Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/135

RhCHAP, heroes resolves itself into the cloudland of heaven with its never- ceasing changes, we are at once justified in thinking that the history of the Teutonic heroes may be of much the same kind ; and if ou examining it we not only find this suspicion borne out, but discern in it some of the most important incidents and sequences which mark the Greek legends, the conclusion is forced upon us that the Teutonic epics, like the Hellenic, are the fruit of one and the same tree which has spread its branches over all the Aryan lands, and that the heroes of these epics no more exhibit the actual character of Northmen and Germans than the portraits of the heroes in the Iliad and Odyssey are the pictures of actual Achaian chieftains. When we find further that the action in each case turns on the possession of a beautiful woman and the treasures which make up her dowry, that this woman is in each case seduced or betrayed, while the hero with his invincible weapons is doomed to an early death after the same stormy and vehement career, we see that we are dealing with materials which under different forms are essentially the same ; and our task becomes at each stage shorter and simpler.

Hence as we begin the story of Volsung (who is Diogenes or the The Vol- son of Odin, his father Rerir and his grandfather Sigi being the only ^^"° ^^'^' intermediate links), we suspect at once that we are carried away from the world of mortal men, when we find that he is one of those mysterious children whose birth from a mother destined never to see them ^ portends their future greatness and their early end ; and as we read further of the sword which is left for the strongest in the roof- tree of Volsung's hall, no room is left for doubt that we have before us the story of Theseus in another dress. The one-eyed guest with the great striped cloak and broad flapping hat, who buries the sword up to its hilt in the huge oak stem,^ is Odin, the lord of the air, who in Teutonic mythology is like the Kyklops, one-eyed, as Indra Savitar is one-handed. But Aigeus in the Argive story is but one of the many names of Zeus Poseidon, and as the husband of Aithra, the ether, he also is lord of the air. In vain, when Odin has departed,

' So in the Hindu popular story, point of view, most important of the Vikramaditya (the child of Aditi, stories of fatal children is that of Kronos, or the Dawn-land of the East), Havelok the Dane, which has assumed is the son of Gandharba-sena. When its final shape as Hamlet under the hand his sire died, his grandfather, the deity of Shakespeare. For the history of Indra, resolved that "the babe should this myth and its variants, the tales of not be born, upon which his mother Argcntile and Curan, tVc, see Intro- stabbed herself. But the tragic event dm/ion to Comparative Mythology, duly happening during the ninth month, 304-309. Vikramaditya came into the world by ^ This tree grows tlirough the roof himself." — Burton, Tales of Indian of the hall and spreads its branches Devilry, preface, p. xv. One of the far and wide in the upper air. It is most remarkable and, from a certain manifestly the counterpart of Vggdrasil.