Part 9

“One day, however, their eyes will begin to wink; the next morning, upon awaking, their eyelids will be found closed, and then they will turn red and blear.

“At table, when proceeding to their usual libations, their slightly tremulous hands will be unable to hold their cups steadily; some of the wine or the hydromel will escape and their garments will remain stained.

“Woe to them if a grain of dust adheres to these stained garments!

“Woe to them still more, if the wreaths of flowers or of jewels begin to fade and to wither on their brows!

“Finally, when the sweet perfumes which now are exhaled from their bodies, change into acrid and sickening odors, there will be nothing left for them but to make their last will.”

I am well convinced that this last phrase has been stealthily introduced into the Voluspa by some kind of criminal and fraudulent trick. The rest, however, is a faithful translation of the original {202}text, as taken from the best authenticated editions.

“Then,” the prophecy continues, “then three sacred cocks, dwelling in the three principal worlds, will crow and reply to each other, announcing the _Twilight of Greatness._

“Then, everything on earth will be in disorder and confusion; families will be at variance with {203}each other, the claims of blood will no longer be acknowledged, and brothers will be arrayed against brothers.

“Adultery and incest, robbery and murder, will prevail among men, and the age will be an age of barbarism, an age of the sword, an age of tempests, an age of wolves!

“The wolves will be ready to devour the sun. Three long winters, with no summers between them, will cover the earth with snow and ice; the branches of the trees will give way under the immense burden; the sun will be darkened more and more; the moon will dissolve into vapor and the stars will go out; the mountains, shaking in their foundations, will be tossed to and fro like reeds in a river; the earth will reject all the plants, the trees, and the rocks which it now bears; the waters will cast the fish upon the shore and with them their algae, their corals, and even the bodies of shipwrecked men, hideous skeletons, whose rattling bones will chime in grimly with the warning of the rising flood.

“Then the sea will grow dark, and upon its waters there will be seen floating that monstrous ship made of the nails of dead men. At the rudder, Ymer, the giant, will stand, having been recalled to life for a time, in order to assist Loki in scaling the heavens by the way of Bifrost, the {204}rainbow, at the head of the other Giants of the Frost.

“Then Surtur the Black will arrive from the southern regions, from the realm of fire, with all of his malignant demons, bearing torches and ready to set heaven and earth on fire.

“Then Hela, the pale goddess of death, will set free her prisoners, the wolf Fenris first of all, and march at the head of these monsters to assist the powers of the South.

“Then the gods will take up their arms; Odin will gather them around him, and with them the heroes from Walhalla; and the last battle will be fought.”

But Vola’s prophecy has to be fulfilled; the gods must perish, and the world with them.

Freyr dies in the flames of Surtur the Black; Thor succumbs to the deadly embrace and the poisonous bites of the great serpent Iormungandur; but, before dying, he kills it. Odin is torn to pieces by the wolf Fenris.

During the struggle, the heavens have been scaled and the genii of fire enter on horseback through the breach, while the giants shake the ash Ygdrasil, which writhes uttering long sighs, and at last falls with the heavenly vault which it has been upholding. The conquerors and the conquered alike are crushed under the ruins, and the world {205}being set on fire by Surtur the Black, vanishes in smoke.

Thus the night of the gods has to succeed to the twilight of the gods.

“O you, spirits of the mountains, do you know whether anything will continue to exist?” asks the Voluspa, at the end of these mournful prophecies.

It must be admitted that this sombre and terrible conception is not without a certain poetic grandeur, a certain savage heroism, which we cannot help admiring. In these verses the Edda is in no way inferior to the most brilliant pictures drawn by Dante or by Milton, and more than once it approaches nearly to the Apocalypse. Thus, as the inspired Apostle saw a new heaven and a new earth, the Edda also announces the coming of a time, when a new earth, more favored and more perfect than ours, shall succeed the old earth.

“When the earth is thus broken to pieces and devoured by fire, what shall happen next?

“There will come forth from the sea another earth, more beautiful and more perfect.

“And will any of the gods survive?

“Balder will be revived and come forth from the place of departed spirits, to rule over the new world under the guidance of the imperishable Al-fader. {206}Then will be the reign of Justice.”

The mythology of the Scandinavians embraces, as we have shown, among its symbols all the great phenomena of Nature, the continual struggle between the two opposite principles, creation and destruction. Being, besides, more complicated and more intelligent than the mythology of the Gauls and the Germans, it deserved to fill a large space in our work, and such a space we have accorded it cheerfully.

But why was it that the civilization introduced by Odin contributed as little as the philosophy of the Druids to the real well-being and the improvement of mankind? I think I see the reason.

In the eyes of the German as well as of the Scandinavian, God was only just and rigid. The rule of the God of Love had not yet begun. Perhaps Balder was to inaugurate it in that other world which the Edda announced.

Do you hear? Do you understand?

Amid all the incidents which were to mark the general conflagration, there is one which particularly recalls to our mind a great historical event. Alexander of Macedonia once questioned certain Celtic ambassadors and was told by them, that what they feared most upon earth, was the falling down of the sky.

This apparently lofty answer filled the young {207}conqueror with admiration, and it is still admired by modern students of history. It was, however, in reality nothing more than a simple, naïve rendering of one of their articles of faith; for all their prophetic books threatened them with the destruction of the heavens.

Another detail, the complete destruction of this globe of ours, after a series of fearful catastrophes, recalls to me, not exactly a great historical fact, but a simple game of my childhood, which may have been symbolic, nay, which may have come down to us from the Edda. This, however, I state with great hesitation.

Did you ever know one of the merriest games, which was once very much the fashion in city and country alike, when a firebrand, a burning stick, or a bunch of straw set on fire, was quickly passed from hand to hand? To prevent its going out, while you held it, you were bound to pass it as quickly as possible to your neighbor, repeating at the same time the expressive words: “_The little fellow is still alive_.” Your neighbor passed it to his neighbor and thus it travelled all around, always accompanied by the same, constant burden: “The little fellow is still alive!” This game was transformed during the Middle Ages, in the North, and especially in Bretagne, into the Torch Dance, as I have mentioned before. {208}Now I imagine that this game, in some way or other, prefigured the universal conflagration that was to come, and _the little fellow_ was the world.

But we must make haste to reach our great scientific discussion.

VIII.

{211}_How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time between one World and another.--How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.--How Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the Indians.--How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God Buddha.--About Mahabarata and Ramayana.--Chronology.--The World’s Age.--Comparative Tables.--Quotations.--Supporting Evidence.--A Cenotaph._

My reader has had a lucky escape.

Determined as I was to fathom in this chapter the true origin of the Scandinavian religion, and inspired by the zeal of a recent convert, I had collected and compared every document that could aid me in proving the Oriental descent of the priests of Odin as well as of the other Druids. I {212}thought it was a beautiful doctrine, and especially an entirely new one.

When I finished my chapter, which I thought was exceedingly well done, I read it to Doctor Rosahl, expecting, I must confess, to be warmly congratulated.

“Why, my dear sir,” he said, when I had finished, “you have made great efforts to prove a thing which has been established long since. All the master minds of France and Germany, to say nothing of other nations, agree on that subject. I mean men like Fauriel, Lassen, Lenormand, Ampere, Eichhoff, Saint-Marc Girardin, Marmier, Klaproth, Ozanam, the two Rémusats, the two Thierrys, the two Humboldts, the two Grimms, not to mention twenty others.

“Why will you come to their assistance after they have won the victory? Do you merely wish to display your scholarship?”

I indignantly denied the charge, and seizing my manuscript with both hands, I resolutely threw it into the fire.

A remnant of paternal weakness induced me, however, to retain the summary of that famous chapter, and I have inserted it here in its regular place, so that it might bear evidence of my wasted labor. As the _corpus delicti_ is no longer in existence, this summary may stand there like an inscription {213}on an empty tomb, to honor the memory of the deceased.

My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph.

I--a scholar! Great God! Let the reader not be disturbed. My purpose in writing this work was nothing more than to try and collect along the banks of the Rhine all the curious myths which have survived the ancient creeds of Europe; for they have all come to the great river. There the traveller finds piled up, after the manner of alluvial layers, all the ancient fables, all the marvelous and often childish tales to which the credulity and lively imagination of our forefathers gave a ready welcome. With the exception of a very few cases, in which the grave nature of the subject lifts me necessarily into higher regions, I wish mainly to tell you once more _Grandmamma’s Tales_. That is what we are going to do next. The Edda itself has no other meaning, for _Edda_ means the same as our _grandmother_.

No, I am too great a lover of tales of a tub ever to have claimed the reputation of being a scholar; but at times I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped. I have been shown the best spots, and I pilfer as well as I can--that is all.

An ignoramus and a pilferer, I resemble a bee which might fly into a botanical garden and, utterly {214}unacquainted with the Latin names of flowers, carry off joyously a rich harvest, without pretending to be able to make academic honey.

IX.

{217}_Confederation of all the Northern Gods.--Freedom of Religion.--Christianity.--Miserere mei!--Homeric Enumeration.--Prussian, Slavic, and Finnish Deities.--The God of Cherries and the God of Bees.--A Silver Woman.--Ilmarinnen’s Wedding Song.--A Skeleton God.--Yaga-Babcûs Pestle and Mortar.--Preparation for Battle.--The Little Chapel on the Hill.--The Signal for the Attack.--Jesus and Mary._

It is high time for us to return to the banks of the Rhine, where the two religions of Jupiter and Odin were about to meet face to face. {218}At that time the terrible prophecies of the Edda were far from being near their fulfillment; Odin had a long period of omnipotence yet before him.

To the great surprise of the adversaries, the Romans, so far from showing any alarm at his approach, received him and his retinue of deities as old acquaintances.

According to their unchanging policy they would see in him nothing but a Jupiter, and in fierce Thor another gallant Mars, somewhat sobered by a long residence in northern countries and excessive use of beer.

The Romans looked, in fact, upon all of these Scandinavian gods and goddesses simply as upon myths of their own that came back to them once more.

The poets hallowed these claims and the historians tried to justify them. According to some, Odin the Conqueror, a member of the family of Ases, had first given to some of his conquests the name of Asia (which might very well be so), and then receded before the Roman armies to cold hyperborean regions. Here he had adopted the gods of his new conquerors, hoping that they would, in return, make him victorious--which seems to me in the highest degree improbable. According to others, the poet Ovid, when Augustus had banished him to Scythia, had learnt the language of the barbarians, {219}among whom he was living, and finding them willing and eager to listen to him, had recited before them his “Metamorphoses.” This was all that was needed to induce the Scythians to make for themselves gods after the model of the Roman gods.

Tacitus, Plutarch, Strabo, and a host of the most illustrious writers never hesitated to give currency to such childish stories, ignoring entirely the date of the Scandinavian religion.

As Rome, however, permitted no human sacrifices, the priests of Odin and of Teut had at first withdrawn far from the beaten track, into the depths of dark old forests. There they could live quietly, practice without restraint the religion of their forefathers, and kill their men in perfect security. At least such were their hopes. The Roman soldiers, however, who handled the woodman’s axe {220}as readily as the sword, and the spade as well as the spear, soon made big holes in these venerable forests, murdered the murderers, and overthrew their blood-stained altars.

{221}Occasionally it happened that the brave legionaries who were employed in these hazardous enterprises, did not reappear. The proconsuls, whose duty it was to keep Germany in order, would have liked to inflict severe punishment; but just then the great reaction began to set in, from the North against the South.

Whilst Rome was making efforts to establish her power in Germany, certain German tribes, Franks and Burgundians, invaded France and began to settle down in some of the conquered Roman provinces. The proconsuls thought it both prudent and wise not to raise the question of religion; and for a long time a truce was tacitly agreed upon between all the different creeds, though not without some misgivings on both sides. Odin had his altars by the side of those of Jupiter; a temple in honor of Thor stood facing a temple dedicated to Mars, and if Bacchus, Diana, and Apollo had their sacred days, Bragi, Frigg, and Freya had theirs also.

In spite of this general toleration, the parties watched each other carefully.

Sooner or later a holy war had to break out; in certain regions it had already begun, when fishermen of the Rhine busily drawing in their nets, heard, for the first time, a still small voice coming down upon them on the waters of the river, which whispered the names of Jesus and Mary. {222}The same voice and the same names were simultaneously heard again and again before Strasbourg, Mayence, and Cologne. It was Christianity that was approaching.

These wondrous words, which now the river only {223}murmured, had soon after been forced by some mystic power from the lips of the Druidesses in their prophetic exaltation and from the priests of Jupiter, as they consulted their auguries.

There was a Druid, who, in the act of sacrificing, was suddenly seized with inspiration, and dropping the bloody knife felt impelled to cry out: _Miserere mei, Jesus!_ and yet Latin had until then been an unknown tongue among the Druids!

The nations stood expectant, waiting for the revelation of a new faith.

Soon a number of fugitives from Tolbiac, returning to the Rhine, produced consternation in all hearts by the announcement that Clovis, the king of the Franks, who had long been suspected of a secret understanding with Rome, had gone over to the god of the Christians, and that the god of the Christians was at that moment advancing at the head of ten legions of destroying angels.

When this news came, the rival religions laid aside their jealousy, and terrified by a common danger, joined hands to resist the invader. A general appeal was made not only by the followers of Odin to those of Jupiter, but also to the Northern gods, the Finnish gods, the Russian gods, and the Slavic gods. The danger was threatening to all alike, and they responded to the appeal and came to the Rhine. {224}We cannot so rapidly pass over this vast Olympian assembly of gods, a poet’s dream, it may be, but a traditional dream, full of strange and striking splendor, which completes in a most unexpected manner the limited description we have tried to give of Northern Myths.

At this grand meeting there appeared in the first place a goodly number of Borussian or Prussian gods, among whom stood first and foremost Percunos, the divine leader of the heavenly bodies; Pikollos, whose face was as pale as Hela’s and whose duty was, like hers, to preside over hell; exacting, however, from men nothing but prayers accompanied by beating hearts, he cared nothing whether he was feared or beloved. A third god, Potrympos, had the appearance of a youth, with smiling lips and with a wreath of wheat ears and flowers on his brow; this was the god of War. Of War? And what meant the smile on his lips and the wheat ears on his brow? They indicated that he was also the god of public supplies and even of love.

It seems that, in ancient Prussia, War was the purveyor-general and supplied everything.

In the retinue of this great trio, we find Antrympos, the god of seas and lakes; Poculos, the god of the air and of storms; then, after these gods ending in _os_, came other deities ending in _us_; Pilvitus, the god of riches, Auchwitus, the god of the sick, and Marcopulus, the god of the nobles. The latter was the terror of the common people, whom he held under an iron yoke. In order to {226}conciliate his good will, they prayed to Puscatus, another god in us, but a kindhearted god. He lived under an elder tree, and the price he exacted in return for his mediation was the modest gift of a piece of bread and a _schoppen_ of beer.

Although their priests were called Crives or Waidelottes, their ceremonies were, nevertheless, mere imitations of those of the Druids. The Borussians honored particularly the famous oak of Remowe, to which Percunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos paid a daily visit. To these same gods they offered their prisoners of war; but they were not sacrificed by means of a knife after the German {227}Or the Scandinavian manner. They destroyed them by fire or they gave them to be devoured to enormous serpents who lived upon the altar and for the altar.

Now all these gods have come to Germany accompanied by their monstrous reptiles, by griffins fearful to behold, and by demons summoned from hell, all called upon to take part in the impending struggle. {228}Almost at the same time with the Prussian gods arrived also the Scythian gods and those of the Sarmatians, the former in chariots, according to the manner of travelling which prevailed among those nations. They also bowed low, like their people, before the all-powerful Tahiti, the great representative of their religion, Fire. The Scythians had evidently derived very little profit from hearing Ovid read his “Metamorphoses.”

The others were but few in numbers; their representatives were their chief triad: Perun, their Jupiter Tonans; Rujewit, who controlled the clouds; and Sujatowist, the judge of the dead. These three brought in their train only Trizbog and the Tassanis, that is, the plague and the furies. Their other gods, unable to do anything for success in war, had wisely stayed at home.

Can I neglect mentioning the names and attributes of these inoffensive local deities, whom the fierce Sarmatians worshipped. They were:--

Kirnis, who causes the cherries to ripen;

Sardona, who watches over the nut trees;

Austeïa, who presides over the education of bees;

The sweet Kolna, who sees to the marriage of flowers.

There were also gods or goddesses of corn, of the kneading-tub and the wash-tub, the god of flies and the god of butterflies; we must confess that {229}these deities could hardly have been very useful on the banks of the Rhine.

But Odin and Jupiter could count upon more efficient and more reliable allies in the gods of Finland.

The gods bear almost always the impress of the character of their followers and of those over whom they rule, and what other nation has ever given such proofs of undaunted courage as the Finns or Finlanders? Pirates on the Baltic, as the Scandinavians were pirates on the ocean, they shared with them the booty that could be gotten in all the Northern seas. They had originally come from the high table-lands of Asia, together with their brethren the Turks, the Mongols, and the Tartars; their first appearance was made under the name of Ugorians, Ogres, and surely the Ogres have made a lasting and a terrible impression on bur popular tales!

The Finns consisted almost exclusively of sailors and soldiers, of miners and blacksmiths. To smelt iron and to fashion it into anchors for their ships, into lances, swords, and spears, was their principal occupation. Hence they paid special reverence to Rauta-Rekhi, the personification of iron; to Wulangoinen, the father of iron, and to Ruojuota, the nurse of iron. They worshipped in like manner with special zeal three sombre virgins, whose powerful breasts were running over with a dark milk, {230}which turned into iron as it cooled off, as water turns into ice when it cools off.

Their principal gods, besides these whom I have mentioned, were again three, and, as usual, three brothers.

The oldest, Vainamoinen, of hoary age, created celestial and terrestial fire, that is to say, the sun and the volcanoes.

The second, Ukko, has to provide them with fire, so as to prevent the earth from returning to the condition of an immense icicle, and the sun to the form of a heap of extinct embers. Living in the clouds he now blows upon the sun and now upon the volcanoes so as to keep up the blaze in both, and encourages them with his voice, the thunder.

Ilmarinnen, the third, a very industrious and most skillful workman, has forged the earth and the seven heavens by which it is surrounded; hence he is called the _Eternal Blacksmith_. He spends his life at the forge, making sometimes stars of all sizes and at other times spare moons. He has even made a silver woman, not for himself, however, but for a younger brother, whose manifold and incessant occupations left him no time to take the necessary steps for a suitable marriage. This woman of fine metal, well-made, beautiful, charming, and of the sweetest disposition, had but one single defect,--no {231}one could come near her without being chilled to the marrow of his bones.

However, the most skillful blacksmith cannot be expected to make a perfect woman at the first trial.

When the question of his own marriage was mooted, Ilmarinnen preferred taking a ready made wife, and, according to the usage which prevailed among the Finns as well as among the Germans, he bought one.