found a place in the Edda, and the English poem Beowulf.
These together we may call the Nibelungen cycle of epic
poems. 1
Of these three the earliest in date is Beowulf. The
portion of this poem which is akin to the stories of the
Volsungs and of the Nibelungs is not that of which a
sketch was given in the Seventh Chapter, but the con-
cluding part which tells of the fight between Beowulf
and a great dragon which infested his land. The dragon
was the guardian of an ancient ' heathen hoard ' of gold,
1 It has been maintained by some writers that the Volsung Saga is
nothing else than a plagiarism from the Nibelungen. But the arguments
in controversion of this view are of overwhelming force. In the first place
a story of the Volsungs was knowa to the author of Beowulf.
.... Hwylc gecwae'S >aet he fram Sigemunde
Secgan hyrde ; ellen-d^edum ;
Uncu>es fela, Waslsinges gewin.
Sigemonde gesprong, aefter dea"S-daege
Dom unlytel ; syftan wiges heard
Wyrm acwealde. ... ... 1. 1758, &c.
He told all that of Sigmund
He had heard say ; of deeds reaounded ;
Of strange things many ; the Wselsing's victories.
To Sigmond ensued after his death-day
No little glory, when the fierce in fight
The worm had slain.
The hero of the adventure was at first Sigmund at least this was so in
the North. It is possible that the name of Sigurd is taken from Siegfried.
This evidence is alone, I should have supposed, tolerably decisive. But
even without the aid of the passage just quoted the elements of the
Volsung tale in Beowulf, the intermediate condition of the Volsun^a Saga
between Beowulf and the Nibelungen, the remains of ancient heathen
belief in it which have been entirely forgotten in the Nibelungen- Lied
(see Chaps. VII. and VIII.), are tolerably decisive evidence of the antiquity
and originality of the Northern epic.
470 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
and Beowulf in killing the worm set free that treasure.
But he could not himself enjoy it or could for a brief
moment only for he had received a mortal hurt in the
combat, and almost immediately after it was over he died.
This is a very short and a very simple incident. But it
contains what is, I suspect, the most germain matter of
the original epic of this cycle. In the Volsung lays 1 the
story is considerably expanded. We have first the history
of Sigurd's fight with the worm Fafnir, which reproduces
the distinctive characteristics of Beowulf's fight with his
dragon, only with this difference, that Sigurd was not
killed in the encounter. 2 He died from a different
immediate cause. But still the slaying of Fafnir was the
final cause of his death ; for it seems to have been through
greed of the gold of Fafnir, as much as from any otber
motive, that Sigurd was treacherously slain by Gunnar and
Hogni. 3 In these Volsung poems many fresh elements
are introduced into the story. As the tale now goes we
have first the finding of Brynhild by Sigurd and the vows
which these exchange; then the oblivious potion admi-
nistered to Sigurd and his marriage with Godrun ; then
Brynhild's revenge, the death of Sigurd, and Brynhild's
own suicide ; and last of all Godrun's vengeance on the
murderers of Sigurd and the ensuing slaughter of the
Mflungs.
In the actual ISTibelungen-Lied, which I take to be the
latest of all the forms of the epic, the finding of the
1 It is hardly necessary to say that the lays of the Volsunga Saga are
the oldest portions of it.
2 Not at least in the story in its present form. But I have little doubt
that in an earlier account Sigurd, after the fight with Fafnir, did descend
into the House of Death ; for the next thing which he did was to go
through the fire at Hindarfjoll to wake Brynhild from her sleep of death.
This fire, as was shown in Chap. VIII., is a symbol ot death. Thus the myth
has been obscured by time in the same way in which came to be obscured
Apollo's descent to Admetus-Hades after his serpent fight.
3 According to one account Sigurd was actually done to death by
Guthorm, the younger brother of these two. But (as is said in the Drop
Niflwiga) Gunnar and Hogni divided between them Fafnir's gold.
THE NIBELUNGEN. 471
treasure has been almost left out of account, and now
the whole history is of the jealousies of Brynhild and
Godrun and of the murders which ensue therefrom. Yet
even in this latest poem the possession by Sigurd of the
treasure of the Nibelungs, otherwise called the Rhine gold,
is alluded to again and again in a way which shows
that this must once have constituted an integral portion
of the story.
Taking, then, the two essential features in the history
of Sigurd to be his slaying the worm Fafnir and his own
death by treachery, the first thing we notice is that the
hero combines in himself the characteristics of two among
the old Teuton divinities of those two, in fact, whose
characters have received most from the epic spirit of the
Norsemen. These divinities are Thorr and Balder. The
longest stories which the Younger Edda tells us are those
which relate to these two gods, who were, moreover, each
of them originally sun gods. The most important among
the deeds of Thorr are his contests with the mid-earth
serpent, combats which are, as I have said, reproduced in
most of the mediaeval dragon fights of Europe. The
essential part of the myth of Balder is his premature
death at the hand of his blind brother Hoftr. These two
elements have been united to form the story of Sigurd
or Siegfried ; and here the worm Fafnir has replaced
Jormungandr, while in the place of H6$r we have Hogni
or Hagen. 1
This is enough to show us that Sigurd and Siegfried
are true descendants from the heroes of ancient heathen
days, a.nd that the tradition of the heroic character had
not been essentially changed from one epoch to another.
Other remnants of heathen belief are visible in the Yolsung
1 Odhinn has come to be confounded with Hoftr in this later epic ; for
there can be no question that Hagen is meant for Odhinn. (See supra
p. 391, note.) In the Volsung epic Odhinn has altogether sunk from the
high position which he holds in the poems of the religious part of the Edda.
He has ceased to be so much the frieLd of man and he has ceased also to
be so powerful as he once was. See what is said in the next paragraph.
472 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
lays- -whereof in former chapters we have already noted
the most conspicuous and in Beowulf. But in the latest
poem of the cycle, the Nibelungen, these minor traces
are not to be found. Perhaps the most noticeable thing
in the poem (and this applies in no small degree to the
Volsung Saga also) is the absence of religious feeling
from it. It is little affected by the beliefs of heathen
Germany, but still less is it affected by the creed of
Christendom. Yet this very absence of religious feeling
is expressive of the time during which the Nibelungen
epic sprang into existence. It belongs precisely to that
era of transition when a great part of the German nation
had left behind them their old gods and had, as yet, found
no new divinity.
In the Nibelungen the names of some few among the
actors of the drama are historical, as, for example, Etzel,
who is Attila, and Dietrich of Bern, who is the Ostrogothic
king Theodoric. 1 These names are enough to suggest the
time at which the Nibelungen epic had its birth. And
though the motive of the poem has insensibly shifted from
what it was at first, and has been presented in a form more
intelligible to the readers of the thirteenth century than it
would have had if it told only of disputes for the posses-
sion of a treasure, still the epic has preserved in a wonder-
ful degree the spirit of the time which gave it birth.
I am insensibly led to speak of the ethic characteristics
of the Nibelungen, contrary to the principle which I laid
down anon that the ethics of the Middle Ages were not a
part of our concern, because the spirit and morale of this
great poem are so peculiar and so typical of the time in
which the Nibelungen legend first sprang up. It is the
spirit of that special period of transition from heathenism
to Christianity and from the total barbarism of the old
Teutonic life to the semi-barbarism of the Middle Ages. In
tone and in ethic the poem must be called heathen, in that
1 Dietrich of Bern = Theodoric of Verona
THE NIBELUNGEN. 473
there is nothing in it at all suggestive of Christianity.
But it does not suggest either the heathenism of the old
days. It belongs only to that epoch during which the
German invaders Tiad abandoned Odhinn, for they had
left him behind in their ancestral villages, but had not yet
adopted Christ. The picture which the lay holds up be-
fore us is a horrible one, a tissue of aimless slaughter, a
history almost altogether foul and bloody, in which if
some noble figures for a time appear they are sure to be
the first to perish. 1 It is not to be supposed that the pic-
ture here drawn, so different from those drawn by Tacitus
and from those presented in more Christian epics, is true
for all time ; but it is undoubtedly true for the exact era
to which it refers. The people were caught with the de-
lirium of conquest and by the fatal enchantment of wealth.
All their thought was now concentrated on heaps of gold,
such as those for which their heroes are described as fight-
ing. This desire for the possession of a hoard of buried
treasure is the one motive force of the whole drama.
While from the fiercer Volsung and Nibelungen poems
the cruelty and greed look out in all their native horror,
even in the milder Beowulf the importance attaching to the
gaining of such a hoard is shown as conspicuously, though
less repulsively. The killing of the dragon was the crown-
ing act of the hero's glorious career. All his adventures
were consummated in the gaining of the e heathen hoard,'
and a heroic life was thought to reach its due ending in
such a deed. As Beowulf was dying he bade his comrade
bring forth the treasure, to feast his eyes therewith. Then
he gave thanks.
Ic Sara frsetwa For this treasure I
Frean ealles ]>anc, Thanks to the Lord of all,
Wuldur cyninge, To the King of Renown,
Wordum secge. Do now express.
1 Siegfried, though he is the hero of the Nibelungen, and is besides
the only fine character in the piece, is slain in the sixteenth Aventiure,
and the poem contains thirty-nine of these cantos.
474 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
ses Se ic moste That these I might
iinum leodum, For my people,
jEiv swylt deege, Ere my death day,
Swylc gestrynan. 1 Such acquire.
That this fever should have seized upon the German
races during the era of their first conquests in Roman
territory will not seem strange to us when we think of all
the enchantments which were woven for them in the
lands to which they came. Little did they guess what
powers lay in ambush there, powers not less intoxicating
to the sense, and not less deceitful to the mind, than were
the spells of those giants who, to Teutonic fancy, held all
regions remote from the German's native home.
The enchantment which first fell upon the invaders
came from that wonder of Roman civilisation of which
they had before only heard. The Goths in Maesia, to
whom the apostle Ulfilas preached in the fourth century, 2
were living a life not greatly different from the life of
their Aryan forefathers two thousand years before. Like
the Aryas, who counted everything by their herds, these
Goths had no wealth but in their cattle, and when Ulfilas
desired to translate into their tongue any of the words for
money in the New Testament he could find no equivalent
but the Gothic faihu, which means cattle. Yet, before a
generation had passed away, the same Goths had been
transplanted into the midst of the teeming luxury of Italy
and Southern Gaul. All the stored wealth of these coun-
tries lay before them to make their own. It is true that to
them money, for the uses to which it is now put, had little
value ; and they probably never understood how coined
metal could be made subservient to the gratification of
civilised tastes and appetites. They had no need of and no
care for the real beauties which adorned the life of a rich
Roman citizen his stately villas, his statues, his gardens
but his more portable wealth they could seize upon and
1 Beowulf, 1. 5580 sqq. 2 Circ. 340-388.
GEEED OF GOLD. 475
cherish, as though it held some charm which might con-
vert their rough lives into lives capable of the enjoyments
which they saw and envied and could not reach. We
know what kind of useless use they did make of the
treasures which they gained. One picture of their method
of employing the precious metals is given to us in the inven-
tory of the marriage presents which were brought to the
Visigoth Ataulf when he espoused the sister of Honorius.
Gibbon l tells of the hundred bowls full of gold and jewels
which were brought by the Goths as a present to the bride
Placidia ; of the fifty cups and sixteen patens of gold ; of
the immense missorium or dish of the same metal, in
weight 500 pounds, which was discovered in the treasure-
house of Narbonne when that city was taken by the
Franks. But a better notion of the rude use of treasure
among the Teuton peoples is given by the roughly-made
utensils bowls, jars, and platters all in solid gold, which,
under the name of viking treasures, are preserved in the
Museum of Copenhagen. Such witnesses as these from
the historic past take away their utterly fabulous character
from accounts of treasure contained in the ballad poetry of
the same age ; as, for example, the description in Beowulf of
the palace of Hrothgar, King of the King Danes, which
was roofed with pure gold. We may gather from these
examples how the Germans actually employed the hoards
that they won ; but we can never learn the full effect
which the vision of this wealth had upon their imagina-
tions. Why the sight of treasure in the precious metals
begets in men a wolfish craving and more than wolfish
cruelty it were hard to say. It was so with the Spaniards
of the sixteenth century, as with these Germans of the
sixth. The whole nation had now, like their national
hero, Sigurd, eaten of the serpent's heart a dreadful
sacrament of cruelty and desire. They had grown wiser,
but they had grown to have, like Athene, ' untender hearts.'
1 Chap. xxxi.
476 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
We shall the better appreciate this characteristic of
the Nibelungen epics when we have been able to compare
them with another cycle of poems which are as essentially
Christian as the Nibelungen are un-Christian. To find a
true antithesis to the great epic of conquest and spoliation,
such an antithesis as may show the change in men's
thoughts and lives after the Middle Ages had really
dawned, we shall have to pass on to that series of poems
which are called the ( Chansons de Geste,' the great Karling
epic of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These poems
are as completely informed by the spirit of mediae val
Catholicism as the Nibelungen is informed by the spirit
of the Teutonic conquests. But before we look at the
' Chansons de Geste ' let us turn aside for a moment to trace
some of the lower currents of popular mythology, which
existed during these ages from the time of the Teutonic
conquests to the time of the rise of the Karling poems.
Epics, it has been said, belong to an age in which
some great emotion is stirring the hearts of the people,
giving a unity to their national life and making them
march together in a rhythmic motion as to the tune of a
war song. Of this order of creations were, whatever their
faults, the Nibelungen-Lied and the other poems of that
cycle ; of such an order was the Carlo vingian epic, of
which we shall have occasion to speak presently, and
which arose when men's thoughts were being turned
toward the great contest between the East and the West,
between Mohammadanism and Christianity. But in
quieter times or in places remote from the stir of excite-
ment and adventure the stream of popular mythology
keeps almost unchanged its tranquil, languid course.
The literature of the kind which the Nibelungen
represents belongs to the warlike classes. Those who
first chaunted the stanzas of the German epic were they
who had been the votaries of Odhinn, the Wind, who had
kept the mark and guarded the village. They went forth
FOLK TALES. 477
to become the ruling races in the countries which they
conquered. In these lands they found the older inhabit-
ants more civilised than themselves, but without national
spirit or national coherence, who were destined soon to
sink to the class of serfs and peasants. Thus for awhile
these conquering Germans stood apart, forming a nation-
ality of their own, belonging neither to their native
country, which they abandoned, nor to the land into which
they came. They lived still a life of camps ; they were
ever on the move and had no sense of property nor of^a
settled home. 1 Therefore the national epic which repre-
sents their deeds and thoughts is in many ways peculiar
and can scarcely be taken for an episode in the regular
development of belief. But with the peaceful brethren
whom they left behind, and among the peasant folk whom
they conquered, the old creeds, the religion of the
Germans by the one and the beliefs of the Celts by the
other, were cherished more persistently. But as the
common people in both regions were for the present
deprived of their natural leaders and of the more eager
and adventurous minds among them, their creeds threw
off the finer portions of them and sank down to be essen-
tially the beliefs of peasants.
There is in every religious system a popular mythology
which lies like a soft alluvial bed all round the more
striking elevations of religious thought ; and which, easily
as it seems to take impressions, is sometimes found to form
the most immutable portion of the creed. The earth-
quakes, the sudden cataclasms which overwhelm the
heights, leave these parts uninjured. They become most
noticeable when the striking features of the religion have
been for a time annihilated ; but they have pre-existed in
days long anterior to these changes, and are not by such
revolutions called into being. We have seen how, while
1 This character attaching to the Merovingian Franks has been very
well pointed out by Guizot (Cours da VHistoire de France, 8 me lecon) and
after him by Michelet (Hist, de France, livre ii.)
478 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
those elements of a creed which may be called national
are always the grander ones, there may remain among
separate fragments of the people many beliefs which are
little removed from a primitive fetich worship. If the
nation is for awhile denationalised, and transformed into
a congeries of units, these primitive elements of belief will
again come to the front. It was through this kind of
separation between the different elements of society that
opportunity was given for the mythology of the lower
people to rise to the surface, and to take its place as it
eventually did in the literary history of the Middle Ages.
There are, it seems to me, three distinctly traceable
streams of folk belief which must be taken to have flowed
side by side with the more important epics of the Middle
Ages side by side with the Nibelungen and side by side
with the Karling poems. Each stream bears the cha-
racter of a mythology sprung up among a conquered race
or at any rate among the inferior orders of society.
First of all, there was among the Celts in England
itself, and probably in other lands, a large body of ancient
heroic myth which celebrated the deeds of the gods or
heroes of the Celtic creed, and out of which the portion
which has survived for us eventually took the shape of the
legend of Arthur. This legend only became generally
popular toward the veiy end of the Middle Ages. Having
for centuries lived on in neglect, and passed from mouth
to mouth among the peasantry, it suddenly grew into favour
just at the time at which the more famous 'Chansons de
Geste ' were falling out of notice. This legend of Arthur
contained in it many elements peculiar to the Celtic mytho-
logy, elements of that mythology which are also noticeable
in another popular tradition of which we shall presently
speak. In a former chapter we saw how this legend pre-
served the true Celtic form of the myth of the Earthly
Paradise. But the Arthur legend could not have been in
any wide sense a popular mythology. It was cherished
by the Britons, but the Celts of Continental Europe
THE LEGEND OF THE SAINTS. 479
had been too long Romanised, and were too thoroughly
Christian, to remember the histories of their fabulous
heroes. Therefore the legend belongs of right only to a
small section of this race, and takes no important place
in the mythology of mediaeval Europe. 1
Much more truly popular among the mass of the Celtic
people the inhabitants of Gaul, for example, in the days
of Merovingian rule must have been a parallel series
of legends those of the saints. These were to some ex-
tent examples of pre-Christian mythology, though clothed
in the garb of Christianity.
The time at which these legends began to circulate
was the century which followed the epoch of Merovingian
conquest; it was after the beginning of the seventh
century that men first began to collect the legends and
write them down. The age of persecution had now ceased,
and time was beginning to grow its moss and lichen over
the memories of the martyrs of the preceding age, men
who had been dear in every way to the subjugated people,
as fellow-countrymen and as champions of Christianity.
Then there arose a race of pious priests, who went about
collecting the oral traditions and graving again, like Old
Mortality at the tombs of the Covenanters, 2 the inscriptions
which had once been written in men's hearts, but were
now in too much danger of becoming effaced.
In morality the stories of the saints are as complete a
contrast as could be looked for to the morality of the ruling
races as that was portrayed to and by themselves in
their epic poems, or as it is portrayed to us by the
contemporary chroniclers. The saint legend is childish in
that innocent and simple fashion which bespeaks the
mythology of peasant folk in every age. Where we are
not face to face with the Christian element of the story,
1 At the date when the Arthur legend became widely known the true
mythic age of Europe had come to an end.
2 This simile is Guizot's. See his fine essay, Coiirs cTHist. Mod. Hut.
de France, leQon 17.
480 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
its morality, we have got back to the very primitive ground-
work of mythology, the folk tale. These stories must
have grown up side by side with the fairy legends which
are so common in old France, tales of the courils, the
corrigans 1 and lutins of Brittany and of the fays and
dracs of the South. Such beings as these and the tales
that are devoted to them are earlier than the great
creations of mythology and the more serious parts of
belief; and they are also much longer lived than these
are.
Perch' una fata non puo mai morire
Fin al di del giudicio universale. 2
In days when the German races, despite their pretended
conversion, would have little to do with Christianity, and
it was ' a thing unheard of for a Merovingian to become
a clerk,' 3 Christianity must needs have been in every way
a religion for the peasantry. Even the rulers of the
Church were in those days chosen from among the con-
quered race, from among such Romans 4 as had gained
influence over the barbarians ; the lower orders of the
priesthood and the monks were drawn from the peasant
and the slavish classes. 5 It was for this reason that the
legends of the saints were so deeply imbued with the
thoughts and beliefs of rustic life ; the same kind of ad-
1 The corrigans were probably, like the faj^s, originally women. The
name comes from corny, little, and grvynn, woman, or else grvemn, genie.
Perhaps these two were originally the same word. See Leroux de Lincy,
Introduction au Livre das Legendes. The presence of the fairy element
in the Arthurian legend is also very noticeable, and makes a strong con-
trast between these myths and those of the Oarlovingian era. The last
were much more German than Celtic.
2 Bojardo, Orlando Inamorato, ii. 26, 15.
8 See the story of St. Columba and Theodebert II. ; also the story of
Clotilda, who said that she would rather see her grandchildren dead than
tonsured. Greg. Tur. iii.
4 Romanised Gauls or Goths.
5 It was quite otherwise in the days of Charlemagne ; for in the capitu-
laries of that king slaves are expressly forbidden to become monks ; this
contrast is typical of the change which passed over Christendom during the
eighth century.
THE LEGEND OF THE SAINTS. 481
venture runs through, the saint legend and the popular
tale. The intervention in one case is that of Provi-
dence or of some saint ; in the other case it is that of
the little familiar, the corrigan or fairy. The deeds of
the two orders of heroes are different in detail, but they
are the same in spirit and intention. In one set of stories
the hero conquers his enemies by his fairy gifts, and gains
the princess at the end ; in the other he works the same
wonders by his miraculous powers, overcoming all his
foes, avowed and secret, and becoming the confidant of
kings. That he afterwards falls into trouble and ends by
suffering martyrdom is the result due as much to a canon
of fitness external to the storyteller as to any predilection
of his own.
The third current was, originally, a pure stream of
popular mythology. It was unmixed either with religion
or with any legends of that higher kind, such as are ne-
cessary to complete a religious system. The stream of
which I speak was the great Beast Epic of mediaeval
Europe, of which we have some scattered remnants in the
histories of Reineke the Fox and Isengrim the Wolf. Yet
these tales are doubtless but fragments of an ancient apo-
logue, which was current throughout Northern Europe.
The traces of the Reinhart legend in many different
lands prove the wide distribution and the early origin of
the story. Among extant editions of the fable, however,
the greater number belong to the borderland between
Northern France and Germany ; they have generally come
from Upper or Lower Flanders. All these extant forms of
the Beast Epic are of too modern a date to give us a trust-
worthy clue to the nature of this epic at the time at w r hich
it sprang up among the peasantry of Northern Europe. 1
1 Grimm (Reinhart Fvchs) has published a number of the earliest
extant forms of the fable of Reinhart and Isengrim. The first of these is
a Latin poem of 688 lines, called Isengrimus. It belongs to the first half
of the twelfth century, Of nearly the same date are the Reinardus,
another Latin poem of 6,596 lines : the Reinhart (Old High German), of
I I
482 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
It is difficult to settle the claim to its authorship of the
two nationalities French and German. For while, on the
one hand, the French has so completely adopted the story
that the name of the hero, Eenard, has come in that lan-
guage to stand for the generic name for fox, to the total
exclusion of the older word, vulpe, this name itself, as well
as those of the other chief actors in the story, Isengrim
and Bruin, are apparently words of German and not of
French origin. 1 That which we can distinguish in the
epic is that it was the possession of the lower strata of
society. The hero, Eenard, is the representative of a sub-
ject race, while Isengrim, the wolf, represents the con-
querors ; and the whole history of the poem is of the
wiles by which Eenard gets the better of his stronger
cousin.
But though Eenard represented the peasant class
wherever the legend was current, I am on the whole dis-
posed to look upon him as standing rather for the lower
orders of the German race than for the subject Celtic
population. There is a close relationship between Eenard
and Isengrim ; they are not of alien blood, though their
interests are ever opposed. 2 In truth, the character of
Eenard is precisely the character of the men of the
2,266 lines ; and the Reinaert de Vos, of 2,350 lines. The third of these
four poemg comes from Alsace, the other three from Flanders.
The three great poems of the epic cycle are Rcinardus (twelfth cen-
tury), Roman de Renart (thirteenth or fourteenth century), Reincke Fuchs
(end of fifteenth century).
1 ' Noble ' (the Lion) is, on the other hand, a distinctly French gloss.
Otherwise the name would have been Adel. But, as Grimm says, the
Bear probably originally performed the office of king (Reinkart Fucks,
Introd. xlvii. liii.) This office was, in course of time, transferred to the
Lion.
The essential characters of the drama are, says Grimm, the conqueror,
the conquered, and the judge Wolf, Fox, and Bear or Lion. For 'con-
queror' and 'conquered' we may perhaps substitute 'ruling ' and 'subject '
races.
2 Throughout the poems they constantly call each other cousin, or uncle
and nephew. The nearness of kinship between the fox and the wolf in
popular belief is well shown by the etymology of the names for them, wolf
being etymologically allied to vulpes.
EEINEKE FUCHS. 483
country to which ' Reinhart Fuchs ' seeins especially to
belong, the inhabitants of the almost independent but
yet physically weak trading cities of Flanders. These
men were still essentially German, but their sympathies
were not with German conquerors, with the nobility of
France or Germany, but with the peasant class. 1
The Thorr of Scandinavian or the Doriar of Teuton
belief became in time the patron god of the peasantry,
and instead of being a warrior he grew to be a promoter
of agriculture, and of that kind of war only which agri-
culture wages against the rude waste tracts of a country. 2
As Odhinn (Wuotan) remained the warlike god, and so the
god of the ruling classes, there would naturally grow up
some rivalry between the two chief Teuton divinities. A
trace of this enmity is shown in one of the Eddaic poems,
the * HarbarSsljoft,' at least in the latest acceptation of its
intention ; for though HarbarS began by being a giant,
there can be no question that he was eventually confounded
with Odhinn. Without meaning it to be supposed that
the original story of the * Reineke Fuchs ' was in any way
founded upon the myth system of Asgard and the Teuton
divinities, I can imagine that in its actual shape it does
bear some traces of this mythology as it appeared during
its latter years. It may well be that the red Reineke has
inherited something from the red Thorr and the grey
Isengrim, something from the grey Odhinn. 3 In Iceland
the fox is still sometimes called holtaporr (wood-Thorr), 4
Odhinn was generally the grey-headed and grey-bearded
1 It is only in the later forms of the Reineke legend that the hero is
converted into a knight possessing a castle Malepertus.
2 See Simrock, Handbuch passim, and Uhland, Der Mythus von TJtor.
3 Thorr, as the Thunderer, was always the red God. He was imagined
to have a red beard (Forn. Sog. ii. 182, x. 329). Odhinn is sometimes a red
god, though more generally a grey. Reinhart is constantly addressed as
the ' red,' as is indeed natural. See Keinardus, 284, 1463 ; Reinaert, 4394 ;
Horn, de Renart, 463, 502, 4557, 6088, 6674, 6689, 8251, 8815, 9683.
Isengrim is almost as often styled the ' grey,' canus, canu, &c.
4 Grimm, D. M. i. 148.
i i 2
484 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
god ; and the wolf was especially sacred to him. Where-
fore Isengrim would be an appropriate representative of
Odhinn. And it is very probable that beside the element
of primitive belief in this Beast Epic, a species of mytho-
logy which is probably earlier than the construction of any
Asgard or ordered pantheon of gods, and which may have
belonged as much to Celts as to Germans, there is like-
wise some reminiscence of the peculiar religious system
of the Teutonic people.
Such fragments of pristine belief as these which we
have enumerated I place about the period during which
the German conquerors were settling into their new
homes, and Europe was entering upon its mediaeval life.
I do this not because this kind of popular belief does in
itself belong to any peculiar age, but because it is
especially in times of transition, and we may say of
denationalisation, that primitive myths take an important
place in the world's creed. It is only under such cir-
cumstances that they rise to the surface and assume some-
thing of the dignity of national epics.
But the German race was not destined to remain for
ever so little like a nation, so much like a house divided
against itself, as it was during the age which immediately
succeeded its conquests of Eoman territory, during the
rule of the Merovingian kings in France, of the Lombards
in Italy, during the days of the Suevi and Visigoths in
Spain and of our Heptarchy in England. A new influence
of German thought began to make itself felt when the
Karling dynasty supplanted the Merovingian dynasty in
France, and when through the strength of the eastern
Franks that d} 7 nasty became in the person of Charles the
supreme ruler in Europe.
Though a thousand unrecorded Christmas Days have
passed away since then, history will not soon lose sight of
that Christmas Day of the } r ear 800, when, as Charlemagne
was kneeling before the altar of St. Peter's in Rome,
THE 'CHANSONS DE GESTE.' 485
Leo III. (so Eginhard tells the story 1 ) came behind him
unperceived, and placing a diadem upon his head cried
out, ' Hail to Charles the Augustus, the great and peace-
ful Emperor of the Romans ! ' The vision which floated
before the minds of the statesmen of those days was the
revival of the old effete Western Empire under better
conditions, with a strong orthodox Emperor at its head,
and of a renewal with all its ancient glories of the Roman
civilisation. But it was not this that the ceremony of
that Christmas Day did really solemnise. The Roman
nation was not galvanised into new life ; in place thereof
the power of the barbarians was established and the era
of their influence on European history was inaugurated.
In the person of their king the crown was placed upon the
head of the Germans.
Now for the first time for many hundred years some
order and fixed law began to appear in the governance of
society; for now all the nations, save those in the far
North and in the East, had been converted to Christianity.
Now, too, all the conquests of the Germans over the
Romans and Celts had come to an end. 2 No longer a
thought remained of migration or of further change.
The life of camps was abandoned, and that complete
settlement of the Germans in their new lands took place
which directly led to the institution of feudalism, and
hence to the petrified, unvarying life of the Middle Ages.
The literature which speaks most eloquently of the
beliefs and feelings of the age which followed this establish-
ment of the Carlovingian dynasty is that immense cycle
of epic poems which has gathered round the name of the
great emperor, and which is hence called the Karling epic.
But the name by which they were distinguished in their
own day was ' Chansons de Geste.' The stories which are
told in these songs, almost without exception, revolve
round the traditional figure of Charlemagne. But this
1 Vita Ear. Magni, 100 ; Annal. 215.
8 Save in the far West Wales, Ireland, Scotland.
486 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
Charlemagne is not the historical king of the Franks ; he is
the mythic being which a couple of centuries of legendary
hero worship have made him. The motive of the poems
the spirit, that is to say, which moves and animates them
is the spirit of the crusader, for they arose at the beginning
of the great contest between the East and the West ; they
faded away when the enthusiasm of the crusades died
down. In these poems Charlemagne is transformed into
the ideal crusader. His deeds of arms are wrought for the
discomfiture of the Saracen, and nearly all the actions of
the other heroes of the songs have the same intent.
Though Christian in tone, the 'Chansons ' are not Celtic;
on the contrary, they are essentially Germanic. They are
Teutonic in the spirit that animates them, in the tramp
of battle to which they seem to keep time, in the forms of
love and hate which they chronicle; they are Teutonic
even in lesser details, as in the actual method of fighting
which they describe and the mode of arranging an army,
or in the system of administering justice. 1 There can be
no doubt that the ' Chansons de Geste ' are, not less than the
Nibelungen, the offspring of the chaunts by which from
time immemorial the German line of battle used to go
encouraged into action, and in which, when the battle
was over, the soldiers used to find their voice again by the
fireside. Tradition, therefore, was never quite broken
through between the days of the old heathen war songs
and those of the birth of the newer Christian epic. And it
could hardly be but that many of the legends of heathenism
were handed on from one era to the other.
True the religion of the people had been utterly
changed between the two epochs; and, so far as regards
either the formal belief or the morality of the ' Chansons,'
these afford as great a contrast as could be imagined to
the thoughts of heathenism upon the same subjects. The
Qhristian theory of morals, in the form in which that was
I 8ee Leon Gautier, Epopee franqaise, vol. i. p. 28.
THE MYTHIC CHARLEMAGNE. 487
understood in the tenth and eleventh centuries, shines
brightly in these poems, and at once divides them by an
impassable gulf from the poems of the Nibelungen cycle.
But as regards the outer region of belief, that part which
does not touch closely upon morality, and does not come
in contact with the Biblical teaching concerning this
world or the next, the barrier between the Christian epic
and the older literature of heathen times is far less
conspicuous. It was to a great extent upon the pattern
of Odhinn, of Thorr, or of other gods and heroes of Asgard
and Walhalla that the legendary characters of Charle-
magne and his paladins were formed.
The emperor himself is in many ways the counterpart
of Odhinri (Wuotan), and seems to perform the same
duties in the midst of his twelve peers which Odhinn
exercised among the twelve gods of Asgard. The part
which Odhinn played in Valholl the same part did
Charles play at Aix. The former was, as we saw,
essentially the counsellor and the wise one among the
gods. Though he was a god of battle and mighty in the
combat, he was less distinctively a fighter than a deliberator.
Thorr and Tyr could do battle as well as he ; but none
possessed the wisdom of Odhinn. Now this is just the
character which attaches to Charles. Roland or Oliver
can do the fighting, but Charles is always the one who
takes and gives counsel, who settles upon the occasion and
the place of war. In the f Chanson de Roland ' there is a
fine picture of Charles seated to receive the ambassadors
from a certain Saracen king. We see him on a golden
throne, with hair and long beard all white
Blanche ad la barbe e tut flurit le chief
with head bent down, eyes cast upon the ground, long
pondering before he gave his answer; 'for,' says the
poet, ' Charles never spake in haste.'
IV ^reover the likeness between Odhinn and Charles
appt r? peculiarly strong in one respect, viz. in the
488 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
aspect of great age which each wears. It is as strange to
endow a chief god as to endow a popular hero with the
appearance of eld. Although the former might be sup-
posed to have existed through all time, one could not
have expected that men would have fancied him bearing
011 his person any impress of the flight of years ; and one
would have expected it least of all with a people who set
so much value upon physical strength as did the Germans.
Yet it is a fact that wherever Odhinn makes his appear-
ance in later German tradition it is as a quite old, grey-
headed, grey-bearded man. He is, in the language of Mr.
Morris's ' Sigurd the Volsung,' 'one-eyed, and seeming
ancient.' I do not know whether this had always been
the conception of Odhinn, but it certainly was the image of
him which existed in the latter days of paganism. And
now in the dawning of the Christian epic we see the same
conception embodied in Charles. There are some ( Chansons '
which tell of Charlemagne's boyhood and early youth,
though these are not among the earliest of the collection.
In any case the minute this early youth is passed Charle-
magne seems to have become suddenly a very old man.
There is no intermediate stage between twenty and sixty
or more. Charlemagne is nearly always called, as in the
passage just quoted, him 'of the white beard.' In the
'Chanson de Koland,' the oldest and the most truly epic of
all the collection, Charlemagne is made to be two hundred
years old and more mien escient douz cenz anz ad passet.
Again, Charles has still somewhat the character of the
tempest god ; he seems to wield, like Odhinn, the powers
of the storm, and the thunder like Zeus or Thorr ; the
glance of his eyes can strike men to the ground as if they
had been struck by the bolt. Odhinn had for ever flying
round his head two ravens, Hugin and Munin (Thought
and Memory), who were his counsellors. In place of these
Charles has two heavenly guides namely, two angels
who never leave him.
Another thing which draws close the link between
THE MYTHIC CHARLEMAGNE. 489
the god and the epic hero is that in popular German tra-
dition Charles the Great is made to lie asleep beneath a
mountain, where, without question, Odhinii had once slept
before. 1 In other traditions a still later national hero,
Frederick Eedbeard (Barbarossa), takes the place of the
god. He sleeps at Kaiserlautern or at Kiffhauser. Every-
one knows the story of the shepherd youth who, by an
underground passage, found his way into the midst of the
hill, and there saw Frederick with his head upon a table,
through which the beard of the king had grown, Frederick
awoke at the sound of the strange footsteps, and demanded
of the shepherd, ' Are the ravens still flying round the
hill ? ' ' Yes,' he answered. ' Then must I sleep another
hundred years.' In this tale the birds of Odhinn still
linger to mark the place where he sleeps and the true
individuality of the sleeper.
The Valkyriur too are not wanting from the legend of
Charlemagne, for they are represented by the daughters
of the emperor. These women are ever described as vira-
goes. They were said to ride with their father to battle ;
one of them, Emma, actually carried off by force a hesi-
tating lover. 2
One antique Teuton goddess, reappearing in these
tales, does so while keeping her proper name. This is
Berchta (Perchta), whom in a former chapter we spoke of
as the counterpart in Germany proper of the Norse god-
dess Frigg, the wife of Odhinn. Berchta seems, in fact,
to have been one of the names of this consort of Wuotan,
and the goddess herself to have been a sort of Queen of
Heaven. 3 The same name recurs continually in the
* Chansons de Geste.' There is Berte aus grans pies (Bertha
Broadfoot), the mother of Charles; and another Bertha,
* In one instance, at all events, the mountain is called Wodansberg.
2 Grimm, Deutsche Sag en, ii. 115, &c.
3 See Grimm, D. M. i. 226 sqq. ; Simrock, Handb. der deut. Myth. 293
357, 364, 409, 548; also Wuttke, Deutscli. Volksab. ch. i. ; Kuhn, S. G.
M. &c. Berchta is something of an earth goddess, as is Frigg.
490 OUTLINES OP PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
the sister of Charles and the mother of Roland. The first
of these two partook of the Yalkyria nature. The name
of Broadfoot came to her from her having one foot webbed
like the foot of a swan. This was all that remained of the
power which once belonged to the Valkyriur of changing
themselves into birds. To such mean dimensions had
shrunk the beautiful myth of Odhinn's swan maidens.
As Charles was the due representative of Allfather
Odhinn, so was Roland, the great hero of this epic, a
representative of his son Thorr. We may perhaps say
that, like Siegfried of the Nibelungen, he combines in
himself traits taken from the two principal divinities of
the second generation among the j3Esir. He, quite con-
trariwise to his uncle, is always young. He is evidently
meant to be in the glow of youth at the very day of his
death.
Amis Rollanz, prozdom, juvente bele ! l
exclaimed Charles in his lament over him after Ron-
cesvaux. Roland was at the end still unmarried, though
affianced to the lovely Aude. Yet he was own nephew to
Charlemagne, who at the same time was two hundred
years old.
Roland was the bearer of the great horn or olifant of
Charlemagne's army. At Roncesvalles, when the rear-
guard of the French under Roland had been surprised and
nearly cut to pieces by the army of the Saracen, Roland
put the horn to his lips and blew a blast, in the hope of
recalling the main body of the army. He blew with such
force that the sound was heard thirty leagues away, and
reached the ears of Charles and of his army, who had
already returned to France. All the host of Charles stood
listening, and three times this distant echo came to their
ears. ( That horn had a long breath,' said the king. But ere
the main body of the French could get back to the battle
field the rear-guard had almost all been slain, and Roland
1 Ami Roland, vaillant homme, belle jeunesse 1
EOLAND. 491
himself was wounded to death. Then he sounded the olifant
once more this time, alas ! but faintly and when Charles
heard it, in sorrow he turned to his barons and said, ( It
is going ill. We shall lose my nephew Roland. I know
by the sound of his horn that he hath not long to live.'
This description is very suggestive of the thunder, first
loud and presently spent and faintly rumbling. It should
be remembered that, at the very time when this horn of
Roland reached the ears of Charlemagne from far away,
a tempest of thunder and lightning was raging over
France. Roland may well have inherited his olifant from
Thorr.
The history of Roncesvalles ma-y have about it some
lingering echoes of the prophecy of Ragnarok. We know
that one of the tokens of the coining of the giants was to
be the sound of the Gjallar-horn, blown by the god Heimdal,
he who had been posted to hold the bridge Bifrost against
the coming of Surtr. When the overwhelming host of
the fire king comes upon him Heimdal is to sound that
Gjallar-horn. Now this horn is undoubtedly the thunder.
The peal belongs both to Heimdal and to Thorr ; therefore
the olifant of Roland may be the thunder too.
Literature of the kind represented by the Carlovingian
epic's belonged chiefly to the upper classes. These songs
were sung by wandering minstrels not so often in the
market-place as in the castle hall or bower. Half the
barons of France traced descent in one way or another
from the paladins, much as the petty Ionian kings to
whom Homer sang deemed themselves the representatives
of the chieftains who had joined in the conquest of Troy.
The earlier songs from which the { Chansons de Geste '
were a compilation were probably of a more popular
character, but they are lost to us.
While these stories were being repeated in the lord's
castle what sort of tales were passing current in the farm-
house and the village, among vassals and serfs ? what
492 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
kind especially in those German lands where Wuotan and
Donar had once swayed the popular creed ?
There is in Germany a certain range of highlands
which, standing upon Switzerland as upon a base, stretches
up diagonally by the Black Forest and the Palatinate to
the Harz and Saxon Switzerland. It corresponds to that
other series of elevations in eastern France or in Alsace
and Lorraine from the Vosges to the Ardennes. Between
these ranges the broad Rhine wanders through fruitful
plains down to the Northern Sea. The hills are two
opposing camps : the plain is the battle ground between
them. Here has often been fought out the issue between
different nationalities and different creeds. The eastern-
most of these two camps was once the stronghold of
German heathenism ; it is now the favourite home of
popular lore. From this eastern range the Saxon or the
Thuringian once looked out upon his great river his free
German Rhine and national god and he saw it gradually
passing over to the new faith. Cathedrals were rising all
along its banks : the great archbishoprics founded by
Charles at Cologne and Mainz and Worms Mainz, the
see of St. Boniface; Cologne, the most sacred and most
influential of the Middle Age towns of Germany; 1 and
then beyond the Rhine, like the outposts of the advancing
army of Christendom, he saw other foundations spring up ;
first among these the seven lesser sees established by
Charlemagne Osnabriick, Minden, Paderborn, Werden,
Halberstadt, and Hildersheim, and the famous abbey of
Fulda. As he beheld these churches rise, the heathen
German fled and hid himself in his mountain fastnesses.
How long his creed lingered there we cannot say, but when
it had finally departed it left the recollection of its presence
in the popular tradition.
The transformations which the German deities under-
went when the people became Christianised took place
1 The laws of the hanse were founded by the merchants of Cologne who
were resident in foreign lands.
GEEMAN FOLK LOKE. . 493
more recently here than elsewhere, and therefore the re-
collection of the old gods is the clearer. It is here that
we must enquire if we wish to discover what became of
Wuotan and Donar, Freka and Holda. It is not in this
case as it is with the folk tales of the type of the ' Reineke
Fuchs,' or even with that popular mythology which peeps
from behind the legends of the saints. Both these kinds of
popular lore are chiefly of the universal folk-tale type, and
the beings which they introduce are such as would find
their counterparts in any land ; as likely in the popular
tales of the Arabs or the Persians as in those of Europe.
A great proportion of the German folk tales are also of
this universal character ; but there is another series which
contains certain tokens of the special German belief, and
which has much to tell us of the lingering effects of that
belief upon popular fancy.
First to notice is the legend of Hackelbarend, or
Hackelberg, or Herod, as he is variously called, the Wild
Huntsman, who is known to us in England as Herne the
Hunter. He is found all over North Germany and in
Denmark ; he is well known in the Jura, and in the
Vosges, and in Switzerland; better known still in the
Harz. Hackelberg, the legend saith, was a wicked noble
who was wont to hunt upon Sundays as upon week days,
without distinction. One particular Easter Sunday he
had not only gone hunting himself, but had forced all his
peasantry to take a part in beating up the game. Presently
he was met by two horsemen : one was mild of aspect and
rode a white horse ; the other was grim and fierce, seated
upon a coal-black steed, which from its mouth and nostrils
seemed to breathe fire. The one sought to dissuade him
from his enterprise, the other urged him on ; but Hackel-
berg turned from his good angel and continued his wild
chase. So now, in company with the fiend, he hunts, and
will hunt to the Judgment Day. Men call him Hel-j tiger, 1
1 In Ix>w German also Dammjager (Kuhn, Sagen, Sec. ii. No. 9),
Bodenjiiger ( = Woden jager), Buddejager, Woenjager, Ewiger Jagex, &c.
(id. ii. 24-28).
494 , OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
hunter of hell. According to one tradition he seduced a
nun, and she now rides bj his side : some say she is
transformed into the white owl Totosel; others call her
Ursula l a significant name.
Woe to the peasant who hears the wild chase sweeping
towards him through some lonely mountain pass, and amid
the din the cry of the Hel-jager, 'Hoto! hutu!' The
barking of dogs may be distinguished from mid air, and
yet nothing seen; or a rain of bloody drops may come
down from above with a limb of one of the victims. One
peasant boldly jeered at the Huntsman as he went by, and
Hackelberg threw him down the arm of a man ; ' for the
Wild Huntsman,' says this legend, c hunts only men.' 2
There can be no doubt that the awful apparition is
Odhinn himself transformed. Hakelbarend seems to have
been the earliest name of the Huntsman ; it means simply
cloak-bearer, and we know how constantly Odhinn is
represented travelling abroad clad in a- long blue cloak,
which is in fact the air or the cloud. 3 She who rides with
the Wild Huntsman is the German goddess Horsel (hence
called Ursula), probably the same as Freyja, 4 and more
remotely the same as Frigg. Odhinn and Freyja rode
together to the field of battle to share in the division of
the slain ; in other words, they were the two psychopomps,
or leaders of ghosts to the nether kingdom. Hackelberg
performed a similar office ; he was a hunter of men.
Hackelberg is, again, connected with some of the notions
concerning the other world which in a former chapter we
traced in Yedic mythology. We saw that in the Vedas
the Milky Way was fancied to be the Bridge of Souls.
1 Kuhn, ii. p. 10.
2 Kuhn, ii. No. 21.
8 Though of course the names given above render such testimony un-
necessary.
4 Horsel, who seems sometimes to have represented the moon (hence
Ursula and her ten thousand virgins, the stars), was also a goddess of love,
as Freyja was. Thus in the various versions of the Tannhiiuser legend we
ha\e sometimes a Horselberg, sometimes a Venusberg, beneath which the
enchantress is supposed to dwell.
THE WILD HUNTSMAN. 495
Now Hackelberg is said to hunt all the year round along
the Milky Way, save during the twelve nights 1 those
which intervene between Christmas and Twelfth Night
during this period he hunts on earth. He is accompanied
by two dogs, who must be identical with the Sarameyas,
the dogs of Yama. 2 All doors and windows should be kept
shut when Hackelberg goes by ; for if they are not, one
of the dog fiends will rush into the house and will lie down
on the hearth, whence no power will be able to make him
move. There he will stay for a year, and during all that
time there will be trouble in the house; but when the
hunt comes round again he will rush wildly forth and
join it.
Let us compare with this universal legend of Hackel-
berg another one which we find in Kuhn's collection. 3
Between the inhabitants of Epe and those of Engter there
had existed for many years a dispute concerning their
common boundary, or mark. Then came a man from Epe
and swore that the boundary was so and so. But the
oath was a false one; wherefore to this day that man
forsworn comes at dusk to the boundary stone and sits upon
it, crying f Hoho ! hoho ! ' and this he must do for ever.
He is called Stretmann (Streitmann, man of war?) This
being is also, I suppose, the transformed Odhinn, who was
once, we know, the arbiter of the mark, inasmuch as he
was the impersonation of the storm. 4 The punishment
here recorded was inflicted on him when he was dismissed
from Asgard to hell, and from a god was changed into a
fiend. Afterwards the crime was invented to account for
the punishment. The same course was, no doubt, followed
in the case of the Wild Huntsman, as well as in that more
modern counterpart of him (evidently also a being of the
1 On some of the beliefs concerning the ' twelve days ' see Chap. VII.
end.
a The ' wish hounds ' that are heard in some parts of England are clearly
these same dogs. 'Wish' is one of the names of Odhinn. Grimm, 2). M
3 No. 34, p. 40. The story was orally communicated to Kuhn.
See Chap. VII.
496 OUTLINES OF PKBIITIVE BELIEF.
storm) Van der Dekken (the Man of the Cloak 1 ), the Flying
Dutchman. Herod, Hackelberg, Herne, Van der Dekken,
Stretmann these are all the counterparts of the great
German god.
Two other stories must also be noticed. One is the
' Pied Piper of Hamelin,' which a great contemporary poet
has rewritten with so much beauty, and has at the same
time made so familiar to us, that the details need not be
repeated here. The rats are symbolical of human souls.
The Piper is the wind that is, Odhinn and the wind,
again, in its character as the soul leader, like Hermes Psy-
ch opompos. The Piper's lute is the same as the lyre of
Hermes ; both have a music which none can disobey, for
it is the whisper of death. First the Piper piped away
the rats from the houses ; but the townsfolk, freed from
their burden, refused him his promised reward, and scorn-
fully chased him from the town. On June 26 he was
seen again, but this time (Mr. Browning has not incor-
porated this little fact) fierce of mien and dressed like a
huntsman, yet still blowing upon the magic pipe. Now it
was not the rats that followed, but the children. . . .
The symbolism of the soul by a mouse or rat, what-
ever may have been its origin and original meaning, seems
to be a Slavonic idea. 2 Wherefore in this particular
Hameln myth we can almost trace a history of the meet-
ing of the two peoples German and Slavonic, and the
uniting of their legends into one story. Let us suppose
there had been some great and long-remembered epidemic
which had proved particularly fatal to the children of
Hameln and the country round about. The Slavonic
dwellers there and in early days Slavonians were to be
found as far west as the Weser would speak of these
deaths mythically as the departure of the mice or rats
1 Dutch deh, deken, is a ' cloak ' as well as a ' deck ; ' dekken, ' to cover.'
2 Kalston, Songs of the Russian People. Much has been said, and by many
writers, of the connection between this story and the name of Apollo
Smintheus (see Cox, Aryan Myth. &c.), but nothing which sheds any real
light upon the place of rats or mice in either legend.
THE PIED PIPER. 497
(i.e. the souls), and perhaps, keeping the tradition which
we know to be universally Aryan l of a water-crossing,
might tell of the souls having gone to the river ; further,
they might deem that the souls had been led thither
by a piping wind god, for he is the property of Slavs
and Germans alike. Then the German inhabitants, wish-
ing to express the legend in their mythical form, would
tell how the same Piper had piped away all the children
from, the town ; so a double story grew up about the
same event. The Weser represents the Biver of Death,
and might have served for the children as well as for the
rats ; to make the legend fuller, another image of death
was chosen for the former, the mound or tomb. That
same mountain within which Charlemagne and Frederick
Redbeard sit, waiting for the Last Day, opened to let the
children pass, 2
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain- side shut fast ;
not to unclose again, we may believe, till the trumpets
shall sound at the Day of Doom. Gne more story one of
universal extension which bears a special relation to the
old idea of Odhinn is the story of the Wandering Jew.
This wretched man, as the legend goes, had mocked at Jesus
on His way to the Cross, and his doom was never to die
and never to rest, but to wander from land to land until
the Day of Judgment. His fate and the fate of Hackel-
berg and of Yan der Dekken are therefore essentially the
same. In this case, and in that of Hackelberg or the
Flying Dutchman, nay, in the case of nearly all the heroes
of folk tales, the idea of sin and punishment is either
invented later than the original legend or introduced by a
side-wind of reflection into a pure nature myth. In every
instance cited the criminal is really none other than the
wind, who must perforce be the wanderer, who must be
1 See Chap. VI. 2 Ibid.
K K
498 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
the Streitmann or blusterous battle-goer, who must sit
for ever in the mark and whistle ' Hoho ! hoto ! '
The Wandering Jew, says the legend, may rest for one
night in the year, and that is the night of Shrove
Tuesday, or of Plough Monday, the day before. Tradition
varies on this point. Then, if anyone will leave a harrow
in the field, he will sit upon it and (this is not said in
every version) bring the man good luck. Others say that
he sits upon the plough. 1 This part of the myth makes
some confusion between the wind god and the earth
goddess ; for it is Frigg or Nerthus who is connected with
the plough and whose rites (dragging her from place to
place upon a car) are still preserved on Shrove Tuesday
or on our Plough Monday. 2
The stories which I have here cited are such as are
preserved in the present day ; they are doubtless but in-
considerable fragments out of the great mass of Middle
Age legendary lore. Yet, such as they are, they will
serve, like chippings from a rock, to help us to guess at the
formations of thought which we cannot actually see. The
story of Hackelberg is by far the most important. It is,
in the first place, purely Teutonic ; it is spread wherever a
German race has dwelt, 3 and it approaches most nearly
to the representation of Odhinn in the genuinely heathen
mythology. We have seen the Wild Huntsman riding
through the air, accompanied by Ursula, just as Odhinn
rode to battle accompanied by IVeyja or by his Valkyriur.
Yet there is a difference between the two characters a
vast one. Hackelberg is. no god, but more than half a
fiend. There are some stories of benefits wrought by the
Wild Huntsman, but in most tales he and his dogs work
only ill. Wuotan was still remembered when this story
grew current, remembered by all the German- speaking
1 Sometimes the En-ige Jude rests under two oaks grown across, i.e. the
oaks of Wuotan Christianised. Xuhn, ii. No. 89.
2 Chap. VII. 2.
3 Not always under the same name ; but that fact makes the. wide 'ex-
tension of the story more significant.
CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE. 499
races, but lie was remembered with fear and abhorrence.
This change will prepare us for the completer change
which we shall have to note anon when Odhinn became the
Prince of Darkness, and his swan maidens, the Valkyriur,
were transformed into witches.
From the two standpoints of the knightly epic and
the popular tale, we may form our estimate of the imagi-
native world of mediaeval Europe. If we choose to raise
our eyes and study the actual world, we shall see how
well it fitted into the ideal creation which clothed it round.
From the time of Charlemagne onwards, during all those
ages in which the Karling epic and the mediaeval popular
tale were growing to their maturity, society had been
visibly settling down into a single fixed condition ; it was
stiffening into that unchangeable though beautiful shape
of which the words Feudalism and Catholicism convey
some faint picture, and which is shown in a sort of allegory
by the architecture of the Gothic cathedral.
No sooner had the conquests of the Teuton races been
secured and their external enemies been put to silence,
than the people began again to turn their arms against
one another. Once each lesser leader had been like the
subordinate officer of an army, in strict dependence upon
the chief of the whole ; but no sooner did they begin to
establish themselves permanently in the new lands than
they set up claims of independence, and erected their own
tribes or followings into miniature principalities. Then
arose the same rivalry and the same slumbering or active
war between barony and barony which had in old Teutonic
days existed between village and village. We see this
state of feeling plainly reflected in the ' Chansons de
Geste; ' for even in the earliest among them, the ( Chanson
de Roland,' Ganelon and Roland make no scruple of defy-
ing one another while in the presence of Charles, in whose
army they are both officers. Ganelon's great act of
treachery, whereby the whole of Charles's rear-guard,
X K 2
500 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
with Eoland at the head, perished in the pass of Ron-
cesvalles, was chiefly brought about by his desire tc
revenge himself for the insult which he had received from
Roland. The incident shows us how much stronger might
be the influence of a private feud than of public duty.
In other ' Chansons' the same feelings are expressed much
more openly. In very many of them we see a powerful
baron bidding defiance to Charles and to all his army ;
as, for example, did Girard de Viane, one of the great
heroes of these lays. One poem, ' Garin le Loherin,' is
entirely devoted to the description of feudal wars, and
contains nothing else but the history of a long vendetta
feud between two houses.
The growth of such a feeling must have made men
look to the security of their homes. Wherefore the result
was that in the age of Charlemagne and in the ages which
succeeded him we see the gradual rise of more and more
castles and the steady abandonment of the open villas in
which the chief notables had before lived. The Teutons,
when they came into new lands, took away the villas from
their possessors and adopted them for their own homes.
As these Tell into decay, in their place strongholds began
t"o rise on every side. The villas had stood in open sunny
plains by river banks ; but the castles perched themselves
on barren rocks or in steep mountain passes, and, like the
spirit of medieval Christianity itself, they became at once
dark and aspiring.
The convents followed the example of the castles.
They too had once stood unenclosed, unguarded, in the
plain and by the river. A type of that earlier convent
was the one built by St. Eligius l (Eloi) near Liege, of
which St. Ouen, the biographer of Eligius, gives us a
delightful picture. It was merely a country villa con-
verted by the saint to his pious purpose. It stood in the
midst of beautiful woods and bounded on one side by a
1 A contemporary of the Merovingian king Dagobert I.
CASTLES AND CONVENTS. 501
stream. The convent grounds were enclosed by no wall,
only by a bank of earth surmounted by a hedge. An
orchard immediately surrounded the monastery. ( And in
the midst of this delightful retreat,' exclaims St. Ouen,
' the saddest mind is invigorated and enjoys its share of
the blessings of a terrestrial paradise.' *
In the Carlovingian age the religious houses gradually
changed their appearance and their sites. They, like the
castles, sought to place themselves upon elevated spots,
6 to be nearer heaven/ and they too became gloomy and
armed. This change involved a change in the internal
life of the convents. Constant work in the fields and in
the open air had been one of the rules of St. Benedict. This
was first set aside by the great founder of Western monas-
tic institutions, St. Columba. It fell more and more
into disuse. Instead of such healthy exercise the monks
gave themselves up to sedentary pursuits ; and when not
engaged in religious exercises they were copying and illu-
minating MSS., writing down the ' Lives of the Saints,' or
what not. It is easy to guess what effect the change of
occupation had upon the thoughts of the cenobites and
upon the development of the monastic system of theology.
. The church architecture was affected by this new
taste for building. Violet-le-Duc says that the seeds of
that architecture which afterwards grew into the Gothic
were implanted in the days of Charlemagne, 2 although men
were yet many centuries ahead of the perfecting of that
wondrous growth. While the church remained still in
the basilica form, the first change was introduced at this
time by the adding of the apse, the roof of which apse
was generally a.rched. In this way men first passed from
the flat roof to the round one. A more important novelty
still was the building of church towers, which likewise
began in the days of Charlemagne. The towers were not
attached to the churches, but stood beside them, as we still
1 Vita S. Miff. c. xvi.
2 Diet, de VArcli., art. ' Architecture.'
502 OUTLINES OF PEIJVIITIVE BELIEF.
commonly see them standing beside the churches of North
Italy ; and from these heights the bells now sent out their
new music over the plain. 1 To us they are the voices from
a bygone world.
The symbolism of Christianity its white robes of
baptism, its curtains, its bell tones, its lighted candles
and incense must have told more upon the imaginative
spirit of heathenism than any mere preaching could have
done. Take the picture which Bseda draws for us of the
first landing of St. Augustine on the shores of Kent of the
procession which the Apostle and his brother missionaries
formed with their crosses and tapers ; of their white robes,
their chaunting. 2 More wondrous even than the church
bells was the church organ. Organs were said to have
been first introduced in the West by Charles, and to have
been brought to him by an embassy from the Byzantine
Emperor ; and tradition tells us of a woman who, in the
reign of Charlemagne's successor, Louis, entered the
cathedral at Metz, and there suddenly heard an organ for
the first time. She was so overcome with emotion at the
sound that she fell down and died there. Is the event an
impossibility ? I scarcely think so.
From this time forth mediaeval life and society began
to take their permanent shapes. And mediaeval life and
society rested, as we know, upon two pillars,* each mighty
but not of equal strength. The weaker of the two pillars
was feudalism, the stronger and the more durable was
Catholicism. Now, as regards feudalism ; modern research
and our more accurate knowledge concerning the growth
of human institutions has tended greatly to modify the
views which were once held concerning it. Feudalism was
once thought to have been an entirely new birth in the
Middle Ages, a pure invention of those times ; but this
theory is not now generally maintained. On the contrary,
1 New mii-si c. Bells are not mentioned in any legends of the Ada Sane-
toruin, which are of an earlier date than the seventh century.
2 See also Grimm, D. M. i. 4 ; Greg. Tur. ii. 31.
CATHOLICISM AND FEUDALISM. 503
it is recognised that feudalism is a descendant in a re-
mote degree indeed, and with many features unknown to
the parent of the German society of prehistoric times,
of that ancient constitution of the village community con-
cerning which in a former chapter something was said.
Feudalism is a return to as near an imitation of the
village community as the changed conditions of surround-
ing things would allow. During their era of invasion the
German races had exchanged their primaeval social or-
ganisation for the constitution of an army. In place
of their old tribal headmen or petty kings they had
ranged themselves under elected military leaders, duces,
heretogas. 1 This camp life lasted very many years, and
during their revolution some of the invading nations forgot
altogether their past, and when they came to settle down
adopted or imitated the civilisation of the Gauls and
Romans. This was the case with the Goths of Italy, of
Southern Gaul, and of Spain ; in a less degree it was the
case with the Lombards. With the Franks and the other
invaders of the North and these were the races who gave
the tone to the civilisation on this side of the Alps and
Pyrenees it was not so. When they settled down they
fell back upon a social state which does recall the Teutonic
society of prehistoric days. They did this not in conscious
1 The rex (i.e. riks or kimunc) is distinguished from the dux (i.e.
heretoga, herzog) by Tacitus (Germ. c. 7). We must for historic Germany
(i.e. the Teuton race after the era, of invasion began) distinguish two kinds
of society (1) the peaceful, which implies the village community and the
king, (2) the warlike, which implies the camp and the herzog. Of course
this is not a fixed rule, and applies only to those places where part of the
nation remained behind as a kind of depot. When a whole nation took to
conquest or migration the king was general also and leader. The two
types of society are reflected in the legends of this time of invasion : the
typical hero, Beowulf or Siegfried, who
' Durch seines Leibes Stiirke ritt in manche Land'
(Nibelungen, 87, Busching),
being the representative of the young blood, is the herzog ; Higelac, Sieg-
mund, Gunther, are the kings. See also some remarks of M. Guizot on the
camp life and comparatively small numbers of the invaders, Cours de
VHistoire de France, i. 279 ; and Michelet, Hist, de France, i. 309.
504 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
imitation or even in recollection of their past, but because
the national character tends always to form around itself
the same social atmosphere. Feudalism was the nearest
compromise they could make with the new sort of civilisa-
tion into which they had been forced. The English on
the one side, and the Christianised Germans beyond the
Rhine upon the other side, accepted in time this compact
and adopted feudalism.
This, then, was in matters of social governance the
compromise effected between ancient German prejudices
and a changed outer world. Not less was mediaeval
Christianity also, and in an especial sense the Christianity
north of the Alps, a compromise in matters of belief and
of thought with bygone times. Mediseval Christianity
likewise had its roots in prehistoric German heathenism.
Some of these roots at least were there ; for, like the
tree Yggdrasill, Catholicism had many different roots in
many different places; some were in heaven, but some
were, we cannot question it, on earth, and some perchance
in hell.
Religion may extend its sway over many regions of
man's thought, It may chiefly affect his political feelings,
or his social morality, or his artistic sense. It may give
new dignity to man, and impart to him added pleasure in
life and in the works of life. These were not the aims of
mediseval Christianity. The essential lesson which it
strove to teach was a profound sense of the supernatural,
of a spiritual world enclosing this sensible world, as our
earth is surrounded by its atmosphere, and of the little
span of our life bounded by two eternities. This sense of
mystery and of spiritual dominion found its nourishment
in the thoughts which through centuries of gloomy forest
life had grown familiar to the Teutonic mind, and which
we know had left a deep impression on Teutonic belief.
And although the creed of heathen Germany was in itself
sensuous and material and concerned only in questioning
the aspects of external nature, yet it had in it the germs
THE GOTHIC CATHEDKAL. 505
of that immaterial perception of the Infinite which, so
characterises mediaeval Catholicism. It gave a training to
the imagination such as was destined afterwards to bear
abundant fruit. Awe and mystery were as the nourishing
rain and dew to the belief of the heathen German. Where-
fore this belief developed afterwards into Catholicism
almost as necessarily as the society of the village commune
grew into the system of feudalism. But in the case of
feudalism and Catholicism alike, although there is a
resemblance to the earlier life and thought of pre-Christian
days, there is also a strange difference. It seems as if in*
either case a living organism had been suddenly petrified
by some gorgon glance. The thing is fixed in its highest
development truly, a growth of wondrous dimensions and
of multiform delicate interlacing?, but it has not the power
of further growth. Though made up of the fairest shapes,
it is of stone.
By gentle stages the Gothic cathedral grew to its
perfect form, and became the best expression of the
thought, the belief, the whole world-philosophy of the
Middle Ages. Gradually the Roman basilica changed into
the Eomanesque church ; slowly the Romanesque church
raised its roof and narrowed its aisles and multiplied
its pillars, until what had once been a house four-square,
visible frpm one end to the other, grew into a very forest
of stony trees, with glades and by-paths and dark recesses
as numerous and as bewildering as in the forest itself.
What had once been a common dwelling-house became
the seat of a mysterious, unseen, and awful Presence.
But we cannot say that this cathedral was altogether a
new creation of mankind, or that it had no relationship
to those forest fastnesses in which through so many ages
the ancestors of all the nations of Northern Europe the
Teutons and the Celts alike ] had paid their vows to the
Wind God. And if the Gothic cathedral do own some
1 See p. 332.
506 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
distant cousinhood to the forest temple of prehistoric
days, then certainly mediseval Christianity cannot refuse
to acknowledge a relationship to ancient Northern hea-
thenism.
It was a belief of the Middle Ages that cunning Satan,
in order to gain sway over men's souls, would sometimes
enter the grass of the field, which in this way, when eaten
by the ox, transferred his devilish nature to the flesh of
that animal ; then when the ox beef was consumed by man
.his being became thereby corrupted and an entry was made
for sin.^ It was a sort of sacrament reversed. We might
suppose some such transfer of spirit to have taken place
when the shrines of German heathendom were made the
sites of temples to the new faith. Boniface and Willibrod
went forth cutting down the sacred trees of Odhinn and
Thorr, and making out of them timber for Christian
churches. They might well have taken warning from the
story of Satan in the grass. For in very truth there was
a spirit lurking in those old shrines who refused to be
exorcised and driven away ; the ancients would have called
him the ^aifjbwv sTri^ptos, the genius loci, the genius of the
place ; what we more prosaically name the association of
ideas. Christianity found nothing so hard to drive away
as these genii of the soil; indeed, she never succeeded in
driving them away utterly, but had to make compromises
with them and to allow some at least (some formal changes
made in outward guise) to retain their homes.
In the German tongues we find that a word which in
one dialect means holy or temple means in another forest.
And this is as much as to say that the forest was ever
holy to the Teutons, and their sacred places were ever
their forest glades. When Catholicism had attained its
full growth, and had by successive changes moulded its
holy place to express in the fullest way its hidden thought,
it once more worshipped in a grove a grove of stone.
In place of the trunks and branching boughs men looked
along endless aisles of pillars and up into a dark fretted
THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL. 507
roof. This expresses in sum the difference between the
old life and the new. The village community of ancient
days had been stiffened into the immutable society of
feudalism, and the old creed with its ancient shrine had
been petrified into Catholicism and its cathedral. The
trees were in a fashion still there. But they no longer
put on fresh forms with the changing seasons. The
branches no longer moved, swayed by the wind. No
glimpses of a higher heaven could be seen above them ;
no stars shone down through their interstices. Yet here
the old associations of solemnity and gloom remained.
Here now dwelt secretum illud the Sacred Presence which
the Teutons had so long worshipped.
Let us enter this temple of Catholicism. In the centre
we see a lighted altar, the rays from which are soon lost
among the clusters of pillars and in the vaulted roof.
Where this light reaches it shines upon beatified saints
or angels, who spread their protecting wings and look
down upon the worshipper. Here we are safe, within the
charmed circle, close to the sacred relics or to the Body
of Christ ; but wherever pillar or groin throws a shadow,
there may be detected, flying from the light and cherish-
ing the darkness, images of the damned in hideous pain,
or it may be devils in wait for the erring soul. And now
those bat-like creatures which had once flitted about the
outer trees of the grove, uttering mournful cries, are within
the sacred aisles, themselves turned to stone. The organ
sends forth its solemn, appealing sounds, the host is lifted
up, the chaunt arises, and the powers of darkness are for
awhile defeated. Yet this organ tone is but the wind of
the forest made melodious ; it is Qdhinn himself trans-
formed and brought into obedience to the new faith. The
organ's music puts to flight the powers of darkness ; but
they are still there. Even if they are driven from the
church they are still without the walls. 1 What if the
1 Throughout the France of the Middle Ages, and in Germany and
England likewise, it was the custom on certain days to make procession
508 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
worshipper, passing alone in the night, forget to cross
himself, to bow before the altar or to dip his hand into
the holy water ?
For all around the Christian, nearer than he could tell,
lay that dreadful world of spirits. Jotunheimar had
drawn its coasts closer than they had been in heathen
times. This was the case even in the days when the poem
of Beowulf was written. Only the heathen might venture
to live far away from human habitations. And it was this
dread of the outer world which kept men fixed to one spot,
and made them bear the burden of that feudal system
which pressed with terrible weight on lord and tenant
alike. The vassal was attached to the soil, and the lord
too was rooted to the rock from which his castle sprang.
* No land without its lord, also no lord without his land
Man belongs to a single place. He is judged according
as men can say he is of high and low place. There he is
localised, immovable, held down under the weight of his
heavy castle and his heavy armour.' *
This is the picture which is held up to us when we try
and look into the Europe of the Middle Ages. The baron
in his castle alone, unneighboured save for purposes of
war. Ail without his own domain was strange, and in
great measure under the governance of spirits. The
distant sounds he heard, like those bells which ( from
Langdale Pike and Witches' Lair ' gave answer to the bells
of Sir Leoline, 2 were the sound of sinful spirits compelled
by the Prince of Darkness. These tales of fear grew from
age to age since the castle first rose upon the rock. The
through the town, carrying the image of Satan portrayed as a dragon. The
procession knocked down everyone who crossed its path, and came at last
to the church door, where the evil one was exercised. The image, we see,
though it cannot enter the church, triumphs everywhere else. In the South
they called the image drac or tarasque ; in the North he was called gar-
gouille, and under this latter name we still see him outside our churches.
1 Michelet, Hist, de France, ii. 392.
2 Chrixtabel.
TRANSFORMATION OF ODHINN. 509
intense gloom which follows in the track of ennui deepened
the natural sombreness of all men's thoughts. The gloom
crept round them like a fog, around the baron and his
men-at-arms in the castle, around the villagers beneath
the castle hill, and thence it infected those men growing
fewer from year to year who lived away in the outlands.
This "was the time when the old popular mythology of
Wuotan and the gods of Walhalla changed its guise,
when, passing through the characters of the Wild Hunts-
man and the Wandering Jew. the god was gradually trans-
formed into the likeness of a fiend. Then grew up that
new system of mythology, or we may say that new worship,
which we call witchcraft.
The splendour of the Gothic cathedral shows us one
side of the belief of the Middle Ages. But there is
another side very different from that. The true anti-
thesis, and yet in a manner the counterpart, to mediseval
Catholicism is the mediseval belief concerning witch-
craft.
The partial transformation, which we noted just now,
of the chief god of ancient heathenism into Hackelberg
must prepare us for his total change into the Prince of
Darkness, the f Prince of the Powers of the Air ; ' for this
last, out of all the Biblical names for Satan, was the one
most commonly used in the Middle Ages, and the one
which suited him best in his Odinic character. The most
striking and' characteristic of all the Odhinn myths was
that which told of the god and the Yalkyriur riding
together to the battle field ; this in its transformed con-
dition became the great Satan myth of the Sabbath. Hence
it is that we find the metropolis of mediseval Satan worship
to have been the last stronghold of Odinism. This lay in
the mountainous land of Saxony, the Harz.
We can in some instances trace the process which has
transformed lovely shield maidens, the companions of a
god, once the ideal of womanhood to the rude chivalry of
the North, into wretched hags, riding upon broomsticks,
510 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF,
upon trusses of hay, or upon sieves, 1 to join the Prince
of Darkness in his midnight orgies.
In the story of Balderus and Hotherus in Saxo
Grammaticus, which tells in a form more nearly resembling
the form of mediaeval legends the history of the death of
Balder, we meet with some wood-women in a transition
state between Yalkyriur and witches. It was the part of
the Valkyria to chaunt runes over her Liebliny, her chosen
warrior, and to bless his arms against hurt ; she, as much
as her later representative, was a professor of magic. But
the Yalkyriur had no need to conceal their powers ; they
were beings of the air and sunlight, not of caves arid
darkness. The wood- women to whom Hotherus goes do
for him just what the Yalkyriur always did for their heroes,
just what, for example, Sigrdrifa (Brynhild) had done for
Agnar; but they are only to be found in darkness; they
have to be sought out in the thickest parts of the forest
or in caves.
Balderus and Hotherus are in the story rivals for the
love of Nanna, and are at war. And Saxo relates how,
when Hotherus was hard pressed by his enemy, it fell out
that one day, when hunting, having lost his way in a fog ;
he came unawares upon a conclave of young maidens, who
saluted him and of whom he enquired their name. ' They
affirmed that it was under their guidance and countenance
that the fortune of a battle was determined, for they were
often present at battles, when no one beheld them, and
brought a wished for victory by their friendly aid.' They
promised help to Hotherus, but good fortune did not
always attend him, and afterwards we find him again in
Denmark, beaten and hard pressed by Balderus. In this
condition he was one day wandering in a vast and trackless
' In a sieve I'll hither sail ' (i.e. corn sieve). Macbeth.
The use of this means of locomotion is common among witches in folk
tales. Moreover tradition says that a witch can be detected by any
person who looks through a corn sieve (Kuhn, ii. No. 77, and Castren,
F. M. p. 68). Is this because the witches are sometimes earth goddesses
transformed ?
TRANSFORMATION OF THE VALKYRIUR. 511
wood, when he found by chance the cave inhabited by his
friends the maidens, whom he knew for those who had
formerly presented him with an invulnerable garment.
They enquired of him the cause of his coming, and 'he
narrated to them the unlucky course which events had
taken, and, complaining of the misfortune -which had
attended his endeavour and of the non-fulfilment of their
promises, he declared that he would give up his designs.
But the nymphs assured him that he had also inflicted
great damage upon his opponent; moreover that the for-
tune of war would be his, if he could obtain possession
of some magic food which was effective in renewing the
strength of Balderus. Hotherus obtained this food, which
was made of the spittle of serpents, and on his way back
met Balderus, whom he wounded so severely that he died
in the next day's battle. 1
I have kept the names which Saxo employs ; he calls
these Valkyriur nymphs. But, recalling first what we
remember of the nature of the shield maidens of Odhinn,
and turning from them to contemplate the mediaeval
witch, do not these nymphs of Saxo seem to be in the
actual course of change from one t"o the other? They
preside over all battles and determine the issue of them ;
but they have their dwellings in caves of the wood, and
their magic food made with the spittle of serpents.
This last reminds us forcibly of the witches' cauldron in
< Macbeth ' or in * Faust.'
We have seen that witchcraft was not only a form of
belief, but likewise, to some extent, a form of worship.
Some suppose the sieve to typify the whirlwind, which is, of course,
a very suitable accompaniment to Odhinn- Satan and to his bar.d, and
which also constitutes a recognised form of punishment in hell (see Inferno,
canto 5).
1 This part of the narrative, the climax, as one would have thought, is
told with a brevity which reminds us of some passages in the idylls of a
great contemporary poet. ' Qui cum pristinum iter rernetiendo calle quo
venerat re'pedaret, obvii sibi Balderi latus hausit eumque seminecem pros-
travit.'- Historia Danica, lib. iii.
512 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
We should be wrong if we imagined that it was the mere
horror of magic which, made up the dread and the detes-
tation with which witchcraft came to be regarded in the
Middle Ages. Magic was an idea so familiar to the
minds of men at that time that it had scarce the power
of alone exciting any very strong feeling. Magic was
practised as much in causes accounted good as in bad
ones. Did the witch cut off the hair from a corpse, and
use that to raise the wind; why then Christianity too
used the hair of a corpse (of a saint *), the paring of his
nails, as talismans against shipwreck. The magic wand
or the dead man's hand could make bolts fly back and
locks open, and point to treasure hidden deep in the
ground. So could the bones of a martyr, the nail or arrow,
or spear, which had pierced him and drunk his blood, his
dress, or even a fragment of any of these relics. We have
in the Kalewala, and more sparsely in the Sagas, wonder-
ful descriptions of the way in which the steel sword or
axe was gifted with its power to hurt. Had Roland
been a Norse hero instead of a champion of Christianity,
we should have had the account of the runes said over his
sword Durendal by some Valkyria maid. As it is we find
it owed its indestructibility to more material, and there-
fore lower, kinds of magic. There was in the guard of
Durendal a tooth of St. Peter, some of the blood of St.
Basil, of the hair of St. Denis, of the weeds of the
Virgin ; 2 and, as a further example of the pure mate-
rialism that appears in the conception of magic at this
time, we find that the power which the relics bestowed
would be as useful to a Saracen if he gained possession of
the sword as they were to Roland.
The Church therefore did not condemn witchcraft on
1 A hair of St. Peter was sent to Norman William by the Pope to aid
him in his invasio'n of England.
2 Chanson de Roland, 1. 2346 sqq. On this account, becaiise Durendal
would be as effective in the hands of a Saracen as in that of a Christian,
Eoland just before his death makes every effort to break the steel, but
cannot. See also what was said in Chap. JI. p. 89.
WITCHCRAFT. 513
account of its material and superstitious character. In
earlier and more enlightened days that had been the
accusation brought against it. ' Our miracles,' Augustine
had said, ' are worked by simple faith and the assurance
which comes of trust in God, not by auguries or sacri-
legious enchantments.' l But this was not the feeling
of a later age. The real distinction between the witch
and the priest was that the one was the practiser of a
black art, the other of a white one ; one was the votary of
Satan, the other of Christ. This was quite well under-
stood on both sides ; the sorcerer introduced into his cult
of Satan 2 a ritual the distinct antithesis of the Catholic
ritual ; a black mass was opposed to the white mass. In
this way witchcraft grew to be distinctly a craft. It be-
came, that is to say, a social body, and had a mystery (of
the religious sort) uniting its members. This cult was,
in all probability, originally a mere survival of heathenism,
and the mystery, like all other mysteries, at first of a
simple kind, developing afterwards into more elaborate
rites.
This mystery is known to us as the Witches' Sabbath.
It would be a mistake to think of the celebration as a
purely imaginary one created by popular superstition, and
existing only in the minds of brain-sick old women who
fancied they had attended it. The Walpurgis-nacht meet-
ing on the Brocken may have been fancy, but, if so, it was
only the imaginary consummation of a hundred, a
thousand, a hundred thousand Sabbaths which were really
celebrated in different parts of Europe. They were not
confined to a few, nor were they everywhere regarded with
the horror which priestly chroniclers feel and would have
1 De Civ. Dei, viii. 9.
2 Some popular tales witness in a curious way to the affection which
the peasantry felt for Satan, i.e. for Satan- Odhinn. They try to save him
by making him turn Christian. Compare, for example, the stories in Kuhn's
collection (No. 220), The Devil's Longing for God, WeUng becomes a
Christian, Weking's Baptism, &c. (294, &c.)
L L
514 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
us feel. In some places they were openly practised and
commonly recognised. In the Basque province, for in-
stance, all went, nobles included. 6 Once none but the
insensate were seen there ; now people of position openly
attend,' exclaims an inquisitor. 1 Priests even went, cele-
brating the white mass in the morning and the black mass
at night. No doubt but that the celebration of the Sabbath
whatever name it might first have received had at
one time a more innocent guise than under the pressure of
persecution it afterwards wore. But there was always in
it a certain protest in favour of the old times, a protest
both against Catholicism and against the twin brother
of Catholicism, the social system of feudalism. It .ex-
pressed a kind of communism ; nobles, burghers, peasants,
shepherds, were mingled in the feast with which the
evening began ; contributions were exacted by force, and
fines were imposed for non-attendance. Such a strange
inverted system of Catholicism would be especially likely
to arise among a people who were in a degree alienated
from their neighbours, the dwellers in some corner of a
country, such as the inhabitants of the Jura, the Bretons,
the men of the Basque Provinces. I imagine this initia-
tory feast to have been the earliest and most essential
part of the Sabbath celebrations ; afterwards followed
other ceremonials, copied from the ritual of the Church
that ritual which in the tenth and eleventh centuries,
from the final disappearance of spoken Latin, had become
unmeaning to all ; and in darker days of persecution the
Sabbath ended in blasphemous defiance of the Head and
Founder of Christianity. 2
In the darkness which hides from our eyes the mediaeval
practice of witchcraft the last remains of the cult of the
1 Lancre, quoted by Michelet, Sorciere.
2 For a detailed description of the rites of the Sabbath see Michelet's
Sorciere, ch. x.
BR
CTNIVE1
THE CEUSADES.
heathen gods disappear. Long before witchcraft had reached
its culminating point 1 a rumour of change made itself heard.
In the midst of the intense stillness of the Middle Ages a
faint movement began, a gentle rustling which betokened
rather a coming than an actual wind. The first apostle of
change was Peter the Hermit, who, in preaching the
deliverance of Jerusalem, preached too the deliverance of
many from the ennui which stifled them, and in pointing
the way to the Holy Land showed men likewise a way to
escape from the monotony of life. Immense must have
been the relief to thousands. A road was opened to them
to the unknown East ; an impulse was imparted to them
strong enough to break through the stifling laws of cus-
tom, and to give play again to the nomadic instincts which
can never be killed in human nature. All the better that
this new expedition was blessed by the Pope and approved
of Holy Church. In thousands and tens of thousands
men joined the standard of Walter the Penniless, careless
many of them about the differences between Saracen and
Christian, but longing only for some relief from the ennui
of their dreary existence.
It was this mere transition from stillness to movement
which awoke the world and heralded the Renaissance.
In the train of this one great motive power followed other
lesser ones, which are more easily distinguishable as the
immediate forerunners of the Eenaissance era. One of
these was the growth of the burgher spirit, incidental
partly to the absence of the seigneurs. The nobles flocked
to the Holy Land ; some few settled and many more died
there. At home there' followed an age of regencies or of
weak younger princes sitting in a brother's seat, such as
was our John. To obtain the means to emigrate the king
and the nobleman alike needed money, and for the first time
since the fall of the Roman Empire the want of a medium
1 This we must take to have been at the beginning of the fourteenth
century. See Lecky, nationalism, p. 47.
L L 2
516 OUTLINES OF PKIMITIVE BELIEF.
of exchange came to be strongly felt. Now money is a kind
of demon of change, inherently and for ever opposed to a
slow, fixed, conservative life, such as was that of feudalism.
Money, like writing, brings far things near and suggests
thoughts of another kind of life from that which at the
moment we are leading. It was easier to raise the subtle
demon than to lay it again. Literature has up to this
time little to tell us of the burgher class, to which money
was the very arms and armour, or was like the familiar
who in the peasant tale puts into the hands of a low-
born swain the means to conquer all the champions of
Christendom. Still less has it to tell us of those elf
forgers underground, the very miners and diggers-up of
the treasure, who were hidden beneath the surface of
knightly and literary society, but who now set them-
selves to their old task of throwing discord into the
world in the shape of coined gold. The hoards of Fafnir,
the Ehine gold of the Nibelungen, were now replaced by
the Hardi d'or. 1
With money the burghers bought their charters and
the cities arose to rival the seigneurs. And presently
another novelty appeared, the very child of the new
currency, of portentous significance to these same feudal
knights I mean the mercenary soldier. With him came
a new sort of military science, a new kind of military
honour and courage, born of a new discipline which is the
instinct of communalism.
Perhaps ib was during this time that the old peasant
legend of the f Eeiiieke Fuchs ' took a form which better
expressed the feelings of the burgher class. The satire
became more pointed and more conspicuous, and Reinhart,
1 Struck by Philip le Hardi, son of St. Louis and father of Philip the
Fair. The issue of this coin may be reckoned the beginning of a gold
currency in Europe north of the Alps. St. Louis did indeed himself mint
gold coins, but probably very few only, as they are of great rarity (Hoff-
mann, Monnaies royales de France, p. 19). The reigns of Philip the Fair
and of our Edward III. are the eras of a large gold currency.
MENDICANT OEDERS. 517
instead of being a representative of the lower people,
became a knight, and as such a living satire upon the
knightly class. At this time too sprang up the form of
literature which was especially created for the burgher
class. That was the fabliau. What the * Chansons de
Geste ' at first, and later on the romances of chivalry or
the love songs of the troubadours, were for the highest
class, what the 'original forms of the Beast Epic and the
Legend of the Saints were for the lowest, such were the
fabliaux for the burgher middle class.
It was in deference to the same spirit of change, the
love of movement which was passing over Europe, that
Francis and Dominic instituted in the thirteenth century
their orders of begging friars. The rule of this new class
of monk was the exact converse of the rule of Benedict of
Nursia, the organiser and almost the founder of western
monasticism, and of the great revivers of that monasticism,
Columba and Bernard. In the ordinances of all these
strictest measures were taken to prevent the monk from
wandering from his home. He was absolutely forbidden
to partake of food outside the walls of the monastery ;
and if a brother were obliged to be absent from it for a
whole day he was enjoined to fast. The Dominicans and
Franciscans, on the contrary, were to have no fixed home
and were never to rest for long in one place. 1 One cannot
but see that the rise of the begging friars was a direct
outcome of the spirit of the age, and unconsciously one
of the death blows to that very Catholicism which it
sought to revive. This is perhaps why these orders
degenerated sooner than did any other. What they had
become in the course of a century and a half from the
time of their institution we may judge from the pages of
Chaucer.
It is not our business here to trace the decline of the
1 This at least was the original institution. It was not long observed.
518 OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF.
mediaeval spirit. The period at -which we have now
arrived is important to the subject in hand for this reason
only, that Medievalism did at this hour of death put forth
her greatest fruits. It was at this time that is to say,
during the thirteenth century that the Gothic architecture
attained the perfection of its form. And it was the end
of this century or the early years of the succeeding one
which gave birth to the second great product of the
Middle Ages, the ' Divine Comedy ' of Dante. Of the first
of these and of its gradual development something has
been said. Unlike the Gothic architecture, the poem of
Dante was a sudden growth. Nothing foretells it in the
literature of the preceding age. That from which Dante
drew his inspiration was the legend of the cloister, and
the thoughts concerning the other world with which the
men of the cloister were chiefly concerned. These notions
and the heathen elements in them we have partly traced
in a former chapter. They were couched in prose, and for
the greater part were prose of the dreariest character ; but
their dull literalness helped Dante to weave his splendid
tissue of imaginative creation. Just as in its grand and
harmonious metre the ' Comedy' is allied not to the rude
alliterative Northern lay, nor to the uncertain cadence of
the ballad, nor the faint assonance of the ' Chanson de
Geste,' but to the measured music of the cathedral choir
and the rhyming Latin hymn, so in matter the vision has
been born of the musings and dreams of the cloister, not
of the experience of the outer world. To the men who
lived in such reveries the history of Europe remained un-
changed. The world had passed from the piety of the
Karling epic to the license of the troubadours, and from
the simplicity of the saint legends to the coarseness of
the fabliaux or the pungent satire of the ' Reinaert de
Vos.' But they remarked it not. The hymns and the
music which had been invented by Pope Gregory I. were
still suitable to the worship of the thirteenth century,
DANTE. 519
and they and the thoughts which they uttered were still
suitable to Dante. The 'Divine Comedy' is little else
than an expanded Dies irw expanded truly and purified,
and with a Dies beatitudinis added. It is becanse he is
imbued with the beliefs of an era that had passed that
Dante is so perfect a mirror of the highest thought of the
Middle Ages.
In our ideal picture of the poet we. are wont to fancy
him marching ahead of his age, anticipating by his divine
prophetic insight thoughts which are but beginning to
stir faintly the rest of mankind, and discovering new
truths which the slow course of enquiry will reveal to
future generations. Is this theory justified by the history
of genius ? What shall we say of Shakespeare ? Is there
more of feudalism and of old aristocratic chivalry in him
than of modern love of freedom and free opinion ? Is it
not true what Carlyle says of Shakespeare, that in him
Catholicism was still alive, albeit it had been declared by
Act of Parliament to be defunct ? What, again, shall we
say of Carlyle himself, to whom the modern theory of
evolution is only another among many instances of the
whimsical folly of mankind? In the same way to Dante
the new outlook westward which was beginning to dawn
upon mariners was impious merely ; and the new outlook
which was dawning upon men's spirits was not less impious
and strange. When he wrote, for Italy at least, feudalism
was already a past thing, and everywhere Catholicism was
dying or in its death throes. But in statecraft Dante had
always before his imagination that vision of the Holy
Eoman Empire, the ultimate source of all earthly power,
which was of the very essence of feudalism. And he
alone among his contemporaries looked into the other
world with the eyes and in the spirit of Catholicism.
Thus outwardly his life was a failure. All things were
taking a bent different from the direction Dante would
have given them. But coming thus, as one born out of
520 OUTLINES OF PEIMITIVE BELIEF.
time, to him it fell to accomplish a task which to no one
else in the world at that* time would have been possible.
Many were the heralds of morning celebrating the rise of
new beliefs and of new principles of life. To Dante it was
given only to sit and lament over a darkening world, to
assist at the obsequies of a dead creed, and for its en-
shrine ment to prepare a costly and splendid tomb.
INDEX.
ABS
A BSTRACT ideas, origin of, in ideas
JLX of sensation, 11-13 ; process of
development from ideas of sensa-
tion, 13-16
Abstract terms, 11-13
Achajmenidaa, descent of, from a tree,
63
Achilles and Apollo, points of likeness
between, 192
Adam of Bremen, his description of a
holy grove at Upsala, 331
Aditi, 139, 142, 143
Adityas, 139, 142, 143 ; name bestowed
especially upon Mitra and Varurca,
139
Admetus, 187 ; true character of, 190
JEaea, Odysseus' coming to, 311 ;
meaning of the word, 312
JEgis, original nature of, 199 ; belongs
of right to Zeus and to Athene, 202
JEolus, 308 ; his island a kind of
paradise, 308
Agalmata, rude, worship of, among
the Greeks, 80
Agni, birth of, from the wood, 98
100 ; he devours his parents, 98
birth of, in the clouds, 100, 101
especially the friend of man, 101
the conductor of the soul to Para-
dise, 102, 288; incarnate after a
fashion, 103 ; the fosterer of strong
emotion, 103 ; hymn to, 103 ; his
relations with Indra, 130 ; in the
wood, 134 ; in the heaven, 134 ; he
with Indra represents the most re-
ligious side of the Vedic creed, 134 ;
as a hero, 135 ; associated with
Varuwa, 144
APO
Ahi, his contests with Indra, 129, 151
Alcinoiis, 321 ; description of his
palace, 321 ; and of his garden, 322
Alvls and Thorr, 357
Amenti, the region of, passed through
"by the soul, 272
Amphictyony, principle of the, and
its relation to fetich worship, 70
Angrbo-Sa, the wife of Loki, 388 ; her
meeting with O'Sinn, 397
Animal worship, obscurity which at
present surrounds, 71 ; its relation
to ancestor worship, 71
Animals, winged, 61
Antichrist will tight with Elias at the
end of the world, according to the
poem Muspilli, 424
Anticleia, her meeting with Odysseus
in Hades, 316
Apap, region of, passed through by
the soul, 272; meaning of the
name, 272 note
Aphrodite 1 of the race of water-born
goddesses, 94, 194 ; became subject
to Asiatic influence, and hence
changed intoKupris, 195 ; sometimes
represented armed, like Athene, 195
Apollo, associated with Zeus and
Athene in invocation, 155, 157
{see also Zeus, Apollo, and Athene) ;
representations of, in art, 161 ; his
contest with Marsyas, 96, 174; au-
thors of his worship as a Hellenic be-
lief were the Dorians, 181 ; his birth,
184 ; Homeric hymn to, 184 sqq. ;
his majesty, 185 ; his combat with
the Python, 185 ; his serving Lao-
medon and Admetus, 187 ; meaning
522
INDEX.
APS
of this last myth, 190 ; the wander-
ing god, 187 ; takes the form of a
dolphin and leads the Dorians
from Crete to Crissa, 187 ; his rela-
tions with Heracles, 188 ; his supe-
riority to -Heracles, 189 ; myth of
his death, 190 ; grandeur of his
character in the Iliad, 191 ; points of
likeness between him and Achilles,
192 ; possible rivalry at one time
between him and Zeus, 193 ; his
character generally in Homer, 194 ;
he and Athene as the mediators
between God and man, 210
Apsaras, water nymphs, 93, 136
Ares, born of a tree, 63 ; the Pelasgian
sun god, 179 ; worshipped especially
in Northern Greece, 179
Argonauts, expedition of, 296 note
Arnold, Mr. Matthew, his definition
of religion, 5, 25-26
Artemis, of the race of water-born god-
desses, 194, 196 ; essentially identi-
cal in character with Athene, 196 ;
became a moon goddess, 198
Arthur, King, his voyage to Avalon,
450 ; his legend only survives as a
remnant, 478 sqq.
Aryaman, one of the three Adityas,
139 ; but little else than a ' third '
to Varurca and Mitra, 139 and note ;
with Varuwa and Mitra worshipped
morning, noon, and evening, 141 ;
mentioned in hymns, 142, 154
Aryas, the first known home of the,
105, 273 ; their early social insti-
tutions, 108, 109 ; diversities of
creed among, 110 ; their migrations,
^ 113
Asbru, the bridge of the gods, 292 ;
also bridge of souls, 292 ; the Urdar
fount at one end of, 293 ; along it
the gods ride to this fount, 347.
See also Bifrost
Asgard, the Gods' "Ward, midmost in
the earth, 277, 347
Ask and Embla (Ash and Elm), first
parents of the human race, 64
Astarte came to be confounded with
Aphrodite, 195 ; originally, perhaps,
an earth goddess, 198 ; became a
moon goddess, 198
Asvin, the, a degraded form of the
BAL
deities Mitra and Varuna, 145 ;
brothers of Ushas, the Dawn, whom
they carry in their chariot, 145;
meaning of the name, 145 note
Ataulf, 475
Athene, of the race of water-born
goddesses, 94, 194 ; associated with
Zeus and Apollo in invocation, 155,
157 (see also Zeus, Apollo, and
Athene) ; representation of, in art,
161 ; her virgin nature, 196 ; as
Pallas, Parthenos essentially iden-
tical in character with Artemis,
196 ; from being the mist became
the cloud, and at last the air, 199 ;
her two births, 199 ; Homeric hymn
to, 199 ; nature myth which shines
through, 200 ; as Polias, 201 ; like-
ness to Zeus, 201 ; has the same
power over atmospheric phenomena,
202 ; her epithets of Prornachos,
203 ; Polybulos, 203 ; Polymetis,
203 ; Tritogeneia, 194, 203 ; Pontia,
203 ; .Phalassia, 203 ; Euploea, 203 ;
Gorgopis, 205 ; Agelia, 208 ; her aid
to Perseus, 204 : perhaps once iden-
tical with the Gorgon, 205 ; pa-
troness of mariners, 206 ; her cha-
racter in the Odyssey, 209 ; her
rivalry with Poseidon, 209 ; she and
Apollo as the mediators between
God and man, 210
Attila, 472
Aude, 490
Augustine, landing of, on the shores
of Kent described by Baeda, 502
Aurora and Aura allied, as Ushas to
the Asvin, 146
Avalon, the Celtic Earthly Paradise,
450 ; Arthur's voyage thither, 450 ;
Oger's voyage thither, 453
BACTRIA, probable early home of
the Aryas, 106 ; description of,
106 sqq.
Balder, relation of his bale fire to
fire worship, 133 ; his bale fires com-
pared with the Eieusinian mysteries,
227 ; his funeral an image of the
setting sun, 283 ; he himself a sun
god, 370 ; his home, 370 ; death of,
and descent into Helheim, 400 sqq. j
INDEX.
523
BAD
his bale fires came to be confounded
with Midsummer fires, and were
eventually known under the name
of St. John's tires, 410 -*qq. ; his
likeness to Sigurd and Siegfried,
471 sqq. ; Balderus in the history
of Saxo Grammaticus, 510
Baucis and Philemon turned into
trees, 66
Beast Epic of the Middle Ages, the,
481 sqq.
Beauty, the Sleeping, 417
Belief, necessity for a definition of,
5 ; development of, parallel to the
development of abstract ideas, as
displayed in the growth of lan-
guage, 16 sqq. ; defined as the capa-
city for worship, 17 ; the three
early phases of, 29 sqq., 53 ; the
anthropomorphic phase of, 46 ; at
what stage it becomes ethical, 48 ;
passionate or ecstatic expression of,
50 sqq.
Benedict. See St. Benedict
Beowulf, the poem, value of as a
testimony to the early beliefs of the
Teuton racea, 358 ; relationship of
the second part of the poem to the
Volsunga Saga and to the Nibelun-
gen-Lied, 469 sqq.
Beowulf, the hero, his arrival in Den-
mark and reception by Hrothgar,
362 ; his fight with Grendel, 363
sqq. ; and with the mother of Gren-
del, 367
Berchta, or Bertha, 371
Bifrost, a bridge of souls, 293. See
also Asbru
Birds, sacred, 59; gift of prophecy
ascribed to, 60
Bird, Paradise of, 448
' Boots,' a character in popular tales,
464 ; typical of the German people,
465
Brandan. See St. Brandan
BreiSablik, the home of Balder, 370
Bridge of Souls, 287 sqq. ; identified
with the Milky Way, 288 ; with the
rainbow, 292
Britain, or Brittia, the home of souls,
Procopius' account of, 437
Bruin in Reineke Fuchs,' 482 and
note
CHA
Brunhild compelled by .Sigurd to re-
ceive the embraces of her husband,
416
Brynhild, a Valkyria, 343 ; pricked
by Odhinn with a sleep thorn, 343 ;
her first meeting with fc^gurd, 311 ;
Sigurd rides to her through the
Hume, 416 ; her revenge, 470. See
also Sigrdnt'a
Burgher class, rise of, gives rise also
to the fabliaux, 516
Burning of the dead, an Aryan rite,
282 ; effect of the rite upon beliefs
concerning the future state, 284
CADMUS, birth of, from a tree, 63
Calypso, her likeness to Circe in
character and in the part she plays
in the Odyssey, 301 ; a Goddess of
Death, 301 ; Hermes brings com-
mand to her to release Odysseus,
:; 1 9 ; she instructs Odysseus how to
make a raft and speeds him on his
way, 319
'Carnoet, the ferry of,' a Breton
legend, 439
Caspian Sea, formerly of greater ex-
tent than now, 273 ; the younger
tribes of the Aryas (i.e. the Yavanas)
lived upon its shore, 275 ; it became
for them the Sea of Death, 276
Castles, the building of, 500
Cathedral. See Gothic cathedral
Catholicism, mediaeval, remains of
heathenism in, 504 sqq.
' Chansons de Geste,' the contrast be-
tween them and the Nibelungen,
476 ; completely informed by the
spirit of mediaeval Catholicism,
476 ; inspired by the crusades, 486 ;
Germanic and not Celtic in tone,
486 ; character in which they pour-
tray Charlemagne, 486, 487 sqq. ;
and Eoland, 490 ; they formed the
literature of the upper classes, 491
Charlemagne, crowning of, at St.
Peter's, on Christmas Day of the
year 800, 484 ; the mythic, of the
' Chansons de Geste,' 486, 487 ; his
likeness to Odhinn, 487
Charles the Fat, his vision of purga<
tory, 428
524
INDEX.
CHI
Chimaera, personification of the storm,
21
Cimmerian Land, the, was a land of
sunset, 273, 276 ; description of, in
the Odyssey, 276
Circe, her likeness to Calypso in cha-
racter and in the part she plays in
the Odyssey, 301 ; she is a Goddess of
Death, 302 ; etymology of her name,
302 note] her parentage, 311; her
island, 311 ; her reception of the
comrades of Odysseus, 312 ; she
speeds Odysseus on his way to
Hades, 313
Climatic influences, effect of, in de-
termining the nature of a creed,
104
' Comedy, Divine.' See Dante
Community, village. See Village
community
Convents, the building of, 500 ; change
which passed over, in the ninth cen-
tury, 501 ; description of a convent
founded by St. Eloi, 501
Core, a name of Athene, 196 ; of Per-
sephone, 227
Cretan labyrinth compared with the
garden of Mylitta at Babylon, 182
Criemhild, Siegfried's love for, 416
Cyclopes, personifications of the
storm, 21 ; dwellers in the out-
world, 305 ; arrival of Odysseus at
their island, 305 ; Polyphemus com-
pared to Grendel, 307; Odysseus'
escape from Polyphemus, 307
DANTE, his indebtedness to the le-
gend of Owayne, 431 sq. ; his
account of Ulysses' last voyage, 442 ;
his ' Divine Comedy ' is, next to the
Gothic cathedral, the greatest pro-
duction of the Middle Ages, 518 ;
the sources from which he drew his
inspiration, 518 ; his want of sym-
pathy with the new thoughts of his
age, 519
Dawn, first represented by the wind
of dawn, 140 ; the white and the
red, 146. See also Ushas
Day, the mythic, described from the
Veda, 146 sqq.
Death, tho imagery of, Chapters V.
EAR
and VIII. ; images of, especially
frequent in the Norse creed, 385 ;
House of, surrounded by a belt of
flame, 390 sqq.
Death, angel of,' 407, 409
Death wake, 266
Dekken, Van der, 496
Delos, why chosen for the birth-place
of Apollo, 183
Demeter, worship and mysteries of,
Chapter V. ; an earth goddess, 175,
214 sqq. ; difficulty of distinguish-
ing the personalities of her and of
Persephone, 231 note ; processional
chaunt in honour of, 241
Demophoon nursed by Demeter, 225
Didron, his remarks on the relation-
ship of Christ to the Father in the
iconography of the Middle Ages,
192
Dietrich of Bern, 472
Dionysus, an earth god, 214 ; rites of,
introduced into the Eleusinia from
Thrace, 221
Dioscuri, their relationship to the
Asvin, 145, 152 ; often associated
by the Greek with dead ancestors,
152
' Divine Comedy,' the. See Dante
Dodona, the grove of, 93. See also
Zeus
Dorians, the first worshippers of
Apollo, 181 ; their migrations, 181,
183
Dornroschen, 417
Durendal, Roland's sword, 512
Dyaus, the sky, 41 ; replaced by Zeus,
Jupiter, and Zio, 46 ; a pre-Vedic
god, 117 ; has fallen into neglect
in the Vedas and been superseded
by Indra, 119 ; the father of Indra,
119 ; compared with Ouranos and
with Kronos, 119 note
EARTH goddesses of the Greeks,
175 ; of the Teutons, 371 ; images
of , dragged from place to place, 236,
374
Earth gods of the Greeks, 178 ; of the
Teutons, 370 ; and goddesses, rela-
tionship of, 216, 370
Earth worship, antiquity and longe-
INDEX.
525
EAR
vity of, 214, 260; characterises the
peasant class, 214
Eai ,ily Paradise, beliefs concerning,
Chapter IX. ; a survival of heathen
belief, 434 ; difference of opinion
touching its locality, 435 ; by some
placed in Ireland, 441 ; or in an
island to the west of Ireland, 441 ;
by Dante placed on the summit of
the Mountain of Purgatory, 443 ;
effect of the belief in, in sending
men on exploring expeditions, 443
Easter fires, 377 ; superstitions con-
cerning them, 378
Eastre. See Ostara
England, or Britain, imagined to be
the home of souls, 436
Eleusinia. See Mysteries
Eleusis originally meant the place of
the 'coming' of spring, 221, 227;
not the designation of one spot
only, 222
Elpenor, Odysseus' meet ing with, in
Hades, 268, 315
Embla and Ask (Elm and Ash), the
first parents of the human race, 64
Epics. See 'Chansons de Geste,' Nibe-
lungen, Odyssey
Erinys and Erinyes, original nature,
21 ; development of the moral ele-
ment in the conception of them, 28
Etzel, 472
FAFNIR, Sigurd's slaying of, 343,
470
Fenrir, one of the children of Loki,
388 ; his nature, 388 ; interchange
of nature between him and Jor-
mungandr, 388 note ; fights with
Odhinn at Pvagnarok, 422
' Fetich ' and ' fetichism,' diverse
meanings given to the words, 31
sqq. ; the only meaning which can
serve to distinguish a, special phase
of belief, 36 ; the three principal
forms of fetich, 54 ; fetich, pro-
phetic powers of the, 61-62 ; the
carved, 81
Fetich worship (fetichism) distin-
guished from magic, 34 ; its rela-
tion to magic, 78 ; its influence
GAN
upon early art, 82-86; its decay,
86 sqq. ; survivals of fetichism, 87
Feudalism, society began to stiffen
into, after the age of Charlemagne,
499 ; this is shown in the ' Chansons
de Geste,' 499 ; one of two pillars
of mediaeval life, 502 ; but not
an entirely new birth, 502 ; rather
an adaptation to its new conditions
of the ancient society of the vil-
lage community, 503 ; the process
by which it reached its full de-
velopment, 503 sq. ; a petrifaction
of life, 505
Kiulsvith, the porter of hell, 395
Fire worship among the Indo-Euro-
pean races, 132 and note. See also
Agni
Folk tales, the great vitality of, 477 ;
become the most conspicuous \\licu
the higher parts of the creed lnv<;
been annihilated, 477; the piimi-
tive groundwork of mythology,
480
Folk tales of the Middle Ages, 477
sqq., 492 sqq.
Folk tales of Germany, 492 sqq.
Fontaine de Jouvence, origin of the,
282
Francis of Assisi. See St. Francis
Franciscans. See Mendicant orders
Freyja, associated with Frigg and
Freyr, 371 ; corresponds to Per-
sephone and Libera, 371 ; her wan-
derings in search of Odhur, 373 ; at
the funeral of Balder, 402
Freyr, a god of summer and of fruit-
fulness, 370 ; his wooing of Ger$,
222, 372 ; at the funeral of Balder,
402 ; his fight with Surtr at Kag-
narok, 422
Frigg and Freyja, 177 ; they corre-
spond to Demeter and Persephone,
371
'Frogs, the,' picture of the under
world presented in, 248
Fursey. Sec St. Fursey
p AGNRAD, a name of Odhinn, 337 ;
\JT meaning of the word, 337
Ganelon, 499
Ganges, became to the Indians the
526
INDEX.
GAU
representative of the River of
Death, 281
Gau, the earth, 118
General terms, 37
GerS, the wooing of, 222, 372
German heathenism, general uni-
formity of, in whatever country
discovered, 325 ; climatic influences
under which it was matured, 326
Germans, low social condition of,
when they are first known to his-
tory, 327
Geruth, 446 ; the same as Geirrod, 446
note
1 Geste, Chansons de.' See ' Chansons
de Geste '
Ghost, the, could not cross Styx until
funeral rites had been performed,
268 ; examples in the cases of El-
penor and Patroclus, 268
Giant race of Greeks and that of
Northmen, comparison between,
304, 307
Gjuki and Gjukungs, 338, 415
Gjallar-brii, the bridge of souls in the
under world, 402, 445
Gjallar horn, the horn of Heimdal, 347
and note ; blown at Ragnarok, 420 ;
Roland's horn compared to, 491
Godrun marries Sigurd, 415 ; her re-
venge for the murder of Sigurd,
470
Gods, active and passive, rivalry be-
tween, 120 sqq.
Gold currency, reintroduction of, in
the Middle Ages, 516
Gorgon slain by Perseus, 205 ; near
connection with Athene, 205, 209
Gorm the Wise, King of Denmark,
279 ; his journey to farther Biar-
mia, 444 sqq.
Gothic cathedral, the, an allegory of
the life and thought of the Middle
Ages, 499 ; the slow stages by which
it grew to its perfect form, 501,
505 ; is the holy grove turned into
stone, 506 ; description of, 507
Goths of MEesia, their ignorance of
money, 474
Gr&ci, etymology of the name, 168
Grave personified as a devouring ani-
mal OA man, 269 sqq.
Grave-mouth the one gate to the
HAU
under world, whether for going or
returning, 267 ; for this reason
strewn with sharp stones, 267
Graves of the Stone Age, traces of
funeral fest found in, 266
Greek divinities, want of individuality
in representation of, 158 ; what this
denotes, 159
Greek religion, complexity of, 155 ;
decay of nature worship in, 156 ;
necessity of comparing it with the
Vedic and Norse creeds, 156
Grendel, a giant, 307 ; his encounter
with Beowulf, 360 sqq. ; his mother,
366 sqq.
Grimhild gives magic potion to Si-
gurd, 415
Grimvald, the Lombard king, ghost
of, 438
' Grove,' convertible term with
' temple ' in Teutonic languages,
331, 506
Grove, holy, at Upsala, 331
Gubernatis, Prof, de, his distinction
between the mythological and re-
ligious periods of the Vedic creed,
26
Gullinkambi, a mythic cock which
crows at Ragnarok, 420 ; perhaps
the same as Salgofnir (393) and
Vidofnir (396)
Gullinbursti-, Freyr's boar, 402
Gunther, Siegfried's service to, 416
Gunthmund, 445
Gymir, the father of GerS, 372
TTACKELBERG, or Hackelbiirend,
11. the Wild Huntsman, another
form of Odhinn, 293, 494; hunts
along the Milky Way, 293 ; his
legend, 493
Hades, 162 ; at first the unseen place,
265; then personified and after-
wards once more a place, 270 ;
Odysseus' voyage to, 313 ; picture of
Hades' kingdom in the Odyssey, 314
Hades-Pluton, 178
Hardi d'or, the introduction of the,
516 and note
Harke, 371
Haukal, Ibn, his description of Norse
funeral rites, 405 sqq.
INDEX.
527
HEA
Heaven and hell, ancient notions
corresponding to our, 273
Hector's clothes burnt as a substitute
for his body, 286
Heimdal, 317 ; his fight with Loki at
Ragnarok, 422 ; his horn compared
to that of Roland, 491
Hel, the concealed place, 265 ; then
personified and afterwards once
more a place, 270 ; one of the
children of Loki, 388 ; Balder in
her halls, 403
Helgi, the ghost of, 392
Hell, harrowing of, 191
Henotheistn, 44 sq. ; a name intro-
duced by Prof. Max Miiller, 44
note', conspicuous in the Vedic
creed, 115
Hephaestus, a degraded form of the
fire god, 133; compared with V6-
lund, 342
Hera, 175 ; her character different
from that of the other wives of
Zeus, 176 ; suggested etymology of
her name, 176 ; her nature subdued
by that of Athene, 198
Heracles, a Pelasgian sun god, 179 ;
worshipped in the centre and south
of Greece, 179 ; his likeness to
Thorr shows him \o be an Aryan
divinity, 179 note; his relations
with Apollo, 188 ; his death, 189 ;
he left his shade in Hades as a
kind of pledge, 190
Hermes, an earth god in Arcadia,
214; his intervention to release
Odysseus from Circe and from
Calypso, 301, 313, 318 ; meaning of
these incidents, 318 ; a wind god,
319 ; a god of the mark and the
market, 333
Hermo'Sr, his ride to Helheim, 403
Hestia, 132
Holda, 371
Homeric hymn to Apollo, 184 sqq. ;
to Athene, 199; to Demeter, 224
sqq.
Homestead, Teuton gods of the, 369
sqq.
Hotherus and Balderus, story of, as
told by Saxo Grammaticus, 510
Hringhorni, Balder's ship, 401
Hrothgar, King of the Danes, 360
JOT
sqq. ', his home roofed with gold,
475
Hymir, 355
INDRA supplants the older god
Dyaus, 119; why he does this,
120 ; rivalry between him and
Varuwa, 122 ; hymn addressed to
him and Varuwa together, 123 ;
becomes the supreme and universal
ruler, 126 ; his might, 127 ; hymn
to, 127 ; his enemies, 128 ; his re-
lations with Agni, 130; he with
Agni represents the most religious
side of Vedic belief, 134 ; his meet-
ing with the Maruts described in a
hymn, 151
Initiation into the Eleusinia, 240
' Ionian,' widest meaning of the name,
163 ; part played by the lonians in
the civilisation of the Greeks, 164
sqq.
Ireland, why the ' Island of Saints,'
441
Iron Wood, the, 348
Isengrim of the * Keineke Fuchs,' his
cousinship to Reineke, 482 ; com-
pared to Odhinn, 483
JAVAN. See Yavanas, Ionian
Jean, St., feux de. See St. John's
fires
Jew, Wandering, the> 497
Johannisfeuer. See St. John's fires
John's, St., fires. See St. John's fires
Jormungandr, the Midgard worm, a
personification of the earth-girding
sea or river, 73 ; his likeness to
Oceanus, 73 ; his combats with
Thorr, 353, 355; a son of Loki,
388 ; his last fight with Thorr at
Ragnarok, 422
Jotuns (jotnar) compared with
Greek giants and Titans, 304, 307 ;
always at enmity with the ^Esir,
336 ; born of fire and ice, 419 ;
their invasion of Mannheim and
encounter with the ^Esir at
Ragnarok, 419 sqq. See also Gymir,
Hrym, Hymir, Loki, Skrymir,
Thrymr, tJtgarSloki
528
INDEX.
JOT
Jotunheimar, the land of vvinter, 349,
389 ; surrounded by a girdle of fire,
349, 390 ; Thorr's tarings to, 349
sqq,
Jouvence, Fontaine de, origin of, 282
Jupiter, 41, 46, 124. See also Zeus
TTALEWALA, descriptions of magic
J\. in, 512
Keleos, Demeter's coming to the house
of, 225
Jfinvad, the bridge, description of,
from the Zend Avesta, 291
Kronos, his fatherhood to Zeus, 119
and note; he represents in many
ways the creed of the peasantry,
174 and note ; banished by the
warlike Zeus, 174
Kuhn, Adalbert, on Sarama, 140
T AOMED6N served by Apollo, 187
I J Ltito comes to Delos, and there
gives birth to Apollo, 184
Lohengrin, 460
Loki the personification of the f unerarl
fire, 386 ; his double nature, a god
and a giant, 387 , his progeny, 388 ;
he causes the death of Balder, 401 ;
he brings the troop of ghosts from
Niflhel in the ship ' Naglf ar ' to fight
at Ragnarok, 421 ; his combat with
Heimdal, 422 ; in the poem Muspilli
his place is taken by the Old
Fiend, 424
Lotophagi, Odysseus' visit to, 304
Lycseus, an epithet of Zeus, signifi-
cance of, 171 note
Lycaeon, Mount , sometimes confounded
with Zeus, 171 and note, 172
MAYDAY celebrations described,
378 ; May fires ban the witches,
378
Magic, vitality of the belief in, 88
Marsyas' skin, 96 ; Marsyas' contest
with Apollo, meaning of, 174
Mare and Meer, etymological con-
nection with morS) Mord, murder,
276
MIT
Mark, original meaning of, 330 ; the
gods of the, 334 sqq.
Maruts, the clouds, 129; the storm
winds, 149; they gain strength as
the day advances, 149 ; hymn to,
150 ; their meeting with Indra
celebrated in a hymn, 150; rather
heroes than gods, 152; often con-
founded with the dead ancestors, 152
Material character of primitive
thought displayed by primitive
language, 6 sqq.
Medusa, 204. See also Gorgon
Mendicant orders, rise of, 517 ; he-
ralded the decay of Catholicism, 517
Menglod, 395 ; the meaning of her
name shows her to be the same as
Freyja, 395 note
Metaneira, Deraeter's visit to her
house, 225 ; she discovers Demetgr
concealing Demophoon in the fire,
225
Metis, a river goddess, 204
Midgard Sea, the, 72, 348 gq. t 389
Migrations of the Aryas, 113 ; of the
Greeco-Italic race, 163 sqq.
Milky Way, the, identified with the
Bridge of Souls, 288 ; various
names of, 288 ; the Wild Huntsman
hunts along it, 293, 495; legend
concerning, under the name of the
Winter Street, 294
Mimir or Mim, his well of wisdom
visited by Odhinn, 336 ; his nature,
336 note
Minos, the tradition of, points to a
time when Crete was the ruling
state in the Greek world, 181 ;
originally stood for the first man,
afterwards for the first Idng among
the Greeks, 182 note
Minotaur, the, probably a sun god
after an Oriental pattern, 182
Mitra, when alone, was originally the
sun, 138 ; afterwards represented
.the sky by day, 139 ; when joined
to Varuwa the two represent the
meeting of the day and night skies,
i.e. the morning or evening, 139,
140 ; but more generally the morn-
ing, 141 ; hymn to Mitra and Varuwa,
142 ; hymn to Mitra alone, 144 ; M.
and V. represent the white dawn, 146
INDEX.
529
MOB
Morgan le Fay(Morgue la Fee), b\sqq.
Monotheism, 48 sq.
Mountains, prophetic powers of, re-
sided in their caves, 62, 67; the
worship of, 67 ; Zeus worshipped
as, 67, 171 and note
Miiller, K. 0., on Heracles and the
Dorians, 188 ; on Apollo and Ad-
met us, 190
Miiller, Professer Max, his definition
of religion, 5 ; has called in question
the supposition of a primitive
fetich worship, 32 ; on Jmnotheixm,
44 ; on Sarama, 140
Muses, relationship of, to nymphs, 95
Music born of streams, 95-97; church,
its potent inlluence in converting
the hf-athen Germans, 502 %
Muspell's-heiin, description of, 419
Muspell's sons at Ragnarok, 1547, 420
Muspilli,the earth-consuming 1irc,415
Muspilli, a Bavarian poem of that
name describing the Last D 17, 24
Mylitta of Babylon, her garden
likened to the labyrinth at Cnossus,
182; an earth goddess, 195; sen-
suous character of, 195
Myrmidons, origin of, H3
Myrrha turned into a tree, 67
Mysteries, Chapter V.; the earliest
which we gain sight of are of the
nature of religious revivals, 218 ;
seciesy not originally an element in,
219; how it came to be so, 2 1 9 ; uni-
versality of, 220; the Eleusinian,
why not mentioned by Homer and
Hesiod, 222 ; originally dramas
enacting the return of spring, 223 ;
the Eleusinlan selected as types of
all, 224 ; story on which the Eleusinia
were founded, 224 sqq. ; mysteries
earlier than a knowledge of agri-
culture, 229 ; change in them which
the knowledge of agriculture intro-
duced, 229; place of the orgy in,
233 ; comparison between Eleusinia
and a Catholic mystery, 235 ; the
proceedings in the Eleusinia, 237
sqq. ; how the thought of death
came to mingle with, 243 ; Oriental
influences upon, 244 ; changes pro-
duced in, by the introduction of
ideas relating to death and the
ODH
future state, 245 sqq. ; effect of
Neoplatonism upon, 251 ; Rome
had originally only mysteries of the
primitive kind, 254 ; she adopted
those of Isis and Serapis- Osiris, 254 ;
sadness which characterised the
Egyptian, 257 ; final stage of, 259 ;
longevity of, 260
Mythologic and religious periods of
the Vedic creed, 26
NANNA, the wife of Balder, dies
with grief to see him on hia
pyre, 401 ; in Saxo's story of Bal-
derus and Hotherus, 510
Nature worship, 39 sqq. (nee also
Preface); its relation to henotheism,
44 ; and to polytheism, 45 ; it
forms the next clearly-marked stage
of belief after fetichism, 91
Nausicaa, Odysseus' meeting with, 321
Neoplatonism, its effect upon the de-
velopment of mysteries, 251
Nerthus, great German earth goddess,
371; probably not the same as
Hertha, 371 note ; her image dragged
from place to place in a car, 374
Nibelungen compared with the V61-
sunga Saga, 416, 470*^.; the pro-
bable date at which the epic first
arose, 467; earliest elements in the
story, 471
Nirrtis, queen of the under world,
288, 289, 371 note
Nymphs, relationship of, to Muses, 95
OAK, mystical, of Zeus at Dodona,
57,93
Ocean us, parent of all things and the
limit of all things, 68
Odhinn supplanted Dyaus-Tyr, 124,
334 ; the wind, 334 ; but also the
heaven, 335 ; continually keeps
watch against the giant race, 336 ;
purchases wisdom at Mlmir's well,
336 ; his appearance as the gentle
wind, 337 ; as the storm wind, 338 ;
rides forth with the Valkyriur, 339 ;
descends to Helheim, 396 ; his last
fight at Ragnarok, 422 ; his rivalry
M M
530
INDEX.
ODH
with Thorr in a later mythology,
483 ; likeness to Isengrim of the
Reineke Fuchs, 483 ; likeness to
Charlemagne of the ' Chansons de
Geste,' 487 sqq. ; transformed into
Hackelberg, 493; into the Stret-
mann, 495 ; into Van der Dekken,
496 ; into the Pied Piper, 496 ; into
the Wandering Jew, 497; into
Satan, 509
Odhur, the husband of Freyja, left her
to wander in distant lands and never
returned, 373 ; really identical with
Odhinn, 373 note
Odysseus, his voyage to the Loto-
phagi, 304 ; to the island of the
Cyclopes, 304 ; to the island of
jEolus, 308; his attempted return
home, 309 ; voyage to the Laestry-
gones, 310 ; to Circe, 311 ; to Hades,
313 ; to Calypso, 318 ; to the Phsea-
cians, 320 ; his return, 323
Odyssey, the great epic of the Sea of
Death, 296 ; a poem written for
seafarers and merchants, 296 ; and
in praise of Athene, 297 ; mingling
of myth and reality in, 299 ; ele-
ments of the epos, 303
Oger the Dane (Holger Danske), his
last voyage, 452 ; reaches Avalon,
453 ; entertained by Morgue la
F6e, 456 ; returns for awhile to the
world, 457 ; and again to Avalou, 458
Ogygia, 318
Olrun, 342 ; the same as Alruna or
Aurinia, 342 noTe, 345
O"rboa, 372 .
Orgy, the, its place in the Eleusinian
mysteries, 233 ; connected with the
worship of Dionysus, 233
Osiris, introduction of his rites into
Greece and Rome, 254 ; confounded
with Serapis, 254 note ; the story of
Osiris and Isis as told by Plutarch,
256 sqq.
Ostara tires, 133, 377
Other world, Chapter VI.; alterna-
tions of belief and scepticism con-
cerning, 262 ; Greek and Hebrew
belief concerning, 268 ; Egyptian
belief concerning, 271 ; Icelandic
picture of, 277, 389 sqq. See also
Hades, Helheim, Earthly Paradise
PLU
Ouen, St. See St. Ouen
Owayne, his descent into St. Patrick's
purgatory, 429 sqq.
FN, worship of, 173; a sort of
earth god, 214
Papa and Rangi of the Maoris, 175
Paradise. See Earthly Paradise
Paradise of Birds, 448
Paradise Knight, the, 459"
Patriotic instincts fostered by fetich-
ism, 69
Pelasgians, 167 ggq. ; suggested deriva-
tion of the word, 167 note ; their
creed partly supplanted by that of
lonians, 180
Pelasgic Zeus, &c. See Zeus, Hera,
Demeter
Pelasgis a name of Demeter, 231 note
Pelopidae descended from a tree, 63
Perchta, 371. See also Bertha
Persephone and Demeter, the heads
and representatives of chthonian
worship, 21 7 ; story of the rape of
Persephone, 224 ; she was not
originally connected with thoughts
of death, 242 ; possibility of there
being two Persephones, 242 note.
See also Demeter
Perseus and the Gorgon, 205
Pertaric, King of the Lombards, 438
Phseacians, Odysseus' voyage to, 321 ;
meaning of their name, 322 ; ferry-
men of the dead, 323
Philology, the use of, in studying the
history of belief, 3 ; material cha-
racter of primitive thought demon-
strated by, 6 sqq. ; comparative,
its testimony to the existence of
nature worship, 39 sqq. ; its method
in recovering traces of the past
civilisation of the Aryan race, 40
Phrygians allied to the Hellenes, 164
Pied Piper is the wind, i.e. Odhinn as
the psychopomp, 496 ; probable
growth of the myth, 496
Placidia, wedding gifts to, 475
Plutarch, his account of the history
of Osiris and Isis, 256 sq.; his ex-
planation of the myth, 258
Pluton, sometimes the son of Dem-
ter, 217 and note. See also Hades
INDEX.
531
POL
Polias, Athene, 201
Polieus, Zeus, 201
Polyphemus. See Cyclops
Poseidon, antiquity of his worship,
177 ; the meaning of his rivalry
' with Athene, 177, 297
Prince of the Powers of the Air, a
favourite name for Satan in the
Middle Ages, 509
Prishni, the mother of the Maruts,
149
Prithivi, 117 ; united with Dy&us, 117;
fell into neglect, 119
Prometheus, the fire drill, 99 note, 135
Purgatory, its relation to Helheim,
425 ; visions of, 426 sqq. ; St.
Patrick's, 429
Pururavas and Urvasi, 340
Python, close connection between her
and a river, 74 ; slain by Apollo,
185
T)AGNAR()K, real meaning of the
JX name, by false etymology writ-
ten . Ragnarokr, 346 note ; the
fighting in Valholl a preparation
for, 369 ; description of, 419 sqq.
Rangi and Papa of the Maoris, 1 75
' Reineke Fuchs,' a remnant of the
great Beast Epic of Northern
Europe, 481 ; the various forms of
the story, 481 note', a tale belong-
ing to the lower strata of society,
482 ; but rather to Teutons than
Celts, 482 ; some relic of the later
mythology of Odhinn and Thorr
has mingled with it, 483
Reineke the Fox, 481 ; his cousinship
to Isengrim, 482 ; in character first
represented the lower class of
Teutons, especially the Flemings,
483 ; to some extenta representative
of Thorr, 483 ; afterwards became
a knight and a satire on the
knightly class, 516
Religion, numerous and conflicting
definitions of, 4 ; Mr Herbert
Spencer's definition, 4, 22 sqq. ; Mr.
Matthew Arnold's definition, 5, 25 ;
Mr. Max Miiller's definition, 5
Rhea an earth goddess, 176 ; possibly
the same as Hera, 176 ; etymology
of hor name, 176
SAT
Rivers, prophetic powers of, 62 ;
worship of, 68 ; descent from, 69 ;
symbolised by serpents, 72
River of Death, 278 sqq. ; the Ganges
a river of death, 281; the Indian
mythic river of death, called Vi-
jaranadi and Vaitera/d, 281
Roland partakes of the nature of
Thorr and of Siegfried, 490; his
youth contrasted with Charle-
magne's great age, 490 ; his horn
compared to the Gjallarhorn of
Heimdal, 491
Romans, mysteries among the, 263 sqq.
Rudolf, Abbot of St. Tron, his account
of a curious heathen revival in the
twelfth century, 376
Rudra, 150, 154
Russ, a Gothic race dwelling in the
centre of Russia, description of their
funeral rites, 405 sqq.
SABBATH, the witches', 609; a
kind of mystery, 613
Sail, no word for, common to the
various members of the Indo-
European family, 165
Saints, Legends of the, 479 sqq.
St. Benedict of Nursia, his monastic
rule, 501, 517
St. Brandon, Isle of, 441 ; voyage
of, 446
St. Dominic, 617
St. Francis of Assisi, account of a
mystery inaugurated by, 234 ; his
order of mendicant friars, 517
St. Fursey, his vision of Purgatory,
427
St. Jean, feux de. See St. John's
fires
St. John's fires, 133, 377; descrip-
tion of, 411 sqq.
St. Patrick's purgatory, 426, 429 sqq.
Salgof nir, a mythic cock, 393. See also
Gullinkambi
tfarnbara, the mountains of, 129
Sarama, 140
Sarameyas, sons of Sarama", the two
dogs of Yam a, 145 : guardians of
the Bridge of Souls, '288 sq.
Sarawyfi, 21
Satan in the grass, 506 ; and Odhinn,
M 2
532
INDEX.
SAV
609. See also Sabbath and Witch-
craft
Savitar as the evening sun, hymn to,
153
Sceaf, 460
Scheria, Odysseus' voyage to, 320;
meaning of the word, 320 note;
description of, 321
Scyld, 459
Sea of Death represented to the
Aryas first by the Caspian, 276 ;
became separated in thought from
the River of Death, 280; repre-
sented to the Greeks by the Medi-
terranean, 296 ; the Odyssey the
great epic of, 296 ; other legends
relating to it, 436 sqq.
Serapis, worship of, in Rome, 254
sqq. ; confounded with Osiris, 254 n
Serpent. See Jormungandr, Python
Serpent king, the, in Arcadia and in
Germany, 76
Serpent-worship, distinct in many
points from ordinary animal
worship, 71 ; its relationship to the
worship of rivers, 72 sqq.
Serpents represent the autochthones
of a land, 76
Sheep, Island of, visited by St. Bran-
dan, 448
Sheol, the under world of the
Hebrews, 268
Sidney, Sir Philip, his false notion
touching poe ic creation, 20
Siegfried, the deeds which he per-
forms for Gunther, 416; his ad-
ventures and death, 471 ; he
combines in his person the charac-
ters of Thorr and Balder, 471 ; his
likeness to Roland, 490
Sigrdrlfa espoused the cause of Agnar,
343 ; pricked by a sleep thorn, 343 ;
asleep on the Hindarfjoll, 343, 415.
See also Brynhild
Sigrfin and the ghost of Helgi, 392
Sigurd, his adventures, 343, 414, 470;
points of likeness between him and
Freyr, 414; between him and
Balder and between him and
Thorr, 471
Skirnir sent by Freyr to woo GerS,
372 ; his ride through the flame,
389, 394
THO
Skrymir, the giant, Thorr's meeting
with, 350 ; the same as tJtgarSloki,
353. See also UtgarSloki
Sleeping Beauty, 417
Sleipnir, Odhinn's horse, 339
Smoke, the embodiment of the soul,
285
Soul confounded with the breath, 265 ;
with smoke, 285
Souls imprisoned in trees, 67
Spencer, Mr. Herbert, his definition
of religion, 4, 22 sqq.
Stones, worship of, 79
Surtr,419 ; rides overBifrost toVlgrid's
plain, 420 ; his fight with Freyr, 422
Suryas, the sun god, 137 ; chases the
Dawn (Ushas), 146. See also Savitar
Svarga. See Swarga
Svastika. See Swastika
Svegder Fiolnersson, his attempt to
find Asgard, 279
Svipdag and Fiolsvith, 395
Swan maidens, a name of the Val-
kyriur, 340
Swarga, the bright world, 288 .
Swastika, the, or tire drill, 99 and note
Symbolism of Christianity, 502
rpANEMAHUTA,the father of trees,
JL in Maori legend, 58, 175
Teiresias, his meeting with Odvsseus
in Hades, 316
Terms, abstract, 11 sqq. ; general, 37
Themis, an earth goddess, 175, 214
Thokk, a witch, 403; the name has
been changed from dckkr, dark, 404
and note
Thorkill, the companion of Gorm the
Wise in his expedition to Utgarthi-
locus, 444
Thorr (or Donar), his fights with Jor-
mungandr, 186, 355 ; the second of
the three gre'at gods of the mark,
335; his faring into Jotunheim, 349
sqq. ; his contest with Thrymr,
355; and with Alvis, 357; si=;nifi-
cance of his journey to UtgarSloki
explained, 398 ; his last fight with
Jormungandr at Ragnarck, 422 ;
points of likeness between him and
Siegfried, 471, Reineke, 483, and
Roland, 490
INDEX.
533
Three Kings of Cologne, the, 382
Thrymr, 355. See Thorr
Tree, the house, 56 ; the world, 57
Tree of Life, a Middle Age legend of
the, 64
Tree gods, 55 sqq.
Tree worship at the foundation of the
Teutonic creed, 332; and of the
Celtic, 332
Trees, life under, 55 ; prophetic power
of, 62 ; descent from, 63 sqq. ; tribal
or village, 65 ; the patrician and
plebeian at Rome, 65 ; men turned
into, 66 ; souls imprisoned in, 67 ;
carved, 81
Trilogy of the earth divinities, 218 ;
of the Teuton gods of the mark, 334
Twashtar, a name of Agni, 133
' Twelve Days,' the, superstitions con-
nected with, 381
Tyr (or Zio) etymologically the same
as Dyuus, 41; the third of the
three great Teuton gods of the
mark, 334 ; not much more than a
pale -shadow of Odhinn, 335, 422 ;
his fight withGarmat Kagnarok, 422
TTLYSSES' last voyage, Dante's ac-
U count of, 442. See also Odysseus
Ulfilas, 474
Under world, Dionysus' visit to, in
the ' Frogs,' 248 ; the ' unseen
place,' 265; the grave the only
entrance to, for going and return-
ing, 266 ; Greek and Hebrew belief
concerning, 268 ; personified as a
monster, 269, 388. See also other
world
Urdar fount, by the roots of Yggdra-
sill, 57 ; the ^Esir ride thither every
day, 347
Urvasi and Pururavas, story of, 340
Ushas, the Dawn, 142, 145 ; hymn to,
146 ; less worship paid to her than
to most divinities, 147
Utgarftloki, Thorr's journey to, 349 ;
is a personification of the fire
surrounding the other world, 398 ;
explanation of Thorr's visit to, 398
VAITERA^I, a river of death, 281
Valholl, the hall of the heroes
(Einheriar), in Asgard, 369
WIT
Valkyriur ( ' choosers of the slain '),
the, Odhinn's swan maidens, 60,
94 ; the myth of, 339 ; relationship
of this myth to like stories in other
mythologies, 340 ; represented in
the legend of Charlemagne by his
daughters, 489 ; transformation of,
into witches, 509 sqq. See also Bryn-
hild or Siprdrifa and Sigrun
Van der Dekken really Odhinn, 496
Varuwa, his connection with Dytius,
47 ; the sky, 122, 138 ; afterwards
the night sky, 123 note, 138
Varuwa and Indra, rivalry between
122 ; hymn to, 123
Varuwa and Mitra, 138, 154; hymn
to, 142. See also Mitra and Varuwa
Vayu, the Wind, associated with Agni
and Surya, 148 ; hymn to the three,
148
Vedas, religious character of, and
consequent absence of mythology
from, 114
Veddah charmer, a, Tennent's de-
scription of, 50
Vesta, 132
Vijaranadi, a river of death, 281
Village community of the Aryas, 108 ;
of the Teutons, 328 ; connection of
the latter with the feudal system,
503
Vindkald or Svipdag and Fiolsvith, 395
Vish/iu inherits the thunders of
Indra, 125
Volund, the myth of, 342
Vritra, the serpent, the enemy of
Indra, 75, 129, 151
Vulcan, 133. See Hephaestus
WALACHURIUN. See Valkyriur
Walpurgisnacht fire, 133, 378
Walpurgistag and Walpurgisnacht,
377, 380
Wandering Jew, the, 380, 497 ; rests on
Shrove Tuesday upon a harrow or
plough, 380, 498; or beneath two
oaks grown across, 498 note
Wild Huntsman. See Hackelberg
Wise women change themselves into
birds, 60
Witches, transformation of the VaU
kyriur into, 609 sqq.
534
INDEX.
WIT
Witchcraft, the true antithesis, and
yet in a manner the counterpart,
of Catholicism, 509 ; consists not
merely in the practice of magic,
but in a distinct cult of Satan, 511
Wood women met by Hotherus, 510
Wuotan. See Odhinn
TAMA, king of the under world, 288 ;
his two dogs, the Sarameyas, 289
Yavanas, 165. See also lonians
Yggdrasill, the world tree in the Ed-
das, 57, 347; takes fire at Ragnarok,
420
Yggr, a name of Odhinn, 337
F7EUS etymologically allied to Dyaus,
LL Jupiter, Zio, &c., 41 ; a proper
name, 46; Zeus supplants Dyaus,
ZIO
47, 124 ; his sonship to Kronos, 119
and note ; especially associated with
Apollo and Athene in invocations,
165, 157 ; these three have given its
character to Greek religion, 1 57 ;
distinctive type of, in art, 161 ;
Pheidias' statue of, 161 ; by what
idea it was inspired, 161 ; the Pe-
lasgic Zeus a god of storms, 171
sqq. ; Zeus worshipped in groves,
172 ; worshipped as a mountain,
172 ; his combat with the Titans,
173 ; his wives, 175; most of these
are earth goddesses, 175 ; Zeus
Chthonios a distinct individuality,
178; so also Zeus Areios, 179;
possible former rivalry between
Zeus and Apollo, 193 ; came to re-
present the highest Greek ideal of
God, 212 ; Zeus Chthonios, 217
Zio. See Tyr
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