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830 SOULS.
meadow of the underworld spoken of in p. 822. 1
Just so the
Bohemians make the soul fly about in trees, Koniginh. hs. p. 88.
106; hence both souls and elves dance to and fro in the
meadows at night. Strange, that a minnesanger already makes
the soul of a drunken (as if- entranced) man jump :
f min sele uf
eime rippe stat, wafen ! diu von dem wine daruf gehiippet hat
(MS. 2, 105 b 2
). So the souls of the drowned keep jumping up
out of the jars, p. 496 (see Suppl.).
to be the souls of dying men (p.
Shooting stars are supposed
722) ; not only heroes and
other men, but separate limbs of their bodies were fixed in the
sky as stars, chap. XXII.
These are the simplest (if you will, rudest) notions as to the
nature of the soul, and to them I ascribe a high antiquity.
More polished, more deeply rooted in ancient myths, is the
opinion of the soul s passage into the domain of the underworld
across a water which divides the realm of living men from that of
the dead.
- The Norse narrative of the death_pf Bajdr has the remarkable
incident, that the ases placed his body on board a vessel, in which
they ereeted ilio funeral pile, set it on fire, and so r.ouimittc.d it /<>
{//<-, sea c.i Jii
jJi water (Sn. <><>)." In the- same way tin; corpse of
the deified hero Scild (p. oO lM is adorned and carried into <i
,s7<//>,
which drifts away on the sea, nobodyTEnows whither, Beow. 5o
105. Sigmundr bears the body oF^his beloved son Smnotli to
the seashore, where a stranger waits with a skiff, and offers
1 Those who are neither saved nor damned come into the green meadoiv,
Heinse s Ardinghello 1, 96.
2 Conf. Helbl. 1, 354: vrou Sele, tretet uf ein rippe. Eenart in his bucket
at the bottom of the well (p. 807), to humbug Ysengrin, pretends he is living in
paradise there, and that every soul, on parting from the body, has to sit on the
bucket-pole till it is penitent, then it may climb down, and leave all its ills behind,
Eenart 6804-13.
3 What deep root this custom hadJakmiJrLJhe North, may be gathered from
the fact that bodies were also buriedTn a boat . [on land] doubtless so that on liheir
,
journey to the underworld, when they came to a water, they might have their fern"
at hand. Hakon konimgrtok \>B,Y skip oil et frtt hoftSo Eiriks Ifymr, ok leTTdraga
a land upp ; J^ar let Hakon leggja Egil Ullserk i skip, oc meft hanom alia J?a menn
er af J^eirra lifti hofSo fallit, let bera par at iortf oc griot. Hakon konungr let oc
fleiri skip uppsetja, oc bera a valinn, Saga H. goffa, cap. 27. Unnr var logff ?
skip i haugmum, Laxd. p. 16. Asmundr var neygdr on i l>kip lagffr, \>rsel\ hans
lag~Sr i annan stafn s .
kipsins ,^Islend ^sog . 1 66. Geirmundr , heygffr ok i lagffr skip
}>ar uti skoginn fra gar Si, ibid. 1, 07. Probably the bodies of the great were first
laid in a coffin, and this put in the boat, which was then buried iiftn^eTiill: Chidrun
says: kntir mun ek kaupa ok kisto steiniSa, SffimT^^l11 :; !^o"l)6ats have been
found, that I know of, in ancient barrows of Continental Germany: