Thule

“ There is no place oftener mentioned by the ancients than Thule, nor any one about the situation of which there has been a greater variety of opinions. Sir Robert Sibbald, in the additions to Camden, has given a discourse concerning the Thule of the ancients, in which the sentiments of different writers on this subject are considered, and many of them refuted. Camden supposes Shetland to be the place so often distinguished by the name of Thule ”

“ Pytheas said that Thule was six days' sail north of Britain. "But who in his senses would believe this?" cries Strabo again. "For Pytheas, who described Thule, has been shown to be the falsest of men. A traveller, starting from the middle of Britain and going five hundred miles to the north, would come to a country somewhere about Ireland, where living would be barely possible."
The first account of the Arctic regions likewise reads like pure romance to the ignorant and untravelled. ”

“ The bleak table-lands above the bluffs are barely grown with hardy shrubs and gramens; the snow gradually increases as we go northwards; the patches and powdering become long streaks, and at last they touch the water’s edge, where every wave besprinkles them. Thule is here fairly Snowland.
All these projections culminate southwards in the great Gláma (clatter) system, and northwards in the Dránga Jökull, these two being the only important masses in the north-western corner of the island. ”

“ Ptolemy calculates his degrees of longitude eastwards from a meridian 0 which he draws west of the Fortunate Isles (the Canaries) , the most western part of the earth. It will be seen that he gives Thule no very great extent. His removing it from the Arctic Circle south to 63° is doubtless due to the men of Agricola’s fleet having thought they had sighted Thule north of the Orkneys. In his eighth book [c. 3] he says:
Thule has a longest day of twenty hours, and it is distant west from Alexandria two hours. ”

“ It shews a surface of vast height, and is every where covered with snow. Some thought they saw land in the space between Thule and Cape Bristol. It is more than probable that these two lands are connected, and that this space is a deep bay, which I called Forster's Bay.
At one o'clock, finding that we could not weather Thule, we tacked and stood to the north, and at four, Freezeland Peak bore east, distant three or four leagues. Soon after, it fell little wind, and we were left to the mercy of a great westerly swell, which set right upon the shore. ”

“ When they thence came to the ocean [about the year 512] they took ship, and landed on the island of Thule [i.e., Scandinavia] and remained there. But Thule is beyond comparison the largest of all islands; for it is more than ten times as large as Britain. But it lies very far therefrom northwards. On this island the land is for the most part uninhabited. But in the inhabited regions there are thirteen populous tribes, each with a king. Every year an extraordinary thing takes place ”

“ Lord of the Isles is chiefly interesting as the first instance of the introduction into the blood of the Londonderry sires of the cross of Prince of Thule, which has already been referred to. His dam Handy was a daughter of Prince of Thule; and it may perhaps have been from this source that his reduced size came, for Prince of Thule was himself only 36 inches high. It is significant, too, that Multum in Parvo, a brown horse 37 inches high, sired by Lord of the Isles out of his own dam Dandy, is described by those who knew [58] Prince of Thule well as being exceedingly like him. ”

“ Towards the coast of the Belgæ [90] lies Thule, famous in Greek poems and in our own; there the nights in any case are short, since the sun, when it has long been about to set, rises up; but in the winter the nights are dark as elsewhere.... But at the summer solstice there is no night at all, because the sun then is already clearer, and not only shows its reflection, but also the greater part of itself.”
Thus we see here, as in so many of the classical authors, and later in Pliny, old legends and more trustworthy information hopelessly mixed together. ”

“ As Thule is never alluded to as lying north of these regions, but always as north of Britain, we cannot believe that he went straight from Norway south or south-eastwards to Jutland or the north coast of Germany. The meaning of Strabo’s words must be that he claimed to have sailed along the west and north-west coast of Europe (which [Pg 70] looks towards the ocean) as far as the borders of Asia, since Tanais (the Don) was generally used as defining the frontier of the two continents. ”

“ Thule, looking at the beautiful elf so lately a tree, could hardly trust his own eyes; and I fancy that many a boy, even at the present day, would have felt rather bewildered under the circumstances.
“Shining child!” said he: “you look vastly like the wonderful little being who led me out of the forest yesterday.”
“That may well be,” replied the elf of light; “for she is my sister. The brown dwarf who pointed out to you the alder-tree [Pg 135] is also an excellent friend of mine, though, strange to say, I have never seen him. We love to aid each other in all possible ways ”

“ The beautiful elf of light, penetrated with gratitude and admiration, remained Thule's fast friend as long as he lived. She gave the lad and his mother an excellent home, and made them happy all the days of their lives. ”

“ Neither is there any that Thule was inhabited by a Celtic-speaking people: it is, as we have seen (p. 152, n. 2) , absolutely certain that corn was cultivated in Scandinavia in the Bronze Age; and even if Pytheas did visit Thule, there is no reason to suppose that he went sufficiently far northward to come in contact with Lapps.
Mr. Tozer (Hist. of Anc. Geogr., pp. 159-60) , who does not believe that Pytheas travelled further northward than ‘the extremity of Britain’, nevertheless holds with Müllenhoff that Thule was Mainland. ”

“ If, however, we suppose him to have been an Irishman, and to have looked upon the voyage to Thule with Ireland as a starting-point, then it becomes more consistent. It is then two days’ sail from Ireland to the Hebrides, seven days thence to the Shetlands, and then five to Thule; that is, the whole voyage [Pg 162] will last fourteen days; and this may be about right. It is undeniably somewhat surprising that there should be no inhabitants on the Orcades, or Shetland, at that time. ”

“ If it should appear, as hinted here, that the word Thule is of Germanic origin, then the probability of the country lying outside the British Isles would be greatly strengthened; for Britain and the Scottish Islands were at that time not yet inhabited by a Germanic race, and the native Celts can only have known a Germanic name for a country from its own Germanic inhabitants. This land farther north must then be Norway. ”

“ Of Thule applied to some part of Great Britain we have a multitude of instances, which are ably and lengthily brought together by Sir Robert Sibbald. [19] Our writer begins by establishing the fact that the ancients connected the idea of darkness with the north.
“These places of Homer πρὸς ζόφον (ad caliginem) , and οὐ γὰρ ἴδμεν ὅπου ζόφου (neque enim scimus ubi sit caligo) , are by Strabo (ii. § 6) interpreted of the north, “Nescimus ubi sit Septentrio” (We know not where the north is) .
He quotes Tibullus (nat. circ. B.C. 54; iv. 1, 154) :
“Illic et densâ tellus absconditur umbrâ.” ”

“ These figures are kindly supplied by Professor H. Geelmuyden.
[55] According to existing MSS. of Solinus [c. 22] it was five days’ sail to Thule from the Orcades, which must here be Shetland, and which are mentioned as the second station on the way to Thule; the Ebudes (Hebrides) were the first station. Mommsen [1895, p. 219] regards the passage as corrupt, and considers it a later interpolation of between the 7th and 9th centuries. ”

“ He calls it the most northerly of the British Isles and says that he reached it after six days' sail from Britain: it was inhabited, but produced little; corn grew there sparingly and ripened ill; in summer the nights were long and bright. This account of his travels is lost save for fragments, and the few surviving fragments do not determine where his Thule was, but Müllenhoff is probably right in thinking it was the Shetlands. The Faeroes, Iceland and Norway have also been suggested, but are for various reasons much less likely. ”

“ What wrong had he done her that he should be haunted by this spectre, that did not threaten, but only looked piteously toward him with eyes full of entreaty and pain?
He left the shore, and blindly made his way up to the pasture-land above, careless whither he went. He knew not how long he had been away from the house, but here was a small fresh-water lake set around about with rushes, and far over there in the East lay a glimmer of the channels between Borva and Lewis. But soon there was another light in the East, high over the low mists that lay along the land. ”

“ Down at their feet, near the shore, a dusky line of huts and houses was scarcely visible, and over these lay a pale blue film of peat-smoke that did not move in the still air. Then they saw the bay into which the White Water runs, and they could trace the yellow glimmer of the river stretching into the island through a level valley of bog and morass. Far away, toward the East, lay the bulk of the island—dark green undulations of moorland and pasture; and there, in the darkness, the gable of one white house had caught the clear light of the sky, and was gleaming Westward like a star. ”

“ When the south-westerly winds bring great seas raging into the bay, with towering white combers dashing in upon the sands, the Thurlestone finds a voice and calls with a sound of roaring, all over this countryside. The rustics say that at such times you shall hear the bellowing of the Thurlestone ten miles distant. ”

“ Thuria, a great and glorious orb, swinging swift across the vaulted dome of the blue-black night, so low that she seemed to graze the hills, a gorgeous spectacle that held the girl now beneath the spell of its enchantment as it always had and always would.
"Ah, Thuria, mad queen of heaven!" murmured Tara of Helium. "The hills pass in stately procession, their bosoms rising and falling; the trees move in restless circles; the little grasses describe their little arcs; and all is movement, restless, mysterious movement without sound, while Thuria passes." ”

“ We cross a muddy river, when, with cracking of whip and galloping horses, we enter a village shaded by great ash-trees, and draw up before a respectable-looking inn, where we take up our quarters, for we are in Tula, once the brilliant capital of the Toltecs, but now reduced to a small straggling town numbering some 1,500 souls. ”

“ In New York, Thurley took another method when pessimism interrupted common sense routine. She went to the piano and practised until her throat gave warning to cease and she could again face the world as the wild-rose-with-a-prophecy-of-the-hothouse-variety Thurley, baby of the great “family,” an interesting young goddess who seldom voiced an opinion but who could sweep away opinions if she sang a ballad (unbeknownst to her present audience) with thoughts of Dan or Philena or the old days in the wagon as the inspiration! ”

“ Some twigs which are bare, and weeds, begin to glitter with hoary light. The very edge or outline of a tawny or russet hill has this hoary light on it. Your thoughts sparkle like the water surface and the downy twigs. From the shore you look back on the silver-plated river.
Every rain exposes new arrow-heads. We stop at Clamshell, and dabble for a moment in the relics of a departed race.
When we emerged from the pleasant footpath through the birches at Witherel Glade, the glittering white tufts of the Andropogon scoparius lit up by the sun were affectingly fair and cheering to behold. ”

“ It cannot fail to make a profound impression by its gloomy grandeur and wild beauty, especially at one point, where the eye can sweep away through the gorge, as if looking through a vast rocky tube, and rest upon green, sunny slopes, and pleasant, smiling scenery beyond.
We reach the pleasant village of Thusis, where the river Nolla flows into the Rhine; and there is, from the bridge that spans it, a beautiful view of the valley in a ring of mountains and an old castle, the oldest in Switzerland, perched on a crag, high above the river. ”

“ And then from the tiny churches of the mountain side and valley one hears the Angelus ringing forth with a peaceful sound; or if one be approaching Innsbruck itself, then the mellow tones of the greater bell of Wilten float upward from the valley and come to one borne on the still evening air. Under such circumstances of beauty and in the impressive solitude of the forest ways one must be, indeed, unimpressionable if one fails to feel something of the spirit and love of Tyrol, and of restful peace which has enslaved so many hearts throughout the country's history. ”

“ The rivers which we had crossed this forenoon possessed more of the character of mountain streams than those in the vicinity of Concord, and I was surprised to see everywhere traces of recent freshets, which had carried away bridges and injured the railroad, though I had heard nothing of it. In Ludlow, Mount Holly, and beyond, there is interesting mountain scenery, not rugged and stupendous, but such as you could easily ramble over,—long narrow mountain vales through which to see the horizon. You are in the midst of the Green Mountains. ”

“ Thun (6) , a quaint old town of Switzerland, on the Aar, 17 m. SE. of Bern, and barely 1 m. distant from Lake of Thun (12 m. by 2 m.) ; has a 12th-century castle, &c.
Thunderer, name given to the Times, from certain powerful articles in it ascribed to the editor, Captain Edward Stirling.
Thurgau (105) , a canton of Switzerland, on the NE. frontier, where Lake Constance for a considerable distance forms its boundary; inhabitants are mainly Protestant; country is hilly but not mountainous, fertile, and traversed by the river Thur, a tributary of the Rhine ”