Book 1 — CHAPTER XII. HEATHENDOM. (continued 2)
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These examples will suffice to show how thoroughly personal the conception of Wierd remained; and in this respect there is no difference whatever between the practice in Beówulf and in the more professedly Christian poems of the Exeter and Vercelli codices, or Cædmon. But one peculiarity remains to be noticed, which connects our Wierd in the most striking manner with the heathen goddesses generally, and the Scandinavian Nornir particularly. We have seen that Wierd opposes, that she stands close to the doomed warrior, that she ravishes him away, that she sweeps away the power of men, that she decides or appoints the event, that she is hard and cruel and pursues her victims. But she also weaves, weaves the web of destiny, as we can say even to this day without violence. It is necessary to give examples of this expression: “Me ðæt wyrd gewæf[750],”—Wierd wove that for me; similar to which is, “Ac him dryhten forgeaf wígspéda gewiofu[751],”—but the Lord gave him the weft of victory; where undoubtedly an earlier weaving Wyrd was thought of. “Ðonne seó þrag cymeð, wefen wyrd-stafum[752],”—when the time cometh, woven with wierd-staves, or letters, probably runes. There is a remarkable passage in the same collection[753], “Wyrmas mec ne áwǽfon, Wyrda 402cræftum, ða ðe geolo godwebb geatwum frætwað,”—Worms wove me not, with the skill of Wierds, those namely which the yellow silk for garments beautifully form. Here weaving is especially put forward as that in which Wierd excels, her own peculiar craft and business[754].
Spinning and weaving are the constant occupation of Teutonic goddesses and heroines: Holda and Bertha spin[755], and so do all the representatives of these goddesses in popular tradition even down to the fairies. But the Valkyriur or Shieldmays also weave, and in this function, as well as their immediate action in the battle-field, as choosers of the slain[756], they have some points of contact with the Norns and Wyrd[757]. Gray has transferred to our language from the Nials Saga a fine poem[758] which throws some light upon the weaving of the Valkyriur, the wígspéda gewiofu. The Anglosaxon belief in the Shieldmaidens comes to us indeed in a darkened form, yet we can hardly doubt that it survived. The word Wælcyrge occurs in glossaries to explain 403Bellona, the goddess of war, and one gloss calls eyes Wælcyrigean, gorgonei, terrible as those of Gorgo; the flashing of the eyes was very probably one mark of a Wælcyrge in the old belief[759], as she floated or rode above the closing ranks of battle. In the superstitions of a later period however we find a clear allusion to these supernatural maidens. A spell preserved in a Harleian manuscript[760] contains the following passages:
Hlúde wǽon hí lá hlúde, ðá hý
ofer ðone hlǽw ridon;
wǽron anmóde, ðá hý
ofer land ridon.
“Loud, lo! loud were they, as they rode over 404the hill: bold were they, as they rode over the land.”
Stód under linde
under leóhtum scylde
ðǽr ða mihtigan wíf
hyra mægen berǽddon,
and hý gyllende
gáras sendon.
“I stood beneath my linden shield, beneath my light shield, where the mighty women exercised their power, and sent the yelling javelins!” Another spell from a MS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, appears to name them more distinctly:
Sitte ge, sígewíf,
sígað tó eorðan,
næfre ge wilde
tó wuda fleógan;
beó ge swá gemindige
mínes gódes,
swá bið manna gehwilc
metes and éðeles.
“Sit, ye victorious women (or women of victory) descend to earth, never fly ye wildly to the wood: be ye as mindful of good to me, as every man is of food and landed possession.” Grimm has remarked with great justice[761] that the sígewíf here recalls the names of Wælcyrian, Sigrdrífa, Sigrún and Sigrlinn. I certainly see in Sigewíf, women who give victory; and the allusion to the wild flight and the wood are both essentially characteristic of the Wælcyrian, 405whom Saxo Grammaticus calls feminae and nymphae sylvestres. For many examples of this peculiar character, it is sufficient to refer to the Deutsche Mythologie[762].
CREATION AND DESTRUCTION.—The cosmogony of the Pentateuch was necessarily adopted by the Saxon converts; yet not so entirely as to exclude all the traditions of heathendom. In the mythology of the Northern nations, the creation of the world occupied an important place: its details are recorded in some of the most striking lays of the earlier Edda; and several of them appear unconsciously to have acted upon the minds of our Christian poets. The genius of the Anglosaxons does not indeed seem to have led them to the adoption of those energetic and truly imaginative forms of thought which the Scandinavians probably derived from the sterner natural features that surrounded them: the rude rocks and lakes of Norway and Sweden, the volcanoes, hot springs, ice plains and snow-covered mountains of Iceland, readily moulded the Northmen to a different train of thought from that which satisfied the dwellers in the marshlands of the Elbe and the fat plains of Britain. But as in the main it cannot be doubted that the heathendom of both races was the same, so even in many modes of expression we meet with a resemblance which can hardly be accidental. Like almost every other people, the Northmen considered 406a gigantic chaos to have preceded the world of order. While the giant Ymer lived, the earth was “without form and void.” Listen to the words of the Vaulu Spá, or Prophetess’s Song:
Ár var alda þar er Ýmir bygði: vara sandr né sær né svalar unnir: jörð fannsk æva né uppkiminn, gap var ginnunga, en gras hvergi[763]. When Ymer dwelt here, 'twas the dawn of time: cool streams were not, neither sands, nor seas: earth was not nor o’er it heaven, yawned the gap, and grass was nowhere.
The sons of Bur however, Oþinn, Vile and Ve, created the vast Midgard, or realm of earth:
Sól skein sunnan á salar steina þá var grand gróin grœnum lauki[764]. The sun shone southward on the stone halls, then was earth grown with green produce.
The constellations however as yet had no appointed course:
Sól þat ne vissi hvar hon sali átti, máni þat ne vissi hvat hann megins átti, stjörnur þat ne vissu hvar þær staði áttu[765]. But the sun knew not where her seat should be, and the moon knew not what his might should be, planets knew not where their place should be.
So the holy Gods went to council, and divided the seasons, giving names to night and noon and morning, to undern and evening, that the years might be reckoned[766].
407The construction of the world out of the fragments of Ymer’s body, the doctrine of the ash Yggdrasil, and of wondrous wells beneath its roots, could of course find no echo here, after the conversion. But it is very remarkable how nearly the description of creation given in Cædmon sometimes coincides with the old remains of heathendom:
Ne wæs hér ðágiet nymðe heólstersceado wiht geworden, ac ðes wída grund stód deóp and dim, drihtne fremde, ídel and unnyt; on ðone eágnm wlát stíðfrihð cining, and ða stowe beheóld dreáma leáse. Geseah deorc gesweorc sémian sinnihte, sweart under roderum, wonn and wéste ... folde wæs ðágyt græs ungréne; gársecg þeahte sweart synnihte wíde and síde wonne wægas[767]. There had not here as yet save cavern shade aught existed, but this wide abyss stood deep and dim, strange to its lord, idle and useless; on which looked with his eyes the king firm of mood and beheld the place devoid of joys. He saw the dark cloud lour in endless night, swart under heaven, dusky and desert ... the earth was yet not green with grass; but ocean covered dark in endless night far and wide the dusky ways.
Then follows the creation of light, the separation of evening and morning, and the production of organic life, as in the first chapter of Genesis. The Wída grund, or vast abyss, is the Ginnunga gap, yawning gulf, of the Edda, and a very remarkable 408parallel lies in the assertion that there was no grass anywhere to make green the earth.
The world was created out of the portions of Ymer’s body; but it seems to be a remnant of ancient heathendom when we find in later times a tradition that Man was created out of the great natural portions of the world itself. An ancient Frisic manuscript quoted by Grimm in Haupt’s Altdeutsche Blätter[768] says, “God scóp thene éresta meneska, thet was Adam, fon achta wendem; thet bénete fon tha sténe, thet flásk fon there erthe, thet blód fon tha wetere, tha herta fon tha winde, thene thochta fon tha wolken, thene suét fon tha dáwe, tha lokkar fon tha gerse, tha ágene fon there sunna, and tha blérem on thene helga óm.” That is,—God created him of eight things: his bones from stone, his flesh from earth, his blood from water, his heart from wind, his thought from cloud, his sweat from dew, his hair from the grass, his eyes from the sun, and then breathed into him the breath of life. In the prose Salomon and Saturn we are also told that Adam was created of eight pounds by weight: a pound of earth from whence his flesh; a pound of fire, whence his red and hot blood; a pound of wind, whence his breathing; a pound of cloud, whence his unsteadiness of mood; a pound of grace, whence his stature and growth; a pound of blossoms, whence the variety of his eyes; a pound of dew, whence his sweat; and a pound of salt, whence his salt tears[769].
409But a much more striking proof of heathendom lies in the Anglosaxon belief that after the destruction of this creation a more beautiful one would arise; not only a metaphysical kingdom of heaven, but a concrete world like our own, on a more imposing and glorious scale. It was the belief of the Northmen that in the closing evening of the ages, the Ragna-rauk, or twilight of the Gods, the old Titanic powers would burst their fetters; Loki, the Northern Satan, would be released from his bondage; Midgard’s orm, the serpent that surrounds the world, would rise in his giant fury; the wolf Fenrir would snap his chain and move against the gods; the ship Naglfar, made of the nails of the dead, and steered by Loki, would convey the sons of Muspelheim to Vigrid, the plain on which this heathen Armageddon was to be fought: at their head the terrible Surtr, the black, the destroyer of the gods, beneath whose sword of fire the whole world should perish.
Kjóll ferr austan, koma munu Muspells um laug lýðir, en Loki stýrir[770]. Eastward the ship shall shape its journey, Muspell’s sons the sea shall travel, o’er the lakes shall Loki steer her.
Oþinn, Thórr, and the other gods shall perish, but not unrevenged: the wolf and the serpent will fall, one by the hands of Viðarr, Oþinn’s son, the other under the terrible battle-maul of Thórr. The 410sun and moon and earth will be destroyed, and the ash Yggrdasil wither under the flames of Surtr.
Sól tekr sortna, sígr fold í mar, hverfa af himni heiðar stjörnur; geisar eimr við aldrnára, leikr hár hiti við himin sjálfan[771] Black wanes the sun, in waves the earth shall sink, from heaven shall fall the friendly stars; round the tree red fire shall rustle, high heat play against the heaven.
But the Gods will be found again in Iðavelli; the earth will arise again from the ocean; the sun that perished will have left a yet more beauteous daughter to perform her task; the deities will remember their ancient power, and the secrets of the great god; the golden tablets will be found in the grass; Baldr, the slain god, will arise from the tomb; Havdr, that unconsciously slew him, will return with him from the realms of Hel, the goddess of the dead. Viðarr and Vale, sons, or rather new births of Oþinn; Mode and Magne, sons of Thórr, will survive the universal destruction; Allfather’s glorious kingdom will be renewed, and the power of death and evil vanish for ever.
Sér hon uppkoma öðru sinni, jörð or œgi iðjagrœna[772]. Then sees she rise a second time the world from ocean wondrous green.
Eína dóttur berr Álfröðull áðr hana Fenrir fari; sú skal ríða, þá er regin deyja, móður brautir mær[773]. One bright child shall bear Álfröðull, ere her form doth Fenrir ruin; thus shall go, when gods have perished, the maiden on her mother’s journey.
411Finnask Æsir á Iðavelli, ok um moldþinur mátkan dœma, ok minnask þar á megindóma, ok á fimbultýs fornar rúnar. Æsir meet in Iðavelli, doom with power the great disasters, there remember mighty judgements, and Fimbultýrs former secrets.
Þar munu eptir undrsamligar gullnar töflur í grasi finnask, þærs í árdaga áttar höfðu fólkvaldr goða ok Fjölnis kind. After, shall be all together found in the grass the golden tablets, which in time past possessed among them gods that ruled the race of Odin.
Munu ósánír akrar vaxa, böls mun alls batna, Baldr mun koma; búa þeir Höðr ok Baldr Hropts sigtóptir vel valtivar[774]. Then unsown the swath shall flourish all bale mend, and back come Baldr: with him Höðr dwell in Hropter’s palace, shrines of gods the great and holy.
412Sal sér hon standa sólu fegra, gulli þakðan á Gimli: þar skolu dyggvar dróttir byggja, ok um aldrdaga ynðis njóta[775]. There sees she stand than sunlight fairer, Gimli’s hall with gold all covered: there the just shall joy for ever, and in pleasure pass the ages.
The conviction that the virtuous would rejoice with God in a world of happiness was of course not derived by our forefathers merely from their heathendom; but to this we may unhesitatingly refer their belief, that after doomsday the sun and moon would be restored with greater splendour. The Saxon Menology[776] says very distinctly:
“At doomsday, when our Lord shall renew all creatures, and all the race of men shall rise again, and never more commit sin, then will the sun shine seven times brighter than she now doth, and she will never set; and the moon will shine as the sun now doth, and never will wane or wax, but stand for ever on his course[777].” That this belief was not unknown in Germany may be argued from an expression of Freidank,
Got himel und erde lát zergán,
unt wil dernách ein schoenerz hán[778].
Dim and fragmentary as these rays of light may be which straggle to us through the veils of bygone ages, it is impossible not to recognize in them traces of that primæval faith which teaches the responsibility of man, the rule of just and holy beings 413superior to himself, and a future existence of joy and sorrow, the ultimate consequence of human actions. With what amount of distinctness this great truth may have been placed before their eyes, we cannot tell, but it is enough that we see it admitted in one of the most thoroughly heathen poems of the Edda, and confirmed by an Anglosaxon tradition totally independent of Christianity. Weak as it is while unsupported by the doctrine of a gracious Redeemer, it is not wholly inoperative upon the moral being of men; and its reception among the nations of the North must have tended to prepare them for the doctrine which in the fulness of time was to supersede their vague and powerless desires by the revelation of the crucified Saviour.
HEROES.—It now remains that we should bestow a few words upon the heroic names which figure in the Epopœa of the North, and which probably in many cases belong to the legends and the worship of gods now forgotten, or which at least represent those gods in their heroic form and character; even as the Iliad in Achilles may celebrate only one form of the Dorian Apollo, and the legends of Cadmus and Theseus may be echoes from an earlier cult of Jupiter and Neptune.
The hero Scyld or Sceldwa[779] has been mentioned as the godlike progenitor of the Scyldingas, the royal race of Denmark; but he also appears among the mythical ancestors of Wóden, in the genealogy 414of Wessex. It is a singular fact that the Anglosaxons alone possess the fine mythus of this hero; the opening division or canto of Beówulf relates of him that he was exposed as a child in a ship upon the ocean; a costly treasure accompanied the sleeping infant as he floated to the shores of the Gardanes, whose king he became; after reigning gloriously and founding a race of kings, he died, and was again sent forth in his ship, surrounded with treasures, to go into the unknown world, from which he came; he came to found a royal race[780], and having done so, he departs and nothing more is known of him. That this mythus was deeply felt in England appears from its being referred to even by the later chroniclers: Æðelweard[781] and William of Malmesbury[782] mention it at length, and a 415desire to engraft a national upon a biblical tradition not only causes Sceaf to be called by some authors the son of Shem, but leads to the assertion of the Saxon chronicle that Sceaf was the son of Noah, born in the ark[783], in obvious allusion to the miraculous exposure on the waters. The mention of Scani by Æðelweard may be taken in connection with a Norse tradition that Skjold was Skanunga goþ, a god of the Scanings. An Anglosaxon riddle in the Codex Exoniensis[784], and of which the answer seems to me to be only a shield, concludes with the very remarkable words,
nama mín is mǽre, hæleðum gifre, and hálig sylf. mighty is my name, rapacious among men, and itself holy.
The second line seems to exclude the supposition of there being any reference to Almighty God, though Scyld, like Helm, is one of his names, examples of which are numerous in all Anglosaxon poetry. There are one or two places in England which bear the name of this god or hero: these are Scyldes treów[785], Scyldmere[786], and Scyldes heáfda[787]; but except in the genealogy of Wessex and the tradition recorded by Æðelweard and William of Malmesbury, there is no record of Sceaf.
As in the poem of Beówulf, Scyld is said to have 416a son called Beówulf from whom the kings of Sleswig are descended, so in the genealogy of Wessex, Scyld is followed by Beaw: there is some uncertainty in the form of the name, but upon comparison of all the different versions given by various chroniclers, we may conclude that it was Beówa or Beów, a word equivalent to Beówulf. The original divinity of this person is admitted by Grimm, but he suffers himself to be misled by some over-skilful German lexicographer who has added Beewolf to the list of English names for the woodpecker, and would render Beówulf as a sort of Latin Picus. I am not aware that any bird in England was ever called the beewolf, or that there are any superstitions connected with the woodpecker in England, as there are in Germany; the cuckoo and the magpie are our birds of augury. When Grimm then declares himself disposed not to give up the termination -wulf in the name, he has only the authority of the poem on his side, in defence of his theory: against which must be placed every other list or genealogy; and it seems to me that these are strongly confirmed by the occurrence of a place called, not Beówulfes hám, but Beówan hám[788], in immediate connection with another named Grendles mere[789]: Whatever the name, this hero was looked upon as the eponymus of various royal races, and this, though the names which have survived are obviously erroneous[790], is distinctive of his real character.
417There are various other heroes mentioned in the poem of Beówulf and in the Traveller’s Song, some remembrance of which is still preserved in local names in various parts of England. A few words may not be misplaced respecting them. In the first-named poem, the hero’s lord and suzerain is invariably named Hygelác; after whose death Beówulf himself becomes king of the Geátas. As Hygelác is said to have perished in fight against the Franks, and as history records the fall of a Danish king Chochilachus in a predatory excursion into the Frankish territory about the beginning of the seventh century[791], Outzen, Leo and others have identified the two in fact as well as name, and drawn conclusions as to the mythical hero, from the historical prince. The coincidence is not conclusive: if Hygelác’s name were already mythical in the seventh century, it may easily have been given to any leader who ventured a plundering expedition into the Frankish territory, especially as the warlike records of an earlier Hygelác would be certain to contain some account of Frankish forays: nor was Hygelác, in Danish Hugleikr[792], by any means an uncommon name. On the other hand, if we admit the historical allusion, we must assign a date to, at any rate, that episode of the poem which is hardly consistent with its general character. I am 418therefore inclined to think that in this instance, as in so many others, an accidental resemblance has been too much relied upon: it is in fact quite as likely (or even more likely) that the historian should have been indebted to the legend, than that the poet should have derived his matter from history. It does seem probable that Hygelác enjoyed a mythical character among the Germans: in the “Altdeutsche Blätter” of Moriz Haupt[793], we find the following statement, taken from a MS. of the tenth century. “De Getarum rege Huiglauco mirae magnitudinis.—Et sunt mirae magnitudinis, ut rex Huiglaucus, qui imperavit Getis et a Francis occisus est, quem equus a duodecimo anno portare non potuit, cuius ossa in Rheni fluminis insula, ubi in oceanum prorumpit, reservata sunt et de longinquo venientibus pro miraculo ostenduntur.”
But Hygelác is not known in Germany only: even in England we have traces of him in local names: thus Hygeláces geát[794], which, as the name was never borne by an Anglosaxon,—so far at least as we know,—speaks strongly for his mythical character. That the fortunes, under similar circumstances, of a historical prince, of the same name or not of the same name, should have become mixed up with an earlier legend, is by no means unusual or surprising.
Another hero of the Beówulf cycle is Hnæf the Hócing, whose fate is described in a fine episode[795], and is connected with the poem called “The battle 419of Finnesburh[796].” Of him too England has something to tell: I find a place was called Hnæfes scylf[797], and further that there was a Hóces byrgels[798], obviously not a Christian burial-place, a Hóces ham[799], and a Hócing mǽd[800]. But unless resemblances greatly deceive us, we must admit that this hero was not entirely unknown to the Franks also; Charlemagne’s wife Hiltikart, a lady of most noble blood among the Swæfas or Sueves (“nobilissimi generis Suavorum puella”) was a near relation of Kotofrit, duke of the Alamanni[801]: in her genealogy occur the names Huocingus and Nebi in immediate succession, and it seems difficult not to see in these Hócing and Hnæf. If, as has been suggested, the Hócings were Chauci or Frisians, their connexion with the Sueves must be of an antiquity almost transcending the limits of history, and date from those periods when the Frisians were neighbours of the Swæfas upon the Elbe, and long before these occupied the highlands of Germany, long in fact before the appearance of the Franks in Gaul, under Chlodio.
Among the heroes of heathen tradition are Wada, Weland and Eigil. All three, so celebrated in the mythus and epos of Scandinavia and Germany, have left traces in England. Of Wada the Traveller’s 420Song declares that he ruled the Helsings[802]; and even later times had to tell of Wade’s boat[803], in which the exact allusion is unknown to us: the Scandinavian story makes him wade across the Groenasund, carrying his son upon his shoulder; perhaps our tradition gave a different version of this perilous journey. The names of places which record his name are not numerous, but still such are found, thus Wadanbeorgas[804], Wadanhlǽw[805]. It is otherwise, however, with his still more celebrated son, Weland, the Wieland of German, Völundr of Norse and Galand of French tradition. Weland is the most famous of smiths, and all good swords are his work. In Beówulf, the hero when about to engage in a perilous adventure, requests that if he falls his coat-of-mail may be sent home, Welandes geweorc, either literally the work of Weland, or a work so admirable that Weland might have made it.[806] Ælfred in his Boetius[807] translates fidelis ossa Fabricii by 421“ðæs wísan goldsmiðes bán Welondes,” where, as Grimm[808] observes, the word Fabricius (faber) may have led him to think of the most celebrated of smiths, Weland. The use made by Sir W. Scott of Weland’s name must be familiar to all readers of Kenilworth: from what has been said it will appear how mistaken in many respects his view was. The place in Berkshire which even yet in popular tradition preserves the name of Wayland smith, is nevertheless erroneously called; the boundary of a Saxon charter names it much more accurately Welandes smiððe, i. e. Weland’s smithy, his workshop[809]. The legend of Weland, identical in many respects with that of the Wilkina Saga and other Northern versions, is mentioned in the Cod. Exon. p. 377. Here we find notice taken of his mutilation by Niðaudr, the violence done by him to Bödhildr, and other acts of his revenge[810], all in fact that is most important in this part of his history. Grimm reminds me[811] that the Wilkina Saga makes Weland 422the constructor of a wondrous boat, and that the act of the son may thus have been transferred to the father, Weland’s boat to Wade.
In the Northern tradition appears a brother of Weland, named Eigil or Egil, who is celebrated as an archer, and to whom belongs the wide-spread tale which has almost past into accredited history in the case of William Tell; this tale given by Saxo Grammaticus to Toko, by the Jomsvíkínga Saga to Palnatoki, and by other authorities to other heroes from the twelfth till the very end of the fifteenth century, but most likely of the very highest antiquity in every part of Europe, was beyond doubt an English one also, and is repeated in the ballad of William of Cloudesley: it is therefore probable that it belongs to a much older cycle, and was as well known as the legends of Wada and Weland, with which it is so nearly connected. Eigil would among the Anglosaxons have borne the form of Ægel, and accordingly we find places compounded with this name,—thus Æglesbyrig, now Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire; Æglesford, now Aylsford in Kent; Ægleslona, in Worcester[812]; Ægleswurð, now Aylsworth in Northamptonshire[813]; also Ægleswyl; and lastly Aylestone in Leicestershire.
The Wilkina Saga and the Scald’s Complaint already cited from the Codex Exoniensis, lead us next to the legends of Ðeódríc (Dietrich von Bern) and Eormenríc, (Hermanaríc), and through the latter to Sigfried and the other heroes of the Nibelungen 423cycle. The heroic or even godlike character of Dietrich has been well made out by Grimm[814], and the historical Theodoric the Ostrogoth vanishes in his traditional representative. The Anglosaxon poet evidently refers to the latter, not indeed from the story he tells, but from the collocation of Ðeódríc among merely mythical personages. Perhaps, as the whole scope of his poem is to relate the misfortunes of the great and thus draw consolation for his own, the thirty years’ residence in Mæringaburg may be considered as a reference to Ðeódríc’s flight from before Otachar[815] and long-continued exile. In a Saxon menology[816] of great antiquity, 424the author, after stating the eighteenth of May to be the commemoration of St. John, Pope and Martyr, goes on to say, that an anchoret on Lipari told certain sailors how at a particular time he had seen king Theodoric, ungirt, barefoot, and bound, led between St. John and St. Finian, and by them hurled into the boiling crater of the neighbouring island Vulcano. That on their return to Italy the sailors discovered by comparison of dates that Theodoric died on the day on which the anchoret noticed his punishment by the hands of his victims. The author expressly tells it was Theodoricus, the king of the Goths in Ravenna; and he concludes by saying, “That was Theodoricus the king whom we call Ðeódríc,” which we can only understand by supposing him to allude to the mythical Ðeódríc. Ælfred seems also to have known something of the mythical Ðeódríc when he says, “he wæs Amaling,” a fact historically true of the Ostrogoth Theodoric, but yet unlikely to have been contained in Ælfred’s Latin authorities. The Traveller’s Song says[817], “Ðeódríc weóld Froncum,” Theodoric ruled the Franks, but this I should rather understand of one of the historical Merwingian kings, than of the Ostrogoth.
The legends of Eormanríc were obviously familiar to the Anglosaxons: in the so often quoted 425poem of the Traveller’s Song, this celebrated prince is mentioned more than once, as well as in the poem which contains the notices of Weland, Beadohild and Ðeódríc. The character given of him in both these compositions denotes a familiarity with the details of his history, as we find them almost universally in the Northern traditions, and more particularly those of his wealth, his cruelty and his treachery.
In Beówulf we have a somewhat further development of his history. We there learn incidentally that Háma (the Ammius of Saxo Grammaticus) carried off from him the Brósinga-mén or mythical collar of the goddess Freya. There can be no doubt that this necklace, called in the Norse traditions Mén Brísínga, is of a most thoroughly mythological charactercharacter[818], and any reference to it in Saxon poetry is welcome evidence of ancient heathendom: moreover 426the Anglosaxon poet alone mentions it in connection with Eormanríc. This peculiar feature is as little known to the other Germanic nations as the beautiful legend of Scyld Scéfing, the loves of Geát and Mǽðhild, the dragon-slaughter of Sigmund, the wars of Hengest and Finn Folcwalding, or the noble epos of Beówulf itself: unfortunately we have no detail as to the circumstances under which the necklace of the goddess came into the possession of Eormanríc.
The Traveller’s Song however has traces of many heroes who are closely connected with the traditional cyclus of Eormanríc: among these are Sifeca (the false Sibich of Germany) and Becca, the Bikki of the corresponding Norse versions, whom it makes chieftain of the Baningas, perhaps the “sons of mischief” from Bana. Háma, already named, and Wudga, the Wittich and Heime of Germany, occur in the same poem: so also the terrible Ætla, Attila the Hun, the Ætli of Scandinavia, the Etzel of the Nibelungen cycle. In the same composition we find Gúðhere, king of the Burgundians, the Norse Gunnar, and German Gunther; and Hagena, probably the Norse Högni, and Hagen the murderer of Sigfried. The Traveller’s Song, and the Scóp’s Complaint contain no mention of the great hero of the Norse and German epos, Sigurdr Fafnisbani, Sigfried, the betrothed of the Shieldmay Bryhyldur, the husband of the fairhaired Chriemhilt.
All the more welcome to us is the episode in Beówulf, which not only records the tale of Sigurdr, though under the name of his father Sigmund, and 427makes particular mention of the dragon-slaughter (Fafnis-bani)—which is a central point in the Norse tradition, although hardly noticed at all in the Nibelungen Lied,—but also refers to the fearful adventures which the Edda relates of the hero and his kinsman Sinfiötli (Fitela) which appear totally unknown in Germany.
Having said thus much of the heroic personages to whom so large a portion of Northern and Germanic tradition is devoted, it becomes possible for me to refer to the great work of James Grimm on German mythology for a demonstration of the connection between these heroes and the gods of our forefathers. I regret that my own limits render it impossible for me to enter at greater length upon this part of the subject; but it requires a work of no small dimensions, and devoted to it exclusively: and it is therefore sufficient to show the identity of our own heroic story and that of Scandinavia and the continent, and thus enable the English reader to adapt to his own national traditions the conclusions of learned enquirers abroad, with respect to their own[819].
428DIVINATION AND WITCHCRAFT.—The attachment of the Germanic races to divination attracted the notice of Tacitus[820]: he says: “They are as great observers of auspices and lots as any. The way they use their lots is simple; they cut into slips a branch taken from an oak or beech, and having distinguished them by certain marks, scatter them at random and as chance wills over a white cloth. Then if the enquiry is a public one, the state-priest,—if a private one, the father of the house himself,—having prayed to the gods, and looking up to heaven, thrice raises each piece, and interprets them when raised according to the marks before inscribed upon them. If they turn out unfavourable, there is no further consultation that day about the same matter: if they are favourable, the authority of omens is still required. Even here they are acquainted with a mode of interrogating the voices and flight of birds; but it is peculiar to this race to try the presages and admonitions of horses. These, white in colour and subject to no mortal work, are fed at the public cost in the sacred groves and woods: then being harnessed to the sacred chariot, they are accompanied by the priest, the king or the prince of the state, who observe their neighings and snortings. Nor has any augury more authority than this, not only among the common people, but even the nobles and priests: for they think themselves the ministers, but the horses the confidants, of the gods. There is another customary form of auspices, by which they 429inquire concerning the event of serious wars. They match a captive of the nation with which they are at war, however they can come by him, with a select champion of their own, each armed with his native weapons. The victory of this one or that is taken as a presage.”
The use of lots as connected with heathendom, that is, as a means of looking into futurity, continued in vogue among the Saxons till a late period, in spite of the efforts of the clergy: this is evident from the many allusions in the Poenitentials, and the prohibitions of the secular law. The augury by horses does not appear to have been used in England, from any allusion at least which still survives; but it was still current in Germany in the seventh century, and with less change of adjuncts than we usually find in the adoption of heathen forms by Christian saints. It was left to the decision of horses to determine where the mortal remains of St. Gall should rest; the saint would not move, till certain unbroken horses were brought and charged with his coffin: then, after prayers, we are told, “Elevato igitur a pontifice nec non et a sacerdote feretro, et equis superposito, ait episcopus: ‘Tollite frena de capitibus eorum, et pergant, ubi Dominus voluerit.’voluerit.’ Vexillum ergo crucis cum luminaribus adsumebatur, et psallentes, equis praecedentibus, via incipiebatur[821].” It may be imagined that the horses infallibly found the proper place for the saint’s burial-place; but what is of importance to us is the use of horses on the occasion. In this country however 430we have some record of a divination in which not horses but a bull played a principal part; and as bulls were animals sacred to the great goddess Nerthus, it is not unlikely that this was a remnant of ancient heathendom. St. Benedict on one occasion appeared to a fisherman named Wulfgeat, and desired him to announce to duke Æðelwine[822], his lord, that it was his the saint’s wish to have a monastery erected to himself, to the pious mother of mercy and All virgins. The spot was to be where he should see a bull stamp with his foot. To use the words of the saint to the fisherman, “Ut ei igitur haec omnia per ordinem innotescas exhortor, sermonem addens sermoni, quatenus scrutetur diligentius in loco praedicto quomodo noctu fessa terrae sua incumbant animalia, ac ubi taurum surgentem pede dextro viderit percutere terram, ibidem proculdubio xenodochii sciat se aram erigere debere.” Obedient to the order, duke Æðelwine set out in the morning to find the spot: “Mira res, et miranda, ubi vir praedictus insulam est ingressus, ... animalia sua in modum crucis, taurum vero in medio eorum iacere prospexit. Et sicut quondam sancto Clementi agnus pede dextro locum fontis, sic viro isti taurus terram pede percutiendo locum mensae futuri arcisterii significavit divinitus[823].” St. Clement’s fountain never rolled such floods of gold as found their way to the rich abbey of Ramsey!
Other details of heathendom in the practices of 431ordinary life must be left to the appendix to this chapter; but a cursory reference may be made to what appears to show a belief in the evil eye, and that practice which in Latin is called invultuatio. The former of these is mentioned in the poem of Beówulf[824], where Hróðgár, warning Beówulf of the frail tenure of human life, adds, “eágena bearhtm,” the glance of eyes, to the many dangers the warrior had to fear:
Nú is ðínes mægnes blæd áne hwíle, eft sona bið ðæt ðec adl oððe ecg eafoðes getwǽfeð, oððe fýres feng, oððe flódes wylm, oððe grípe meces, oððe gáres fliht oððe atol yldo, oððe eágena bearhtm, forsitteð and forsworceð. Now is the bloom of thy strength for a little while, soon will it be that sickness or the sword shall part thee from thy power, or clutch of fire, or wave of flood, or gripe of sword, or javelin’s flight, or ugly age, or glance of eye, shall oppress and darken thee!
Invultuation is defined by Mr. Thorpe in the following words: “a species of witchcraft, the perpetrators of which were called vultivoli, and are thus described by John of Salisbury: Qui ad affectus hominum immutandos, in molliori materia, cera forte vel limo, eorum quos pervertere nituntur effigies exprimunt[825]. To this superstition Virgil alludes:
“Limus ut hic durescit, et haec ut cera liquescit,
Uno eodemque igni, sic nostro Daphnis amore.
“Of the practice of this superstition, both in England and Scotland, many instances are to be 432met with; among the most remarkable, that of Eleanor Cobham, duchess of Gloucester, and Stacey, servant to George Duke of Clarence[826].”
But it seems to include also the practising against the life of an enemy by means of a waxen or other figure, in which pins were stuck, or against which a sharp bolt was shot.shot. It is against this crime that the law of Henry the First enacts[827]: “Si quis veneno, vel sortilegio, vel invultuacione, seu maleficio aliquo, faciat homicidium, sive illi paratum sit sive alii, nihil refert, quin factum mortiferum, et nullo modo redimendum sit:” and this is perhaps also intended by the word liblác used by Æðelstân[828]. It is also probable that this was the crime for which in the tenth century a widow was put to death by drowning at London Bridge, and her property forfeited to the crown[829]. Anglosaxon homilies however also mention philtres of various kinds, which the people are warned against as dangerous and damnable heathendom.
Such are the fragments of a system which at one time fed the religious yearnings and propped the moral faith of our forefathers,—faint notes from a chorus of triumphant jubilation which once rose to heaven from every corner of the island.
How shall we characterize it? As a dull and debasing Fetish-worship, worthy of African savages? or as a vague and colourless Pantheism, in which religion vanishes away, and philosophy gropes for a basis which it cannot find? I think not.
433Contemplate the child who bounds through the wood, or pauses in delight upon the meadow, where he wantons in the very joy of life itself: to him this great creation is full of playmates, beings animate or inanimate, with whom he shares his little pleasures, to whom he can confide his little sorrows. He understands their language, and in turn he has a language for them, which he thinks they understand: he knows more of their peculiarities than the halting step of scientific observation is always able to overtake; for he knows what science haughtily refuses to contemplate or, it may be, is unable to appreciate. The birds speak to him, the forests whisper to him, the shadows and the low tones of the hill and valley lull him to repose, the winds wanton with his curled locks and blow them over his shoulders, the streams and brooks have spray to play with and sprinkle in his laughing eyes. He stands before the great spirit of nature, face to face, and knows him as he reveals himself in every one of his divine forms; for the child sees and knows the secrets of God, which the man, alas! is condemned to forget. Such as the child is, has the child-like nation been, before the busy hum of commerce, the crashing strokes of the piston, the heavy murmur of innumerable spinning-jennies necessarily banished more natural music from our ears. An age that thinks about itself and its own capacity, that reflects upon its own processes of thought, and makes great combinations of powers, and anatomizes nature till it becomes familiar with 434every secret of creation, may be an earnest puritanical age, a stern protestant age, one that will not be fed with imaginative religions, but it cannot be one of implicit, trusting, fearing, rejoicing, trembling belief: the age of faith ceased where the age of knowledge began. Man knows too much, perhaps believes too little: he will not, and he must not, yield his privilege of calm, determined, obstinate enquiry: he will, and should, judge for himself, weigh evidence, compare and reason, and decide for himself how much or how little he will receive as true. How can he wonder at the stars, their rising, their setting or their eclipse? He calculates where new planets may be found: he weighs them in his balances when found, and tells not only their circumference or their density, but how long the straggling ray of light that started from them was on its journey, before it reached the eye of the gazer. What can these wavering fragments of time and space be to him who calculates duration by the nutation of suns, or the scarcely appreciable difference of millennial changes? Let us remember what our fathers were, and consider what we are. For them there was indeed a time, a period to tell of,
“when the Sun
Knew not her dwelling, nor the Moon his power,
And the Stars knew not where their place should be!”
We know their places, and their dwellings, and their power. They are subordinated to a hypothesis of gravitation. For us there is no wavering bridge of the Gods, no Bifröst or Asbrú; our rainbow 435is a shadowy thing, a belt of deceptive colours, the reflection of a sunbeam in the multitudinous prisms of a shower-cloud. We have no Hammer, wielded by the Thunder-god, and dreaded by the giants; our Miölner has vanished into the indifference of opposing electricities. Apothecaries’ Hall prepares its simples without the aid of charms, or invocation of divinities; and though we stand as yet but on the threshold of science, we have closed for ever behind us the portals of mystery and belief. For we are raised upon the shoulders of the times gone by, and cast a calm and easy view over the country which our forefathers wandered through in fear and trembling. We fear not what they feared; we cling not to what they clung to, for relief and comfort; we have set up our own idol, the Understanding, fortified by laborious experience, taught by repeated struggles and victories, firmly based on conquered, catalogued and inventoried nature, on facts, the stern children of a passionless reality. I know not whether we have gained or lost in this inevitable career of humanity; I have faith only that He who rules the purpose of the ages, has thus cast our lot in the infinite love and wisdom of his own thought. But not to us, or in our finite forms of thought, can the world be as once it was, and the “dull catalogue of common things” admits no admixture of a fancied divinity; nay, so far are we from seeking to instil spirit into matter, that the informing soul itself ceases to be the object of our contemplation, while we are busied with the nerves and tendons, 436or charmed with the wonderful combination of details that form the perfect whole. We stand supreme among the subjects of our knowledge; and the marvels of science itself will now not form the stock in trade of a second-class conjuror. Observe the man who threads his way with imperturbable security and speed through the thoroughfares of a densely-peopled metropolis: the crowd throng about him, yet he yields here, he advances there, till at length, almost unconsciously, he has attained the goal of his desire. He is familiar with the straight lines and angles that surround him, he measures his position and stands upright, mistaking, if indeed he think at all, the inconceivably rapid calculations of the understanding for acts of his own spontaneous volition. The unaccustomed eye of the child cannot do this; and he wavers in his steps and stumbles from point to point, helpless, but charming in his helplessness, till practice brings him power, and he too walks and stands upright among men. So is it with the minds of men in early and uninstructed periods, stumbling from belief to belief, resting for support upon every circumstance of surrounding life, and unfurnished with the elements of scientific reasoning, which, by assuring certainty, destroy the vague, indefinite basis of faith, or bring within a narrow and constantly decreasing circle, its vague and indefinite object. We believe the results of Geometry, the theorems of analytic mathematics, because we cannot help ourselves, cannot escape from the inevitable 437conclusion involved in the premises; but we cannot call this acquiescence faith, or establish upon it a moral claim before our own conscience and our God. And as there can be no reason save in the unintelligible, no faith save in the impossible, all that is brought within the realm of the intellect, or the sphere of the possible, is just so much withdrawn from the circle of religion.
The basis of the religious state in man is the sensation of weakness,—whether that weakness be or be not distinctly traced in the consciousness to the ignorance which is its cause, or to the ultimate, more abstract and more philosophical conviction of sinfulness, in the conscience. Man cannot rest for his anxious desire to know the why and how of every phænomenon he observes: this restlessness is the law of his intellect, that is, the condition of his humanity: he interrogates the phænomena themselves, but if they will give no answer to his question, he will seek it without them. In himself he will seek it in vain. At no time, at no stage of his development can he understand the relation of the subject and the object, or comprehend the copula that unites them. The philosopher the most deeply trained in watching abstract forms of thought, acknowledges with a sigh that even the intuitions of the reason halt in the fetters of the understanding, and that to give objective reality to what can be known only in the forms and through the powers of the subjective, is at best to be guilty of a noble treason to the laws of pure reasoning. And what 438shall he do, who is not trained in watching abstract forms of thought? Is he more likely to find the answer in himself? Alas, no! he feels only too surely that his nature can give no satisfying response; that his confined and bounded being is itself full of problems which remain unsolved.
And now let this state be considered with reference to the early inhabitant of a world, whose secrets are yet undiscovered, and on whom no light of heavenly radiance has fallen. For him, as for us, there is no answer either in the phænomenon or in the observer: but he has no reason to reject the supposition of a supernatural influence: everything that surrounds him is filled with evidence of supernatural power. He lives in nearer communion than we do with the world about him: his frame, not yet clogged and vitiated by the habits of an advanced cultivation, is more alive than ours to the external effects of natural causes: the world itself, existing under different conditions of climate, different electrical combinations, not yet subdued by the plough, or the axe of the forester, not yet bridled and trained by the canal, the manufactory or the railroad, has effluences which act upon the nerves and fluids of the man, and which seem to him divine emanations, revelations of the divinity within the lake, the mountain and the tree: the lake, the mountain and the tree he peoples then with gods,—with Nymphs and Nereids, with Oreads and Hamadryads—to whose inward and spiritual action the outward owes its power and its form. 439But the outward and visible is not a sign only, of the inward and spiritual; it is a symbol, a part of that which it denotes; it is at once the sower and the seed.
In no age can man be without the great ideas of God, of right, of power, of love, of wisdom; but an age that has not learnt to feed upon abstractions, must find the realization of those ideas in the outward world, and in a few familiar facts of human nature. It strives to give itself an account of itself, and the result of its efforts is a paganism, always earnest and imaginative, often cruel and capricious, as often gentle, affectionate and trusting—for even in spite of cruelty and caprice, the affections will have their way, and trust will find a home. Its inconsistence is the offspring not of guilt, but of imperfect knowledge: it seeks the great solution of all religious problems, a mediator between God and man: it is its error, but not necessarily its crime, that it finds that mediator in the complex of the world itself: no other has been revealed to it; and the reveries of philosophy that haunt the sounding Portico or the flowery swathes of Hymettus, cannot tell of the “Unknown God” to the agriculturist, the huntsman or the pirate.
I believe in two religions for my forefathers: one that deals with the domestic life, and normal state of peace; that sanctifies the family duties, prescribes the relations of father, wife and child, divides the land, and presides over its boundaries; that tells of gods, the givers of fertility and increase, the protectors of the husbandman and the herdsman; 440that guards the ritual and preserves the liturgy; that pervades the social state and gives permanence to the natural, original political institutions. I call this the sacerdotal faith, and I will admit that to its teachers and professors we may owe the frequent attempt of later periods to give an abstract, philosophic meaning to mythus and tradition, and to make dawning science halt after religion.
The second creed I will call the heroic; in this I recognize the same gods, transformed into powers of war and victory, crowners of the brave in fight, coercers of the wild might of nature, conquerors of the giants, the fiends and dragons; founders of royal families, around whom cluster warlike comrades, exulting in the thought that their deities stand in immediate genealogical relation to themselves, and share in the pursuits and occupations which furnish themselves with wealth and dignity and power. Let it be admitted that a complete separation never takes place between these different forms of religion; that a wavering is perceptible from one to the other; that the warrior believes his warrior god will bless the produce of his pastures; that the cultivator rejoices in the heroic legend of Wóden and of Baldr, because the cultivator is himself a warrior, when the occasion demands his services: still, in the ultimate development and result of the systems, the original distinction may be traced, and to it some of the conclusions we observe must necessarily be referred: it is thus that spells of healing and fruitfulness survive when the great gods have vanished, and that 441the earth, the hills, the trees and waters retain a portion of dimmed and bated divinity long after the godlike has sunk into the heroic legend, or been lost for ever.
I can readily believe that the warrior and the noble were less deeply impressed with the religious idea than the simple cultivator. In the first place, the disturbed life and active habits of military adventurers are not favourable to the growth of religious convictions: again, there is no tie more potent than that which links sacred associations to particular localities, and acts, unconsciously perhaps but pervasively, upon all the dwellers near the holy spots: the tribe may wander with all its wealth of thought and feeling; even its gods may accompany it to a new settlement; but the religio loci, the indefinable influence of the local association, cannot be transported. Habits of self-reliance, of a proud and scornful independence, are not consistent with the conviction of weakness, which is necessary to our full admission of the divine pre-eminence; and the self-confident soldier often felt that he could cope with gods such as his had been described to be. In the Greek heroic lay Tydides could attack, defeat, and even wound Ares: I do not know that the Teutonic mythology ever went so far as this; but we have abundant record of a contemptuous disregard with which particular heroes of tradition treated the popular religion. Some selected indeed one god in whom they placed especial trust, and whom they worshipped (as far as they worshipped at all) to the exclusion of the 442rest; but more must have participated in that feeling which is expressed in a Danish song,
“I trust my sword, I trust my steed,
But most I trust myself at need[830]!”
while to many we may safely apply what is said of a Swedish prince, “han var mikit blandinn i trunni,” he was mightily confused in his belief. Still it is certain that a personal character was attributed to the gods, as well as an immediate intervention in the affairs of life. The actual presence of Oþinn from time to time on the battle-field, in the storm, in the domestic privacy of the household, was firmly believed, in Scandinavia; and it is reasonable to assume that Wóden would have been found as active among our German progenitors, had not the earlier introduction of Christianity into Teutonic Europe deprived us of the mythological records which the North supplies. Beda tells us that Eádwini of Northumberland sacrificed and offered thanks to his gods upon the birth of a daughter. Rǽdwald of Eastanglia, even after his nominal conversion, continued to pay his offerings to idols, and the people of Essex, when labouring under the ravages of a pestilence, abjured the faith of Christ and returned to the service of the ancient gods. But in the personality of God alone resides the possibility of realizing the religious idea.
443We possess no means of showing how the religion of our own progenitors or their brethren of the continent, had been modified, purified, and adapted in the course of centuries to a more advanced state of civilization, or the altered demands of a higher moral nature; but, at the commencement of the sixth century we do find the pregnant fact, that Christianity met but little resistance among them, and enjoyed an easy triumph, or at the worst a careless acquiescence, even among those whose pagan sympathies could not be totally overcome. Two suppositions, indeed, can alone explain the facile apostasy to or from Christianity, which marked the career of the earliest converts. Either from a conviction of the inefficacy of heathendom had proceeded a general indifference to religious sanctions, which does not appear to answer other conditions of the problem, or the moral demands of the new faith did not seem to the Saxons more onerous than those to which they were accustomed; for it is the amount of self-sacrifice which a religion successfully imposes upon its votaries, which can alone form a measure of its influence. The fact that a god had perished, could sound strangely in the ears of no worshipper of Baldr; the great message of consolation,—that he had perished to save sinful, suffering man,—justified the ways of God, and added an awful meaning to the old mythus. An earnest, thinking pagan, would, I must believe, joyfully accept a version of his own creed, which offered so inestimable a boon, in addition to what he had heretofore possessed. The final destruction 444of the earth by fire could present no difficulties to those who had heard of Surtr and the Twilight of the Gods, or of Allfather’s glorious kingdom, raised on the ruin of the intermediate divinities. A state of happiness or punishment in a life to come was no novelty to him who had shuddered at the idea of Nástrond: Loki or Grendel had smoothed the way for Satan. Those who had believed in runes and incantations were satisfied with the efficacy of the mass; a crowd of saints might be invoked in place of a crowd of subordinate divinities; the holy places had lost none of their sanctity; the holy buildings had not been levelled with the ground, but dedicated in another name; the pagan sacrifices had not been totally abolished, but only converted into festal occasions, where the new Christians might eat and drink, and continue to praise God: Hréðe and Eóstre, Wóden, Tiw and Fricge, Ðunor and Sætere retained their places in the calendar of months and days: Erce was still invoked in spells, Wyrd still wove the web of destiny; and while Wóden retained his place at the head of the royal genealogies, the highest offices of the Christian church were offered to compensate the noble class for the loss of their old sacerdotal functions. How should Christianity fail to obtain access where Paganism stepped half way to meet it, and it could hold out so many outward points of union to paganism?
We dare not question the decrees of omnipotence, or enquire into the mysterious operations of omniscient God; it is not for us to measure his infinite 445wisdom by the rules of our finite intelligence, or to assume that his goodness and mercy can be appreciated and comprehended by the dim, wavering light of our reason; but man feels that in every age man has had a common nature, a common hope and a common end of being; and we shall do no wrong either to philosophy or to religion, if we believe that even in the errors of paganism there lay the germs of truth; and that the light which lighteth every one that cometh into the world, was vouchsafed in such form and measure as best to subserve the all-wise, all-holy, and all-merciful objects of creation!
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