Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/94

 84 Reviews.

burial of the worshippers of Frey and the cremation that came in comparatively late in the age of bronze. Are's Age of Barrows associated with Frey is put by him after the cremation times, but that is because a second Barrow Age really did in Scandinavia follow the Cremation Age. The earlier Barrow Age goes back in one form or another to the " very earhest times ; " but it was probably associated in its earlier form with Thunder, for, at least in Landnamab6c, we find Thor-worshippers believing that they " died into hills " and places of burial. Sir Henry Howorth has endeavoured to trace the two waves of religious thought that brought into Europe the different notions of which burial by burning and burial in howes, i.e. ghost-houses, are the indices, one belief coming from the south and being Afri- can, the other from the East and probably Indo-Iranian. The notion of the spirit-journey (apparently broadly the same as the Polynesian belief) and the curious metempsychosis theories (lately so ably studied by Mr. Nutt) have again to be distinguished from, or properly associated with, the Ghost House and Cremation customs. That cremation is associated with the Woden-cult in Scandinavia rests upon evidence that is as yet incomplete, but not wholly lacking. Woden's weapon being the spear or " casting assegai," and not the stone-ax, the earlier weapon of Thunder, or the sword, the stabbing or slashing bronze or iron weapon asso- ciated with Tew, is noteworthy, and helps to give the chronology of his cult. Thiod61fr apparently took the fact of a standing stone or memorial as an evidence of cremation in the case of Agne, Domar, and Wanland.

Mr. Chadwick is perfectly justified in the use he makes of Fornaldar Sogur, though of late recension and compilation they contain much that is very antique ; and the evidence of Beowulf's Lay and the parallel traditions registered in Saxo show them to have preserved old material; while the scraps of verse they include, though not all early, yet seem to preserve citations from lost poems of the same type as the Eddie Lays. Thus the Saga of Hr6mundr Greip's son has embalmed for us an episode out of the life of Helge the bold, that is only faintly alluded to in the extant Eddie collection.

Mr. Chadwick is right in noting that sacrifices to Frey are of edible animals, boar, &c., while those to Woden are of human beings, hounds, and hawks, and later those warlike birds, such as

1