BALDUR AND HÖDR. II. 93 out with his toil, he must fall from the Leukadian or glisten- CHAP. ing cape into the sea, as the sun, greeting the rosy cliffs, sinks beneath the waters.' SECTION XI. TEUTONIC SUN-GODS AND HEROES. and Brond. In Cadmon and the epic of Beowulf the word baldor, Baldur bealdor, is found in the sense of prince or chief, as mägða bealdor, virginum princeps. Hence the name Baldr or Baldur might be referred to the Gothic balds, our bold, and stress might be laid on the origin of the name of Baldur's wife Nanna from a verb nenna, to dare. But Grimm remarks that the Anglo-Saxon genealogies speak of the son of Odin not as Baldur but as Bäldäg, Beldeg, a form which would lead us to look for an Old High German Paltac. Although this is not found, we have Paltar. Either then Bäldäg and Bealdor are only forms of the same word, as Regintac and Reginari, Sigitac and Sighar, or they are compounds in which bäl must be separated from däg; and thus the word might be connected with the Sclavonic Bjelbog, Belbog, the white shining god, the bringer of the day, the benignant Phoibos. Such an inference seems to be strengthened by the fact that the Anglo-Saxon theogony gives him a son Brond, who is also the torch or light of day. Baldur, however, was also known as Phol, a fact which Grimm establishes with abundant evidence of local names; and thus the identity of Baldr and Bjelbog seems forced upon us. Forseti, or Fosite, is reckoned among the Asas as a son of Baldur and Nanna, a name which Grimm compares with the Old High German forasizo, præses, princeps.2 The being by whom Baldur is slain is Hödr, a blind god of enormous strength, whose name may be traced in the forms Hadupracht, Hadufians, &c., to the Chatumerus of Tacitus. He is simply the power of darkness triumphing over the lord of light; and 1 Another account made the dog of Prokris a work of Hephaistos, like the golden statues of Alkinoös, and spoke of it as a gift from Zeus to Europe, who gave it to Minos, and as bestowed by Minos on Prokris, who at last gives it to Kephalos. Prokris is also a bride of Deutsche Myth. 212. BOOK II. The dream of Baldur. hence there were, as we might expect, two forms of the myth, one of which left Baldur dead, like Sarpêdôn, another which brought him back from the unseen world, like Memnon and Adonis. But the essence of the myth lies in his death, the cause of which is set forth in a poem of the elder Edda, entitled Baldur's dream, a poem so beautiful and so true to the old myth that I may be forgiven for citing it in full. The gods have hastened all to the assembly, Then uprose Odin the all-creator And flung the saddle on Sleipnir's back, Where well he knew was the Völa's mound; 'What man among men, one whom I know not, The snow hath enwrapped me, the rain beat upon me, "Wegtam my name is, Waltam's son am I; Speak thou of the under world, I of the upper; 'The mead is prepared for Baldur here, The gleaming draught covered o'er with the shield; Compelled I have spoken, but now am I mute.' Close not thy lips yet, I must ask further, Till I know all things. And this will I know. 'Close not thy lips yet, I must ask further, Till I know all things. And this will I know; Who will accomplish vengeance on Hödur, And bring to the scaffold the murderer of Baldur?' Rindur in the west hath won the prize Who shall slay in one night all Odin's heirs. His hands he shall wash not: his locks he doth comb not, Till he brings to the scaffold the murderer of Baldur.' of Baldur. Some features in this legend obviously reproduce incidents The death in Greek mythology. The hound of hell who confronts the Father of Song is the dog of Yamen, the Kerberos who bars the way to Orpheus until he is lulled to sleep by his harping; while the errand of Odin which has for its object the saving of Baldur answers to the mission of Orpheus to recover Eurydikê. Odin, again, coming as Wegtam the wanderer reminds us at once of Odysseus the far-journeying and long-enduring. The ride of Odin is as ineffectual as the pilgrimage of Orpheus. All created things have been made to take an oath that they will not hurt the beautiful Baldur but the mistletoe has been forgotten, and of this plant Loki puts a twig into the hand of Baldur's blind brother Hödr, who uses it as an arrow and unwittingly slays Baldur while the gods are practising archery with his body as a mark. Soon, however, Ali (or Wali) is born, a brother to Baldur, who avenges his death, but who can do so only by slaying the unlucky Hödr. of Baldur. avenging The mode in which this catastrophe is brought about can- The not fail to suggest a comparison with the myth which offers Sarpêdôn as a mark for the arrows of his uncles, and with the stories of golden apples shot from the heads of blooming youths, whether by William Tell, or William of Cloudeslee, or any others. In short, the gods are here in conclave, aiming their weapons at the sun, who is drawing 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, the autumn sun, when the nights begin to be longer than the day. The younger brother born to avenge him is the new sun-child, BOOK II. The story of Tell and Gesler. 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 Eurôpê and Pasiphaê, the broad-spreading light of morning, or the dazzling heavens), is slain by the wintry sun, and avenged by Ali or Wali, 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 dogmatically 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.'1 The myth of Tell, with which the story of Baldur and The tragedy of the solar year, of the murdered and risen god, is familiar to us from the days of ancient Egypt: must it not be of equally primæval origin here?' [in Teutonic tradition].— Bunsen, God in History, ii. 458. The evidence which has established the substantial identity of the story of the Iliad with that of the Odyssey has also shown that the Nibelung Lay practically reproduces the myth of the Volsungs, and that the same myth is presented under slightly different colours in the legends of Walthar of Aquitaine and other Teutonic romances, vol. i. ch. xii. The materials of these narratives are, in short, identical with the legends of the Teutonic Baldur and the Greek Helen, and the whole narrative thus becomes in each case transparent in almost every part. The identity of the Sigurd of the Edda with the Siegfried of the Nibelung Song has so important a bearing on the results of Comparative Mythology, that I avail myself all the more readily of the evidence by which this fact has been established by one who believes that Atli and one or two other names of the Nibelung Lay are undoubtedly historical.' On this point, indeed, Bunsen has left no work to be done. If he has left in the Lay of the Nibelungs two or three historical names, he has left nothing more. The narra tive or legend itself carries us to the Breidablick (Euryphaessa) or Ganz blick (Pasiphaê) which is the dazzling abode of Baldur, the type of the several Helgis, of Sigurd and Siegfried, as he is also of Achilleus and Odysseus, of Rustem, Perseus, or Herakles. THE LEGEND OF TELL. Sarpêdôn suggests a comparison, has received its deathblow as much from the hands of historians as from those of comparative mythologists. But there are probably few legends which more thoroughly show that from myths which have worked themselves into the narrative of an historical age there is absolutely nothing to be learnt in the way of history. Even if the legend of Tell be given up as a myth, it might be contended that at the least it indicates some fact, and this fact must be the oppression of the Swiss by Austrian tyrants; and yet this supposed fact, without which the story loses all point and meaning, has been swept away as effectually as the incidents which have been supposed to illustrate it. The political history of the Forest Cantons begins at a time long preceding the legendary date of Tell and Gesler; and the election of Rudolf of Hapsburg as king of the Romans in 1273 was important to the Swiss only from their previous connexion with his house. In short, we have proof of the existence of a confederation of the Three Cantons in 1291, while the popular account dates its origin from the year 1314, and ascribes it to the events which are assigned to that time. Nay, more, there exist in contemporary records no instances of wanton outrage and insolence on the Hapsburg side. It was the object of that power to obtain political ascendency, not to indulge its representatives in lust or wanton insult. That it was so becomes all the more distinct, since there are plentiful records of disputes in which the interests of the two were mixed up with those of particular persons.' In these quarrels, the Edinburgh Reviewer goes on to say, 'the symptoms of violence, as is natural enough, appear rather on the side of the Swiss Communities than on that of the aggrandising imperial house;' and the attack on the abbey of Einsiedeln was treated not as a crime of which the men of Schwitz were guilty, but as an act of war for which the three Cantons were responsible as a separate state.' The war of Swiss independence which followed this event was brought to an issue in the battle of Morgarten; 6 Confédération Suisse in the Edinburgh 97 CHAP. II. |