- torical literature, which is the full-blown flower of
Gothic paganism. In the other countries inhabited by Gothic (Scandinavian, Low Dutch and English) and Germanic (High German) races, scarcely any mythological literature was produced. The German Niebelungen-Lied and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf's Drapa are at best only semi-mythological. The overthrow of heathendom was too abrupt and violent. Its eradication was so complete that the heathen religion was almost wholly obliterated from the memory of the people. Occasionally there are found authors who refer to it, but their allusions are very vague and defective, besides giving unmistakable evidence of being written with prejudice and contempt. Nor do we find among the early Germans that spirit of veneration for the memories of the past, and desire to perpetuate them in a vernacular literature; or if they did exist, they were smothered by the Catholic priesthood. When the Catholic priests gained the ascendancy, they adopted the Latin language and used that exclusively for recording events, and they pronounced it a sin even to mention by name the old pagan gods oftener than necessity compelled them to do so.
Among the Norsemen, on the other hand, and to a considerable extent among the English, too, the old religion flourished longer; the people cherished their traditions; they loved to recite the songs and Sagas, in which were recorded the religious faith and brave deeds of their ancestors, and cultivated their native speech in spite of the priests. In Iceland at least, the priests did not succeed in rooting out paganism, if you please, before it had developed sufficiently to produce those beautiful blossoms, the Elder and Younger Eddas. The chief reason of this was, that the people continued to use their mother-tongue, in writing as well as in speak-
