Note 2 — THE MYTH IN REGARD TO THE LOWER WORLD. (Part IV. Continued from Volume II.)

There is a story of the creation of man by three wandering gods, who become in mediæval stories Jesus and SS. Peter and Paul walking among men, as in Champfleury's pretty apologue of the bonhomme misére, so beautifully illustrated by Legros. In the eddic legend one of these gods is called Hœne; he is the speech-giver of Wolospa, and is described in praises taken from lost poems as "the long-legged one" [langifotr], "the lord of the ooze" [aurkonungr]. Strange epithets, but easily explainable when one gets at the etymology of Hœne = hohni = Sansc. sakunas = Gr. kuknos = the white bird, swan, or stork, that stalks along in the mud, lord of the marsh; and it is now easy to see that this bird is the Creator walking in chaos, brooding over the primitive mish-mash or tohu-bohu, and finally hatching the egg of the world. Hohni is also, one would fancy, to be identified with Heimdal, the walker, who is also a creator-god, who sleeps more lightly than a bird, who is also the "fair Anse," and the "whitest of the Anses," the "waker of the gods," a celestial chanticleer as it were (Vigfusson, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, vol. i., Introduction, p. cii., quoted by the translator).