Note 1034 — Chapter XVII · THE GRECIAN MYTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF MODERN EUROPE.
Reading edition
“Interea tamen homines Christiani in numina non credant ethnica, nec aliter fidem narrationibus hisce adstruere vel adhibere debent, quam in libri hujus proœmio monitum est de causis et occasionibus cur et quomodo genus humanum a verâ fide aberraverit.” (Extract from the Prose Edda, p. 75, in the Lexicon Mythologicum ad calcem Eddæ Sæmund. vol. iii. p. 357, Copenhag. edit.)
A similar warning is to be found in another passage cited by P. E. Müller, Über den Ursprung und Verfall der Isländischen Historiographie, p. 138, Copenhagen, 1813; compare the Prologue to the Prose Edda, p. 6, and Mallet, Introduction à l’Histoire de Dannemarc, ch. vii. pp. 114-132.
Saxo Grammaticus represents Odin sometimes as a magician, sometimes as an evil dæmon, sometimes as a high priest or pontiff of heathenism, who imposed so powerfully upon the people around him as to receive divine honors. Thor also is treated as having been an evil dæmon. (See Lexicon Mythologic. ut supra, pp. 567, 915.)
Respecting the function of Snorro as logographer, see Præfat. ad Eddam, ut supra, p. xi. He is much more faithful, and less unfriendly to the old religion, than the other logographers of the ancient Scandinavian Sagas. (Leitfaden der Nordischen Alterthümer, p. 14, by the Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, 1837.)
By a singular transformation, dependent upon the same tone of mind, the authors of the French Chansons de Geste, in the twelfth century, turned Apollo into an evil dæmon, patron of the Mussulmans (see the Roman of Garin le Loherain, par M. Paulin Paris, 1833, p. 31): “Car mieux vaut Dieux que ne fait Apollis.” M. Paris observes, “Cet ancien Dieu des beaux arts est l’un des démons le plus souvent désignés dans nos poëmes, comme patron des Musulmans.”
The prophet Mahomet, too, anathematized the old Persian epic anterior to his religion. “C’est à l’occasion de Naser Ibn al-Hareth, qui avait apporté de Perse l’Histoire de Rustem et d’Isfendiar, et la faisait réciter par des chanteuses dans les assemblées des Koreischites, que Mahomet prononça le vers suivant (of the Koran): Il y a des hommes qui achètent des contes frivoles, pour détourner par-là les hommes de la voie de Dieu, d’une manière insensée, et pour la livrer à la risée: mais leur punition les couvrira de honte.” (Mohl, Préface au Livre des Rois de Ferdousi, p. xiii.)