blade, an old sword of giant days, with keenest edge. The Scylding's champion seized the hilt, and despairing of his life he drew the blade and struck fiercely at her neck. It broke the bone-joints and passed through her body. She sank upon the floor. And he, rejoicing in his deed, sprang up; a light stole down into the water as when the lamp of heaven mildly shines, and he saw throughout the house. Then he perceived Grendel's hated body lying there, and swinging his sword around Beowulf cut off his head.

When the wise men, who with Hrothgar were watching the pool from above, saw the water all dabbled and stained with blood, they made no doubt but that the old she-wolf had destroyed the noble earl. Then came on noon-day, and the Scyldings grew sick of heart; the king of men turned to go homeward; but still they gazed upon the lake, longing for their lord to appear. And down below, behold! in the hot blood of the giant all the sword had melted away, like ice when the Father (He who hath power over times and seasons-the true God) looseneth the bond of frost and unwindeth the ropes which bind the waves. Then Beowulf dived up through the water: soon he was at the surface. And when Grendel died, the turbid waves, the vast and gloomy tracts, grew calm and bright.

So, too, after her centuries of gloom, the mild light of Christianity shone down into the deep waters of German thought, and in time their tracts too grew calm and bright. But this was not yet. We have still, in another chapter, to try and see something of how the dark shadow which was an inheritance of so many ages hung over the creed of medieval Christendom. By virtue of this inheritance mediæval Catholicism entered into the line of descent from the creeds of heathen Germany.

§ 2. The Gods of the Homestead.

We have gained some insight into one side of Teutonic belief; and that the most important side. We have been

THE CREED OF FARM AND HOMESTEAD.

369

standing with the warrior, who had his home in the mark and who spent his time in hunting there. His world and his gods are those who lie beyond the familiar ground of the village farm; still farther away, as the half-known changes into the wholly strange, awe and gloom merge into horror and darkness, and we pass from the homes of the warlike Odhinn, Thorr, and Tyr to hateful Jötunheim. The joys of Odhinn's heaven were for the warrior. He only who had died by the sword could gain entrance there. Every morning the heroes of Valhöll rode out to the field and fought till they had hewn each other in pieces; but at even they were whole again, and they spent the night over their cups of mead. This perpetual fighting was, as we know, a preparation for Ragnarök.

A paradise such as this would ill have suited quiet folk: and even among the Germans there were some of these. There was a simpler sort of religion which belonged to those who in after years became the peasantry.' They were averse from war, but fond of rustic life and its quiet pleasures. There must always be in the midst of a society, however warlike, a large class of those who have no taste for the favourite pursuit, who have no desire for adventure nor for change of home. These are the true children of the soil. We trace their influence in every creed; and their religion is the faith of worshippers to whom no mere change of creed is of vital importance. They have their poetry of nature, which asks no aid from anxious thought and aspiration. Whatever others may discover of the secrets of life, they can find out this at least, that there are still cakes and ale to be met with there, and open sunny meadows, and grasses and flowers, and silvery streams, and soft shy wood creatures, and fishes and innumerable

The old Germans had not precisely slaves after the Roman fashion, but they had serfs, who cultivated the soil for them (Tac. Germ. c. 25, and Guizot, Cours, &c., Hist. de France, i. p. 265). These serfs may have been originally Slavonic by blood (slav = slave), but they spoke German, and made up the lower population of the Germans.

B B

birds. For them, as the true bard of all this craft1 in old days said, for them earth yields her increase; for them the oaks hold in their summits acorns and in their midmost branches bees. The flocks bear for them their fleecy burdens, and their wives bring forth children like to their fathers. They live in unchanged happiness, and need not ply across the sea in impious ships.' There were such men and women as these among our own forefathers; and the religion which they made their own was of necessity somewhat opposed to the creed of the Wodin-worshippers.

There are two gods who seem to belong to this faction: both gods of summer and the sun. One is Balder, the brightest and best beloved among the Esir, who was the very sun himself, the day star in his mild aspect, as he would naturally appear in the North. Balder's house was called Breiðablik, Wide-Glance-that is to say, it was the bright upper air which is the sun's home. This palace was surrounded by a space called the peace-stead, in which no deed of violence could be done.2 Balder appears to us like the son of Lêtô in his most benignant mood. When he died all things in heaven and earth, both living things and trees and stones and all metals,' wept to bring him back again: as, indeed, all things must weep at the loss of the sun, chief nourisher at life's feast.

3

The other sun god, or summer god, was Freyr, who was connected with the spring and with all the growth of plants and animals; he was a patron of agriculture, and, like Balder, a god of peace; 'to him must men pray for good harvests and for peace;' a 'beauteous and mighty god' he was, like Apollo Chrysaôr, girt with a sword; not so much for fight as because the sun's rays are ever likened to a sword. Freyr can fight upon occasion; and he will engage in one of the three great combats of Ragnarök.5

Hesiod, Works and Days, 232.

2 Edda Snorra, D. 49, and Friþiofssaga, beginning.

3 E. S. 1. c.

4 E. S. D. 24.

See Chap. VIII.

The gentler side of the religion was in the North, as it always is, associated rather with the goddesses than with gods. Here, as among Greeks and Romans, the great patron of the peasant folk was the earth goddess.' In Tacitus the divinity appears under the name of Nerthus, which is perhaps Hertha. A similar goddess among the Suevi is called by him Isis. Other German names which seem to belong more or less to the same divinity are Harke, Holda, Perchta, Bertha. We must class with these beings the Norse Frigg (German Freka). Her I have already taken as an example of the way in which the earth goddess may lose her distinctive character and put on that of the heaven god through becoming his wife. Hêra, we saw, did this in the Greek pantheon, and Frigg does the same in the Northern. She is not a conspicuous character in the Scandinavian mythology.

To Frigg Freyja bears the same relationship that Persephonê bears to Dêmêtêr; wherefore we may say that Frigg, Freyr, and Freyja correspond to Dêmêtêr, Dionysus, and Persephonê, and more closely still to the Ceres, Liber, and Libera of the Romans. After what was said in Chapter V. touching the relationship of these latter gods, no further explanation is needed of the character of Frigg, Freyr, and Freyja.

It is strange, however, to see how the tale of the wanderings and sorrows of the earth goddess in search of the spring reappears in the mythology of every land, and ends in every case in some form of mystery. There are two stories in the Eddas3 which especially correspond to the myths commemorated in the anodos (up-coming) of Persephone and her marriage with Dionysus and in her

See Chap. V.

2 The identity of Nerthus and Hertha is assumed by most writers who are not specialists upon the subject of German etymology; but, as it is not admitted by Grimm, I hesitate to assume it, probable as, at first sight, it appears (see Grimm, D. M. chap. xiii.) Nerthus, says Meyer, corresponds to the Skr. Nritus, terra (Nachtrag to Grimm's D. M. iii. 84). Nritus or Nirtis became the Queen of the Dead (see p. 289).

3 From E. S. D. 37, and Skirnismâl.

kathodos (down-going) and the sorrows of Demeter for her loss. The first is the history of the wooing of Gerd by Freyr, and it is thus told:

Their

There was a man named Gŷmir,' and his wife was Örboða (Aurbota), of the mountain jötuns' race. daughter was Gerd, fairest of all women. Once Freyr mounted the seat of Odhinn, which was called Air Throne; and looking northward into far Giant Land, he saw a light flash forth. Looking again, he saw that the light was made by the maiden Gerd, who had just opened her father's door, and that it was her beauty which thus shone over the snow. Then Freyr was smitten with love sadness, and determined to woe the fair one to be his wife; and so he sent his messenger, Skirnir, to whom he gave his horse and magic sword. Skirnir went to Gerd, and he told her how great Freyr was among the Æsir, and how noble and happy a place was Asgard, the home of the gods; but for all his pleading Gerd would give no ear to his suit. At last the messenger drew his sword, and threatened to take her life, unless she would grant to Freyr his desire. So Gerd promised to visit the god nine nights thence, in Barri's wood.

Here a very simple nature myth is told us. The earth will not respond to the wooing of the sun unless he draw his sharp sword, the rays. Freyr himself it must have been who in the original myth undertook the journey into dark Jötunheim.2 In very northern lands we know that the sun himself does actually disappear in the cold North, the death region. When he is there the earth con

=

1 Gŷmir is a name of the sea god Oegir Oceanus etymologically and actually. See Oegisdrekka, beg. The relationship between such a being and the earth is not quite plain, though the explanation may certainly be suggested by what has been said of the nature of Oceanus in Chapter II. and in various places. Gŷmir is by Simrock connected with Hŷmir, who is the winter sca (Hŷmiskviða). (Handbuch der deutschen Mythologie, p. 61.) Simrock also says that Gŷmir is an under-world god (p. 398).

2 Skirnir is in fact only a by-name of Freyr (see Lex. Mythol. 706b). The same authority says that Skirnir means the air, which somewhat complicates the solution of the story. The Icl. skirr is our sheer.