BOOK II.
Teutonic
theogonies.
up no small part of the ocean with his horn which reaches from heaven to its surface — a ponderous image for the clouds or the rays of the sun as they drink from the sea. But neither the Greek nor the Teutonic deities have the monstrous forms of the four-armed Vishnu or the four-headed Brahma — these fearful combinations being confined to beings like Briareos and Geryon and the giants of northern mythology, unless an exception is to be made of the three- handed Hekate, who, however, can scarcely be reckoned among the Olympian gods, and the four-armed Lakedaimonian ApoUon.^ The two-headed Janus is a Latin deity. But if the Teutonic gods are never monstrous, they are sometimes maimed ; and in the one-eyed Odin we have the idea which called the Hellenic Kyklops into existence ; while in the one-handed Tyr ^ we see Indra Savitar ; and in the limping Loki, the lame Hephaistos. But whatever may be their office, these are all bright and radiant deities ; Hel alone, like the rugged king of Hellenic mythology, has a dark and repulsive aspect* The very expressions used in speaking of them are transparent. The flowing locks of the Wish-god and of Baldur are those of Zeus and Phoibos ; the fair-haired Demeter of the Greek becomes the fair- haired Lif of the Teuton.* The power of Zeus is seen again in that of Thor, and the golden glory which surrounded the head of Phoibos or Asklepios, and became the aureole of Christian saints, is not less a mark of the German deities, and appears on the head of Thor as a circlet of stars. ^
But when w^e turn to the theogony set forth in the Voluspa Saga, we can as little doubt that it marks a comparatively late stage of thought, as we can suppose that the Hesiodic theogony is older than the simple and transparent myths which tell us of Prokris or Tithonos or Endymion. The myth of Baldur, at least in its cruder forms, must be far more ancient than any classification resembling that
' Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 298.
- Tyr loses his hand in the moulh
of the wolf Fenris, who refuses to be bound with the cord woven by the dwarfs of Schwarz Alfheini unless he has the hand in his mouth as a gauge of their good faith. See also Tylor, Primitive Cnllure, i. 316.
- Hel, the daughter of Loki, and
sister of the wolf Fenris and the horrible worm or serpent, is half black and half human in ai)]Dearance. Her dwelling is in Niflheim, far down in the depths of the earth, beneath the roots of Yggdrasil. — Grimm, D. M. 289. She is the hungry and insatiable goddess, the greedy Polydektes and Polydegmon of Greek myths (Grimm, ib. 291), the black Kail of modern Hindu theogony.
- Grimm, //'. 534.
- Ib. 300. We are bound to mark
the emphasis with which Grimm, writing half a century ago, insisted on the close affinity between the Teutonic and the Greek mythology, "an affinity for which, as in the relations of the Greek and the Teutonic languages, there is no question of borrowing or choice, nothing but un- conscious affinity, allowing room (and that inevitably) for considerable divergences."
