Charles Hardwick

“ After the Roman legions left the Britons to themselves, there is darkness over the face of the land from the fifth to the eighth century. Those are really our dark ages. From 420, when it is supposed that Honorius withdrew his troops, to 730, when Bede wrote his history, we see nothing of British history. Afar off we hear the shock of arms, but all is dim, as it were, when two mighty hosts do battle in the dead of night. When the dawn comes and the black veil is lifted, we find that Britain has passed away. ”

“ The thunder was the bellowing of a mighty beast or the rolling of a wagon. The lightning was a sinuous serpent, or a spear shot straight athwart the sky, or a fish darting in zigzags through the waters of heaven. The stormy winds were howling dogs or wolves; the ravages of the whirlwind that tore up the earth were the work of a wild boar." [27] Mr. Fiske, in his "Myths and [Pg 109] Myth-makers," says that these mythical monsters "not only steal the daylight, but they parch the earth and wither the fruits, and they slay vegetation during the winter months." ”

“ It became the Hell where the old man hews wood for the Christmas fire, and where the Devil in his eagerness to buy the flitch of bacon yields up the marvellous quern which is 'good to grind almost anything.' It was not so pleasant, indeed, as Heaven, or the old Valhalla, but it was better to be there than shut out in the outer cold beyond its padlocked gates. ”

“ On a cold, or wet, or stormy night, the peasant will exclaim with real sympathy 'Musha! God help the poor souls that are in the shelter of the ditches, or under the eaves this way!' And the good 'chanathee' or mother of a family will sweep the hearth, that the poor souls may warm themselves when the family retires. The conviction that the spirits of the departed sweep along with the storm or shiver in the driving rain, is singularly wild and near akin to the Scandinavian myth. ”

“ Like all other remarkable natural objects, they are the subject of whimsical myths amongst them. According to them, the sun and moon are of the same age, but the sun brings daylight and gladness and the moon brings darkness, witchcraft, and death—for death comes from sleep, and sleep commences in darkness. The sun and moon, they say, once got angry with each other, each one claiming to be the eldest. The moon said, 'Who are you, to dare to speak to me? You are alone; you have no people. ”

“ He says—"Amongst those opinions which are produced by a little knowledge, to be dispelled by a little more, is the belief in the almost boundless creative power in the human imagination. The superficial student, mazed in a crowd of seemingly wild and lawless fancies, which he thinks to have no reason in nature nor pattern in the material world, at first concludes them to be new births from the imagination of the poet, the tale-teller, and the seer. ”

“ How long will they rise? [296]
"Those mortals who beheld the pristine Ushas dawning have passed away: to us she is now visible, and they approach who will behold her in after times.
"Ushas, endowed with truth, who art the sister of Bhava, the sister of Varuna, be thou hymned first of the gods.
"Unimpeding divine rites, although wearing away the ages of mankind, the dawn shines the likeness of the mornings that have passed, or that are to be for ever, the first of those that are to come.
"She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. ”

“ But, though there were many battles in that dreary time, and many Arthurs, it was rather in the every day battle of life, in that long unceasing struggle which race wages with race, not sword in hand alone, but by brain and will and feeling, that the Saxons won the mastery of the land. ”

“ The blinding of this monster is the natural sequel when his mere brute force is pitted against the craft of his adversary. In his seeming insignificance and his despised estate, in his wayworn mien and his many sorrows, Odysseus takes the place of the Boots or Cinderella of Teutonic folk-lore; and as the giant is manifestly the enemy of the bright being whose splendours are for the time being hidden beneath a veil, so it is the representative of the sun himself who pierces out his eye ”

“ The most credulous writer, he that has the greatest passion for the marvellous, while he falsifies the history of his contemporaries, paints their manners of life and modes of thinking without perceiving it. His simplicity, his ignorance, are at once pledges of the artless truth of his drawing, and a warning to distrust that of his relations. ”

“ On May-day, in the morning, every man, except impediment, would walke into the sweete meadowes and greene woods, there to rejoyce their spirites with the beauty and savour of sweete flowers, and with the harmony of birds praysing God in their kind. ”

“ While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbued,
And Dunbar field resound thy praises loud,
And Worcester's laureat wreath. Yet much remains
To conquer still; Peace hath her victories
No less renown'd than War; new foes arise
Threat'ning to bind our souls with secular chains:
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.
The number of the troops engaged in this short but brilliant campaign is stated variously by different authorities. ”

“ The hooting owl, Tutursel, flies before him, and ravens, birds peculiarly sacred to Woden, accompany the chase. Whoever sees it approach must fall flat on the ground, or shelter himself under any odd number of boards, nine or eleven, otherwise he will be borne away through the air and set down hundreds of miles away from home, among people who speak a strange tongue. It is still more dangerous to look out of the window when Odin is sweeping by. The rash man is struck dead, or at least gets a box on the ear that makes his head swell as big as a bucket, and leaves a fiery mark on his cheek. ”

“ Show the 'Rivers of France' to a boy who has the natural faculties which perceive beauty, but who is still innocent of criticism, he will believe the drawings to be true, and think as he dreams over them that a day may come when he will visit these enchanting scenes. ”

“ All of these legends have been resolved into figurative and sometimes highly poetic descriptions of natural phenomena, and especially what is termed the "elemental strife." The horse's leg thrown down by Odin represents the crooked lightning's flash; the gold its brightness, and the stench its sulphurous odour. The wild boars which he hunts are stormy wind-clouds; the fair ladies the light white scudding vapours that seem to coquette with the squally wind. ”

“ Christian priests were again slain at the altar by worshippers of Woden, for the Danes were still heathen. Letters, arts, religion, governments disappeared before these Northmen as before the Northmen of old. But when the wild burst of the storm was over, land, people, government reappeared unchanged. England still remained England; the Danes sank quietly into the mass of those around them; and Woden yielded without a struggle to Christ. The secret of this difference between the two invasions was that the battle was no longer between men of different races. ”

“ The sun, the moon, the sky or firmament, the dawn and evening twilight, the sea, lightning, clouds, rain, wind, frost, fire, &c., and their attendant active phenomena, contributed mainly to the construction of their mythological edifice. Indra was god of the firmament, the earliest thunderer, the forerunner of Zeus, Jupiter and Thor; Agni was the god of fire, and Soma was the deity who brought down to earth the celestial liquor, the "drink of the gods," the amrita of the Vedas, the nectar of the Greeks. ”

“ Fiske says, "the Charlemagne of romance is a mythical personage. He is supposed to be a Frenchman at a time when neither the French nation nor the French language can properly be said to have existed; and he is represented as a doughty crusader, although crusading was not thought of until long after the Karolingian era. He is a myth, and what is more he is a solar myth—an avatar, or at least a representative of Odin in his solar capacity. If in his case legend were not controlled by history, he would be for us as unreal as Agamemnon.... ”

“ But to the dwellers in the North heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and life without fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in a cold region over those who were cowards by implication, while the mead-cup went round and huge logs blazed and crackled in Valhalla for the brave and beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle. But under Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the cold, uncomfortable goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fires abound, and where the devils abide in everlasting flame. ”

“ So when we have found out the excessive freedom which Turner allowed himself; when we have discovered that he is not to be trusted for the representation of any object, however important—that his chiaroscuro, though effective is arbitrary, and his colour though brilliant is false; when we have quite satisfied ourselves, in a word, that he is a poet, and not an architectural draughtsman, or an imitator of nature, is that a reason why we should not enjoy the poems? ”

“ He says,—"The continual metaphors by which we compare our thoughts and emotions to the changes of the outer world—sadness to a cloudy sky, calm to the silvery rays of the moonlight, anger to waves agitated by the wind—are not, as Schelling observed, a mere play of the imagination, but are an expression, in two different languages, of the same thought of the Creator, and one serves to interpret the other. ”