Northern mythology

;
NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY. 137
among forms of like sound. Every verbal illustration
must, therefore, be conformable to the laws of transition
between the Northern and its kindred tongues ;
a rule, by
the way, easier to give than to follow.
To explain a myth is to show what can have given occasion
to the image on which it hinges, and to express, in
unemblematic language, the thought which serves as a
basis for the image. Here explanation may usually stop
for to follow the figurative
picture through all its parts is
not necessary, that being a process which will naturally be
undertaken by every poetic mind, and the object of explanation
is not to excite the fancj^, but to lead it to the
point whence it may begin its flight. In the myth of
Frey and Gerd^s love, for instance, the thought forms the
basis, that the god of fecundity longs to spread his blessing
over the barren earth, and to wake in the seed its
slumbering efficacy. To show this is to explain the myth.
But this thought is expressed by a picture of all the desires
and sufferings of love, of the blessing of fruitfulness,
as the effect of love in the youthful heart ; whereby the
myth becomes a beautiful poem. To develop this poetic
beauty is not the object of illustration ; it can escape no
one who has a feeling for poetry. And to follow all the
possible resemblances between the effect of fruitfulness in
the earth, and the effect of love in the heart, would be as
uninteresting as tasteless.