Vol. 3 Preface

I could multiply such examples; I could also, if the task were not reserved for others or another occasion, shew in detail that the same mythic basis, which must be assumed for our own heroic lays, was not foreign either to the Carolingian poetry, the product mainly of a German tribe, or even to the British. Arthur belongs to the 'wild host' and the 'heaven's wain,' Morgana coincides with norns and elfins. A great deal nearer still stands Charles with his heroes: he is the Long-beard that sleeps in the mountain and rides on the Karl-wain, his Karl-stone is the same as on the Woden-stone (p. 155), Roland stands on the pillar, Froberge reminded us of Frô (p. 216), and Galans, who plies the forge for these Frankish heroes, is Wayland, Wielant, Völundr. Berthe with the foot, progenitress of Charles, is our Berhta (p. 429); and, attached to her, stand Flore and Blanchefleur with their elvish names (p. 1063). Charle's loved one was an elfin (p. 435), Auberon is Elberich and elf-king; and Maugis = Madalgis, borders on the elvish. Charle's hall resembles that of Asgard (p. 1133n.).

If these investigations have not been a sheer waste of time (and to me it seemed worth the trouble to look into the affairs of our antiquity from all sides), I may now at length attempt an answer to questions, or some of them at least, as to what is the true fundamental character of Teutonic mythology.

Judged by the standard of those mythologies that completed their career from beginning to end, notably the Greek (with which nevertheless it has so many important features in common), it will bear no comparison, if only for the reason that it was interrupted early, before it had produced all that it could have produced. As to our language and poetry, they were sensibly disturbed and hindered too, but they lived on, and could acquire a new impetus; the heathen faith was cut down to the root, and its poor remains could only save themselves by stealth under a new guise. Crude, unkempt it cannot but appear, yet the crude has its simplicity, and the rough its sincerity.

In our heathen mythology certain ideas stand out strong and clear, of which the human heart especially has need, by which it is sustained and cheered. To it the highest god is a father (p. 22), a good father, gofar (p. 167), gaffer, grandfather, who grants salvation and victory to the living, and to the dead an entrance to his dwelling. Death is a going home, a return to the father (p. 839). By the side of the god stands the highest goddess as a mother (p. 22), gammer, grandmother, wise and white ancestress. The god is exalted, the goddess beaming with beauty; both go their rounds and appear in the land, he instructing in war and weapons, she in spinning, weaving, sowing of seed; from him comes the poem, from her the tale. The same paternal authority is deeply stamped on our ancient law, the father taking the newborn son on his lap and acknowledging him; but what we read in some only of our ancient codes, may have been the rule everywhere, namely, that the composition paid to women was originally a higher, a double one. The German reverence for women was already known to Tacitus (p. 397), and history vouches for it in the Mid. Ages: in the heroic lays a greater stress is laid on Mother Uote than on the father of the heroes, as Brunhild towers even above Siegfried (see Suppl.). By the side of the beautiful description of mother's love in the Vita Mahthildis (Pertz 6, 298) we can put this touch by Rudlieb 1, 52: 'Ast per cancellos post hunc pascebat ocellos Mater,' as her son was departing. Whenever in dry old Otfried I come to the lines iv. 32: wir sîn gibot ouh wirkên, inti bî unsa muater thenkên (we his bidding also do, and of our mother think), it moves me to melancholy, I don't know whether he meant the church, or her that bore him, I think of my own dear mother (Dorethea Grimm, b. 20 Nov. 1755, d. 27 May 1808). Another thing also we learn from the oldest history of our people, that modesty and virtue had never fled from the land; beside Tacitus, we may rely on Salvian (5^th cent.) as the most unimpeachable of witnesses. Refined grace might be wanting, nay, it has often retired before us, and been washed out of remembrance; to the Greeks Apollo, Pallas, Aphrodite stood nearer, their life was brighter like their sky. Yet Frô and Frouwa appear altogether as kind and loving deities, in Wuotan I have produced the god of song, and as Wish he may have been a god of longing and love. However many blossoms of our old mythology and poetry may lie undisclosed and withered, one thing will not escape the eye of a judge, that our poesy still has virgin forms and unlaboured adornment at her command, which, like certain plants, have disappeared from hotter climes.

When the plastic and poetic arts have sprung out of a people's faith, they adorn and protect it by imperishable works; yet another fact must not be overlooked, that both poets and artists insensibly deviate from the sanctity of the old type, and adopt an independent treatment of sacred subjects, which, ingenious as it may be, mars the continuity of tradition. The tragedians will alter for their own ends what epic had handed down entire; the sculptors, striving after naked forms of beauty, will, in favour of it, sacrifice if need be the significant symbol; as they can neither bring in all the features of the myth, nor yet find the whole of them sufficient, they must omit some things and add others. Sculpture and the drama aim at making the gods more conceivable to the mind, more human; and every religion that is left free to unfold itself will constantly fall back upon man and the deepest thoughts he is capable of, to draw from them a new interpretation of the revealed. As in statues the rigid attitude unbent itself and the stiff folds dropt away, so devotion too in her converse with deity will not be needlessly shackled. In the same way language, even in the hands of poets, declines from the sensuous perfection of poetry to the rational independence of prose.

The grossness that I spoke of would have disappeared from the heathen faith had it lasted longer, though much of the ruggedness would have remained, as there is in our language something rough-hewn and unpolished, which does not unfit it for all purposes, and qualifies it for some. There goes with the German character a thoughtful earnestness, that leads it away from vanity and brings it on the track of the sublime. This was noticed even by Tacitus, whose words, though discussed in the book (p. 70-1, 104-5), will bear repeating: 'Ceterum nec cohibere parietibus deos, neque in ullam humani oris speciem assimilare, ex magnitudine coelestium arbitrantur. Lucos ac nemora consecrant, deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident.' This is no empty phrase, this 'arbitrantur' and 'appellant' must have come of inquiries, which a Roman, if he wished to understand anything of the Germani, had first of all to set a-going. That is how it actually was in Germany at that time, such answer had German men given, when asked about the temples and images of their gods. Temples are first built to hold statues: so long as these were not, neither were those. Anything mentioned in later centuries, or occurring by way of exception among particular tribes, seems to have been corruption and confusion, to which there was no want of prompting. All the Scandinavian temples and idols fall into this later time, or they have their reason in the difference of race.

That notable piece of insight shows us the whole germ of Protestantism. It was no accident, but a necessity, that the Reformation arose first in our country, and we should long ago have given it our undivided allegiance, had not a stir been made against it from abroad. It is remarkable how the same soil of Old-German faith in Scandinavia and Britain proved receptive of Protestant opinion; and how favourable to it a great part of France was, where German blood still held its ground. As in language and myth, so in the religious leanings of a people there is something indestructible.

Gods, i.e. a multiplication of the one supreme incomprehensible Deity, could only be conceived of by Germans as by others under a human form (p. 316), and celestial abodes like earthly houses are ascribed to them. But here comes a difference, in this reluctance to exhibit the immeasurable (that magnitudo coelestium) in visible images, and confine it between earthly walls. To make a real portrait of Deity is clean impossible, therefore such images are already prohibited in the Old Test. decalogue; Ulphilas renders eidwlon by galiug or galiuga-guð (lie-god), meaning that any representation of a god was a lie; and the first christian centuries abhorred image-worship, though it gradually found its way into the church again. The statues of Greek gods, we know, proceeded originally from a sacred type, which only by degrees became more secular; the paintings of the Mid. Ages, and even Raphael's great soul-stirring compositions, for want of such a type, were obliged to invent their figures, the legend from which artists chiefly drew their subjects being already song or story; accordingly these pictures stand lower than the works of Greek art, and the spirit of Protestantism insists on their being bundled out of the churches. But if our heathen gods were imagined sitting on mountains and in sacred groves, then our medieval churches soaring skyward as lofty trees, whose sublime effect is unapproached by any Greek pediments and pillars, may fairly be referable to that Old German way of thinking. Irmansûl and Yggdrasill were sacred trees, rearing their heads into the breezes: the tree is the steed (drasill, the snorter) on which Wuotan, the bodeful thrill of nature, stormfully careers: Yggr signifies shudder, thrill of terror (p. 120, and Suppl.). By the Old German forest-worship I also explain the small number of the priests, who only begin to multiply in temples entrusted to their charge.

Of all forms of belief, the Monotheistic is at once the most agreeable to reason and the most honouring to Deity. It also seems to be the original form, out of whose lap to a childlike antiquity Polytheism easily unfolded itself, by the loftiest attributes of the one God being conceived first as a trilogy, then as a dodecalogy. This arrangement comes out in all the mythologies, and especially clear, I think, in ours: almost all the gods appear unequal in rank and power, now superior, now subordinate, so that, mutually dependent, they must all at last be taken as emanations of a highest and only One. What is offensive in polytheism is thereby diminished (p. 176). For even in the heathen breast a consciousness of such subordination could hardly be quite extinct, and the slumbering faith in a highest god might wake up any moment.

To point out these groups of deities from our half dried-up sources was beyond my power, but the threes and twelves of the Edda are indicated, p. 335. The Greeks however differ in having only one twelve, consisting of six gods and six goddesses, while of the âses and âsynjas there are twelve each, making together twice as many deities as the Greek. Twelve chairs are set for the gods sitting in council (p. 858). Sometimes the highest god has twelve inferiors added to him, which raises the total by one: Loki is called the thirteenth among the gods, and Gnâ among the goddesses. Snorri 211b names thirteen âses, and even more âsynjas. These triads and twelves of the gods are reflected again in the heroes and wise-women: Mannus begot three sons, heads of races (p. 345. 395), Heimdall founded three orders, the Ynglînga saga 2, 7 calls Oðin's fellow-gods his twelve princes (höfdîngar); Westmar has twelve sons (Saxo Gram. p. 68); there were thirteen valkyrs (p. 421), and three norns. In Welf's retinue are twelve heroes (p. 395); king Charles's twelve might indeed be traced to the twelve apostles, and the poem itself points to that, but the same thing is found in numberless myths and legends. The might of the godlike king flashes forth yet again in his heroes.