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of the north as late as the end of the fourteenth century. Without their coöperation, the greater part of the songs and Sagas of genuine antiquity could hardly have reached us. The Skaldic diction which was polished to an artistic extreme, with its pagan metaphors and similes, retained its supremacy over literary form even after the influence of Christianity had revolutionized national thought.1

The Eddas.

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The chief mythological records of the Norse are the Eddas and the Sagas. The word Edda has usually been connected with the Icelandic for great-grandmother; it has also been regarded as a corruption of the High German Erda, Mother Earth, from whom, according to the lay in which the word first occurs, the earliest race of mankind sprang,3. or as the point or head of Norse poetry, or as a tale concerned with death, or as derived from Odde, the home of the reputed collector of the Elder Edda. But, of recent years, scholars have looked with most favor upon a derivation from the Icelandic oðr, which means mind, or poetry. There are two Icelandic collections called Eddas Snorri's and Saemund's. Until the year 1643 the name was applied to a book, principally in prose, containing Mythical Tales, a Treatise on the Poetic Art and Diction, a Poem on Metres, and a Rhymed Glossary of Synonyms, with an appendix of minor treatises on grammar and rhetoric the whole intended as a guide for poets. Although a note in the Upsala manuscript, of date about 1300 A.D., asserted that this work was "put together" by Snorri Sturlason, who lived 1178-1241, the world was not informed of the fact until 1609, when Arngrim Johnsson made the announcement in his Constitutional History of Iceland.' While

1 F. W. Horn's Geschichte d. Literatur d. Skandinavischen Nordens, 27-42. 2 Cleasby and Vigfusson's Dictionary; Lüning's Die Edda, 1859.

8 The Lay of Righ in Snorri's Edda; Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale, II. 514. 4 Jacob Grimm.

5 The Celtic aideadh: Professor Rhys, Academy, Jan. 31, 1880.

6 Arne Magnusson, see Morley's Eng. Writers, II. 336, and Murray's New Eng Dictionary.

7 Corp. Poet. Boreale, I., XXVII., etc.

the main treatises on the poetic art are, in general, Snorri's, the treatises on grammar and rhetoric have been, with more or less certitude, assigned to other writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is probable, too, that in the Mythical Tales, or the Delusion of Gylfi, Snorri merely enlarged, and edited with poetical illustrations, the work of earlier hands. The poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries do not speak of Snorri, but they refer continually to the "rules of Edda," and frequently to the obscurity and the conventionality of Eddic phraseology, figures, and art. Even at the present day, in Iceland, it is common to hear the term "void of Eddic art," or a bungler in Eddic art." A rearrangement of Snorri's Edda, by Magnus Olafsson (1574-1636), is much better known than the original work.

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In 1642, Bishop Bryniolf Sveinsson discovered a manuscript of the mythological poems of Iceland. Misled by theories of his own and by a fanciful suggestion of the famous antiquary Biorn of Scardsa, he attributed the composition of these poems to Saemund the Wise, a historian who lived 1056-1133. Henceforth, consequently, Snorri's work is called the Younger, or Prose Edda, in contradistinction to Bryniolf's find, which is known as the Elder, the Poetical Edda, or the Edda of Saemund. The oldest manuscript of the Poetical Edda is of the thirteenth century. Its contents were probably collected not later than 1150. The composition of the poems cannot well be placed earlier than the ninth or tenth centuries after Christ; and a consideration of the habits, laws, geography, and vocabulary illustrated by the poems leads. eminent scholars to assign the authorship to emigrants of the south Norwegian tribes who, sailing westward, "won Waterford and Limerick, and kinged it in York and East England." The poems are Icelandic, however, in their general character and history. They are principally of heroic and mythical import: such as the stories of Balder's Fate, of Skirnir's Journey, of Thor's Hammer, of Helgi the Hunding's Bane, and the twenty lays that

1 Corp. Poet. Boreale, I., LXXI.; LXIII.-LXIV.

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in fragmentary fashion tell the eventful history of the Völsungs and the Nibelungs.1

The Sagas. The Eddas contain many myths and mythical features that contradict the national character of both Germans and Norsemen ; but the Sagas have their roots in Norse civilization, and are national property. Of these mythic-heroic prose compositions the most important to us is the Völsunga Saga, which was put together probably in the twelfth century, and is based in part upon the poems of the Elder Edda, in part upon floating traditions, and in part upon popular songs that now are lost.3

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§ 14. Records of German Mythology. - The story of the Völsungs and the Nibelungs springs from mythological sources common to the whole Teutonic race. Two distinct versions of the Saga survive, the Low or North German, which we have already noticed in the lays of the Elder Edda and in the Norse Völsunga Saga, and the High or South German, which has been preserved in German folk-songs and in the Nibelungenlied, or Lay of the Nibelungs, that has grown out of them. The Norse form of the story exhibits a later survival of the credulous, or myth-making, mental condition. The Lay of the Nibelungs absorbed, at an earlier date, historical elements, and began sooner to restrict the personality of its heroes within the compass of human limitations.*

Although there are many manuscripts, or fragments of manuscripts, of the Nibelungenlied that attest its popularity between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was not until the Swiss critic, J. J. Bodmer, published, in 1757, portions of two ancient poems, "The Revenge of Kriemhild" and "The Lament over the Heroes of Etzel," that the attention of modern scholars was called to this famous German epic. Since that time many theories of the composition of the Nibelungenlied have been advanced. It has

1 For literature, see Commentary, §§ 177-185.

2 Paul's Grundriss d. Germ. Phil., 1 Bd., 5 Lfg.; Mythologie.

3 Morris and Magnússon's The Story of the Völsungs and Nibelungs. Horn's Gesch. d. Lit. d. Skand. Nordens, 27-42, 58, etc.

4 Werner Hahn, Das Nibelungenlied.

been held by some that the German epic is an adaptation of the Norse version; by others, that the Scandinavians, not the Germans, borrowed the story; and by others still, that the epics, while proceeding from a common cradle, are of independent growth. The last theory is the most tenable. Concerning the history of the Nibelungenlied, it has been maintained that since, during the twelfth century, when no poet would adopt any other poet's £ stanzaic form, the Austrian Von Kürenberg used the stanzaic form of the Nibelungenlied, the epic must be his.3 It has also been urged that the poem, having been written down about 1140, was altered in metrical form by younger poets, until, in 1200 or thereabouts, it assumed the form preserved in the latest of the three great manuscripts. But the theory advanced by Lachmann is still of great value: that the poem consists of a number of ancient ballads of various age and uneven worth; and that, about 1210, a collector, mending some of the ballads to suit himself, strung them together on a thread of his own invention.

In fine, the materials of the poem would persuade us not only of its origin in very ancient popular lays, but of their fusion and improvement by the imaginative effort of at least one, and, probably, of several poets, who lived and wrote between 1120 and 1250 A.D. The metrical structure, also, would indicate derivation from the German folk-song and modification due to multifarious handling on the part of popular minstrels and poets of written verse.5

§ 15. Records of Oriental Mythology. Although the myths of Egypt, India, and Persia are of intense interest and importance. they have not materially affected English literature. The following is, however, a brief outline of the means by which some of them have been preserved.

1 The Grimm brothers; v. d. Hagen; Vilmar.

2 Werner Hahn; Jas. Sime, Ency. Brit., Nibelungenlied.

8 Pfeiffer.

4 Bartsch, see Ency. Brit.

5 Werner Hahn, 18, 58-60. For literature, see Commentary, § 186.

6 For translations of Oriental Myths, see Commentary, § 15; for mythical per sonages, see Index and Dictionary.

Egyptian Records. These are (1) The Hieroglyphs, or sacred inscriptions in Tombs of the Kings, and other solemn places, conveying ideas by symbols, by phonetic signs, or by both; (2) The Sacred Papyri, containing hymns to the gods; (3) The Books of the Dead and of the Lower Hemisphere, - devoted to necromantic incantations, prayers for the souls of the departed, nd other rituals.

Indian Records. (1) The Vedas, or Holy Scriptures of the Hindoos, which fall into four divisions. The most ancient, the Rig-veda, consists of hymns of an elevated and spiritual character composed by families of Rishis, or psalmists, as far back, perhaps, as 3000 B.C., not later than 1400 B.C. They give us the religious conceptions of the Aryans when they crossed the Himalayas and began to push toward Southern Hindostan. The Sama-veda is a book of solemn chants and tunes. The Yajur-veda comprises prayers for sacrificial occasions, and interpretations of the same. The Atharva-veda shows, as might be expected of the youngest of the series, the influence upon the purer Aryan creed, of superstitions borrowed, perhaps, from the aboriginal tribes of India. It contains spells for exorcising demons and placating them.

(2) The Indian Epics of classical standing. They are the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâyana. Scholars differ as to the chronological precedence. The Great Feud of the Bhâratas has the air of superior antiquity because of the numerous hands and generations that have contributed to its composition. The Adventures of Râma, on the other hand, recalls a more primitive stage of credulity, and of savage invention. The Mahâbhârata is a storehouse of mythical tradition. It contains several wellrounded epic poems, the most beautiful of which is the Episode of Nala, a prince who, succumbing to a weakness common to his contemporaries, has gambled away his kingdom. The Great Feud of the Bhâratas is, indeed, assigned to an author- - but his name, Vyâsa, means simply the Arranger. The Râmâyana purports to have been written by the poet Vâlmîki. It tells how Sita, the wife of Prince Râma, is carried off to Ceylon by Râvana, king

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