The Mythology was thus coloured by the thought of the times and the conditions and character of the people, while it was given, of course, appropriate setting amidst local scenery.

Northern Teutonic Mythology must have had gradual growth. It appears to have attained its highest development in the Viking Age, when a united and masterful people, stirred, no doubt by well-organized political conditions, to a great awakening, spread far and wide to impose their rule and their culture upon alien peoples. When earlier migrations took place, amidst the battle storms of violent tribal fusion, the new religious system. was in process of formation. The Angles and Saxons, for instance, were not greatly influenced by the Odin cult when they reached these island shores. Their deified tribal heroes were still predominant. That has been made abundantly clear by Stopford Brooke in his masterly study, History of Early English Literature.

So far as we are able to reconstruct the Mythology -nor can we expect complete agreement among the experts in this regard-it appears to have been highly developed and adjusted to the minutest detail. The official religion, of course, may not have been accepted in its completeness by all classes; sections may have still clung to favoured deities, while they recognized others unknown to their ancestors. Odin, we know, was esteemed more highly by scholarly skalds than by fighting men, who continued to exalt and worship Thor as chief or most influential god, and to repose their trust in the magical influence exercised in battle by the shadowy but ancient war-god Tyr. No doubt the teachers remained the while serenely confident that ultimately the spirit-god would be held in greater regard by thinking men than gods of physical might. But the growth of

this great Pagan mythology was arrested by the gradual advance of Christianity, and it is given popular reconstruction in these pages as it possibly existed, especially in the north, when the influence of the new and greater religion coloured the Balder story, and the idea was interpolated of a greater All-father than Odin. The Saxo stories are drawn upon to fill gaps, although gaps may have ever existed. We may add that we call the Mythology Northern Teutonic in preference to "Germanic", because of its geographical setting, and for the pregnant reason that it has survived mainly in the form given to it by the mingled peoples of the North.

The local character of this particular mythological system is strongly emphasized in "the story of creation". Only a Northern people living in close proximity to Arctic ice-fields could have conceived of a chaos-gulf bounded on the north by a cold and darksome Nifelheim, and on the south by a warm and bright Muspelheim. Life begins to be when and where the ice-blocks are thawed. The gods and their doings are also coloured by their Scandinavian environment. "Light-battles" and fierce Nature-wars are emphasized in a land of pronounced seasonal changes. No matter whence certain deities were imported, here in the land of long winter nights they are acclimatized and naturalized. They contend against indigenous frost-giants; they fight and then become the allies of indigenous Vana-gods; they visit a sea-folk's terrible storm-god Æger in his hall at the sea bottom; they acquire northern temperaments and become fatalists like all seafarers, ancient and modern.

Teutonic gloom overspreads Teutonic Mythology. Odin and his Asa clan live ever under the shadow of Ragnarok, "The Dusk of the gods". This gloom hangs heavily as northern storm-clouds over early "Teutonic"

literature. It haunts the Eddas and Sagas; it permeates Anglo-Saxon poetry. Dr. Clark Hall says of Beowulf, "There is undoubtedly less colour about the second part than the first, and more gloom. The habit of foreboding which is noticeable in Part I is so prominent in Part II as to give a general tone of fatalistic hopelessness to it. Sunshine and shadow no longer alternateshadow is over all." The same comment might be applied with equal force to the Nibelungenlied. Although "gloomy" and "Celtic" have become synonymous terms of late years, yet Celtic (Irish) Mythology and old Gaelic literature both in Scotland and in Ireland strike, in comparison with what is termed Teutonic, a brighter and more cheerful note. It may be that the gloom is aboriginal-pre-Celtic and pre-Teutonic-a shadow of primitive but persistent mental habits.

In Teutonic Mythology, as in Greek, there are evidences of remote race-memories. The Asiatic "broadheads who crossed Europe in "waves", which began to arrive in the vast periods of the late Stone Age, must have imported not only new customs and new weapons, but also fragments of immemorial myths. Superstitions survive longer than stone monuments, and they pass through language to language, and from land to land, with the buoyancy of American timber which drifts across the Atlantic to Hebridean shores. An instance may be noted in the northern "Story of Creation". The body of Ymer, the chaos-giant, is cut to pieces; his flesh and bones become soil and rocks; his skull is the sky dome; his progeny is engulfed in his blood, which is the sea. Babylonian tablets relate a similar story. In the begin ning Bel-Merodach slew the chaos-giantess Tiawath; he cut up her body, and with one part he framed the earth and with the other the heavens. Her blood was forced

to flow southward by a strong north wind-it became the river which filled the sea.

Comparisons may also be drawn between Teutonic and Greek Mythologies. But these will be found to be of slighter character. Those elements, common to both, which are not Asiatic may be of early Mediterranean origin, for as ancient cities lie below ancient cities, so do ancient mythologies rest upon the wrecks of others of still greater antiquity. As Jubainville has shown in Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais et la Mythologie Celtique, Greek and Celtic are closely related and mainly of common origin. They are children of one mother; but Scandinavian Mythology cannot be regarded as other than a distant relation.

The

In all three Mythologies there is a central Naturemyth tragedy. In Greek it is the slaying of Night by Dawn. Hermes, surnamed Argeiphontes, in his character as Dawn-god, slays Argus, the many-eyed, who is Night, with a round stone, which is the Sun. In Celtic (Irish) Mythology the Dawn-god, Lugh, kills Balor of the Evileye, who is Night, with the same round sun-stone. myth also applies to the slaying of Winter by Summer and of Evil by Good. The tragedy of Scandinavian Mythology, on the other hand, is the slaying of Day (or Summer) by Night (or Winter). Blind Hoder shoots Balder (in his Edda character as Summer Sun-god) with the wintry mistletoe-arrow. He is prompted by Loke, the Scandinavian Mephistopheles, who plots to hasten the downfall of the gods. Light is thus overcome by Darkness, Summer by Winter, and Good by Evil.

Another broad and fundamental contrast is afforded by the conceptions of Night in the Northern and other European Mythologies. Instead of the tyrannical Balor of Ireland, or the monstrous Argus of Greece, we have

the beneficent northern Night-goddess Nat, daughter of Mimer (Wisdom) and sister of Urd (Fate). She brings to mankind refreshment and inspiration. Her lover is Delling, the red elf of dawn, and their son is Dag (Day).

Nat is evidently of eastern origin. In the Rig-veda the goddess of night (dark daughter of day) is, like Nat, both noble of aspect and character; she "increases riches". In the tenth Mandala she is thus addressed :Kind goddess, be propitious to thy servants Who at thy coming straightway seek repose.

Drive thou away from us, O Night, the wolf,
Drive thou away the thief, and bear us safely
Across thy borders.

In Teutonic Mythology, Evil is not necessarily associated with Darkness. The tempter and plotter is handsome Loke in his character as a fire-god; he is evidently an ally of Surtur, who burns up the world at Ragnarok. Loke is corrupted by the Hag of Ironwood, the "Mother of Evil", whose evil progeny includes the fierce wolves— one of which swallows the moon, while the other devours Odin- the great Midgard Serpent, and the repulsive, torture-loving Hel. Her Babylonian counterpart is Tiawath, among whose offspring are immense serpents, fiery dragons, raging hounds, fish-men, &c. The Northern Hag's husband, Gymer, is keeper of her flock, as is also the husband, Kingu, of Tiawath's.

The World, according to northern belief, is supported by a great tree which is ever green. This conception is not peculiar to Scandinavia, but nowhere else is an ashtree similarly exalted in dignity. At its roots are three wells, and in one is a gnawing dragon or serpent. The gods dwell under its branches; they sit in judgment upon the dead beneath the ash in the Underworld. It