TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

244
OTHER GODS.
never once names the Eddie Loki, tells wonderful things
of this
Ugarthilocus, pp. 163-6 : he paints him as a gigantic semi-divine
monster, who dwells in a distant land,
is invoked in a storm like
other gods, and grants his aid. A valiant hero, named Thorkill,
brooks the adventurous journey to Ugarthilocus
legendary variation of the visit which, in Snorri, Thorr pays to
: all this is but
UtgarSaloki. Still it is worth noticing, that Thorkill plucks out one
of Ugarthilocus s huge spear-like hairs, and takes it home with him
(Saxo 165-6). The utgar&ar were the uttermost borders of the
habitable world, where antiquity fixed the abode of giants and
monsters, i.e., hell; and here also may have been present that
notion of the bar, closing up as it were the entrance to that
inaccessible region of ghosts and demons.
Whether in very early times there was also a Saxon LoJco and
an Alamannic Lcihlw, or only a Grendil and Krentil ; what is of
capital importance is the agreement in the myths themselves.
what was cited above, I will here add something more.
To
Our
nursery-tales have made us familiar with the incident of the hah
plucked off the devil as he lay asleep in his grandmother s lap
(Kinderm. 29). The corresponding Norwegian tale makes three
feathers be pulled out of the dragon s tail, not while he sleeps, but
after he is dead.
Loki, in punishment of his misdeeds, is put in chains, like
Prometheus who brought fire to men; but he is to be released
again at the end of the world. One of his children, Fenrir, 1
i.e.,
himself in a second birth, pursues the moon in the shape of a wolf,
and threatens to swallow her. According to Sn. 12. 13, an old
giantess in the forest gave birth to these giants in wolfskin girdles,
the mightiest of them being Mdnagarmr (lunae canis) who is to
devour the moon ;
but in another place, while Skoll chases the sun,
Hati, Hroffvitnis sonr (Soem. 45 a
) dogs the moon. Probably there
were fuller legends about them all, which were never written
down ; an old Scotch story is still remembered about the tayl of
water. To the elder series must be added Sif= earth, and the miSgarSsormr
(world-snake). But what nature-god can OSinn have taken the place of?
None ? And was his being not one of the primeval ones 1 &c. [Quoted from
SuppL, vol. iii.]
1 Goth. Fanareis ? OHG. Fanari, Feniri ? can it be our fahnentrager,
pannifer 1 But the early Norse does not seem to have the word answering to
the Goth, fana, OHG. fano (flag). [Has the fox holding up his tail as a
to do with
standard, in the unrighteous war of beasts against birds, anything
this ?]