Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/163

Rh the youthful Herakles as given in the apologue of Prodikos. He is CHAP, the father of the afflicted ; what he wins he shares; all that is good he loves. Wherever he goes, Ecke hears the people recount the exploits and dwell on the beauty and the goodness of Dietrich. Under a linden tree he finds a wounded man, and looking at his wounds, he cries out that he had never seen any so deep, and that nothing remained whole to him under helmet or shield. " No sword can have done this; it must be the wild thunder-stroke from heaven." Ecke is soon to see the hero who smote down the wounded man ; but no sooner is he confronted with the valiant knight, than he forgets the part which he ought to play if he means to appear as a messenger of Seburk and to do her bidding. He now speaks in his own cha- racter, as the Pani who bears an irrepressible hate for his adversar}-, while Dietrich is as passive in the matter as Achilleus when he de- clared that the Trojans had never done him any mischief. " I will not strive with thee," he says, " thou hast done me no harm ; give my service to thy lady, and tell her I si always be her knight" But » Ecke is bent only upon fighting, and while he refuses to be the bearer of any message, he calls Dietrich a coward and dares him to the contest. Nor can we avoid noting that although Dietrich prays him to wait till the sun shines if fight they must, Ecke by his in- tolerable scoffs brings on the battle while it is yet night, and the strife between the powers of light and darkness is carried on amidst a storm of thunder and lightning until the day breaks. Ecke flien thinks that he has won the victory; but just as he is boasting of his success, Dietrich is filled with new strength, and when Ecke refuses to yield up his sword, he runs him through. But he himself is sorely wounded, and as he wanders on he finds a fair maiden sleeping by a spring, as Daijhne, Arethousa, IMelusina, and the nymphs are all found near the running waters. The being whom Dietrich finds is gifted with the powers which Oinone cannot or will not exercise for the benefit of Paris. She heals him -snth a wonderful salve, and tells him that she is a wise woman, like Brynhild and Medeia, knowing the evil and the good, and dwelling in a fair land beyond the sea. But the story has been awkwardly put together, and of the fair Seburk we hear no more. This, however, is but further evidence of the mythical character of the materials with which the poets of the early and middle ages for the most part had to deal.

The poem of the Great Rose Garden is a still more clumsy The Great travesty of the myth of the Phaiakian or Hyperborean gardens. The birds are there, singing so sweetly that no mournful heart could refuse to be solaced by them ; but the cold touch of the nortli is on