TEUTONIC MYTH AND LEGEND

[Teutonic Knight]

Another class of Scottish giants inhabit caves, and some of them are many-headed. They hoard and guard treasure. Heroes who fight against them are invariably assisted by dogs (dogs "which have their day"), and they are instructed by indispensable wise women 3 who possess magic wands. What appears to be the oldest Thor story belongs to this class. When Thor sets out to visit Geirrod

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he has neither hammer nor belt of strength. The Hag Grid, like the Scottish "wise-woman", warns and instructs him, and gives him her belt and magic wand. In this story Thor flings a boulder and breaks the back of a giantess. He may have wielded thunder-boulders ere his iron hammer was invented.

[Teutonic Knight]

Scottish giants, therefore, are more like the Scandinavian than the Irish variety. If it is held that they were imported by the Vikings, it might be asked why Thor was forgotten, and why the Asa-gods and the Vans were left behind? If they are classed as Irish, it should be noted that the Danann gods, who overcame the Fomors in Erin, are not found in Scotland. Call it be maintained that the Irish brought over their "gods of Night" and left behind their "gods of Day"? In Wales and Cornwall there are also giants of the Scottish type. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in fact, tells us that giants were the sole inhabitants of ancient Britain when Brute and the first men arrived.

[Teutonic Knight]

Beyond the realms of Gaul, beneath the sunset
Lieth an island, girt about by ocean,
Guarded by ocean--erst the haunt of giants. 1
                                            S. Evans's Trans.

[Teutonic Knight]

It would appear that archaic giant-lore is pre-Celtic and pre-Teutonic, and therefore a common inheritance. In the wars of the Olympians and Titans, of the Irish Danann gods and the Fomors, and of the Asa-gods and the Jotuns, we may have echoes of ancient racial conflicts. The old tribal peoples attributed their successes to their gods, and remembered their battles as the battles of rival gods. For these giants are also gods of archaic conception. In Scotland certain of them are associated with the fortunes of families and tribes. On the other hand, gods

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[Teutonic Knight]

are but exalted giants; the boisterous Olympians find their counterpart in the boisterous Scandinavian Jotuns rather than in the more refined Asa-gods and Vans.

With these giants are associated the elves. In Teutonic lore, which is not necessarily wholly of Teutonic origin, the male elves predominate. In Scotland, as in Greece, elves are mainly females, who are ruled over by a queen. There are also Scottish fairy-smiths, but they are one-eyed and Cyclopean, and not always distinguishable from giants. In fact, the Fian-giants are confused with fairies in ail Inverness mound, and Thomas the Rhymer is added in the character of one of the "Seven Sleepers". Danann gods and fairies are similarly mingled in Ireland. It should be noted in this connection that Teutonic elf-smiths are allies of the giants, and they are sometimes stronger than them. When Siegfried overcame the giant doorkeeper of Nibelung, he found that the dwarf was a still more powerful opponent. Thor is friendly with the elves, but Svipdag, son of Egil, the elf, destroys the thunder-god's hammer with the "Sword of Victory".

[Teutonic Knight]

The other class of elves--the "Light-elves"--are vaguely defined in Northern Teutonic Mythology. Frey was their ruler in his youth, which suggests that he is himself an elf exalted to a god. The wise Vans are also elfin in character, and were probably the spirit-folk of ail early seafaring people. The story of the unhappy marriage of Njord and Skade may contain a germ of historic fact-the uncongenial association of a tribe of seafarers with a tribe of huntsmen.

[Teutonic Knight]

The female elves of the commoner type become valkyries; they are also swan-maidens who have tragic liaisons with mankind. Brynhild is a swan-maiden and a valkyrie; she is also in the Nibelungenlied a boulder

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throwing hag. The Balder story, regarding which much has been written, is not, therefore, the only one that underwent radical changes in the process of Mythology-making. According to Professor Frazer in the Golden Bough, Balder was originally a tree-god whose soul was in the mistletoe. The theory is as weighty as is the reputation of that Darwin of folklore.

[Teutonic Knight]

But perhaps the most interesting class of elves are the sons of Ivalde--Volund and his brothers. They display the attributes now of dwarfs, now of giants, and anon of star deities. It would appear that they absorbed more than one ancient personality in an older Mythology than that in which the Odin cult predominates. Rydberg shows that Volund (Wieland) and the giant Thjasse are indistinguishable. A close study of northern folklore supports that view, and an intimate acquaintance with the mental habits of fairy-and-giant-believing people assists one to appreciate it fully. Thjasse is the only giant who is winged like Volund, as Loke and Freyja are the only members of the Asa-clan who can assume bird guise. Thjasse and Volund are also symbolized as mountain wolves; they are both star deities; they are more like one another than the two Balders, and appear to be products of the same ancient welded lore of an earlier mythological system.

[Teutonic Knight]

In the Northern "Story of Creation" these elves, or black dwarfs, are, it is evident, intentionally belittled. They have their origin, like maggots, in Ymer's flesh. Yet they provide the gods with indispensable gifts--Odin with his spear, Thor with his hammer, and Frey with his boar and wondrous ship. In Thjasse's flight to Asgard we may have a story invented purposely to account for his fall, because, like Odin, he is a spirit-god. His other names, Byrr and Gustr, signify wind and gale.

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[Teutonic Knight]

It is not possible now to reconstruct what appears to be a pre-Odin-cult Mythology, in which Ivalde and his sons predominate. The "Milky Way" is "Irmin's Way", and Irmin, invoked by old Hildebrand in the Dietrich story, is "the ruling god It is also Bil's way (Bil is Ivalde's daughter), and as "Bil-rost", according to Rydberg, is the original of Bif-rost. The Anglo-Saxons called the "Milky Way" "Watling Street". 1

Volund's brother Egil, the archer, is associated with the clouds and the sea. Sleet and rain are his arrows; his arrows are also "herrings that leap from the hands of Egil", and herrings are "arrows of the sea". 2 Egil's son, the Iceland Hamlet, is the guardian of the World-Mill; his son Svipdag, with shining sword, resembles a light-hero.

[Teutonic Knight]

In the older moon-myth Gevar, the Gewar of the Hother-Balder story, is the ward of the moon-ship, and it is attacked and burned by Ivalde. The myth is obscure but suggestive; it survives in fragments only. The swan-maids are wooed by Ivalde's three sons, and Ivalde and Gevar have quarrelled violently as rival lovers.

[Teutonic Knight]

This group are hunters, skee-runners, and musicians. They are also connected with an early form of the Balder story. Svipdag, as Hotherus, is the wooer of Gevar's daughter Nanna, and Balder, his rival, falls a victim to his "magic sword" in the heroic story in Saxo. If Balder, as a tree-god, was associated with the tree-well, he may have wooed Nanna of the moon by reflecting her image. In this connection it may be noted that wells sprang up in the hoof marks of Balder's horse,

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and in Saxo's story he provides wells for his thirsting soldiers. His rival would thus be the light-hero Svipdag, with his shining summer sword, which was concealed for a season in the Underworld cave where lie the Seasonal "Seven Sleepers". In Northern Teutonic Mythology the popular Balder becomes the Summer Sun-god. instead of Svipdag, and the only husband of Nanna. If the original story was thus transformed by displacing or changing a hero, the process is a familiar one. The shadowy Hoder may be the original rival lover altered to fit into the new mythological system.

[Teutonic Knight]

It is to this group of ancient tales of rival lovers and swan-maids and moon-maids that we owe the treasures of Middle Age popular romance. The Volsunga-saga and the Nibelungenlied and the Balder heroic story were developed from what Rydberg calls the "Ivalde myth". Svipdag, too, is the original of Siegfried and Sigurd. In his character as a wronged son he suggests Hamlet and Finn-mac-Coul. The latter has a hammer (Ord na Feinne) which links him with Thor, as Thor links with the other giant-killers-Sigurd, Siegfried, and Dietrich. A tribal hero invariably absorbs the attributes of his predecessors, and develops and changes to suit the tastes of audiences and minstrels in various ages and in various countries. In Scandinavia, when the Asa-gods were threatened by the advance of Christianity, Svipdag, as Eric, was exalted as a rival to Christ, and suffered the fate of being associated with the Devil, who was afterwards called "old Erik". Odin was similarly treated; as Nik he became "the old Nick" of Perdition. Finn-mac-Coul was also pictured by early Christian missionaries as an inhabitant of "the lower regions."

[Teutonic Knight]

The Beowulf story is an interesting link between the

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heroic lore of the northern Continental peoples and that of the early Britons. Beowulf, like Dietrich, may have been a historical personage, but in the poem he is a hero of the Svipdag order, yet not necessarily a "light-hero". He slays the warrior-devouring Grendel. Dietrich, in one of the poems of his cycle, also rids the neighbourhood of Attila's court of a man-eating monster. In the next part of Beowulf, which is evidently an addition, whether by the same author or another it matters not here, the hero slays Grendel's mother. Although the poet suggests that she is less formidable than her son, she proves to be a more ferocious opponent. Only by the familiar "magic sword" can she be slain. In this respect she resembles Hilde, the wife of Grim, in the Dietrich story; but she bears a closer resemblance to the British Hag, the mother of the giants. Finn-mac-Coul, when in "The Kingdom of Big Men," had similarly, after slaying sea-giants, to contend against the terrible Sea-Hag-mother. There are several similar stories in Highland giant-lore, and no doubt they were prevalent at one time throughout Britain, especially among members or descendants of the Matriarchal tribes referred to by Cæsar.