Confederation of all the Northern Gods.—Freedom of Religion.—Christianity.—Miserere mei!—Homeric Enumeration.—Prussian, Slavic, and Finnish Deities.—The God of Cherries and the God of Bees.—A Silver Woman.—Ilmarinnen’s Wedding Song.—A Skeleton God.—Yaga-BabcÛs Pestle and Mortar.—Preparation for Battle.—The Little Chapel on the Hill.—The Signal for the Attack.—Jesus and Mary.
It is high time for us to return to the banks of the Rhine, where the two religions of Jupiter and Odin were about to meet face to face. At that time the terrible prophecies of the Edda were far from being near their fulfillment; Odin had a long period of omnipotence yet before him.
To the great surprise of the adversaries, the Romans, so far from showing any alarm at his approach, received him and his retinue of deities as old acquaintances.
According to their unchanging policy they would see in him nothing but a Jupiter, and in fierce Thor another gallant Mars, somewhat sobered by a long residence in northern countries and excessive use of beer.
The Romans looked, in fact, upon all of these Scandinavian gods and goddesses simply as upon myths of their own that came back to them once more.
The poets hallowed these claims and the historians tried to justify them. According to some, Odin the Conqueror, a member of the family of Ases, had first given to some of his conquests the name of Asia (which might very well be so), and then receded before the Roman armies to cold hyperborean regions. Here he had adopted the gods of his new conquerors, hoping that they would, in return, make him victorious—which seems to me in the highest degree improbable. According to others, the poet Ovid, when Augustus had banished him to Scythia, had learnt the language of the barbarians, among whom he was living, and finding them willing and eager to listen to him, had recited before them his “Metamorphoses.” This was all that was needed to induce the Scythians to make for themselves gods after the model of the Roman gods.
Tacitus, Plutarch, Strabo, and a host of the most illustrious writers never hesitated to give currency to such childish stories, ignoring entirely the date of the Scandinavian religion.
As Rome, however, permitted no human sacrifices, the priests of Odin and of Teut had at first withdrawn far from the beaten track, into the depths of dark old forests. There they could live quietly, practice without restraint the religion of their forefathers, and kill their men in perfect security. At least such were their hopes. The Roman soldiers, however, who handled the woodman’s axe as readily as the sword, and the spade as well as the spear, soon made big holes in these venerable forests, murdered the murderers, and overthrew their blood-stained altars.
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Occasionally it happened that the brave legionaries who were employed in these hazardous enterprises, did not reappear. The proconsuls, whose duty it was to keep Germany in order, would have liked to inflict severe punishment; but just then the great reaction began to set in, from the North against the South.
Whilst Rome was making efforts to establish her power in Germany, certain German tribes, Franks and Burgundians, invaded France and began to settle down in some of the conquered Roman provinces. The proconsuls thought it both prudent and wise not to raise the question of religion; and for a long time a truce was tacitly agreed upon between all the different creeds, though not without some misgivings on both sides. Odin had his altars by the side of those of Jupiter; a temple in honor of Thor stood facing a temple dedicated to Mars, and if Bacchus, Diana, and Apollo had their sacred days, Bragi, Frigg, and Freya had theirs also.
In spite of this general toleration, the parties watched each other carefully.
Sooner or later a holy war had to break out; in certain regions it had already begun, when fishermen of the Rhine busily drawing in their nets, heard, for the first time, a still small voice coming down upon them on the waters of the river, which whispered the names of Jesus and Mary. The same voice and the same names were simultaneously heard again and again before Strasbourg, Mayence, and Cologne. It was Christianity that was approaching.
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These wondrous words, which now the river only murmured, had soon after been forced by some mystic power from the lips of the Druidesses in their prophetic exaltation and from the priests of Jupiter, as they consulted their auguries.
There was a Druid, who, in the act of sacrificing, was suddenly seized with inspiration, and dropping the bloody knife felt impelled to cry out: Miserere mei, Jesus! and yet Latin had until then been an unknown tongue among the Druids!
The nations stood expectant, waiting for the revelation of a new faith.
Soon a number of fugitives from Tolbiac, returning to the Rhine, produced consternation in all hearts by the announcement that Clovis, the king of the Franks, who had long been suspected of a secret understanding with Rome, had gone over to the god of the Christians, and that the god of the Christians was at that moment advancing at the head of ten legions of destroying angels.
When this news came, the rival religions laid aside their jealousy, and terrified by a common danger, joined hands to resist the invader. A general appeal was made not only by the followers of Odin to those of Jupiter, but also to the Northern gods, the Finnish gods, the Russian gods, and the Slavic gods. The danger was threatening to all alike, and they responded to the appeal and came to the Rhine. We cannot so rapidly pass over this vast Olympian assembly of gods, a poet’s dream, it may be, but a traditional dream, full of strange and striking splendor, which completes in a most unexpected manner the limited description we have tried to give of Northern Myths.
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At this grand meeting there appeared in the first place a goodly number of Borussian or Prussian gods, among whom stood first and foremost Percunos, the divine leader of the heavenly bodies; Pikollos, whose face was as pale as Hela’s and whose duty was, like hers, to preside over hell; exacting, however, from men nothing but prayers accompanied by beating hearts, he cared nothing whether he was feared or beloved. A third god, Potrympos, had the appearance of a youth, with smiling lips and with a wreath of wheat ears and flowers on his brow; this was the god of War. Of War? And what meant the smile on his lips and the wheat ears on his brow? They indicated that he was also the god of public supplies and even of love.
It seems that, in ancient Prussia, War was the purveyor-general and supplied everything.
In the retinue of this great trio, we find Antrympos, the god of seas and lakes; Poculos, the god of the air and of storms; then, after these gods ending in os, came other deities ending in us; Pilvitus, the god of riches, Auchwitus, the god of the sick, and Marcopulus, the god of the nobles. The latter was the terror of the common people, whom he held under an iron yoke. In order to conciliate his good will, they prayed to Puscatus, another god in us, but a kindhearted god. He lived under an elder tree, and the price he exacted in return for his mediation was the modest gift of a piece of bread and a schoppen of beer.
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Although their priests were called Crives or Waidelottes, their ceremonies were, nevertheless, mere imitations of those of the Druids. The Borussians honored particularly the famous oak of Remowe, to which Percunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos paid a daily visit. To these same gods they offered their prisoners of war; but they were not sacrificed by means of a knife after the German Or the Scandinavian manner. They destroyed them by fire or they gave them to be devoured to enormous serpents who lived upon the altar and for the altar.
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Now all these gods have come to Germany accompanied by their monstrous reptiles, by griffins fearful to behold, and by demons summoned from hell, all called upon to take part in the impending struggle. Almost at the same time with the Prussian gods arrived also the Scythian gods and those of the Sarmatians, the former in chariots, according to the manner of travelling which prevailed among those nations. They also bowed low, like their people, before the all-powerful Tahiti, the great representative of their religion, Fire. The Scythians had evidently derived very little profit from hearing Ovid read his “Metamorphoses.”
The others were but few in numbers; their representatives were their chief triad: Perun, their Jupiter Tonans; Rujewit, who controlled the clouds; and Sujatowist, the judge of the dead. These three brought in their train only Trizbog and the Tassanis, that is, the plague and the furies. Their other gods, unable to do anything for success in war, had wisely stayed at home.
Can I neglect mentioning the names and attributes of these inoffensive local deities, whom the fierce Sarmatians worshipped. They were:—
Kirnis, who causes the cherries to ripen;
Sardona, who watches over the nut trees;
AusteÏa, who presides over the education of bees;
The sweet Kolna, who sees to the marriage of flowers.
There were also gods or goddesses of corn, of the kneading-tub and the wash-tub, the god of flies and the god of butterflies; we must confess that these deities could hardly have been very useful on the banks of the Rhine.
But Odin and Jupiter could count upon more efficient and more reliable allies in the gods of Finland.
The gods bear almost always the impress of the character of their followers and of those over whom they rule, and what other nation has ever given such proofs of undaunted courage as the Finns or Finlanders? Pirates on the Baltic, as the Scandinavians were pirates on the ocean, they shared with them the booty that could be gotten in all the Northern seas. They had originally come from the high table-lands of Asia, together with their brethren the Turks, the Mongols, and the Tartars; their first appearance was made under the name of Ugorians, Ogres, and surely the Ogres have made a lasting and a terrible impression on bur popular tales!
The Finns consisted almost exclusively of sailors and soldiers, of miners and blacksmiths. To smelt iron and to fashion it into anchors for their ships, into lances, swords, and spears, was their principal occupation. Hence they paid special reverence to Rauta-Rekhi, the personification of iron; to Wulangoinen, the father of iron, and to Ruojuota, the nurse of iron. They worshipped in like manner with special zeal three sombre virgins, whose powerful breasts were running over with a dark milk, which turned into iron as it cooled off, as water turns into ice when it cools off.
Their principal gods, besides these whom I have mentioned, were again three, and, as usual, three brothers.
The oldest, Vainamoinen, of hoary age, created celestial and terrestial fire, that is to say, the sun and the volcanoes.
The second, Ukko, has to provide them with fire, so as to prevent the earth from returning to the condition of an immense icicle, and the sun to the form of a heap of extinct embers. Living in the clouds he now blows upon the sun and now upon the volcanoes so as to keep up the blaze in both, and encourages them with his voice, the thunder.
Ilmarinnen, the third, a very industrious and most skillful workman, has forged the earth and the seven heavens by which it is surrounded; hence he is called the Eternal Blacksmith. He spends his life at the forge, making sometimes stars of all sizes and at other times spare moons. He has even made a silver woman, not for himself, however, but for a younger brother, whose manifold and incessant occupations left him no time to take the necessary steps for a suitable marriage. This woman of fine metal, well-made, beautiful, charming, and of the sweetest disposition, had but one single defect,—no one could come near her without being chilled to the marrow of his bones.
However, the most skillful blacksmith cannot be expected to make a perfect woman at the first trial.
When the question of his own marriage was mooted, Ilmarinnen preferred taking a ready made wife, and, according to the usage which prevailed among the Finns as well as among the Germans, he bought one.
For the sake of enjoying some relief after such a long enumeration of deities, now entirely out of fashion, I feel strongly tempted to insert here a saga, a Finnish legend, which treats of this very marriage of Ilmarinnen, the blacksmith, and was composed by his own sister. In this wedding-song, which is full of the sweetest and chastest sentiments, she exhibits the domestic life of these artisan-gods, who sometimes were disposed to beat their wives,—at least the saga suggests the occurrence of such events.
Ilmarinnen has just been married and becomes impatient, he actually swears at not seeing his young bride come to him in great haste. Listen to what is sung to him, with an accompaniment on a small Kantele guitar, by his sister, the hostess of Pohjola, in order to calm him the better:—
“O husband, brother of my brothers, you have already waited long for the coming of this happy day; wait patiently a little longer. Your well beloved will not tarry long. She finishes her toilet; but you know it is far to the fountain to which she has to go for water.
“O husband, brother of my brothers, be patient! She has just put on her robe, but she has only put on one sleeve. You would surely not have her appear before you with one sleeve empty?
“O husband, she has just arranged her hair; a beautiful belt encircles her waist, but she has a shoe only on one foot; she must needs have time to put on the other shoe also.
“Husband,.... here she is coming,.... but she has put on only one glove,.... give her time to put on the other!”
When the young bride appears at last, the good hostess of Pohjola is suddenly deeply concerned for her:—
“O wife, O purchased maid, O dove that has been sold! My sister, my poem, my green branch, how many tears you will shed!
“Your family were very eager to have the money paid down for you in the hollow of a shield.
“Poor ignorant girl, you thought you were leaving the paternal roof for a few hours, for a day, perhaps! Alas! You have surrendered forever, you have a master now!” And then turning once more to Ilmarinnen, she adds:—
“O husband, brother of my brothers, do not teach this child, the slave, whip in hand, the way she must walk.
“Do not make her cry under the rod or under the stick; teach her gently, in a soft voice, with closed doors.
“The first year by words, the second year by a frown, the third year by gently pressing her foot. Be patient!
“If, after three years, she is unwilling to learn, O husband, brother of my brothers, take a few slender reeds, take a little broom-sedge, chastise her, but with a rod covered with wool.
“If she still resists, well; cut a twig in the woods, a willow branch, not too stout, and hide it beneath your garment. Let no one guess what is going to happen.
“Above all, do not strike her hands nor her face; for her brother might well ask you: Has a wolf bitten her? Her father might well say to you: Has a bear torn her thus?”
Does not this Saga, with all its harsh allusions, breathe a most touching tenderness? It seems that the most delicate sentiments were preserved intact amid the coarsest manners and the most violent passions. What was your name, O naÏve muse of Finland, who inspired the good hostess of Pohjola? Were you not perhaps a daughter of those beautiful Indian gandharvas, who said,—
“The elephant is led by a rope, the horse by a bridle, and a woman by her heart.”
And does it not remind us of our humble and simple-minded neighbors, when we hear how this Eternal Blacksmith, this first-class god who has made heaven and earth, who buys a wife and beats her, expresses his fear of the reproaches of his brother-in-law and his father-in-law?
After this pause we must go on describing the other armies of gods who had hastened to the banks of the Rhine in order to resist a common enemy.
By the side of the heavenly representatives of Scythia and Sarmatia, of Prussia and Finland, we find other gods belonging to the different Slavonic races. But why should we repeat here a complete list of all this multitude of allies, whose curious names the most retentive memory could not possibly retain?
Suffice it to say that the Lithuanians, the Moravians, the Silesians, Bohemians, and Russians were represented at this meeting by their most formidable deities. There was Ilia, the great archer, whose arrows hit the mark after having passed through a thickness of nine fir trees; Radgost, the merciless destroyer; Flintz, the skeleton god, who bore a lion’s head on his shoulders and drove a chariot of flames; and the giant Yaga-Baba, whose head reached high above the loftiest mountains. When a warrior was seized with fear before he beheld the enemy, he immediately took him from the ranks and brayed him in a wooden mortar with an iron pestle.
All four of them brought in their retinue whole battalions of Strygi or blood-suckers, of voracious Trolls, Marowitzes, and Kikimoras, who smothered their victims; of Polkrans and Leschyes, the latter a kind of dwarf satyrs, who could at will change into giants, and the former half men and half dogs, singing and barking alternately. Their songs, as fearful as their barkings, spread terror around them, and they themselves killed at a hundred yards’ distance by the venom of their breath.
Such were the allies whom the Roman and Scandinavian gods arrayed against Christianity.
When the new comers had been properly organized, Jupiter’s eagle rose above the clouds, uttered three piercing cries, turning to the three points of the horizon, and at once from the East, from the West, and from the South, there came forth the gods of Rome and Greece, abandoning their mysterious retreats. There was Neptune with his Tritons, his Harpies, and his marine monsters; and there was Pluto with his Fates, his Furies, and his whole host from hell.
Odin struck his buckler, and from the far North came not only the gods and the Valkyrias, with the heroes of Walhalla, but even the adversaries of the Ases,—Hela, the wolf Fenris, the Giants of the Frost with Loki at their head,—and all enlisted under him to take part in the immense slaughter.
Never had the armies of a Darius, an Alexander, an Attila, or a Charlemagne, presented a more imposing and more terrible aspect; nor has the world ever seen the like since.
When the Sibyls and the Norns, the augurs and the witches had been consulted, the march began.
A few miles from the other side of the river, in the direction of Argentoratum (Strasbourg), about half way up the slope of a gentle hill, there stood a little chapel which had not been quite finished.
The Sibyls and Druidesses had pointed out this building as the end of the first day’s march, not doubting but that the god of the Christians would appear at the head of his legions, to defend his temple.
The Confederates were advancing silently under cover of the night in order to surprise the enemy, whom they thought fully prepared for resistance. Odin was in command of the right wing of the army, Jupiter of the left. The Scythian, Sarma-tian, Borussian, and Finnish deities under the orders of Tahiti, Perun, Percunos, Wainamoinen, and Radgost, commanded the centre.
As soon as they came in sight of the hill, they noticed a very peculiar twinkling light, which shone out from the deep darkness, and was surrounded below by a circle of light.
Immediately the three light-footed messengers of the Roman, Slavonic, and Scandinavian gods, Mercury, Algis, and Hermode, were sent out to reconnoitre, accompanied by the Eumenides, the Valkyrias, and a small detachment of Lapithes and Centaurs. When they returned they reported that the light proceeded from the flaming swords of ten thousand destroying angels. They were quite sure of it.
Some of the allies immediately rushed forth, as is the usage in all epic battles, to challenge the chiefs of the angels to single combat. But Jupiter and Odin, thinking that all these private contests can only jeopardize the success of the great battle, compelled them to obey orders.
Thor, who had been one of the first to rush forth, was so much disappointed, that in his anger he let his heavy mace fall upon a little town that was on their route, and that might possibly have impeded the progress of the army. The mace instantly returned to the hand of the owner, and then fell and returned again and again.
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The barking of Cerberus, the three-headed dog, of his brother dog Garm, and the howlings of the Strygi, the Kikimoras, and the Polkrans.
This was by no means all of the concert.
Mars, Odin, Potrympos, and the other war-gods now drew their swords, which produced a fearful grating sound as they came out of their sheaths; next Jupiter sounds his thunder among the Romans, and after him thunder Perun among the Slaves, Ukko among the Finns, and Thor among the Scandinavians. The repeated crash of thunder. And thanks to this incident, the plain had been cleared and levelled at the same time, and the signal for the attack was given at once. The Corybantes beat their drums in muffled tones; the chants of the Bards and the Skalds responded from the right and the left wing, although their harps were soon drowned in the bleat of the trumpets, the furious lightning mingles with the rumbling of the chariots of Tabiti, of Flintz, the skeleton god, and of Pocu-los and Stribog, the gods of waterspouts and of Northern tempests; the Egipans, the Cyclops, the blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen, begin to push immense masses of rock before them, brandishing entire oak trees as spears; while the Giants of the Frost with fearful clamor, which is taken up by the whole army of invaders, follow them, led by the equally gigantic Yaga-Baba, the terrible conductor of such an infernal concert, who marks the time by beating with his iron pestle upon his wooden mortar.
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All these fearful noises, all these echoing explosions, seem to confound heaven and earth; the horizon trembles and shakes, the mountains start and stagger.
But the holy hill stands unmoved.
The light which at first shone only at the base has gradually risen as high as the summit, and the little chapel now shines brightly like a brilliant constellation.
Surprised at seeing no enemy appear, the army of the pagan gods makes a halt.
Suddenly, O miracle! lifted up as if by a gust of wind from on high, the little chapel vanishes, and in its place is seen a simple altar surmounted by a cross.
Before this altar stands a young maid, showing neither ornament nor weapon of defense,—a Virgin barefooted, with a child in her arms.
She comes down the hill, a smile on her lips; the brilliant light still encircles her brow and the brow of the infant; she comes straight up to the allied gods, who begin to look at each other in utter consternation.
She draws nearer, and all of a sudden an irresistible panic seizes Jupiter and Odin, Mars and Thor, Wainomoinen and Perun, together with the Eumenides, the Tassanis, the Cyclops, and the Giants, and all turn back towards the river, cross it in fearful disorder, and crush each other in their desperate flight, while their own temples and their own statues fall to pieces in the universal destruction.
Some of these were buried in the Rhine, where we shall hereafter find them once more; the remainder reached in sad condition their northern homes, abandoning almost the whole of Germany to Jesus and Mary.
It is but right to notice that in all the traditions which speak of this struggle between the gods and the rising religion of Christ, no mention is ever made of the Teut and the Esus of the Celts, the Alfader of the Scandinavians, the Jumala of the Finns, and the Bog of the Slaves,—nor is the Unknown God of the Romans ever mentioned. The reason is that each one of these grand deities, like the Indra of the Indian heaven, contained all the others and represented to the mind the idea of the only one eternal God.
This grand but vain effort of the pagan gods was made, according to tradition, about the year 510 of the Christian era. In the course of the same year King Clovis determined to erect a temple in honor of Christ which should be worthy of Him, and laid the foundation of the Minster at Strasbourg, perhaps with a design to replace the little chapel, which had disappeared in so miraculous a manner.
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