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THE MIGHT AND EXPLOITS OF GRETTIR.

2

VI.

145 horrible smiting of the bearsarks, who are shut up in a barn, we have CHAP. the awful hall of slaughter in the Odyssey and the Nibelung Lay. In the marvellous story of the demon who is vainly assailed first by Glam who becomes a demon himself, then by Thorgaut, but is finally slain by Grettir, we see the common type of the popular story in which the youngest son, or Boots, wins the day, when his two brothers or comrades fail. In the beaks of the ship which is so full of weather-wisdom that the one whistles before a south wind and the other before a north wind, we have a reminiscence of the divine Argo. In the errand on which, when his companions have no fire, Grettir is sent to bring fire from a distant cliff, although "his mind bids him hope to get nought of good thereby," we see the myth of Prometheus and his recompense. The conflict of Grettir and Snækoll is related in words so nearly resembling those of the narrative of David's fight with Goliath, that it is hard to resist the suspicion that we may have here an instance of mere copying, or that we have a travesty of the story of Samson, as we read that "on a day as Grettir lay sleeping, the bonders came upon him, and when they saw him they took counsel how they should take him at the least cost of life, and settled so that ten men should leap on him while some laid bonds on his feet; and thus they did, and threw themselves on him ; but Grettir broke forth so mightily that they fell from off him." In his enormous strength, in his fitful action, which is as often mischievous as it is beneficent, in the lot which makes him a servant of beings meaner than himself, which stirs up enemies against him in men whom he has never injured, in the doom which he foresees and which he has not the power, and indeed takes no pains, to avert, he is the very counterpart of Heraklês and Achilleus. When he slays afresh Glam who has been long dead, the demon tells him "Hitherto thou hast earned fame by thy deeds, but henceforth will wrongs and manslayings fall upon thee, and the most part of thy doings will turn to thy woe and illhap; an outlaw shalt thou be made, and ever shall it be thy lot to dwell alone abroad." Henceforth he is "the traveller," who can know no rest, who seeks shelter of many great men ; "but something ever came to pass whereby none of them would harbour him." This, however, is the doom of Indra and Savitar in many Vedic hymns, of Wuotan Wegtam in Teutonic mythology, of Sigurd, Perseus, Bellerophon, Oidipous, Odysseus, Phoibos, and Dionysos. These are all wanderers and outlaws like Grettir, and there is scarcely an incident in the life of Grettir which is not found in the legends of one or more of the mythical beings just named. The overthrow

1 Grettir Saga, 115.

2 Tb. 123.

• Ib. 153.

L

BOOK

I.

The avenging of Grettir.

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of the eighty assassins led on by Thorir of Garth is the defeat of the Lykian ambuscade by Bellerophontes. After this the wounded. hero goes to a cave under Balljökul, where the daughter of Hallmund heals his wound, and treats him well. "Grettir dwelt long there that summer," like Odysseus in the cave of Kalypsô, or Tanhaüser in the Venusberg, or True Thomas in the coverts of Ercildoune ; but we look to find him chafing, as these did, at the enforced rest. We turn over the page and we read, "Now as the summer wore, Grettir yearned for the peopled country, to see his friends and kin.” ' It is Odysseus longing to see Penelopê once more. But he is under a doom. As Olaf says, "If ever a man has been cursed, of all men must thou have been.' It is the curse which is laid on Ixîôn and Sisyphos, and singularly enough his father Asmund says of his son, "Methinks over much on a whirling wheel his life turns.' Hence also he dreads the darkness like a child, for Heraklês, Helios, and Achilleus can do nothing when the sun has gone down. Hence too, the old mother of Thorbiorn lays on him the fate "that thou be left of all health, wealth, and good hap, all good heed and wisdom," the very fate of which Achilleus complains again and again to Thetis in the very bitterness of his heart. If again Grettir has his brother Illugi in whom he has garnered up his soul, this is the story of Achilleus and Patroklos, of Peirithoös and Theseus, of the Dioskouroi, and a host of others. Nineteen years he is an outlaw. "Then said the lawman that no one should be longer in outlawing than twenty winters in all," and so Grettir was set free, as Odysseus returns home in the twentieth year. The incident which led to the death of Grettir is simply the myth of Philoktêtês and of Rustem. The cutting off of Grettir's hand is an incident in the myth of Indra Savitar, of Tyr, and of Walthar of Aquitaine. When again it is said of him that "he is right-well ribbed about the chest, but few might think he would be so small of growth below," we cannot avoid a comparison with the story of Shortshanks in Grimm's collection, or of Odysseus who, when he sits, is far more majestic than Menelaos, although the latter, when standing, towers above him by head and shoulders.

In short, the Saga, as a whole, ceases practically to have any distinctive features, and even in the sequel which relates the story of Thorstein, Dromund, and Spes, the incident which the translators compare with the romance of Tristram is not the only point of likeness with other legends. The closing scenes in the lives of the two 1 Ib. 232.

Grettir Saga, 171.

2 Ib. 121.

3 lb. 126.

GRETTIR AND ODYSSEUS.

VI.

147

lovers precisely reproduce the last incidents in the myth of Lancelot CHAP. and Guinevere. Of the avenging of Grettir by Thorstein we need only say that the same issue belongs to the stories of Sigurd and the Three Helgis, and that all these have their type and find their explanation in the avenging of Baldur.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

BOOK
II.

Ideas of

the heaven.

The Ether,

THE ETHEREAL HEAVENS.

SECTION I.-DYAUS.

THE ancient Vedic mythology exhibits in a state of fusion the elements which the Hellenic legends present to us in forms more or less crystallised; and precisely on this account it has for us an inestimable value as throwing light on the process by which the treasure-house of Aryan mythology was filled. The myths of Achil leus and Sigurd point clearly enough to the idea of the sun as doomed to an early death: but the Vedic hymns bring before us a people to whom the death of the sun is a present reality, for whom no analogy has suggested the idea of a continuous alternation of day and night, and who know not, as the fiery chariot of the sun sinks down in the west, whether they shall ever see again the bright face of him who was their friend.1 All their utterances were thus the utterances of children who knew little of themselves and nothing of the world without them, and thus also they could not fail to apply to the same objects names denoting very different relations or characteristics. The heaven might be the father of the dawn, or he might be the child of the earth. The morning might be the parent of the sun, or she might be his sister, or his bride; and we should expect (as we find), that, if the names denoting these ideas came to be employed as names of deities, the characters and powers of these gods would show a constant tendency to run into each other.

But the attribution to all sensible objects of a life as personal Glistening and conscious as their own would lead to the thought of one common source or origin of the life of all; and this source could be found only in the broad bright heaven which brooded over the wide earth

1 See p. 21, et seq.

DYAUS AND ZEUS.

149

I.

and across which the sun made his daily journey to cheer the CHAP. children of men. Thus Dyaus, the glistening ether,' became to the Hindu, as Zeus was to the Greek, a, name for the supreme God; but although some mythical features entered gradually into the conception of this deity, the name retained its original significance too clearly to hold its ground in Hindu theology. Dyaus, like the Hellenic Ouranos, must be displaced by his child, who at the first had brought out more prominently the supremacy of his father; and thus Indra became to the Hindu what Zeus was to the Hellenic tribes, while the Vedic Varuņa retained in the east a spiritual character which Ouranos never acquired in the west.'

1 Dyaus, Zeus, Divus, Theos, Deus, Juno, Diana, Dianus or Janus, with many others, are outgrowths from the same root, dyu to shine. But in his Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology, Mr. Peile, while fully allowing that the Sanskrit name Dyaus is represented by the Greek Zeus and by the Latin divus and deus, yet denies that there is any relation between the Latin deus and the Greek 0eós. By the laws of phonetic change, he insists, the Latin d must answer to a Greek 8, as in dóuos, domus hence some other root must be sought for beds, perhaps OEZ, a secondary form of OE, the root of Tionμ, though this is rejected by Professor Curtius, Gr. Et. pp. 230, 404, in favour of a distinct root thes or fes (meaning to pray), which he traces in festus and in θέσσασθαι. (Pind. N. v. 18.) I venture to think that too great a stress is here laid on laws which undoubtedly apply generally to the Aryan languages, but to which there are yet some instances of apparent and some even of real exception. The Greek dáxpv is rightly represented by the English tear, while dakos, the biting beast, reappears in its legitimate dress in the German Toggenburg; but in English we have not as in tear, but dog, while in Latin it is seen in "tigris," tiger, which approaches nearly to the English "tyke " as a name for the dog. In the same way in the Greek Táros ought to be represented by fin English; but it appears as path.

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The connection of the two words can scarcely be doubted, for if Professor Curtius may give the equation πάτος: πόντος = πάθος : πένθος = βάθος : βένθος, we may also add πάτος : πόντος = path : pond. Hence the fact that the Greek form of Dyaus is eeós, not deós, scarcely warrants our severing the two words.

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If the Vedic adeva is the Greek 0eos,
the relationship of Beds with the Latin
"deus" is established. In this conclu-
sion I am following Professor Max
Müller, Lectures on Language, second
series, 425-455. Professor Max Müller
has gone into this matter afresh (Selected
Essays, vol. i. p. 215, note B), reaching
the same conclusion. There are
ceptions, he adds, to phonetic laws;
and although the greatest caution is
needed in dealing with them, it is of no
use to shut our eyes to them or refuse
to consider them. I pointed out one
in my History of Greece, vol. i. p. 577,
n. 1038. If to this we add Thrinakia,
it seems scarcely to follow that we have
before us any phonetic anomaly. It
would be unsafe to say that kindred
tribes, long passed away, had not said
three for 3, and called a tree a tree, and
not δρῦς. If we cannot venture to
identify God and good in English or its
kindred dialects, still less can we venture
to deny their affinity-in other words,
their growth from a common root.

Heaven and earth, it would seem,
are in the earliest hymns alike self-
existent; but Dr. Muir ("Principal
Deities of the Rig Veda,” Transactions
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol.
xxiii. part iii.) remarks that we are
not told, as in the Hesiodic Theogony,
which of the two is the older. "On the
contrary, one of the ancient poets seems
to have been perplexed by the difficulty
of this question, as at the beginning of
one of the hymns (i. 185) he exclaims,
"Which of you twain was the first, and
which the last? How were they pro-
duced? Sages, who knows?' His
power and wisdom are shown most of
all in the creation or evocation of his
son Indra. Thus of Indra it is said,
'Thy father was the parent of a most

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