Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/369

Rh lesser light, he can in various terms describe the sun as the eye of heaven. In the Rig-Veda it is the 'eye of Mitra, Varuna, and Agni' — 'chakshuh Mitrasya Varunasyah Agneh.' In the Zend-Avesta it is 'the shining sun with the swift horses, the eye of Ahura-Mazda;' elsewhere both eyes, apparently sun and moon, are praised. To Hesiod it is the 'all-seeing eye of Zeus' — Macrobius speaks of antiquity calling the sun the eye of Jove — The old Germans, in calling the sun 'Wuotan's eye,' recognized Wuotan, Woden Odhin, as being himself the divine Heaven. These mythic expressions are of the most unequivocal type. By the hint they give, conjectural interpretations may be here not indeed asserted, but suggested, for two of the quaintest episodes of ancient European myth. Odin, the All-father, say the old skalds of Scandinavia, sits among his Æsir in the city Asgard, on his high throne Hlidskialf (Lid-shelf), whence he can look down over the whole world discerning all the deeds of men. He is an old man wrapped in his wide cloak, and clouding his face with his wide hat, 'os pileo ne cultu proderetur obnubens,' as Saxo Grammaticus has it. Odin is one-eyed; he desired to drink from Mimir's well, but he had to leave there one of his eyes in pledge, as it is said in the Völuspa:

'All know I, Odin! Where thou hiddest thine eye In Mimir's famous well. Mead drinks Mimir every morning From Wale-father's pledge — Wit ye what this is?'

As Odin's single eye seems certainly to be the sun in heaven, one may guess what is the lost eye in the well — perhaps the sun's own reflection in any pool, or more

1 Rig-Veda, i. 115; Böhtlingk and Roth, s.v. 'mitra.' 2 Avesta, tr. Spiegel, 'Yaçna,' i. 35; iii., lxvii., 61-2; compare Burnouf, 'Yaçna.' 3 Macrob. Saturnal. i. 21, 13. See Max Müller, 'Chips,' vol. ii. p. 85. 4 Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' p. 665. See also Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' p. 213.