Part 17

“The loves and feuds of the Powers of Nature, after they had been told, first of gods, then of heroes, appear in the tales of the people as the flirting and teasing of fairies and imps. Christianity had destroyed the old gods of the Teutonic tribes, and supplied new heroes in the saints and martyrs of the Church. The gods were dead, and the heroes, the sons of the gods, forgotten. But the stories told of them would not die, and in spite of the excommunications of the priests, they were welcomed wherever they appeared in their strange disguises. Kind-hearted grannies would tell the pretty stories of old, if it was only to keep their little folk quiet. They did not tell them of the gods; for those gods were dead; or, worse than that, had been changed into devils. They told them of nobody; ay, sometimes they would tell them of the very saints and martyrs, and the apostles themselves have had to wear some of the old rags that belonged by right to Odin and other heathen gods. The oddest figure is that of the Devil in his half-Christian and half-heathen garb. The Aryan nations had no Devil. Pluto, though of a sombre character, was a very respectable personage; and Loki, though a mischievous person, was not a fiend. The German goddess, Hell, too—like Proserpina—had once seen better days. Thus, when the Germans were indoctrinated with the idea of a real Devil, the Semitic Satan or Diabolus, they treated him in the most good-humoured manner. They ascribed to him all the mischievous tricks of their most mischievous gods. But while the old Northern story-tellers delighted in the success of cunning, the new generation felt in duty bound to represent the Devil in the end as always defeated. He was outwitted in all the tricks which had formerly proved successful, and thus quite a new character was produced—the poor or stupid Devil, who appears not unfrequently in the German and in Norwegian tales.

All this Mr. Dasent has described very tersely and graphically in his Introduction, and we recommend the readers of his tales not to treat that Introduction as most introductions are treated.”—_Saturday Review, January 15, 1859._

APPENDIX—Ananzi Stories. Why the Jack Spaniard’s Waist is Small—Ananzi and the Lion—Ananzi and Quanqua—The Ear of Corn and the Twelve Men—The King and the Ant’s Tree—The Little Child and the Pumpkin Tree—The Brother and his Sisters—The Girl and the Fish—The Lion, the Goat, and the Baboon—Ananzi and Baboon—The Man and the Doukana Tree—Nancy Fairy—The Dancing Gang.

_In preparation._

The Prose, or Younger Edda. Commonly ascribed to Snorri Sturluson. Translated from the Old Norse, by GEORGE WEBBE DASENT, D.C.L. A New Edition, with an Introduction, in one volume crown 8vo.

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“Considered as a picture of manners, customs, and characters, the Njala has a merit equal in our eyes to that of the Homeric poems themselves.”—_Edinburgh Review, October 1861._

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“An historical romance of the tenth century, first narrated almost at the very time and by the very people to whom it refers, nearly true as to essential facts, and quite true in its pictures of the customs and the temper of the old Norsemen, about whom it tells, is in these volumes edited with the soundest scholarship by Dr. Dasent. There was need of a thorough study of the life and language of the early colonists of Iceland for the effective setting forth of this Njala, or saga of Njal.”—_Examiner, March 30._

“This ‘Story of Burnt Njal’ is worthy of the translator of the Norse Tales: a work of interest to the antiquary and the lover of legendary lore—that is, to every one capable of appreciating those sources of history which are at once the most poetic and the most illustrative of the character and growth of nations. The events of the story happened while the conflict of the two creeds of Christ and Odin was yet going on in the minds of the Northmen. We must pass the book over to the reader’s attentive consideration, for there are few portions of it that are not pregnant with interest and instruction for a reflective mind.”—_Athenæum._

“Hurriedly and imperfectly as we have traced the course of this tale divine, it must be evident to all who have accompanied us in our progress that there is real Homeric stuff in it. The Saga has a double value, an æsthetic and an historic value. Through it we may learn how men and women in Iceland, near a thousand years ago, lived, loved, and died.”—_Spectator, April 20._

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GEORGE WEBBE DASENT, D.C.L.

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