Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

IUU MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK the keys of the prison-house, like the malignant Grendel in
_ ^—* Beowulf, or the English fire-demon Grant mentioned by Ger-
vase of Tilbury, a name connected with the Old Norse grind,
a grating, and the modern German grenz, a boundary. At
no time, however, did Loki exhibit the features of the Semitic
devil or the Iranian Ahriman. Like Hephaistos, a god of
the fire, he resembles him also in his halting gait and in the
uncouth figure which provokes the laughter of the gods ;
and if we are not told that like him Loki was hurled out of
heaven, yet we see him bound for his evil deeds, and, like
Prometheus, he shall be set free, we are told, at the end of
the world, and shall hurry in the form of a wolf to swallow
the moon, as the deliverance of Prometheus is to be followed
by the overthrow of his tormentor. Hence the Norse phrase,
' Loki er or bondum,' answering to the expression, 6 Der
Teufel ist frei gelassen,' the devil is loose. 1
old the The last day of the week bore, in Grimm's opinion, the
name of this deity. 2 In place of our Saturday we have the
Old Norse laugardagr, the Swedish logerdag, the Danish
loverdag, a word which at a later period was held to mean
the day appointed for bathing or washing, but which was
more probably used at first in the original sense of brightness
attached to Loki's name. When, however, this mean-
ing gave way before the darker sense extracted from the
verb lukan, to shut or imprison, Loki became known as
Ssetere, the thief who sits in ambush. The Christian mis-
sionaries were not slow to point out the resemblance of this
word to the Semitic Satan and the Latin Saturnus, who were
equally described as malignant demons ; and thus the notions
grew up that the name of the last day of the week was im-
ported from the old mythology of Italy, or that the Teutonic
god was also the agricultural deity of the Latin tribes.
1 The root of the two myths of Loki family of the gods. The vulture of
and Prometheus is thus precisely the Prometheus is in the case of Loki resame.
In each case the benefactor of placed by a serpent whose venom
man is a being as subtle as he is wise, trickles down upon his face.
and as such he is expelled from the 2 Grimm, D. M., ii. 227.