BOOK II
near to his doom, as the summer approaches its end. They have no
wish to slay him ; rather, it is the wish of all that he should not die ;
but he must be killed by his blind brother, whose victory is por-
tended, when the nights begin to be longer than the day. The
younger brother born to avenge him is the new sun-child, whose birth
marks the gradual rising again of the sun in the heaven. The myth
now becomes transparent Baldur, who dwells in Breidablick or
Ganzblick (names answering precisely to Europe and Pasiphae, the
broad-spreading light of morning, or the dazzling heavens), is slain by
the wintry sun, and avenged by Ali or ^^'ali, the son of Odin and
Rind, immediately after his birth. Ali is further called Bui, the tiller
of the earth, over which the plough may again pass on the breaking
of the frost. These incidents at once show that this myth cannot
have been developed in the countries of northern Europe. Bunsen
rightly lays stress, and too great stress can scarcely be laid, on the
thorough want of correspondence between these myths and the
climatic conditions of northern Germany, still more of those of
Scandinavia and of Iceland. It may be rash to assign them dog-
matically to Central Asia, but indubitably they sprung up in a country
where the winter is of very short duration. Baldur then is " the god
who is slain," like Dionysos who is killed by his brothers and then
comes to life again : but of these myths the Vedic hymns take no
notice. " In the region where they arose there is no question of any
marked decline of temperature," and therefore these poems "stop
short at the collision between the two hostile forces of sunshine and
storm." ^
' "The tragedy of the solar year, of parative Mythologj', that I avail myself the murdered and risen god, is familiar all the more readily of the evidence by to us from the days of ancient Egypt : which this fact has been established by must it not be of equally prima-val one who believes that Atli and one or origin here?" [in Teutonic tradition]. — two other names of the Nibelung Lay Bunsen, God iti History, ii. 458. are " undoubtedly historical." On this The evidence which has established point, indeed, Bunsen has left no work the substantial identity of the story of to be done. If he has left in the Lay the Ilhid that of the Odyssty has of the Nibelungs two or three historical also shown that the Nibelung Lay prac- names, he has left nothing more. The lically reproduces the myth of the Vol- narrative or legend itself carries us to sungs, and that the same myth is pre- the Breidablick (Euryphaessa) or Ganz- sented under slightly different colours blick (Pasiphae) which is the dazzling in the legends of Nalthar of Aquitaine abode of Baldur, the type of the several and other Teutonic romances, ch. Ilelgis, of Sigurd anti Siegfried, as he vi. The materials of these narra- is also of Achilleus and Odysseus, of tives are, in short, identical with the Rustem, Perseus, or Herakles. legends of the Teutonic Baldur and the In the Slavonic mythologj-, Perun, Greek Helen, and the whole narrative Perkunas, dies like Baldur or Adonis, thus becomes in each case transparent and remains lying veiled in a shroud or in almost every part. The identity of floating over dark waters, until the the Sigurd of the Edda with the Sieg- spring recalls him to life. — Ralston, fried of the Nibelung Song has so impor- Sou^ of the Rtissiati People, 98. taut a bearing on the results of Com-
