Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/231

Rh CHAP. earth (bif-rost, the waving resting-place),^ and his abode is in Himinbiorg, the hill of heaven, the Latin Mens Ccelius, the first syllable of his name being, like himin, only another form of himmel. In other respects he resembles Argos Panoptes. Like him, he needs less sleep than a bird ; by night as by day he can see a hundred miles, and so keen are his senses that he can hear the corn growing on the earth and the wool lengthening on the sheep's back.^ As the watcher and warder of the gods, he carries a horn, the point of which sticks in Niflheim at the root of Yggdrasil ; and it was easy to add that he rode a horse with a golden mane and that his own teeth were of gold. He speaks of himself as the son of nine mothers, a phrase which in Bunsen's opinion has nothing to do with the watches of the night, and must be referred to the nine mythological worlds of the Voluspa Saga, of which Niflheim is the ninth and the lowest ; and thus the myth would mean that "the sun-light is the common divine child of all these worlds."^

Another god of the gleaming heaven is Bragi, the brilliant, while, Bragi, the hke Donar or Baldur, he is a son of Odin. As the god of poetry |^J"y °^ and eloquence, he is the guardian and patron of bards and orators, and his name, like that of Vach or Saga, passes from the signification of light to that of fluent and honied speech. Thus hragr Karla was simply an eloquent man, and a further step degraded the name of d.sa bragr, the chief among the gods, and left it as an epithet of vain boasters.

The name of the god Oegir, with whom Bragi is sometimes asso- Oegir, the ciated in the Edda, has shared a similar fate. Used first as a name ^^^-&°'^- for the sea, it has come to denote the Ogres with which nurses frighten children. If, as Grimm supposes, the word belongs to the same root with the Gothic agas and 6g, the Anglo-Saxon ege, egesa, Old High German aki, eki, fear, dread, horror, the later meaning is quite in accordance with its original form. But however this may be, the word Oegir as a name for the sea carries us to the Greek stream

asking who she is, says, "I am thy these, one has to keep a bandage over good thoughts, good words, good his eyes, for his sight is so keen that deeds." — Y>xoiVi, Religion of Zoroaster, whatever he looks at splits in two; R 13. another can see all round the world ;

' Bebende Ristdite, Bunsen, God in and a third can hear everything, even History, ii. 412. In Slavonic mytho- to the growing of the grass. These logy this bridge seems to stand at the ministers of the solar hero are again end of the Milky Way, where four monks seen in Grimm's story, How Six guard the sacred road and cut to pieces travelled through the World, and in all who attempt to traverse it. — Ralston, the Gaelic tale of The King of Lochlin's

Songs of the Russian People, 109. Three Daughters. — Campbell, 7 ales 0/ story of the Six Servants, Grimm. Of ' God in History, ii. 412, 490.
 * These qualities reappear in the the IVest Highlands, i. 238, 250.