TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

DWELLINGS. INCARNATION. 337
still go their rounds, and heroes ride through field or air. More
rarely, and not at regular intervals, there take place journeys of
gods through the world, singly or in twos or threes, to inspect the
race of man, and punish the crimes they have noticed. Thus
Mercury and OSinn appeared on earth, or Heimdall to found the
three orders, and Thorr visited at weddings ; Oolnn, Hoenir and
Loki travelled in company; medieval legend makes God the
Father seek a lodging, or the Saviour and St. Peter, or merely
three angels (as the Servian song does, Vuk 4, no. 3). Most
frequent however are the solitary appearances of gods, who, invoked
or uninvoked, suddenly bring succour to their favoured ones in
every time of need ; the Greek epos is quite full of this. Athene,
Poseidon, Ares, Aphrodite mingle with the warriors, warning,
advising, covering ; and just as often do Mary and saints from
heaven appear in Christian legends. The Lithuanian Perkunos also
walks on earth (see SuppL).
But when they descend, they are not always visible ; you may
hear the car of the god rush by, and not get sight of him bodily ;
like ghosts the blessed gods flit past the human eye unnoticed, till
the obstructive mist be removed from it. Athene seizes Achilles
by the hair, only by him and no other is she seen, II. 1, 197 ; to
make the succouring deities visible to Diomed, she has taken the
mist from his eyes, that was on them before 5, 127 :
6V
8 av TOI air o(#aX//,coz/ e\ov, r) irplv eirrjev,
too-Kys r)fj,ev Oeov ?)8e KOI avSpa.
Just so Biarco, in Saxo Gram., p. 37, is unable to spy Othin riding
a white steed and aiding the Swedes, till he peeps through the ring
formed by the arm of a spirit-seeing woman: a medium that
elsewhere makes the elfin race visible to the bleared eyes of man.
In another way the gods, even when they showed themselves
bodily, concealed their divine nature, by assuming the form of a
human acquaintance, or of an animal. Poseidon "stept into the
host, disguised as Kalchas, II. 13, 45, Hermes escorted Priam as a
Myrmidon warrior 24, 397, and Athene the young Telemachus as
Mentor. In the same way Othin appeared as the chariot-driver
Bruno (p. 330), or as a one-eyed old man. Metamorphoses of gods
into animals in Teutonic mythology take place only for a definite
momentary purpose, to which the character of the animal supplies
the key ; e.g., Oftinn takes the shape of a snake, to slip through a
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