TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

FLIGHT. VEHICLES. HORSES. 327
But the gliding of the gods over such immense distances must have
seemed from first to last like flying, especially as their departure
was expressly prepared for by the assumption of a bird s form. It
is therefore easy to comprehend why two several deities, Hermes
and Athene, are provided with peculiar sandals (TreSiXa), whose
motive power conveys them over sea and land with the speed of
wind, II. 24, 341. Od. 1, 97. 5, 45 ; we are expressly told that
Hermes flew with them (Trereto, II. 24, 345. Od. 5, 49);
plastic art represents them as winged shoes, and at a later time adds
a pair of wings to the head of Hermes. 1
These winged sandals
then have a perfect right to be placed side by side with the feather-
shift (fiaSrhamr) which Freyja possessed, and which at Thor s
request she lent to Loki for his flight to lotunheim, Saem.
a>b
70 ;
but as Freyja is more than once confounded with Frigg (p. 302),
other legends tell us that Loki flew off in the valsham Friggjar,
Sn. 113. I shall come back to these falcon or swan coats in
another connexion, but their resemblance to the Greek pedlla
is unmistakable; as Loki is here sent as a messenger from the
gods to the giants, he is so far one with Hermes, and Freyja s
feather-shift suggests the sandals of Athene. Sn. 132-7: Loki
atti skda, er hann rann d lopt ok log!
had shoes in which he ran
through air and fire. It was an easy matter, in a myth, for the
investiture with winged hamr or sandals to glide insensibly into
an actual assumption of a bird s form : GeirroSr catches the flying
Loki as a veritable bird, Sn. 113, and when Athene starts to fly,
she is a swallow (see Suppl.).
The mighty gods would doubtless have moved whithersoever it
pleased them, without wings or sandals, but simple antiquity was
not content with even these : the human race used carriages and
horses, and the gods cannot do without them either. On this point
a sensible difference is to be found between the Greek and German
mythologies.
All the higher divinities of the Greeks have a chariot and pair
ascribed to them, as their kings and heroes in battle also fight in
chariots. An o^rjfia for the god of thunder would at once be
suggested by the natural phenomenon itself ;
and the conception of
the sun-chariot driven by Helios must also be very ancient. The
1 0. Miiller s archseol. 559.