X.-B. Saintine

“ In these Germany incorporates, as it were, the loftiest of her patriotic aspirations, the saddest of her disappointments, the most persistent of her hopes. They represent not only her old faith, that could never be completely eradicated, but also her old favorites, a Hermann and a Siegfried, the hero of the Nibelungen, a Theodoric and a Charlemagne, a Witikind and a Frederick Barbarossa, a William Tell and a Charles V. Her heroes, her beloved, her glory—she has not allowed them to fall into oblivion and be severed from the present; she will not admit that they are dead, they are but asleep. ”

“ This old woman, who is to come back, is Teutonia, and it was her name that Frederick Barbarossa was murmuring to himself as he fell asleep for another century.
When the old woman shall have succeeded in extricating herself from this mass of sand and rock which weighs her down, then and then only the great day will come. The heroes who now are held captive in their mountains and subterranean grottoes, will shake off the torpor of their long sleep; they will reappear among their people, the dead trees will bear new foliage to proclaim their return by a miracle, and the cry of: Teutonia! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among all these gods Balder is the most richly endowed, the best, the handsomest and the most virtuous—Balder, the Bright God, by eminence. Although the son of Odin and Frigg, he might be taken for a son of Freya, on account of his strong resemblance to Love itself, not to the turbulent, passionate, and capricious Love of the Greeks, but to Love in the widest and noblest sense of the word,—Love, in fine, in its Christian meaning. Balder represents that universal goodness, loyalty, affection, and harmony, which binds all beings to each other; Bragi, the poet is his brother ”

“ Have you seen enough of the gods and demigods of Germany, of the Nixen and goblins, the Kobolds, the giants, and the dwarfs? Have I shown you enough of this vast storehouse of human folly? I must confess, it makes me melancholy to speak of all this, and I feel an urgent desire to “shut up shop.”
The conscientious collector of myths, who has more material than he can manage, and sees new myths continually rising before him, is not unlike those learned physicians who spend their lives among crowds of insane people. ”

“ It has been said, and not without a show of reason, that the history of our Gallic or Germanic ancestors ought to be for us a subject of deep interest; but bold minds have in vain tried to raise [086] up once more the old oak tree, to trim it and to let air and light enter within its canopy of leaves. The birds that once sang in its branches have left no trace behind them of their songs, and nothing has reached us from those sacred precincts but a few faint echoes. ”

“ To die on one’s bed or in an armchair, was a wrong in Odin’s eyes, a grievous wrong, though not exactly a crime, since he punished it only with a temporary detention in those damp, low places, where darkness, silence, and weariness seemed to combine for their punishment. The dwellers in Niflheim had scarcely any amusement except their reciprocal yawns, and from time to time a flash of dim light which reached there when the little black Alfs came in or went out, busily engaged in conveying a load of souls.
The great criminals were thrown into Nastrond, the real hell. ”

“ We are all natives of one or the other bank of this great river Rhine, and feel towards each other, whether we live on the right or the left bank, very much like school-boys whose friendship is cemented by many a battle royal.
Being a Frenchman, I feel that I am about to [065] pay a visit to my paternal ancestors—for the Franks have given us our name. No wonder that I feel deeply moved.
I examine the low huts of the village, if village it can be called, and find that they are separated from each other by commons and by fields, and that they finally lose themselves in the open country. ”

“ But it has never been found out why this benevolent fairy of work-people does not live in some great industrial city, or some beautiful country district, where the signs of active life are abundant and the whirring of wheels or the stamping of machinery is heard; where the spinners sing, and the washerwomen beat time at the limpid stream. She prefers, with unaccountable perverseness, to live in dismal swamps, beside faithless Will-o’-the-Wisps and low Nixen! ”

“ Oh, poets and sculptors, you have upset everything in religion! You are responsible for the loss of that austere simplicity which once characterized the faith of men! Miserable cutters of stone, reckless counters of syllables, you, and you alone, have substituted symbols for truth! Still, I do not condemn you; although I have stood up to [105] defend the Druids of the earliest days, I am far from being insensible to the charms of art and of poetry; besides, what right have I, who speak of gods and myths, to pass sentence on those who have been the real creators of Mythology? ”

“ 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 ”

“ Not all the Druidesses, however, succeeded in making the Roman generals go back, by a word or a gesture; nor did all the Roman generals fall from their horses and die. After fifty-five years of strangely varying fortunes, the Genius of Rome was victorious, and must needs have been victorious, for it led the whole world by its power. It brought with it also its gods, which in spite of their numbers, or rather perhaps because they were so numerous, met on the banks of the Rhine with a more determined resistance than its soldiers. ”

“ In that ancient home of mysticism and of philosophy, everything is permanently rooted, everything is made for eternity, like those old oak trees of the Hercynia of antiquity: when the parent tree is cut down, and has no longer a trunk to bear boughs and branches, it sends forth new shoots from the roots. Druidism also has become permanent there. We have seen it fight against the gods of the Romans; it fought in like manner against Christianity under Witikind ”

“ The city of Utgard is of incredible size, the city walls, the houses, the trees, the furniture, all are gigantic. Our travellers could easily pass between the legs of the little children they met in the streets, as we modern people pass under the triumphal arches of the ancients. You see, now we are no longer in Lilliput, we have reached the island of the giants with Gulliver. Gulliver might very well be the offspring of some Scandinavian legend.
The king received Thor and, his friends, laughing heartily at their small size, and the seats they are offered are three times as high as they are. ”

“ The Rhine, disgusted at the loss of his royal dignity, and determined to take his vengeance on the warrior-bishops, received these last arrivals as he had those who came before. In his healing waters the Undines mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads; the Gnomes found shelter under the rocks, where they were hospitably received by the Dwarfs, and in the evening twilight the Nymphs, the Elves, and the Dryads danced once more merrily in company with Sylphs, Fairies, and Peris. ”

“ The place of missing monsters is occupied by some of those whom Odin spared on the occasion of his first campaign against the giant sons of Ymer, and by the wolf Fenris, whom the Ases had treacherously captured. There are also two other wolves, convicted of having made an attempt upon the life of the Sun, and all of these monsters are firmly chained and appear rather as sufferers than as tormentors.
One of these days, their iron chains will be loosened; one of these days heaven will turn cold and hell will melt, and—then, woe to the gods! ”

“ Why four famished stags feed upon its foliage? You understand? Well!
“But by what sign shall we recognize the approaching end of the gods—that which the Edda calls their twilight?
“The most important among all the sacred books of the North, a volume containing the prophecies of the divine sybil Vola, the Voluspa, will tell you.
“When the fatal moment draws near, their voice will cease to be able to utter the accustomed chants, and the luminous brightness radiating from their bodies will fade away little by little. ”

“ 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 [220] 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. ”

“ At first the giants had produced universal terror. The god Thor was blessed because he had driven them, armed as he was with his famous iron mace, all across the Hercynian forest. But as people became better acquainted with them, their fears subsided. They turned out to be far from cruel, to eat human flesh only in cases of dire necessity, and to act generally not only kindly, but even like simpletons—a misfortune common to most men, who are too fully developed in length or in breadth. ”

“ To see a human habitation, you have to rise high above the fences and hedges and then look down upon the ground.
At a place where two roads meet, the cracking of a whip is heard; hogs, sheep, and small oxen are driven aside to make way for a kind of procession, consisting of grave and solemn men and women, who almost all wear a look of consternation.
It is a wedding.
Two young people have just had their union blessed by the priests under the sacred oak. The bride is dressed in black, and wears a wreath of dark leaves on her head ”

“ How, then does it come about that the lime tree should in our day, in the nineteenth century, call forth sentiments of such extreme violence? The reason is that Young Germany has proclaimed it to be the Tree of Love, because its leaves are shaped like hearts. ”

“ The third jewel of Thor is his war belt; when he puts it on, his strength is twice as great as before; in fact, he becomes irresistible and would overthrow the great Odin himself. But Odin has nothing to fear on his part, for in spite of his brutal and passionate temper, Thor is always an obedient and submissive son.
Asa-Thor, that is to say, the Lord Thor, was most highly respected among men as the redhaired master of thunder and lightning, and as the destroyer of giants ”

“ The monk, who no doubt was a magician, knocked three times at the door with his rod, saying again: “Open! open! open!” and the brass doors turned upon their hinges, producing the same noise which they had heard before underground.
They were now in a grotto, whose ceiling and walls, blackened by the smoke of an immense number of torches, seemed to be hung with black as a sign of mourning. ”