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ANIMALS. 655
2. ANIMALS.
We shall have still more to say about sacred animals, which
enter into more intimate relations with man than dumb nature
can ;
but their cultus will admit of being referred to two or three
principal causes. Either they stood connected with particular
gods, and to some extent in their service, as the boar belongs
to Fro, the wolf and raven to Wuotan ; or there lies at the basis
the metamorphosis of a higher being into some animal shape,
on the strength of which the whole species comes to be invested
with a halo of honour. That is how we may in some instances
have to take a bear, bull, cow or snake, presupposing an in
carnation, though our mythology may have long
ceased to reach
so far back as to give a full account of it. Then, bordering
close upon such a lowering of the god into the animal, comes
the penal degradation of m<an into a beast, the old doctrine
of transmigration, in which we discover a third reason for the
consecration of animals, though
it does not warrant an actual
worship of them. Those myths, e.g. of the cuckoo, woodpecker,
nightingale, and so on, furnish a fund of beautiful tales, which
enter largely into the hero-worship (see Suppl.).
QUADEUPEDS. Foremost of animals I name the horse, the
noblest, wisest, trustiest of domestic animals, with whom the hero
holds friendly talk (p. 392), who sympathizes in his griefs and
rejoices
in his victories. As some heroes are named after the
horse (Hengest, Hors), the horse too has proper names given him ;
Norse mythology assigns to nearly every god his separate horse,
endowed with miraculous powers. OSin s steed is named Sleipnir
(p. 154), and is, like some giants and heroes, an octopod. 1 The
other horses of the ases are enumerated by Saem. 44 a and Sn. 18,
without specifying to which they belonged. Several names are
formed with faxi (jubatus, comatus, OHG. vahso), as SMnfam
(Seem. 32. Sn.ll), Gullfaxi (Sn. 107-10), Hrimfaxi (Ssem. 32.
91. Sn. 11), Freyfaxi (Vatnsd. 140-1). Of these,
Gullfaxi the
gold-maned belonged to giant Hrungnir, Skinfaxi the shiny-
are the two that
1 Old riddle on Oftinn and Sleipnir in the Hervararsaga : Who
go to Thing (council) together, and have three eyes, ten legs and one tail between
them? A mode of expression quite of a piece with our old habits of speech thus
;
in the Weisthumer it is said the officers of the court shall come to the assize with 6
mouths, meaning three men on horseback and a dog.