Note 10 — Chapter VII · THE ENCAMPMENT MOSSE EURD.

One of the wild ideas of Scandinavian mythology is, that the sun is the eye of Odin, and that he once had two like other people; but, that coming one day to the well of Mimiver, the waters of which are pure wisdom, he bargained for a draught, and bought the horn gjoll full at the price of one of his eyes; no such great quantity either, if gjoll be the original of our English gill. However, this fully accounts for the fact that the moon is not now so bright as the sun, which it probably once was. It must be confessed that the whole of this story is entirely inconsistent with the theory of the sun and moon in the prose “Edda,” where these are represented as separate and independent divinities, the son and daughter of the giant Mundilfari,—the sun being feminine and the moon masculine; a tradition contrary to the notions of our poets, but fully borne out by our English peasants, who invariably speak of the moon as “he,” and the sun as “she.”