THREE SCANDINAVIAN MYTHS

THE original myths of all peoples, when we trace them to their occult significance, will be found to embody some deep meaning, although this is not unfrequently overlaid by stupid additions of later ages. No myths are more worthy of study than those of the Scandinavian peoplesown cousins of our great-great-grandfathers a score of generations back. Of the three Scandinavian myths which we here reproduce, the first is notable because, like some of the discourses of our Lord, it contains not only the parable, but the interpretation thereof:

I.-THOR AND THE GIANT SKRYMIR.

ONCE in his journeyings, Thor and his comrades came to what seemed to be a large house, having a broad hall, out of which ran

the trees to their very tops. As Thor approached, the giant rose to his feet, and from his great blue eyes looked down upon the intruder. "Who are

you?" asked Thor; "and

why do you snore so ?"

Without saying a word, Thor flung his hammer straight at the head of the giant; but Skrymir merely said: "Aha! it seems that a leaf must have blown against my face."

Thor's hammer always came straight back to his hand, no matter how far he had flung it. He threw it again with all his might. Skrymir put his hand to his forehead, saying:

"I think that an acorn has dropped on my forehead." Thor threw his hammer a third time. But Skrymir laughed aloud.

"Oho," said he, "a bird has been flying by and has dropped a feather on my face," and without another word Skrymir turned his back and stole away.

Thor and his two comrades, the ever-hungry Loki and the swift-footed Thialfi, went onward a long way till they

"My name is Skrymir," replied the giant, and his voice sounded as if it came from some mountain-top, so high was his head above the ground. "I know who you are," he continued. "You are Thor, of Asgard. I have heard enough of you. But tell me now what you think of my glove." So saying, he stooped down and picked up what Thor had supposed to be a great house, and in which he and his companions had passed the night; but which was, in truth, only the giant's glove.

"Skrymir are you?" said Thor; "I have heard of you; and I am come here to Jötunheim to try my hand against just such giants as you are."

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"Try it, and welcome," said Skrymir.

came to the great city of Utgard. They entered the royal palace, in whose wide hall was a table spread with food, and around it sat the giant King and his nobles at dinner.

Thor ap proached and made his greetings.

"I know

who you are,

my little fellow," said the King; "you are Thor. But here no one sits down to

meat until he has shown himself worthy of the honor by performing some wonderful feat. Now what can you and your fellows do to

prove your

selves worthy of eating with us ?"

"I can eat as much as anybody," answered Loki. "Very well," said the King. "Let Logi be summoned to the hall."

A tall, meagre man made his appearance, and a huge platter of meat was placed between him and Loki, and they set to work, one at each end. In a few minutes they met at the middle of the dish; but though Loki had eaten his half of the meat, Logi had devoured the bones also. Loki acknowledged himself vanquished, and Thialfi was asked what he could do.

"I will run a race with any man here," replied Thialfi. The King beckoned to Hügi, a slender youth, and the two racers started off together.

Thialfi ran swiftly- —as swiftly as a deer chased by hounds; but Hügi ran faster still, and, passing the goal, he turned round and met Thialfi halfway in the course. Three times was this repeated, and with the same result. So Thialfi acknowledged himself beaten. It was now Thor's turn. "What feat do you propose ?" asked the Utgard King. "I will try a drinking-match with any of you," replied

Thor.

"Very well," answered the king; "let the goblet be brought."

The goblet was not so very large. "Now," said the King, "anybody can drain this goblet at three draughts; if it is done at two, it is very fair drinking; but the man who can drain it at one draught is a stout fellow."

Thor lifted the goblet, and took a long pull; but when he set it down, it was almost as full as before. He lifted it again, and swallowed with all his might until his breath failed him. The mead was lowered a little, but was still almost up to the brim of the goblet. He tried a third time, but by all the three draughts only a very small portion of the liquor had disappeared.

"Aha!" said the King, glancing around at the company; "it is pretty clear that this Thor is by no means the kind of man that we have always supposed him to be." Thor was nettled.

I am that Skrymir whom you met in the forest. When you flung your hammer at me with such sure aim it would each time have crushed my head like an egg-shell, had not my magic art enabled me to place a mountain between me and you. Your hammer struck that mountain and not me. Go past the place when you return home, and you will find that mountain with three deep clefts in it, which will in time become verdant valleys. These are the places where your hammer struck. So, too, your senses were deceived in the contests of to-day. When Loki and Logi sat down before the platter, Loki ate as though he were Hunger itself; but Logi is Fire, which consumes bones as well as flesh. Thialfi is the most swift-footed of men; but Hügi is my Thought, and nothing can equal the speed of Thought. So, too, of your own trials. That which you supposed to be a goblet was the great ocean, and when you go down to the shore you will see how much your draughts have diminished its waters. Hereafter, when men shall note the ebb and flow of the tides, they will say, 'Thor is drinking.' What you thought to be a cat was Midgard, the great serpent, whose folds encircle the world and keep all things in their place. When we saw her moved ever so little, we trembled lest the very foundations of the land and the seas were to be shaken by your might. Nor need you be ashamed that you were unable to contend with

"Well," replied the King, "it shall not be a very hard one; one which our children are fond of playing; but it takes a stout boy of ten years to do it. You see my gray cat there ?—just lift her clear up from the ground, so that she will not touch it."

Thor put his hand gently under the cat, and lifted; but she was immovable. Gradually, he put forth all his strength, and tugged away as he had never tugged before; but the most he could do was to raise the cat so far that one foot was clear of the floor.

"I thought it would be so," said the King, with a sneering smile. "The cat is truly a pretty big one for such a little fellow as Thor to lift."

Thor grew mad with mingled mortification and wrath. "You think me a little fellow, do you?" he cried. "Well, I defy any one of you to wrestle a fall with me !"

"I do not think that any man here would think it worth his while to wrestle with you. But if you really wish to try a fall, there's that old crone Elli; she has in her day thrown down some men stouter than Thor will ever be."

Elli came forward. She was old, withered and toothless. Thor shrank from the thought of pitting himself against her; but he had challenged anybody there, and she had accepted the challenge; so he had no choice. The contest was long and earnest. Do what he might, Thor could not move the old woman from her feet; while she, on her part, seemed inclined to let him weary himself out in vain efforts. At last, Thor felt a strange weariness come over him. He tottered and sank on one knee before his strange antagonist.

At this sight the giants laughed in derision; but the king bade them to be quiet, and with unlooked-for courtesy invited Thor and his companions to seat themselves at the board. Thor could not well refuse the courteous invitation, but said:

"I must own that we have acquitted ourselves but poorly, and this grieves me, for I know that in Jötunheim it will be said that Thor and his friends were men of little worth."

"Not so, by my word," replied the King. "You little dream what you have done, and whom you have encountered. see you do not know me in my present aspect.

whom she will not, sooner or later, lay low."

So runs this myth, the meaning of which is clear enough ; All the Powers which bear rule in the present order of things, are yet subject to a higher Power which governs them, and from whose decrees there is no escape. The Scandinavian myths of Odin and Thor and Skrymir thus link themselves with the older and purer Greek mythology, the exponent of which is the "Prometheus" of Eschylus, not the "Iliad" of Homer.

II. ODIN AND THE DWARFS.

ODIN sat in the halls of his Valhalla, looking down upon the world below. Nothing escaped his vision, and, in the end, no wrong or evil will go unrighted; nay, what seems wrong will be overruled so as to result in a higher good.

"The men of the earth," said Odin to himself, "are idle and stupid. There are dwarfs and elves among them who play upon them all manner of tricks, which they cannot understand, and do not know how to prevent. At this moment I see a husbandman who is sowing grains of wheat; behind him runs a dwarf who changes the wheat into stones. There I see two hideous little creatures who have been holding under water the head of a man until he was drowned. They have mixed his blood with honey, which they have put into a jar, and given to a giant to keep for them. I must put an end to all this."

So Odin sent Helmod, his "Flying Word," to summon all the dwarfs and elves to appear before him. Soon the little creatures, conducted by Helmod, made their appear ance, rendering obeisance to Odin, each in his or her own fashion. Odin spake to them gravely, and recounted all their misdeeds. The rude gnomes only grinned, while the light elves wept, for they are at bottom tender-hearted creatures. Odin turned sternly to the two dwarfs whom he had seen drowning the man.

"Whose blood was it," he asked, "that you mixed with honey, and put into a jar ?"

"Oh," said the dwarfs, as though the matter was a You know who he was. clever joke; "that was Kvasir. Well, he has been wandering up and down for seven years, and looked so wise that men thought he must be one of the gods. We found him lying dead in the meadow, drowned in his own wisdom; so we took his blood and mixed it with

ODIN AND THE DWARFS.-SEE PAGE 202.

AMONG THE TOMBS.

BY S. B. LUCE.

sufficient! It might have been the fiery Tybalt's, or the brave and generous Mercutio's such mistakes were possible in the lapse of ages. But the pretty brunette who acted as guide told the whole story, and said most positively it was Juliet's tomb; so Juliet's tomb it is.

While pondering upon poor Juliet's fate, I suddenly discovered that I was standing over the grave of another lady-one who, for all I was aware, equally deserved my pity. "Hic jacet," said the "voiceful stone"

"Hic jacet Dn. Margarita Bellasia.
An. D., MDCXVII."

"And what of Margarita ?" I asked of my communicative guide, as I stepped reverently aside from Miss Bellasia's grave. But it was only an arching of the eyebrows, a rippling smile and a shrug that was vouchsafed for reply. And is it really so? thought I. Does this poor child of humanity lie here unheeded? Is her very name trampled upon by the multitude who visit as a shrine the last resting-place of-of whom? a mere figment of the human brain! The remains of one were once animated by an immortal soulthe other was a mere ideal creation of man. The one may even now be an angel in heaven-the other but a phantasm which lives in the imagination alone. And yet, true it is, that the one who had the real existence has long ceased to be remembered here on earth, while the fictitious lives in the memory with perennial freshness. There may have been once a living Juliet, tradition dating her story far back-nearly six centuries ago-just as there may have been a living type of the frail and lovely Helen of Sparta. To this class of mythical heroines there are not

a tomb but in my heart?""

FINDING myself, on one occasion, in the ancient city of Verona, with a few hours to spare, and impelled by idle curiosity, I repaired to the house known as No. 17 Strada Capello. A cardinal's hat, which embellished the front, indicated that the house had once been the abode of the irascible Capulet, father to the too-confiding Juliet; while the bundle of straw which depended from the arched entrance signified that this once lordly mansion was now a hostelry-the Hat Tavern, in fact-where man and beast might find food and shelter.

Entering the courtyard, I could not but speculate curiously as to what particular part of the crazy old balcony above had been the "east," when Juliet was the "sun." But, amid the dirt and confusion which on every side prevailed, scarcely a passage of the play, which has rendered the wretched place so famous, could be recalled; nor a note of the delicious music to which Bellini has set the rhythmical name of Giulietta.

Hastening from "The Sign of the Hat," I proceeded to Juliet's tomb. There it is!-a crumbling, much-defaced old sarcophagus, but happy once in its cold and stiff embrace of Juliet's graceful form. Let it not be asked how we know this to be Juliet's tomb. We know it, and that is

gentle Ruth of Moab: just as the uninstructed eye refers all the stars of the firmament to one common plane. But the character of Ruth shines for all time with unborrowed light, forming one of an unbroken series which, like the planets, beginning at the furthest reaches of human ken, leads right up to the Sun of Righteousness. The former may be compared to those stars which have actually disappeared from the firmament, though their lingering light still trembles through the realms of space.

But why moralize over the grave of a fictitious Juliet and a real Margarita, when, if we may judge from the records of the past, the Divine Author of our being never intended that man should bestow such care upon his last resting-place; as if he were to be remembered by that alone? His own chosen instrument, Moses, was one of the greatest statesmen and lawgivers of sacred or profane history, as he was one of the greatest of military leaders. He was taken away when at the full tide of his earthly fame; on the eve of the accomplishment of one of the most momentous campaigns of all time, and in the full vigor of manhood-" his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated"-he died, in fact, at the very time when worldly fame would have accorded to him the highest posthumous honors; and yet he was buried so quietly that, even when

the record of his death was penned, "no man knew of his sepulchre."

No one, not divinely inspired, ever exercised greater influ ence over human reasoning than Socrates. His name will continue to be venerated by civilized man as long as civilization continues to exist; and yet, who can point out the last resting-place of his remains? Pagan as he was, he had divined the great mystery of the soul's immortality, and held his mortal clay of little account.

"In what way do you wish that we should bury you?" asks, in the last sad hour of his earthly career, his loving disciple Crito.

"Any way you like, if you can get hold of me," answers this true philosopher. "I, who am now talking to you, am the real Socrates; not that body you shall presently see stretched upon the floor. After I have drank the hemlock I shall be with you no longer, but shall depart to some blessedness of the blessed."

How much is the science of to-day indebted to Archimedes! yet even in Cicero's time, not only his grave, but he himself, was unknown to the Syracusans. It was only by diligent search among the tangled waste of the suburbs of their city that the Roman quæstor discovered the crumbling stone that marked the great geometrician's grave. He identified it, finally, in a tombstone bearing the carved figure of a cylinder circumscribing a sphere; for it was by the discovery of the relations of these two figures-as 3 to 2-that the great Syracusan wished to be remembered. But not the monumental stone only, but the Syracuse of that day, has long since disappeared; while thousands of textbooks containing the well-known theorem keep the memory of Archimedes for ever

green.

Sir Walter Scott, in relating the fate of Lord Marmion, has well pictured the utter vanity of monumental splendor. It will be remembered how the story, in gently flowing verse, goes on to tell that after "Flodden's fatal fleld "

"Fitz-Eustace' care A pierced and mangled body bare To moated Lichfield's lofty pile: And there, beneath the southern aisle A tomb with gothic sculpture fair Did long Lord Marmion's image bear.

And thus, in the proud Baron's tomb, The lowly woodsman took the room.

Less easy task it were to shew

Lord Marmion's nameless grave and low; They dug his grave e'en where he lay,

But every mark has gone."

How much more enduring deeds are than stone, the world's history affords a thousand examples. Homer lived so long ago, that the fact of his very existence has been questioned; and yet, in the earlier dawn of literature, he created for himself, in the Iliad, a monument that is to-day as fresh and as green as the everlasting hills, and one that will only sink into decay with the literature of which it forms so great an ornament. So Shakespeare's works are his monument; and they will perpetuate his name long after Westminster Abbey shall have crumbled into dust. Those who visit Hamlet's grave at Elsinore, or the tomb of Juliet at Verona, do involuntary homage to the genius who created those characters, and, as it were, breathed into them the breath of life.

It was with some such thoughts as these that we read, with feelings of satisfaction, the epitaph inscribed upon the tomb erected to Alexander Hamilton in Old Trinity churchyard, New York. After extolling his merits as a patriot, a soldier, and a statesman, the lines conclude by saying that his "virtues will be admired by a grateful posterity dong? after this marble shall have moldered into dust."

Some of the "names that were not born to die," are written among the eternal stars, as those of Copernicus and Kepler; of Galileo and Herschel; others are inscribed on

There erst was martial Marmion found,

His feet upon a couchant hound,

His hands to heaven upraised; And all around, on scutcheon rich, And tablet carved and fretted niche,

His arms and feats were blazed. And yet, though all was carved so fair, And priests for Marmion breathed the prayer,

The last Lord Marmion lay not there!"

The familiar story goes on to relate that a peasant swain had followed his lord to Flodden Plain, and, sore wounded, had dragged himself to the foot of Sibyl's Cross-

"and died

Close by the noble Marmion's side. The spoilers stripped and gashed the slain,

And thus their corpses were mista'en;