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fishermen would long since have forgotten that so foolish an opinion had ever existed, if foreign mariners, who were not disabused like them, did not often come to buy their wind of them, and pay them money for being the objects of their ridicule.
The Missionaries and first Bishops, were early in their endeavours to root out this pernicious weed from the soil where they wished to plant the Gospel. They attacked the Pagan religion with all sorts of weapons. As they were often so credulous as to believe the false miracles of Paganism, they were weak enough to oppose them with others, that were no whit better, except in the purity of the intention. In an old Icelandic Chronicle[1], we meet with a bishop laying a storm with Holy-water, and some other ceremonies.——But to proceed on with the discourse of Odin:
“When I see, says he, Magicians
travelling through the air, I disconcert
them by a single lock, and force them
to abandon their enterprize.” He had.
before spoken of these aerial travellers.
“[2]If I see a man dead, and hanging
aloft on a tree, I engrave Runic
