N ^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY SE-fHb=^f-^^ The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924084317555 POPULAK TALES THE NOKSE BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. The Story of Burnt Njal ; or, Life in Iceland at the end of tlie Tenth Century. From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga. By Sir George Webbe Dasent, D. C. L. 2 vols, demy 8vo, with Maps and Plans, 28s. Gisli the Outlaw. From the Icelandic. By Sir George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L. 1 vol. small 4to, with Illustrations, 7s. 6d. Edinburgh: David Douglas. POPULAE TALES FROM THE :n^oiise BY SIE GEORGE WEBBE DASENT, D.C.L., Etc. " WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON THE ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF POPULAR TALES THIRD EDITION EDINBUEGH: DAVID DOUGLAS JIDCCCLXXXVIII [Right of Translation reserved.} \ I Hi X J1 NOTICE TO THE SECOND EDITION. rpHE first edition of these Tales being exhausted, and a demand having arisen for a second, the Translator has thought it right to add thirteen tales, which complete the translation of MM. Asbjomsen and Moe's Collection, and to strengthen the Introduction by working in some new matter, and by working out some points which were only slightly sketched in the first edition. The favour with which the book was welcomed makes it almost a duty to say a word here on the many kind and able notices which have been written upon it. Duties are not always pleasant, but the fulfilment of this at least gives no pain; because, without one exception, every criticism which the Translator has seen has shewn him that his prayer for " gentle " readers has been f uUy heard. It will be forgiven him, he hopes, when he says that he has not seen good ground to change or even to modify any of the opinions as to the origin and diffusion of popular tales put forth in the first edition. Much vi NOTICE TO THE SECOND EDITION. indeed has been said by others for those views ; what has been urged against them, with all kindness and good humour, in one or two cases, has not availed at all to weigh down mature convictions deliberately expressed after the studies of years, backed as they are by the researches and support of those who have given their lives to this branch of knowledge. And now, before the Translator takes leave of his readers for the second time, he will follow the lead of the good godmother in one of these Tales, and forbid all good children to read the two which stand last in the book. There is this difference between him and the godmother. She found her foster-daughter out as soon as she came back. He will never know it, if any bad child has broken his behest. Still he hopes that all good children who read this book will bear in mind that there is just as much sin in breaking a commandment even though it be not found out, and so he bids them good-bye, and feels sure that no good child will dare to look into those two rooms. If, after this warning, they peep in, they may perhaps see something which will shock them. " Why then print them at all ? " some grown reader asks. Because this volume is meant for you as well as for children, arid if you have gone ever so little into the world with open eyes, you must have seen, yes, every day, things much more shocking. Because there is nothing NOTICE TO THE SECOND EDITION. vii immoral in their spirit. Because they are intrinsically- valuable, as illustratiag manners and traditions, and so could not well be left out. Because they complete the number of the Norse originals, and leave none untrans- lated. And last, though not least, because the Translator hates family versions of anything, " Family Bibles," " Family Shakespeares." Those who, with so large a choice of beauty before them, would pick out and gloat over this or that coarseness or freedom of expression, are like those who, in reading the Bible, should always turn to Leviticus, or those whose Shakespeare woiild open of itself at Pericles Prince of Tyre. Such readers the Translator does not wish to have. Beoad Sakctuart, March 12, 1859. NOTICE TO THE FIEST EDITION. rpHESE translations from the Norske Folkeeventyr, collected with such freshness and faithfulness by MM. Asbjornsen and Moe, have been made at various times and at long intervals during the last fifteen years ; a fact which is mentioned only to account for any variations in style or tone — of which, however, the Translator is unconscious — that a critical eye may detect in this volume. One of them, The Master Thief, has already appeared in Blackwood's Magazine for November 1851, from the columns of which periodical it is now reprinted, by the kind permission of the Proprietors. The Translator is sorry that he has not been able to comply with the suggestion of some friends upon whose good-will he sets all store, who wished him to change and soften some features in these Tales, which they thought likely to shock English feeling. He has, however, felt it to be out of his power to meet their wishes, for the merit of an undertaking of this kind rests X NOTICE TO THE FIEST EDITION. entirely on its faithfulness and truth ; and the man who, in such a work, wilfuUy changes or softens, is as guilty as he "who puts bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." Of this guilt, at least, the Translator feels himself free ; and, perhaps, if any, who may be inclined to be offended at first, will take the trouble to read the Intro- duction which precedes and explains the Tales, they may find, not only that the softening process would have spoilt these popular traditions for all except the most childish readers, but that the things which shocked them at the first blush are, after all, not so very shocking. For the rest, it ill becomes him to speak of the way in which his work has been done : but if the reader will only bear in mind that this, too, is an enchanted garden, in which whoever dares to pluck a flower, does it at the peril of his head ; and if he will then read the book in a merciful and tender spirit, he will prove himself what the Translator most longs to find, " a gentle reader," and both will part on the best terms. Broad Sanctuary, Dec. 12, 1858. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Origin, Diffusion, Norse Mythology, . Norse Popular Tales, Conclusion, . PAGE xvii xxxi Iv Ixxxii cxxxv TALES. True and Untrue, . , , Why the Sea is Salt, The Old Dame and her Hen, East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, Boots who ate a Match with the Troll, Hacon Grizzlebeard, U 22 36 39 CONTENTS. Boots who made the Princess say, "That's a Story," . . . ■ • The Twelve Wild Ducks, . The Giant who had no Heart in his Body, The Fox as Herdsman, The Mastermaid, The Cat on the Doveefell, . Princess on the Glass Hill, How One went out to "Woo, The Cock and Hen, . The Master-Smith, . The Two Step-Sisters, Buttercup, .... Taming the Shrew, . Shortshanks, gudbrand on the hill-side, The Blue Belt, "Why the Bear is Stumpy-tailed, . Not a Pin to Choose between Them, One's own Children are always Prettiest, The Three Princesses of "Whiteland, The Lassie and her Godmother, . 48 51 59 69 71 90 92 104 105 105 113 124 129 131 149 155 172 173 180 181 188 CONTENTS. The Three Aunts, .... The Cock, the Cuckoo, and the Blackcock, KiCH Peter the Pedlar, Gertrude's Bird, Boots and the Troll, Goosey Grizzel, The Lad who went to the North Wind, The Master Thief, . The Best Wish, The Three Billy-Goats Gruff, Well Done and III Paid, . The Husband who was to Mind the House, Dapplegrim, .... Farmer Weathersky, Lord Peter, . The Seven Foals, The Widow's Son, Bushy Bride, Boots and his Brothers, Big Peter and Little Peter, Tatterhood, .... The Cock and Hen that went to the Dovrefell, PAGE 193 XIV CONTENTS. Katie Woodencloak, Thumbikin, . Doll i' the Grass, . The Lad and the Deil, The Cock and Hen a-Ntjtting, The Big Bird Dan, . SoRiA Morla Castle, Bruin and Eeynard, Tom Totherhouse, . Little Annie the Goose-Girl, PAGE 357 372 374 377 378 382 396 409 411 414 Introduction to Appendix, . Note to Introduction to Appendix, 419 422 APPENDIX. "Why the Jack-Spaniard's Waist is Small. Ananzi and the Lion, Ananzi and Quanqua, The Ear op Corn and the Twelve Men, The King and the Ant's Tree, The Little Child and the Pumpkin Tree, 425 425 429 430 432 433 CONTENTS. XV The Brothek 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, . PAGE 434 437 438 439 440 441 443 IKTRODUCTIOK 0 E I G I N. rpHE most careless reader can hardly fail to see that many of the Tales in this volume have the same ground- work as those with which he has been familiar from his earliest youth. They are Nursery Tales, in fact, of the days when there were tales in nurseries — old wives' fables, which have faded away before the light of gas and the power of steam. It is long, indeed, since English nurses told these tales to English children by force of memory and word of mouth. In a written shape, we have long had some of them at least in English versions of the C antes cle ma IRre I'Oye of Perrault, and the Contes cle F6es of Madame D'Aulnoy ; those tight-laced, high-heeled tales of the "teacup times" of Louis xiv. and his suc- cessors, in which the popular tale appears to as much dis- advantage as an artless country girl in the stifling atmo- sphere of a London theatre. From these foreign sources, after the voice of the English reciter was hushed — and it was hushed in England more than a century ago — our great-grandmothers learnt to tell of Cinderella and BeauDy and the Beast, of Little Eed Eiding-Hood and Blue Beard, mingled together in the Cabinet des Fies with Sindbad the Sailor and Aladdin's wondrous lamp ; for that was an uncritical age, and its spirit breathed hot and cold, east and west, from all quarters of the globe at once, con- as xviii INTEODUCTION. fusing the traditions and tales of all times and countries into one incongruous mass of fable, as mucli tangled and knotted as that famous pound of flax which the lassie in one of these Tales is expected to spin into an even woof within four-and-twenty hours. No poverty of invention or want of power on the part of translators could entirely destroy the innate beauty of those popular traditions; but here, in England at least, they had almost dwin- dled out, or at any rate had been lost sight of as home- growths. We had learnt to buy our own children back dis- guised in foreign garb ; and as for their being anything more than the mere pastime of an idle hour — as to their having any history or science of their own — such an absurdity was never once thought of. It had, indeed, been remarked, even in the eighteenth century — that dreary time of indifference and doubt — that some of the popular traditions of the nations north of the Alps con- tained striking resemblances and parallels to stories in the classical mythology. But those were the days when Greek and Latin lorded it over the other languages of the earth ; and when any such resemblance or analogy was observed, it was commonly supposed that that base-bdin slave, the vulgar tongue, had dared to make a clumsy copy of something peculiarly belonging to the twin tyrants who ruled all the dialects of the world with a pedant's rod. At last, just at the close of that great war which Western Europe waged against the genius and fortune of the first ISTapoleon; just as the eagle — Prometheus and the eagle in one shape — was fast fettered by sheer force and strength to his rock in the Atlantic, there arose a man in Central Germany, on the old Thuringian soil, to JACOB 6KIMM. xix whom it was given to assert the dignity of vernacular literature, to throw off the yoke of classical tyranny, and to claim for aU the dialects of Teutonic speech a right of ancient inheritance and perfect freedom before unsus- pected and unknown. It is almost needless to mention this honoured nailie. For the furtherance of the. good work which he began nearly fifty years ago, he still lives* and still labours. There is no spot on which an .accent of Teutonic speech is uttered where the name of Jacob Grimm is not a " household word." His General Grammar of all the Teutonic Dialects from Iceland to England has proved the equality of these tongues with their ancient classical oppressors. His Antiquities of Teutonic Law have shewn that the codes of the Lombards, Franks, and Goths were not mere savage, brutal customaries, based, as, had been supposed, on the absence of all law and right. . , His numerous treatises on early German authors have shewn that the German poets of the Middle Age, Godfrey of Strasburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartmann voo der Aue, Walter von der Vogelweide, and the restj can hold their own against any contemporary writers in other lands. And lastly, what rather concerns us here, his Teutonic Mythology, his Eeynard the Fox, and the collection of German Popular Tales, which he and his brother William published, have thrown a flood of light on the early history of all the branches of our race, and have raised what had come to be looked on as mere nursery fictions and old wives' fables — to a study fit for the energies of grown men, and to all the dignity of a science. * [He died in, 1863. This Introduction was written in 1858.] XX INTRODUCTION. In these pages, where we ha\'e to run over a vast tract of space, the reader who wishes to learn and not to cavil — and for such alone this Introduction is intended — must be content with results rather than processes and steps. To use a homely likeness, he must be satisfied with the soup that is set before him, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled. When we say, therefore, that in these latter days the philology and mythology of the East and West have met and kissed each other ; that they now go hand in hand ; that they lend one another mutual support ; that one cannot be under- stood without the other, — we -look to be believed. We do not expect to be put to the proof, how the labours of Grimm and his disciples on this side were first rendered possible by the linguistic discoveries of Anquetil du Perron and others in India and France, at the end of the last century; then materially assisted and furthered by the researches of Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, and others, in India and England during the early part of this century, and finally have become identical with those of Wilson, Bopp, Lassen, and Max MiiUer, at the present day. The affinity, which exists in a mythological and philological point of view, between the Aryan or Indo-European lan- guages on the one hand, and the Sanscrit on the other, is now the first article of a literary creed, and the man who denies it puts himself as much beyond the pale of argument as he who, in a religious discussion, should meet a grave divine of the Church of England with the strict contradic- tory of her first article, and loudly declare his conviction that there was no God. In a general way, then, we may be permitted to dogmatize, and to lay it down as a law which COMPAKATIVE PHILOLOGY. XXI is always in force, that the first authentic history of a nation is the history of its tongue. We can form no notion of the literature of a country apart from its language, and the con- sideration of its language necessarily involves the consider- ation of its history. Here is England, for instance, with a language, and therefore a literature, composed of Celtic, Eoman, Saxon, N"orse, and Eomance elements. Is not this simple fact suggestive of — nay, does it not challenge us to — an inquiry into the origin and history of the races who have passed over our island, and left their mark not only on the soil but on our speech ? Again, to take a wider view, and to rise from archfeology to science, what problem has interested the world in a greater degree than the origin of man, and what toil has not been spent in tracing all races back to their common stock ? The science of comparative philology — the inquiry, not into one isolated language — for now-a-days it may fairly be said of a man who knows only one language that he knows none — but into all the languages of one family, and thus to reduce them to one common centre, from which they spread like the rays of the sun, — if it has not solved, is in a fair way of solving, this problem. When we have done for the various members of each family what has been done of late years for the Indo-European tongues, its solution will be complete. In such an inquiry the history of a race is, in fact, the his- tory of its language, and can be nothing else ; for we have to deal with times antecedent to all history, properly so called, and the stream which in later ages may be divided into many branches now flows in a single channel. From the East, then, came our ancestors, in days of immemorial antiquity, in that grey dawn of time of which xxii INTRODUCTION. all early songs and lays can tell, but of which it is as im- possible as it is useless to attempt to fix the date. Im- possible, because no means exist for .ascertaining it ; use- less, because it is in reality a matter of utter indifference, when, as this tell-tale crust of earth informs us, we have an infinity of ages and periods to fall back on,* whether *: How strange is the terror of Natural Science, which seems to possess, with a religious possession, so many good and pious people ! How rigidly do they bind themselves hand and foot with the mere letter of the law, forgetting Him who came to teach us that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life " ! What are we to say of those who, when the old crust which clogs and hampers human knowledge is cracking and breaking all around them, when the shell is too narrow an abode for the life within it, which is preparing to cast it off, still cling to the crust and shell, looking, like the disciples by the sepulchre, at the hnen clothes lying, and know not that He has risen in glory 1 These are they who obstinately refuse to beheve in the " Testimony of the Eocks," who deny Geology the thousands, nay millions, of years which she requires to make her deposits in Nature's great saving-bank. These are they for whom the Nile, as he brings down year by year his tribute to the sea from Central Africa, lays down in vain layer after layer of alluvial deposit, which can be measured to an inch for tens of thousands of years. These are they to whom the comparatively younger growth of trees, the dragon tree of Orotava, and the cedars of California, plead in vain when they shew, yeai; after year, ring on ring of wood for thousands of years. "Nq; the world is only five or six thousands of years old, or thesreabouts. The Old Testament "—the dates in which have been confessedly tampered with, and in some cases THE ARYAN RACE. XXUl this great movement, this mighty lust to change their seats, seized on the Aryan race one hundred or one thousand years sooner or later. , But from the East we came, and from that central plain of Asia, now commonly called Iran. Iran, the habitation of the tillers and forged and fabricated by Hebrew scribes — " says so. We be- lieve in it ; we will believe in nothing else, not even in our senses. We will believe literally in the first chapter of Genesis, in working days and nights of twenty-four hours, even before the sun and moon were made, on the fourth day, ' to divide the day from the night,' and to be 'for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.' We will not hear of ages or periods, but 'days,' because the 'letter' says so." This is what our Western Brahmins say ; but if they remembered that He who set sun and moon also planted the eye and ear, that He gave sense, and speech, and mind ; if they considered that faith is a lively thing, elastic and expansive ; that it embraces a thou- sand or a million years as easily as a moment of time ; that bonds cannot fetter it, nor distance darken and dismay it ; that it is given to man to grow with his growth and strengthen with his strength ; that it rises at doubts and difficulties, and surmounts them — they would cease to condemn all the world to wear their own strait-waistcoat, cut and sewn by rabbis and doctors some thousand years ago ; a garment which the human intellect has, altogether outgrown, which it is ridiculous to wear, which careless and impious men laugh at when it is seen in the streets ; and might begin to see that spirit is spirit, and flesh is flesh J that while one lives for ever, the other is cor- ruptible and passes away ; that there are developments in faith as in everything else ; that as man's intellect and human knowledge have grown and expanded, so his faith must grow XXIV IKTEODUCTION. earers* of the earth, as opposed to Tiiran, the abode of restless horse-riding nomads — of Turks, in short ; for in their name the root survives, and still distinguishes the great Turanian or Mongolian family from the Aryan, Iranian, or Indo-European race. It is scarce worth while to inquire — even if inquiry could lead to any result — . what cause set them in motion from their ancient seats. Whether impelled by famine or internal strife, starved out like other nationalities in recent times, or led on by adventurous chiefs, whose spirit chafed at the narrowness of home, certain it is that they left that home and began a wandering westwards, which only ceased when it reached the Atlantic and the Northern Ocean, Nor was the fate of those they left behind less strange. At some period almost as remote as, but after, that at which the wan- derers for Europe started, the remaining portion of the and expand too ; that it really matters nothing at all, as an act of faith, whether the world is six thousand or six million 3'ears old ; that it must have had a beginning; that there must be one great first cause, God, Surely there is no better way to bring His goodness into question, to throw doubt on His revelation, and to make it the laughing-stock of the irreli- gious, than thus to clip the wings of faith, to throw her into a dungeon, to keep her from the light of day, to make her read through Hebrew spectacles, and to force her to be a laggard and dullard, instead of a bright and volatile spirit, forward and foremost in the race of life. * "But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest." — Shakespeare, Dedication to Venus and Adonis. THE ARYAN KACB. XXV stock, or a considerable offshoot from it, turned their faces east, and passing the Indian Caucasus, poured tlirough the defiles of Affghanistan, crossed the plain of the Pive Kivers, and descended on the fruitful plains of India. The different destiny of these stocks has been wonderful indeed. Of those who went west, we have only to enumerate the names under which they appear in history — Celts, Greeks, Eomans, Teutons, Slavonians — to see and to know at once that the stream of this migration has borne on its waves all that has become most precious to man. To use the words of Max Miiller : "They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their litera- ture and works of art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other, and with Semitic and Mongo- lian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion." We may add, that though by nature tough and enduring, they have not been obstinate and self-willed; they have been distinguished from all other nations, and particularly from their elder brothers whom they left behind, by their common sense, by their power of adapting themselves to all circumstances, and by making the best of their position ; above all, they have been teachable, ready to receive impressions from withoiit, and, when received, to develop them. To shew the truth of this, we need only observe, that they adopted Christi- xxvi INTEODUCTION. anity from another race, the most obstinate and stiff- necked the world has ever seen, who, trained under the Old Dispensation to preserve the worship of the one true God, were too proud to accept the further revelation of God under the New, and, rejecting their birthright, suffered their inheritance to pass into other hands. Such, then, has been the lot of the Western branch, of the younger brother, who, like the younger brother whom we shall meet so often in these Popular Tales, went out into the world, with nothing but his good heart and God's blessing to guide him; and now has come to aU. honour and fortune, and to be a king, ruling over the world. He went out and did. Let us see now what be- came of the elder brother, who stayed at home some time after his brother went out, and then only made a short journey. Having driven out the few aboriginal inhabi- tants of India with little effort, and following the course of the great rivers, the Eastern Aryans gradually established themselves all over the peninsula ; and then, in calm pos- session of a world of their own, undisturbed by conquest from without, and accepting with apathy any change of dynasty among their rulers, ignorant of the past and care- less of the future, they sat down once for all and thought — thought not of what they had to do here, that stern lesson of every-day life from which neither men nor nations can escape if they are to live with their fellows, but how they could abstract themselves entirely from their present existence, and immerse themselves wholly in dreamy speculations on the future. Whatever they may have been during their short migration and subsequent settlement, it is certain that they appear in the Vedas — a'HE EASTERN ARYANS. XXVll perhaps the earliest collection which the world possesses — as a nation of philosophers. Well may Professor Miiller compare the Indian mind to a plant reared in a hot-house, gorgeous in colour, rich in perfume, precocious and abundant in fruit ; it may be all this, "but will never be like the oak, growing in wind and weather, striking its roots into real earth, and stretching its branches into real air, beneath the stars and sun of Heaven ".; and well does he als:o remark, that a people of this peculiar stamp was never destined to act a prominent part in the history of the world ; nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcen- dental ideas could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and moral character of the Hindoos.* * As a specimen of their thoughtful turn of mind, even in the Vedas, at a time before the monstrous avatars of the Hindoo Pantheon were imagined, and when their system of philosophy, properly so called, had no existence, the following metrical translation of the 129th hymn of the 10th book of the Big-Veda may be quoted, which Professor Miiller assures us is of a very early date : — ' ' Nor aught nor nought existed ; yon bright sky Was not, nor Heaven's broad woof outstretched above. What covered all ? what sheltered ? what concealed ? Was it the water's fathomless abyss ? There was not death — yet was there nought inunortal. There was no confine betwixt day and night ; The only One breathed breathless by itself, Other than It there nothing since has been. Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled In gloom profound — an ocean without light — The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat. Then first came love upon it, the new spring Of mind — yea, poets in their hearts discerned, xxviii INTRODUCTION. In this passive, abstract, unprogressive state, they have remained ever since. Stiffened into castes, and tongue- tied and hand-tied by absurd rites and ceremonies, they were heard of in dim legends by Herodotus ; they were seen by Alexander when that bold spirit pushed his phalanx beyond the limits of the known world ; they trafficked with imperial Eome, and the later empire; they were again almost lost sight of, and became fabulous, in the Middle Age ; they were rediscovered by the Portu- guese ; they have been alternately peaceful subjects and desperate rebels to us English ; but they have been still the same immovable and unprogressive philosophers, though akin to Europe all the while ; and though the Highlander, who drives his bayonet through the heart of a high-caste Sepoy mutineer, little knows that his pale features and sandy hair, and that dusk face with its raven locks, both come from a common ancestor away in Central Asia, many, many centuries ago. Pondering, this bond between created things And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth. Piercing and all-pervading, or from Heaven ? Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose — Nature below, and power and will above — Who knows the secret ? who proclaimed it here, Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang ? The Gods themselves came later into being — Who knows from whence this great creation sprang ? He from whom all this great creation came, Whether His will created or was mute. The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, He knows it — or perchance even he knows not." If we reflect that this hymn was composed centuries before the time of Hesiod, we shall be better able to appreciate the speculative character of the Indian mind in its earliest stage. THE WESTERN ARYANS. XXIX But here arises the question, What interest can we, the descendants of the practical brother, heirs to so much liistorical renown, possibly take in the records of a race so historically characterless, and so sunk in reveries and mysticism? The answer is easy. Those records are written in a language closely allied to the primeval common tongue of those two branches before they parted, and descending from a period anterior to their separation. It may, or it may not, be the very tongue itself, but it certainly is not further removed than a few steps. The speech of the emigrants to the west rapidly changed with the changing circumstances and various fortune of each of its waves, and in their intercourse with the aboriginal population they often adopted foreign elements into their language. One of these waves, it is probable, passing by way of Persia and Asia Minor, crossed the Hellespont and, following the coast, threw off a mighty rill, known in after times as Greeks; while the main stream, striking through Macedonia, either crossed the Adriatic, or, still hugging the coast, came down on Italy, to be known as Latins. Another, passing between the Caspian and the Black Sea, filled the steppes round the Crimea, and, pass- ing on over the Balkan and the Carpathians towards the west, became that great Teutonic nationality which, under various names, but all closely akin, filled, when we first hear of them in historical times, the space between the Black Sea and the Baltic, and was then slowly but surely driving before them the great wave of the Celts which had preceded them in their wandering, and which had probably followed the same line of march as the ancestors of the Greeks and Latins, — a movement which lasted until all XXX INTRODUCTION. that was left of Celtic nationality was either absorbed by the intruders, or forced aside and driven to take refuge in mountain fastnesses and outlying islands. Besides all these, there was still another wave, which is supposed to have passed between the Sea of Aral and the Caspian, and, keeping still further to the north and east, to have passed between its kindred Teutons and the Mongolian tribes, and so to have lain in the background until we find them appearing as Slavonians on the scene, of history. Into so many great stocks did the Western Aryans pass, each possessing strongly marked nationalities and languages, and these seemingly so distinct that each often asserted that the other spoke a barbarous tongue. But, for aU that, each of those tongues bears about with it still, and in earlier times no doubt bore still more plainly about with it, infallible evidence of common origin, so that each dialect can be traced up to that primeval form of speech still in the main preserved in the Sanscrit by the Southern Aryan branch, who, careless of practical life, and im- mersed in speculation, have clung to their ancient tradi- tions and tongue with wonderful tenacity. It is this which has given such value to Sanscrit, a tongue of which it may be said that if it had perished the sun would never have risen on the science of comparative philology. Be- fore the discoveries in Sanscrit of Sir William Jones, Willdns, Wilson, and others, the world had striven to find the common ancestor of European languages, sometimes in the classical, and sometimes in the Semitic tongues. In the one case the result was a tyranny of Greek and Latin over the non-classical tongues, and in the other the most uncritical and un philosophical waste of learning. DIFFUSION. XXXI No doubt some striking analogies exist between the Indo- European family and the Semitic stock, just as there are remarkable analogies between the Mongolian and Indo- European families ; but the ravings of Vallancey, in his effort to connect the Erse with Phoenician, are an awful warning of what unscientific inquiry, based upon casual analogy, may bring itself to believe, and even to fancy it has proved. These general observations, then, and this rapid bird's- eye view, may suffice to show the common affinity which exists between the Eastern and Western Aryans ; between the Hindoo on the one hand, and the nations of Western Europe on the other. That is the fact to keep steadily before our eyes. We all came, Greek, Latin, Celt, Teuton, Slavonian, from the East, as Idth and kia, leaving kith and kiQ behind us; and after thousands of years, the language and traditions of those who went East, and those who went West, bear such an affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond discussion or dispute, the fact of their descent from a common stock. DIPEUSIOK This general affinity established, we proceed to narrow our subject to its proper limits, and to confine it to the consideration, first, of Popular Tales in general, and, secondly, of those ISTorse Tales in particular, which form the bulk of this volume. In the first place, then, the fact which we remarked on setting out, that the groundwork or plot of many of xxxii INTRODUCTION. I these tales is common to all the nations of Europe, is more I important, and of greater scientific interest, than might at first appear. They form, in fact, another link in the chain of evidence of a common origin between the East and "West, and even the obstinate adherents of the old classical theory, according to which all resemblances were set down to sheer copying from Greek or Latin patterns, are now forced to confess not only that there was no such whole- sale copying at all, but that, in many cases, the despised vernacular tongues have preserved the common traditions far more faithfully than the writers of Greece and Eome. The sooner in short that this theory of copying, which some even besides the classicists have maintained, is abandoned, the better, not only for the truth but for the literary reputation of those who put it forth. No one can, of course, imagine that during that long succession of ages when this mighty wedge of Aryan migration was driving its way through that prehistoric race, that nameless nationality, the traces of which we everywhere find underlying the intruders in their monuments and imple- ments of bone and stone — a race akin, in all probability, to the Mongolian family, and whose miserable remnants we see pushed aside, and huddled up in the holes and corners of Europe, as Lapps, and Finns, and Basques- no one, we say, can suppose for a moment, that in that long process of contact and absorption, some traditions of either race should not have been caught up and adopted by the other. We know it to be a fact with regard to their language, from the evidence of philology, which cannot lie; and the witness borne by such a word as the Gothic Atta for father, where a Mongolian has been DIFFUSION. xxxm adopted in preference to an Aryan word, is irresistible on this point ; but that, apart from such natural assimilation, all the thousand shades of resemblance and af&nity which gleam and flicker through the whole body of popular tradition in the Aryan race, as the Aurora plays and flashes in countless rays athwart the Northern heaven, should be the result of mere servile copying of one tribe's traditions by another, is a supposition as absurd as that of those good country-folk, who, when they see an Aurora, fancy it must be a great fire, the work of some incendiary, and send off the parish engine to put it out. No ! when we find in such a story as " The Master Thief" traits which are to be found in the Sanscrit Hitopadesa,* and which * "A Brahmin, who had vowed a sacrifice, went to the market to buy a goat. Three thieves saw him, and wanted to get hold of the goat. They stationed themselves at inter- vals on the high-road. When the Brahmin, who carried the goat on his back, approached the first thief, the thief said, ' Brahmin, why do you carry a dog on your back 1 ' The Brahmin replied : ' It is not a dog, it is a goat.' A little while after, he was accosted by the second thief, who said, 'Brahmin, why do you carry a dog on your back?' The Brahmin felt perplexed, put the goat down, examined it, and walked on. Soon after he was stopped by the third thief, who said, 'Brahmin, why do you carry a dog on your back 1 ' Then the Brahmin was frightened, threw down the goat, and walked home to perform his ablutions for having touched an un- clean animal. The thieves took the goat and ate it." See the notice of the Norse Tales in the Saturday Review, January 15th. In Max Midler's translation of the Hitopadesa, the story has a difierent ending. See also Le Piacevoli NoUi di xxxiv INTRODUCTION. reminds us at once of the story of Ehampsinitus in Herodotus ; which are also to be found in German, Italian, and Flemish popular tales, but told in all with such variations of character and detail, and such adaptations to time and place, as evidently show the original workiag of the national consciousness upon a stock of tradition common to all the race, but belonging to no tribe of that race in particular ; and when we find this occurring not in one tale but in twenty, we are forced to abandon the theory of such universal copying, for fear lest we should fall into a greater difficulty than that for which we were striving to account. To set this question in a plainer light, let us take a well-known instance; let us take the story of "William Tell and his daring shot, which is said to have been made in the year 1307. It is just possible that the feat might be historical, and, no doubt, thousands believe it for the sake of the Swiss patriot, as firmly as they believe in any- thing; but, unfortunately, this story of the bold archer who saves his life by shooting an apple from the head of his child at the command of a tyrant is common to the whole Aryan race. It appears in Saxo Grammaticus, who flour- ished in the twelfth century, where it is told of Palnatoki, M. Giovan Francesco Straparola da Garavaggio. Venice, 1567. Notte Prima, Favola III. " Pre Scarpacifico da tre malandrini una sol volta gabbato, tre fiate gabba lore, finalmente vittorioso con la sua Nina lietamente rimane." In which tale the be- ginning is a parallel to the first part of " The Master Thief," while the end answers exactly to the Norse tale added in this edition, and called " Big Peter and Little Peter." TELL S MASTER SHOT. XXXV King Harold Gormson's thane and assassin. In the thirteenth century the Wilkina Saga relates it of Egill, Vblundr's — our Wayland Smith's — younger brother. So also in the Norse Saga of Saint Olof, king and martyr : the king, who died in 1030, eager for the conversion of one of his heathen chiefs Eindridi, competes with him in various athletic exercises, first in swimming and then in archery. After several famous shots on either side, the king challenges Eindridi to shoot a tablet off his son's head without hurting the child. Eindridi is ready, but declares he will revenge himself if the child is hurt. The king has the first shot, and his arrow strikes close to the tablet. Then Eindridi is to shoot, but at the prayers of his mother and sister, refuses the shot, and has to yield and be converted.* So, also. King Harold Sigurdarson, who died 1066, backed himself against a famous marksman, Hemingr, and ordered him to shoot a hazel-nut off the head of his brother Bjorn, and Hemingr performed the feat.-f- In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Malleus Maleficarum refers it to Puncher, a magician of the Upper Ehine. Here in England, we have it in the old English ballad of Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudesly, where William performs the feat.f It is not told at all of Tell in Switzerland before the year 1499, and the earlier Swiss chronicles omit it altogether. It is common to the Turks and Mongolians ; and a legend of the wild Samoyeds, who never heard of Tell * Fornm. Sog., ii. 272. t Mailer's Saga Bibl., iii. 359. f See the ballad in Percy's Eeliqnes. xxxvi INTRODUCTION. or saw a book in their lives, relates it, chapter and verse, of one of their famous marksmen. What shall we say then, but that the story of this bold master-shot was primeval amongst many tribes and races, and that it only crystallised itself round the great name of Tell by that process of attraction which invariably leads a grateful people to throw such mythic wreaths, such garlands of bold deeds of precious memory, round the brow of its darling champion.* * The following are translations from Saxo, the Wilkina Saga, and the Malleus Maleficarum. The question is com- pletely set at rest by Grimm, D. M., p. 353 fol. and p. 1214. " Nor is the following story to be wrapped in silence. A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Harold's body- guard, had made his bravery odious to very many of his fellow-soldiers by the zeal with which he surpassed them in the discharge of his duty. This man once, when talking tipsily over his cups, had boasted that he was so skilled an archer, that he could hit the smallest apple placed a long way off on a wand at the first shot ; which talk, caught up at first by the ears of backbiters, soon came to the hearing of the king. Now, mark how the wickedness of the king turned the confidence of the sire to the peril of the son, by command- ing that this dearest pledge of his life should be placed in- stead of the wand, with a threat that, unless the author of this promise could strike off the apple at the first flight of the arrow, he should pay the penalty of his empty boasting by the loss of his head. The king's command forced the soldier to perform more than he had promised, and what he had said, reported by the tongues of slanderers, bound him to accom- plish what he had not said." .... "Nor did his ster- GELLERTS GRAVE. xxxvii Nor let any pious Welshman be shocked if we venture to assert that Gellert, that famous hound upon whose last resting-place the traveller comes as he passes down the lovely vale of Gwynant, is a mythical dog, and never ling courage, though caught in the snare of slander, suffer him to lay aside his firmness of heart ; nay, he accepted the trial the more readily because it was hard. So Palnatoki warned the boy urgently when he took his stand to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with calm ears and unbent head, lest by a slight turn of his body he should defeat the practised skill of the bowman ; and, taking further counsel to prevent his fear, he turned away his face, lest he should be scared at the sight of the weapon. Then taking three arrows from the quiver, he struck the mark given him with the first he fitted to the string. But, if chance had brought the head of the boy before the shaft, no doubt the penalty of the son would have recoiled to the peril of the father, and the swerving of the shaft that struck the boy would have linked them both in common ruin. I am in doubt, then, whether to admire most the courage of the father or the temper of the son, of whom the one by skill in his art avoided being the slayer of his child, while the other by patience of mind and quietness of body saved himself alive, and spared the natural affection of his father. Nay, the youthful frame strengthened the aged heart, and showed as much courage in awaiting the arrow as the father skill in launching it. But Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he had taken more arrows from the quiver, when it had been settled that he should only try the fortune of the bow once, made answer, ' That I might avenge on thee the swerving of the first by the points of the rest, lest per- chance my innocence might have been punished, while your xxxviii INTRODUCTION. snuffed the fresh breeze in the forest of Suowdon, nor saved his master's child from ravening wolf. This, too, is a primeval story, told with many variations. Sometimes the foe is a wolf, sometimes a bear, sometimes a snake. Sometimes the faithful guardian of the child is an otter, a weasel, or a dog. It, too, came from the East. It is found in the Pantcha-Tantra, in the Ritopadesa, in Bidpai's violence escaped scot-free.'" — Saxo Gram., Book x. p. 166, ed. Frankf . "About that time the young Egill, Wayland's brother, came to the court of King Nidung, because Wayland (Smith) had sent him word. Egill was the fairest of men, and one thing he had before all other men — he shot better with the bow than any other man. The king took to him well, and Egill was there a long time. Now, the king wished to try whether Egill shot so well as was said or not, so he let Egill's son, a boy of three years old, be taken, and made them put an apple on his head, and bade Egill shoot so that the shaft struck neither above the head nor to the left nor to the right; the apple only was he to split. But it was not forbidden him to shoot the boy, for the king thought it certain that he would do that on no account, if he could at all help it. And he was to shoot one arrow only, no more. So Egill takes three, and strokes their feathers smooth, and fits one to his string, and shoots and hits the apple in the middle, so that the arrow took along with it half the apple, and then fell to the ground. This master-shot has long been talked about, and the king made much of him, and he was the most famous of men. Now, King Nidung asked Egill why he took out three arrows, when it was settled that one only was to be shot with. Then Egill answered, ' Lord,' said he, ' I will not lie to you ; had GELLEKT S GEAVB. xxxix Fables, in the Arabic original of the Seven Wise Masters, —that famous collection of stories which illustrate a step- dame's calumny and hate — and in many medieval versions of those originals.* Thence it passed into the Latin Gesta Bomanorum, where, as well as in the Old English version published by Sir Frederick Madden, it may be read as a I stricken the lad with that one arrow, then I had meant these two for you.' But the king took that well from him, and all thought it was boldly spoken." — Wilkina Saga, ch. 27, ed. Paring. " It is related of him [Puncher] that a certain lord, who wished to obtain a sure trial of his skill, set up his little son as a butt, and for a mark a shilling on the boy's cap, com- manding him to carry off the shilling without the cap with his arrow. But when the wizard said he could do it, though he would rather abstain, lest the Devil should decoy him to destruction ; still, being led on by the words of the chief, he thrust one arrow through his collar, and, fitting the other to his crossbow, struck off the coin from the boy's cap without doing him any harm ; seeing which, when the lord asked the wizard why he had placed the arrow in his collar ? he answered, ' If by the Devil's deceit I had slain the boy, when I needs must die, I would have transfixed you suddenly with the other arrow, that even so I might have avenged my diG&ih:"— Malleus Malef., P. ii. ch. 16. * See Pantcha-Tantra, v. ii. of Wilson's Analysis, quoted by Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Essai sur Us Fables Indiennes, Paris (Techener), 1838, p. 54, where the animal that protects the child is a mangouste (Viverra Mungo). See also Sitopa- desa. Max Miiller's Translation, Leipzig (Brockhaus), p. 178, where the guardian is an otter. In both the foe is a snake. xl INTEODUCTION. service rendered by a faithful hound against a snake. This, too, like Toll's master-shot, is as the lightning which shineth over the whole heaven at once, and can be claimed by no one tribe of the Aryan race, to the exclusion of the rest. " The Dog of Montargis " is in like manner mythic, though perhaps not so widely spread. It first occurs in France, as told of Sybilla, a fabulous wife of Charlemagne; but it is at any rate as old as the time of Plutarch, who relates it as an anecdote of brute sagacity in the days of Pyrrhus. There can be no doubt, with regard to the question of the origin of these tales, that they were common in germ at least to the Aryan tribes before their migration. We find those germs developed in the popular traditions of the Eastern Aryans, and we find them developed in a hundred forms and shapes in every one of the nations into which the Western Aryans have shaped themselves in the course of ages. We are led, therefore, irresistibly to the conclu- sion, that these traditions are as much a portion of the common inheritance of our ancestors, as their language unquestionably is ; and that they form, along with that language, a double chain of evidence, which proves their Eastern origin. If we are to seek for a simile, or an analogy, as to the relative positions of these tales and traditions, and to the mutual resemblances which exist between them as the several branches of our race have developed them from the common stock, we may find it in one which will come home to every reader as he looks round the domestic hearth, if he should be so happy as to have one. They are like as sisters of one house are like. They have what would be called a strong family likeness ; NATIONAL DREAMS. xli but besides this likenes^ which they owe to father or mother, as the case may be, they have each their pecu- liarities of form and eye and face, and, still more, their differences of intellect and mind. This may be dark, that fair ; this may have grey eyes, that black ; this may be open and graceful, that reserved and close ; this you may love, that you can take no interest in. One may be bashful, another winning, a third worth knowing and yet hard to know. They are so like, and so unlike. At first it may be, as an old English writer beautifully expresses it, " their father hath writ them as his own little story," but as they grow up they throw off the copy, educate them- selves for good or ill, and finally assume new forms of feeling and feature under an original development of their own. Or shall we take another likeness, and say they are national dreams ; that they are like the sleeping thoughts of many men upon one and the same thing. Suppose a hundred men to have been eye-witnesses of some event on the same day, and then to have slept and dreamt of it ; we should have as many distinct representations of that event, all turning upon it and bound up with it in some way, but each preserving the personality of the sleeper, and working up the common stuff in a higher or lower degree, just as the fancy and the intellect of the sleeper was at a higher or lower level of perfection. There is, indeed, greater truth in this likeness than may at first sight appear. In the popular tale, properly so called, the national mind dreams all its history over again ; in its half-conscious state it takes this trait and that trait, this feature and that feature, of times and ages long past. It xlii INTRODUCTION. snatches up bits of its old beliefs, and fears, and griefs, and glory, and pieces them together with something that happened yesterday, and then holds up the distorted reflection in all its inconsequence, just as it has passed before that magic glass, as though it were genuine history, and matter for pure belief. And here it may be as well to say, that besides that old classical foe of vernacular tradition, there is another hardly less dangerous, which returns to the charge of copying, but changes what lawyers call the venue of the trial from classical to Eastern lands. According to this theory, which came up when its classica predecessor was no longer tenable, the traditions and tales of Western Europe came from the East, but they were still all copies. They were supposed to have proceeded entirely from two sources : one the Directorium Humanm VitcB of John of Capua, translated between 1262-78 from a Hebrew version, which again came from an Arabic version of the eighth century, which came from a Pehlvi version made by one Barzouyeh, at the command of Chosrou Noushirvan, King of Persia, in the sixth century, which again came from the Pantcha-T antra, a Sanscrit original of unknown antiquity. This is that famous book of Galila and Dimna, as the Persian version is called, attributed to Bidpai, and which was thus run to earth in India. The second source of Western tradition was held to be that still more famous collection of stories commonly known by the name of the " Story of the Seven Sages," but which, under many names — Kaiser Octavianus, Diocletianus, Dolopathos, Erastus, etc. — plays a most im- portant part iu medieval romance. This, too, by a similar process, has been traced to India, appearing first in CALILA AND DIMKA. xliii Europe at the beginning of the thirteenth century in the Latin Historia Septem Sapientum Romm, by Dame Jehans, monk in the Abbey of Haute Selve. Here, too, we have a Hebrew, an Arabic, and a Persian version ; which last came avowedly from a Sanscrit original, though that original has not yet been discovered. From these two- sources of fable and tradition, according to the new copy- ing theory, our Western fables and tales had come by direct translation from the East. Now it will be at once evident that this theory hangs on what may be called a single thread. Let us say, then, that all that can be found in Galila and Dimna, or the later Persian version, made a.d. 1494, of Hossein Vaez, called the Anvari So- haili, "the Canopic Lights," — from which, when published in Paris by David Sahid of Ispahan, in the year 1644, La Fontaine drew the substance of many of his best fables. — Let us say, too, that all can be found in the " Life of the Seven Sages," "or the Book of Sendabad," as it was called in Persia, after an apocryphal Indian sage — came by translation — that is to say, through the cells of Brah- mins, magians, and monks, and the labours of the learned — into the popular literature of the West. Let us give up all that, and then see where we stand. What are we to say of the many tales and fables which are to be found in neither of those famous collections, and not tales alone, but traits and features of old tradition, broken bits of fable, roots and germs of mighty growths of song and story, nay, even the very words, which exist in Western popular literature, and which modern philology has found obstinately sticking in Sanscrit, and of which fresh proofs and instances are discovered every day? What xliv INTRODUCTION. are we to say of such a remarkable resemblance as this ?— "The noble King Putraka fled into the Vindhya moun- tains in order to live apart from his unkind kinsfolk ; and as he wandered about there he met two men who wrestled and fought with one another. ' Who are you 1 ' he asked. ' We are the sons of Mayasara, and here lie our riches ; this bowl, this staff, and these shoes ; these are what we are fight- ing for, and whichever is stronger is to have them for his own.' " So when Putraka had heard that, he asked them with a laugh, ' Why, what 's the good of owning these things ? ' "Then they answered, 'Whoever puts on these shoes gets the power to fly ; whatever is pointed at with this staff rises up at once ; and whatever food one wishes for in this bowl, it comes at once.' " So when Putraka had heard that he said, ' Why flght about it ? Let this be the prize ; whoever beats the other in a race, let him have them all.' " ' So be it,' said the two fools, and set off running, but Putraka put on the shoes at once, and flew away with the staff and bowl up into the clouds." Well, this is a story neither in the Pantcha-Tantra nor the Hitopadesa, the Sanscrit originals of Galila and Dimna. It is not in the Directorium Hiomance Vitce, and has not passed west by that way. Nor is it in the Book of Sendabad, and thence come west in the "History of the Seven Sages." Both these paths are stopped. It comes from the Katha Sarit Sagara, the "Sea of Streams of Story " of Somadeva Blmtta of Cashmere, who, in the middle of the twelfth century of our era, worked up the tales found in an earlier collection, called the Vrilwi somadeva's stories. xlv Katha, "the lengthened story," in order to amuse his mistress, the Queen of Cashmere. Somadeva's collection has only been recently known and translated. But west the story certainly came long before, and in the extreme north-west we still find it in these Norse Tales in " The Three Princesses of Whiteland," p. 181. " ' Well ! ' said the man, ' as this is so, I '11 give you a bit of advice. Hereabouts, on a moor, stand three brothers, and there they have stood these hundred years, fighting about a hat, a cloak, and a pair of boots. If any one has these three things, he can make himself invisible, and wish himself any- where he pleases. You can tell them you wish to try the things, and after that, you'll pass judgment between them, whose they shall be.' "Yes ! the king thanked the man, and went and did as he told him. '"What's all this? ' he said to the brothers. 'Why do you stand here fighting for ever and a day ? Just let me try these things, and I'll give judgment whose they shall be.' " They were very willing to do this ; but as soon as he had got the hat, cloak, and boots, he said — " ' When we meet next time I '11 tell you my judgment ; ' and with these words he wished himself away.'' Nor in the Norse tales alone. Other collections shew how thoroughly at home this story was in the East. In the Eelations of Ssidi Kw, a Tartar tale, a Chan's son first gets possession of a cloak which two children stand and fight for, which has the gift of making the wearer invisible, and afterwards of a pair of boots, with which one can wish one's-self to whatever place one chooses. Again, in a Wallachian tale we read of three devils who xlvi INTRODUCTION. fight for their inheritance— a club which turns everything to stone, a hat which makes the wearer invisible, and a cloak by help of which one can wish one's-self whitherso- ever one pleases. Again, in a Mongolian tale, the Chan's son comes upon a group of children who fight for a hood which makes the wearer invisible ; he is to be judge be- tween them, makes them run a race for it, but meanwhile puts it on and vanishes from their sight. A little further on he meets another group, who are quarrelling for a pair of boots, the wearer of which can wish himself whitherso- ever he pleases, and gains possession of them in the same way.* Nor in one Norse tale alone, but in many, we find traces of these three wonderful things, or of things like them. They are very like the cloth, the ram, and the stick, which the lad got from the North Wind instead of his meal. Very like, too, the cloth, the scissors, and the tap, which will be found in p. 252, "The Best "Wish." If we drop the number three, we find the Boots again in " Soria Moria Castle," p. 396. Leaving the Norse Tales, we see at once that they are the seven-league boots of Jack the Giant Killer. In the Nibelungen Lied, when Siegfried finds Schilbung and Niblung, the weird heirs of the famous "Hoard," striving for the possession of that heap of red gold and gleaming stones ; when they beg him to share it for them, promising him, as his meed, Balmung, best of swords; when he shares it, when they are discontent, and when in the struggle which ensues he gets possession of the tarnhut, the " cloak of darkness," which gave its * Moe : Introd. xxxii.-iii. THE NIBELTJNGEN HOAKD. xlvii wearer the strength of twelve men, and enabled him to go where he would unseen, and which was the great prize among the treasures of the dwarfs ;* who is there that does not see the broken fragments of that old Eastern story of the heirs struggling for their inherit- ance, and calling in the aid of some one of better wit or strength, who ends by making the very prize for which they fight his own ? And now to return for a moment to Galila and Bimna, and " The Seven Sages." Since we have seen that there are other stories, and many of them, for this is by no means the only resemblance to be found in Somadeva's book,-f- which are common to the Eastern and * The account in the Nibelungen respecting the tarnhut is confused, and the text probably corrupt ; but so much is plain, that Siegfried got it from Elberich in the struggle which ensued with Schilbung and Niblung, after he had shared the Hoard. t Thus we find in it the originals or the parallels of Grendel in Beowulf, of Rumpelstiltskin, of the recovery of the Bride by the ring dropped into the cup, as related in Soria Moria Castle, and other tales ; of the " wishing ram," \\ hich in the Indian story becomes a " wishing cow," and thus reminds us of the bull in one of these Norse Tales, out of whose ear came a "wishing cloth"; of the lucky child, who finds a purse of gold under his pillow every morning ; and of the red lappet sown on the sleeping lover, as on Siegfried in the Nibelungen. The devices of Upakosa, the faithful wife, remind us at once of " The Mastermaid," and the whole of the stories of Saktideva and the Golden City, and of Viduschaka, King Adityasena's daughter, are the same in groundwork and in many of their incidents as "East o' the Sun, and West o' xlviii INTRODUCTION. Western Aryans, but which did not travel to Europe by translation ; let us go on to say that it is by no means certain, even when some "Western story or fable is found in these Sanscrit originals and their translations, that that was the only way by which they came to Europe. A single question will prove this. How did the fables and apologues which are found in ^sop, and which are also found in the Pantcha-Tantra and the ITitopadesa come West ? That they came from the East is certain ; but by what way ? — certainly not by translation or copying, for they had travelled west long before translations were thought of. How was it that Themistius, a Greek orator of the fourth century,* had heard of that fable of the lion, fox, and bull, which is in substance the same as that of the lion, the bull, and the two jackals in the Pantcha-Tantra, and the Hitopadesal How, but along the path of that primeval Aryan migration, and by that deep ground-tone of tradition by which man speaks to man, nation to nation, and age to age; along which comparative philology has, in these last days, travelled back thither, listened to the accents spoken, and so found in the East the cradle of a common language and common belief. And now having, as we hope, finally established this Indian affinity, and disposed of mere Indian copying, let us lift our eyes and see if something more is not to be discerned on the wide horizon now open on our view. The most interesting problem for man to solve is the origin of his race. Of late years comparative philology, the Moon," "The Three Princesses of Whiteland," and "Soria Moria Castle." * J. Grimm : Reinhart Fuchs, cclxiii. Intr. ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN RACE. xlix having accomplished her task in proving the affinity of language between Europe and the East, and so taken a mighty step towards fixing the first seat of the greatest — greatest in v/it and wisdom, if not in actual numbers — portion of the human race, has pursued her inquiries into the languages of the- Turanian, the Semitic, and the Chamitic or African races, with more or less successful results. In a few more years, when the African languages are better known, and the roots of Egyptian and Chinese words are more accurately detected, Science will be better able to speak as to the common affinity of all the tribes that throng the earth. In the meantime, let the testimony of tradition and popular tales be heard, which in this case have outstripped comparative philology, and lead instead of following her. It is beyond the scope of this essay, which aims at being popular and readable rather than learned and lengthy, to go over a prolonged scientific investigation step by step. We repeat it : the reader must have faith in the writer, and believe the words now written are the results of an inquiry, and not ask for the inquiry itself. In all mythologies and traditions, then, there are what may be called natural resemblances, paral- lelisms suggested to the senses of each race by natural objects and every-day events, and these might spring up spontaneously all over the earth as home growths, neither derived by imitation from other tribes, nor from seeds of common tradition shed from a common stock. Such resem- blances have been well compared by William Grimm * to * Kinder- und Hausmarchen, vol. iii., 3d ed., Gottingen, 1856 ; a volume worthy of the utmost attention. c 1 INTRODUCTION. those words which are found in all languages derived from the imitation of natural sounds, or, we may add, from the first lisping accents of infancy. But the case is very different when this or that object which strikes the senses is accounted for in a way so extraordinary and peculiar, as to stamp the tradition with a character of its own. Then arises a like impression on the mind, if we find the same tradition in two tribes at the opposite ends of the earth, as is produced by meeting twin brothers, one in Africa and the other in Asia ; we say at- once, " I know you are so-and-so's brother, you are so like him." ' Take an instance : In these Norse Tales, p. 172, we are told how it was the bear came to have a stumpy tail, and in an African tale* we find how it was the hysena became tailless and earless. Now, the tailless condition both of the bear and the hysena could scarcely fail to attract attention in a race of hunters, and we might expect that popular tradition would attempt to account for both ; but how are we to explain the fact, that both Norseman and African account for it in the same way — that both owe their loss to the superior cunning of another animal ? In Europe the fox bears away the pahn for wit from all other animals, so he it is that persuades the bear in the Norse Tales to sit with his tail in a hole in the ice till it is fast frozen in, and snaps short off when he tries to tug it out. In Bornou, in the heart of Africa, * Kolle : Kanuri Proverbs and Fables, London Church Missionary House, 1854. A book of great philological interest, and one which reflects great credit on the religious society by which it was published. AFRICAN TALES. li it is the weasel who is the wisest of beasts, and who, having got some meat in common with the hyiBna, put it into a hole, and said, — " ' Behold two men came out of the forest, took the meat, and put it into a hole : stop, I will go into the hole, and then thou mayst stretch out thy tail to me, and I will tie the meat to thy tail for thee to draw it out.' So the weasel went into the hole, the hysena stretched its tail out to it, but the weasel took the hyaena's tail, fastened a stick, and tied the hyasna's tail to the stick, and then said to the hysena, ' I have tied the meat to thy tail ; draw, and pull it out.' The hyaena was a fool, it did not know the weasel surpassed it in subtlety ; it thought the meat was tied ; but when it tried to draw out its tail, it was fast. When the weasel said again to it, ' Pull,' it pulled, but could not draw it out ; so it became vexed, and on pulling with force, its tail broke. The tail being torn out, the weasel was no more seen by the hysena : the weasel was hidden in the hole with its meat, and the hysena saw it not."* Here we have a fact in natural history accounted for, but accounted for in suck e peculiar way as shews that the races among which they are current must have derived them from some common tradition. The mode by which the tail is lost is different indeed : but the manner in which the common ground-work is suited in one case to the cold of the North, and the way in which fish are commonly caught at holes in the ice as they rise to breathe ; and in the other to Africa and her pit-falls for wild beasts, is only another proof of the oldness of the tradition, and that it is not merely a copy. * Kanuri Proverbs, p. 167. Hi INTRODUCTION. Take another instance. Every one knows the story in the Arabian Nights, where the man who knows the speech of beasts laughs at something said by an ox to an ass. His wife wants to know why he laughs, and persists, though he tells her it will cost him his life if he tells her. As he doubts what to do, he hears the cock say to the house-dog, " Our master is not wise ; I have fifty hens who obey me; if he followed my advice, he'd just take a good stick, shut up his wife in a room with him, and give her a good cudgelling." The same story is told in Straparola* with so many variations as to shew it is no copy ; it is also told in a Servian popular tale, with variations of its own ; and now here we find it in Bornou, as told by Kolle. " There was a servant of God who had one wife and one liorse; but his wife was one-eyed, and they lived in their house. Now this servant of God understood the language of the beasts of the forest when they spoke, and of the birds of the air when they talked as they flew by. This servant of God also under- stood the cry of the hyrena when it arose at night in the forest, and came to the houses and cried near them ; so, like- wise, when his horse was hungry and neighed, he understood what it neighed, rose up, brought the horse grass, and then returned and sat down. It happened one day that birds had their talk as they were flying by above, and the servant of God understood what they talked. This caused him to laugh, whereupon his wife said to him, ' What dost thou hear that * Notte Duodecima. Favoia terza. " Federigo da Poz- zuolo che intendeva il linguaggio de gli animali, astretto dalla moglie dirle un segreto, quella stranamente batte." AFRICAN TALES. liii thou laughest ? ' He replied to his wife, ' I shall not tell thee what I hear, and why I laugh.' The woman said to her hus- band, 'I know why thou laughest ; thou laughest at me because I am one-eyed.' The man then said to his wife, 'I saw that thou wast one-eyed before I loved thee, and before we married and sat down in our house.' Wheu the woman heard her husband's word she was quiet. "But once at night, as they were lying on their bed, and it was past midnight, it happened that a rat played with his wife on the top of the house, and that both fell to the ground. Then the wife of the rat said to her husband, ' Thy sport is bad ; thou saidst to me that thou wouldst play, but when we came together we fell to the ground, so that I broke my back. "When the servant of God heard the talk of the rat's wife, as he was lying on his bed, he laughed. Now, as soon as he laughed his wife arose, seized him, and said to him as she held him fast, ' Now this time I will not let thee go out of this house except thou tell me what thou hearest and why thou laughest.' The man begged the woman, saying, 'Let me go ; ' but the woman would not listen to her husband's entreaty." The husband then tells his wife that he knows the language of beasts and birds, and she is content; but when he wakes in the morning he finds he has lost his ■wonderful gift ; and the moral of the tale is added most ungallantly, " If a man shews and tells his thoughts to a woman, God will punish him for it." Though, perhaps, it is better, for the sake of the gentler sex, that the tale should be pointed with this unfair moral, than that the African story should proceed like all the other variations, and save the husband's gift at the cost of the wife's skin. liv INTRODUCTION. Take other African instances. How is it that the wandering Bechuanas got their story of " The Two Brothers," the ground-work of which is the same as "The Machandelboom " and " The Milk-white Doo," and where the incidents and even the words are almost the same ? How is it that in some of its traits that Bechuana story embodies those of that earliest of all popular tales, recently published from an Egyptian Papyrus, coeval with the abode of the Israelites in Egypt ? and how is it that that same Egyptian tale has other traits which remind us of the Dun Bull in "Katie "Woodencloak," as well as incidents which are the germ of stories long since reduced to writing in Norse Sagas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries?* How is it that we still find among the Negroes in the West Indiesf a rich store of popular tales, and the Beast Epic in full bloom, brought with them from Africa to the islands of the West ; and among those tales and traditions, how is it that we find a " Wishing Tree," the counterpart of that in a German popular tale, and " a little dirty scrub of a child," whom his sisters despise, but who is own brother to Boots in the Norse Tales, and like him outwits the Troll, spoils his substance, and saves Ms sisters? How is it that we find the good woman who washes the loath- some head rewarded, while the bad man who refuses to do that dirty work is punished for his pride ; the very ground- work, nay the very words, that we meet in " Bushy Bride,", * The Story of the Two Brothers Anesou and Satou, from the D'Orbiney Papyrus, by De Eoug6 : Paris, 1852. t See the Ananzi Stories in the Appendix, which have been taken down from the mouth of a West Indian nurse. NOKSE MYTHOLOGY. Iv another Norse tale ? How is it that we find a Mongolian tale, which came confessedly from India, made up of two of our Norse Tales, " Eich Peter the Pedlar," and " The Giant that had no heart in his body" ?* How should all these things be, and how could they possibly be, except on that theory which day by day becomes more and more a matter of fact: this, that the whole human race sprung from one stock, planted in the East, which has stretched out its boughs and branches, laden with the fruit of language, and bright with the bloom of song and story, by successive offshoots to the utmost parts of the earth. NOESE MYTHOLOGY. And now, in the second place, for that particular branch of the Aryan race, in which this peculiar develop- ment of the common tradition has arisen, which we are to consider as " Norse Popular Tales." Whatever disputes may have existed as to the mytho- logy of other branches of the Teutonic subdivision of the Aryan race — whatever discussions may have arisen as to the position of this or that divinity among the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Goths — about the Norsemen there can be no dispute or doubt. From a variety of circum- stances, but two before all the rest — the one their settle- ment in Iceland, which preserved their language and its literary treasures incorrupt; the other their late conversion * " The Deeds of Bogda Gesser Cham," by I. J. Schmidt, Petersburg and Leipzig, 1839. Ivi INTRODUCTION. to Christianity— their cosmogony and mythology stands before us in full flower, and we have not, as elsewhere, to pick up and piece together the wretched fragments of a faith, the articles of which its own priests had forgotten to commit to writing, and which those of another creed had dashed to pieces and destroyed, wherever their zealous hands could reach. In the two Eddas, therefore, in the early Sagas, in Saxo's stilted Latin, which barely conceals the popular songs and legends from which the historian drew his materials, we are enabled to form a perfect conception of the creed of the heathen Norsemen. We are enabled to trace, as has been traced by the same hand in another place,* the natural and rational development of that creed from a simple worship of nature and her powers, iirst to monotheism, and then to a polytheistic system. The tertiary system of Polytheism is the soil out of which the mythology of the Eddas sprang, though through it each of the older formations crops out in huge masses which admit of no mistake as to its origin. In the Eddas the natural powers have been partly subdued, partly thrust on one side, for a time, by Odin and ^sir, by the Great Father and his children, by One Supreme and twelve subordinate gods, who rule for an appointed time, and over whom hangs an impending fate, which imparts a charm of melancholy to this creed, which has clung to the race who once believed in it long after the creed itself has vanished before the light of Christianity. According to this creed, the ^sir and Odin had their abode in Asgard, a lofty hill in the centre of the habitable * Oxford Essays for 1858 : " The Norsemen in Tcelanrl." THE ^SIII AND THE FROST GIANTS. Ivii earth, in the midst of Midgard, that middle earth which we hear of in early English poetry, the abode of gods and men. Bound that earth, which was fenced in against the attacks of ancient and inveterate foes by a natural fortification of hills, ilowed the great sea in a ring, and beyond that sea was Utgard, the^jitlying^_world^the abode of Frost Giants, and Monsters, those old-natural powers who had been dispossessed by Odin and the ^sir when the new order of the universe arose, and between whom and the new_gods a. feud as inveterate as that cherished by the Titans against Jupiter was necessarily kept alive. It is true indeed that this feud was broken by intervals of truce during which the Msix and the Giants visit each other, and appear on more or less friendly terms, but the true relation between them was war ; pretty much as the Norseman was at war with all the rest of the world. Nor was this struggle between two rival races or powers con- lined to the gods_in Asgard_alone. Just as their ancient foes were the Giants of Frost and Snow, so between the race of men and the race of Trolls was there a perpetual feud. As the gods were men magnified and exaggerated, so were the Trolls diminished Frost Giants ; far superior to man in strength and stature, but inferior to inan in wit and invention. Like the Frost Giants, they inhabit the rough and rugged places of the earth, and, historically speaking, in all probability represent the old aboriginal races who retired into the mountainous fastnesses of the land, and whose strength was exaggerated, because the in- tercourse between the races was small. In almost every respect they stand in the same relations to men as the Frost Giants stand to the Gods. Iviii INTRODUCTION. There is nothing, perhaps, more characteristic of a true, as compared with a false religion, than the restlessness of the one when brought face to face with the quiet dignity and majesty of the other. Under the Christian dispensa- tion, our blessed Lord, his awful sacrifice once performed, " ascended up on high," having " led captivity captive," and expects the hour that shall make his foes " his foot- stool " ; but false gods, Jupiter, Vishnu, Odin, Thor, must constantly keep themselves, as it were, before the eyes of men, lest they should lose respect. Such gods being invariably what the philosophers call subjective, that is to say, having no existence except in the minds of those who believe in them, having been created by man in his own image, with his own desires and passions, stand in constant need of being re-created. They change as the habits and temper of the race which adores them alter ; they are ever bound to do something fresh, lest man should forget them, and new divinities usurp their place. Hence came endless avatars in Hindoo mythology, reproducing all the dreamy monstrosities of that passive Indian mind. Hence came Jove's adventures, tinged with all the lust and guile which the wickedness of the natural man planted on a hot-bed of iniquity is capable of conceiving. Hence bloody Moloch, and the foul abominations of Chemosh and Milcom. Hence, too, Odin's countless adventures, his journeys into all parts of the world, his constant trials of wit and strength, with his aiieient foes the Frost Giants, his hairbreadth escapes. Hence Thor's labours and toils, his passages beyond the sea, girt with his strength-belt, wearing his iron gloves, and grasping his hammer, which split the skulls of so many of the Giant's kith and kin. TKUE AND FALSE EELIGIONS. lix In the Norse gods, then, we see the Norseman himself, sublimed and elevated beyond man's nature, but bearing about with him all his bravery and endurance, all his dash and spirit of adventure, all his fortitude and resolu- tion to struggle against a certainty of doom which, sooner or later, must overtake him on that dread day, the " twilight of the gods," when the wolf was to break loose, when the great snake that lay coiled round the world should lash himself into wrath, and the whole race of the -^sirs and their antagonists were to perish in internecine strife. Such were the gods in whom the Norseman believed, [ — exaggerations of himself, of all his good and all his bad • qualities. Their might and their adventures, their domestic quarrels and certain doom, were sung in vener- able lays, now collected in what we call the Elder, or Poetic Edda; simple majestic songs, whose mellow accents go straight to the heart through the ear, and whose simple severity never suffers us to mistake their meaning. But, besides these gods, there were heroes of the race whose fame and glory were in every man's memory, and whose mighty deeds were in every minstrel's mouth : Helgi, Sigmund, Sinfjotli, Sigurd, Signy, Brynhildr, Gudrun ; champions and shield-maidens, henchmen and corse- choosers, now dead and gone, who sat round Odin's board in Valhalla ; women whose beauty, woes, and sufi'erings were beyond those of all woinen; men whose prowess had never found an equal. Between these, love and hate ; all that can foster passion or beget revenge. Ill-assorted marriages ; the right man to the wrong woman, and the wrong man to the right woman ; envyings, jealousies, Ix INTRODUCTION. hatred, murders, all the works of the natural man, com- bine together to form that marvellous story which begins with a curse — the curse of ill-gotten gold; — and ends with a curse, a widow's curse, which drags down all on whom it falls, and even her own flesh and blood, to certain doom. Such was the theme of the wondrous Volsung Tale, the far older, simpler, and grander original of that Nibelungen Need of the thirteenth century, a tale which begins with the slaughter of Fafnir by Sigurd, and ends with Her- manaric, " that fierce faith-breaker," as the Anglo-Saxon minstrel calls him, when he is describing, in rapid touches, the mythic glories of the Teutonic race. This was the story of the Volsungs. They traced themselves back, like all heroes, to Odin, the great father of gods and men. From him sprung Sigi, from him Eerir, from him Volsung, ripped from his mother's womb after a six years' bearing, to become the Eponymus of that famous race. In the centre of his hall grew an oak, the tall trunk of which passed through the roof, and its boughs spread far and wide in upper air. Into that hall, on a high feast day, when Signy, Volsung's daughter, was to be given away to Siggeir, King of Gothland, strode an old one-eyed guest. His feet were bare, his hose were of knitted linen, he wore a great striped cloak, and a broad flapping hat. In his hand he bore a sword, which, at one stroke, he drove up to the hilt in the oak trunk. " There," said he, " let him of all this company bear this sword who is man enough to pull it out. I give it him, and none shall say ■ he ever bore a better blade.'' With these words he passed out of the hall, and was seen no more. Many tried, for that sword was plainly a thing of price, but none THE VOLSUNG TALK. Ixi could stir it, till Sigmund, the best and bravest of Volsuug's sons, tried his hand, and, lo ! the weapon yielded itself at once. This was that famous blade Ch-am, of which we shall hear again. Sigmund bore it in battle against his brother-in-law, who quarrelled with him about this very sword, when Volsung fell, and Sigmund and his ten brothers were taken and bound. All perished but Sig- mund, who was saved by his sister Signy, and hidden in a wood till he could revenge his father and brethren. Here with Sinfjotli, who was at once his son and nephew, he ran as a were-wolf through the forest, and wrought many wild deeds. When Sinfjotli was of age to help him, they proceed to vengeance, and burn the treacherous brother-in-law alive, with all his followers. Sigmund then regains his father's kingdom, and in extreme old age dies in battle against the sons of King Hunding. Just as he was about to turn the fight, a warrior of more than mortal might, a one-eyed man in a blue cloak, with a flapping hat, rose up against him spear in hand. At that outstretched spear Sigmund smites with his trusty sword. It snaps in twain. Then he knows that his luck is gone ; he sees in his foe Odin the giver of the sword, sinks down on the gory battle-field, and dies in the arms of Hjordis, his young wife, refusing all leechcraft, and bow- ing his head to Odin's will. By the fortune of war, Hjordis, bearing a babe under her girdle, came into the hands of King Hialprek of Denmark ; there she bore a son to Sigmund, Sigurd, the darling of Teutonic song and story. Eegin, the king's smith, was his foster-father, and as the boy grew up the fairest and stoutest of all the Volsungs, Eegin, who was of the dwarf race, urged him Ixii INTRODUCTION. day by day to do a doughty deed, and slay Fafnir the Dragon. For Fafuir, Eegin, and Otter had been brothers, sons of lieidmav. In one of their many wanderings, Odin, Loki, and Heenir came to a river and a force. There, on the bank under the force, they saw an otter with a salmon in its mouth, which it ate greedily with its eyes shut. Loki took a stone, threw it, and killed the beast, and boasted how he had got both fish and flesh at one throw. Then the ^sir passed on and came at night to Eeidmar's house, asked a lodging, got it, and shewed their spoil. " Seize and bind them, lads," cried Eeidmar ; " for they have slain your brother Otter." So they were seized and bound by Eegin and Fafnir, and offered an atonement to buy off the feud, and Eeidmar was to name the sum. Then Otter was flayed, and the ^sir were to fill the skin with red gold, and cover it without, that not a hair could be seen. To fetch the gold Odin sent Loki down to the abodes of the Black Elves ; there in a stream he caught Andvari the Dwarf, and made him give up all the gold which he had hoarded up in the stony rock. In vain the Dwarf begged and prayed that he might keep one ring, for it was the source of all his wealth, and ring after ring dropped from it. " ISTo ; not a penny should he have," said Loki. Then the Dwarf laid a curse on the ring, and said it sliould be every man's bane who owned it. " So much the better," said Loki, and when he got back, Odin saw the ring how fair it was, and kept it to himself, but gave the gold to Eeidmar. So Eeidmar filled the skin with gold as full as he could, and set it up on end, and Odin poured gold over it, and covered it up. But when Eeidmar looked at it he saw still one grey hair, and bade THE VOLSTJNG TALE. Ixiii them cover that too, else the atonement was at an end. Then Odin drew forth the ring and laid it over the grey hair. So the Msiv was set free, but before they went, Loki repeated the curse which Andvari had laid -upon the ring and gold. It soon began to work. First, Eegin asked for some of the gold, but not a penny would Eeidmar give. So the two brotliers laid their heads together and slew their sire. Then Eegin begged Fafnir to share the gold with him. But, " no," Fafnir was stronger, and said he should keep it all himself, and Eegin had best be off, unless he wished to fare the same- way as Eeidmar. So Eegin had to fly, but Fafnir took a dragon's shape ; " and there," said Eegin, " he lies on the ' Glistening Heath,' coiled round his store of gold and precious things, and that's why I wish you to kill him.'' Sigurd told Eegin, who was the best of smiths, to forge him a sword. Two are made, but both snap asunder at the fiist stroke. "Untrue are they, like you and all your race," cries Sigurd. Then he went to his mother and begged the broken bits of Oram, and out of them Eegin forged a new blade, that clove the anvil in the smithy, and cut a lock of wool borne down upon it by a running stream. " Now, slay me, Fafnir," said Regin ; but Sigurd must first find out King Hunding's sons, and avenge his father Sigmund's death. King Hialprek lends him force ; by Odin's guidance he finds them out, routs their army, and slays all those brothers. On his return, his foster-father still egsrs him on to slay the Dragon, and thus to shew that there was still a Volsung left. So, armed with Gram, and mounted on Gran, his good steed, whom Odin had taught him how to choose, Sigurd rode to the " Glistening Heath," ]xiv INTRODUCTION. dug a pit in the Dragon's path, and slew him as he passed over him down to drink at the river. Then Eegin came up, and the old feeling of vengeance for a brother's blood grew strong, and as an atonement, Sigurd was to roast Fafnir's heart, and carry it to Eegin, who swilled his full of the Dragon's blood, and lay down to sleep. But as Sigurd roasted the heart, and wondered if it would soon be done, he tried it with his finger to see if it were soft. The hot roast burned his finger, and he put it into his mouth, and tasted the life-blood of the Dragon. Then in a moment he understood the song of birds, and heard how the swallows over his head said one to the other, " There thou sittest, Sigurd, roasting Fafnir's heart. Eat it thy- self, and become the wisest of men." Then another said, "There lies Regin, and means to cheat him who trusts him." Then a third said, " Let Sigurd cut off his head then, and so own all the gold himself." Then Sigurd went to Eegin and slew him, and ate the heart, and rode on Gran to Pafnir's lair, and took the spoil and loaded his good steed with it, and rode away. And now Sigurd was the most famous of men. All the songs and stories of the ISTorth make him the darling of that age. They dwell on his soft hair, which fell in great locks of golden brown, on his bushy beard of auburn hue, his straight features, his raddy cheeks, his broad brow, his bright and piercing eye, of which few dared to meet the gaze, his taper limbs and well-knit joints, his broad shoulders, and towering height. " So tall he was, that as he strode through the full-grown rye, girt with Gram, the tip of the scabbard just touched the ears of corn." Ready of tongue too, and full of forethought. His great pleasure THE VOLSUNG TALE. Ixv was to help other men, and to do daring deeds ; to spoil his foes, and give largely to his friends. The bravest man alive, and one that never knew fear. On and on he rode, till on a lone fell he saw a flickering flame, and when he reached it, there it flamed and blazed all round a house. No horse but Gran could ride that flame ; no man alive but Sigurd sit him while he leaped through it. Inside the house lay a fair maiden, armed from head to foot, in a deep sleep. Brynhildr, Atli's sister, was her name, a Valkyrie, a corse-chooser ; but out of wilfulness she had given the victory to the wrong side, and Odin in his wrath had thrust the thorn of sleep into her cloak, and laid her under a curse to slumber there till a man bold enough to ride through that flame came to set her free, and win her for his bride. So then she woke up, and taught him all runes and wisdom, and they swore to love each other with a mighty oath, and then Sigurd left her and rode on. So on he rode to King Giuki's hall, Giuki the Mflung, King of Franldand, whose wife was Grimhildr, whose sons were Gunnar and Hogni, whose stepson was Guttorm, and whose daughter was the fair Gudrun. Here at first he was full of Brynhildr, and all for going back to fetch his lovely bride from the lone fell. But Grimhildr was given to dark arts ; she longed for the brave Volsung for her own daughter, she brewed him the philtre of forgetfulness, he drained it off, forgot Brynhildr, swore a brother's friend- ship with Gunnar and Hogni, and wedded the fair Gudrun. But now Giuki wanted a wife for Gunnar, and so off set the brothers and their bosom friend to woo, but whom should they choose but Brynhildr, Atli's sister, who sat there still upon the fell, waiting for the man who was d Ixvi INTKODUCTION. bold enough to ride through the flickering flame. She knew but one could do it, and waited for that one to come back. So she had given out whoever could ride that flame should have her to wife. So wheia Gunnar and Hogni reached it, Gunnar rode at it, but his horse, good though it was, swerved from the fierce flame. Then by Grimhildr's magic arts, Sigurd and Gunnar changed shapes and arms, and Sigurd leapt up on Gran's back, and the good steed bore him bravely through the flame. So Brynhildr the proud maiden was won and forced to yield. That evening was their wedding ; but when they lay down to rest, Sigurd unsheathed his keen sword Grarn, and laid it naked between them. Next morning when he arose, he took the ring which Andvari had laid under the curse, and which was among Fafnir's treasures, and gave it to Brynhildr as a " morning gift," and she gave him another ring as a pledge. Then Sigurd rode back to his companions, and took his own shape again, and then Gunnar went and claimed Brynhildr, and carried her home as his bride. But no sooner was Gunnar wedded than Sigurd's eyes were opened, the power of the philtre passed away, he remembered all that had passed, and the oath he had sworn to Brynhildr. All this came back upon him when it was too late, but he was wise and said nothing about it. "Well, so things went on, till one day Brynhildr and Gudrun went down to the river to wash their hair. Then Brynhildr waded out into the stream as far as she could, and said she wouldn't have on her head the water that streamed from Gudrun's; for hers was the braver husband. So Gudrun waded out after her, and said the water ought THE VOLSUNG TALE. Ixvii to come on her hair first, because her husband bore away the palm from Gunnar, and every other man alive, for he slew Fafnir and Eegin, and took their inheritance. "Ay," said Brynhildr, " but it was a worthier deed when Gunnar rode through the flame, but Sigurd dared not try." Then Gudrun laughed, and said, "Thinkst thou that Gunnar really rode the flame ? I trow he went to bed with thee that night, who gave me this gold ring. And as for that ring yonder which you have on your finger, and which you got as your 'morning gift,' its name is Andvari's- spoil, and that I don't think Gunnar sought on the ' Glistening Heath.' Then Brynhildr held her peace and went home, and her love for Sigurd came back, but it was turned to hate, for she felt herself betrayed. Then she egged on Gunnar to revenge her wrong. At last the brothers yield to her entreaties, but they were sworn brothers to Sigurd, and to break that oath by deed was a thing unheard of. Still they broke it in spirit ; by charms and prayers they set on Guttorm their half-brother, and so at dead of night, while Gudrun held the bravest man alive fast locked in her white arms, the murderer stole to the bedside and drove a sword through the hero. Then Sigurd turned and writhed, and as Guttorm fled he hurled Gram after him, and the keen blade took him asunder at the waist, and his head fell out of the room and his heels in, and that was the end of Guttorm. But witih revenge Bryn- hildr's love returned, and when Sigurd was laid upon the pile her heart broke ; she burst forth into a prophetic song of the woes that were still to come, made them lay her by his side with Gram between them, and so went to Valhalla with her old lover. Thus Andvari's curse was fulfilled. Ixviii INTRODUCTION. Gudrun, the weary widow, wandered away. After a while, she accepts atonement from her brothers for her husband's loss, and marries Atli, the Hun king, Brynhildr's brother. He, cherished a grudge against Giuki's sons for the guile they had practised against their brother-in-law, which had broken his sister's heart, and besides he claimed, in right of Gudrun, all the gold which Sigurd won from the Dragon, but which the Niflung Princes had seized when he was slain. It was in vain to attack them in fair fight, so he sent them a friendly message, and invited them to a banquet ; they go, and are overpowered. Hogni's heart is cut out of him alive, but he still smiles ; Gunnar is cast into a pit full of snakes, but even then charms them to sleep with his harp, all but one, that flies at his heart and stings him to death. With them perished the secret of the Dragon's hoard, which they had thrown into the Ehine as they crossed it on the way to Hun-land Now comes horror on horror. Eevenge for her brothers now belongs to Gudrun ; she slays with her own hand her two sons by Atli, makes him eat their flesh, and drink their blood out of their skulls, and, while the king slept sound, slew him in his bed by the help of her brother Hogni's son. Then she set the hall ablaze, and burnt all that were in it. After that she went to the sea-shore, and threw herself in to drown. But the deep will not have her, the billows bear her over to King Jonakr's land. He marries her, and has three sons by her, Saurli, Hamdir, and Erp, black-haired as ravens, like all the Niflungs. Svanhild, her daughter by Sigurd, who had her father's bright and terrible eyes, she has still with her, now grown up to be the fairest of women. So when Hermanaric the THE VOLSUKG TALE. Ixix Mighty, the great Gothic king, heard of Svanhild's beauty, he sent his son Eandyer to woo her for him, but Bikki the False said to the youth, " Better far were this maiden for thee than for thy old father"; and the maiden and the prince thought it good advice. Then Bikki went and told the king, and Hermanaric bade them take and hang Eandver at once. So on his way to the gallows, the prince took his hawk and plucked off all its feathers, and sent it to his father. But when his sire saw it, he knew at once that, as the hawk was featherless and unable to fly, so was his realm defenceless under an old and sonless king. Too late he sent to stop the hanging ; his son was already dead. So one day as he rode back from hunting, he saw fair Svanhild washing her golden locks, and it came into his heart how there she sat, the cause of all his woe ; and he and his men rode at her and over her, and their steeds trampled her to death. But when Gudrun heard this, she set on her three Niflung sons to avenge their sister. Byrnies and helms she gave them so true that no sword would bite on them. They were to steal on Hermanaric as he slept ; Saurli was to cut off his hands, Hamdir his feet, and Erp his head. So as the three went along, the two asked Erp what help he would give them when they got to Hermanaric. "Such as hand lends to foot," he said. " No help at all," they cried ; and passing from words to blows, and because their mother loved Erp best, they slew him. A little further on Saurli stumbled and fell forward, but saved himself with one hand, and said, " Here hand helps foot ; better were it that Erp lived." So they came on Hermanaric as he slept, and Saurli hewed off his hands, and Hamdir his feet, but he awoke and called for his men. Ixx INTEODUCTION. Then said Hamdir — " Were Erp alive, the head would be off, and he couldn't call out." Then Hermanaric's men arose and took the twain, and when they found that no steel would touch them, an old one-eyed man gave them advice to stone them to death. Thus fell Saurli and Hamdir, and soon after Gudrun died too, and with her ends the Volsung and the Niflung tale. And here it is worth while to say, since some minds are so narrowly moulded as to be incapable of containing more than one idea, that because it has seemed a duty to describe in its true light the old faith of our forefathers, it by no means follows that the same eyes are blind to the glorious beauty of Greek Mythology. Tliat had the rare advantage of running its course free and unfettered until it fell rather by natural decay than before the weapon of a new belief. The Greeks were Atheists before they became Christian. Their faith had passed through every stage. We can contemplate it as it springs out of the dim mis-shapen symbol, during that phase when men's eyes are fixed more on meaning and reality than on beauty and form, we can mark how it gradually looks more to sym- metry and shape, how it is transfigured in the Arts, until, under that pure air and bright sky, the glowing radiant figures of Apollo and Aphrodite, of Zeus and Athene, — of perfect man-worship and woman-worship, — stand out clear and round in the foreground against the misty distance of ancient times. Out of that misty distance the Norseman's faith never emerged. What that early phase of faith might have become, had it been once wedded to the Muses, and learned to cultivate the Arts, it is impossible to say. As it is, its career was cut short in GREEK MYTHOLOGY. Ixxi mid- course. It carried about with it that melancholy presentiment of dissolution which has come to be so characteristic of modern life, but of which scarce a trace exists in ancient times, and this feeling would always have made it different from that cheerful carelessness which so attracts us in the Greeks ; but even that downcast brood- ing heart was capable of conceiving great and heroic thoughts, which it might have clothed in noble shapes and forms, had not the axe of Providence cut down the stately sapling in the North before it grew to be a tree, while it spared the pines of Delphi and Dodona's sacred oaks, until they had attained a green old age. And so this faith remained rude and rough ; but even rudeness has a simplicity of its own, and it is better to be rough and true- hearted than polished and false. In all the feelings of natural affection, that faith need fear no comparison with any other upon earth. In these respects it is firm and steadfast as a rock, and pure and bright as a living spring. The highest God is a father, who protects his children ; who gives them glory and victory while they live, and when they die takes them to himself ; to those fatherly abodes Death was a happy return, a glorious going home. By the side of this great father stands a venerable goddess, dazzling with beauty, the great mother of gods and men. Hand in hand this divine pair traverse the land; he teaching the men the use of arms and all the arts of war, — for war was then as now a noble calling, and to handle arms an honourable, nay necessary, profession. To the women she teaches domestic duties and the arts of peace ; from her they learn to weave, and sew, and spin ; from her, too, the husbandman learns to till his fields. Eroni Ixxii INTRODUCTION. him springs poetry and song ; from her legend and tra- dition. Nor should it ever be forgotten that the footsteps of Providence are always onward, even when they seem taken in the dark, and that their rude faith was the first in which that veneration for women arose, which the West- ern nations may well claim as the brightest jewel in their crown of civilisation ; that while she was a slave in the East, a toy to the Greeks, and a housewife to the Eomans, she was a helpmeet to the Teuton, and that those stern warriors recognised something divine in her nature, and bowed before her clearer insight into heavenly mysteries. The worship of the Virgin Mary was gradually developed out of this conception of woman's character, and would have been a thing absurd and impossible had Christianity clung for ever to Eastern soil. And now to proceed, after thus turning aside to compare the mythology of the Greek with the faith of the Norseman. The mistake is to favour one or the other' exclusively instead of respecting and admiring both ; but it is a mistake which those only can fall into, whose souls are narrow and confined, who would say this thing and this person you shall love, and none other ; this form and feature you shall worship and adore, and this alone ; when in fact the whole promised land of thought and life lies before us at our feet, our nature encourages us to go in and possess it, and every step we make in this new world of knowledge brings us to fresh prospects of beauty, and to new pastures of delight. Such were the gods, and such the heroes of the Norse- man ; who, like his own gods, went smiling to death under the weight of an inevitable destiny. But that fate never fell on their gods. Before this subjective mythological THE NEW AND THE OLD. Ixxiii dream of the Norsemen could be fulfilled, the religious mist in which they walked was scattered by the sunbeams of Christianity. A new state and condition of society arose, and the creed which had satisfied a race of heathen warriors, who externally were at war with all the world, became in time an object of horror and aversion to the converted Christian. This is not the place to describe the long struggle between the new and the old faith in the liTorth ; how kings and queens became the foster-fathers and nursing-mothers of the Church ; how the great chiefs, each a little king in himself, scorned and derided the whole scheme as altogether weak and effeminate; how the bulk of the people were sullen and suspicious, and often broke out into heathen mutiny ; how kings rose and kings fell, just as they took one or the other side ; and how, finally, after a contest which had lasted altogether more than three centuries, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden — we run them over in the order of conversion — became faithful to Christianity, as preached by the missionaries of the Church of Eome. One fact, however, we must insist on, which might be inferred, indeed, both from the nature of the struggle itself, and the character of Eome ; and that is, that throughout there was something in the process of conversion of the nature of a compromise ^— of what we may call the great principle of " give and take." In all Christian churches, indeed, and in none so much as the Church of Eome, nothing is so austere, so elevating, and so grand, as the uncompromising tone in which the great dogmas of the Faith are enunciated and proclaimed. Nothing is more magnificent, in short, than the theory of Christianity ; but nothing is more mean Ixxiv INTBODUCTION. and miserable than the time-serving way in which those dogmas are dragged down to the dull level of daily life, and that sublime theory reduced to ordinary practice. At Eome, it was true, that the Pope could congratulate the faithful that whole nations in the barbarous and frozen North had been added to the true fold, and that Odin's grim champions now universally believed in the gospel of peace and love. It is so easy to dispose of a doubtful struggle in a single sentence, and so tempting to believe it when once written. But in the North, the state of things, and the manner of proceeding, were entirely different. There the dogma was proclaimed, indeed ; but the manner of preaching it was not in that mild spirit with which the Saviour rebuked the disciple when he said, " Put up again thy sword into his place : for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." There the sword was used to bring converts to the font, and the baptism was often one rather of blood than of water. There the new converts perpetually relapsed, chased away the missionaries and the kings who sheltered them, and only yielded at last to the overwhelming weight of Christian opinion in the "Western world. St. Olof, Idng and martyr, martyred in pitched battle by his mutinous allodial freemen, because he tried to drive rather than to lead them to the cross ; and another Olof, greater than he, Olof Tryggvason, who fell in battle against the heathen Swedes, were men of blood rather than peace ; but to them the introduction of the new faith into Norway is mainly owing. So also Charlemagne, at an earlier period, had dealt with the Saxons at the Main Bridge, when his ulti- matum was, " Christianity or death." So also the first CHRISTIANITY IN THE NORTH. Ixxv missionary to Iceland — who met, indeed, with a sorry reception — was followed about by a stout champion named Thangbrand, who, whenever there was what we should now call a missionary meeting, challenged any impugner of the new doctrines to mortal combat on the spot. No wonder that, after having killed several opponents in the little tour which he made with his missionary friend through the island, it became too hot to hold him, and he, and the missionary, and the new creed, were forced to take ship and sail back to Norway. " Precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, and there a little," was the motto of Eome in her dealings with the heathen Norsemen, and if she suited herself at first rather to their habits and temper than to those of more enlightened nations, she had an excuse in St. Paul's maxim of making herself " all things to all men." Thus, when a second attempt to Christianise Iceland proved more successful — for in the meantime. King Olof Trygg- vason, a zealous Christian, had seized as hostages all the Icelanders of family and fame who happened to be in Norway, and thus worked on the feelings of the chiefs of those families at home, who in their turn bribed the law- man who presided over the Great Assembly to pronounce in favour of the new Faith — even then the adherents of the old religion were allowed to perform its rites in secret, and two old heathen practices only were expressly prohibited, the exposure iof infants and the eating of horseflesh, for horses were sacred animals, and the heathen ate their flesh after they had been solemnly sacrificed to the gods. As a matter of fact, it is far easier to change a form of religion than to extirpate a faith. The first indeed Ixxvi INTEODITCTION. is no easy matter, as those students of history well know, who are acquainted with the tenacity with which a large proportion of the English nation clung to the Church of Eome, long after the State had declared for the Eeformation. But to change the faith of a whole nation in block and bulk on the instant, was a thing contrary to the ordinary working of Providence, and unknown even in the days of miracles, though the days of miracKs had long ceased when Eome advanced agaiast the North. There it was more politic to raise a cross in the grove where the Sacred Tree had once stood, and to point to the sacred emblem which had supplanted the old object of national adoration, when the populace came at certain seasons with songs and dances to perform their heathen rites. Near the cross soon rose a church ; and both were . girt by a cemetery, the soil of which was doubly sacred as a heathen fane and a Christian sanctuary, and where alone the bodies of the faithful could repose in peace. But the songs and dances, and processions in the churchyard round the cross, continued long after Christianity had become dominant. So also the worship of wells and springs was christianised when it was found impossible to prevent it. Great churches arose over or near them, as at Walsingham, where an abbey, the holiest place in England, after the shrine of ! St. Thomas at Canterbury, threw its majestic shade over 1 the heathen wishing-well, and the worshippers of Odin i and the Nornir were gradually converted into votaries of I the Virgin Mary. Such practices form a subject of \ constant remonstrance and reproof in the treatises and penitential epistles of medieval divines, and in some few THE HEATHEN GODS. Ixxvii places and churches, even in England, such rites are still yearly celebrated.* So, too, again with the ancient gods. They were cast down from honour, but not from power. They lost their genial kindly influence as the protectors of men and the origin of all things good ; but their existence was tolerated ; they became powerful for ill, and degenerated into malig- nant demons. Thus the worshippers of Odin had supposed that at certain times and rare intervals the good powers shewed themselves in bodily shape to mortal eye, passing through the land in divine progress, bringing blessings in their train, and receiving in return the offerings and homage of their grateful votaries. But these were naturally only exceptional instances ; on ordinary occasions the pious heathen recognised his gods sweeping through the air in cloud and storm, riding on the Avings of the wind, and speaking in awful accents, as the tempest howled and roared, and the sea shook his white mane and crest. Nor did he fail to see them in the dust and din of battle, when Odin appeared with his terrible helm, succouring his own, striking fear into their foes, and turning the day in many a doubtful fight ; or in the hurry and uproar of the chase, where the mighty huntsman on his swift steed, seen in glimpses among the trees, took up the hunt where weary mortals laid it down, outstripped them all, and brought the noble quarry to the ground. Looking up to the stars and heaven, they saw the footsteps of the gods * See Anecd. and Trad., Oamd. Soc. 1839, pp. 92 fol. See also the passages from Anglo-Saxon laws against " well- waking," which Grimm has collected, D. M., p. 550. Ixxviii INTRODUCTION. marked out in the bright path of the Milky Way ; and in the Bear they hailed the war-chariot of the warrior's god. The great goddesses too, Frigga and Freyja, were thoroughly old-fashioned domestic divinities. They help women in their greatest need, they spin themselves, they teach the maids to spin, and punish them if the wool remains upon their spindle. They are kind, and good, and bright, for Eolda, Bertha, are the epithets given to them. And so, too, this mythology which, in its aspect to the stranger and the external world, was so ruthless and terrible, when looked at from within and at home, was genial, and kindly, and hearty, and affords another proof that men, in all ages and climes, are not so bad as they seem ; that after all, peace and not war is the proper state for man, and that a nation may make war on others and exist ; but that unless it has peace within, and industry at home, it must perish from the face of the earth. But when Christianity came the whole character of this goodly array of divinities was soured and spoilt. Instead of the stately procession of the God, which the intensely sensuous eye of man in that early time connected with all the phenomena of nature, the people were led to believe in a ghastly grisly band of ghosts, who followed an infernal warrior or huntsman in hideous tumult through the mid- night air. No doubt, as Grimm rightly remarks,* the heathen had fondly fancied that the spirits of those who had gone to Odin followed him in his triumphant progress either visibly or invisibly ; that they rode with him in the whirlwind, just as they followed him to battle, and feasted D. M., p. 900. Wiitendes heer. THE WILD HUNTSMAN. ]xxix with him in Valhalla ; but now the Christian belief, when it had degraded the mighty god into a demon huntsman, who pursued his nightly round in chase of human souls, saw in the train of the infernal master of the hunt only the spectres of suicides, drunkards, and ruffians ; and, with all the uncharitableness of a dogmatic faith, the spirits of children who died unbaptized, whose hard fate had thrown them into such evil company. This was the way in which that widespread superstition arose, which sees in the phantoms of the clouds the shapes of the Wild Huntsman and his accursed crew, and hears, in spring and autumn nights, when sea-fowl take the wing to fly either south or north, the strange accents and uncouth yells with which the chase is pressed on in upper air. Thus, in Sweden it is still Odin who passes by; in Denmark it is King Waldemar's Hunt; in Norway it is Aaskereida, that is Asgard's Car; in Germany it is Wode, Woden, or Hackelberend, or Dieterich of Bern; in France it is Hellec[uin, or King Hugo, or Charles the Fifth, or, dropping a name altogether, it is Le Grand Veneur who ranges at night through the Forest of Fontainebleau. Nor was England without her Wild Huntsman and his ghastly following. Gervase of Tilbury, in the twelfth century, could tell it of King Arthur, round whose mighty name the superstition settled itself, for he had heard from the foresters how, "on alternate days, about the full of the moon, one day at noon, the next at midnight when the moon shone bright, a mighty train of hunters on horses was seen, with baying hounds and blast of horns; and when those hunters were asked of whose company and household they were, they replied 'of Arthur's.'" We Ixxx INTRODUCTION. hear of him again in " The Complaynt of Scotland," that curious composition attributed by some to Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount in Fife, and of Gilmerton in East Lothian, pp. 97, 98, where he says— " Arthur knycht, he raid on nycht, With gyldin spur and candil lycht." Nor should we forget, when considering this legend, that story of Heme the Hunter, who, "Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns ; And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle, And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner."* And even yet, in various parts of England, the story of some great man-, generally a member of one of the county families, who drives about the country at night, is common. Thus, in Warwickshire, it is the " One-handed Boughton," who drives about in his coach and six, and makes the benighted traveller hold gates open for him ; or it is "Lady Skipwith," who passes through the country at night in the same manner. This subject might be pursued to much greater length, for popular tradition is full of such stories ; but enough has been said to show how the awful presence of a glorious God can be converted into a gloomy supersti- tion ; and, at the same time, how the majesty of the old belief strives to rescue itself by chngiug, in the popular consciousness, to some king or hero, as Arthur or Walde- mar, or, failing that, to some squire's family, as Hackel- * Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iv. so. 4. THE CHURCH OF ROME. Ixxxi berend, or the "one-handed Boughton," or even to the Keeper Heme. Odin and the J5sir then were dispossessed and de- graded by our Saviour aiid his Apostles, just as they had of old thrown out the Frost Giants, and the two are mingled together, in mediaeval Norse tradition, as Trolls and Giants, hostile alike to Christianity and man. Christianity had taken possession indeed, but it was beyond her power to kUl. To this half-result the swift corruption of the Church of Rome lent no small aid. Her doctrines, as taught by Augustine and Boniface, by Anschar and Sigfrid, were comparatively mild and pure ; but she had scarce swallowed the heathendom of the Worth, much in the same way as the Wolf was to swallow Odin at the "Twilight of the Gods," than she fell into a deadly lethargy of faith, which put it out of her power to digest her meal. Gregory the Seventh, elected Pope in 1073, tore the clergy from the ties of domestic life with a grasp that wounded every fibre of natural affection, and made it bleed to the very root. With the celibacy of the clergy he established the hierarchy of the Church, but her labours as a missionary church were over. Henceforth she worked not by mis- sionaries and apostles, but by crusades and bulls. Now she raised mighty armaments to recover the barren soil of the Holy Sepulchre, or to annihilate heretic Albigenses. Now she established great orders, Templars and Hospitallers, whose pride and luxury and pomp brought swift destruction on one at least of those fraternities. Now she became feudal — she owned land instead of hearts, and forgot that the true patrimony of St. Peter was the souls of men. No wonder that, with the barbarism of the times, she soon Ixxxii INTRODUCTION. fulfilled the Apostle's words, " She that liveth iu luxury is dead while she liveth," and became filled with idle super- stitions and vain beliefs. No wonder, then, that instead of completing her conquest over the heathen, and carrying out their conversion, she became half heathen herself;, that she adopted the tales and traditions of the old mytho- logy, which she had never been able to extirpate, and related them of our Lord and his Apostles. No wonder, then, that having abandoned her mission of being the first power of intelligence on earth, she fell like Lucifer when the mist of medieval feudalism rolled away, and the light of learning and education returned— fell before the indig- nation of enlightened men, working upon popular opinion. Since which day, though she has changed her plans, and remodelled her superstitions to suit the times, she has never regained the supremacy which, if she had been wise in a true sense, she seemed destined to hold for ever. NOESE POPULAK TALES. The preceding observations will have given a sufficient account of the mythology of the Norsemen, and of the way in which it fell. They came from the East, and brought that common stock of tradition with them. Settled in the Scandinavian peninsula, they developed themselves through Heathenism, Eomanism, and Luther- anism, iii a locality little exposed to foreign influence, so that even now the Daleman in Norway or Sweden may be reckoned among the most primitive examples left of peasant life. "We should expect, then, that these Popular Tales, which, for the sake of those ignorant in such matters, THE GODS ON EARTH. Ixxxiii it may be remarked, had never been collected or reduced to writing till within the last few years, would present a faithful picture of the national consciousness, or, perhaps, to speak more correctly, of that half consciousness out of which the heart of any people speaks in its abundance. Besides those world-old affinities and primeval parallel- isms, besides those dreamy recollections of its old home in the East, which we have already pointed out, we should expect to find' its later history, after the great migration, stUl more distinctly reflected; to discover heathen gods masked in the garb of Christian saints ; and thus to see a proof of our assertion above, that a nation more easily changes the form than the essence of its faith, and clings with a toughness which endures for centuries to what it has once learned to believe. In all mythologies, the trait of all others which most commonly occurs, is that of the descent of the Gods to earth, where, in human form, they mix among mortals, and occupy themselves with their affairs, either out of a spirit of adventure, or to try the hearts of men. Such a conception is shocking to the Christian notion of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God ; but we question if there be not times when the most pious and perfect Christian may not find comfort and relief from a fallacy which was a matter of faith in less enlightened creeds, and over which the apostle, writing to the Hebrews, throws the sanction of his authority, so far as angels are concerned.* Nor could he have forgotten those words of * Heb. xiii. 1 : " Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers : for thereby some have en- tertained angels unawares." Ixxxiv INTRODUCTION. the men of Lystra, — "The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men;" and how they called "Barnabas Jupiter," and himself Mercury, " because he was the chief speaker." Classical mythology is full of such stories. These wander- ings of the gods are mentioned in the Odyssey, and the sanctity of the rites of hospitality, and the dread of turning a stranger from the door, took its origin from a fear lest the wayfaring man should be a divinity in disguise. According to the Greek story, Orion owed his birth to the fact that the childless Hyrieus, his reputed father, had once received unawares Zeus, Poseidon, and Hermes, or, to call them by their Latin names, Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury. In the beautiful story of Philemon and Baucis, Jupiter and Mercury reward the aged couple who had so hospitably received them by warning them of the approach- ing deluge. The fables of Phaedrus and ^sop represent Mercury and Demeter as wandering and enjoying the hospitality of men. In India it is Brahm and Vishnu who generally wander. ' In the Edda, Odin, Loki, and Hoenir thus roam about, or Thor, Thialfi, and Loki. Sometimes Odin appears alone as a horseman, who turns in at night to the smith's house, and gets him to shoe his horse, — a legend which reminds us at once of the Master- Smith.* Sometimes it is Thor with his great hammer who wanders thus alone. Now, let us turn from heathen to Christian times, and look at some of these old legends of wandering gods in a * One of Odin's name, when on these adventures, was Gangradr, or Grangleri. Both mean "the Ganger, or way- farer." We have the latter epithet in the " Gangrel carle," and " Gangrel loon," of the early Scotch ballads. HEATHEN GODS IN CHKISTIAN GARB. Ixxxv new dress. Throughout the Middle Age, it is our blessed Lord and St. Peter that thus wander; and here we see that half-digested heathendom to which we have alluded. Those who may be shocked at such tales in this collection as " The Master-Smith " and " Gertrude's Bird," must just remember that these are almost purely heathen traditions, in which the names alone are Christian ; and if it be any consolation to any to know the fact, we may as well state at once that this adaptation of new names to old beliefs is not peculiar to the !N"orseQifill. but is found in all the popular tales of Europe. Germany was full of them, and there St. Peter often appears in a snappish ludicrous guise, which reminds the reader versed in Norse mythology with the tricks and pranks of the shifty Loki. In the Norse tales he thoroughly preserves his saintly character. Nor was it only gods that walked among men. In the Norse mythology, Frigga, Odin's wife, who knew before- hand all that was to happen, and Preyja, the goddess of love and plenty, were prominent figures, and often trod the earth ; the three Norns or Fates, who sway the weirds of men, and spin their destinies at Mimirs' well of know- ledge, were awful, venerable powers, to whom the heathen world looked up with love and adoration and awe. To that love and adoration and awe, throughout the Middle Age, one woman, transfigured into a divine shape, succeeded by a sort of natural right, and round the Virgin Mary's blessed head a halo of lovely tales of divine help beams with soft radiance as a crown bequeathed to her by the ancient goddesses. She appears as divine mother, spinner, and helpful virgin (vierge secourable). Plowers and plants bear her name. In England one of our commonest and Ixxxvi INTRODUCTION. prettiest insects is still called after her, but which belonged to Freyja, the heathen " Lady," long before the Western nations had learned to adore the name of the mother of Jesus.* The reader of these Tales will meet, in that of " The Lassie and her Godmother," p. 188, with the Virgin Mary in a truly mythic character, as the majestic guardian of sun, moon, and stars, combined with that of a helpful, kindly woman, who, while she knows how to punish a fault, knows also how to reconcile and forgive. ; The Norseman's god was a god of battles, and victory his greatest gift to men ; but this was not the only aspect under which the Great Father was revered. Not victory in the fight alone, but every other good gift came down from him and the ^sir. Odin's supreme will was that treasure-house of bounty towards which, in one shape or the other, all mortal desires turned, and out of its abundance showers of mercy and streams of divine favour constantly poured down to refresh the weary race of men. All these blessings and mercies, nay, their very source itself, the ancient language bound up in a single word, * So also Orion's Belt was called by the Norsemen, Frigga's spindle or rode, Friggjar rocJcr. In modern Swedish, Friggerock, where the old goddess holds her own ; but in Danish, Marice- rock. Our Lady's rock or spindle. Thus, too, Karlavagn, the "car of men," or heroes, who rode with Odin, which we call " Charles's Wain," thus keeping something, at least, of the old name, though none of its meaning, became in Scotland "Peter's- pleugh," from the Christian saint, just as Orion's sword became " Peter's-staflf." But what do "Lady Landers" and "Lady Ellison '' mean, as applied to the " Lady-Bird " in Scotland ? THE WISH. Ixxxvii which, however expressive it may still be, has lost much of the fulness of its meaning in its descent to these later times. This word was " Wish," which originally meant the perfect ideal, the actual fruition of all joy and desire, and not, as now, the empty longing for the object of our desires. From this original abstract meaning, it was but a step to pass to the concrete, to personify the idea, to make it an immortal essence, an attribute of the divinity, another name for the greatest of all Gods himself. And so we find a host of passages in early writers,* in every one of which "God" or "Odin" might be substituted for "Wish" with perfect propriety. Here we read how "The Wish" has hands, feet^ power, sight, toil, and art. How he works and labours, shapes and masters, inclines his ear, thinks, swears, curses, and rejoices, adopts children, and takes men into his house ; behaves, in short, as a being of boundless power and infinite free-will. Still more, he rejoices in his own works as in a child, and thus appears in a thoroughly patriarchal point of view, as the Lord of creation, glorying in his handiwork, as the father of a family in early times was glad at heart when he reckoned his children as arrows in his quiver, and beheld his house full of a long line of retainers and dependants. For this attribute of the Great Father, for Odin as the God of Wish, the Edda uses the word "Oski,'' which literally expresses the masculine personification of " Wish," and it passed on and added the word osk, wish, as a prefix to a number of others, to signify that they stood in a peculiar relation to the Great Giver of all good. Thus, we have osJca-steinn, wishing-stone, i.e. a stone which plays the part of a divining-rod, and reveals secrets and * D. M., -p. 126 fol., where they are cited at length. Ixxxviii INTRODUCTION. hidden treasure ; oska-hyrr, a fair wind, a wind as fair as man's heart could wish it ; osJc-larn and oska-larn, a child after one's own heart, an adopted child, as when the younger Edda teUs us that all those who die in battle are Odin's choice-bairns, his adopted children, those on whom he has set his heart, — an expression which, in their turn, was taken by the Icelandic Christian writers to express the relation existing between God and the baptized ; and, though last, not least, oska-mcer, wish-maidens, another name for the Valkyries — Odin's corse-choosers, — who picked out the dead for him on the field of battle, and waited on the heroes in Valhalla. Again, the Edda is filled with " choice things," possessing some mysterious power of their own, some " virtue," as our older English would express it, which belong to this or that god, and are occasionally lent or lost. Thus, Odin himself had a spear which gave victory to those on whose side it was hurled ; Thor, a hammer which destroyed the Giants, hallowed vows, and returned of itself to his hand. He had a strength-belt, too, which, when he girded it on, his god- strength waxed one-half; Freyr had a sword which wielded itself ; Freyja a necklace which, like the cestus of Venus, inspired all hearts with love ; Freyr, again, had a ship tealled SkitKblathnir. "She is so great, that all the ^sir, with their weapons and war gear, may find room on board her ; and as soon as the sail is set, she has a fair wind whither she shall go ; and when there is no need of faring on the sea in her, she is made of so many things, and with so much craft, that Freyr may fold her together like a cloth, and keep her in his bag."* * Snorro's Edda, Stockholm, 1842, translated by the writer. WISHING THINGS. Ixxxix Of this kind, too, was the ring " Dropper " which Odin had, and from which twelve other rings dropped every night ; the apples which Idun, one of the goddesses, had, and of which, so soon as the ^sir ate, they became young again; the helm which CEgir, the sea giant had, which struck terror into all antagonists like the ^gis of Athene ; and that wonderful mill which the mythical Frodi owned, of which we shall shortly speak. Now, let us see what traces of this great god " Wish " and his choice-bairns and wishing-things we can find in these Tales, faint echoes of a mighty heathen voice, which once proclaimed the goodness of the great Father in the blessings which he bestowed on his chosen sons. We shall not have long to seek. Tn tale No. xx.. p. 1 .SI . when Short- shanks meets those three old crookbacked hags who have only one eye, which he snaps up, and gets iirst a sword ■' that puts a whole army to flight, be it ever so great." We have the " one-eKfid-Qdin.,".dsgenerated into an old hag._or rather — by no uncommon process — we have an old witch fused by popular tradition into a mixture of Odin and the three Nornir. Again, when he gets that wondrous ship "which can sail over fresh water and salt water, and over ■ high hills and deep dales," and which is so small that he can put it into his pocket, and yet, when he came to use it, could hold five hundred men, we have plainly the Skith- blathnir of the Edda to the very Life. So also in "The , BestWjsh^i p,- 252, the whole groundwork of this story rests on this old belief; and when we meet that pair of old scissors which cuts all manner of fine clothes out of the air, that tablecloth which covers itself with the best dishes you could think of, as soon as it was spread out, and that XC INTKODUCTION. tap which, as soon as it was turned, poured out the best of mead and wine, we have plainly another form of Frodi's wishing-quern, — another recollection of those things of choice about which the old mythology has so much to tell. Of the same kind are the tablecloth, the ram, and the stick in "The Lad who went to the North Wind," p. 228, and the rings in " The Three Princesses of White- land," p. 181, and in "Soria Moria Castle," p. 396. In the first of those stories, too, we find those "three brothers" who have stood on a moor " these hundred years fighting about a hat, a cloak, and a pair of boots," which had the virtue of making him who wore them invisible; choice things which will again remind the reader of the Nibelun- gen Lied, of the way in which Siegfried became possessed of the famous hoard of gold, and how he got that " cap of darkness " which was so useful to him in his remaining exploits. So again in "The Blue Belt," p. 155, what is that belt which, when the boy girded it on, " he felt as strong as if he could lift the whole hill," but Thor's "choice- belt ; " and what is the daring boy himself, who overcomes the Troll, but Thor himself, as engaged in one of his adventures with the Giants ? So, too, in " Little Annie the Goose-girl," p. 414, the stone which tells the Prince all the secrets of his brides is plainly the old Oskastein, or " wishing-stone." These instances will suffice to shew the prolonged faith inj^ish," and his choice things ; a belief which, though so deeply rooted in the North, we have already traced to its home in the East, whence it stretches itself from pole to pole, and reappears in every race. We recognise it in the wishing-~cap oTTortunatus, which is a Celtic legend; in the cornucopia of the Eomans; WISHING THINGS. xci in the goat Amalthea among the Greeks ; in the wishing- cow and wishing-tree of the Hindoos ; in the pumpkin-tree of the West Indian Ananzi stories ; in the cow of the Seryian legends, who spins yarn out of her ear ; in the Sampo of the Finns ; and in all those stories of cups, and glasses, and horns, and rings, and swords, seized by some bold spirit in the midst of a fairy revel, or earned by some kind deed rendered by mortal hand to one of the " good folk " in her hour of need, and with which the " luck "* of that mortal's house was ever afterwards bound up ; stories with which the local traditions of all lands are full, but which all pay unconscious homage to the worship of that great God, to whom so many heathen hearts so often turned as the divine realiser of their prayers, and the giver of all good things, until they came at last to make an idol out of their hopes and prayers, and to immortalise the very " Wish " itself. Again, of all beliefs, that in which man has, at all times of his history, been most prone to set faith, is that of a golden age of peace and plenty, which had passed away, but which might be expected to return. Such a period was looked for when Augustus closed the temple of Janus, and peace, though perhaps not plenty, reigned over what the proud Eoman called the habitable world. Such a period the early Christian expected when the Saviour was born, in the reign of that very Augustus ; and such a period, some, whose thoughts are more set on earth than heaven,have hoped for ever since, with a hope which, though deferred for eighteen centuries, has not made their hearts * See the well-known story of the " Luck of Eden Hall." xcii INTRODUCTION. sick. Such a period of peace and plenty, such a golden time, the Norseman could tell of in his mythic Prodi's reign, when gold or Frodi's meal, as it was called, was so plentiful that golden armlets lay untouched from year's end to year's end on the king's highway, and the fields bore crops unsown. Here, in England, the Anglo-Saxon Bede* knew how to tell the same story of Edwin, the Northum- brian king, and when Alfred came to be mythic, the same legend was passed on from Edwin to the West Saxon monarch. The remembrance of "the bountiful Prodi" echoed in the songs of German poets long after the story which made him so bountiful had been forgotten ; but the Norse Skalds could tell not only the story of Prodi's wealth and bounty, but also of his downfall and ruin. In (Frodiy house were two maidens of that old giant race, Penja and Menja. These daughters of the giant he had bought as slaves, and he made them grind his quern or hand-mill, Grotti, out of which he used to grind peace and gold. Even in that golden age one sees there were slaves, and Prodi, however bountiful to his thanes and people, was a hard taskmaster to his giant handmaidens. He kept them to the mill, nor gave them longer rest than the cuckoo's note lasted, or they could sing a song. But that quern was such that it ground anything that the grinder chose, though until then it had ground nothing but gold and peace. So the maidens ground and ground, and one sang their piteous tale in a strain worthy of ^schylus as the other worked — they prayed for rest and pity, but Prodi was deaf. Then they turned in giant mood, and * Hist. ii. 16. FEODI S QUEEN. xciii ground no longer peace and plenty, but fire and war. Then the quern went fast and furious, and that very night came Mysing the Sea-rover, and slew Frodi and all his men, and carried off the quern ; and so Frodi's peace ended. The maidens the Sea-rover took with him, and when he got on the high seas he bade them grind salt. So they ground; and at midnight they asked if he had not salt enough, but he bade them still g-rind on. So they ground till the ship was full and sank, Mysing, maids, and mill, and all, and that's why the sea is salt.* Perhaps of all the tales in this volume, none could be selected as better proving the toughness of a traditional belief than No. ii., p. 8, which tells ".Why the Sea is Salt." The notion of the Arch-enemy of Godand man, of a fallen angel, to whom power was permitted at certain times for an all-wise purpose by the Great Euler of the universe, was as foreign to the heathendom of our ancestors as his name was outlandish and strange to their tongue. This notion Christianity brought with it from the East ; I and though it is a plant which has struck deep roots, grown distorted and awry, and borne a bitter crop of superstition, it required all the authority of the Church to prepare the soil at first for its reception. To the notion of good necessarily follows that of evil. The Eastern mind, with its Ormuzd and Ahriman, is full of such dual- ism, and from that hour, when a more than mortal eye saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven,t the kingdom of darkness, the abode of Satan and his bad spirits, was * Snor. Ed. Skaldsk. ch. 43. t St. Luke X. IS. xciv INTRODUCTION. established in direct opposition to the kingdom of the Saviour and his angels. The North had its own notion ou this point. Its mythology was not without its own dark powers; but though they too were ejected and dispos- sessed, they, according to that mythology, had rights of their own. To them belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by the younger race of Odin and JEsiv ; and though this upstart dynasty, as the Frost Giants in Promethean phrase would have called it, well knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was fated to do them all mischief, and to outlive them, they took her and made her queen of Niflheim, and mistress over nine worlds. There, in a bitterly cold place, she received the souls of all who died of sickness or old age ; care was her bed, hunger her dish, starvation her knife. Her walls were high and strong, and her bolts and bars huge ; " Half blue was her skin, and half the colour of human flesh. A goddess easy to know, and in all things very stern and grim."* But though severe, she was not an evil spirit. She only I received those who died as no Norseman wished to die. For those who fell on the gory battle-field, or sank beneath the waves, Yalhalla was prepared, and endless mirth and bliss with Odin. Tliose_wgntJ;o-JIel,^ who were rather unfortunate than wicked, who died before they could be (^killed. But when Christianity^came in jiid_ejeeied_Odin and his crew of false divinities, declaring them, to be Jying gods and demons, then Hel fell with therest ; but f uMl- ling her fate, outlived them. From a person she became a place, and all the Northern nations, from the Goth to * Snor. Edda, ch. 34, Engl. Transl. THE DEVIL AND HEL. XCV the Norseman, agreed in believing Hell to be the abode of the devil and his wicked spirits, the place prepared from the beginning for the everlasting torments of the damned. One curious fact connected with_this_explanation of Hell's origin will not escape the reader's attention. The Christian notion of-HfilLisJ}ha,t^of a^place_„of_Jieat, for in the Eaat,-_whence Christianity came, heat is. often an in- tolerable torment, and cold, on the other hand, everything that is pleasant and delightful. But to.the jclweller in the North, heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and life without fire has a dreary outlook ; so their Hel ruled in a cold region over those who were cowards by implicationPtrfeile the mead-cup went round, and huge logs blazed and crackled in Valhalla, for the brave and beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle. But under Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the cold uncomfortable goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fire abound, and where the devils abide in everlasting flame. Still, popular tradition is tough, and even after cen- turies of Christian teaching, the Norse peasant, in his popular tales, can still tell of Hell as a place where firewood is wanted at Christmas, and over which a certain air of comfort breathes, though, as in the god- dess Hel's halls, meat is scarce. The following passage from " Why the Sea is Salt," p. 8, will sufficiently prove this : — "Well, here is the flitch," said the rich brother, "and now go straight to Hell." " What I have given my word to do, I must stick to," said the other ; so he took the flitch and set off'. He walked xcvi INTKODTJCTIOX. the whole day, and at dusk he came to a place where he saw a very bright light. "Maybe this is the place," said the man to himself. So he turned aside, and the first thing he saw was an old, old man, with a long white beard, who stood in an outhouse, hewing wood for the Christmas fire. " Good even," said the man with the flitch. " The same to you ; whither are you going so late ? " said the man. " Oh ! I 'm going to Hell, if I only knew the right way,'' answered the poor man. " Well, you 're not far wrong, for this is Hell," said the old man. " When you get inside they will be all for buying your flitch, for meat is scarce in Hell ; but mind you don't sell it unless you get the hand-quern which stands behind the door for it. When you come out, I'll teach you how to handle the quern, for it 's good to grind almost any- thing." This, too, is the proper place to explain the conclusion of that intensely heathen tale, "The Magter^mit.h/' p. 105. We have already seen how the Saviour and St. Peter supply, in its beginning, the place of Odin and some other heathen god. But when the Smith sets out with the feeling that he has done a silly thing in quarrelling with the Devil, having already lost his hope of heaven, this tale assumes a still more heathen shape. AccordingJ;o the old.. notion, those who were j.otJ3jdin^guests went either to Thor's house, who had all the thralls, or to .Frejja, who even claimed a third part of the slain on every^battle- field with Odin, or to Hel, the cold comfortless goddfess already mentioned, who was still no tormentor, though she ruled over nine worlds, and though her walls were High, THE NORSEMAN S HELL. xcvii and her bolts and bars huge ; traits which come out in " The Master-Smith," p. 105, when the Devil, who here assumes Hel's place, orders the watch to go back and lock up all the mne locks_onJh6 gates of Hell — a lock for each of the goddesses' nine worlds — and to put a padlock on besides. In the twilight between heathendom and Christianity, in that half- Christian half-heathen consciousness which this tale reveals, heg,ven is the prefp.rableji.bndR, ;^.s Valhalla, wpg of yore, but rather than be without a house to one's head after ^eath, Hell was not to be despised ; though, having behaved ill to the ruler of one, and actually quarrelled with the master of the other, the Smith was naturally anxious on the matter. This notion of different abodes in another world, not necessarily places of torment, comes out too in " yot a Pin to choose between-JJiem." p. 173, where Peter, the second husband of the silly Goody, goes about begging from house to house in Paradise. Por the rest, whenever the Devil appears in these tales, it is not at all as the Arch-enemy, as the subtle spirit of the Ghristian^s_faith, but rather as one of _the^^old Giants, supernatural and hostile indeed to man, but simple and easily jdeeeived by a cunning reprobate, whose superior intelligence he learns to dread, for whom he feels himself no match, and whom, finally, he will receive in Hell at no price. We shall have to notice some other characteristics of this race of giants a little further on, but certainly no greater proof can be given of the small hold which the Christian Devil has taken of the Forse mind, than the heathen aspect under which he constantly appears, and the^iidicrous^ way in which he is always outwitted. f xcviii INTRODUCTION. We have seen how our Lord and the saints succeeded to Odin and his children in the stories which told of their wanderings on earth to warn the wicked, or to help the good ; we have seen how the kindliness and helpfulness of the ancient goddesses fell like a royal mantle round the form of the Virgin Mary. We have seen, too, on the other hand, how the procession of the Almighty God degenerated into the infernal midnight hunt. We have now to see what became of the rest of the power of the goddesses, of all that might which was not absorbed into the glory of the blessed Virgin. We shall not have far to seek. IsTo reader of early medieval chronicles and sermons can fail to have been struck with many passages which ascribe majesty and power to beings of woman's sex. Now it is a heathen goddess as Diana ; now some half- historical character as B&rtha ; now a mythical being as Holda ; now Herodias ; now Satia ; now Domina Abundia, or Dame Habonde.* A very short investigation will serve * Here are a few of these passages which might be much extended; — Burohard of Worms, p. 194, a. "credidisti ut aliqua femina sit quae hoc facere possit quod qusedam a dia- bolo deceptse se affirmant necessario et ex prsecepto facere debere ; id est cum daemonum turbS. in similitudinem muli- erum transformatfi,, quam vulgaris stultitia Holdam vocat, certis noctibus equitare debere super quasdam bestias, et in eorum se consortio annumeratam esse. "Illud etiam non omittendum, quod qusedam sceleratse mulieres retro post Sathanam conversse, dsemonum illusionibus et phantasmatibus seductse credunt se et profitentur noctur- nis horis cum Diand paganorum dea, vel cum Herodiade et innumera multitudine mulierum equitare super quasdam bes- THE HEATHEN GODDESSES. xcix to. identify the two ancient goddesses Frigga and Freyja with all these leaders of a midnight host. Just as Odin was banished from day to darkness, so the two great heathen goddesses, fused into one " uncanny " shape, were supposed to ride the air at night. Medieval chroniclers, writing in bastard Latin, and following the example of classical authors, when they had to find a name for this demon-goddess, chose, of course, Diana the heathen huntress ; the moon-goddess ; and the ruler of the night. In the same way, when they threw Odin's name into a Latin shape, he, the god of wit and will, as well as power and victory, became Mercury. As for Herodias — not the mother, but the daughter who danced — she must have made a deep impression on the mind of the early Middle Age, for she was supposed to have been cursed after the beheading of John the Baptist, and to have gone on dancing for ever. When heathendom fell, she became confounded with the ancient Goddesses, and thus we find tias, et multa terrarum spatia intempestse noctis silentio per- transire, ejusque jussionibus velut Dominm obedire et certis noctibus ad ejus servitium evocari." — Burchard of Worms, 10, 1. "Quale est, quod noctilucam quandam, vel Herodiadem, vel preesidem noctis Dominam concilia et conventus de nocte asserunt convocare, varia celebrari convivia, etc." — Joh. Sarisberiensis Polycrat., 2, 17, died 1182. " Serodiam illam baptistse Christi interfectricem, quasi reginam, immo deam proponant, asserentes tertiam totius mundi partem illi traditam." — Bather. Cambrens., died 974. " Sic et dsemon qui prsetextu mulieris cum aliis de nocte, demos et cellaria dicitur frequentare, et vocant earn Satiam a C INTRODUCTION. her, sometimes among the crew of the Wild Huntsman; sometimes, as we see in the passages below, in company with, or in the place of Diana, Holda, Satia, and Abundia, at the head of a bevy of women, who met at certain places to celebrate unholy rites and mysteries. As for Holda, Satia, and Abundia, "the kind," "the satisfying," and "the abundant," they are plainly names of good rather than evil powers; they are ancient epithets drawn from the bounty of the " Good Lady," and attest the feeling of respect which still clung to them in the popular mind. As was the case whenever Christianity was brought in, the country folk, always averse to change, as compared with the more lively and intelligent dwellers in towns, satietate, at Dominam Ahundiam pro abundantia, quam earn praestare dicunt domibus quas frequentaverit ; hujusmodi etiam daemones quas dominas vocant, vetulse penes quas error iste remansit et a quibus solis creditur et somniatur." — Gui- lielmus Alvernus, i. 1036, died 1248. So also the Boman de Bou (M6on, line 18,622) — " Qui les cine sens ainsinc deceit Par les fantosmes, qu'il re9oit, Dont maintes gens par lor folie Cuident estre par nuit estries, Errans aveques Dame Habonde ; Et dient, que par tout le monde Li tiers enfant de nacion S\mt de ceste condicion." And again, line 18,686 — " Dautre part, que li tiers du monde Aille ainsinc avec Dame Habonde." WITCHCRAFT. CI still remained more or less heathen,* and to this day they preserve unconsciously many superstitions which can be traced up in lineal descent to their old belief. In many ways does the old divinity peep out under the new superstition — the long train, the midnight feast, "the good lady " who presides, the bounty and abundance which her votaries fancied would follow in her footsteps, all belong to the ancient Goddess. Most curious of all is the way in which all these traditions from different countries insist on the third part of the earth, the third child born, the third soul as belonging to the " good lady " who leads the revel; for this right of a third, or even of a half, was one which Treyja possessed. " But Treyja is most famous of the Asynjor. She has that bower in heaven hight Folk- vangr, and whithersoever she rideth to the battle, then hath she one-half of the slain, but Odin the other half." Again "when she fares abroad, she drives two cats and sits in a car, and she lends an easy ear to the prayers of men.""!- We have got then the ancient goddesses identified as evil influences, and as the leader of a midnight band of women, who practised secret and unholy rites. This leads us at once to witchcraft. In all ages and in all races this belief in sorcery has existed. Men and women practised it alike, but in all times female sorcerers have predomi- nated.! This was natural enough. In those days women * See the derivation of pagan from 'paganus,' one who lived in the country, as opposed to ' urbanus,' a townsman. t Snorro's Edda, Dasent's Trans, pp. 29, Stockholm 1842, I Keisersberg Omeiss, 46 b., quoted by Grimm, D. M., p. 991, says — " Wen man ein man verbrent, so brent man wol zehen frauen." CU INTEODUCTION. were priestesses; they collected drugs and simples ; women I alone knew the virtues of plants. Those soft hands spun I linen, made lint, and bound wounds. Women, in the / earliest times with which we are acquainted with our forefathers, alone knew how to read and write, they only could carve the mystic runes, they only could chant the charms so potent to allay the wounded warrior's smart and pain. The men were busy out of doors with ploughing, hunting, barter, and war. In such an age the sex which possessed by natural right book-learning, physic, soothsaying, and incantation, even when they used these mysteries for good purposes, were but a step from sin. \ The same soft white hand that bound the wound and \ scraped the lint; the same gentle voice that sung the Imystic rune, that helped the child-bearing woman, or drew the arrow-head from the dying champion's breast ; the same bright eye that gazed up to heaven in ecstasy bhrough the sacred grove and read the will of the Gods when the mystic tablets and rune-carved lots were cast — all these, if the will were bad, if the soothsayer passed into the false prophetess, the leech into a poisoner, and the priestess into a witch, were as potent and terrible for ill as they had once been powerful for good. In all the Indo-European tribes, therefore, women, and especially old women, have practised witchcraft from the earliest times, and Christianity found them wherever it advanced. But Christianity, as it placed mankind upon a higher platform of civilisation, increased the evil which it found, and when it expelled the ancient goddesses, and confounded them as demons with Diana and Herodias, it added them and their votaries to the old class of malevolent sorcerers. There was but one step, but a simple act of the will, between THE MEDIEVAL WITCH. ciii the Norn and the hag, even before Christianity came in. As soon as it came, down went Goddess, Valkyrie, Norn, priestess, and soothsayer, into that unholy deep where the heathen hags and witches had their being; and, as Christianity gathered strength, developed its dogmas, and worked out its faith, fancy, tradition, leechcraft, poverty, and idleness, produced that unhappy class, the medieval witch, the persecution of which is one of the darkest pages in religious history. It is curious indeed to trace the belief in witches through the Middle Age, and to mark how it increases in intensity and absurdity. At first, as we have seen in the passages quoted, the superstition seemed comparatively harmless, and though the witches themselves may have believed in their unholy power, there were not wanting divines who took a common-sense view of the matter, and put the absurdity of their pretensions to a practical proof. Such was that good parish priest who asked, when an old woman of his flock insisted that she had been in his house .with the company of " the Good Lady," and had seen him naked and covered him up, " How, then, did you get in when all the doors were locked ? " "We can get in," she said, "even if the doors are locked." Then the priest took her into the chancel of the church, locked the door, and gave her a sound thrashing with the pastoral staff, calling out, " Out with you, lady witch." But as she could not, he sent her home, saying, " See now how foolish j'ou are to believe in such empty dreams."* But as the Church * See the passage from Vincent, Bellov. Spec. Mor. iii. 2, 27, quoted in Grimm, D. M., pp. 1012-13. CIV INTRODUCTION. increased in strength, as heresies arose, and consequent persecution, then the secret meetings of these sectarians, as we should now call them, were identified by the hierarchy with the rites of sorcery and magic, and with the relics of the worship of the old gods. By the time, too, that the hierarchy was established, that belief in the fallen angel, the Arch-Fiend, the Devil, originally so foreign to the nations of the West, had become thoroughly ingrafted on the popular mind, and a new element of wickedness and superstition was introduced at those unholy festivals. About the middle of the thirteenth century, we find the mania for persecuting heretics invading the tribes of Teutonic race from France and Italy, backed by all the power of the Pope. Like jealousy, persecution too often makes the meat it feeds on, and many silly, if not harmless, superstitions were rapidly put under the ban of the Church. Now the " Good Lady " and her train begin to recede; they only fill up the background, while the Prince of Darkness steps, dark and terrible, in front, and soon draws after him the following of the ancient goddess. Now we hear stories of demoniac possession ; now the witches adore a demon of the other sex. With the male element, and its harsher, sterner nature, the sinfulness of these unholy assemblies is infinitely increased; folly becomes guilt, and guilt crime.* * The following passage from "The Fortalice of Faith" of Alphonso Spina, written about the year 1458, will sufSce to show how disgustingly the Devil, in the form of a goat, had supplanted the "Good Lady:" — "Quia nimium abundant tales perversse mulieres in Delphinatu et Guasconia, ubi se asserunt concurrere de nocte in quMam planitie deserta ubi PROCESSES AGAINST WITCHES. cv From the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century the history of Europe teems with processes against witches and sorcerers. Before the Eeformation it reached its height, in the Catholic world, with the famous buU of Innocent the Eighth in 1484, the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, the first of the long list of witch-finding books, and the zeal with which the State lent all the terrors of the law to assist the ecclesiastical inquisitors. Before the tribunals of those inquisitors, in est caper quidam in rupe, qui vulgariter dicitur el loch de Biterne, at quod ibi conveniunt cum candelis accensis et adorant ilium capnim osculantes eum in ano suo. Ideo captse plures earum, ab inquisitoribus fidei et convictse ignibus com- buruntur.'' About the same time, too, began to spread the notion of formal written agreements between the Fiend and men who were to be his after a certain time, during which he was to help them to all earthly goods. This, too, came with Chris- tianity from the East. The first instance was Theophilus, vicedominus of the Bishop of Adana, whose fall and con- version form the original of all the Faust Legends. See Grimm, D. M., 969, and "Theophilus in Icelandic, Low German, and other tongues, by G. W. Dasent, Stockholm, 1845," where a complete account of the literature of the legend may be found. In almost all these early cases the Fiend is outwitted by the help of the Virgin or some other saint, and in this way the reader is reminded of the Norse Devil, the successor of the Giants, who always makes bad bargains. When the story was applied to Faust in the six- teenth century, the terrible Middle Age Devil was paramount, and knew how to exact his due. CVl INTRODUCTION. the fifteenth century, innumerable victims were arraigned on the double charge of heresy and sorcery — for the crimes ran in couples, both being children and sworn servants of the Devil. Would that the historian could say that with the era of the Eeformation these abomi- nations ceased ! The Eoman Hierarchy, with her bulls and inquisitors, had sown a bitter crop, which both she and the Protestant Churches were destined to reap ; but in no part of the world were the labourers more eager and willing, when the fields were "black" to harvest, than in those very reformed communities which had just shaken off the yoke of Eome, and which had sprung in many cases from the very heretics whom she had persecuted and burnt, accusing them, at the same time, of the most malignant sorceries.* Their excuse is, that no * How strangely full of common sense sounds the following article from the Capitularies of Charlemagne, De part. Sax. 5 : "Si quis a diabolo deceptus crediderit secundum morem Paganorum, virum aliquem aut foeminam strigam esse et homines comedere, et propter hoc ipsum incenderit, vel carnem ejus ad comedendum dederit, capitis sententii, punietur." And this of Rotharius, Lex. Eoth., 379 : " NuUus praesumat aldiam alienam aut ancillam quasi strigam occidere, quod Christianis mentibus nuUatenus est credendum nee possibile est, ut hominem mulier vivum intrinsecus possit comedere." Here the law warns the common people from believing in witches, and from taking its functions into their own hands, and reasons with them against the absurdity of such delusions. So, too, that reasonable parish priest who thrashed the witch, though earlier in time, was far in advance of Gregory and his inquisitors, and even of our wise King James. WITCHCRAFT IN PROTESTANT COUNTRIES. CVli one is before Hs age. The intense personality given to the Devil in the Middle Age had possessed the whole mind of Europe. "We must take them as we find them, with their bright fancy, their earnest faith, their stern fanaticism, their revolting superstition, just as when we look upon a picture we know that those brilliant hues and tones, that spirit which informs the whole, could never be were it not for the vulgar earths and oU out of which the glorious work of art is mixed and made. Strangely monotonoiis are all the witch trials of which Europe has so many to show. At first the accused denies, then under torture she confesses, then relapses and denies; tortured again, she confesses again, amplifies her story, and accuses others. When given to the stake, she not seldom asserts all her confessions to be false, which is ascribed to the power which the fiend still has over her. Then she is burnt and her ashes given to the winds. Those who wish to read one, unexampled perhaps for barbarity and superstition, and more curious than the rest from the prominence given in it to a man, may find it in the trial of Dr. Fian, the Scotch wizard, "which Doctor was register to the devill, that sundrie times preached at ITorth Baricke (Forth Berwick, in East Lothian) Kirke to a number of notorious Witches."* But * The following is the title of this strange tract, — "Newes from Scotland, declaring the damnable life of Doctor Fian, a notable Sorcerer, who was burned at Edenbrough, in Januarie last 1591, which Doctor was register to the devill, that sundrie times preached at North Baricke Kirke to a number of notorious Witches. With the true examinations of the said Doctor and witches, as they uttered them in the presence of CVlll INTRODUCTION. we advise no one to venture on a perusal of this tract who is not prepared to meet with the most unutterable accusa- tions and crimes, the most cruel tortures, and the most absurd confessions, followed as usual by the stoutest denial of all that had been confessed ; when torture had done her worst on poor human nature, and the soul re- asserted at the last her supremacy over the body.* One the Scottish king. Discovering how they pretended to be- witch and drowne his Majestic in the sea, comming from Den- marke, with such other wonderfull matters as the like, hath not bin heard at anie time. Published according to the Scottish copie. Printed for William Wright." It was reprinted in 1816 for the Eoxburghe Club by Mr. Gr. H. Freeling, and is very scarce even in the reprint, which, all things considered, is perhaps just as well. * The following specimens of the tortures and confessions may suffice ; but most of the crimes and confessions are unutterable. One Geillis Duncane was tortured by her master, David Seaton, dwelling within the town of Tranent, who, " with the help of others, did torment her with the tor- ture of the Pilliwinkes (thumbscrews), upon her fingers, and binding and wrinching her head with a cord or roape, which is a most cruel torment also." So also Agnes Sampson, "the eldest witch of them all, dwelling in Haddington, being hrought to Haleruid House before the kinge's majestie and sundry other of the nobilitie of Scotland, had her head thrawne with a rope according to the custom of that countrie, beeing a payne most greevous." After the Devil's mark is found on her, she confesses that she went to sea with two hundred others in sieves to the kirk of North Berwick in East Lothian, and after they had landed they "took handes on the lande THE TRIAL OF DOCTOR FIAN. cix characteristic of all these Avitch trials is the fact, that in spite of their unholy connection and intrigues with the Evil One, no witch ever attained to wealth and station by the aid of the Prince of Darkness. The pleasure to do ill is all the pleasure they feel. This fact alone might have opened the eyes of their persecutors, for if the Devil had the worldly power which they represented him to have, and daunced, this reill or short daunce, saying all with one voice, — " Commer goe ye before, Commer goe ye, Gif ye will not goe before, Commer let me." " At which time she confessed that this Geillis Duncans did goe before them playing this reill or daunce upon a small trumpe called a Jew's trump, until they entered into the kirk of North Barrick." "As touching the aforesaid Doctor Fian," he "was taken and imprisoned, and used with the accustomed paine provided for these offences, inflicted upon the rest, as is aforesaid. First by thrawing of his head with a rope, whereat he would confesse nothing(!) Secondly, he was persuaded by faire means to confesse his follies, but that would prevaile as little. Lastly, he was put to the most severe and cruell paine in the world, called the Bootes, who, after he had received three strokes, being inquired if he would confesse his damnable actes and wicked life, his toong would not serve him to speake.'' This inability, produced no doubt by pain, the other witches explain by saying that the Devil's mark had not been found, which, being found, " the charm " was "stinted," and the Doctor, in dread probably of a fourth stroke, confessed unutterably shameful things. Having escaped from prison, of course by the aid of the Devil, he was pursued, and brought back and re-examined before the king. " But this ex INTRODUCTION. he might at least have raised some of his votaries to temporal rank, and to the pomps and the vanities of this world. An old German proverb expresses this notorious fact, by saying, that " every seven years a witch is three halfpence richer ; " and so with aU the unholy means of Hell at their command, they dragged out their lives, along with their black cats, in poverty and wretchedness. To this fate at last came the worshippers of the great goddess Freyja, whom our forefathers adored as the goddess of love and plenty ; and whose car was drawn by those animals which popular superstition has ever since assigned to the " old witch " of our English villages. The North was not free, any more than the rest of the Protestant world, from this direful superstition, which ran Doctor, notwithstanding that his own confession appeareth remaining in recorde, under his owne hande writing, and the same thereunto fixed in the presence of the King's majestie and sundrie of his councel], yet did he utterly deny the same, whereupon the King's majestie, perceiving his stubborne wilfulnesse ... he was commanded to have a most strange torment, which was done in this manner following, — His nailes upon all his fingers were riven and pulled off with an instrument called in Scottish a Turkas, which in England wee call a payre of pincers, and under everie nayle there was thrust in two needels over even up to the heads. At all which torments, notwithstanding the Doctor never shronke anie whit, neither would he then confesse it the sooner for all the tortures inflicted upon him. " Then was he with all convenient speed, by commande- ment convaied againe to the torment of the Bootes, wherein hee continued a long time, and did abide so many blowes in them, that his legges were crusht and beaten together as small as WITCHCRAFT IN THE NORTH. Cxi over Europe like a pestilence in the sixteenth century. In Sweden especially, the witches and their midnight ridings to Blohulla, the black hill, gave occasion to processes as absurd and abominable as the trial of Dr. Man and the witch-findings of Hopkins. In Denmark, the sorceresses were supposed to meet at Tromsoe, high up in Finmark, or even on Hecla in Iceland. The Norse witches met at a BlokoUe of their own, or on the Dovrefell, or at other places in Norway or Finmark. As might be expected, we find many traces of witchcraft in these Tales, but it may be doubted whether these may not be referred rather to the old heathen belief in such arts still lingering in the popular mind than to the processes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which were far might bee, and the bones and flesh so brused that the bloud and marrow spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable for ever. And notwithstanding all these grievous paines and cruel torments, he would not confesse aniething, so deepely had the Devill entered into his heart, that hee utterly denied all that which he had before avouched, and would saie nothing therunto but this, that what he had done and sayde before, was onely done and saide for fear of paynes which he had endured." Thereupon as "a due execution of justice," " and for example sake," he was tried, sentenced, put into a cart, strangled and "immediately put into a great fire, being readie provided for that purpose, and there burned in the Castle Hill of Edenbrough on a saterdaie, in the ende of Januarie last past, 1591." The tract ends significantly : " The rest of the witches which are not yet executed remayne in prison till further triall and knowledge of his majestie's pleasure." CXil INTilODUCTION. more a craze and mania of the educated classes acting under a mistaken religious fanaticism against popular superstitions than a movement arising from the mass of the community. Still, in the Mastermaid, p. 71, the witch of a sister-in-law, who had rolled the apple over to the Prince, and so charmed him, was torn to pieces be- tween twenty-four horses. The old queen in " The Lassie and her Godmother," p. 188, tries to persuade her son to have the young queen burnt alive for a wicked witch, who was dumb, and had eaten her own babes. In " East o' the Sunand -West, o' the Moon," p. 22, it is a wicked stepmother who has bewitched the prince. In "Bushy Bride," p. 322, the ugly bride charms the king to sleep, and is at last thrown, with her wicked mother, into a pit full of snakes. In "The Twelve Wild Ducks," p. 51, the wicked stepmother persuades the king that Snow-white and Eosy-red is a witch, and almost persuades him to burn her alive. In " Tatterhood," p. 345, a whole troop of witches come to keep their revels on Christmas eve in the Queen's Palace, and snap off the young Princess's head. It is hard, indeed, in tales where TroUs play so great a part, to keep witch and Troll separate ; but the above instances will shew that the belief in the one, as distinct from the other, exists in the popular superstitions of the North. The frequent transformation of men into beasts, in these Tales, is another striking feature. This power the gods of the Norseman possessed in common with those of aU other mythologies. Europa and her BuU, Leda and her Swan, will occur at once to the reader's mind ; and to come to closer resemblances, just as Athene appears in the TRANSFOEMATIONS INTO BEASTS. CXIU Odyssey as au eagle or a swallow perched on the roof of the hall,* so Odin flies off as a falcon, and Loki takes the form of a horse or bird. This was only part of that omnipotence which all gods enjoy. But thebeliefttiat men, under TOrtain_conditions,coul.d^so take the shape of animals, is primeval^ and the traditions of every race_can teU of such transformatipBS. Herodotus had heard how the Neurians, a Slavonic race, passed for wizards amongst the Scythians and the Greeks settled round the Black Sea, because each of them, once in the year, became a wolf for a few days, and then returned to his natural shape. Pliny, Pomponius Mela, and St. Augustin, in his great treatise, Be Givitate Dei, tell the same story, and Virgil in his Eclogues has sung the same belief f The Latins called such a man a turnskin, — versipellis, an expression which exactly agrees with the Icelandic expression for the same thing, and which is probably the true original of our turncoat. In Petronius the superstition appears in its full shape, and is worth repeating. At the banquet of Trimalchion, Mceros gives the following account of the turnskins of Nero's time : — " It happened that my master was gone to Capua to dis- pose of some second-hand goods. I took the opportunity and persuaded our guest to walk with me to the fifth milestone. He was a valiant soldier, and a sort of grim water-drinking Pluto. About cock-crow, when the moon was shining as bright as mid-day, we came among the monuments. My * Od. iii. 372 ; and xxii. 239. t Eel. viii. 97 — "His ego saepe lupum fieri et se condere silvis Moerim vidi." 9 cxiv INTRODUCTION. friend began addressing himself to the stars, but I was rather in a mood to sing or to count them ; and when I turned to look at him, lo ! he had already stripped himself and laid down his clothes near him. My heart was in my nostrils, and I stood like a dead man ; but he ' circumminxit vestinienta,' and on a sudden became a wolf. Do not think I jest; I would not lie for any man's estate. But to return to what I was saying. When he became a wolf, he began howling, and fled into the woods. At first I hardly knew where I was, and afterwards, when I went to take up his clothes, they were turned into stone. Who then died with fear but 1 1 Yet I drew my sword, and went cutting the air right and left, till I reached the villa of my sweetheart. I entered the court- yard. I almost breathed my last, the sweat ran down my neck, my eyes were dim, and I thought I should never recover myself. My Melissa wondered why I was out so late, and said to me, — ' Had you come sooner you might at least have helped us, for a wolf has entered the farm, and worried all our cattle ; but he had not the best of the joke, for all he escaped, for our slave ran a lance through his neck.' When I heard this, I could not doubt how it was, and, as it was clear daylight, ran home as fast as a robbed innkeeper. When I came to the spot where the clothes had been turned into stone, I could find nothing except blood. But when I got home, I found my friend the soldier in bed, bleeding at the neck like an ox, and a doctor dressing his wound. I then knew he was a turnskin ; nor would I ever have broke bread with him again : no, not if you had killed me."* * See Grimm's D. M., 1047 fol. ; and for this translation from Petronius, a very interesting letter prefixed to Madden's ed. of the old English Romance of " William and the Were- wolf," 1832, one of the Eoxburghe Club Publications. This WERE-WOLVES. CXV A man who had such a gifit or greed was also called lycanthropus, a man-wolf or wolf-man, which term the Anglo-Saxons translated literally in Canute's Laws verevulf, and the early English werewolf. In Old French he was loupgarou, which means the same thing ; except that garou means man-wolf in itself without the antecedent hup, so that, as Madden observes, the whole word is one of those reduplications of which we have an example in lukewarm. In Brittany he was hleizgarou and denvleiz, formed respectively from hleiz, wolf, and den, man ; garou is merely a distorted form of wer or vere, man and loup. In later French the word became waroid, whence the Scotch wroul, wurl, and worlin.* It was not likely that a belief so widely spread should not have extended itself to the North ; and the grave assertions of Olaus Magnus in the sixteenth century, in his Treatise de Gentibus Septentrionalihus, shew how common the belief in were-wolves was in Sweden so late as the time of Gustavus Vasa. In mythical times the Volsunga Sagaf expressly states of Sigmund and Sinfjotli that they became were-wolves, — which, we may remark, were Odin's sacred beasts, — just in the same way as Bryn- hildr and the Valkyries, or corse-choosers, who followed the letter, which was by the hand of Mr. Herbert of Petworth, contains all that was known on this subject before Grimm ; but when Grimm came he was, compared with all who had treated the subject, as a sober man amongst drunkards. * Buclavaret in the Lais of Marie de France, i, 178, seems to be a corruption of Bleizgarou, as the Norman garioal is of garwolf. See also Jamieson's Diet, under warimlf. t FornaldSog.,l 130, 131. cxvi INTRODUCTION. god of battles to the field, and chose the dead for Valhalla when the fight was done, became swan-maidens, and took the shape of swans. In either case, the wolfs skin or the swan's feathery covering was assumed and laid aside at pleasure, though the Vohmdr Quidr, in the Edda, and the stories of " The Fair Melusina," and other medieval swan- maidens, shew that any one who seized that shape while thus laid aside, had power over its wearer. In later times, when this old heroic belief degenerated into the notion of sorcery, it was supposed that a girdle of wolfskin thrown over the body, or even a slap on the face with a wolfskin glove, would transform the person upon whom the sorcerer practised into the shape of a ravening wolf, which fled at once to the woods, where he remained in that shape for a period which varied in popular belief for nine days, three, seven, or nine years. While in this state he was especially ravenous after young children, whom he carried off as the were-wolf carried off William in the old romance, though all were-wolves did not treat their prey with the same tenderness as that were-wolf treated William. But the favourite beast for Norse transformations in historic times, if we may judge from the evidence afforded by the Sagas, was the bear, the king of all their beasts, whose strength and sagacity made him an object of great respect.* This old belief, then, might be expected to be found in these Norse Tales, and accordingly we find men trans- formed in them into various beasts. Of old these trans- * See Landnama in many places. Egil's Sag. Hrolf Krak. Sas. WERE-BEAES. CXVll formations, as we have already stated, were active, if we may use the expression, as well as passive. A man who possessed the gift frequently assumed the shape of a beast at his own will and pleasure, like the soldier in Petronius. Even now in Norway, it is matter of popular belief that Finns and Lapps, who from time immemorial have passed for the most skilful witches and wizards in the world, can at will assume the shape of bears ; and it is a common thing to say of one of those beasts, when he gets unusually savage aind daring, " that can be no Christian bear." On such a bear, in the parish of Ofoden, after he had worried to death more than sixty horses and six men, it is said that a girdle of bearskin, the infallible mark of a man thus transformed, was found when he was at last tracked and slain. The tale called " Farmer Weathersky," in this collection (p. 285), shews that the belief of these spon- taneous transformations still exists in popular tradition, where it is easy to see that Farmer Weathersky is only one of the ancient gods degraded into a demon's shape. His- sudden departure through the air, horse, sledge, and lad, and all, and his answer, "I'm at home, alike north, and south, and east, and west"; his name it- self,' and his distant abode, surrounded with the corpses of the slain, sufficiently betray the divinity in disguise. His transformation, too, into a hawk answers exactly to that of Odin when he flew away from the Frost Giant in the shape of that bird. But in these Tales such trans- formations are for the most part passive ; they occur not at the wiU of the person transformed, but through sorcery practised on them by some one else. Thus the White Bear in the beautiful story of " East o' the Sun and West cxviii INTRODUCTION. o' the Moon," p. 22, is a Prince transformed by his step- mother, just as it is the stepmother who plays the same part in the romance of William and the Were-wolf. So the horse in "The Widow's Son," p. 311, is a Prince over whom a king has cast that shape.* So also in "Lord Peter," p. 295, which is the full story of what we have only hitherto known in part as " Puss in Boots," the cat is a Princess bewitched by the Troll who had robbed her of her lands; so also in "The Seven Foals," p. 302, and "The Twelve Wild Ducks," p. 51, the Foals and the Ducks are Princes over whom that fate has come by the power of a witch or a Troll, to whom an unwary promise had been given. Thoroughly mythic is the trait in "The Twelve Wild Ducks," where the youngest brother reappears with a wild duck's wing instead of his left arm, because his sister had no time to finish that portion of the shirt, upon the completion of which his retransformation depended. But we should ill understand the spirit of the Norsemen, if we supposed that these transformations into beasts were all that the national heart has to tell of beasts and their doings, or that, when they appear, they do so merely as men-beasts, without any power or virtue of their own. From the earliest times, side by side with those productions of the human mind which speak of the dealings of men with men, there has grown up a stock of traditions about animals and their relations with one another, which forms a true Beast Epic, and is full of the liveliest traits of nature. * Troldham, at hade ham paa. Comp. the Old Norse hamr, hamfor, hamwadr, hamraimnr, which occur repeatedly in the same sense. THE BEAST EPIC. cxix Here, too, it was reserved for Grimm to restore these traditions to their true place in the history of the human mind, and to sliew that the poetry which treats of them is neither satirical nor didactic, though it may contain touches of both these artificial kinds of composition, but, on the contrary, purely and intensely natural. It is Epic, in short, springing out of that deep love of nature and close observa- tion of the habits of animals which is only possible in an early and simple stage of society. It used to be the fashion, when these Beast traditions were noticed, to point to ^sop as their original, but Grimm has sufficiently proved* that what we see in .iEsop is only the remains of a great world-old cycle of such traditions which had already, in .ffisop's day, been subjected by the Greek mind to that critical process which a late state of society brings to bear on popular traditions ; that they were then already worn and washed out and moralised. He has also shewn how the same process went on till in Pheedrus nothing but the dry bones of the traditions, with a drier moral, are served up to the reader; and he has done justice on La Fontaine, who wrote with all the wanton licentiousness of his day, and frittered away the whole nature of his fables by the frivolity of his allusions to the artificial society of his time. Nor has he spared Lessing, who, though he saw through the poverty of Phsedrus as compared with ^sop, and was alive to the weakness of La Fontaine, still wandered about in the classical mist which hung heavy over the learning of the eighteenth century, and saw in the Greek form the perfection of all fable, when in ^sop * Eeinhart Fucks, Introduction. cxx INTRODUCTION. it really appears in a state of degeneracy and decay. Here too, as in so many other things, we have a proof that the world is older than we think it. The Beast-Fables in the Pantcha-Tantra and the HitopoAesa, the Indian parallels to .iSlsop, reveal, in the connection in which they occur, and in the moral use to which they are put, a state of society long past that simple early time in which such fictions arise. They must have sprung up in the East in the very dawn of time ; and thence travelling in all direc- tions, we find them after many centuries in various shapes, which admit of no mistake as to their first origin, at the very ends of the earth, in countries as opposite as the Poles to each other ; in New Zealand and Norway, in Central Africa and Servia, in the West Indies and in Mongolia ; all separated by immense tracts of land or sea from their common centre. 'I To the earnest inquirer, to one who believes that many dark things may yet be solved, it is very satisfactory to see that even Grimm, in his " Eeynard the Fox," is at a loss to understand why the North, properly so called, had none of the traditions which the Middle Age moulded into that famous Beast Epic. But since then the North, as the Great Master himself confesses in his later works, has amply avenged herself for the slight thus cast upon her by mistake. In the year 1834, when Grimm thus expressed his surprise on this point, the North had no such traditions to shew in books indeed, but she kept them stored up in her heart in an abundance with which no other land perhaps can vie. This book at least shews how natural it seems to the Norse mind now, and how much more natural of course it seemed in earlier times, when THE BEAST EPIC IN THE NOKTH. CXXl seuse went for so much and reflection for so little, that beasts should talk; and how truly and faithfully it has listened and looked for the accents and character of each. The Bear is still the King of Beasts, in which character he appears in " True and Untrue," p. 1, but here, as in Germany, he is no match for the Fox in wit. Thus Eeynard plays him a trick which condemns him for ever to a stumpy tail in No. xxiii. (p. 172). He cheats him out of his share of a firkin of butter in No. lvii. (p. 409). He is preferred as Herdsman, in No. x. (p. 69), before either Bear or Wolf, by the old wife who wants some one to tend her flock. Yet all the while he professes immense respect for the Bear, and calls him " Lord," even when in the very act of outwitting him. In the tale called " Well Done and HI Paid," p. 266, the crafty fox puts a finish to his mis- behaviour to his "Lord Bruin," by handing him over, bound hand and foot, to the peasant, and by causing his death outright. Here, too, we have- an example, which we shall see repeated in the case of the giants, that strength and stature are not always wise, and that wit and wisdom never fail to carry the day against mere brutes force. An- other tale, however, restores the bear to his true place as the king of beasts, endowed not only with strength, but with something divine and terrible about him which the Trolls cannot withstand. This is " The Cat on the Dovre- fell," p. 90, in connection with which it should be re- membered that the same tradition existed in the thirteenth century in Germany,* that the bear is called familiarly grandfather in the North, and that the Lapps reckon him * Grimm, Irisdi. Elfenm., 114-19, and D. M., 447. cxxii INTRODUOTIOK. rather as akin to men than beasts ; that they say he has the strength of ten and the wit of twelve men. If they slay him, they formally beg his pardon, as do also the Ostjaks, a tribe akin to the Lapps, and bring him to their huts with great formalities and mystic songs. To the Wolf, whose nickname is " Graylegs,"* these Tales are more complimentary. He is not the spiteful, stupid, greedy Isengrim of Germany and France. Not that Isengrim, of whom old English fables of the thirteenth century tell us that he became a monk, but when the brethren wished to teach him his letters that he might learn the Paternoster, all they could get out of him was lamb, lamb ; nor could they ever get him to look to the cross, for his eyes, with his thoughts, "were ever to the woodward.''^ He appears, on the contrary, in " The Giant who had no Heart in his Body," p. 59, as a kindly, grateful beast, who repays ten- fold out of the hidden store of his supernatural sagacity the gift of the old jade, which Boots had made over to him. The horse was a sacred animal among the Teutonic tribes from the first moment of their appearance in history, and TacitusJ has related, how in the shade of those woods and groves which served them for temples, white horses were fed at the public cost, whose backs no mortal man crossed, whose neighings and snortings were carefully watched as auguries and omens, and who were thought to be * Comp. Vict. Hug., Notre-Dame de Paris, where he tells us that the gipsies called the wolf piedgris. See also Grimm, B. M., 633, and Reinhart, Iv, ccvii, and 446. t Douce, Illust. to Shakspeare, ii. 33, 344, quoted in Reinhart Fuchs, cexxi. | German. 9, 10. THE BULL. cxxiu conscious of divine mysteries. In Persia, too, the classical reader will remember how the neighing of a horse decided the choice for the crown. Here, in England, at any rate, we have only to think of Hengist and Horsa, the twin- heroes of the Anglo-Saxon migration, as the legend ran, — heroes whose name meant " horse," — and of the vale of the White Horse in Berks, where the sacred form still gleams along the down, to be reminded of the sacredness of the horse to our forefathers. The Eddas are filled with the names of famous horses, and the Sagas contain many stories of good steeds, in whom their owners trusted and believed as sacred to this or that particular god. Such a horse is Dapplegrim in these Tales (p. 272), who saves his master out of all his perils, and brings him to all fortune, and is another example of that mysterious con- nection with the higher powers which animals in all ages have been supposed to possess. Such a friend, too, to the helpless lassie is the Dun Bull in "Katie Woodencloak," p. 357, out of whose ear comes the "Wishing Cloth," which serves up the choicest dishes. The story is probably imperfect, as we should expect to see him again in human shape after his head was cut off, and his skin flayed ; but, after being the chief character up to that point, he remains from that time forth in the background, and we only see him darkly in the man who comes out of the face of the rock, and supplies the lassie's wants when she knocks on it. Dun, or blue, or mouse- colour, is the favourite colour for fairy kine. Thus the cow which Guy of Warwick killed was dun. The Huldror in Norway have large flocks of blue kine. In Scotland runs the story of the Mouse-coloured Elfin Bull. In cxxiv INTRODUCTION. Iceland the colour of such Idne is apalgrdr, dapple grey. This animal has been an object of adoration and respect from the earliest times, and we need only remind our readers of the sanctity of cows and bulls among the Indians and Egyptians, of "the Golden Calf" in the Bible ; of lo and her wanderings from land to laud ; and, though last, not least, of Audhumla, the Mythic Cow in the Edda, who had so large a part in the creation of the first Giant in human form.* The Dog, to which, with all his sagacity and faithful- ness, something unclean and impure clings, as Grimm well observes, plays no very prominent part in these Tales.f * Snorro's Edda, ch. vi., English trans., Stockholm, 1842. t Thus from the earliest times " dog," " hound," has been a term of reproach. Great instances of fidelity, such as "Gellert" or the "Dog of Montargis," both of which are Eastern and primeval, have scarcely redeemed the cringing currish nature of, the race in generalfrom disgrace. M. Fran- cisque Michel, in his Histoire des Eaces Mavdites de la France et, de I'Espagne, thinks it probable that Cagot, the nickname by which the heretical Goths who fled into Aquitaine in the time of Charles Martel, and received protection from that king and his successors, were called by the Franks, was derived from the term Oanis Gothicus or Canes Gothi. In modern French the word means 'hypocrite,' and this would come from the notion of the outward conformity to the Catholic formula- ries imposed on the Arian Goths by their orthodox protectors. Etymologically, the derivation is good enough, according to Diez, Bomanisches Worterhuch; Proven9al ca, dog; Got, Gothic. Before quitting Gagot, we may observe that the derivation of Ugot, our ' bigot,' another word of the same kind, is not so THE DOG. CXXV We find him, however, in " Not a Pin to choose between them," p. 173, where his sagacity fails to detect his mistress ; and, as " the foe of his own house," the half- bred foxy hound, who chases away the cunning Fox in "Well Done and 111 Paid," p. 266. Still he, too, in popular superstition, is gifted with a sense of the super- natviral ; he howls when death impends, and in " Butter- cup," p. 124, it is Goldtooth, their dog, who warns Buttercup and his mother of the approach of the old hag. In "Bushy Bride," p. 322, he appears only as the lassie's lap-dog, is thrown away as one of her sacrifices, and at last goes to the wedding in her coach ; yet in that tale he has something weird about him, and he is sent out by his mistress three times to see if the dawn is coming. clear. Michel says it comes from Vizigothus, Bkigothus. Diez says this is too far-fetched, especially as "Bigot," "Bigod," was a term appUed to the Normans, and not to the population of the South of France. There is, besides, another derivation given by Ducange from a Latin chronicle of the twelfth century. In speaking of the homage done by Eollo, the first Duke of Normandy, to the King of France, he says — "Hie non dignatus pedem Caroli osoulari nisi ad oa suum levaret, cumque sui comites ilium admonerent ut pedem Kegia iu acceptione tanti muneris, Neuatrise provinoise, oscularetur, Anglica lingua respon- dit 'ne se bi got,'' quod interpretatur 'ne per deum. ' Rex vero et sui ilium deridentes, et sermonem ejus corrupts referentes, ilium voca- Verunt Bigottum ; unde Normanni adhuc Bigothi vocantur. " Wace, too, says, in the JRoman de Rem, that the French had abused the Normans in many ways, calling them Bigos. It is also termed, in a French record of the year 1425, "un mot tres injurieux." Diez says it was not used in its present sense before the sixteenth century. cxxvi INTRODUCTION. In one tale (p. 264) the Goat appears in full force, and dashes out the brains of the Troll, who lived under the bridge over the burn. In another, " Tatterhood," p. 345, he helps the lassie in her onslaught on the witches. He, too, was sacred to Thor in the old my- thology, and drew his thundering car. Here something of the divine nature of his former lord, who was the great foe of all Trolls, seems to have been passed on in popular tradition to the animal who had seen so many adventures with the great God who swayed the thunder. This feud between the Goat and the Trolls comes out curiously in "The Old Dame and her Hen," p. 14, where a goat falls down the trapdoor to the Troll's house : " Who sent for you, I should like to know, you long-bearded beast ? " said the Man o' the Hill, who was in an awful rage ; and with that he whipped up the Goat, wrung his head off, and threw him down into the cellar." Still liQ belonged to one of the heathen gods, and so in later Middle-Age superstition he is assigned to the Devil, who even takes his shape when he presides at the Witches' Sabbath. J Nor in this list must the little birds be forgotten which taught the man's daughter, in the tale of " The Two Step- sisters," p. 113, how to act in her trials. So, too, in " Katie Woodencloalc," p. 3.57, the little bird tells the Prince, " who understood the song of birds very well," that blood is gushing out of the golden shoe. The belief tliat some persons had the gift of understanding what the birds said is primeval. We pay homage to it in our proverbial expression, " A little bird told me." Popular traditions and rhymes protect their nests, as in the case of the wren, the robin, and the swallow. Occasionally this gift seems GIANTS AND TKOLLS. cxxvii to have been acquired by eating or tasting the flesh of a snake or dragon, as Sigurd, in the Volsung tale, first became aware of Eegin's designs against his life, when he accidentally tasted the heart-blood of Fafnir, whom he had slain in dragon shape, and then all at once the swallow's song, perched above him, became as intelligible as human speech. We now come to a class of beings which plays a large part, and always for ill, in these Tales. These are the Giants or Trolls. In modern Korse tradition there is little difference between the names, but originally Troll was a more general expression for a supernatural being than Giant,* which was rather confined to a race more dullj;han wiclced. In the Giants we have the wantonnesg of boundless b^ily strength and size^ which, trusting entirely to these qualities, falls at last by its own weight. At first, it is true, that proverbial wisdom, all the stores of traditional lore, all that could be learnt by what may be called rule of thumb, was ascribed to them. One sympathises too with them, and almost pities them as the representatives of a simple primitive race, whose day is past and gone, but who still possessed something of the innocence and virtue of ancient times, together with a stock of old experience, which, however useful it might be as an example to others, was quite useless to help them- * The most common word for a giant in the Eddas was Jiitunn (A.-Sax. eoten), which, strange to say, survives in the Scotch Etin. In one or two places the word Ogre has been used, which is properly a Romance word, and comes from the French ogre, Ital. orco, Lat. orcus. Here, too, we have an old Roman god of the nether world degraded. cxxviii INTRODUCTION. selves. They are the old Tories of mythology, as opposed to the JEsir, the advanced liberals. They can look back and say what has been, but to look forward to say what will be and shall be, and to mould the future, is beyond their ken. True as gold to the traditional and received, and worthless as dross for the new and progressive : such a nature, when unprovoked, is easy and simple ; but rouse f it, and its exuberant strength rises in a paroxysm of rage, 1 though its clumsy awkward blows, guided by mere ■ cunning, fail to strike the slight and lissom foe who waits for and eludes the stroke, until his reason gives him the mastery over sheer brute force which has wearied itself out by its own exertions.* This race, and that of the upstart ^sir, though almost 'always at feud, still had their intervals of common intercourse, and even social enjoyment. Marriages take place between them, visits are paid, feasts are given, ale is broached, and mirth is fast and furious. Thor was the worst foe the giants ever had, and yet he met them some- times on good terms. They were destined to meet once for all on that awful day, " the twilight of the gods," but till then, they entertained for each other some sense of mutual respect. The Trolls, on the other hand, with whom mankind had more to do, were supposed to be less easy-tempered, and more systematically malignant, than the Giants, and with the term were bound up notions of sorcery and * These paroxysms were called in Old Norse Jotunmodr, the Eiin mood, as opposed to Asmodr, the mood of the ^sir, that diviner wrath which, though burning hot, was still under the control of reason. TROLLS IN THE NORSE TALES. CXXIX unholy power. But mythology is a woof of many colours, in which the hues are shot and hlended, so that the various races of supernatural beings are shaded off, and fade away almost imperceptibly into each other; and thus, even in heathen times, it must have been hard to say exactly where the Giant ended and the Troll began. But when Christianity came in, and heathendom fell, when the godlike race of the .^sir became evU. demons instead of good genial powers, then all the objects of the old popular belief, whether ^sir, Giants, or Trolls, were mingled together in one superstition, as "no canny." They were all Trolls, all malignant ; and thus it is that, in these Tales, the traditions about Odin and his under- lings, about the Frost Giants, and about sorcerers and wizards, are confused and garbled ; and all supernatural agency that plots man's ill is the work of Trolls, whether the agent be the arch-enemy himself, or giant, or witch, or wizard. In tales such as "The Old Dame and her Hen," p. 14, "The Giant who had no Heart in his Body," p. 59, " Shortshanks," p. 131, "Boots and the Troll," p. 215, "Boots who ate a Match with the Troll," p. 36, the easy temper of the old Frost Giants predominates, and we almost pity them as we read. In another, " The Big Bird Dan," p. 382, we have a TroU Prince, who appears as a generous benefactor to the young Prince, and lends him a sword by help of which he slays the King of the Trolls, just as we sometimes find in the Edda friendly meetings between the ^sir and this or that Frost Giant. In "Tatterhood," p. 345, the Trolls are very near akin to the witches of the Middle Age. In other tales, h cxxx INTRODUCTION. as "The Mastermaid," p. 71, "The Blue Belt," p. 155, "Farmer "Weathersky," p. 285, a sort of settled malig- nity against man appears as the direct working and result of a bad and evil spirit. In "Buttercup," p. 124, and "The Cat on theJDovrefell," we have the Troll proper,— the supernatural dwellers of the woods and hills, who go to church, and eat men, and porridge, and sausages indif- ferently, not from malignity, but because they know no better, because it is their nature, and because they have always done so. In one point they all agree: in their place of abode. The wild pine forest that clothes the spurs of the f eUs, but more than all, the interior recesses of the rocky fell itself, is where the Trolls live. Thither they carry off the children of men, and to them belongs all the untold riches of the mineral world. There, in caves and clefts in the steep face of the rock, sits the Troll, as the representative of the old giants, among heaps of gold and silver and precious things. They stride off into the dark forest by day, whither no rays of the sun can pierce; they return home at nightfall, feast themselves full, and snore out the night. One thing was fatal to them : the sight of the sun. If they looked him fuU in the face, his glory was too great for them, and they burst, as in "Lord Peter," p. 295, and in "The Old Dame and her Hen," p. 14. This, too, is a deeply mythic trait. The old religion of the North was a bright and lively faith ; it lived in the light of joy and gladness ; its gods were the "blithe powers"; opposed to them were the dark powers of mist and gloom, who could not bear the glorious face of the Sun, of Baldr's beaming visage, or the bright flash of Thor's levin bolt. THE TEOLLS ARE FINNS AND LAPPS. CXXXl In one aspect, the whole race of Giants and Trolls stands out in strong historical light. There can be little doubt that, in their continued existence amongst the woods, and rocks, and hills, we have a memory of the gradual suppression and extinction of some hostile race, who gradually retired into the natural fastnesses of the land, and speedily became mythic. Nor, if we bear in mind their natural position, and remember how constantly the infamy of sorcery has clung to the Finns and Lapps, shall we have far to go to seek this ancient race, even at the present day. Between this outcast nomad race, which wandered from forest to forest, and from fell to fell, without a fixed place of abode, and the old natural powers and Frost Giants, the minds of the race which adored Odin and the ^sir soon engendered a monstrous man-eating cross-breed of supernatural beings, who fled from contact with the intruders as soon as the first great struggle was over, abhorred the light of day, and looked upon agriculture and tillage as a dangerous innovation which destroyed their hunting-fields, and was destined finally to root them out from off the face of the earth. This fact appears in countless stories all over the globe, for man is true to himself in all climes, and the savage in Africa or across the Eocky Mountains dreads tillage and detests the plough as much as any Lapp or Samoyed. " See what pretty playthings, mother ! " cries the Giant's daughter, as she unties her apron, and shows her a plough, and horses, and peasant. " Back with them this instant," cries the mother in wrath, " and put them down as care- fully as you can, for these playthings can do our race great harm, and when these come we must budge." CXXXli INTRODUCTION. " What sort of an earthworm is this ? " said one Giant to another, when they met a man as they walked. " These are the earthworms that will one day eat us up, brother," answered the other ; and soon both Giants left that part of Germany. Nor does this trait appear less strongly in these Norse Tales. The Giants or Trolls can neither brew nor wash properly, as we see in " Shortshanks," p. 131, where the Ogre has to get Shortshanks to brew his ale for him ; and in " East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon," p. 22, where none of the Trolls are able to wash_out the spot of tallow. So also in the "Two Step-sisters," p. 113, the old witch is forced to get human maids to do her household work; and, lastly, the best example of all, in "Lord Peter," p. 295, where agriculture is plainly a secret of mankind, which the Giants were eager to learn, but which was a branch of knowledge be- yond their power to attain. " ' Stop a bit,' said the Cat, ' and 1 11 tell you how the farmer sets to work to get in his winter rye.' "And so she told him such a long story about the winter rye. " ' First of all, you see, he ploughs the field, and then he dungs it, and then he ploughs it again, and then he harrows it,' and so she went on till the sun rose." Before we leave these gigantic natural powers, let us linger a moment to point out how heartily the Winds aje sketched in these Tales as four brothers ; of whom, of course, the North wind is the oldest, and strongest, and roughest. But though rough in form and tongue, he is a genial, kind-hearted fellow after all. He carries the lassie to the castle, " East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon," whither none of his brothers had strength to blow. All THE NORTH WIND. CXXxm he asks is that she won't be afraid, and then he takes a good rest, and puffs himself up with as much breath as ever he can hold, begins to blow a storm, and off they go. So, too, in "The Lad who went to the North "Wind," p. 228, though he can't restore the meal he carried off, he gives the lad three things which make his for- tune, and amply repay him. He, too, like the Grecian Boreas, is divine, and lineally descended from Hrsesvelgr, that great giant in the Edda, who sits "at the end of the world in eagle's shape, and when he flaps his wings, all the winds come that blow upon men." Enough surely has now been said to shew that the old religion and mythology_of the Norseman still lives, disguised in these popular tales. Besides this internal evidence, we find here and there, in the written literature of earlier days, hints that the same stories were even then current, and current then, as now, among the lower classes. Thus in King Sverri's Saga we read, " And so it was just like what is said to have happened in old stories of what the king's children suffered from their stepmother's ill- will." And again, in Olof Tryggvason's Saga by the monk Odd, "And better is it to hear such things with mirth than stepmother's stories which shepherds tell, where no one can tell whether anything is true, and where the king is always made the least in their narrative." But, in truth, no such positive evidence is needed. Any one who has read the Volsung tale as we have given it, will be at no loss to see where the " little birds " who speak to the Prince and the lassie, or the " pit of snakes " into which folk are cast, in these tales, come from ; nor when they read in the "Big Bird Dan," p. 382, about "the naked CXXXIV INTRODUCTION. sword " which the Princess lays by her side every night, will they fail to recognise Sigurd's sword Gram^ which he laid between himself and Brynhildr when he rode through the flame and won her for Gunnar. These mythical deep- rooted germs, throwing out fresh shoots from age to age in the popular literature of the race, are far more con- vincing proofs of the early existence of these traditions than any mere external evidence.* * It may be worth while here to shew how old and wide- spread this custom or notion of the " naked sword " was. In the North, besides being told of Sigurd and Brynhildr, we hear it of Hr61f and Ingigerd, who took rest at night in a hut of leaves in the wood, and lay together, "but laid a naked sword between them." So also Saxo Grammaticus says of Kiag Gorm : " Ceeterum ne inconcessum virginis amorem libidinoso complexu prseripere videretur, vicina latera non solum alterius complexibus exuit, sed etiam distrido mucrone secrevit." — Lib. 9, p. 179. So also Tristan and Isolt in Gottfried of Stras- burg's poem, lines 17,407-17 — "Hieriiber vant Tristan einen sin, Si gieugen an ir bette wider, Und leiten sioh dk wider nider, Von einander wol bin dan, Reht als man und man, Nibt als man und wip ; DS. lac lip und lip. In fremder gelegenheit. Ouch h^t Tristan geleit Sin sw&rt bar enzwischen si." And the old French Tristan in the same way — " Et qant il vit la nue e-ipee Qui entre eus deus les deseurout. " So the old English Tristrem, iii. 20, 21, 22— " His swerd he drough titly And laid it hem bitvene." THE NAKED SWOED. cxxxv CONCLUSION. "We have now only to consider the men and women of these Tales, and then our task is done. It will be sooner And the old German ballad in Des Knahen Wunderhorn, ii. 276— " Der Herzog zog aus sein goldiges scliwert, Er leit es zwisohen beide hert Das sohwert soil weder hauen noch aohneiden, Das Annelein soil eln megedli bleiben. " So Fonzo and Fenizia in the Pentamerone, i. 9 — "Ma segnenno havere fatto vuto a Diana, de non toccare la mogliere la notte, mese la spata arrancata oomme stacoione 'miezo ad isso ed a Fenizia." And in Grimm's story of "The Two Brothers,'' where the second brother lays "a double-edged sword" at night between himself and his brother's wife, who has mistaken him for his twin brother. In fact, the custom, as William Wackemagel has shewn in Haupt's Zeitschrift fur Deutsches AUerthum, was one recognised by the law ; and so late as 1477, when Lewis, County Palatine of Veldenz represented Maximilian of Austria as his proxy at the betrothal of Mary of Burgundy, he got into the bed of state, booted and spurred, and laid a naked sword between him and the bride. Comp. BirJcens Eliren- spiegel, p. 885. See also as a proof that the custom was known in England as late as the seventeenth century, " The Jovial Crew," a comedy first acted in 1641, and quoted by Sir W. Scott in his Tristrem, p. 345, where it is said, Act v. sc. 2, "He told him that he would be his proxy, and marry her for him, and lie with her the first night ^dth a naked cudgel be- twixt them." And see for the whole subject, J. Grimm's Deutsche Bechts-AUerthumer, Gottingen, 1828, pp. 168-70. cxxxvi INTRODUCTION. done, because they may be left to speak for themselves, and must stand or fall by their own words and actions. The tales of all races have a character and manner of their own. Among the Hindoos the straight stem of the story is overhung with a network of imagery which reminds one of the parasitic growth of a tropical forest. Among the Arabs the tale is more elegant, pointed with a moral, and adorned with tropes and episodes. Among the Italians it is bright, light, dazzling, and swift. Among the French we have passed from the woods, and fields, and hills, to my lady's houdoir, — rose-pink is the prevailing colour, and the air is loaded with patchouli and milh fleurs. We miss the song of birds, the modest odour of wild-flowers, and the balmy fragrance of the pine forest. The Swedes are more stiff, and their style is more like that of a chronicle than a tale. The Germans are simple, hearty, and rather comic than humorous ; and M. Moe* has well said, that as we read them it is as if we sat and listened to some elderly woman of the middle class, who recites them with a clear, full, deep voice. In Scotland the few that have been collected by Mr. Eobert Chambers-f- are as good in tone and keeping as anything of the kind in the whole range of such popular collections.! The wonderful * M. Moe, Introd. Norsk Event., Christiania, 1851, 2d ed., to which the writer is largely indebted. t Popular Rhymes of Scotland, ed. 1847. J The following list, which only selects the more promi- nent collections, will sufiice to shew that Popular Tales have a literature of their own : — Sanscrit : The Pantcha-Tantra, "The Five Books," a collection of fables of which only extracts have as yet been published, but of which Professor THE LITEEATURK OF POPULAR TALES. CXXXVU likeness which is shewn between such tales as "The Black Bull of Norroway" in Mr. Chambers's collection, and Katie Woodencloak in these Norse Tales, is to be accounted "Wilson has given an analysis in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society, vol. i. sect. 2. The Hitopadesa, or " Whole- some Instruction,'' a selection of tales and fables from the Pantcha-Tantra, first edited by Carey at Serampore in 1804 ; again by Hamilton in London in 1810 ; again in Germany by A. W. von Schlegel in 1829, an edition which was followed in 1831 by a critical commentary by Lassen; and again in 1830 at Calcutta with a Bengali and English translation. The work had been translated into English by Wilkins so early as 1787, when it was published in London, and again by Sir William Jones, whose rendering, which is not so good as that by Wilkins, appeared after his death in the collected edition of his works. Into German it has been translated in a masterly way by Max Midler, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1844. Versions of these Sanscrit collections, the date of the latter of which is ascribed to the end of the second century of the Christian era, varying in many respects, but all possessing sufficient resemblance to identify them with their Sanscrit originals, are found in almost every Indian dialect, and in Zend, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Greek, and TurkisL We are happy to be able to state here that the eminent Sanscrit scholar. Professor Benfey of Gottingen, is now publishing a German translation of the Pantcha-Tantra, which will be accompanied by translations of numerous compositions of the same kind, drawn from unpublished Sanscrit works, and from the legends current amongst the Mongolian tribes. The work will be preceded by an introduction embracing the whole question of the origin and diffusion of fables and popular tales. The following will be the title of Prof. Benfey's work : CXXXviii . INTRODUCTION. for by no theory of the importation of this or that parti- cular tale in later times from Norway, but by the fact that the Lowland Scots, among whom these tales were ^^'Pantcha Tantra. Erster Theil: Fiinf Biicher Indischer Fabeln, Marchen, und Erzalungen. Aus dem Sanskrit iibersetzt, mit Anmerkungen und Einleitung tlber das Indische G-rundwerk und dessen Ausfliisse, so wie iiber die Quellen und Verbreitung des Inhalts derselben. Zweiter Theil, tjbersetzungen und Anmerkungen." Most interesting of aU for our purpose is the collection of Sanscrit Tales, collected in the twelfth century of our era, by Somadeva Bhatta of Cashmere. This has been published in Sanscrit, and trans- lated into German by Hermann Brockhaus, and the nature of its contents has already been sufficiently indicated. We may add, however, that Somadeva's collection exhibits the Hindoo mind in the twelfth century in a condition, as regards popular tales, which that of Europe has not yet reached. How old these stories and fables must have been in the East, we see both from the Pantcha-Tantra and the Hitopadesa, which are strictly didactic works, and only employ tales and fables to illustrate and inculcate a moral lesson. We in the West have got beyond fables and apologues, but we are only now collecting our popular tales. In Somadeva's time the simple tale no longer sufficed; it had to be fitted into and arranged with others, with an art and dexterity which is really marvel- lous ; and so cleverly is this done, that it requires a mind of no little cultivation, and a head of more than ordinary clearness, to carry without confusion all the wheels within wheels, and fables within fables, which spring out of the original story as it proceeds. In other respects the popular tale loses in sim- plicity what it gains in intricacy by this artificial arrangement ; and it is evident that in the twelfth century the Hindoo tales THE LITERATURE OP POPULAR TALES. CXXXIX told, were lineal descendants of Norsemen, who had either seized the country in the Viking times, or had been driven into it across the Border after the Norman Conquest. had been long since collected out of the mouths of the people, and reduced to writing ; — in a word, that the popular element had disappeared, and that they had passed into the written literature of the race. We may take this opportunity, too, to mention that a most curious collection of tales and fables, translated from Sanscrit, has recently been discovered in Chinese. They are on the eve of publication by M. Stanislas Julien, the first of Chinese scholars; and from the information on the matter which Professor Max Miiller has kindly furnished to the translator, it appears that they passed with Buddhism from India into China. The work from which M. Julien has taken these fables — which are all the more precious because the Sanscrit originals have in all probability perished, — is called Yu-lin, or " The Forest of Comparisons." It was the work of Youen-thai, a great Chinese scholar, who was President of the Ministry of Justice at Pekin in the year 1565 of our era. He collected in twenty-four volumes, after the labour of twenty years, during which he read upwards of four hundred works, all the fables and comparisons he could find in ancient books. Of those works, two hundred were trans- lations from the Sanscrit made by Buddhist monks, and it is from eleven of these that M. Julien has translated his Chinese Fables. We need hardly say that this work is most anxiously expected by all who take an interest in such matters. Let it be allowed to add here, that it was through no want of respect towards the memory of M. de Sacy that the translator has given so much prominence to the views and labours of the Brothers Grimm in this Introduction. To M. de Sacy belongs all the merit of exploring what may be called the old written Cxl INTJIODUCTION. These Norse Tales we may characterise as bold, out- spoken, and humorous, in the true sense of humour. In the midst of every difficulty and danger arises that old world of fable. He, and Warton, and Dunlop, and Price, too, did the dayswork of giants, in tracing out and classifying those tales and fables which had passed into the literature of the Aryan race. But, besides this old region, there is another new hemisphere of fiction which lies in the mouths and in the minds of the people. This new world of fable the Grimms discovered, and to them belongs the glory of having brought all its fruits and flowers to the light of day. This is why their names must ever be foremost in a work on Popular Tales, shining, as their names must ever shine, a bright double star over that new hemisphere. In more modern times, the earliest collection of popular tales is to be found in the Piacevoli Notte of John Francis Straparola of Caravaggio, near MUan, the first edition of which appeared at Venice in 1550. The book, which is shamefully indecent, even for that age, and which at last, in 1606, was placed in the Index Expurgatorius, contains stories from all sources, and amongst them nineteen genuine popular tales, which are not disfigured by the filth with which the rest of the volume is full. Straparola's work has been twice translated into German, — once at Vienna, 1791, and again by Schmidt in a more complete form, Mdrchen-Saal, Berlin, 1817. But a much more interesting Italian collection appeared at Naples in the next century. This was the Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile, who wrote in the Neapoh- tan dialect, and whose book appeared in 1637. This collec- tion contains forty-eight tales, and is in tone, and keeping, and diction, one of the best that has ever appeared in any language. It has been repeatedly reprinted at Naples. It has been trans- lated into German, and a portion of it, a year or two back, by THE LITERATURE OF POPULAR TALES. Cxli Norse feeling of making the best of everything, and keeping a good face to the foe. The language and tone are perhaps rather lower than in some other collections, Mr. Taylor, into English. In France the first collection of this kind was made by Charles Perrault, who, in 1697, pub- lished eight tales, under a title taken from an old Fabliau, Conies de ma Mhre VOye, whence comes our "Mother Goose." To these eight, three more tales were added in later editions. Perrault was shortly followed by Madame d'Aulnoy (bom in 1650, died 1705), whose manner of treating her tales is far less true to nature than Perrault's, and who inserts at will verses, alterations, additions, and moral reflections. Her style is sentimental and over-refined ; the courtly airs of the age of Louis xiv. predominate, and nature suffers by the change from the cottage to the palace. Madame d'Aulnoy was followed by a host of imitators : the Countess Murat, who died in 1716 ; Countess d'Auneuil, who died in 1700; M. de Preschac, born 1676, who composed tales of utter worthless- ness, which may be read as examples of what popular tales are not, in the collection called Le Cabinet des Fdes, which was published in Paris in 1785. Not much better are the attempts of Count Hamilton, who died in 1720; of M. de Moncrif, who died in 1770 ; of Mademoiselle de la Force, died 1724 ; of Mademoiselle I'H^ritier, died 1737; of Count Caylus, who wrote his Fieries Nouvelles in the first half of the eighteenth century, for the popular element fails almost entirely in their works. Such as they are, they may also be read in the Cabinet des Fies, a collection which ran to no fewer than forty-one volumes, and with which no lover of popular tradition need trouble himself much. To the playwright and the story-teller it has been a great repository, which has supplied the lack of original invention. In Germany we need trouble ourselves with none cxlii INTRODUCTION. but it must be remembered that these are the tales of " hempen homespuns," of Norse yeomen, of Norske Bonder, who call a spade a spade, and who burn tallow, not wax ; and yet in no collection of tales is the general tone so chaste, are the great principles of morality better worked out, and right and wrong kept so steadily in sight. The general view of human nature is good and kindly. The happiness of married life was never more prettily told than in "Gudbrand on the Hillside," p. 149, where the tenderness of the wife for her husband weighs down all other considerations ; and we all agree with M. Moe that it would be well if there were many wives like Gudbrand's. The balance, too, is very evenly kept between the sexes ; of the collections before the time of the Grimms, except to say that they are nearly worthless. In 1812-14 the two brothers, Jacob and William, brought out the first edition of their Kinder- und Haus-Marchen, which was followed by a second and more complete one in 1822, 3 vols., Berlin, Reimer. The two first volumes have been repeatedly repub- lished, but few readers in England are aware of the existence of the third, a third edition of which appeared in 1856 at Gottingen, which contains the literature of these traditions, and is a monument of the care and pains with which the brothers — or rather William, for it is his work — even so far back as 1820, had traced out parallel traditions in other tribes and lands. This work formed an era in popular literature, and has been adopted as a model by all true collectors ever since. It proceeded on the principle of faithfully collecting these traditions from the mouths of the people, without adding one jot or tittle, or in any way interfering with them, except to select this or that variation as most apt or beauti- ful. To the adoption of this principle we owe the excellent CHAEA"CTEES IN NORSE TALES. Cxliii for if any wife should point with indignation at such a tale as "Not a Pin to choose between them," p. 173, where wives suffer ; she will be amply avenged when she reads "The Husband who was to mind the House," p. 269, where the husband has decidedly the worst of the bargain, and is punished as he deserves. Of particular characters, one occurs repeatedly. This is that which we have ventured, for want of a better word, to call "Boots," from that widely-spread tradition__in English families, that the youngest brother isioijnd,to do all the hard work his brothers set him, and which has also dignified him with the term here used. Iq Norse he is called " Askefis^' or " Espen Askefjis." By M. Moe he Swedish collection of George Stephens and Hylten Cavallius, Svenska Folk-Sagor og ^fventyr, 2 vols., Stockholm 1844, and following years ; and also this beautiful Norse one, to which Jacob Grimm awards the palm over all collections, except perhaps the Scottish, of MM. Asbjornsen and Moe. To it also we owe many most excellent collections in Germany, over nearly the whole of which an active band of the Grimms' pupils have gone gathering up as gleaners the ears which their great masters had let fall or let lie. In Denmark the collec- tion of M. Winther, Danslce FolJceeventyr, Copenhagen 1823, is a praiseworthy attempt in the same direction ; nor does it at all detract from the merit of H. G. Andersen as an original writer, to observe how often his creative mind has fastened on one of these national stories, and worked out of that piece of native rock a finished work of art. Though last, not least, are to be reckoned the Scottish stories collected by Mr. Robert Chambers, of the merit of which we have already expressed our opinion in the text. cxliv INTRODUCTION. is called " Ashepot,"* a Danish word which the readers of Grimm's Tales will see at once is own brother to Aschenputtel. The meaning of the word is "one who pokes abont the ashes and blows up the fire " ; one who does dirty work, in short ; and in Norway, according to M. Moe, the term is almost universally applied to the youngest son of the family. He is Cinderella's brother, in fact ; and just as she had all the dirty work put upon her by her sisters, he meets with the same fate from his brothers. He is generally the youngest of three, whose names are often Peter and Paul, as in No. xlii. (p. 295), and who despise, cry down, and mock him. But he has in him that deep strength of character and natural power upon which the good powers always smile. He is the man whom Heaven helps, because he can help himself; and so, after his brothers try and fail, he alone can watch in the barn, and tame the steed, and ride up the glass hiU, and gain the Princess and half the kingdom. The Norse "Boots" shares these qualities in common with the "Pinkel" of the Swedes, and the Dummling of the * After all, there is, it seems, a Scottish word which answers to Askepot to a hair. See Jamieson's Dictionary, where the reader will find Ashiepattle as used in Shetland for "a neglected child"; and not in Shetland alone, but in Ayr- shire, Ashypet, an adjective, or rather a substantive degraded to do the dirty work of an adjective, "one employed in the lowest kitchen work." See too the quotation, " when I reached Mrs. Damask's house she was gone to bed, and nobody to let me in, dripping wet as I was, but an ashypet lassie, that helps her for a servant." — Steamboat, page 259. So again Assiepet, substan- tive, " a dirty little creature, one that is constantly soiled with ass or ashes." CHARACTERS IN NORSE TALES. cxlv Germans, as well as with otir " Jack the Giant Killer," but he starts lower than these — he starts from the dust- bin and the coal-hole. There he sits idle whilst all work ; there he lies with that deep irony of conscious power, which knows its time must one day come, and meantime can afford to wait. When that time comes, he girds him- self to the feat, amidst the scoffs and scorn of his flesh and blood ; but even then, after he has done some great deed, he conceals it, returns to his ashes, and again sits idly by the kitchen-fire, dirty, lazy, and despised, until the time for final recognition comes, and then his dirt and rags fall off, — he stands out in all the majesty of his royal robes, and is acknowledged once for all a king. In this way does the consciousness of a nation, and the mirror of its thought, reflect the image and personification of a great moral truth, that modesty, endurance, and ability will sooner or later reap their reward, however much they may be degraded, scoffed at, and despised by the proud, the worthless, and the overbearing.* As a general rule, the women are less strongly marked than the men ; for these Tales, as is well said, are uttered "with a manly mouth ;"-f- and none of the female characters, except perhaps " The Mastermaid," and " Tatterhood," can compare in strength with "The Master- Smith," "The Master-Thief," " Shortshanks," or " Boots." Still the true womanly type comes out in full play in such tales as "The Two Step-sisters," p. 113; East o' the Sun and West * The Sagas contain many instances of Norsemen who sat thus idly over the fire, and were thence called Kolbitr, coalhiters, but who afterwards became mighty men. + Moe : Introd. Norsk Event. cxlvi INTRODUCTION. o' the Moon," p. 22; "Bushy Bride," p. 322, and "The Twelve Wild Ducks," p. 51. In all these the lassie is bright, and good, and helpful ; she forgets herself in her eagerness to help others. When she goes down the well after the unequal match against her step-sister in spinning bristles against flax ; she steps tenderly over the hedge, milks the cow, shears the sheep, relieves the boughs of the apple-tree, — all out of the natural goodness of her heart. When she is sent to fetch water from the well, she washes and brushes, and even kisses, the loathsome head; she believes what her enemies say, even to her own wrong and injury ; she sacrifices all that she holds most dear, and at last even herself, because she is made to believe that it is her brother's wish. And so on her, too, the good powers smile. She can understand and profit by what the little birds say; she knows how to choose the right casket. And at last, after many trials, all at once the scene changes, and she receives a glorious reward, while the wicked step- mother and her ugly daughter meet with a just fate. Nor is another female character less tenderly drawn in " Hacon Grizzlebeard," p. 39, where we see the proud, haughty princess subdued and tamed by natural affection into a faithful, loving wife. We sympathise with her more than with the " Patient Grizzel " of the poets, who is in reality too good, for her story has no relief; while in Hacon Grizzlebeard we begin by being angry at the princess's pride ; we are glad at the retribution which overtakes her, but we are gradually melted at her sufferings and hard- ships when she gives up all for the Beggar and follows him; we burst into tears with her when she exclaims, " Oh the Beggar, and the babe, and the cabin ! " and we rejoice THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. cxlvii with her when the Prince says, " Here is the Beggar, and there is the babe, and so let the cabin burn away." Nor is it unprofitable here to remark how the profes- sions fare when they appear in these tales. The Church cannot be said to be treated with respect, for "Father Lawrence" is ludicrously deceived and scurvily treated by the Master Thief, p. 232 ; nor does the priest come off any better in "Goosey Grizzel," p. 221, where he is thrown by the Parmer into the wet moss. Indeed it seems asif the popular mind were determined to revenge itgelf when left to itself, for the superstition of Eome on the one hand, and the severity of strict Lutheranism on the other. It has little to say of either of them, but when it does speak, its accents are not those of reverence and love. The Law, too, as represented by those awful personages, the Constable, the Attorney, and the Sheriff in " The Master- maid," p. 71, is_Jield up to ridicule, and treated with anything but tenderness. But there is one profession for which a good word is said, a single word, but enough to shew the feeling of the people. In " The Twelve Wild Ducks," p. 51, the king is "as soft and kind" to Snow- white and Eosey-red "as a doctor," — a doctor, alas! not of laws, but of medicine ; and thus this profession, so often despised, but in reality the noblest, has homage paid to it in that single sentence, which neither the Church with all its dignity, nor the Law with all its cunning, have been able to extort from the popular mind. Yet even this profession has a hard word uttered against it in " Katie Woodencloak," p. 357, where the doctor takes a great fee from the wicked queen to say she will never be well unless she has some of the Dun Bull's flesh to eat. cxlviii INTRODUCTION. And now it is time to bring this Introduction to an end, lest it should play the Wolf's part to Odin, and swallow up the Tales themselves. Enough has been said, at least, to prove that even nursery tales may have a science of their own, and to shew how the old Nornir and divine spinners can revenge themselves if their old wives' tales are insulted and attacked. The inquiry itself might be almost indefinitely prolonged, for this is a journey where each turn of the road brings out a new point of view, and the longer we linger on our path, the longer we find something fresh to see. Popular mythology is a virgin mine, and its ore, so far from being exhausted or worked out, has here, in England at least, been scarcely touched. It may, indeed, be dreaded lest the time for collecting such English traditions is not past and gone ; whether the steam-engine and printing-press have not played their great work of enlightenment too well ; and whether the popular tales, of which, no doubt, the land was once full, have not faded away before those great inventions, as the race of Giants waned before the might of Odin and the iEsir. Still the example of this very Norway, which at one time was thought, even by her own sons, to have few tales of her own, and now has been found to have them so fresh and full, may serve as a warning not to abandon a search, which, indeed, can scarcely be said to have been ever begun ; and to suggest a doubt whether the Ul success which may have attended this or that particular attempt, may not have been from the fault rather of the seekers after traditions, than from the want of the traditions themselves. In point of fact, it is a matter of the utmost difficulty to gather such tales POPULAR TALES Ilf ENGLAND. cxlix in any country, as those who have collected them most successfully -will be the first to confess. It is hard to make old and feeble women, who generally are the depositaries of these national treasures, believe that the inquirer can have any real interest in the matter. They fear that the question is only put to turn them into ridicule; for the popular mind is a sensitive plant; it becomes coy, and closes its leaves at the first rude touch ; and when once shut, it is hard to make these aged lips reveal the secrets of the memory. There they remain, however, forming part of an under-current of tradition, of which the educated classes, through whose mind flows the bright upper-current of faith, are apt to forget the very existence : , things out of sight, and therefore out of mind. Now and then a wave of chance tosses them to the surface from those hidden depths, and all Her Majesty's inspectors of schools are shocked at the wild shapes which still haunt the minds of the great mass of the community. It can- not be said that the English are not a superstitious people- Here we have gone on for more than a hundred years proclaiming our opinion that the belief in witches, and wizards, and ghosts, and fetches, was extinct throughout the land. Ministers of all denominations have preached them down, and philosophers convinced all the world of the absurdity of such vain superstitions ; and yet it has been reserved for another learned profession, the Law, to produce in one trial at the Staffordshire assizes, a year or two ago, such a host of witnesses, who firmly believed in witchcraft, and swore to their belief in spectre dogs and wizards, as to shew that, in the Midland counties at least, such traditions are anything but extinct. If so much of cl INTRODUCTION. the bad has been spared by steam, by natural philosophy, and by the Church, let us hope that some of the good may still linger along with it, and that an English Grimm may yet arise who may carry out what Mr. Chambers has so well begun in Scotland, and discover in the mouth of an Anglo-Saxon Gammer Grethel, some, at least, of those popular tales which England once had in common with aU the Aryan race. For these ISTorse Tales one may say that nothing can equal the tenderness and skill with which MM. Asbjornsen and Moe have collected them. Some of that tenderness and beauty may, it is hoped, be found in this English translation; but to those who have never been in the country where they are current, and who are not familiar with that hearty simple people, no words can teU the freshness and truth of the originals. It is not that the idioms of the two languages are different, for they are more nearly allied, both in vocabulary and construction, than any other two tongues, but it is the face of nature herself, and the character of the race that looks up to her, that fail to the mind's eye. The West Coast of Scotland is something like that nature in a general way, axcept that it is infinitely smaller and less grand ; but that constant, bright blue sky, those deeply-indented, sinuous, gleaming friths, those headstrong rivers and headlong falls, those steep hill-sides, those long ridges of fells, those peaks and needles rising sharp above them, those hanging glaciers and wreaths of everlasting snow, those towering endless piae forests, relieved by slender stems of silver birch, those green spots in the midst of the forest, those winding dales and upland lakes, those various shapes of NORSE NATURE. cli birds and beasts, the mighty crashing elk, the fleet rein- deer, the fearless bear, the nimble lynx, the shy wolf, those eagles, and swans, and seabirds, those many tones and notes of Nature's voice making distant music through the twilight summer night, those brilliant, flashing, northern lights when days grow short, those dazzling, blinding storms of autumn snow, that cheerful winter frost and cold, that joy of sledging over the smooth ice, when the sharp-shod horse careers at full speed with the light sledge, or rushes down the steep pitches over the crackling snow through the green spruce wood — all these form a Nature of their own. These particular features belong in their fulness and combination to no other land. When in the midst of all this natural scenery we find an honest, manly race, not the race of the towns and cities, but of the dales and fells, free and unsubdued, holding its own in a country where there are neither lords nor ladies, but simple men and women, brave men and fair women, who cling to the traditions of their forefathers, and whose memory reflects as from the faithful mirror of their native steel the whole history and progress of their race — when all these natural features, and such a manly race meet ; then we have the stuff out of which these tales are made, the living rock out of which these sharp-cut national forms are hewn. Then, too, our task of introducing them is over, we may lay aside our pen, and leave the reader and the tales to themselves. ISfORSE TALES. TEUE AND UNTEUE. Once on a time there were two brothers ; one was called True, and the other Untrue. True was always upright and good towards all, but Untrue was bad and full of lies, so that no one could believe what he said. Their mother was a widow, and hadn't much to live on; so when her sons had grown up, she was forced to send them away, that they might earn their bread in the world. Each got a little scrip with some food in it, and then they went their way. Now, when they had walked till evening, they sat down on a windfall in the wood, and took out their scrips, for they were hungry after walking the whole day, and thought a morsel of food would be sweet enough. " If you're of my mind," said Untrue, " I think we had better eat out of your scrip, so long as there is anything in it, and after that we can take to mine." Yes ! True was well pleased with this, so they fell to eating, but Untrue got all the best bits, and stuffed him- self with them, while True got only the burnt crusts and scraps. B 2 NOESE TALES Next morning they broke their fast off True's food, and they dined off it too, and then there was nothing left in his scrip. So when they had walked tiU late at night, and were ready to eat again. True wanted to eat out of his brother's scrip, but Untrue said " No," the food was his, and he had only enough for himself. " Nay ! but you know you ate out of my scrip so long as there was anjrthing in it," said True. " All very fine, I daresay," answered Untrue ; " but if you are such a fool as to let others eat up your food before your face, you must make the best of it ; for now aU you have to do is to sit here and starve." "Very well!" said True, "you're Untrue by name and untrue by nature ; so you have been, and so you will be all your life long." Now when Untrue heard this, he flew into a rage, and rushed at his brother, and plucked out both his eyes. " Now, try if you can see whether folk are untrue or not, you blind buzzard !" and so saying, he ran away and left him. Poor True ! there he went walking along and feeling his way through the thick wood. BHad and alone, he scarce knew which way to turn, when aU at once he caught hold of the trunk of a great bushy lime-tree, so he thought he would climb up into it, and sit there tiU the night was over for fear of the wild beasts. " When the birds begia to slug," he said to himself, " then I shall know it is day, and I can try to grope my way farther on." So he climbed up into the Hme-tree. After he had sat there a little time, he heard how some one came and began to make a stir and clatter under the TEUE AN'D UNTRUE. S tree, and soon after others came ; and when they began to greet one another, he found out it was Bruin the bear, and Greylegs the wolf, and Slyboots the fox, and Longears the hare, who had come to keep St. John's eve under the tree. So they began to eat and drink, and be merry ; and when they had done eating, they fell to gossiping together. At last the Fox said — " Shan't we, each of us, teU a little story while we sit here ?" Well ! the others had nothing against that. It would be good fun, they said, and the Bear began ; for you may fancy he was king of the company. " The king of England," said Bruin, " has such bad eye- sight, he can scarce see a yard before him ; but if he only came to this lime-tree in the morning, while the dew is still on the leaves, and took and rubbed his eyes with the dew, he would get back his sight as good as ever." "Very true!" said Greylegs. "The king of England has a deaf and dumb daughter too ; but if he only knew what I know, he would soon cure her. Last year she went to the communion. She let a crumb of the bread fall out of her mouth, and a great toad came and swallowed it down ; but if they only dug up the chancel floor, they would find the toad sitting right under the altar rails, with the bread stOl sticking in his throat. If they were to cut the toad open, and take and give the bread to the princess, she would be like other folk again as to her speech and hearing.'' " That's aU very well," said the Pox ; " but if the king of England knew what I know, he would not be so badly off for water in his palace ; for under the great stone, in 4 NORSE TALES. his palace-yard, is a spring of the clearest water one could wish for, if he only knew to dig for it there." " Ah !" said the Hare in a small voice ; " the king of England has the finest orchard in the whole land, but it does not bear so much as a crab, for there Lies a heavy gold chain in three turns round the orchard. If he got that dug up, there would not be a garden like it for bearing in all his kingdom." " Very true, I dare say," said the Fox ; " but now it's getting very late, and we may as well go home." So they all went away together. After they were gone. True fell asleep as he sat up in the tree ; but when the birds began to sing at dawn, he woke up, and took the dew from the leaves, and rubbed his eyes with it, and so got his sight back as good as it was before Untrue plucked his eyes out. Then he went straight to the king of England's palace, and begged for work, and got it on the spot. So one day the king came out into the palace-yard, and when he had walked about a bit, he wanted to drink out of his pump ; for you must know the day was hot, and the king very thirsty ; but when they poured him out a glass, it was so muddy, and nasty, and foul, that the king got quite vexed. " I don't think there's ever a man in my whole king- dom who has such bad water in his yard as I, and yet I bring it in pipes from far, over hill and dale," cried out the king. " Like enough, your Majesty ;" said True, " but if you would let me have some men to help me to dig up this great stone which lies here in the middle of your yard, you would soon see good water, and plenty of it." TRUE AND UNTRUE. 5 Well ! the king was willing enough ; and they had scarcely got the stone well out, and dug under it a while, before a jet of water sprang out high up into the air, as clear and full as if it came out of a conduit, and clearer water was not to be found in all England. A little while after the king was out in his palace-yard again, and there came a great hawk flying after his chicken, and all the kiag's men began to clap their hands and bawl out, " There he flies !" " There he flies !" The king caught U-P his gun and tried to shoot the hawk, but he couldn't see so far, so he fell into great grief " Would to Heaven," he said, " there was any one who could tell me a cure for my eyes ; for I think I shall soon go quite blind!" " I can tell you one soon enough," said True ; and then he told the king what he had done to cure his own eyes, and the Idng set off that very afternoon to the lime-tree, as you may fancy, and his eyes were quite cured as soon as he rubbed them with the dew which was on the leaves in the morning. From that time forth there was no one whom the king held so dear as True, and he had to be with him wherever he went, both at home and abroad. So one day, as they were walking together in the orchard, the king said, " I can't tell how it is, that I can't ! there isn't a man in England who spends so much on his orchard as I, and yet I can't get one of the trees to bear so much as a crab." "Well! well!" said True; "if I may have what lies three times twisted round your orchard, and men to dig it up, your orchard will bear weU enough." Yes ! the king was quite willing, so Tme got men and 6 NOESE TALES. began to dig, and at last lie dug up the "whole gold chain. N"ow True was a rich man, far richer indeed than the king himself, but still the king was well pleased, for his orchard bore so that the boughs of the trees hung down to the ground, and such sweet apples and pears nobody had ever tasted. Another day too the king and True were walking about, and talking together, when the princess passed them, and the king was quite downcast when he saw her. " Isn't it a pity, now, that so lovely a princess as mine should want speech and hearing?" he said to True. " Ay, but there is a cure for that," said True. "When the king heard that, he was so glad that he pro- mised him the princess to wife, and half his kingdom into the bargain, if he could get her right again. So True took a few men, and went into the church, and dug up the toad which sat under the altar-raUs. Then he cut open the toad, and took out the bread and gave it to the king's daughter ; and from that hour she got back her speech, and could talk like other people. Now True was to have the princess, and they got ready for the bridal-feast, and such a feast had never been seen before ; it was the talk of the whole land. Just as they were in the midst of dancing the bridal-dance, in came a beggar lad, and begged for a morsel of food, and he was so ragged and wi-etched that every one crossed themselves when they looked at him ; but True knew him at once, and saw that it was Untrue, his brother. " Do you know me again ?" said True. " Oh ! where should such a one as I ever have seen so great a lord ?" said Untrue. TRUE AND UNTRUE. 7 " Still you have seen me before," said True. " It was I whose eyes you plucked out a year ago this very day. Un- true by name, and untrue by nature ; so I said before, and so I say now ; but you are still my brother, and so you shall have some food. After that, you may go to the lime- tree where I sat last year ; if you hear anything that can do you good, you will be lucky." So Untrue did not wait to be told twice. " If True has got so much good by sitting in the lime-tree, that in one year he has come to be king over half England, what good may not I get ?" he thought. So he set off and climbed up into the lime-tree. He had not sat there long, before aU the beasts came as before, and ate and drank, and kept St. John's eve under the tree. When they had left off eating, the Fox wished that they should begin to tell stories, and Untrue got ready to listen with all his might, till his ears were almost fit to fall off. But Bruin the bear was surly, and growled and said — "Some one has been chattering about what we said last year, and so now we will hold our tongues about what we know ;" and with that the beasts bade one another " Good night," and parted, and Untrue was just as wise as he was before, and the reason was, that his name was Un- true, and his nature imtrue too. NOKSE TALES. WHY THE SEA IS SALT. Once on a time, but it was a long, long time ago, there were two brothers, one rich and one poor. Now, one Christmas eve, the poor one hadn't so much as a crumb in the house, either of meat or bread, so he went to his brother to ask him for something to keep Christmas with, in God's name. It was not the first time his brother had been forced to help him, and you may fancy he wasn't very glad to see his face, but he said — " If you will do what I ask you to do, I'll give you a whole flitch of bacon." So the poor brother said he would do anything, and was full of thanks. " Well, here is the flitch," said the rich brother, " and now go straight to Hell." " What I have given my word to do, I must stick to," said the other ; so he took the flitch and set off. He walked the whole day, and at dusk he came to a place where he saw a very bright light. "Maybe this is the place," said the man to himseE So he turned aside, and the first thing he saw was an old, old man, with a long white beard, who stood in an outhouse, hewiag wood for the Christmas fire. ' Good even," said the man with the flitch. " The same to you ; whither are you going so late ?" said the man. WHY THE SEA IS SALT. 9 " Oh ! I'm going to Hell, if I only knew the right way," answered the poor man. " Well, you're not far wrong, for this is Hell," said the old man ; " when you get inside they will be all for buy- ing your flitch, for meat is scarce in Hell ; but mind, you don't sell it unless you get the hand-quern which stands behind the door for it. When you come out, I'll teach you how to handle the quern, for it's good to grind almost anything." So the man with the flitch thanked the other for his good advice, and gave a great knock at the Devil's door. When he got in, everj^hing went just as the old man had said. All the devils, great and small, came swarming up to hiTTi like ants round an anthill, and each tried to outbid the other for the flitch. " Well !" said the man, "by rights my old dame and I ought to have this flitch for our Christmas dinner ; but since you have all set your hearts on it, I suppose I must give it up to you ; but if I sell it at all, I'll have for it that quern behind the door yonder." At first the Devil wouldn't hear of such a bargain, and chaffered and haggled with the man ; but he stuck to what he said, and at last the Devil had to part with his quern. When the man got out into the yard, he asked the old woodcutter how he was to handle the quern ; and after he had learned how to use it, he thanked the old man and went off home as fast as he could, but stOl the clock had struck twelve on Christmas eve before he reached his own door. " Wherever in the world have you been ?" said his old dame ; " here have I sat hour after hour waiting and 10 NORSE TALES. watching, without so much as two sticks to lay together under the Christmas brose." " Oh !" said the man, " I couldn't get back before, for I had to go a long way first for one thing, and then for another ; but now you shall see what you shall see." So he put the quern on the table, and bade it first of all grind lights, then a table-cloth, then meat, then ale, and so on till they had got everything that was nice for Christ- mas fare. He had only to sp^ak the word, and the quern ground out what he wanted. The old dame stood by bless- ing her stars, and kept on asking where he had got this wonderful quern, but he wouldn't tell her. " It's all one where I got it from ; you see the quern is a good one, and the mill-stream never freezes, that's enough." So he ground meat and drink and daiaties enough to last out till Twelfth Day, and on the third day he asked all his friends and kia to his house, and gave a great feast. Now, when his rich brother saw all that was on the table, and aU that was behind in the larder, he grew quite spite- ful and wild, for he couldn't bear that his brother should have anything. " 'Twas only on Christmas eve," he said to the rest, "he was ia such straits that he came and asked for a morsel of food in God's name, and now he gives a feast as if he were count or kiag;" and he turned to his brother and said — "But whence, in Hell's name, have you got all this wealth?" "From behind the door," answered the owner of the quern, for he didn't care to let the cat out of the bag. But WHY THE SEA IS SALT. 11 later on the evening, when he had got a drop too much, he could keep his secret no longer, and brought out the quern and said — " There, you see what has gotten me all this wealth ;" and so he made the quern grind aU kind of things. When his brother saw it, he set his heart on having the quern, and, after a deal of coaxing, he got it ; but he had to pay three hundred dollars for it, and his brother bargained to keep it tiU hay-harvest, for he thought, if I keep it till then, I can make it grind meat and drink that will last for years. So you may fancy the quern didn't grow rusty for want of work, and when hay-harvest came, the rich brother got it, but the other took care not to teach him how to handle it. It was evening when the rich brother got the quern home, and next morning he told his wife to go out into the hay-field and toss, while the mowers cut the grass, and he would stay at home and get the dinner ready. So, when dinner-time drew near, he put the quern on the kitchen table and said — " Grind herrings and broth, and grind them good and fast." So the quern began to grind herrings and broth ; first of all, all the dishes full, then all the tubs full, and so on till the kitchen floor was quite covered. Then the man twisted and twirled at the quern to get it to stop, but for aU his twisting and fingering the quern went on grinding, and in a little while the broth rose so high that the man was like to drown. So he threw open the kitchen door and ran into the parlour, but it wasn't long before the quern had ground the parlour fidl too, and it was only at 12 NOKSE TALES. the risk of his life that the man could get hold of the latch of the house door through the stream of broth. When he got the door open, he ran out and set off down the road, with the stream of herriags and broth at his heels, roaring like a waterfall over the whole farm. JSTow, his old dame, who was in the field tossing hay, thought it a long time to dinner, and at last she said — " Well ! though the master doesn't call us home, we may as well go. Maybe he finds it hard work to boil the broth, and wiU. be glad of my help." The* men were willing enough, so they sauntered home- wards ; but just as they had got a little way up the hill, what should they meet but herrings, and broth, and bread, all running and dashing, and splashing together in a stream, and the master himself running before them for his life, and as he passed them he bawled out, — "Would to heaven each of you had a hundred throats ! but take care you're not drowned in the broth." Away he went, as though the Evil One were at his heels, to his brother's house, and begged him for God's sake to take back the quern that instant ; for, said he — " If it grinds only one hour more, the whole parish will be swallowed up by herrings and broth." But his brother wouldn't hear of taking it back till the other paid him down three hundred dollars more. So the poor brother got both the money and the quem, and it wasn't long before he set up a farm-house far finer than the one in which his brother Hved, and with the quern he ground so much gold that he covered it with plates of gold ; and as the farm lay by the sea-side, the golden house gleamed and gEstened far away over the sea. WHY THE SEA IS SALT. 13 All who sailed by put ashore to see the rich man in the golden house, and to see the wonderful quern, the fame of which spread far and wide, tiU there was nobody who hadn't heard tell of it. So one day there came a skipper who wanted to see the quern ; and the first thing he asked was if it could grind salt. " Grind salt !" said the owner ; " I should just think it could. It can grind anything." When the skipper heard that, he said he must haye the quern, cost what it would ; for if he only had it, he thought he should be rid of his long voyages across stormy seas for a lading of salt. WeU, at first the man wouldn't hear of parting with the quern ; but the skipper begged and prayed so hard, that at last he let him have it, but he had to pay many, many thousand dollars for it. Now, when the skipper had got the quern on his back, he soon made off with it, for he was afraid lest the man should change his mind ; so he had no time to ask how to handle the quern, but got on board his ship as fast as he could, and set saU. When he had sailed a good way off, he brought the quern on deck and said — " Griad salt, and grind both good and fast." WeU, the quern began to grind salt so that it poured out like water ; and when the skipper had got the ship full, he wished to stop the quern, but whichever way he turned it, and however much he tried, it was no good ; the quern kept grinding on, and the heap of salt grew higher and higher, and at last down sunk the ship. There lies the quern at the bottom of the sea, and grinds away at this very day, and that's why the sea is salt. 14 NORSE TALUS. THE OTJ) DAME AJSTD HER HEN Once on a time there was an old widow who lived far away from the rest of the world, up mider a hill-side, with her three daughters. She was so poor that she had no stock hut one single hen, which she prized as the apple of her eye ; in short, it was always cackling at her heels, and she was always running to look after it. Well ! one day, all at once, the hen was missing. The old wife went out, and round and round the cottage, looking and calling for her hen, but it was gone, and there was no getting it back. So the woman said to her eldest daughter, " You must just go out and see if you can find our hen, for have it back we must, even if we have to fetch it out of the hilL" "Well ! the daughter was ready enough to go, so she set off and walked up and down, and looked and called, but no hen could she find. But all at once, just as she was about to give up the hunt, she heard some one calling out in a cleft in the rock — " Your hen trips inside the hill ! Your hen trips inside the hill !" So she went into the cleft to see what it was, but she had scarce set her foot inside the cleft, before she fell through a trap-door, deep, deep down, into a vault under S3:ound. When she got to the bottom she went through many rooms, each finer than the other ; but in the inner- THE OLD DAME AND HEE HEN. 15 most room of all, a great ugly man of the hill-folk came up to her and asked, " Will you be my sweetheart ?" " No ! I will not," she said. She wouldn't have him at any price ! not she ; all she wanted was to get ahove ground again as fast as ever she could, and to look after her hen which was lost. Then the Man o' the Hill got so angry that he took her up and wrung her head off, and threw both head and trunk down into the cellar. While this was going on, her mother sat at home waiting and waiting, but no daughter came. So, after she had waited a bit longer, and neither heard nor saw any- thing of her daughter, she said to her midmost daughter, that she must go out and see after her sister, and she added — "You can just give our hen a call at the same time." Well ! the second sister had to set off, and the very same thing befell her ; she went about looking and calling, and all at once she too heard a voice away in the cleft of the rock saying — " Your lien trips inside the hill ! Your hen trips inside the hill !" She thought this strange, and went to see what it could be ; and so she too fell through the trap-door, deep, deep down, into the vault. There she went from room to room, and in the innermost one the Man o' the Hill came to her and asked if she would be his sweetheart? No ! that she wouldn't ; all she wanted was to get above gi'ound again, and hunt for her hen which was lost. So the Man o' the Hill got angry, and took her up and wrung her head off, and threw both head and trunk down into the cellar. 16 NORSE TALES. ISTow, when the old dame had sat and waited seven lengths and seven breadths for her second daughter, and could neither see nor hear anything of her, she said to the youngest — "Now, you really must set off and see after your sisters. 'Twas silly to lose the hen, but 'twill be sillier still if we lose both your sisters ; and you can give the hen a call at the same time " — for the old dame's heart was still set on her hen. Yes ! the youngest was ready enough to go ; so she walked up and down, hunting for her sisters and calling the hen, but she could neither see nor hear anything of them. So at last she too came up to the cleft in the rock, and heard how something said — " Your hen trips inside the hill ! Your hen trips inside the hill !" She thought this strange, so she too went to see what it was, and fell through the trap-door too, deep, deep down, into a vault. "When she reached the bottom she went from one room to another, each grander than the other ; but she wasn't at all afraid, and took good time to look about her. So, as she was peeping into this and that, she cast her eye on the trap-door into the cellar, and looked down it, and what should she see there but her sisters, who lay dead. She had scarce time to slam to the trap-door before the Man o' the Hill came to her and asked — "Will you be my sweetheart ?" " With aU my heart," answered the girl, for she saw very well how it had gone with her sisters. So, when the Man o' the HOI heard that, he got her the finest THE OLD DAME AND HER HEN. 17 clothes in the -world ; she had only to ask for them, or for anything else she had a mind to, and she got what she wanted, so glad was the Man o' the Hill that any one would he his sweetheart. But when she had heen there a little while, she was one day even more doleful and downcast than was her wont. So the Man o' the Hill asked her what was the matter, and why she was in such dumps. " Ah !" said the girl, "it's hecause I can't get home to my mother. She's hard pinched, I know, for meat and drink, and has no one with her." " Well !" said the Man o' the HiU, " I can't let you go to see her; hut just stuff some meat and drink into a sack, and I'll carry it to her." Yes ! she would do so, she said, with many thanks ; but at the bottom of the sack she stuffed a lot of gold and silver, and afterwards she laid a little food on the top of the gold and silver. Then she told the ogre the sack was ready, but he must be sure not to look into it. So he gave his word he wouldn't, and set off. Now, as the Man o' the HiU. walked off, she peeped out after him through a chink in the trap-door ; hut when he had gone a bit on the way, he said — "This sack is so heavy, I'll just see what there is inside it." And so he was about to untie the mouth of the sack, but the girl called out to him — " I see what you're at ! I see what you're at !" "The deuce you do!" said the Man o' the HiU; c 13 NORSE TALES. "then you must have plaguy sharp eyes in your head, that's aU!" So he threw the sack over his shoulder, and dared not try to look into it again. When he reached the widow's cottage, he threw the sack in through the cottage door, and said— " Here you have meat and drink from your daughter ; she doesn't want for anything." So, when the girl had been in the hUl a good bit longer, one day a biUy-goat fell down the trap-door. " Who sent for you, I should like to know ? you long-bearded beast!" said the Man o' the HUl, who was in an awful rage, and with that he whipped up the goat, and wrung his head off, and threw him down into the cellar. " Oh !" said the girl, " why did you do that ? I might have had the goat to play with down here." " Well !" said the Man o' the HUl, "you needn't be so down in the mouth about it, I should think, for I can soon put hfe into the biUy-goat again." So saying, he took a flask which hung up against the wall, put the billy-goat's head on his body again, and smeared it with some ointment out of the flask, and he was as well and as lively as ever again. "Ho! ho!" said the girl to herself; "that flask is worth something — ^that it is." So when she had been some time longer in the hill, she watched for a day when the Man o' the HDl was away, took her eldest sister, and putting her head on her shoulders, smeared her with some of the ointment out of the flask, just as she had seen the Man o' the Hill do with the billy- THE OLD DAMB AND HER HEN. 19 goat, and in a trice her sister came to life again. Then the girl stuffed her into a sack, laid a little food over her, and as soon as the Man o' the HiU came home, she said to him — " Dear friend ! Now do go home to my mother with a morsel of food again ; poor thing ! she's both hungry and thirsty I'U he bound ; and besides that, she's all alone in the world. But you must mind and not look into the sack." Well ! he said he would carry the sack ; and he said, too, that he would not look into it ; but when he had gone a little way, he thought the sack got awfully heavy ; and when he had gone a bit farther he said to himself— " Come what wiU, I must see what's inside this sack, for however sharp her eyes may be, she can't see me all this way off." But just as he was about to untie the sack, the girl who sat inside the sack called out — " I see what you're at ! I see what you're at ! " "The deuce you do !" said the ogre ; "then you must have plaguy sharp eyes ;" for he thought all the while it was the girl inside the hill who was speaking. So he didn't care so much as to peep into the sack again, but carried it straight to her mother as fast as he could, and when he got to the cottage door he threw it in through the door, and bawled out — " Here you have meat and drink from your daughter ; she wants for nothing." Now, when the girl had been in the hill a while longer, 20 NOESE TALES. she did the very same thing with her other sister. She put her head on her shoiilders, smeared her with ointment out of the flask, brought her to life, and stuffed her into the sack ; but this time she crammed ia also as much gold and silver as the sack would hold, and over all laid a very little food. " Dear friend," she said to the Man o' the HiU, " you really must run home to my mother with a little food again ; and mind you don't look into the sack." Yes ! the Man o' the Hill was ready enough to do as she wished, and he gave his word too that he wouldn't look into the sack ; but when he had gone a bit of the way he began to think the sack got awfully heavy, and when he had gone a bit further, he could scarce stagger along under it, so he set it down, and was just about to untie the string and look into it, when the girl inside the sack bawled out — " I see what you're at ! I see wliat you're at ! " " The deuce you do," said the Man o' the Hill, " then you must have plaguy sharp eyes of your own." Well, he dared not try to look into the sack, but made all the haste he could, and carried the sack straight to the girl's mother. When he got to the cottage door he threw the sack in through the door, and roared out — " Here you have food from your daughter ; she wants for nothing." So when the girl had been there a good while longer, the Man o' the HOI made up his mind to go out for the day ; then the girl shammed to be sick and sorry, and pouted and fretted. THE OLD DAME AND HER HEN. 21 " It's no use your coining home tefore twelve o'clock at night," she said, " for I shan't be able to have supper ready before, — I'm so sick and poorly." But when the Man o' the Hill was well out of the house, she stuffed some of her clothes with straw, and stuck up this lass of straw in the comer by the chimney, with a besom in her hand, so that it looked just as if she herself were standing there. After that she stole off home, and got a sharp-shooter to stay in the cottage with her mother. So when the clock struck twelve, or just about it, home came the Man o' the TTill, and the first thing he said to the straw-girl was, " Give me something to eat." But she answered him never a word. "Give me something to eat, I say!" called out the Man o' the Hill, " for I am almost starved." No ! she hadn't a word to throw at him. " Give me something to eat !" roared out the ogre the third time. " I think you'd better open your ears and hear what I say, or else I'll wake you up, that I will !" 'No ! the girl stood just as stUl as ever ; so he flew into a rage, and gave her such a slap in the face, that the straw flew all about the room ; but when he saw that, he knew he had been tricked, and began to hunt everywhere ; and at last, when he came to the cellar, and found both the girl's sisters missing, he soon saw how the cat jumped, and ran off to the cottage, saying, "I'R soon pay her off!" But when he reached the cottage, the sharp-shooter fired off his piece, and then the Man o' the Hill dared not go into the house, for he thought it was thunder. So he set off home again as fast %s he could lay legs to the ground ; 22 NOESB TALES. but what do you think, just as he got to the trap-door, the sun rose and the Man o' the Hill burst. Oh ! if one only knew where the trap-door was, I'll be Dound there's a whole heap of gold and silver down there stUl! EAST 0' THE SUN AND WEST 0' THE MOON. Once on a time there was a poor husbandman who had so many children that he hadn't much of either food or clothing to give them. Pretty children they all were, but the prettiest was the youngest daughter, who was so lovely there was no end to her loveliness. So one day, 'twas on a Thursday evening late at the fall of the year, the weather was so wild and rough out- side, and it was so cruelly dark, and rain fell and wind blew, till the walls of the cottage shook again. There they all sat round the fire busy with this thing and that. But just then, all at once something gave three taps on the window-pane. Then the father went out to see what was the matter ; and, when he got out of doors, what should he see but a great big White Bear. " Good evening to you," said the White Bear. " The same to you," said the man. " Will you give me your youngest daughter ? If you will, I'll make you as rich as you are now poor," said the Bear. Well, the man would not be at all sorry to be so rich ; but stUl he thought he must have a bit of a talk with his EAST O' THE SUN AND WEST o' THE MOON. 23 daughter first ; so he went in and told them how there was a great "White Bear waiting outside, who had given his word to make them so rich if he could only have the youngest daughter. The lassie said "ITo!" outright. ISTothing could get her to say anything else ; so the man went out and settled it with the White Bear, that he should come again the next Thursday evening and get an answer. Meantime he talked his daughter over, and kept on telling her of all the riches they would get, and how well off she would be her- seK ; and so at last she thought better of it, and washed and mended her rags, made herself as smart as she could, and was ready to start. I can't say her packing gave her much trouble. Next Thursday evening came the White Bear to fetch her, and she got upon his back with her bundle, and off they went. So, when they had gone a bit of the way, the White Bear said — " Are you afraid ?" " Ifo ! she wasn't." " Well ! mind and hold tight by my shaggy coat, and then there's nothing to fear," said the Bear. So she rode a long, long way, till they came to a great steep hill. There, on the face of it, the White Bear gave a knock, and a door opened, and they came into a castle, where there were many rooms all lit up ; rooms gleaming with silver and gold ; and there too was a table ready laid, and it was all as grand as grand could be. Then the White Bear gave her a silver bell ; and when she wanted anything, she was only to ring it, and she would get~lt at once. 24 NORSE TALES. Well, after she had eaten and drunk, and evening wore on, she got sleepy after her journey, and thought she would like to go to bed, so she rang the hell ; and she had scarce taken hold of it before she came into a chamber, where there was a bed made, as fair and white as any one would wish to sleep in, with silken pillows and curtauis, and gold fringe. All that was in the room was gold or silver ; but when she had gone to bed, and put out the light, a man came and laid himself alongside her. That was the White Bear, who threw off his beast shape at night ; but she never saw him, for he always came after she had put out the light, and before the day dawned he was up and off again. So things went on happily for a while, but at last she began to get silent and sorrowful ; for there she went about all day alone, and she longed to go home to see her father and mother, and brothers and sisters. So one day, when the White Bear asked what it was that she lacked, she said it was so dull and lonely there, and how she longed to go home to see her father and mother, and brothers and sisters, and that was why she was so sad and sorrowful, because she couldn't get to them. "Well, well!" said the Bear, "perhaps there's a cure for all this ; but you must promise me one thing, not to talk alone with your mother, but only when the rest are by to hear ; for she'll take you by the hand and try to lead you into a room alone to talk ; but you must mind and not do that, else you'll bring bad luck on both of us." So one Sunday the White Bear came and said now they could set off to see her father and mother. Well, off they started, she sitting on his back ; and they went far and long. At last they came to a grand house, and there EAST 0 THK SUN AND WEST 0 THE MOON. 25 her brothers and sisters were running about out of doors at play, and everything was so pretty, 'twas a joy to see. " This is where your father and mother live now," said the White Bear ; " but don't forget what I told you, else you'll make us both unlucky." "No! bless her, she'd not forget;" and when she had reached the house, the White Bear turned right about and left her. Then when she went in to see her father and mother, there was such joy, there was no end to it. None of them thought they could thank her enough for aU she had done for them. Now, they had everything they wished, as good as good could be, and they all wanted to know how she got on where she lived. WeU, she said, it was very good to live where she did ; she had all she wished. What she said beside I don't know ; but I don't think any of them had the right end of the stick, or that they got much out of her. But so in the afternoon, after they had done dinner, all happened as the White Bear had said. Her mother wanted to talk with her alone in her bed-room ; but she minded what the White Bear had said, and wouldn't go up stairs. " Oh, what we have to talk about will keep," she said, and put her mother off. But somehow or other, her mother got round her at last, and she had to tell her the whole story. So she said, how every night, when she had gone to bed, a man came and lay down beside her as soon as she had put out the light, and how she never saw him, because he was always up and away before the morning dawned ; and how she went about woeful and sorrowing, for she thought she should so like to see him, and how all day 26 NORSE TALES. long she walked about there alone, and how duU, and dreary, and lonesome it was. " My !" said her mother ; " it may well be a Troll you slept with ! But now I'll teach you a lesson how to set eyes on him. I'll give you a bit of candle, which you can carry home in your bosom ; just light that while he is asleep, but take care not to drop the tallow on him." Yes ! she took the candle, and hid it in her bosom, and as night drew on, the White Bear came and fetched her away. But when they had gone a bit of the way, the White Bear asked if aU hadn't happened as he had said. " Well, she couldn't say it hadn't." "Now, mind," said he, "if you have listened to your mother's advice, you have brought bad luck on us both, and then, all that has passed between us will be as nothing." " "No," she said, " she hadn't listened to her mother's advice." So when she reached home, and had gone to bed, it was the old story over again. There came a man and lay down beside her ; but at dead of night, when she heard he slept, she got up and struck a light, lit the candle, and let the light shine on him, and so she saw that he was the loveliest Prince one ever set eyes on, and she fell so deep in love with him on the spot, that she thought she couldn't live if she didn't give him a kiss there and then. And so she did, but as she kissed him, she dropped three hot drops of tal- low on his shirt, and he woke up. " What have you done ?" he cried ; " now yon have made us both unlucky, for had you held out only this one year, I had been freed. Tor I have a stepmother who has be- EAST O' THE SUN AND WEST o' THE MOON. 27 witched me, so that I am a White Bear by day, and a Man by night. But now all ties are snapt between us ; now I must set off from you to her. She lives in a castle which stands East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, and there, too, is a Princess, with a nose three ells long, and she's the wife I must have now." She wept and took it ill, but there was no help for it ; go he must. Then she asked if she mightn't go with him. No, she mightn't. " TeU me the way, then," she said, " and I'll search you out ; that surely I may get leave to do." "Yes, she might do that," he said ; "but there was no way to that place. It lay East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, and thither she'd never find her way." So next morning, when she woke up, both Prince and castle were gone, and then she lay on a little green patch, in the midst of the gloomy thick wood, and by her side lay the same bundle of rags she had brought with her from her old home. So when she had rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and wept till she was tired, she set out on her way, and walked many, many days, till she came to a lofty crag. Under it sat an old hag, and played with a gold apple which she tossed about. Her the lassie asked if she knew the way to the Prince, who lived with his stepmother iu the castle that lay East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, and who was to marry the Princess with a nose three eUs long. " How did you come to know about bim ?" asked the old hag ; " but maybe you are the lassie who ought to have had him ?" 28 NORSE TALES. Yes, she was. " So, so ; it's you, is it ?" said the old hag. " Well, aU I know ahout him is, that he lives in the castle that lies East o' the Sun and "West o' the Moon, and thither you'U come, late or never ; but still you may have the loan of my horse, and on him you can ride to my next neighbour. Maybe she'll be able to tell you ; and when you get there, just give the horse a switch under the left ear, and beg him to be off home ; and, stay, this gold apple you may take with you." So she got upon the horse, and rode a long long time, till she came to another crag, under which sat another old hag, with a gold carding-comb. Her the lassie asked if she knew the way to the castle that lay East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, and she answered, like the first old hag, that she knew nothing about it, except it was east o' the sun and west o' the moon. " And thither you'll come, late or never ; but you shall have the loan of my horse to my next neighbour ; maybe she'll tell you all about it ; and when you get there, just switch the horse under the left ear, and beg him to be off home." And this old hag gave her the golden carding-comb ; it might be she'd find some use for it, she said. So the lassie got up on the horse, and rode a far far way, and a weary time ; and so at last she came to another great crag, under which sat another old hag, spinning with a golden spinniag- wheeL Her, too, she asked if she knew the way to the Prince, and where the castle was that lay East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon. So it was the same thing over again. EAST 0 THE SUN AND WEST 0 THE MOON. 29 " Maybe it's you who ought to liave had the Prince ?" said the old hag. Yes, it was. But she, too, didn't know the way a bit better than the other two. " East o' the sun and west o' the moon it was," she knew — that was all. " And thither you'll come, late or never ; but I'll lend you my horse, and then I think you'd best ride to the East Wind and ask him ; maybe he knows those parts, and can blow you thither. But when you get to him, you need only give the horse a switch under the left ear, and he'll trot home of himself" And so, too, she gave her the gold spinniag-wheeL " Maybe you'll find a use for it," said the old hag. Then on she rode many many days, a weary time, before she got to the East Wind's house, but at last she did reach it, and then she asked the East Wind if he could tell her the way to the Prince who dwelt east o' the sun and west o' the moon. Yes, the East Wind had often heard tell of it, the Prince and the castle, but he couldn't tell the way, for he had never blown so far. " But, if you will, I'll go with you to my brother the West Wind, maybe he Imows, for he's much stronger. So, if you will just get on my back, I'll carry you thither." Yes, she got on his back, and I should just think they went briskly along. So when they got there, they went into the West Wind's house, and the East Wind said the lassie he had brought was the one who ought to have had the Prince who lived in the castle East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon ; and so she had set out to seek him, and how he had come 30 NOESE TALES. with her, and would be glad to know if the West Wind knew how to get to the castle. " ISTay," said the West Wind, " so far I've never blown ; but if you will, I'll go with you to our brother the South Wind, for he's much stronger than either of us, and he has flapped his wings far and wide. Maybe he'U tell you. You can get on my back, and I'll carry you to him.'' Yes ! she got on his back, and so they travelled to the South Wind, and weren't so very long on the way, I should think. When they got there, the West Wind asked Mm if he could tell her the way to the castle that lay East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, for it was she who ought to have had the Prince who lived there. " You don't say so ! That's she, is it ?" said the South Wind. " Well, I have blustered about in most places in my time, but so far have I never blown ; but if you will, I'U take you to my brother the North Wind ; he is the oldest and strongest of the whole lot of us, and if he don't know where it is, you'll never find any one in the world to tell you. You can get on my back, and I'll carry you thither." Yes ! she got on his back, and away he went from his house at a fine rate. And this time, too, she wasn't long on her way. So when they got to the North Wind's house, he was so wUd and cross, cold puffs came from him a long way off. " Blast you both, what do you want ?" he roared out to them ever so far off, so that it struck them with an icy shiver. EAST O THE SUN AND WEST 0 THE MOON. 3 1 " Well," said the South AVind, " you needn't be so foul- mouthed, for here I am, your brother, the South Wind, and here is the lassie who ought to have had the Prince who dwells in the castle that lies East o' the Sun and West o' THE Moon, and now she wants to ask you if you ever were there, and can tell her the way, for she would be so glad to find him agaiu." " Yes, I KNOW well enough wheee it is," said the North Wind ; " once in my life I blew an aspen-leaf thither, but I was so tired I couldn't blow a puff for ever so many days after. But if you really wish to go thither, and aren't afraid to come along with me, I'U take you on my back and see if I can blow you thither." Yes ! with all her heart ; she must and would get thither if it were possible in any way; and as for fear, however madly he went, she wouldn't be at all afraid. " Very well, then," said the North Wind, " but you must sleep here to-night, for we must have the whole day before us, if we're to get thither at all. Early next morning the North Wiud woke her, and puffed himself up, and blew himself out, and made himself so stout and big, 'twas gruesome to look at him ; and so off they went high up through the air, as if they would never stop till they got to the world's end. Down here below there was such a storm ; it threw down long tracts of wood and many houses, and when it swept over the great sea, ships foundered by hundreds. So they tore on and on, — no one can believe how far they went, — and all the while they still went over the sea, and the North Wind got more and more weary, and so out of breath he could scarce bring out a puff, and his wings 32 NOESE TALES. drooped and drooped, till at last lie suiik so low that the crests of the waves dashed over his heels. " Axe you afraid ?" said the North Wind. "No !" she wasn't. But they weren't very far from land ; and the North Wind had still so much strength left in him that he man- aged to throw her up on the shore under the windows of the castle which lay East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon ; but then he was so weak and worn out, he had to stay there and rest many days before he could get home again. Next morning the lassie sat down under the castle window, and began to play with the gold apple ; and the first person she saw was the Long-nose who was to have the Prince. "What do you want for your gold apple, you lassie ?" said the Long-nose, and threw up the window. " It's not for sale, for gold or money," said the lassie. '•■ If it's not for sale for gold or money, what is it that you wiU sell it for ? You may name your own price," said the Princess. " Well ! if I may get to the Prince, who lives here, and be with him to-night, you shall have it," said the lassie whom the North Wind had brought. Yes ! she might ; that could be done. So the Princess got the gold apple ; but when the lassie came up to the Prince's bed-room at night he was fast asleep ; she called him and shook him, and between whiles she wept sore ; but all she could do she couldn't wake him up. Next morning as soon as day broke, came the Princess with the long nose, and drove her out again. EAST O' THE SUN AND WEST o' THE MOON. 33 So in the day-time she sat down under the castle win- dows and hegan to card with her golden carding-comb, and the same thing happened. The Princess asked wha,t she wanted for it ; and she said it wasn't for sale for gold or money, hut if she might get leave to go up to the Prince and be with him that night, the Princess should have it. But when she went up she found him fast asleep again, and all she called, and aU she shook, and wept, and prayed, she couldn't get life into him ; and as soon as the first gray peep of day came, then came the Princess with the long nose, and chased her out again. So in the day-time the lassie sat down outside under the castle window, and began to spin with her golden spinning-wheel, and that, too, the Princess with the long nose wanted to have. So she threw up the win- dow and asked what she wanted for it. The lassie said, as she had said twice before, it wasn't for sale for gold or money ; but if she might go up to the Prince who was there, and be with him alone that night, she might have it. Yes ! she might do that and welcome. But now you must know there were some Christian folk who had been carried off thither, and as they sat in their room, which was next the Prince, they had heard how a woman had been in there, and wept and prayed, and called to him two nights running, and they told that to the Prince. That evening, when the Princess came with her sleepy drink, the Prince made as if he drank, but threw it over his shoulder, for he could guess it was a sleepy drink. So, when the lassie came in, she found the Prince wide I) 34 NOESE TALES. awake ; and then she told him the whole story how she had come thither. "Ah," said the Prince, "you've just come in the very nick of time, for to-morrow is to be our wedding-day ; but now I won't have the Long-nose, and you are the only woman in. the world who can set me free. I'll say I want to see what my wife is fit for, and beg her to wash the shirt which has the three spots of tallow on it ; she'll say yes, for she doesn't know 'tis you who put them there ; but that's a work only for Christian folk, and not for such a pack of Trolls, and so I'll say that I won't have any other for my bride than the woman who can wash them out, and ask you to do it." So there was great joy and love between them all that night. But next day, when the wedding was to be, the Prince said — " First of aU, I'd like to see what my bride is fit for." " Yes!" said the step-mother, with aU her heart. " Well," said the Prince, " I've got a fine shirt which I'd like for my wedding shirt, but some how or other it has got three spots of tallow on it, which I must have washed out ; and I have sworn never to take any other bride than the woman who's able to do that. If she can't, she's not worth having." "Well, that was no great thing they said, so they agreed, and she with the long nose began to wash away as hard as she could, but the more she rubbed and scrubbed, the bigger the spots grew. " Ah ! " said the old hag, her mother, " you can't wash ; let me try." But she hadn't long taken the shirt in hand, before EAST O THE SUN AND WEST 0 THE MOON. 35 it got far worse than ever, and with all her rubbing, and wringing, and scrubbing, the spots grew bigger and blacker, and the darker and uglier was the shirt. Then all the other TroUs began to wash, but the longer it lasted, the blacker and uglier the shirt grew, till at last it was as black all over as if it had been up the chimney. "Ah!" said the Prince, "you're none of you worth a straw : you can't wash. Why there, outside, sits a beggar lassie, I'll be bound she knows how to wash better than the whole lot of you. Come in, Lassie ! " he shouted. Well, in she came. " Can you wash this shirt clean, lassie, you ? " said he. " I don't know," she said, " but I think I can." And almost before she had taken it and dipped it in the water, it was as white as driven snow, and whiter still. " Yes ; you are the lassie for me," said the Prince. At that the old hag flew into such a rage, she burst on the spot, and the Princess with the long nose after her, and the whole pack of Trolls after her, — at least I've never heard a word about them since. As for the Prince and Princess, they set free aU the poor Christian folk who had been carried off and shut up there ; and they took with them all the silver and gold, and flitted away as far as they could from the castle that lay East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon. 36 NORSE TALES. BOOTS WHO ATE A MATCH WITH THE TEOLL. Okoe on a time there was a farmer who had three sons ; his means were small, and he was old and weak, and his sons would take to nothing. A fine large wood belonged to the farm, and one day the father told his sons to go and hew wood, and try to pay off some of his debts. Well, after a long talk, he got them to set off, and the eldest was to go first. But when he had got well into the wood, and began to hew at a mossy old fir, what should he see coming up to him but a great sturdy TroU. " If you hew in this wood of mine," said the Troll, " rU kiU you !" When the lad heard that, he threw the axe down, and ran off liome as fast as he could lay legs to the ground ; so he came in quite out of breath, and told them what had happened, but his father called him "hare-heart," — no Troll would ever have scared him from hewing when he was young, he said. Next day the second son's turn came, and he fared just the same. He had scarce hewn three strokes at the fir, before the Troll came to him too, and said — " If you hew in this wood of mine, I'll kill you." The lad dared not so much as look at him, but threw down the axe, took to his heels, and came scampering home just like his brother. So when he got home, his BOOTS WHO ATE A MATCH WITH THE TROLL. 37 father was angry again, and said no Troll had ever scared him when he was young. The third day Boots wanted to set off. " You, iadeed !" said the two elder brothers ; " you'll do it bravely, no doubt ! you, who have scarce ever set your foot out of the door." Boots said nothing to this, but only begged them to give him a good store of food. His mother had no cheese, so she set the pot on the fire to make him a little, and he put it into a scrip and set off. So when he had hewn a bit, the Troll came to him too, and said — " If you hew in this wood of mine, I'll kill you." But the lad was not slow ; he pulled his cheese out of the scrip in a trice, and squeezed it till the whey spurted out. " Hold your tongue !" he cried to the Troll, " or I'll squeeze you as I squeeze the water out of this white stone." " Nay, dear friend !" said the Troll, " only spare me, and I'U help you to hew." WeU, on those terms the lad was willing to spare him, and the TroU hewed so bravely, that they feUed and cut up many, many fathoms in the day. But when even drew near, the Troll said — " Now you'd better come home with me, for my house is nearer than yours." So the lad was willing enough ; and when they reached the Troll's house, the Troll was to make up the fire, while the lad went to fetch water for their porridge, and there stood two iron pails so big and heavy, that he couldn't so much as lift them from the ground. 38 NOESE TALES. " Pooh !" said the lad, " it isn't worth while to touch these finger-basins. I'U just go and fetch the spring itself." " Way, nay, dear friend !" said the Troll ; " I can't afford to lose my spring ; just you make up the fire, and I'U go and fetch the water." So when he came back with the water, they set to and boiled up a great pot of porridge. " It's aU the same to me," said the lad ; " but if you're of my mind, we'll eat a match ! " " With all my heart," said the TroU, for he thought he could surely hold his own in eating. So they sat down ; but the lad took his scrip unawares to the TroU, and hung it before him, and so he spooned more into the scrip than he ate himself ; and when the scrip was fuU, he took up his knife and made a slit in the scrip. The Troll looked on aU the whUe, but said never a word. So when they had eaten a good bit longer, the TroU laid down his spoon, saying, " N"ay ! but I can't eat a morsel more." " But you shall eat," said the youth ; " I'm only half done ; why don't you do as I did, and cut a hole in your paunch ? You'U be able to eat then as much as you please." " But doesn't it hurt one crueUy ?" asked the. TroU. " Oh," said the youth, " nothing to speak of." So the TroU did as the lad said, and then you must know very weU that he lost his Ufe ; but the lad took aU the sUver and gold that he found in the hUl-side, and went home with it, and you may fancy it went a great way to pay off the debt. HACON GRIZZLEBEAED. 69 HACON GRIZZLEBEAED. Once on a time there was a Princess who was so proud and pert that no suitor was good enough for her. She made game of them all, and sent them about their busi- ness, one after the other ; but though she was so proud, still new suitors kept on coming to the palace, for she was a beauty, the wicked hussey ! So one day there came a prince to woo her, and his name was Hacon Grizzlebeard ; but the first night he was there, the Princess bade the king's fool cut off the ears of one of the prince's horses, and slit the jaws of the other up to the ears. When the prince went out to drive next day, the Princess stood in the porch and looked at him. " Well ! " she cried, " I never saw the like of this in all my life ; the keen north wind that blows here has taken the ears off one of your horses, and the other has stood by and gaped at what was going on till his jaws have split right up to his ears.'' And with that she burst out into a roar of laughter, ran in, slammed to the door, and let him drive off. So he drove home ; but as he went, he thought to him- self that he would pay her off one day. After a bit, he put on a great beard of moss, threw a great fur cloak over his clothes, and dressed himself up just like any beggar. He went to a goldsmith and bought a golden spinning wheel, and sat down with it under the Princess' window, 40 NOKSE TALES. and began to file away at his spinning wheel, and to turn it this way and that, for it wasn't quite in order, and be- sides, it wanted a stand. So when the Princess rose up in the morning, she came, to the window and threw it up, and called out to the beggar if he would sell his golden spinning wheel ? " No ; it isn't for sale," said Hacon Grizzlebeard ; " but if I may have leave to sleep outside your bed-room door to-night, I'll give it you." "Well, the Princess thought it a good bargain ; there could be no danger in letting him sleep outside her door. So she got the wheel, and at night Hacon Grizzlebeard lay down outside her bed-room. But as the night wore on he began to freeze. " Hutetutetutetu ! it is so cold ; do let me iu," he cried. "You've lost your wits outright, I think," said the Princess. " Oh, hutetutetutetu ! it is so bitter cold, pray do let me in," said Hacon Grizzlebeard again. " Hush ! hush ! hold your tongue ! " said the Princess ; " if my father were to know that there was a man in the house, I should be in a fine scrape." " Oh, hutetutetutetu! Pm almost frozen to death ; only let me come inside and lie on the floor," said Hacon Grizzlebeard. Yes ! there was no help for it. She had to let him in, and when he was, he lay on the ground and slept like a top. Some time after, Hacon came again with the stand to the spinning wheel, and sat down under the Princess' HAOON GRTZZLEBEAED. 41 window, and began to file at it, for it was not quite fit for use. When she heard him filing, she threw up the window and began to talk to him, and to ask what he had there. " Oh ! only the stand to that spinning wheel which your royal highness bought ; for I thought, as you had the wheel, you might like to have the stand too." " What do you want for it ? " asked the Princess ; but it was not for sale any more than the wheel, but she might have them if she would give him leave to sleep on the floor of her bedroom next night. Well ! she gave him leave, only he was to be sure to lie still, and not to shiver and call out " hutetu," or any such stuff. Hacon Grizzlebeard promised fair enough, but as the night wore on he began to shiver and shake, and to ask whether he might not come nearer, and lie on the floor alongside the Princess' bed. There was no help for it ; she had to give him leave, lest the king should hear the noise he made. So Hacon Grizzlebeard lay alongside the Princess' bed, and slept like a top. It was a long while before Hacon Grizzlebeard came again ; but when he came he had with him a golden wool- winder, and he sat down and began to file away at it under the Princess' window. Then came the old story over again. When the Princess heard what was going on, she came to the window and asked him how he did, and whether he would sell the golden wool-winder ? " It is not to be had for money ; but if you'll give me leave to sleep to-night in your bed-room, with my head on your bedstead, you shall have it for nothing," said Hacon Grizzlebeard. 42 NORSE TALES. " Well ! she would give him leave, if he only gave his word to be quiet and make no noise. So he said he would do his best to be stUl ; but as the night wore on he began to shiver and shake, so that his teeth chattered again. " Hutetutetutetu ! it is so bitter cold ! Oh, do let me get into bed and warm myself a little," said Hacon Grizzle- beard. " Get into bed ! " said the Princess ; " why, you must have lost your wits." " Hutetutetutetu ! " said Hacon ; " do let me get into bed. Hutetutetutetu." " Hush ! hush ! be still for God's sake," said the Princess ; " if father knows there is a man in here, I shall be in a sad plight. I'm sure he'll kill me on the spot." "Hutetutetutetu! let me geb into bed," said Hacon Grizzlebeard, who kept on shivering so that the whole room shook. Well ! there was no help for it ; she had to let him get into bed, where he slept both sound and soft ; but a little while after the Princess had a child, at which the king grew so wild with rage, that he was near making an end of both mother and babe. Just after this happened, came Hacon Grizzlebeard tramping that way once more, as if by chance, and took his seat down in the kitchen, like any other beggar. So when the Princess came out and saw him, she cried, "Ah, God have mercy on me, for the Ul-luck you have brought on me ; father is ready to burst with rage ; do let me follow you to your home." " Oh ! I'll be bound you're too well bred to follow me," said Hacon, " for I have nothing but a log hut to live iu ; HACON GRIZZLEBEARD. 43 and how I shall ever get food for you I can't tell, for it's jnst as much as I can do to get food for myself." " Oh yes ! it's aU the same to me how you get it, or whether you get it at all," she said ; " only let me be with you, for if I stay here any longer, my father wiU he sure to take my life." So she got leave to be with the beggar, as she called him, and they walked a long, long way, though she was but a poor hand at tramping. "When she passed out of her father's land into another, she asked whose it was ? " Oh ! this is Hacon G-rizzlebeard's, if you must know," said he. " Indeed ! " said the Princess ; " I might have married him if I chose, and then I should not have had to walk about like a beggar's wife." So, whenever they came to grand castles, and woods, and parks, and she asked! whose they were ? the beggar's answer was still the same : " Oh ! they are Hacon Grizzle- beard's." And the Princess was in a sad way that she had not chosen the man who had such broad lands. Last of all they came to a palace, where he said he was known, and where he thought he could get her work, so that they might have something to live on ; so he buUt up a cabin by the wood-side for them to dwell in ; and every day he went to the king's palace, as he said, to hew wood and draw water for the cook, and when he came back he brought a few scraps of meat ; but they did not go very far. One day, when he came home from the palace, he said — " To-morrow I will stay at home and look after the baby, but you must get ready to go to the palace, do you 44 NORSE TALES. hear ? for the Prince said you were to come and try your hand at baking." " I bake ! " said the Princess ; " I can't bake, for I never did such a thing ia my life." " Well, you must go," said Hacon, " since the Prince has said it. If you can't bake, you can learn ; you have only got to look how the rest bake ; and mind, when you leave, you must steal me some bread." " I can't steal," said the Princess. " You can learn that too," said Hacon ; " you know we live on short commons. But take care that the Prince doesn't see you, for he has eyes at the back of his head." So when she was well on her way, Hacon ran by a short cut and reached the palace long before her, and threw off his rags and beard, and put on his princely robes. The Princess took her turn ia the bakehouse, and did as Hacon bade her, for she stole bread till her pockets were crammed full. So when she was about to go home at even, the Prince said — "We don't know much of this old wife of Hacon Grizzlebeard's ; I thiak we'd best see if she has taken any- thing away with her." So he thrust his hand into all her pockets, and felt her all over, and when he found the bread, he was in a great rage, and led them all a sad life. She began to weep and bewail, and said — " The beggar made me do it, and I couldn't help it." " Well," said the Priace at last, " it ought to have gone hard with you ; but all the same, for the sake of the beggar you shall be forgiven this once." When she was well on her way, he threw oil' his robes, HACON GRIZZLEBEAKD. 45 put on his skin cloak, and his false beard, and reached the cabin before her. When she came home, he was busy nursing the baby. " Well, you have made me do what it went against my heart to do. This is the first time I ever stole, and this shall be the last ;" and with that she told him how it had gone with her, and what the Prince had said. A few days after Hacon Grizzlebeard came home at even and said — " To-morrow I must stay at home and mind the babe, for they are going to kill a pig at the palace, and you must help to make the sausages." " I make sausages !" said the Princess ; " I can't do any such thing. I have eaten sausages often enough ; but as to making them, I never made one in my life." Well, there was no help for it ; the Prince had said it, and go she must. As for not knowing how, she was only to do what the others did, and at the same time Hacon bade her steal some sausages for him. " Nay, but I can't steal them," she said ; " you know how it went last time." " Well, you can learn to steal ; who knows but you may have better luck next time ?" said Hacon Grizzlebeard. When she was well on her way, Hacon ran by a short cut, reached the palace long before her, threw off his skin cloak and false beard, and stood in the kitchen with his royal robes before she came in. So the Priacess stood by when the pig was killed, and made sausages with the rest, and did as Hacon bade her, and stuffed her pockets fuH of sausages. But when she was about to go home at even, the Priuce said — 46 NORSE TALES. " This beggar's wife was long-fingered last time ; we may as well just see if she hasn't carried anything off." So he began to thrust his hands into her pockets, and when he found the sausages he was in a great rage again, and made a great to do, threatening to send for the constable and put her into the cage. " Oh, God bless your royal highness ; do let me off! The beggar made me do it," she said, and wept bitterly. " Well," said Hacon, " you ought to smart for it ; but for the beggar's sake you shall be forgivea" When she was gone, he changed his clothes again, ran by the short cut, and when she reached the cabia, there he was before her. Then she told him the whole story, and swore, through thick and thin, it should be the last time he got her to do such a thing. Now, it fell out a little time after, when the man came back from the palace, he said — " Our Prince is going to be married, but the bride is sick, so the tailor can't measure her for her wedding gown. And the Prince's wUl is, that you should go up to the palace and be measured instead of the bride ; for he says you are just the same height and shape. But after you have been measured, mind you don't go away ; you can stand about, you know, and when the tailor cuts out the gown, you can snap up the largest pieces, and bring them home for a waistcoat for me." " ISTay, but I can't steal," she said; "besides, you know how it went last time." "You can learn then," said Hacon, "and you may have better luck, perhaps." She thought it bad, but still she went and did a.s sLe HACON GRIZZLEBEAED. 47 was told. She stood by while the tailor was cutting out the gown, and she swept down all the biggest scraps, and stuffed them into her pockets ; and when she was going away, the Prince said — " We may as well see if this old girl has not been long- fingered this time too." So he began to feel and search her pockets, and when he found the pieces he was in a rage, and began to stamp and scold at a great rate, while she wept and said — " Ah, pray forgive me ; the beggar bade me do it, and 1 couldn't help it." " Well, you ought to smart for it," said Hacon ; " but for the beggar's sake it shall be forgiven you." So it went now just as it had gone before, and when she got back to the cabin, the beggar was there before her. " Oh, Heaven help me," she said ; " you will be the death of me at last by making me nothing but what is wicked. The Prince was in such a towering rage that he threatened me both with the constable and cage." Some time after, Hacon came home to the cabin at even and said — " Now, the Prince's wUl is, that you should go up to the palace and stand for the bride, old lass ! for the bride is still sick, and keeps her bed ; but he won't put off the wedding ; and he says, you are so like her, that no one could tell one from the other ; so to-morrow you must get ready to go to the palace." " I think you've lost your wits, both the Prince and you," said she. " Do you think I look fit to stand in the bride's place ? look at me ! Can any beggar's trull look worse than I ?" 48 NOESE TALES. " Well, the Prince said you were to go, and so go yoa must," said Hacon Grizzlebeard. There was no help for it, go she must ; and when, she reached the palace, they dressed her out so finely that no princess ever looked so smart. The bridal train went to church, where she stood for the bride, and when they came back, there was dancing and merriment in the palace. But just as she was in the midst of dancing with the Prince, she saw a gleam of light through the window, and lo ! the cabin by the wood-side ■was all one bright flame. " Oh ! the beggar, and the babe, and the cabin," she screamed out, and was just going to swoon away. " Here is the beggar, and there is the babe, and so let the cabin burn away," said Hacon Grizzlebeard. Then she knew him again, and after that the mirth and merriment began in right earnest ; but siace that I have never heard tell anything more about them. BOOTS WHO MADE THE PEINCESS SAY, "THAT'S A STOEY." Once on a time there was a king who had a daughter, and she was such a dreadful story-teller that the like of her was not to be found far or near. So the king gave out, that if any one could teU such a string of lies as would get her to say, " That's a story," he should have her to wife, and half the kingdom besides. Well, many came, as "thats a. story.' 49 you may fancy, to try their luck, for every one woidd have been very glad to have the Princess, to say nothing of the kingdom ; hut they all cut a sorry figure, for the Princess was so given to story-telling, that all their lies went in at one ear and out of the other. Among the rest came three brothers to try their luck, and the two elder went first, hut they fared no better than those who had gone before them. Last of all, the third. Boots, set off and found the Princess in the farm-yard. " Good morning," he said, " and thank you for nothing.'' " Good morning," said she, " and the same to you." Then she went on — "You haven't such a fine farm-yard as ours, I'll be bound ; for when two shepherds stand, one at each end of it, and blow their ram's horns, the one can't hear the other." "Haven't we though!" answered Boots; "ours is far bigger ; for when a cow begins to go with calf at one end of it, she doesn't get to the other end before the time to drop her calf is come." "I dare say!" said the Princess. "Well, but you haven't such a big ox, after all, as ours yonder ; for when two men sit, one on each horn, they can't touch each other with a twenty-foot rule." "Stuff!" said Boots; "is that all? why, we have an ox who is so big, that when two men sit, one on each horn, and each blows his great mountain-trumpet, they can't hear one another.'' " I dare say," said the Princess ; " but you haven't so much mUk as we, I'U be bound ; for we milk our kine into E 50 NORSE TALES. great pails, and carry them in-doors, and empty them into great tubs, and so we make great, great cheeses." " Oh ! you do, do you ?" said Boots. " Well, we mUk ours into great tubs, and then we put them in carts and drive them in-doors, and then we turn them out into great brewing vats, and so we make cheeses as big as a great house. We had, too, a dun mare to tread the cheese well together when it was makiag ; but once she tumbled down into the cheese, and we lost her ; and after we had eaten at this cheese seven years, we came upon a great dun mare, alive and kicking. Well, once after that I was going to drive this mare to the miU, and her back-bone snapped in two ; but I wasn't put out, not I, for I took a spruce saphng, and put it into her for a back-bone, and she had no other back-bone all the while we had her. But the sapling grew up into such a tall tree, that I climbed right up to heaven by it, and when I got there, I saw the Virgin Mary sitting and spinning the foam of the sea into pigs'-bristle ropes ; but just then the spruce-fir broke short oif, and I couldn't get down again ; so the Virgin Mary let me down by one of the ropes, and down I slipped straight into a fox's hole, and who should sit there but my mother and your father cobbling shoes ; and just as I stepped in, my mother gave your father such a box on the ear, that it made his whiskers cm-1." " That's a story !" said the Princess ; " my father never did any such thing in all his born days !" So Boots got the Princess to wife, and half the kingdom besides. THE TWELVE WILD DUCKS. 51 THE TWELVE WILD DUCKS. Once on a time there was a Queen wlio was out driving, when there had been a new fall of snow in the winter ; but when she had gone a little way, she began to bleed at the nose, and had to get out of her sledge. And so, as she stood there, leaning against the fence, and saw the red blood on the white snow, she fell a-thinking how she had twelve sons and no daughter, and she said to herself — " If I only had a daughter as white as snow and as red as blood, I shouldn't care what became of aU my sons." But the words were scarce out of her mouth before an old witch of the Trolls came iip to her. "A daughter you shall have," she said, "and she shaU be as white as snow, and as red as blood ; and your sons shall be mine, but you may keep them till the babe is christened." So when the time came the Queen had a daughter, and she was as white as snow, and as red as blood, just as the Troll had promised, and so they called her " Snow-white and Eosy-red." Well, there was great joy at the King's court, and the Queen was as glad as glad could be ; but when what she had promised to the old witch came into her mind, she sent for a silversmith, and bade him make twelve silver spoons, one for each prince, and after that she bade him make one more, and that she gave to Snow-white and Eosy-red. But as soon as ever the Princess was 52 NORSE TALEM. christened, the Princes were turned into twelve wild ducks, and flew away. They never saw them again, — away they went, and away they stayed. So the Princess grew up, and she was both tall and fair, but she was often so strange and sorrowful, and no one could understand what it was that failed her. But one evening the Queen was also sorrowful, for she had many strange thoughts when she thought of her sons. She said to Snow-white and Eosy-red — " Why are you so sorrowful, my daughter ? Is there anjiihing you want ? if so, only say the word, and you shah have it." " Oh, it seems so dull and lonely here," said Snow-white and Eosy-red ; " every one else has brothers and sisters, but I am all alone ; I have none ; and that's why I'm so sorrowful." " But you had brothers, my daughter," said the Queen ; " I had twelve sons who were your brothers, but I gave them aU away to get you ;" and so she told her the whole story. So when the Princess heard that, she had no rest ; for, in spite of all the Queen could say or do, and all she wept and prayed, the lassie would set off to seek her brothers, for she thought it was all her fault ; and at last she got leave to go away from the palace. On and on she walked into the wide world, so far, you would never have thought a young lady could have strength to walk so far. So, once, when she was walldng through a great, great wood, one day she felt tired, and sat down on a mossy tuft and fell asleep. Then she dreamt that she went deeper and deeper into the wood, tUl she came to a little wooden hut, and there she found her brothers ; just then she woke, and THE TWELVE WILD DUCKS. 53 straight before her she saw a worn path in the green moss, and this path went deeper into the wood ; so she followed it, and after a long time she came to just such a little wooden house as that she had seen in her dream. Now, when she went into the room there was no one at home, but there stood twelye beds, and twelve chairs, and twelve spoons — a dozen of everything, in short. So when she saw that she was so glad, she hadn't been so glad for many a long year, for she could guess at once that her brothers lived here, and that they owned the beds, and chairs, and spoons. So she began to make up the fire, and sweep the room, and make the beds, and cook the dinner, and to make the house as tidy as she could ; and when she had done all the cooking and work, she ate her own dinner, and crept imder her yoimgest brother's bed, and lay down there, but she forgot her spoon upon the table. So she had scarcely laid herself down before she heard something flapping and whirring in the air, and so all the twelve wild ducks came sweeping in ; but as soon as ever they crossed the threshold they became Princes. " Oh, how nice and warm it is in here," they said. " Heaven bless him who made up the fire, and cooked such a good dinner for us." And so each took up his silver spoon and was going to eat. But when each had taken his own, there was one still left lying on the table, and it was so like the rest that they couldn't tell it from them. " This is our sister's spoon," they said ; " and if her spoon be here, she can't be very far off herself." " If this be our sister's spoon, and she be here," said 54 NORSE TALES. the eldest, " she shall be killed, for she is to blame for all the ill we suffer." And this she lay under the bed and listened to. " N"o," said the youngest, " 'twere a shame to kill her for that. She has nothing to do with our suffering iU ; for if any one's to blame, it's our own mother." So they set to work hunting for her both high and low, and at last they looked under all the beds, and so when they came to the youngest Prince's bed, they found her, and dragged her out. Then the eldest Prince wished again to have her killed, but she begged and prayed so prettily for herself " Oh ! gracious goodness ! don't kill me, for I've gone about seeking you these three years, and if I could only set you free, I'd willingly lose my life." "Well !" said they, "if you wiU. set us free, you may keep your life ; for you can if you choose." " Yes ; only tell me," said the Princess, " how it can be done, and I'll do it, whatever it be." " You must pick thistle-down," said the Princes, " and you must card it, and spin it, and weave it ; and after you have done that, you must out out and make twelve coats, and twelve shirts, and twelve neckerchiefs, one for each of us, and while you do that, you must neither talk, nor laugh, nor weep. If you can do that, we are free." " But where shall I ever get thistle-down enough for so many neckerchiefs, and shirts, and coats ?" asked Snow- white and Eosy-red. " We'll soon show you," said the Princes ; and so they took her with them to a great wide moor, where there stood such a crop of thistles, all nodding and nodding in THE TWELVE WILD DUCKS. 55 the breeze, and the down all floating and glistening like gossamers through the air in the sunbeams. The Princess had never seen such a quantity of thistle-down in her life, and she began to pluck and gather it as fast and as well as she could ; and when she got home at night she set to work carding and spinning yarn from the down. So she went on a long long time, picking, and carding, and spin- ning, and all the while keeping the Princes' house, cook- ing, and making their beds. At evening home they came, flapping and whuTing like wild ducks, and all night they were Princes, but in the morning off they flew again, and were wild ducks the whole day. But now it happened once, when she was out on the moor to pick thistle-down, — and if I don't mistake, it was the very last time she was to go thither, — it happened that the young King who ruled that land was out hunting, and came riding across the moor, and saw her. So he stopped there and wondered who the lovely lady could be that walked along the moor picking thistle-down, and he asked her her name, and when he could get no answer, he was still more astonished ; and at last he liked her so much, that nothing would do but he must take her home to his castle and marry her. So he ordered his servants to take her and put her up on his horse. Snow-white and Eosy-red she wrung her hands, and made signs to them, and pointed to the bags in which her work was, and when the King saw she wished to have them with her, he told his men to take up the bags behind them. When they had done that the Princess came to herself, little by little, for the King was both a wise man and a handsome man too, and he was as soft and kind to her as a doctor. But when they got 56 NORSE TALES. home to the palace, and the old Queen, who was his step- mother, set eyes on Snow-white and Eosy-red, she got so cross and jealous of her because she was so lovely, that she said to the king — " Can't you see now, that this thing whom you have picked up, and whom you are going to marry, is a witch ? Why, she can't either talk, or laugh, or weep !" But the King didn't care a pin for what she said, but held on with the wedding, and married Snow-white and Eosy-red, and they lived in great joy and glory ; but she didn't forget to go on sewing at her shirts. So when the year was almost out, Snow-white and Eosy-red brought a Prince into the world ; and then the old Queen was more spiteful and jealous than ever, and at dead of night she stole in to Snow-white and Eosy-red, while she slept, and took away her babe, and threw it into a pit full of snakes. After that she cut Snow-white and Eosy-red in her finger, and smeared the blood over her mouth, and went straight to the King. " 'Now come and see," she said, " what sort of a thiag you have taken for your Queen ; here she has eaten up her own babe." Then the king was so downcast, he almost burst into tears, and said — " Yes, it must be true, since I see it with my own eyes ; but she'll not do it again, I'm sure, and so this time I'U spare her life." So before the next year was out she had another son, and the same thing happened. The King's stepmother got more and more jealous and spiteful. She stole iuto the young Queen at night while she slept, took away the babe, THE TWELVE WILD DUCKS. 57 and threw it into a pit fuH of snakes, cut the young Queen's finger, and smeared the blood over her mouth, and then went and told the King slie had eaten up her own child. Then the King was so sorrowful, you can't think how sorry he was, and he said — " Yes, it must be true, since I see it witb my own eyes , but she'll not do it again, I'm sure, and so this time too I'll spare her life." Well, before the next year was out. Snow-white and Eosy-red brought a daughter into the world, and her, too, the old Queen took and threw into the pit full of snakes, while the young Queen slept. Then she cut ber finger, smeared the blood over her mouth, and went again to the King and said — " ISTow you may come and see if it isn't as I say ; she's a wicked, wicked witch, for here she has gone and eaten up her third babe too." Then the King was so sad, there was no end to it, for now be couldn't spare her any longer, but had to order her to be burnt alive on a pile of wood. But just when the pile was aU ablaze, and they were going to put her on it, she made signs to them to take twelve boards and lay them round the pile, and on these she laid the neckerchiefs, and the shirts, and the coats for her brothers, but the youngest brother's shirt wanted its left arm, for she hadn't had time to finish it. And as soon as ever she had done that, they heard such a flapping and whirring in the air, and down came twelve wild ducks flying over the forest, and each of them snapped up his clothes in his bill and flew r>ff with them. See now ! " said the old Queen to the King, " wasn't I 58 NOKSE TALES. right when I told you she "vvas a witch ; but make haste and burn her before the pile burns low." " Oh ! " said the King, "we've wood enough and to spare, and so I'll wait a bit, for I have a mind to see what the end of aU. this will be." As he spoke, up came the twelve princes riding along, as handsome well-grown lads as you'd wish to see; but the youngest prince had a wild duck's wing instead of his left arm. " What's all this about ? " asked the Princes. " My Queen is to be burnt," said the King, " because she's a witch, and because she has eaten up her own babes.'' " She hasn't eaten them at all," said the Princes. " Speak now, sister ; you have set us free and saved xl% now save yourself" Then Snowrwhite and Rosy-red spoke, and told the whole story ; how every time she was brought to bed, the old Queen, the King's stepmother, had stolen into her at night, had taken her babes away, and cut her little finger, and smeared the blood over her mouth ; and then the Princes took the King, and showed him the snake-pit where three babes lay playing with adders and toads, and lovelier children you never saw. So the King had them taken out at once, and went to his stepmother, and asked her what punishment she thought that woman deserved who could find it in her heart to betray a guiltless Queen and three such blessed little babes. " She deserves to be fast bound between twelve un- broken steeds, so that each may take Ms share of her," said the old Queen. THE GIANT WHO HAD NO HEART [N HIS BODY. 59 "You have spoken your own doom,'' said the King, " and you shall suffer it at once." So the wicked old Queen was fast bound between twelve unbroken steeds, and each got his share of her. But the King took Snow-white and Eosy-red, and their three children, and the twelve Princes ; and so they all went home to their father and mother, and told all that had befallen them, and there was joy and gladness over the whole kingdom, because the Princess was saved and set free, and because she had set free her twelve brothers. THE G-IAISTT WHO HAD N"0 HEAET IN HIS BODY. Once on a time there was a King who had seven sons, and he loved them so much that he could never bear to be without them all at once, but one must always be with him. Now, when they were grown up, six were to set off to woo, but as for the youngest, his father kept him at home, and the others were to bring back a princess for him to the palace. So the King gave the six the finest clothes you ever set eyes on, so fine that the light gleamed from them a long way off, and each had his horse, which cost many, many hundred dollars, and so they set off. Now, when they had been to many palaces, and seen many princesses, at last they came to a King who had six daughters ; such lovely king's daughters they had never seen, and so they feU to wooing them, each one, and when 60 NORSE TALES. they had got them for sweethearts, they set off home again, but they quite forgot that they were to bring back with them a sweetheart for Boots, their brother, who stayed at home, for they were over head and ears in love with their own sweethearts. But when they had gone a good bit on their way, they passed close by a steep hiU-side, like a wall, where the giant's house was, and there the giant came out, and set his eyes upon them, and turned them all into stone, princes and princesses and all. Now the King waited and waited for his six sons, but the more he waited the longer they stayed away ; so he fell into great trouble, and said he should never know what it was to be glad again. " And if I had not you left," he said to Boots, " I would live no longer, so fuU of sorrow am I for the loss of your brothers." " Well, but now I've been thinking to ask your leave to set out and find them again ; that's what I'm thinMng of," said Boots. " Nay, nay ! " said his father ; " that leave you shall never get, for then you would stay away too." But Boots had set his heart upon it ; go he would ; and he begged and prayed so long that the King was forced to let him go. Now, you must know the King had no other horse to give Boots but an old broken-down jade, for his six other sons and their train had carried off aU his horses ; but Boots did not care a pin for that, he sprang up on his sorry old steed. " FareweU, father," said he ; "I'U come back, never fear, and like enough I shall bring my six brothers back with me ; " and with that he rode off. THE GIANT WHO HAD NO HEART IN HIS BODY. 61 So, when he had ridden a while, he came to a Eaven, which lay in the road and flapped its wings, and was not able to get out of the way, it was so starved. " Oh, dear friend," said the Eaven, " give me a little food, and I'll help you again at your utmost need." " I haven't much food," said the Priace, " and I don't see how you'll ever be able to help me much ; but still I can spare you a little. I see you want it." So he gave the Eaven some of the food he had brought with him. ITow, when he had gone a bit further, he came to a brook, and in the brook lay a great Salmon, which had got upon a dry place, and dashed itself about, and could not get into the water again. " Oh, dear friend," said the Salmon to the Prince ; " shove me out into the water again, and I'D. help you agaia at your utmost need." " Well ! " said the Prince, " the help you'll give me will not be great, I daresay, but it's a pity you should lie there and choke ; " and with that he shot the fish out into the stream again. After that he went a long, long way, and there met him a Wolf, which was so famished that it lay and crawled along the road on its belly. " Dear friend, do let me have your horse," said the Wolf; "I'm so hungry the wind whistles through my ribs ; I've had nothing to eat these two years." "No," said Boots, "ihis will never do ; first I came to a raven, and I was forced to give him my food ; next I came to a salmon, and him I had to help into the water again ; and now you will have my horse It can't be 02 NORSE TALES. done, tliat it can't, for then I should have nothing to ride on." " Nay, dear friend, but you can help me," said Gray- legs the wolf ; " you can ride upon my back, and I'll help you again in your utmost need." " Well ! the help I shall get from you will not be great, I'll be bound," said the Prince ; " but you may take my horse, since you are in such need." So when the wolf had eaten the horse. Boots took the bit and put it into the wolf's jaw, and laid the saddle on his back ; and now the wolf was so strong, after what he had got inside, that he set off with the Prince like nothing. So fast he had never ridden before. "When we have gone a bit farther," said Graylegs, " I'll show you the Giant's house." So after a while they came to it. " See, here is the Giant's house," said the Wolf ; " and see, here are your six brothers, whom the Giant has turned into stone ; and see here are their six brides, and away yonder is the door, and in at that door you must go." " Kay, but I daren't go in," said the Prince ; " he'U take my life." "No! no!" said the Wolf; "when you get in you'U iind a Princess, and she'll tell you what to do to make an end of the Giant. Only miud and do as she bids you." Well ! Boots went in, but, truth to say, he was very much afraid. When he came in the Giant was away, but in one of the rooms sat the Princess, just as the wolf had said, and so lovely a Princess Boots had never yet set eyes on. THE OIANT WHO HAD NO HEART IN HIS BODY. 63 " Oh ! heaven help you ! whence have you come ? " said the Princess, as she saw him ; " it will surely be your death. ISTo one can make an end of the Giant who lives here, for he has no heart in his body." "Well ! well !" said Boots ; "but now that I am here, I may as well try what I can do with him ; and I wiU see if I can't free my brothers, who are standing turned to stone out of doors ; and you, too, I wiU. try to save, that I wOl." "WeU, if you must, you must," said the Princess ; " and so let us see if we can't hit on a plan. Just creep under the bed yonder, and mind and listen to what he and I talk about. But, pray, do lie as stUl as a mouse." So he crept under the bed, and he had scarce got well underneath it, before the Giant came. "Ha!" roared the Giant, "what a smeU of Christian blood there is in the house ! " " Yes, I know there is," said the Princess, " for there came a magpie flying with a man's bone, and let it faU down the chimney. I made all the haste I could to get it out, but aU one can do, the smeU doesn't go off so soon." So the Giant said no more about it, and when night came, they went to bed. After they had lain a while, the Princess said — " There is one thing I'd be so glad to ask you about, if I only dared." " What thing is that ?" asked the Giant. " Only where it is you keep your heart, since you don't carry it about you," said the Princess. " Ah ! that's a thing you've no business to ask aoout ; 64 NOESE TALES. bu'-; if you must know, it lies under the door-sill," said the Giant. " Ho ! ho ! " said Boots to himself under the bed, "then we'U soon see if we can't find it." Next morniiLg the Giant got up cruelly early, and strode off to the wood ; but he was hardly out of the house before Boots and the Princess set to work to look under the door-sill for his heart ; but the more they dug, and the more they hunted, the more they couldn't find it. " He has baulked us this time," said the Princess, " but we'U try him once more." So she picked all the prettiest flowers she coidd find, and strewed them over the door-sill, which they had laid in its right place again ; and when the time came for the Giant to come home again, Boots crept under the bed. Just as he was well under, back came the Giant. Snuff — snuff, went the Giant's nose. " My eyes and limbs, what a smell of Christian blood there is in here," said he. " I know there is," said the Princess, " for there came a magpie flying with a man's bone in his bill, and let it fall down the chimney. I made as much haste as I could to get it out, but I daresay it's that you smell." So the Giant held his peace, and said no more about it. A little while after, he asked who it was that had strewed flowers about the door-sill. " Oh, I, of course," said the Princess. " And, pray, what 's the meaning of all this ?" said the Giant. "Ah !" said the Princess, " I'm so fond oi you that I THE GIANT WHO HAD NO HEART IN HIS BODY. 65 couldn't help strewing them, when I knew that your heart lay under there." " You don't say so," said the Giant ; " but after all it doesn't lie there at all." So when they went to bed again in the evening, the Princess asked the Giant again where his heart was, for she said she would so like to know. "Well," said the Giant, "if you must know, it lies away yonder in the cupboard against the waU." " So, so ! " thought Boots and the Princess ; " then we'll soon try to find it." Next morning the Giant was away early, and strode ofl to the wood, and so soon as he was gone Boots and the Princess were in the cupboard hunting for his heart, but the more they sought for it, the less they found it. "Well," said the Princess, "we'U just try him once more." So she decked out the cupboard with flowers and garlands, and when the time came for the Giant to come home, Boots crept under the bed again. Then back came the Giant. Snuff — snuff! "My eyes and limbs, what a smell of Christian blood there is in here ! " "I know there is," said the Princess; "for a little while since there came a magpie flying with a man's bone in his bill, and let it fall down the chimney. I made all the haste I could to get it out of the house again; but after all my pains, I daresay it's that you smeU." When the Giant heard that, he said no more about it ; but a little while after, he saw how the cupboard was all decked about with flowers and garlands ; so he asked who 66 NOESE TALES. it was that had done that? Who could it be but the Princess ? "And, pray, what's the meaning of all this tom- foolery ? " asked the Giant. " Oh, I'm so fond of you, I couldn't help doing it when I knew that your heart lay there," said the Princess. "How can you be so silly as to believe any such thing?" said the Giant. " Oh yes ; how can I help believing it, when you say it ?" said the Princess. "You're a goose," said the Giant; "where my heart is, you will never come." "Well," said the Princess; "but for all that, 'twould be such a pleasure to know where it really lies." Then the poor Giant could hold out no longer, but was forced to say — "Far, far away in a lake lies an island ; on that island stands a church; in that church is a well; in that well swims a duck ; iu that duck there is an egg, and in. that egg there lies my heart, — you darliug !" In the morning early, while it was still gray dawn, the Giant strode off to the wood. " Yes ! now I must set off too," said Boots ; " if I only knew how to find the way." He took a long, long farewell of the Princess, and when he got out of the Giant's door, there stood the Wolf waiting for him. So Boots told him all that had happened inside the house, and said now he wished to ride to the well in the church, if he only knew the way. So the Wolf bade him jump on his back, he'd soon find the way; and away they went, tiU the wind whistled after them, over hedge and field, over hill and THE GIANT WHO HAD NO HEART IN HIS BODY. 67 dale. After they had travelled many, many days, they came at last to the lake. Then the Prince did not know how to get over it, but the Wolf bade him only not be afraid, but stick on, and so he jumped into the lake with the Prince on his back, and swam over to the island. So they came to the church ; but the church keys hung high, high up on the top of the tower, and at first the Prince did not know how to get them down. " You must caU on the raven," said the Wolf. So the Prince called on the raven, and in a trice the raven came, and flew up and fetched the keys, and so the Prince got into the church. But when he came to the well, there lay the duck, and swam about backwards and forwards, just as the Giant had said. So the Prince stood and coaxed it and coaxed it, till it came to him, and he grasped it in his hand ; but just as he lifted it up from the water the duck dropped the egg into the weU, and then Boots was beside himself to know how to get it out again. "Well, now you must call on the salmon to be sure," said the Wolf; and the king's son called on the salmon, and the salmon came and fetched up the egg from the bottom of the well. Then the Wolf told him to squeeze the egg, and as soon as ever he squeezed it the Giant screamed out. "Squeeze it again," said the WoK; and when the Prince did so, the Giant screamed still more piteously, and begged and prayed so prettily to be spared, saying he would do all that the Prince wished if he would only not squeeze his heart in two. "Tell him, if he will restore to life again your six brothers and their brides, whom he has turned to stone, 68 NOESE TALES. you mil spare his life," said the Wolf. Yes, the Giant was ready to do that, and he turned the six brothers into king's sons again, and their brides into king's daughters. "Now, squeeze the egg in two,'' said the Wolf. So Boots squeezed the egg to pieces, and the Giant burst at once. Now, when he had made an end of the Giant, Boots rode back again on the Wolf to the Giant's house, and there stood all his six brothers alive and merry, with their brides. Then Boots went into the hill-side after his bride, and so they all set off home again to their father's house. And you may fancy how glad the old king was when he saw all his seven sons come back, each with his bride ; — " But the loveliest bride of aU is the bride of Boots, after all," said the king, " and he shall sit uppermost at the table, with her by his side." So he sent out, and called a great wedding-feast, and the mirth was both loud and long ; and if they have not done feasting, why, they are stiQ at it. THE FOX AS HERDSMAJf. 69 THE I'OX AS HEEDSMA17. Once on a time there was a woman who went out to hire a herdsman, and she met a bear. " Whither away, Goody ? " said Bruin. " Oh, I'm going out to hire a herdsman," answered the woman. " Why not have me for a herdsman ? " said Bruin. " Well, why not ? " said the woman. " If you only knew how to call the flock ; just let me hear." " OW, OW !" growled the bear. " No, no ! I won't have you," said the woman, as soon as she heard bim say that, and off she went on her way. So, when she had gone a bit farther, she met a wolf. "Whither away, Goody ?" asked the WoK. " Oh," said she, " I'm going out to hire a herdsman." " Why not have me for a herdsman ?" said the Wolf. " Well, why not ? if you can only call the flock ; let me hear," said she. " Uh, uh !" said the WoE " 1^0, no !" said the woman ; " you'll never do for me." Well, after she had gone a while longer, she met a fox. "Whither away, Goody?" asked the Fox. " Oh, I'm just going out to hire a herdsman," said the woman. 70 NOESB TALES. "Why not have me for your herdsman?" asked the Fox. " Well, why not ?" said she ; " if you only knew how to call the flock ; let me hear." " DiL-DAL-HOLOM," sung out the Fox, in such a fine clear voice. " Yes ; I'll have you for my herdsman," said the woman ; and so she set the Fox to herd her flock. The first day the Fox was herdsman he ate up all the woman's goats ; the next day he made an end of all her sheep ; and the third day he ate up all her kine. So, when he came home at even, the woman asked what he had done with all her flocks ? "Oh!" said the Fox, "their skulls are in the stream, and their bodies in the holt." Now, the Goody stood and churned when the Fox said this, but she thought she might as well step out and see after her flock ; and while she was away the Fox crept iato the churn and ate up the cream. So when the Goody came back and saw that, she fell into such a rage, that she snatched up the little morsel of the cream that was left, and threw it at the Fox as he ran off, so that he got a dab of it on the end of his tail, and that's the reason why the fox has a white tip to his brush. THE MASTERMAID. 71 THE MASTEBMATD. Once on a time there was a king who had several sons — I don't know how many there were — but the youngest had no rest at home, for nothing else would please him but to go out into the world and try his luck, and after a long time the king was forced to give him leave to go. Now, after he had travelled some days, he came one night to a Giant's house, and there he got a place in the Giant's ser- vice. In the morning the Giant went off to herd his goats, and as he left the yard he told the Prince to clean out the stable ; " And after you have done that, you needn't do any- thing else to-day ; for you must know it is an easy master you have come to. But what is set you to do you must do well, and you mustn't think of going into any of the rooms which are beyond that in which you slept, for if you do, I'll take your life." " Sure enough, it is an easy master I have got," said the Prince to himself, as he walked up and down the room, and carolled and sang, for he thought there was plenty of time to clean out the stable. " But stUl it would be good fun just to peep into his other rooms, for there must be something in them which he is afraid lest I should see, since he won't give me leave to go in." So he went into the first room, and there was a pot boil- ing on a hook by the wall, but the Prince saw no fire under- 72 NOESE TALES. neath it. I wonder what is inside it, he thought ; and then he dipped a lock of his hair into it, and the hair seemed as if it were all turned to copper. " What a dainty broth," he said ; " if one tasted it, he'd look grand inside his gullet ;" and with that he went into the next room. There, too, was a pot hanging by a hook, which bubbled and boiled; but there was no fire under that either. "I may as well try this too," said the Prince, as he put another lock into the pot, and it came out aU silyered. " They haven't such rich broth in my father's house," said the Prince ; " but it all depends on how it tastes," and with that he went on into the third room. There, too, hung a pot, and boiled just as he had seen in the two other rooms, and the Priace had a mind to try this too, so he dipped a lock of hair into it, and it came out gilded, so that the Hght gleamed from it. " ' Worse and worse,' said the old wife ; but I say better and better," said the Prince ; " but if he boils gold here, I wonder what he boils in yonder." He thought he might as well see ; so he went through the door into the fourth room. Well, there was no pot ia there, but there was a Princess, seated on a bench, so lovely, that the Prince had never seen anjrthing like her in his born days. " Oh ! in Heaven's name," she said, " what do you want here?" " I got a place here yesterday," said the Prince. " A place, indeed ! Heaven help you out of it." " Well, after all, I think I've got an easy master ; he THE MASTERMAID. 73 hasn't set me much to do to-day, for after I have cleaned out the stable my day's work is over." "Yes, but how will you do it?" she said ; "for if you set to work to clean it like other folk, ten pitchforks full will come in for every one you toss out. But I will teach you how to set to work ; you must turn the fork upside down, and toss with the handle, and then all the dung wUl fly out of itself." " Yes, he would be sure to do that," said the Prince ; and so he sat there the whole day, for he and the Princess were soon great friends, and had made up their minds to have one another, and so the first day of his service with the Giant was not long, you may fancy. But when the evening drew on, she said 'twould be as well if he got the stable cleaned out before the Giant came home ; and when he went to the stable he thought he would just see if what she had said were true, and so he began to work like the grooms in his father's stable ; but he soon had enough of that, for he hadn't worked a minute before the stable was so full of dung that he hadn't room to stand. Then he did as the Princess bade him, and turned up the fork and worked with the handle, and lo ! in a trice the stable was as clean as if it had been scoured. And when he had done his work he went back into the room where the Giant had given him leave to be, and began to walk up and down, and to carol and sing. So after a bit, home came the Giant with his goats. "Have you cleaned the stable ?" asked the Giant. "Yes, now it's all right and tight, master," answered the Prince. " I'll soon see if it is," growled the Giant, and strode 74 NOESE TALES. off to the stable, where he found it just as the Prince had said. " You've been talking to my Mastermaid, I can see," said the Giant; "for you've not sucked this knowledge out of your own breast." "Mastermaid!" said the Prince, who looked as stupid as an owl, " what sort of thing is that, master ? Pd be very glad to see it." "Well, well!" said the Giant; "you'll see her soon enough." Next day the Giant set off with his goats again, and before he went he told the Prince to fetch home his horse, which was out at grass on the hill-side, and when he had done that he might rest aU the day. "For you must know it is an easy master you have come to," said the Giant ; " but if you go into any of the rooms I spoke of yesterday, I'll wring your head off." So off he went with his flock of goats. "An easy master you are indeed," said the Prince; " but for all that, Pll just go in and have a chat with your Mastermaid ; may be she'll be as soon mine as yours." So he went in to her, and she asked him what he had to do that day. " Oh I nothing to be afraid of," said he ; " I've only to go up to the hOl-side to fetch his horse." " Very well ; and how will you set about it ?" " Well, for that matter, there's no great art in riding a horse home. I fancy I've ridden fresher horses before now," said the Prince. " Ah, but this isn't so easy a task as you think ; but I'll teach you how to do it. When you get near it, fire THE MASTEEMAID. 75 and flame will come out of its nostrils, as out of a tar barrel ; tut look out, and take the bit ■whiob hangs behind the door yonder, and throw it right into his jaws, and he win grow so tame that you may do what you like with him." Yes ! the Prince would naind and do that ; and so he sat in there the whole day, talking and chattering with the Mastermaid about one thing and another ; but they always came back to how happy they would be if they could only have one another, and get well away from the Giant ; and, to tell the truth, the Prince would have clean forgotten both the horse and the bill-side, if the Mastermaid hadn't put bim in mind of them when evening drew on, telling him he had better set out to fetch the horse before the Giant came home. So he set off, and took the bit which hung in the corner, ran up the hill, and it wasn't long before he met the horse, with fire and flame streaming out of its nostrils. But he watched his time, and as the horse came ■ open-jawed up to him, he threw the bit into its mouth, and it stood as quiet as a lamb. After that it was no great matter to ride it home and put it up, you may fancy ; and then the Prince went into his room again, and began to carol and sing. So the Giant came home again at even with his goats ; and the first words he said were — " Have you brought my horse down from the hiU. ?" "Yes, master, that I have," said the Prince; "and a better horse I never bestrode ; but for all that I rode him straight home, and put him up safe and sound." " I'll soon see to that," said the Giant, and ran out to the stable, and there stood the horse just as the Prince had said. IQ NOESE TALES. " You've talked to my Mastermaid, I'll be bound, for you haven't sucked this out of your own breast " said the Giant again. " Yesterday master talked of this Mastermaid, and to- day it's the same story," said the Prince, who pretended to be silly and stupid. " Bless you, master ! why don't you show me the thing at once ? I should so like to see it only once in my Hfe." " Oh, if that's all," said the Giant, " you'll see her sooa enough.'' The third day, at dawn, the Giant went off to the wood again with his goats ; but before he went he said to the Prince — " To-day you must go to Hell and fetch my fire-tax. When you have done that you can rest yourself all day, for you must know it is an easy master you have come to ;" and with that off he went. "Easy master, indeed!" said the Prince. "You may be easy, but you set me hard tasks all the same. But I may as well see if I can find your Mastermaid, as you call her. I daresay she'U teU. me what to do ;" and so ia he went to her again. So when the Mastermaid asked what the Giant had set him to do that day, he told her how he was to go to Hell and fetch the fiie-tax. " And how will you set about it?" asked the Master- maid. "Oh, that you must tell me," said the Prince. "I have never been to Hell hi my hfe; and even if I knew the way, I don't know how much I am to ask for." THE MASTERMAID. 77 " Well, m soon tell you," said the Mastermaid ; " you must go to tlie steep rock away yonder, under the hill-side, and take the club that lies there, and knock on the face of the rock. Then there "will come out one all glistening with fire ; to him you must tell your errand ; and when he asks you how much you will have, mind you say, ' As much as I can carry.'" Yes ; he would he sure to say that ; so he sat in there with the Mastermaid all that day too ; and though evening drew on, he would have sat there tOl now, had not the Mastermaid put liim ia mind that it was high time to be off to Hell to fetch the Giant's fire-tax before he came home. So he went on his way, and did just as the Master- maid had