Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/592

 on the ice of Lake Vener, between two Swedish kings, assisted by the chief Helgi and King Olaf of Nonvay, supported by Hromund Greipsson, the betrothed of the king’s sister Swan-white. Above the heads of the combatants flew a great swan; this was Kara, the mistress of Helgi, who had transformed herself into a bird. She, by her incantations, blunted the weapons of King Olaf’s men, so that they began to give way before the Swedes. But accidentally Helgi, in raising his sword, smote off the leg of the swan which floated on expanded wings above his head. From that moment the tide of battle turned, and the Norwegians were victorious.

It is a fair subject for inquiry, whether the popular iconography of the angel-hosts is not indebted to the heathen myth for its most striking features. Our delineations of angels in flowing white robes, with large pinions, are derived from the later Greek and Roman representations of victory; but were not these figures—half bird, half woman—derived from the Apsaras of the Vedas, who were but the fleecy clouds, supposed in the ages of man’s simplicity to be celestial swans?