Vol. 3 Preface

Now whence can these details have been imported into the homespun fairy-tale? Every country has them at its fingers' ends. To take another striking instance: the story of the three cousins (p. 415) who had spun till the nose of one grew long, another's eyes red, and another's fingers thick, is told still more vividly in Norway (Asb. and Moe, no. 13), and most vividly in Scotland (Chambers, p. 54-5). Or the changeling's unfailing formula (pp. 469. 927), was that conveyed from Denmark to Scotland, from Ireland to Hesse? Was the legend of the willow that has never heard a cock crow (p. 1243) handed over by the Romans to the Poles; and the myth of the thunder-bolt by the Greek to the slav, by the Slav to the German? Did a little bird always pick up the legendary seed, and lug it over hill and dale to other lands? I believe Myth to be the common property of many lands, that all its ways are not yet known, but that it is properest to that nation with whose gods it closely coalesces, as a word common to several languages may best be claimed by that one which can explain its root. The legend of Tell relates no real event, yet, without fabrication or lying, as a genuine myth it has shot up anew in the bosom of Switzerland, to embellish a transaction that took hold of the nation's inmost being.

I do not deny for a moment, that beside this mysterious diffusion of myths there has also been borrowing from without, nay, that they could be purposely invented or imported, though it is a harder matter than one would imagine for this last sort to take root among the people. Roman literature has from early times spread itself over other European lands, and in certain cases it may be quite impossible to strike the balance between its influence and that inner growth of legend. And nowhere is extrinsic influence less a matter of doubt than where, by the collision of christian doctrine with heathenism among the converted nations, it became unavoidable to abjure the old, and in its place to adopt or adapt what the new faith introduced or tolerated.

Oftentimes the Church---and I have specified sundry instances---either was from the outset, or gradually became, tolerant and indulgent. She prudently permitted, or could not prevent, that heathen and christian things should here and there run into one another; the clergy themselves would not always succeed in marking off the bounds of the two religions; their private leanings might let some things pass, which they found firmly rooted in the multitude. In the language, together with a stock of newly imported Greek and Latin terms, there still remained, even for ecclesiastical use, a number of Teutonic words previously employed in heathen services, just as the names of gods stood ineradicable in the days of the week; to such words old customs would still cling, silent and unnoticed, and take a new lease of life. The festivals of a people present a tough material, they are so closely bound up with its habits of life, that they will put up with foreign additions, if only to save a fragment of festivities long loved and tried. In this way Scandinavia, probably the Goths also for a time, and the Anglo-Saxons down to a late period, retained the heathenish Yule, as all Teutonic Christians did the sanctity of Eastertide; and from these two the Yule-boar and Yule-bread, the Easter pancake, Easter sword, Easter fire and Easter dance could not be separated. As faithfully were perpetuated the name and in many cases the observances of Midsummer. New christian feasts, especially of saints, seem purposely as well as accidentally to have been made to fall on heathen holidays. Churches often rose precisely where a heathen god or his sacred tree had been pulled down, and the people trod their old paths to the accustomed site: sometimes the very walls of the heathen temple became those of the church, and cases occur in which idol-images still found a place in a wall of the porch, or were set up outside the door, as at Bamberg cathedral there lie Slavic-heathen figures of animals inscribed with runes. Sacred hills and fountains were re-christianed after saints, to whom their sanctity was transferred; sacred woods were handed over to the newly-founded convent or the king, and even under private ownership did not altogether lose their long-accustomed homage. Law-usages, particularly the ordeals and oath-takings, but also the beating of bounds, consecrations, image-processions, spells and formulas, while retaining their heathen character, were simply clothed in christian forms. In some customs there was little to change: the heathen practice of sprinkling a newborn babe with water (vatni ausa p. 592, dicare p. 108, line 5) closely resembled christian baptism, the sign of the hammer that of the cross, and the erection of tree-crosses the irmensûls and world-trees of paganism. Still more significant must appear that passage where Völuspâ and the Bible coincide (p. 811); in the far later Sôlar-lioð traces of christian teaching are discernible.

In a conflux of so many elements it could not but happen, even where the mental conceptions and views of a simple populace unable to do without myths had felt the full force of the revolution, that in its turn the Old, not wholly extinct, should half unconsciously get interwoven with the irrepressible New. Jewish and christian doctrine began to lean towards heathen, heathen fancies and superstitions to push forward and, as it were, take refuge in all the places they found unoccupied by the new religion. Here we find christian material in a heathen form, there heathen matter in a christian disguise.

As the goddess Ostara was converted into a notion of time, so was Hellia into one of place. The beliefs of our forefathers about elves and giants got intensified and expanded into angels and devils, but the legends remained the same. Wuotan, Donar, Zio, Phol put on the nature of malignant diabolic beings, and the story of their solemn yearly visitation shaped itself into that of a wild rabble rout, which the people now shunned with horror, as formerly they had thronged to those processions.

Veiled under the biblical names of Cain, Elias, Enoch, Antichrist, Herodias, there come into view the same old myths about moon-spots, giants' buildings, a god of thunder and of storm, the gracious (holde) night-dame and the burning of the world. And what arrests our attention still more is, that to the Virgin Mary we apply a whole host of charming legends about Holda and Frouwa, norns and valkyrs, as the Romans did those about Venus, Juno and the parcae; nay, in the fairy-tale, dame Holle and Mary can usurp the place of gray-hatted Wuotan. What a tender fragrance breathes in those tales of Mary, and what has any other poetry to put by the side of them? To the kindly heathen traits is superadded for us that sense of superior sanctity which encompasses this Lady. Herbs and flowers are named after Mary, her images are carried about, and, quite in accordance with the heathen worship, installed on forest trees. She is a divine mother, she is a spinning-wife, she appears as maid of mercy (vierge secourable) to whosoever calls upon her. To the country folk in Italy, Mary stands well in the foreground of their religion; the Madonnas of several churches in Naples are looked upon as so many different divine beings, and even as rivals, and a Santa Venere by their side gives no offence. Three Marys together (p. 416, note) resemble the three norns and three fays; Mary carries stones and earth in her apron (p. 537) like Athena or the fay. The worship of Mary altogether, being neither founded on Scripture nor recognised by the first centuries, can only be explained by the fact of those pretty and harmless but heathen fancies having taken such deep root in the people that the Church also gradually combined with them a more daintly devised and statelier devotion (attentio) which we find woven into numerous legends and sermons.

But Mary does not stand alone by a long way. Immediately at her side there has grown up in the Catholic and Greek churches an interminable adoration of Saints, to make up for heathen gods of the second or third rank, for heroes and wise-women, and to fill the heart by bridging the gulf between it and pure Deity. Dogma may distinguish between Deity and intercessors; but how many a pious lip, moving in prayer before the sacred image, must be unaware of this distinction, or forget it! And further, among the saints themselves there are various grades, and the particular troubles under which they can be of service are parcelled out among them like so many offices and lines of business, so that almost every disease and its remedy are called by the name of their saint; this division of tasks has the strongest analogy to the directions given in Norse and Lithuanian mythology for the invocation of the several deities (p. 335). The victorious hero who had slain the dragon made room for Michael or George; and the too pagan Siegberg (p. 198), which may have meant the same as Eresberg (p. 201), was handed over to Michael, as the mons Martis in France was turned into a mons martyrum, Montmartre. It is remarkable that the Ossets have converted the dies Martis into Georgeday, and dies Veneris into Mary's day (Pott 1, 105. 2, 802). The places of Oðinn and of Freyja in minni-drinking are taken by John and by Gertrude, a saint who in other ways also has changed places with the goddess (pp. 61. 305. 673); but we can easily see why the heathen counterpart to a saint's legend is oftener to be found in the Roman than in our German mythology. The Church in her saints and canonizations had not the wit to keep within bounds, and the disproportion comes out most glaringly in the fact that the acts and miracles of the Saviour and his apostles are in some cases outdone by those of the saints. Whoever would push these investigations further, as they deserve to be pushed, will have to take particular notice, what saints are the first to emerge in the popular faith of any country, and which of them in poems and in forms of benediction have gradually slipt into the places of the old gods.

Here let me illustrate the more or less thorough interpenetration and commingling of Christian and heathen legend by two examples, which seem to me peculiarly important.

It must be regarded as one of the original possessions common to our mythologies, that the God, or two gods, or three, descend from heaven to earth, whether to prove men's works and ways (p. 337), or in search of adventures. This does violence to the christian belief in God's omnipresence and omniscience; but it is a very pleasing fancy, that of the gods in person walking the earth unrecognized, and dropping in at the houses of mortals. Even the Odyssey 17, 485-7 alludes to such wanderings, in which is found the loftiest consecration of hospitality: a man will be loth to turn away a stranger, under whose guise a celestial god may be visiting him. A Greek myth with details appears in the story of Orion: three gods, Zeus, Poseidon, Hermes (some say Zeus, Ares, Hermes = Donar, Zio, Wuotan) take lodging with Hyrieus, and after being feasted, give him leave to ask a favour; he wishes for a son, and they create him one much in the same way as Kvâsir was engendered (p. 902, conf. 1025n). Ovid's Fasti 5, 495-535. Hyginus 195 relates the same fable of the Thracian Byrseus. In the beautiful legend of Philemon and Baucis (Ovid's Met. 8, 626-721), Jupiter and Mercury are travelling, and reward their kind entertainers by saving them from the impending deluge (p. 580); a fable of Phaedrus makes the divine messanger alone, the god of roads and highways, pass the night with mortals (Mercurium, hospitio mulieres olim duae illiberali et sordido receperant). But Demeter also is at times represented as travelling and associating with men, as would be natural for all mothers of gods; Aesop in Fab. 54 makes Demeter travel with a swallow and an eel, but when they came to a river the bird flew up, the fish slipt into the water, and what did Demeter do? With the Indians it is principally Brahma and Vishnu that visit the earth. In a Lithuanian legend Perkunos walks the earth at the time when beast yet spoke; he first met the horse, and asked his way. 'I have no time to shew thee the way, I have to eat.' Hard by was an ox grazing who had heard the traveller's request: 'Come stranger,' he cried, 'I will shew thee the way to the river.' Then said the god to the horse: 'As thou couldst not for eating find time to do me a turn of kindness, thou shalt for a punishment be never satisfied;' then to the ox: 'Thou good-natured beast shalt conveniently appease thy hunger, and after chew the cud at thine ease, for thou wert ready to serve me.' This myth likewise inculcates kindness to the stranger, and for Perkunos subsequent narrators could without scruple substitute the Saviour. In the Edda it is always Oðinn, Loki and Hœnir that go on journeys together, the same three Ases that also co-operate in creating (p. 560), the Loðr and Loki are apparently one (p. 241), and in this connexion Loki has nothing base or bad about him. Hœnir is called in Sn. 106 sessi, sinni, mâli Oðins (sodalis, comes, collocutor Odini). These three Ases set out on a journey, and at night seek a lodging; in the stories preserved to us no mention is made of a trial of hospitality. In a later saga Oðinn with Loki and Hœnir rides to the chase (Müller's Sagabibl. 1, 364); and a remarkable lay of the Faröe Isles (Lyngbye pp. 500 seq.) presents the same three, Ouvin, Höner and Lokkji, not indeed as travelling, but as succouring gods, who when called upon immediately appear, and one after the other deliver a boy whom giant Skrujmsli is pursuing, by hiding him, quite in fairy-tale fashion, in an ear of barley, a swan's feather, and a fish's egg. There were doubtless many more stories like this, such as the Norwegian tale in Asbiörn. no. 21, conf. p. 423. As bearing upon their subsequent transference, it must not be overlooked that in Fornm. sög. 9, 56. 175 Oðinn on horseback calls one evening at a blacksmith's, and has his horse shod; his identity with Hermes becomes quite startling in these myths. At other times however it is Thôrr with his heavy hammer (p. 180) that seeks a lodging, like Zeus, and when he stays the night at the peasant's, Loki accompanies Thôrr (Sn. 49); then again Heimdallr, calling himself Rîgr, traverses the world, and founds the families of man. The Finnish legend makes Wäinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkainen travel (rune 23), quite on a par with Oðinn, Loki, and Hœnir.