Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

»bZ MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
"BOOK readily adapted. Hel had been, like Persephone, the queen
^—* of the unseen-land,—in the ideas of the northern tribes^
a land of bitter cold and icy walls. She now became
not the queen of Niflheim, but Mflheim itself, while her
abode, though gloomy enough, was not wholly destitute of
material comforts. It became the Hell where the old man
hews wood for the Christinas fire, and where the Devil in
his eagerness to buy the flitch of bacon yields up the
marvellous quern which is ' good to grind almost anything.' l
It was not so pleasant, indeed, as heaven, or the old Val-
halla, but it was better to be there than shut out in the
outer cold beyond its padlocked gates. 2 But more particu-
larly the devil was a being who under pressure of hunger
might be drawn into acting against his own interest ; in
other words, he might be outwitted, and this character of a
poor or stupid devil is almost the only one exhibited in
Teutonic legends. a In fact, as Professor Max Miiller re-
marks, the Germans, when they had been c
indoctrinated
with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Satan or Diabolus,
treated him in the most good-humoured manner ;
' nor is
it easy to resist Dr. Dasent's conclusion that ' no greater
proof can be given of the small hold which the Christian
Devil has taken of the Norse mind, than the heathen aspect
under which he constantly appears, and the ludicrous way in
which he is alwa} r s outwitted.' 4
Tayland But this freedom was never taken with Satan. While
ie Smith.
1 'Why the Sea is Salt.' Dasent, carefully locked. Dr. Dasent remarks
Norse Tales, ii. This inexhaustible that the Smith makes trial of hell in
quern is only another form of the trea- the first instance, for 'having behaved
sures of Helen or Brynhild. But though ill to the ruler ' of heaven, and ' actually
the snow may veil all the wealth of quarrelled with the master' of hell,
fruits and vegetables, this wealth is of ' he was naturally anxious '
no use to the chill beings who have laid
to know
whether he would be received by either.
their grasp upon it. These beings must Ibid. cu.
be therefore f-o hard pressed for hunger
that, like Esau, they may be ready to
3
It has been said of Southey that he
could never think of the devil without
part with anything or everything for a laughing. This is but saying that he
mess of pottage or a flitch of bacon. had the genuine humour of our Teutonic
2 The Master Smith, in the heathenish ancesiors. His version of the legend of
story so entitled, entraps the devil into Eleeraon may be compared with any of
a purse, as the Fisherman entraps the the popular tales in which Satan is
Jin in the Arabian Tale, and the devil overmatched by men whom he despises,
is so scared that when tho Smith pre- Grimm, 969.
Bents himself at the gate of hell, he 4 Norse Tales, introd. ciii.
gives orders to have tho nine padlocks