Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/128

122, arising from too absolute an acceptance of the opinions of one school, have been pointed out, and we would not wish to do other than encourage efforts directed to the widening of the circle of those who take pleasure in such classic masterpieces as Loka-Senna, the best work of the unknown Aristophanes of the Scandinavian colonies.

The next book to be noticed is one of much greater importance. It is the Researches in Teutonic Mythology of Viktor Rydberg, translated by R. B. Anderson. This is on one side the most important addition to our knowledge of early Teutonic myths since Grimm. It is a book with a good deal of humanity about it, and though one is far from agreeing with all its conclusions, it is eminently suggestive. The author has studied his Saxo to good purpose, and has been rewarded. The peculiar merit of the author is his sagacity in grasping clues that have escaped others; his weak side is the over-tendency to identifications; yet it must be admitted that the existence of parallel myths in the North has been neglected unduly, and that one must suppose that in the spread of governmental area by the leaguing of tribes into nations, various forms of the same myth would appear side by side, and where the differentiation of the parallels had been great they would tend to survive with the differentiation accented, while where the differentiation was slight they would merge, leaving perhaps in a word or phrase the traces of a brief separate existence.

The first portion of this volume is devoted to a clear and good summary of the mediæval Trojan hypothesis in its relation to the Scandinavians, and to a review of the earlier native traditions respecting migrations from the North. Next follows an examination into the mythic culture-god or hero, the Teutonic Triptolemus, Sheaf, with an identification of Skelfir-Sheaf and Heimdall, which I should hardly be disposed to admit, and further equations of Skiold-Borgar-Rig-Earl, and of Gram Skioldson-Halfdan, the old-Halfdan, Borgarsson-Halfdan Berg-gram,