than the Celtic representatives of the sun, since he is born in the Halls of the West during the night, and rises in the morning to conquer the power of darkness to which Balder had succumbed. These less illustrious brothers of his have their counterparts in Celtic, not so much perhaps in Lug's more obscure incarnations, as in Cúchulainn's comrades and rivals, Loegaire and Conall, the latter of whom, second only to Cúchulainn himself in valour, survived to be the avenger of his death.
It is remarkable that Balder has a dwelling-place in the heavens, and this seems to refer to the arctic summer, when the sun prolongs his stay above the horizon. The pendant to the picture would naturally be his staying as long in the nether world. At length a general weeping for Balder takes place—a tender touch which the writer of the Prose Edda seems to have correctly interpreted by a reference to the tears, as it were, with which most objects are bedewed when warmer weather follows a hard frost. Of course Frigg's messengers, who are the unnamed suns of the days between winter and summer, can with their increasing warmth make most things weep, but not the ogress Thökk[1] who dwells in a cave penetrated neither by the light of day nor by the frost of winter, and her tearlessness is artistically made the obstacle to Balder's return. In other words, it was still too soon; but in due time he fails not to come back, and then follow the happy results described by the sibyl. The latter makes his murderer Höᵭr be his brother
- ↑ The giantess is probably not to be regarded as a form of Loki, but rather as a personification of fate or destiny; and I suggest with diffidence that her name is of the same origin as the Welsh tynghed, 'destiny,' Irish tocad: see Nigra's Reliquie Celtiche, p. 43.
