IDEAS OF THE DIVINE WILL. of Baldur. The life or the reign of the Æsir themselves will come to an end, but a new earth rising from this second chaos will resemble that of the golden age in the Hesiodic tradition. Of this Teutonic theogony we may say without the least misgiving that it exhibits no sign of any Christian influence. It would be almost as reasonable to trace such an influence in the Hesiodic poems, where, if we could get over the insurmountable difficulties of chronology, such an attempt might be made with far greater plausibility. Nor can we charge Bunsen with speaking too strongly, when he says that we must be brought to this negative conclusion, unless " we are to set above facts a preconceived opinion, taken up at random on the slightest grounds, or indolently to decline scrutiny of those facts, or profound reflexions on what they indicate."1 191 CHAP. I. Wuotan. The idea which the Aryans of India sought to express under the The name names Brahman and Atman, the Aryans of Europe strove to signify by the name Wuotan. That idea centred in the conception of Will as a power which brought all things into being and preserves them in it, of a will which followed man wherever he could go and from which there was no escape, which was present alike in the heavens above and in the depths beneath, an energy incessantly operating and making itself felt in the multiplication as well as in the sustaining of life. Obviously there was no one thing in the physical world which more vividly answered to such a conception than the wind, as the breath of the great Ether, the moving power which purifies the air. Thus the Hindu Brahman denoted originally the active and propulsive force in creation, and this conception was still more strictly set forth under the name Atman, the breath or spirit which becomes the atmosphere of the Greeks and the athem of the GerAtman is thus the breathing, in other words, the self-existent being, the actual self of the universe; and the meaning thus assigned to the word was so impressed upon the minds of the Aryans of India that no mythology ever grew up round it. In Professor Müller's words "the idea of the Atman or self, like a pure crystal, was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed down to philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it as the medium through which all is seen and in which all is reflected and known." The conception of the Teutonic Wuotan was at first not less exalted. Like Brahman and Atman, it is the moving strength and power of creation, and the word in Grimm's belief carries us to the Latin vad-ere, to go or move, the Bavarian wueteln, mans. BOOK to stir or grow. Thus Grimm remarks that of Wuotan it may be said as Lucan says of Jupiter Est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris, the pure spiritual deity. The word itself is therefore a participle of the old verb watan, whose cognate forms vata, ôd, account for the dialectical variations which converted it into the Saxon Wuodan, Wodan, Woden, Odin, the Frisian Wêda, the Norse Oðinn. But the ideas thus expressed by the name were necessarily lost when the Christian missionaries taught the people to look on Wuotan or Odin as the archfiend ruling over troops of malignant demons; nor is it improbable that the process may have begun at an earlier period. The name is connected closely with the German wuth, in which the notion of energy has been exaggerated into that of impulse uncontrolled by will. Such a limitation of meaning was quite in harmony with the tendency of all the German tribes to identify energy with. vehement strife, and thus Wuotan became essentially the armed deity, the god of war and of battles, the father of victory. As such, he looks down on the earth from his heavenly home through a window, sitting on his throne with Freya by his side, as Hêrê sits by Zeus in Olympos. In the strange story which is to account for the change which converted the Winili into the Lombards, this attribute of Wuotan is connected with the rising of the sun, the great eye of day. As the giver of victory, the greatest of all blessings in Teutonic eyes, he was necessarily the giver of all other good things, like the Hermes of the Greeks with whose name his own is identical in meaning. As such, he is Osci, Oski, the power of Wish or Will, so often exhibited in the mythology of northern Europe, the Wunsch to whom the poets of the thirteenth century assign hands, eyes, knowledge, blood, with all the appetites and passions of humanity. This power of Wuotan is seen in the oska-stein, or wishing stone, 3 The instruments of Wish generally run in triplets, as in the story of King Putraka (pp. 89, 93). In that of Cinderella, they are three nuts, containing each a splendid robe. In the story of The Pink, Wish assumes the Protean power of transformation; in that of Brother Lustig, it is a bag in which the possessor may see anything that he wishes to shut up in it, and by means of which he contrives, like the Master Smith, to find his way into heaven. In the tale of the Poor Man and the Rich Man, the three wishes which bring happiness here and hereafter to the former, bring only "vexation, troubling, I. which the Irish localise in Blarney and which Grimm connects with CHAP. the wishing-rod or staff of Hermes,' in the Oskmeyjar or Wishmaidens or Valkyries who guide to Valhalla all heroes slain in battle, and who are the wish or choice children of Wuotan, and more especially in the Oska-byrr, or Wish-wind, in which we recognise both in name and in the thing the Kuevos oupos of our Iliad. It is this power doubtless which is denoted by the Sanskrit Kama, as the force which first brought the visible Kosmos into being, and by the Eros of the Hesiodic theogony. 8 tan or The single eye of Odin points beyond all doubt to the sun, the The oneone eye which all day long looks down from heaven upon the earth. eyed WuoBut when he was figured as an old man with a broad hood and a Odin. wide-flowing robe, the myth necessarily sprung up that he had lost an eye, a story which answers precisely to the myth of Indra Savitar, while it also throws further light, if any such were needed, on that of the Kyklôpes. But as the sun is his eye, so his mantle is the vapour which like the cloud-gathering Zeus Odin wraps around himself, and thus becomes Hakolberend, the wearer of the veil, or Harbard, the bearded god. In his hand he bears the marvellous spear Gungnir, in which we see the lance of Phoibos or Artemis. The first sentence shows the train of In gloom profound, an ocean without The germ that still lay covered in the Burst forth, one nature from the fervent Then first came love upon it." On this passage Professor H. H. Wilson remarks, "The term 'love' here appears to us to convey a notion too transcendental to have had a place in the conception of the original author. The word is Kama, which scarcely indicates love in the sense in which it may here be understood, although not absolutely indefensible: but Kama means desire, wish, and it expresses here the wish, synonymous with the will, of the sole-existing Being to create."-Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1860, p. 384. Thus in Saxo he is "grandævus altero orbus oculo," and again "Armipotens uno semper contentus ocello." The reason assigned by the myth is that he was obliged to leave one eye in pledge when he wished to drink at the well of Mimir. II. BOOK By his side are the two wolves Gari and Freki, with whom he hunts down his victims, wolves like the Myrmidons whom Achilleus lets loose upon the Trojans, wolves like those from which Phoibos was supposed to derive his name Lykeios. On his shoulders sit the two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who whisper into his ears all that they see or hear, as the serpents by their mysterious whisperings impart more than human wisdom to the infant Iamos.1 They are the ravens who bring to Apollôn the tidings of the faithlessness of Korônis, ast in the shape of a raven Aristeas tells the Metapontines that he followed Phoibos when he came to their country. 2 Odin the raingiver, Odin the Tyr and As the bearded god, Odin becomes the giver of the rain, the Zeus Ombrios of the Greeks, the Jupiter Pluvius or flowing Jupiter of the Latins, as well as their Neptunus or cloud-deity. As such, he is Hnikar, the Anglo-Saxon Nicor or water-god, whose offspring are the Nixies or water-sprites, as the Hellenic Naiads are the children of Zeus. In this character he is the Biblindi, or drinker (the Latin bib-ere) of the Eddas. Like Phoibos again, or Asklepios, he is the healer, who alone can restore strength and vigour to the maimed horses of Baldur; and as the Muses are the daughters of Zeus, so is Saga the daughter of Wuotan, the source of all poetry, the inspirer of all bards. In his hunts he rides the eight-footed horse Sleipnir, the white steed which bears him also through the thick of battle, like the rudderless and oarless ships which carry the Phaiakians across the blue seas of heaven. Wuotan, the Allfather and the Psychompompos, who takes all souls to himself when their earthly journey is done, has become for the nations of northern Europe a mere name; but the mark of his name he has impressed on many places. If our Wednesdays remind us of him, he has also left his relics in Onslew," in the island Odinse, in Odinfors, Odenskälla and Wednesbury. The close connexion of the name Tyr with the several forms developed from the root dyu, to shine, would of itself lead us to expect that the word would remain practically a mere appellative for gods whose names might again betray a relation to the same root. 'Grimm, D. M. 134, traces the names to hugr, thought, and munr, mind, as in Minerva, &c. Herod. iv. 15. So Poseidon becomes St. Nicholas. All these names come from the same root with the Sanskrit sna, the Greek vxw, the Latin nare, to float or swim. With them we must link the common term "Old Nick," as a name for the devil. • Professor Max Müller seems inclined to trace Christian influence in the description of Odin Allfadir as given, for instance, in the dialogue called Gylfi's Mocking, 5 Othanslef, Othini reliquiæ. Grimm, D. M. 144, adds many other instances. ODIN AND THOR. 1. 195 Accordingly we meet with Sigtyr, the victorious god, as a name for CHAP. Wuotan, and Reidartyr or Reidityr, the riding or driving Tyr, as a name for Thor. Nor can it be said that any real mythology has gathered round this word, for the Stauros which is specially connected with his name belongs rather to the region of symbolism than of mythology, although the conjunction of this emblem with the circle (the kestos of Aphroditê and the necklace of Harmonia and Eriphylê) is in itself a subject of some interest. Hence we should further be led to expect that the special emblem under which Tyr would be worshipped would be the sword and to this fact Grimm traces the names, not only of the Saxons, but of the Cherusci as pointing to the old Cheru, Heru -a sword. : SECTION VII.-THUNDER, DONAR, THOR. Donar. Englishmen may not unnaturally be tempted to think that our The name word Thunder is the older and more genuine form of the name given to the god who wields the lightnings, and that this name was chosen to express the loud crash which echoes across the heaven. Yet the word in its first meaning has no reference to noise and din. The root denotes simply extension as applied whether to sound or to any other objects, and from it we have the Greek and Latin words Teivw and tendo, to stretch, Tóvos, tone, ie. the stretching and vibration of chords, tonitru, thunder, as well as tener and tenuis, the Sanskrit tanu, answering to our tender and thin. Hence the dental letter which has led to the popular misconception of the word is found to be no essential part of it; and the same process which presents the English tender and the French tendre as an equivalent for the Latin tener, has with us substituted thunder for the Latin tonitru.1 Thus the several forms Donar, Thunor, and perhaps Thor are really earlier than the shape which the word has assumed in our English dialect. Allfather. As the lord of the lightning, the thunder, and the rain, Donar is Thor the as closely allied, and, indeed, as easily identified with Wuotan, as Vishnu with Indra, or Indra with Agni. But although most of their characteristics are as interchangeable as those of the Vedic gods. generally, each has some features peculiar to himself. Thus, although Thor is sometimes said to move in a chariot like other deities, yet he is never represented as riding like Odin. 1 Professor Müller, having traced the I connexion between these words, adds, "The relations betwixt tender, thin, and thunder would be hard to be established, He is essentially, like if the original conception of thunder had |