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THAT Poem is followed by another no less deserving of regard. It made part of the Edda of Soemund; and, in point of antiquity, does not yield to the Voluspa: this is called Havamaal, or “The Sublime Discourse of Odin,” and is attributed to that God himself, who is supposed to have given these precepts of wisdom to mankind. This piece is the only one of the kind now in the world. We have, directly from the ‘ancient’ Scythians[1] themselves, no other monument on the subject of their morality: whatever we know from any other quarter on this article, being imperfect, corrupted and uncertain. Thus this moral system of Odin’s may, in some measure, supply the loss of the maxims which Zamolxis, Dicenæus, and Anacharsis gave to their Scythian countrymen: maxims which those sages pretended to have derived from heaven, and which were frequently the envy of the Greek Philosophers.
The Havamaal, or Sublime Discourse, is comprised in about one hundred and twenty stanzas. There are very few which are not good and sensible; but as some of them contain only common truths, and others, allusions which it would be tedious and difficult to explain, I shall give only
- ↑ Des Celtes & des Scythes. Fr.
