TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

LOKI, GRENDEL, SATURN. 241
retained in the name of a broad-leaved vegetable ; there is also a j
plant called devil s-hand, and in more than one legend the Evil one {
leaves the print of his hand on rocks and walls.
If these last allusions have led us away from the beneficent
deities rather to hurtful demons and malignant spirits, we have here
an easy transit to the only god whom the teaching of the Edda repre
sents as wicked and malevolent, though it still reckons him among
the Ases.
5. (LOKI, GRENDEL), SATURN.
Logi, as we have seen, was a second son of Forniotr, and the
three brothers Hler, Logi, Kari on the whole seem to represent
water, fire and air as elements. Now a striking narrative (Sn. 54.
60) places Logi by the side of Loki, a being from the giant province
beside a kinsman and companion of the gods. This is no mere play
upon words, the two really signify the same thing from different
points of view , Logi the natural force of fire, and Loki, with a
shifting of the sound, a shifting of the sense : of the burly giant
has been made a sly seducing villain. The two may be compared
to the Prometheus and the Hephaestus (Vulcan) of the Greeks ;
Okeanos was a friend and kinsman of the former. But the two get
mixed up. In Loki, sa er flestu illu raetfr (Sn. 46), who devises the
most of ill, we see also the giant demon who, like Hephaestus, sets
the gods a-laughing ;
his limping reminds us of Hephaestus and the
lame fire (N. Cap. 76), his chaining of Prometheus s, for Loki is put
in chains like his son Fenrir. As Hephsestus forges the net for
Ares and Aphrodite, Loki too prepares a net (Sn. 69), in which he
is caught himself. Most salient of all is the analogy between
Hephaestus being hurled down from Olympus by Zeus (II. 1, 591-3)
and the devil being cast out of heaven into hell by God (ch. XXXIII,
Devil), though the Edda neither relates such a fall of Loki, nor sets
him forth as a cunning smith and master of dwarfs , probably the
stories of Loki and Logi were much fuller once. Loki s former
fellowship with OSinn is clearly seen, both from Ssem. 61 b , and
from the juxtaposition of three creative deities on their travels,
Offinn, Hcenir, Lo&r, Saem. 3 a ,
instead of which we have also O&inn,
Hcenir, Loki, Saem. 180, or in a different order O&inn, Loki, Hcenir,
Sn. 80. 135 (conf. supra, p. 162). This trilogy I do not venture to
identify with that of Hler, Logi, Kari above, strikingly as OSinn
corresponds to the t? CLVC/JLOIO ; and though from the creating OSinn
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