A Book of Myths
with rich tapestry and with gold. For many a year had Angrbotha rested
there in peace, and it was only by chanting a magic spell and tracing
those runes which have power to raise the dead that Odin awoke her.
When she raised herself, terrible and angry from her tomb, he did not
tell her that he was the mighty father of gods and men. He only asked
her for whom the great feast was prepared, and why Hel was spreading
her couches so gorgeously. And to the father of Baldur she revealed
the secret of the future, that Baldur was the expected guest, and that
by his blind brother Hodur his soul was to be hastened to the Shades.
"Who, then, would avenge him?" asked the father, great wrath in his
heart. And the prophetess replied that his death should be avenged by
Vali, his youngest brother, who should not wash his hands nor comb his
hair until he had brought the slayer of Baldur to the funeral pyre.
But yet another question Odin would fain have answered.
"_Who_," he asked, "_would refuse to weep at Baldur's death?_"
Thereat the prophetess, knowing that her questioner could be none
other than Odin, for to no mortal man could be known so much of the
future, refused for evermore to speak, and returned to the silence of
her tomb. And Odin was forced to mount his steed and to return to his
own land of warmth and pleasure.
On his return he found that all was well with Baldur. Thus he tried to
still his anxious heart and to forget the feast in the chill regions
of Niflheim, spread for the son who was to him the dearest, and to
laugh with those who tried in vain to bring scathe to Baldur.
Only one among those who looked at those sports and grew merry, as he
whom they loved stood like a great cliff against which the devouring
waves of the fierce North Sea beat and foam and crash in vain, had
malice in his heart as he beheld the wonder. In the evil heart of Loki
there came a desire to overthrow the god who was beloved by all gods
and by all men. He hated him because he was pure, and the mind of Loki
was as a stream into which all the filth of the world is discharged.
He hated him because Baldur was truth and loyalty, and he, Loki, was
treachery and dishonour. He hated him because to Loki there came never
a thought that was not full of meanness and greed and cruelty and
vice, and Baldur was indeed one _sans peur et sans reproche_.
Thus Loki, taking upon himself the form of a woman, went to Fensalir,
the palace, all silver and gold, where dwelt Freya, the mother of
Baldur.
The goddess sat, in happy majesty, spinning the clouds, and when Loki,
apparently a gentle old woman, passed by where she sat, and then
paused and asked, as if amazed, what were the shouts of merriment that
she heard, the smiling goddess replied:
"All things on earth have sworn to me never to injure Baldur, and all
the gods use their weapons against him in vain. Baldur is safe for
evermore."
"All things?" queried Loki.
And Freya answered, "All things but the mistletoe. No harm can come to
him from a thing so weak that it only lives by the lives of others."
Then the vicious heart of Loki grew joyous. Quickly he went to where
the mistletoe grew, cut a slender green branch, shaped it into a
point, and sought the blind god Hodur.
Hodur stood aside, while the other gods merrily pursued their sport.
"Why dost thou not take aim at Baldur with a weapon that fails and so
join in the laughter?" asked Loki.
And Hodur sadly made answer:
"Well dost thou know that darkness is my lot, nor have I ought to
cast at my brother."
Then Loki placed in his hand the shaft of mistletoe and guided his
aim, and well and surely Hodur cast the dart. He waited, then, for the
merry laughter that followed ever on the onslaught of those against
him whom none could do harm. But a great and terrible cry smote his
ears. "_Baldur the Beautiful is dead! is dead!_"
On the ground lay Baldur, a white flower cut down by the scythe of the
mower. And all through the realm of the gods, and all through the land
of the Northmen there arose a cry of bitter lamentation.
"That was the greatest woe that ever befell gods and men," says the
story.
The sound of terrible mourning in place of laughter brought Freya to
where
"on the floor lay Baldur dead; and round lay thickly
strewn swords, axes, darts, and spears, which all the
gods in sport had lightly thrown at Baldur, whom no
weapon pierced or clove; but in his breast stood fixed
the fatal bough of mistletoe."
Matthew Arnold.
When she saw what had befallen him, Freya's grief was a grief that
refused to be comforted, but when the gods, overwhelmed with sorrow,
knew not what course to take, she quickly commanded that one should
ride to Niflheim and offer Hel a ransom if she would permit Baldur to
return to Asgard.
Hermoder the Nimble, another of the sons of Odin, undertook the
mission, and, mounted on his father's eight-footed steed, he speedily
reached the ice-cold domain of Hel.
There he found Baldur, sitting on the noblest seat of those who
feasted, ruling among the people of the Underworld. With burning words
Hermoder pled with Hel that she would permit Baldur to return to the
world of gods and the world of men, by both of whom he was so dearly
beloved. Said Hel:
"Come then! if Baldur was so dear beloved,
And this is true, and such a loss is Heaven's--
Hear, how to Heaven may Baldur be restored.
Show me through all the world the signs of grief!
Fails but one thing to grieve, here Baldur stops!
Let all that lives and moves upon the earth
Weep him, and all that is without life weep;
Let Gods, men, brutes, beweep him; plants and stones,
So shall I know the loss was dear indeed,
And bend my heart, and give him back to Heaven."
Matthew Arnold.
Gladly Hermoder made answer:
"All things shall weep for Baldur!"
Swiftly he made his perilous return journey, and at once, when the
gods heard what Hel had said, messengers were despatched all over the
earth to beg all things, living and dead, to weep for Baldur, and so
dear to all nature was the beautiful god, that the messengers
everywhere left behind them a track of the tears that they caused to
be shed.
Meantime, in Asgard, preparations were made for Baldur's pyre. The
longest of the pines in the forest were cut down by the gods, and
piled up in a mighty pyre on the deck of his great ship _Ringhorn_,
the largest in the world.
"Seventy ells and four extended
On the grass the vessel's keel;
High above it, gilt and splendid,
Rose the figure-head ferocious
With its crest of steel."
Longfellow.
Down to the seashore they bore the body, and laid it on the pyre with
rich gifts all round it, and the pine trunks of the Northern forests
that formed the pyre, they covered with gorgeous tapestries and
fragrant flowers. And when they had laid him there, with all love and
gentleness, and his fair young wife, Nanna, looked on his beautiful
still face, sorrow smote her heart so that it was broken, and she fell
down dead. Tenderly they laid her beside him, and by him, too, they
laid the bodies of his horse and his hounds, which they slew to bear
their master company in the land whither his soul had fled; and around
the pyre they twined thorns, the emblem of sleep.
Yet even then they looked for his speedy return, radiant and glad to
come home to a sunlit land of happiness. And when the messengers who
were to have brought tidings of his freedom were seen drawing near,
eagerly they crowded to hear the glad words, "_All creatures weep, and
Baldur shall return!_"
But with them they brought not hope, but despair. All things, living
and dead, had wept, save one only. A giantess who sat in a dark cave
had laughed them to scorn. With devilish merriment she mocked:
"Neither in life, nor yet in death,
Gave he me gladness.
Let Hel keep her prey."
Then all knew that yet a second time had Baldur been betrayed, and
that the giantess was none other than Loki, and Loki, realising the
fierce wrath of Odin and of the other gods, fled before them, yet
could not escape his doom. And grief unspeakable was that of gods and
of men when they knew that in the chill realm of the inglorious dead
Baldur must remain until the twilight of the gods had come, until old
things had passed away, and all things had become new.
Not only the gods, but the giants of the storm and frost, and the
frost elves came to behold the last of him whom they loved. Then the
pyre was set alight, and the great vessel was launched, and glided out
to sea with its sails of flame.
"They launched the burning ship!
It floated far away
Over the misty sea,
Till like the sun it seemed,
Sinking beneath the waves,
Baldur returned no more!"
Yet, ere he parted from his dead son, Odin stooped over him and
whispered a word in his ear. And there are those who say that as the
gods in infinite sorrow stood on the beach staring out to sea,
darkness fell, and only a fiery track on the waves showed whither he
had gone whose passing had robbed Asgard and the Earth of their most
beautiful thing, heavy as the weight of chill Death's remorseless hand
would have been their hearts, but for the knowledge of that word. They
knew that with the death of Baldur the twilight of the gods had begun,
and that by much strife and infinite suffering down through the ages
the work of their purification and hallowing must be wrought. But when
all were fit to receive him, and peace and happiness reigned again on
earth and in heaven, Baldur would come back. For the word was
_Resurrection_.
"So perish the old Gods!
But out of the sea of time
Rises a new land of song,
Fairer than the old."
Longfellow.
"Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive."
Emerson.
BEOWULF
"He was of mankind
In might the strongest."
Longfellow's Translation.
Whether those who read it be scholars who would argue about the origin
and date of the poem, ingenious theorists who would fain use all the
fragmentary tales and rhymes of the nursery as parts of a vast jig-saw
puzzle of nature myths, or merely simple folk who read a tale for a
tale's sake, every reader of the poem of Beowulf must own that it is
one of the finest stories ever written.
It is "the most ancient heroic poem in the Germanic language," and was
brought to Britain by the "Winged Hats" who sailed across the grey
North Sea to conquer and to help to weld that great amalgam of peoples
into what is now the British Race.
But once it had arrived in England, the legend was put into a dress
that the British-born could more readily appreciate. In all
probability the scene of the story was a corner of that island of
Saeland upon which Copenhagen now stands, but he who wrote down the
poem for his countrymen and who wrote it in the pure literary
Anglo-Saxon of Wessex, painted the scenery from the places that he and
his readers knew best. And if you should walk along the breezy,
magnificent, rugged Yorkshire coast for twelve miles, from Whitby
northward to the top of Bowlby Cliff, you would find it quite easy to
believe that it was there amongst the high sea-cliffs that Beowulf
and his hearth-sharers once lived, and there, on the highest ness of
our eastern coast, under a great barrow, that Beowulf was buried.
_Beowulfesby_--_Bowlby_ seems a quite easy transition. But the people
of our island race have undoubtedly a gift for seizing the imports of
other lands and hall-marking them as their own, and, in all
probability, the Beowulf of the heroic poem was one who lived and died
in the land of Scandinavia.