Chapter XII: Heathendom (4)

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 cycle. 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, the 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.

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Footnote 814:

D. Myth. p. 346.

Footnote 815:

The Hiltibrants Lied says,

Hiltibrant haetti min fater. ih heittu Hadubrant.
forn her ostar gihueit. floh her Otachres nid.
hina mit Theotrihhe. enti sinero degano filu.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
sid Detrihhe. darba gistontum.
fateres mines, dat uuas so friuntlaos man.

For remarks on Ðeódríc’s exile see W. Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, pp.
22, 24, 34, 36, 37, 201, 204.

Footnote 816:

MS. C. C. C. Cantab. No. 179. “On ðone eahtateóðan dæg ðæs monðes byð
Sce Johannes týd ðæs pápan ⁊ ðæs martyres, se gedyde þurh Godes myht
blyndum men gesyhðe. Ðone Johannes for ǽfstum [héht cwellan]
Theodoricus se wæs Gotena cyning in Rauenna ðǽre ceastre; ⁊ sum
wéstensetla on ðám ealonde ðe is nemned Liparus, he sæde sciplíðendum
mannum ðæt he gesáwe Johannes sáwle ðæs papan lǽdan ðone cyning ðe
hine ofslóh gebundenne on écum wítum. He cwæð, se Godes þeów, tó ðám
sciplíðendum: Girsan dæg on ða nigoðan tíd dæges, ðæt is on ðone nón,
Þeodricus wæs gelǽded ungyrd ⁊ unsceód ⁊ eác gebunden be ðám handum,
betweoh Johanne ðám pápan ⁊ Finianum ðám ealdormen, ⁊ he wæs fram heom
áworpen on byrnende seáð on ðysum neáh-ealande, ⁊ ðæt is nemned
Ulcania. And ða sciplíðende ða ðæt gehýredon, hig ymbhydelíce
ámearcodon ðone dæg, ⁊ him ðá cyrdon eft tó Etelwara mǽgðe, ðǽr hig
ðone cyning ǽr lyfigende forlǽton; ⁊ hig ðá eft hine ðǽr deádne
gemétton, ðý ylcan dæge ðe his wíte ðám Godes þeówe ætywed wæs. Ðæt
wæs swíðe riht ðæt he fram ðám twám mannum wǽre sended on ðæt éce fýr,
ðaðe he hér unrihtlíce ofslóh on ðisim life. Ðæt wæs Þeodoricus ðone
we nemnað Ðeódríc.” See further illustrations of this strange tale in
the Deutsche Heldensage, p. 38, where Otto of Freisingen is quoted,
but who does not give nearly so many details as the Anglosaxon legend.

Footnote 817:

Trav. Song, l. 47.

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The legends of Eormanríc were obviously familiar to the Anglosaxons: in the so often quoted poem 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 character[818], and any reference to it in Saxon poetry is welcome evidence of ancient heathendom: moreover the 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.

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Footnote 818:

When Loki announced to Freya that Thórr would not recover his hammer
unless she married the giant who had become possessed of it, she
trembled with rage, so that the halls of the gods shook under her, and
the Mén Brísínga burst from her neck: again when Thórr disguises
himself in her distinctive dress, he does not forget the necklace,
Hamarsheimt, xiii. xv. xix. I am inclined to think the Saxon reading
erroneous, and that Brósinga is a mere error of copying. The meaning
of the word is obscure: Brising in Norse denotes a fierce flame, and
the name of the collar has been explained from its bright and burning
colour. Grimm suggests a derivation from a verb _brísan_ (found in
Middle German under the form _brísen_) _nodare_, _nodis_
_constringere_, in reference to the form of its links. But the main
difficulty in my opinion is found in the plural genitive of the
patronymic, and I would almost prefer the hypothesis of our having
entirely lost the lay which described its origin: others we certainly
have lost which had reference to it, as for instance Loki’s and
Heimdallr’s contention for it. Saxo Grammaticus has a story probably
about its origin (p. 13) which is totally unsatisfactory. Were the
Brísingas (sons of fire?) its first possessors or makers?

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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 makes 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].

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Footnote 819:

I would particularly call attention to W. Grimm’s Deutsche Heldensage,
P. Müller’s Sagabibliothek, and J. Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie; the
last, a very storehouse of all that bears upon this most interesting
and important subject, important whether we consider it merely in a
literary point of view, or in the far higher one of a revelation of
the creed of our forefathers, the sources of their hope and fear, the
basis of their moral being and directing motive of their actions. If
it be true that nothing human can be without interest for a man,
surely that which tells of the religious belief of our forefathers
must be of the deepest and nearest interest. It has had something to
do with making us what we are.

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DIVINATION 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 inquire 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.”

Footnote 820:

Germ. x.

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.’ 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 we 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!

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Footnote 821:

Vit. Anon. Sci. Galli. Pertz, Monum. ii. 17.

Footnote 822:

The same whom the grateful monks have distinguished by the name of
_Dei amicus_.

Footnote 823:

Cod. Dipl. No. 581.

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Other details of heathendom in the practices of ordinary 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 Now is the bloom of thy strength
áne hwíle, for a little while,
eft sona bið soon will it be
ðæt ðec adl oððe ecg that sickness or the sword
eafoðes getwǽfeð, shall part thee from thy power,
oððe fýres feng, or clutch of fire,
oððe flódes wylm, or wave of flood,
oððe grípe meces, or gripe of sword,
oððe gáres fliht or javelin’s flight,
oððe atol yldo, or ugly age,
oððe eágena bearhtm, or glance of eye,
forsitteð and forsworceð. shall oppress and darken thee!

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Footnote 824:

Beów. l. 3520.

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_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.

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Footnote 825:

De Nugis Curial. lib. i. cap. 12.

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“Of the practice of this superstition, both in England and Scotland, many instances are to be met with; among the most remarkable, that of Eleanor Cobham, duchess of Gloucester, and Stacey, servant to George Duke of Clarence[826].”

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Footnote 826:

Anc. Laws and Inst. vol. ii. Gloss.

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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. 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.

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Footnote 827:

Leg. Hen. lxxi. § 1.

Footnote 828:

Æðelst. i. § 6.

Footnote 829:

Cod. Dipl. No. 591.

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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.

Contemplate 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 every 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 is 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, or 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 conclusion 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 shall 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. But 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; that 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 the 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 rest; 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.

Footnote 830:

“Först troer jeg mit gode svärd,
og saa min gode hest,
dernäst troer jeg mine dannesvenne,
jeg troer mig self allerbedst.”

Many examples are given in Grimm, Mythol. p. 7.

We 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 of 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 wisdom 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!

APPENDIX.