Norse popular tales
Norse popular talesINTRODUCTIONTALES FROM THE NORSEWHY THE SEA IS SALTTHE OLD DAME AND HER HENEAST O' THE SUN AND WEST O' THE MOONBOOTS WHO ATE A MATCH WITH THE TROLLHACON GRIZZLEBEARDBOOTS, WHO MADE THE PRINCESS SAY, 'THAT'S A STORY'THE TWELVE WILD DUCKSTHE GIANT WHO HAD NO HEART IN HIS BODYTHE FOX AS HERDSMANTHE MASTERMAIDTHE CAT ON THE DOVREFELLPRINCESS ON THE GLASS HILLTHE COCK AND HENHOW ONE WENT OUT TO WOOTHE MASTER-SMITHTHE TWO STEP-SISTERSBUTTERCUPTAMING THE SHREWSHORTSHANKSGUDBRAND ON THE HILL-SIDETHE BLUE BELTWHY THE BEAR IS STUMPY-TAILEDNOT A PIN TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THEMONE'S OWN CHILDREN ARE ALWAYS PRETTIESTTHE THREE PRINCESSES OF WHITELANDTHE LASSIE AND HER GODMOTHERTHE THREE AUNTSTHE COCK, THE CUCKOO, AND THE BLACK-COCKRICH PETER THE PEDLARGERTRUDE'S BIRDBOOTS AND THE TROLLGOOSEY GRIZZELTHE LAD WHO WENT TO THE NORTH WINDTHE MASTER THIEFTHE BEST WISHTHE THREE BILLY-GOATS GRUFFWELL DONE AND ILL PAIDTHE HUSBAND WHO WAS TO MIND THE HOUSEDAPPLEGRIMFARMER WEATHERSKYLORD PETERTHE SEVEN FOALSTHE WIDOW'S SONBUSHY BRIDEBOOTS AND HIS BROTHERSBIG PETER AND LITTLE PETERTATTERHOODTHE COCK AND HEN THAT WENT TO THE DOVREFELLKATIE WOODENCLOAKTHUMBIKINDOLL I' THE GRASSTHE LAD AND THE DEILTHE COCK AND HEN A-NUTTINGTHE BIG BIRD DANSORIA MORIA CASTLEBRUIN AND REYNARDTOM TOTHERHOUSELITTLE ANNIE THE GOOSE-GIRLINTRODUCTION TO APPENDIXAPPENDIXANANZI AND THE LIONANANZI AND QUANQUATHE EAR OF CORN AND THE TWELVE MENTHE KING AND THE ANT'S TREETHE LITTLE CHILD AND THE PUMPKIN TREETHE BROTHER AND HIS SISTERSTHE GIRL AND THE FISHTHE LION, THE GOAT, AND THE BABOONANANZI AND BABOONTHE MAN AND THE DOUKANA TREENANCY FAIRY'THE DANCING GANG'FOOTNOTES TO INTRODUCTIONCopyright
Norse popular tales
g. w. dasent
INTRODUCTION
ORIGINThe most careless reader can hardly fail to see that many of
the Tales in this volume have the same groundwork as those with
which he has been familiar from his earliest youth. They are
Nursery Tales, in fact, of the days when there were tales in
nurseries—old wives' fables, which have faded away before the light
of gas and the power of steam. It is long, indeed, since English
nurses told these tales to English children by force of memory and
word of mouth. In a written shape, we have long had some of them,
at least, in English versions of theContes de ma
Mère l' Oyeof Perrault, and theContes de Féesof Madame D'Aulnoy;
those tight-laced, high- heeled tales of the 'teacup times' of
Louis XIV and his successors, in which the popular tale appears to
as much disadvantage as an artless country girl in the stifling
atmosphere of a London theatre. From these foreign sources, after
the voice of the English reciter was hushed—and it was hushed in
England more than a century ago—our great-grandmothers learnt to
tell of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, of Little Red
Riding-hood and Blue Beard, mingled together in theCabinet des Féeswith Sinbad the Sailor
and Aladdin's wondrous lamp; for that was an uncritical age, and
its spirit breathed hot and cold, east and west, from all quarters
of the globe at once, confusing the traditions and tales of all
times and countries into one incongruous mass of fable, as much
tangled and knotted as that famous pound of flax which the lassie
in one of these Tales is expected to spin into an even wool within
four-and-twenty hours. No poverty of invention or want of power on
the part of translators could entirely destroy the innate beauty of
those popular traditions; but here, in England at least, they had
almost dwindled out, or at any rate had been lost sight of as
home-growths. We had learnt to buy our own children back, disguised
in foreign garb; and as for their being anything more than the mere
pastime of an idle hour—as to their having any history or science
of their own—such an absurdity was never once thought of. It had,
indeed, been remarked, even in the eighteenth century—that dreary
time of indifference and doubt—that some of the popular traditions
of the nations north of the Alps contained striking resemblances
and parallels to stories in the classical mythology. But those were
the days when Greek and Latin lorded it over the other languages of
the earth; and when any such resemblance or analogy was observed,
it was commonly supposed that that base-born slave, the vulgar
tongue, had dared to make a clumsy copy of something peculiarly
belonging to the twin tyrants who ruled all the dialects of the
world with a pedant's rod.At last, just at the close of that great war which Western
Europe waged against the genius and fortune of the first Napoleon;
just as the eagle—Prometheus and the eagle in one shape—was fast
fettered by sheer force and strength to his rock in the Atlantic,
there arose a man in Central Germany, on the old Thuringian soil,
to whom it was given to assert the dignity of vernacular
literature, to throw off the yoke of classical tyranny, and to
claim for all the dialects of Teutonic speech a right of ancient
inheritance and perfect freedom before unsuspected and unknown. It
is almost needless to mention this honoured name. For the
furtherance of the good work which he began nearly fifty years ago,
he still lives and still labours. There is no spot on which an
accent of Teutonic speech is uttered where the name of Jacob Grimm
is not a 'household word'. His General Grammar of all the Teutonic
Dialects from Iceland to England has proved the equality of these
tongues with their ancient classical oppressors. His Antiquities of
Teutonic Law have shown that the codes of the Lombards, Franks, and
Goths were not mere savage, brutal customaries, based, as had been
supposed, on the absence of all law and right. His numerous
treatises on early German authors have shown that the German poets
of the Middle Age, Godfrey of Strasburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Hartman von der Aue, Walter von der Vogelweide, and the rest, can
hold their own against any contemporary writers in other lands. And
lastly, what rather concerns us here, his Teutonic Mythology, his
Reynard the Fox, and the collection of German Popular Tales, which
he and his brother William published, have thrown a flood of light
on the early history of all the branches of our race, and have
raised what had come to be looked on as mere nursery fictions and
old wives' fables—to a study fit for the energies of grown men, and
to all the dignity of a science.In these pages, where we have to run over a vast tract of
space, the reader who wishes to learn and not to cavil—and for such
alone this introduction is intended—must be content with results
rather than processes and steps. To use a homely likeness, he must
be satisfied with the soup that is set before him, and not desire
to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled. When we
say, therefore, that in these latter days the philology and
mythology of the East and West have met and kissed each other; that
they now go hand and hand; that they lend one another mutual
support; that one cannot be understood without the other,—we look
to be believed. We do not expect to be put to the proof, how the
labours of Grimm and his disciples on this side were first rendered
possible by the linguistic discoveries of Anquetil du Perron and
others in India and France, at the end of the last century; then
materially assisted and furthered by the researches of Sir William
Jones, Colebrooke, and others, in India and England during the
early part of this century, and finally have become identical with
those of Wilson, Bopp, Lassen, and Max Müller, at the present day.
The affinity which exists in a mythological and philological point
of view between the Aryan or Indo-European languages on the one
hand, and the Sanscrit on the other, is now the first article of a
literary creed, and the man who denies it puts himself as much
beyond the pale of argument as he who, in a religious discussion,
should meet a grave divine of the Church of England with the strict
contradictory of her first article, and loudly declare his
conviction, that there was no God. In a general way, then, we may
be permitted to dogmatize, and to lay it down as a law which is
always in force, that the first authentic history of a nation is
the history of its tongue. We can form no notion of the literature
of a country apart from its language, and the consideration of its
language necessarily involves the consideration of its history.
Here is England, for instance, with a language, and therefore a
literature, composed of Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norse, and Romance
elements. Is not this simple fact suggestive of, nay, does it not
challenge us to, an inquiry into the origin and history of the
races who have passed over our island, and left their mark not only
on the soil, but on our speech? Again, to take a wider view, and to
rise from archaeology to science, what problem has interested the
world in a greater degree than the origin of man, and what toil has
not been spent in tracing all races back to their common stock? The
science of comparative philology—the inquiry, not into one isolated
language—for nowadays it may fairly be said of a man who knows only
one language that he knows none—but into all the languages of one
family, and thus to reduce them to one common centre, from which
they spread like the rays of the sun—if it has not solved, is in a
fair way of solving, this problem. When we have done for the
various members of each family what has been done of late years for
the Indo- European tongues, its solution will be complete. In such
an inquiry the history of a race is, in fact, the history of its
language, and can be nothing else; for we have to deal with times
antecedent to all history, properly so called, and the stream which
in later ages may be divided into many branches, now flows in a
single channel.From the East, then, came our ancestors, in days of
immemorial antiquity, in that gray dawn of time of which all early
songs and lays can tell, but of which it is as impossible as it is
useless to attempt to fix the date. Impossible, because no means
exist for ascertaining it; useless, because it is in reality a
matter of utter indifference, when, as this tell-tale crust of
earth informs us, we have an infinity of ages and periods to fall
back on whether this great movement, this mighty lust to change
their seats, seized on the Aryan race one hundred or one thousand
years sooner or later. [1] But from the East we came, and from that
central plain of Asia, now commonly called Iran. Iran, the
habitation of the tillers andearers[2] of the earth, as opposed to Turan, the abode of restless
horse-riding nomads; of Turks, in short, for in their name the root
survives, and still distinguishes the great Turanian or Mongolian
family, from the Aryan, Iranian, or Indo-European race. It is
scarce worth while to inquire—even if inquiry could lead to any
result—what cause set them in motion from their ancient seats.
Whether impelled by famine or internal strife, starved out like
other nationalities in recent times, or led on by adventurous
chiefs, whose spirit chafed at the narrowness of home, certain it
is that they left that home and began a wandering westwards, which
only ceased when it reached the Atlantic and the Northern Ocean.
Nor was the fate of those they left behind less strange. At some
period almost as remote as, but after, that at which the wanderers
for Europe started, the remaining portion of the stock, or a
considerable offshoot from it, turned their faces east, and passing
the Indian Caucasus, poured through the defiles of Affghanistan,
crossed the plain of the Five Rivers, and descended on the fruitful
plains of India. The different destiny of these stocks has been
wonderful indeed. Of those who went west, we have only to enumerate
the names under which they appear in history—Celts, Greeks, Romans,
Teutons, Slavonians—to see and to know at once that the stream of
this migration has borne on its waves all that has become most
precious to man. To use the words of Max Müller: 'They have been
the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have
carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life
with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and
morals, and we learn from their literature and works of art the
elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of
philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic
and Mongolian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of
history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the
world together by the chains of civilization, commerce, and
religion.' We may add, that though by nature tough and enduring,
they have not been obstinate and self-willed; they have been
distinguished from all other nations, and particularly from their
elder brothers whom they left behind, by their common sense, by
their power of adapting themselves to all circumstances, and by
making the best of their position; above all, they have been
teachable, ready to receive impressions from without, and, when
received, to develop them. To show the truth of this, we need only
observe, that they adopted Christianity from another race, the most
obstinate and stiff-necked the world has ever seen, who, trained
under the Old Dispensation to preserve the worship of the one true
God, were too proud to accept the further revelation of God under
the New, and, rejecting their birth-right, suffered their
inheritance to pass into other hands.Such, then, has been the lot of the Western branch, of the
younger brother, who, like the younger brother whom we shall meet
so often in these Popular Tales, went out into the world, with
nothing but his good heart and God's blessing to guide him; and now
has come to all honour and fortune, and to be a king, ruling over
the world. He went out anddid.
Let us see now what became of the elder brother, who stayed at home
some time after his brother went out, and then only made a short
journey. Having driven out the few aboriginal inhabitants of India
with little effort, and following the course of the great rivers,
the Eastern Aryans gradually established themselves all over the
peninsula; and then, in calm possession of a world of their own,
undisturbed by conquest from without, and accepting with apathy any
change of dynasty among their rulers, ignorant of the past and
careless of the future, they sat down once for all andthought—thought not of what they had
to do here, that stern lesson of every-day life which neither men
nor nations can escape if they are to live with their fellows, but
how they could abstract themselves entirely from their present
existence, and immerse themselves wholly in dreamy speculations on
the future. Whatever they may have been during their short
migration and subsequent settlement, it is certain that they appear
in the Vedas—perhaps the earliest collection which the world
possesses—as a nation of philosophers. Well may Professor Müller
compare the Indian mind to a plant reared in a hot-house, gorgeous
in colour, rich in perfume, precocious and abundant in fruit; it
may be all this, 'but will never be like the oak, growing in wind
and weather, striking its roots into real earth, and stretching its
branches into real air, beneath the stars and sun of Heaven'; and
well does he also remark, that a people of this peculiar stamp was
never destined to act a prominent part in the history of the world;
nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas could not
but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and moral
character of the Hindoos. [3]In this passive, abstract, unprogressive state, they have
remained ever since. Stiffened into castes, and tongue-tied and
hand-tied by absurd rites and ceremonies, they were heard of in dim
legends by Herodotus; they were seen by Alexander when that bold
spirit pushed his phalanx beyond the limits of the known world;
they trafficked with imperial Rome, and the later empire; they were
again almost lost sight of, and became fabulous in the Middle Age;
they were rediscovered by the Portuguese; they have been
alternately peaceful subjects and desperate rebels to us English;
but they have been still the same immovable and unprogressive
philosophers, though akin to Europe all the while; and though the
Highlander, who drives his bayonet through the heart of a
high-caste Sepoy mutineer, little knows that his pale features and
sandy hair, and that dusk face with its raven locks, both come from
a common ancestor away in Central Asia, many, many centuries
ago.But here arises the question, what interest can we, the
descendants of the practical brother, heirs to so much historical
renown, possibly take in the records of a race so historically
characterless, and so sunk in reveries and mysticism? The answer is
easy. Those records are written in a language closely allied to the
primaeval common tongue of those two branches before they parted,
and descending from a period anterior to their separation. It may,
or it may not, be the very tongue itself, but it certainly is not
further removed than a few steps. The speech of the emigrants to
the west rapidly changed with the changing circumstances and
various fortune of each of its waves, and in their intercourse with
the aboriginal population they often adopted foreign elements into
their language. One of these waves, it is probable, passing by way
of Persia and Asia Minor, crossed the Hellespont, and following the
coast, threw off a mighty rill, known in after times as Greeks;
while the main stream, striking through Macedonia, either crossed
the Adriatic, or, still hugging the coast, came down on Italy, to
be known as Latins. Another, passing between the Caspian and the
Black Sea, filled the steppes round the Crimea, and; passing on
over the Balkan and the Carpathians towards the west, became that
great Teutonic nationality which, under various names, but all
closely akin, filled, when we first hear of them in historical
times, the space between the Black Sea and the Baltic, and was then
slowly but surely driving before them the great wave of the Celts
which had preceded them in their wandering, and which had probably
followed the same line of march as the ancestors of the Greeks and
Latins. A movement which lasted until all that was left of Celtic
nationality was either absorbed by the intruders, or forced aside
and driven to take refuge in mountain fastnesses and outlying
islands. Besides all these, there was still another wave, which is
supposed to have passed between the Sea of Aral and the Caspian,
and, keeping still further to the north and east, to have passed
between its kindred Teutons and the Mongolian tribes, and so to
have lain in the background until we find them appearing as
Slavonians on the scene of history. Into so many great stocks did
the Western Aryans pass, each possessing strongly-marked
nationalities and languages, and these seemingly so distinct that
each often asserted that the other spoke a barbarous tongue. But,
for all that, each of those tongues bears about with it still, and
in earlier times no doubt bore still more plainly about with it,
infallible evidence of common origin, so that each dialect can be
traced up to that primaeval form of speech still in the main
preserved in the Sanscrit by the Southern Aryan branch, who,
careless of practical life, and immersed in speculation, have clung
to their ancient traditions and tongue with wonderful tenacity. It
is this which has given such value to Sanscrit, a tongue of which
it may be said, that if it had perished the sun would never have
risen on the science of comparative philology. Before the
discoveries in Sanscrit of Sir William Jones, Wilkins, Wilson, and
others, the world had striven to find the common ancestor of
European languages, sometimes in the classical, and sometimes in
the Semitic tongues. In the one case the result was a tyranny of
Greek and Latin over the non- classical tongues, and in the other
the most uncritical and unphilosophical waste of learning. No doubt
some striking analogies exist between the Indo-European family and
the Semitic stock, just as there are remarkable analogies between
the Mongolian and Indo- European families; but the ravings of
Vallancy, in his effort to connect the Erse with Phoenician, are an
awful warning of what unscientific inquiry, based upon casual
analogy, may bring itself to believe, and even to fancy it has
proved.These general observations, then, and this rapid bird's eye
view, may suffice to show the common affinity which exists between
the Eastern and Western Aryans; between the Hindoo on the one hand,
and the nations of Western Europe on the other. That is the fact to
keep steadily before our eyes. We all came, Greek, Latin, Celt,
Teuton, Slavonian, from the East, as kith and kin, leaving kith and
kin behind us; and after thousands of years the language and
traditions of those who went East, and those who went West, bear
such an affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond
discussion or dispute, the fact of their descent from a common
stock.DIFFUSIONThis general affinity established, we proceed to narrow our
subject to its proper limits, and to confine it to the
consideration,first, of
Popular Tales in general, andsecondly, of those Norse Tales in particular, which form the bulk of
this volume.In the first place, then, the fact which we remarked on
setting out, that the groundwork or plot of many of these tales is
common to all the nations of Europe, is more important, and of
greater scientific interest, than might at first appear. They form,
in fact, another link in the chain of evidence of a common origin
between the East and West, and even the obstinate adherents of the
old classical theory, according to which all resemblances were set
down to sheer copying from Greek or Latin patterns, are now forced
to confess, not only that there was no such wholesale copying at
all, but that, in many cases, the despised vernacular tongues have
preserved the common traditions far more faithfully than the
writers of Greece and Rome. The sooner, in short, that this theory
of copying, which some, even besides the classicists, have
maintained, is abandoned, the better, not only for the truth, but
for the literary reputation of those who put it forth. No one can,
of course, imagine that during that long succession of ages when
this mighty wedge of Aryan migration was driving its way through
that prehistoric race, that nameless nationality, the traces of
which we everywhere find underlying the intruders in their
monuments and implements of bone and stone—a race akin, in all
probability, to the Mongolian family, and whose miserable remnants
we see pushed aside, and huddled up in the holes and corners of
Europe, as Lapps, and Finns, and Basques—No one, we say, can
suppose for a moment, that in that long process of contact and
absorption, some traditions of either race should not have been
caught up and adopted by the other. We know it to be a fact with
regard to their language, from the evidence of philology, which
cannot lie; and the witness borne by such a word as the Gothic Atta
forfather, where a Mongolian
has been adopted in preference to an Aryan word, is irresistible on
this point; but that, apart from such natural assimilation, all the
thousand shades of resemblance and affinity which gleam and flicker
through the whole body of popular tradition in the Aryan race, as
the Aurora plays and flashes in countless rays athwart the Northern
heaven, should be the result of mere servile copying of one tribe's
traditions by another, is a supposition as absurd as that of those
good country-folk, who, when they see an Aurora, fancy it must be a
great fire, the work of some incendiary, and send off the parish
engine to put it out. No! when we find in such a story as the
Master-thief traits, which are to be found in the SanscritHitopadesa[4], and which reminds us at
once of the story of Rhampsinitus in Herodotus; which are also to
be found in German, Italian, and Flemish popular tales, but told in
all with such variations of character and detail, and such
adaptations to time and place, as evidently show the original
working of the national consciousness upon a stock of tradition
common to all the race, but belonging to no tribe of that race in
particular; and when we find this occurring not in one tale but in
twenty, we are forced to abandon the theory of such universal
copying, for fear lest we should fall into a greater difficulty
than that for which we were striving to account.To set this question in a plainer light, let us take a
well-known instance; let us take the story of William Tell and his
daring shot, which is said to have been made in the year 1307. It
is just possible that the feat might be historical, and, no doubt,
thousands believe it for the sake of the Swiss patriot, as firmly
as they believe in anything; but, unfortunately, this story of the
bold archer who saves his life by shooting an apple from the head
of his child at the command of a tyrant, is common to the whole
Aryan race. It appears in Saxo Grammaticus, who flourished in the
twelfth century, where it is told of Palnatoki, King Harold
Gormson's thane and assassin. In the thirteenth century theWilkina Sagarelates it of Egill,
Völundr's—our Wayland Smith's—younger brother. So also in the Norse
Saga ofSaint Olof, king and
martyr; the king, who died in 1030, eager for the conversion of one
of his heathen chiefs Eindridi, competes with him in various
athletic exercises, first in swimming and then in archery. After
several famous shots on either side, the king challenges Eindridi
to shoot a tablet off his son's head without hurting the child.
Eindridi is ready, but declares he will revenge himself if the
child is hurt. The king has the first shot, and his arrow strikes
close to the tablet. Then Eindridi is to shoot, but at the prayers
of his mother and sister, refuses the shot, and has to yield and be
converted [Fornm. Sog., 2,
272]. So, also, King Harold Sigurdarson, who died 1066, backed
himself against a famous marksman, Hemingr, and ordered him to
shoot a hazel nut off the head of his brother Björn, and Hemingr
performed the feat [Müller'sSaga
Bibl., 3, 359]. In the middle of the fourteenth
century, theMalleus Maleficarumrefers it to Puncher, a magician of the Upper Rhine. Here in
England, we have it in the old English ballad ofAdam Bell, Clym of the Clough,
andWilliam of Cloudesly, where
William performs the feat [see the ballad in Percy'sReliques]. It is not at all of Tell in
Switzerland before the year 1499, and the earlier Swiss chronicles
omit it altogether. It is common to the Turks and Mongolians; and a
legend of the wild Samoyeds, who never heard of Tell or saw a book
in their lives, relates it, chapter and verse, of one of their
famous marksmen. What shall we say then, but that the story of this
bold master-shot was primaeval amongst many tribes and races, and
that it only crystallized itself round the great name of Tell by
that process of attraction which invariably leads a grateful people
to throw such mythic wreaths, such garlands of bold deeds of
precious memory, round the brow of its darling champion
[5].Nor let any pious Welshman be shocked if we venture to assert
that Gellert, that famous hound upon whose last resting-place the
traveller comes as he passes down the lovely vale of Gwynant, is a
mythical dog, and never snuffed the fresh breeze in the forest of
Snowdon, nor saved his master's child from ravening wolf. This,
too, is a primaeval story, told with many variations. Sometimes the
foe is a wolf, sometimes a bear, sometimes a snake. Sometimes the
faithful guardian of the child is an otter, a weasel, or a dog. It,
too, came from the East. It is found in thePantcha-Tantra, in theHitopadesa, in Bidpai'sFables, in the Arabic original
ofThe Seven Wise Masters, that
famous collection of stories which illustrate a stepdame's calumny
and hate, and in many mediaeval versions of those originals [6].
Thence it passed into the LatinGesta
Romanorum, where, as well as in the Old English
version published by Sir Frederick Madden, it may be read as a
service rendered by a faithful hound against a snake. This, too,
like Tell's master-shot, is as the lightning which shineth over the
whole heaven at once, and can be claimed by no one tribe of the
Aryan race, to the exclusion of the rest. 'The Dog of Montargis' is
in like manner mythic, though perhaps not so widely spread. It
first occurs in France, as told of Sybilla, a fabulous wife of
Charlemagne; but it is at any rate as old as the time of Plutarch,
who relates it as an anecdote of brute sagacity in the days of
Pyrrhus.There can be no doubt, with regard to the question of the
origin of these tales, that they were common in germ at least to
the Aryan tribes before their migration. We find those germs
developed in the popular traditions of the Eastern Aryans, and we
find them developed in a hundred forms and shapes in every one of
the nations into which the Western Aryans have shaped themselves in
the course of ages. We are led, therefore, irresistibly to the
conclusion, that these traditions are as much a portion of the
common inheritance of our ancestors, as their language
unquestionably is; and that they form, along with that language, a
double chain of evidence, which proves their Eastern origin. If we
are to seek for a simile, or an analogy, as to the relative
positions of these tales and traditions, and to the mutual
resemblances which exist between them as the several branches of
our race have developed them from the common stock, we may find it
in one which will come home to every reader as he looks round the
domestic hearth, if he should be so happy as to have one. They are
like as sisters of one house are like. They have what would be
called a strong family likeness; but besides this likeness, which
they owe to father or mother, as the case may be, they have each
their peculiarities of form, and eye, and face, and still more,
their differences of intellect and mind. This may be dark, that
fair; this may have gray eyes, that black; this may be open and
graceful, that reserved and close; this you may love, that you can
take no interest in. One may be bashful, another winning, a third
worth knowing and yet hard to know. They are so like and so unlike.
At first it may be, as an old English writer beautifully expresses
it, 'their father hath writ them as his own little story', but as
they grow up they throw off the copy, educate themselves for good
or ill, and finally assume new forms of feeling and feature under
an original development of their own.Or shall we take another likeness, and say they are national
dreams; that they are like the sleeping thoughts of many men upon
one and the same thing. Suppose a hundred men to have been
eye-witnesses of some event on the same day, and then to have slept
and dreamt of it; we should have as many distinct representations
of that event, all turning upon it and bound up with it in some
way, but each preserving the personality of the sleeper, and
working up the common stuff in a higher or lower degree, just as
the fancy and the intellect of the sleeper was at a higher or lower
level of perfection. There is, indeed, greater truth in this
likeness than may at first sight appear. In the popular tale,
properly so called, the national mind dreams all its history over
again; in its half conscious state it takes this trait and that
trait, this feature and that feature, of times and ages long past.
It snatches up bits of its old beliefs, and fears, and griefs, and
glory, and pieces them together with something that happened
yesterday, and then holds up the distorted reflection in all its
inconsequence, just as it has passed before that magic glass, as
though it were genuine history, and matter for pure belief. And
here it may be as well to say, that besides that old classical foe
of vernacular tradition, there is another hardly less dangerous,
which returns to the charge of copying, but changes what lawyers
call thevenueof the trial from
classical to Eastern lands. According to this theory, which came up
when its classical predecessor was no longer tenable, the
traditions and tales of Western Europe came from the East, but they
were still all copies. They were supposed to have proceeded
entirely from two sources; one theDirectorium
Humanae Vitaeof John of Capua, translated
between 1262-78 from a Hebrew version, which again came from an
Arabic version of the 8th century, which came from a Pehlvi version
made by one Barzouyeh, at the command of Chosrou Noushirvan, King
of Persia, in the 6th century, which again came from thePantcha Tantra, a Sanscrit original of
unknown antiquity. This is that famous book ofCalila and Dimna, as the Persian
version is called, attributed to Bidpai, and which was thus run to
earth in India. The second source of Western tradition was held to
be that still more famous collection of stories commonly known by
the name of the 'Story of the Seven Sages,' but which, under many
names—Kaiser Octavianus, Diocletianus, Dolopathos, Erastus,
etc.—plays a most important part in mediaeval romance. This, too,
by a similar process, has been traced to India, appearing first in
Europe at the beginning of the thirteenth century in the
LatinHistoria Septem Sapientum Romae, by Dame Jehans, monk in the Abbey of Haute Selve. Here,
too, we have a Hebrew, an Arabic, and a Persian version; which last
came avowedly from a Sanscrit original, though that original has
not yet been discovered. From these two sources of fable and
tradition, according to the new copying theory, our Western fables
and tales had come by direct translation from the East. Now it will
be at once evident that this theory hangs on what may be called a
single thread. Let us say, then, that all that can be found
inCalila and Dimna, or the
later Persian version, made A.D. 1494, of Hossein Vaez, called
theAnvari Sohaïli, 'the
Canopic Lights'—from which, when published in Paris by David Sahid
of Ispahan, in the year 1644, La Fontaine drew the substance of
many of his best fables.—Let us say, too, that all can be found in
theLife of the Seven Sages, or
the Book of Sendabad as it was called in Persia, after an
apocryphal Indian sage—came by translation—that is to say, through
the cells of Brahmins, Magians, and monks, and the labours of the
learned—into the popular literature of the West. Let us give up all
that, and then see where we stand. What are we to say of the many
tales and fables which are to be found in neither of those famous
collections, and not tales alone, but traits and features of old
tradition, broken bits of fable, roots and germs of mighty growths
of song and story, nay, even the very words, which exist in Western
popular literature, and which modern philology has found
obstinately sticking in Sanscrit, and of which fresh proofs and
instances are discovered every day? What are we to say of such a
remarkable resemblance as this?The noble King Putraka fled into the Vindhya mountains in
order to live apart from his unkind kinsfolk; and as he wandered
about there he met two men who wrestled and fought with one
another. 'Who are you?' he asked. 'We are the sons of Mayâsara, and
here lie our riches; this bowl, this staff, and these shoes; these
are what we are fighting for, and whichever is stronger is to have
them for his own.'So when Putraka had heard that, he asked them with a laugh:
'Why, what's the good of owning these things?' Then they answered
'Whoever puts on these shoes gets the power to fly; whatever is
pointed at with this staff rises up at once; and whatever food one
wishes for in this bowl, it comes at once.' So when Putraka had
heard that he said 'Why fight about it? Let this be the prize;
whoever beats the other in a race, let him have them
all'.'So be it', said the two fools, and set off running, but
Putraka put on the shoes at once, and flew away with the staff and
bowl up into the clouds'.Well, this is a story neither in thePantcha
Tantranor theHitopadesa, the Sanscrit originals
ofCalila and Dimna. It is not
in theDirectorium Humanae Vitae, and has not passed west by that way. Nor is it in
theBook of Sendabad, and
thence come west in theHistory of the Seven
Sages. Both these paths are stopped. It comes
from theKatha Sarit Sagara,
the 'Sea of Streams of Story' of Somadeva Bhatta of Cashmere, who,
in the middle of the twelfth century of our era, worked up the
tales found in an earlier collection, called theVrihat Katha, 'the lengthened story',
in order to amuse his mistress, the Queen of Cashmere. Somadeva's
collection has only been recently known and translated. But west
the story certainly came long before, and in the extreme north-west
we still find it in these Norse Tales in 'The Three Princesses of
Whiteland', No. xxvi.'Well!' said the man, 'as this is so, I'll give you a bit of
advice. Hereabouts, on a moor, stand three brothers, and there they
have stood these hundred years, fighting about a hat, a cloak, and
a pair of boots. If any one has these three things, he can make
himself invisible, and wish himself anywhere he pleases. You can
tell them you wish to try the things, and after that, you'll pass
judgment between them, whose they shall be'.Yes! the king thanked the man, and went and did as he told
him.'What's all this?' he said to the brothers. 'Why do you stand
here fighting for ever and a day? Just let me try these things, and
I'll give judgment whose they shall be.'They were very willing to do this; but as soon as he had got
the hat; cloak, and boots, he said: 'When we meet next time I'll
tell you my judgment'; and with these words he wished himself
away.Nor in the Norse tales alone. Other collections shew how
thoroughly at home this story was in the East. In the Relations
ofSsidi Kur, a Tartar tale, a
Chan's son first gets possession of a cloak which two children
stand and fight for, which has the gift of making the wearer
invisible, and afterwards of a pair of boots, with which one can
wish one's self to whatever place one chooses. Again, in a
Wallachian tale, we read of three devils who fight for their
inheritance—a club which turns everything to stone, a hat which
makes the wearer invisible, and a cloak by help of which one can
wish one's self whithersoever one pleases. Again, in a Mongolian
tale, the Chan's son comes upon a group of children who fight for a
hood which makes the wearer invisible; he is to be judge between
them, makes them run a race for it, but meanwhile puts it on and
vanishes from their sight. A little further on he meets another
group, who are quarrelling for a pair of boots, the wearer of which
can wish himself whithersoever he pleases, and gains possession of
them in the same way.Nor in one Norse tale alone, but in many, we find traces of
these three wonderful things, or of things like them. They are very
like the cloth, the ram, and the stick, which the lad got from the
North Wind instead of his meal. Very like, too, the cloth, the
scissors, and the tap, which will be found in No. xxxvi, 'The Best
Wish'. If we drop the number three, we find the Boots again in
'Soria Moria Castle', No. lvi. [Moe, Introd., xxxii-iii] Leaving
the Norse Tales, we see at once that they are the seven-leagued
boots of Jack the Giant Killer. In theNibelungen
Lied, when Siegfried finds Schilbung and
Niblung, the wierd heirs of the famous 'Hoard', striving for the
possession of that heap of red gold and gleaming stones; when they
beg him to share it for them, promising him, as his meed, Balmung,
best of swords; when he shares it, when they are discontent, and
when in the struggle which ensues he gets possession of the
'Tarnhut', the 'cloak of darkness', which gave its wearer the
strength of twelve men, and enabled him to go where he would be
unseen, and which was the great prize among the treasures of the
dwarfs[7]; who is there that does not see the broken fragments of
that old Eastern story of the heirs struggling for their
inheritance, and calling in the aid of some one of better wit or
strength who ends by making the very prize for which they fight his
own?And now to return for a moment toCalila and
DimnaandThe Seven
Sages. Since we have seen that there are other
stories, and many of them, for this is by no means the only
resemblance to be found in Somadeva's book [8] which are common to
the Eastern and Western Aryans, but which did not travel to Europe
by translation; let us go on to say that it is by no means certain,
even when some Western story or fable is found in these Sanscrit
originals and their translations, that that was the only way by
which they came to Europe. A single question will prove this. How
did the fables and apologues which are found inAesop, and which are also found in
thePantcha Tantyaand
theHitopadesacome West? That
they came from the East is certain; but by what way, certainly not
by translations or copying, for they had travelled west long before
translations were thought of. How was it that Themistius, a Greek
orator of the fourth century [J. Grimm,Reinhart
Fuchs, cclxiii, Intr.] had heard of that fable
of the lion, fox, and bull, which is in substance the same as that
of the lion, the bull, and the two jackals in thePantcha Tantyaand theHitopadesa? How, but along the path of
that primaeval Aryan migration, and by that deep-ground tone of
tradition by which man speaks to man, nation to nation, and age to
age; along which comparative philology has, in these last days,
travelled back thither, listened to the accents spoken, and so
found in the East the cradle of a common language and common
belief.And now, having, as we hope, finally established this Indian
affinity, and disposed of mere Indian copying, let us lift our eyes
and see if something more is not to be discerned on the wide
horizon now open on our view. The most interesting problem for man
to solve is the origin of his race. Of late years comparative
philology, having accomplished her task in proving the affinity of
language between Europe and the East, and so taken a mighty step
towards fixing the first seat of the greatest—greatest in wit and
wisdom, if not in actual numbers—portion of the human race, has
pursued her inquiries into the languages of the Turanian, the
Semitic, and the Chamitic or African races, with more or less
successful results. In a few more years, when the African languages
are better known, and the roots of Egyptian and Chinese words are
more accurately detected, Science will be better able to speak as
to the common affinity of all the tribes that throng the earth. In
the meantime, let the testimony of tradition and popular tales be
heard, which in this case have outstripped comparative philology,
and lead instead of following her. It is beyond the scope of this
essay, which aims at being popular and readable rather than learned
and lengthy, to go over a prolonged scientific investigation step
by step. We repeat it. The reader must have faith in the writer,
and believe the words now written are the results of an inquiry,
and not ask for the inquiry itself. In all mythologies and
traditions, then, there are what may be called natural
resemblances, parallelisms suggested to the senses of each race by
natural objects and every-day events, and these might spring up
spontaneously all over the earth as home growths, neither derived
by imitation from other tribes, nor from seeds of common tradition
shed from a common stock. Such resemblances have been well compared
by William Grimm, [Kinder and
Hausmärchen, vol. 3,3dedition (Göttingen, 1856) a volume
worthy of the utmost attention.] to those words which are found in
all languages derived from the imitation of natural sounds, or, we
may add, from the first lisping accents of infancy. But the case is
very different when this or that object which strikes the senses is
accounted for in a way so extraordinary and peculiar, as to stamp
the tradition with a character of its own. Then arises a like
impression on the mind, if we find the same tradition in two tribes
at the opposite ends of the earth, as is produced by meeting twin
brothers, one in Africa and the other in Asia; we say at once 'I
know you are so and so's brother, you are so like him'. Take an
instance: In these Norse Tales, No. xxiii, we are told how it was
the bear came to have a stumpy tail, and in an African tale, [9] we
find how it was the hyaena became tailless and earless. Now, the
tailless condition both of the bear and the hyaena could scarcely
fail to attract attention in a race of hunters, and we might expect
that popular tradition would attempt to account for both, but how
are we to explain the fact, that both Norseman and African account
for it in the same way—that both owe their loss to the superior
cunning of another animal. In Europe the fox bears away the palm
for wit from all other animals, so he it is that persuades the bear
in the Norse Tales to sit with his tail in a hole in the ice till
it is fast frozen in, and snaps short off when he tries to tug it
out. In Bornou, in the heart of Africa, it is the weasel who is the
wisest of beasts, and who, having got some meat in common with the
hyaena, put it into a hole, and said:'Behold two men came out of the forest, took the meat, and
put it into a hole: stop, I will go into the hole, and then thou
mayst stretch out thy tail to me, and I will tie the meat to thy
tail for thee to draw it out'. So the weasel went into the hole,
the hyaena stretched its tail out to it, but the weasel took the
hyaena's tail, fastened a stick, and tied the hyaena's tail to the
stick, and then said to the hyaena 'I have tied the meat to thy
tail; draw, and pull it out'. The hyaena was a fool, it did not
know the weasel surpassed it in subtlety; it thought the meat was
tied; but when it tried to draw out its tail, it was fast. When the
weasel said again to it 'Pull', it pulled, but could not draw it
out; so it became vexed, and on pulling with force, its tail broke.
The tail being torn out, the weasel was no more seen by the hyaena:
the weasel was hidden in the hole with its meat, and the hyaena saw
it not. [Kanuri Proverbs, p.
167.]Here we have a fact in natural history accounted for, but
accounted for in such a peculiar way as shows that the races among
which they are current must have derived them from some common
tradition. The mode by which the tail is lost is different indeed;
but the manner in which the common ground-work is suited in one
case to the cold of the North, and the way in which fish are
commonly caught at holes in the ice as they rise to breathe; and in
the other to Africa and her pitfalls for wild beasts, is only
another proof of the oldness of the tradition, and that it is not
merely a copy.Take another instance. Every one knows the story in the
Arabian Nights, where the man who knows the speech of beasts laughs
at something said by an ox to an ass. His wife wants to know why he
laughs, and persists, though he tells her it will cost him his life
if he tells her. As he doubts what to do, he hears the cock say to
the house-dog 'Our master is not wise; I have fifty hens who obey
me; if he followed my advice, he'd just take a good stick, shut up
his wife in a room with him, and give her a good cudgelling.' The
same story is told in Straparola [10] with so many variations as to
show it is no copy; it is also told in a Servian popular tale, with
variations of its own; and now here we find it in Bornou, as told
by Kölle.There was a servant of God who had one wife and one horse;
but his wife was one-eyed, and they lived in their house. Now this
servant of God understood the language of the beasts of the forest
when they spoke, and of the birds of the air when they talked as
they flew by. This servant of God also understood the cry of the
hyaena when it arose at night in the forest, and came to the houses
and cried near them; so, likewise, when his horse was hungry and
neighed, he understood why it neighed, rose up, brought the horse
grass, and then returned and sat down. It happened one day that
birds had their talk as they were flying by above and the servant
of God understood what they talked. This caused him to laugh,
whereupon his wife said to him 'What dost thou hear that thou
laughest?' He replied to his wife 'I shall not tell thee what I
hear, and why I laugh'. The woman said to her husband 'I know why
thou laughest; thou laughest at me because I am one-eyed'. The man
then said to his wife 'I saw that thou wast one-eyed before I loved
thee, and before we married and sat down in our house'. When the
woman heard her husband's word she was quiet.But once at night, as they were lying on their bed, and it
was past midnight, it happened that a rat played with his wife on
the top of the house and that both fell to the ground. Then the
wife of the rat said to her husband 'Thy sport is bad; thou saidst
to me that thou wouldst play, but when we came together we fell to
the ground, so that I broke my back'.When the servant of God heard the talk of the rat's wife, as
he was lying on his bed, he laughed. Now, as soon as he laughed his
wife arose, seized him, and said to him as she held him fast: 'Now
this time I will not let thee go out of this house except thou tell
me what thou hearest and why thou laughest'. The man begged the
woman, saying 'Let me go'; but the woman would not listen to her
husband's entreaty.The husband then tells his wife that he knows the language of
beasts and birds, and she is content; but when he wakes in the
morning he finds he has lost his wonderful gift; and the moral of
the tale is added most ungallantly: 'If a man shews and tells his
thoughts to a woman, God will punish him for it'. Though, perhaps,
it is better, for the sake of the gentler sex, that the tale should
be pointed with this unfair moral, than that the African story
should proceed like all the other variations, and save the
husband's gift at the cost of the wife's skin.Take other African instances. How is it that the wandering
Bechuanas got their story of 'The Two Brothers', the ground-work of
which is the same as 'The Machandelboom' and the 'Milk-white Doo',
and where the incidents and even the words are almost the same? How
is it that in some of its traits that Bechuana story embodies those
of that earliest of all popular tales, recently published from an
Egyptian Papyrus, coeval with the abode of the Israelites in Egypt?
and how is it that that same Egyptian tale has other traits which
reminds us of the Dun Bull in 'Katie Woodencloak', as well as
incidents which are the germ of stories long since reduced to
writing in Norse Sagas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries?
[11] How is it that we still find among the Negroes in the West
Indies [12] a rich store of popular tales, and the Beast Epic in
full bloom, brought with them from Africa to the islands of the
West; and among those tales and traditions, how is it that we find
a 'Wishing Tree', the counter-part of that in a German popular
tale, and 'a little dirty scrub of a child', whom his sisters
despise, but who is own brother to Boots in the Norse Tales, and
like him outwits the Troll, spoils his substance, and saves his
sisters? How is it that we find the good woman who washes the
loathsome head rewarded, while the bad man who refuses to do that
dirty work is punished for his pride; the very groundwork, nay the
very words, that we meet in Bushy-bride, another Norse Tale? How is
it that we find a Mongolian tale, which came confessedly from
India, made up of two of our Norse tales, 'Rich Peter the Pedlar'
and 'The Giant that had no heart in his body' [The Deeds of Bogda Gesser Chan, by I.
J. Schmidt (Petersburg and Leipzig, 1839).]? How should all these
things be, and how could they possibly be, except on that theory
which day by day becomes more and more a matter of fact; this, that
the whole human race sprung from one stock, planted in the East,
which has stretched out its boughs and branches laden with the
fruit of language, and bright with the bloom of song and story, by
successive offshoots to the utmost parts of the earth.NORSE MYTHOLOGYAnd now, in the second place, for that particular branch of
the Aryan race, in which this peculiar development of the common
tradition has arisen, which we are to consider as 'Norse Popular
Tales'.Whatever disputes may have existed as to the mythology of
other branches of the Teutonic subdivision of the Aryan
race—whatever discussions may have arisen as to the position of
this or that divinity among the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, or the
Goths—about the Norsemen there can be no dispute or doubt. From a
variety of circumstances, but two before all the rest—the one their
settlement in Iceland, which preserved their language and its
literary treasures incorrupt; the other their late conversion to
Christianity—their cosmogony and mythology stands before us in full
flower, and we have not, as elsewhere, to pick up and piece
together the wretched fragments of a faith, the articles of which
its own priests had forgotten to commit to writing, and which those
of another creed had dashed to pieces and destroyed, wherever their
zealous hands could reach. In the two Eddas, therefore, in the
early Sagas, in Saxo's stilted Latin, which barely conceals the
popular songs and legends from which the historian drew his
materials, we are enabled to form a perfect conception of the creed
of the heathen Norsemen. We are enabled to trace, as has been
traced by the same hand in another place [Oxford
Essays for1898: 'The Norsemen in Iceland'.], the
natural and rational development of that creed from a simple
worship of nature and her powers, first to monotheism, and then to
a polytheistic system. The tertiary system of Polytheism is the
soil out of which the mythology of the Eddas sprang, though through
it each of the older formations crops out in huge masses which
admit of no mistake as to its origin. In the Eddas the natural
powers have been partly subdued, partly thrust on one side, for a
time, by Odin and the Aesir, by the Great Father and his children,
by One Supreme and twelve subordinate gods, who rule for an
appointed time, and over whom hangs an impending fate, which
imparts a charm of melancholy to this creed, which has clung to the
race who once believed in it long after the creed itself has
vanished before the light of Christianity. According to this creed,
the Aesir and Odin had their abode in Asgard, a lofty hill in the
centre of the habitable earth, in the midst of Midgard, thatmiddle earthwhich we hear of in early
English poetry, the abode of gods and men. Round that earth, which
was fenced in against the attacks of ancient and inveterate foes by
a natural fortification of hills, flowed the great sea in a ring,
and beyond that sea was Utgard, the outlying world, the abode of
Frost Giants, and Monsters, those old-natural powers who had been
dispossessed by Odin and the Aesir when the new order of the
universe arose, and between whom and the new gods a feud as
inveterate as that cherished by the Titans against Jupiter was
necessarily kept alive. It is true indeed that this feud was broken
by intervals of truce during which the Aesir and the Giants visit
each other, and appear on more or less friendly terms, but the true
relation between them was war; pretty much as the Norseman was at
war with all the rest of the world. Nor was this struggle between
two rival races or powers confined to the gods in Asgard alone.
Just as their ancient foes were the Giants of Frost and Snow, so
between the race of men and the race of Trolls was there a
perpetual feud. As the gods were men magnified and exaggerated, so
were the Trolls diminished Frost Giants; far superior to man in
strength and stature, but inferior to man in wit and invention.
Like the Frost Giants, they inhabit the rough and rugged places of
the earth, and, historically speaking, in all probability represent
the old aboriginal races who retired into the mountainous
fastnesses of the land, and whose strength was exaggerated, because
the intercourse between the races was small. In almost every
respect they stand in the same relations to men as the Frost Giants
stand to the Gods.There is nothing, perhaps, more characteristic of a true, as
compared with a false religion, than the restlessness of the one
when brought face to face with the quiet dignity and majesty of the
other. Under the Christian dispensation, our blessed Lord, his
awful sacrifice once performed, 'ascended up on high', having 'led
captivity captive', and expects the hour that shall make his foes
'his footstool'; but false gods, Jupiter, Vishnu, Odin, Thor, must
constantly keep themselves, as it were, before the eyes of men,
lest they should lose respect. Such gods being invariably what the
philosophers callsubjective,
that is to say, having no existence except in the minds of those
who believe in them; having been created by man in his own image,
with his own desires and passions, stand in constant need of being
recreated. They change as the habits and temper of the race which
adores them alter; they are ever bound to do something fresh, lest
man should forget them, and new divinities usurp their place. Hence
came endless avatars in Hindoo mythology, reproducing all the
dreamy monstrosities of that passive Indian mind. Hence came Jove's
adventures, tinged with all the lust and guile which the wickedness
of the natural man planted on a hot-bed of iniquity is capable of
conceiving. Hence bloody Moloch, and the foul abominations of
Chemosh and Milcom. Hence, too, Odin's countless adventures, his
journeys into all parts of the world, his constant trials of wit
and strength, with his ancient foes the Frost Giants, his
hair-breadth escapes. Hence Thor's labours and toils, his passages
beyond the sea, girt with his strength-belt, wearing his iron
gloves, and grasping his hammer which split the skulls of so many
of the Giant's kith and kin. In the Norse gods, then, we see the
Norseman himself, sublimed and elevated beyond man's nature, but
bearing about with him all his bravery and endurance, all his dash
and spirit of adventure, all his fortitude and resolution to
struggle against a certainty of doom which, sooner or later, must
overtake him on that dread day, the 'twilight of the gods', when
the wolf was to break loose, when the great snake that lay coiled
round the world should lash himself into wrath, and the whole race
of the Aesirs and their antagonists were to perish in internecine
strife.Such were the gods in whom the Norseman
believed—exaggerations of himself, of all his good and all his bad
qualities. Their might and their adventures, their domestic
quarrels and certain doom, were sung in venerable lays, now
collected in what we call the Elder, or Poetic Edda; simple
majestic songs, whose mellow accents go straight to the heart
through the ear, and whose simple severity never suffers us to
mistake their meaning. But, besides these gods, there were heroes
of the race whose fame and glory were in every man's memory, and
whose mighty deeds were in every minstrel's mouth. Helgi, Sigmund,
Sinfjötli, Sigurd, Signy, Brynhildr, Gudrun; champions and shield-
maidens, henchmen and corse-choosers, now dead and gone, who sat
round Odin's board in Valhalla. Women whose beauty, woes, and
sufferings were beyond those of all women; men whose prowess had
never found an equal. Between these, love and hate; all that can
foster passion or beget revenge. Ill assorted marriages; the right
man to the wrong woman, and the wrong man to the right woman;
envyings, jealousies, hatred, murders, all the works of the natural
man, combine together to form that marvellous story which begins
with a curse—the curse of ill-gotten gold—and ends with a curse, a
widow's curse, which drags down all on whom it falls, and even her
own flesh and blood, to certain doom. Such was the theme of the
wondrous Volsung Tale, the far older, simpler and grander original
of that Nibelungen Need of the thirteenth century, a tale which
begins with the slaughter of Fafnir by Sigurd, and ends with
Hermanaric, 'that fierce faith-breaker', as the Anglo-Saxon
minstrel calls him, when he is describing, in rapid touches, the
mythic glories of the Teutonic race.