Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

96 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK
II.
The story
of Tell and
G-esler.
wliose birth marks the gradual rising again of the sun in
the heaven. The myth now becomes transparent. Baldur,
who dwells in Breidablick or Ganzblick (names answering
precisely to Europe and Pasiphae, the broad- spreading light
of morning, or the dazzling heavens), is slain by the wintry
sun, and avenged by Ali or Wali, the son of Odin and Rind,
immediately after his birth. Ali is further called Bui, the
tiller of the earth, over which the plough may again pass on
the breaking of the frost. These incidents at once show
that this myth cannot have been developed in the countries
of northern Europe. Bunsen rightly lays stress, and too
great stress can scarcely be laid, on the thorough want of
correspondence between these myths and the climatic con-
ditions of northern Germany, still more of those of Scandi-
navia and of Iceland. It may be rash to assign them dog-
matically to Central Asia, but indubitably they sprung up in a
country where the winter is of very short duration. Baldur
then is ' the god who is slain,' like Dionysos who is killed
by his brothers and then comes to life again : but of these
myths the Vedic hymns take no notice. ' In the region
where they arose there is no question of any marked decline
of temperature,' and therefore these poems ' stop short at
the collision between the two hostile forces of sunshine and
storm.' l
1
— :
The myth of Tell, with which the story of Baldur and
' The tragedy of the solar year, of
the murdered and risen god, is familiar
to us from the days of ancient Egypt
must it not be of equally primaeval
origin here?' [in Teutonic tradition].
Bunsen, God in History, ii. 458.
The evidence which has established
the substantial identity of the story of
the Iliad with that of the Odyssey has
also shown that the Nibelung Lay practically
reproduces the myth of the Volsungs,
and that the same myth is pre-
sent ed under slightly different colours in
the legends of Walthar of Aquitaine and
other Teutonic romances, vol. i. eh. xii.
The materials of these narratives are,
in short, identical with the legends of
the Teutonic Baldur and the Greek
Helen, and the whole narrative thus becomes
in each case transparent in
almost every part. The identity of the
Sigurd of the Edda with the Siegfried
of the Nibelung Song has so important
a bearing on the results of Comparative
Mythology, that I avail myself all the
more readily of the evidence by which
this fact has been established by one
who believes that Atli and one or two
other names of the Nibelung Lay are
' undoubtedly historical.' On this point,
indeed, Bunsen has left no work to be
done. If he has left in the Lay of the
Nibelungs two or three historical names,
he has left nothing more. The narrative
or legend itself carries us to the
Breidablick (Euryphaessa) or Ganzblick
( Pasiphae) which is the dazzling
abode of Baldur, the type of the several
Helgis, of Sigurd and Siegfried, as he is
also of Achilleus and Odysseus, of Rustem,
Perseus, or Herakles.