Page:Norse mythology or, the religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted with an introduction, vocabulary and index.djvu/238

 In regard to Odin's speaking with Mimer's head, we have the following passage in the lay of Sigdrifa:

On the rock he stood With edged sword, A helm on his head he bore. Then spake Mimer's head Its first wise word, And true sayings uttered.

And in Völuspá, when Ragnarok is impending:

Mimer's sons dance, But the central tree takes fire At the resounding Gjallarhorn, Loud blows Heimdal, His horn is raised; ''Odin speaks With Mimer's head''.

Odin's eye is the sun. Mimer's fountain is the utmost sources of the ocean. Into it, Odin's eye, the sun sinks every evening to search the secrets of the deep, and every morning Mimer drinks the gold-brown mead (aurora). When the dawn colors the sea with crimson and scarlet, then Mimer's white fountain is changed to golden mead; it is then Mimer, the watcher of the fountain of knowledge, drinks with his golden horn the clear mead which flows over Odin's pledge. But Mimer means memory (Anglo-Saxon meomor), and as we know that our ancestors paid deep reverence to the memories of the past, and that the fallen heroes, who enjoyed the happiness of Valhal with Odin, reveled in the memory of their deeds done on earth, it is proper to add that Mimer is an impersonation of memory. Our spirit (Odin, od, aand) sinks down into the depths of the