Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/102

 xcvi Then said Hamdir—"Were Erp alive, the head would be off, and he couldn't call out." Then Hermanaric's men arose and took the twain, and when they found that no steel would touch them, an old one-eyed man gave them advice to stone them to death. Thus fell Saurli and Hamdir, and soon after Gudrun died too, and with her ends the Volsung and the Niflung tale.

And here it is worth while to say, since some minds are so narrowly moulded as to be incapable of containing more than one idea, that because it Has seemed a duty to describe in its true light the old faith of our forefathers, it by no means follows that the same eyes are blind to the glorious beauty of Greek Mythology. That had the rare advantage of running its course free and unfettered until it fell rather by natural decay than before the weapon of a new belief. The Greeks were Atheists before they became Christian. Their faith had passed through every stage. We can contemplate it as it springs out of the dim mis-shapen symbol, during that phase when men's eyes are fixed more on meaning and reality than on beauty and form, we can mark how it gradually looks more to symmetry and shape, how it is transfigured in the Arts, until, under that pure air and bright sky, the glowing radiant figures of Apollo and Aphrodite, of Zeus and Athene,—of perfect man-worship and woman-worship,—stand out clear and round in the foreground against the misty distance of ancient times. Out of that misty distance the Norseman's faith never emerged. What that early phase of faith might have become, had it been once wedded to the Muses, and learned to cultivate the Arts, it is impossible to say. As it is, its career was cut short in