Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/459

Rh At no time, however, did Loki exhibit the features of the Semitic CHAP. devil or the Iranian Ahriman. Like Hephaistos, a god of the fire, he resembles him also in his halting gait and in the uncouth figure which provokes the laughter of the gods ; and if we are not told that like him Loki was hurled out of heaven, yet we see him bound for his evil deeds, and, like Prometheus, he shall be set free, we are told, at the end of the world, and shall hurry in the form of a wolf to swallow the moon, as the deliverance of Prometheus is to be followed by the overthrow of his tormentor. Hence the Norse phrase, " Loki er or bondum," answering to the expression, " Der Teufel ist frei gelassen," the devil is loose.^

The last day of the week bore, in Grimm's opinion, the name of Loki the this deity.^ In place of our Saturday we have the Old Norse laugar- '^ ' dagr, the Swedish logerdag, the Danish loverdag, a word which at a later period was held to mean the day appointed for bathing or wash- ing, but which was more probably used at first in the original sense of brightness attached to Loki's name. WTien, however, this meaning gave way before the darker sense extracted from tlie verb lukan, to shut or imprison, Luki became known as Ssetere, the thief who sits in ambush. The Christian missionaries were not slow to point out the resemblance of this word to the Semitic Satan and the Latin Saturnus, who were equally described as malignant demons ; and thus the notions grew up that the name of the last day of the week was imported from the old ni) thology of Italy, or that the Teutonic god was also the agricultural deity of the Latin tribes. Another and in some versions a very different account of fire is The Hesi( ages. given in the myths of Prometheus. In the Hesiodic Theogony Pro- "'°^° metheus is a son of the Titan lapetos, his brothers being Epimetheus, Atlas, and Menoitios. But even of these the Hesiodic account cannot easily be reconciled with that of the Odyssey. In the latter, Atlas (Skambha) is the guardian and keeper of the pillars which hold up the heaven above the earth, and he knows all the depths of the sea.' In the former he is condemned by Zeus to support the heaven

' The root of the two myths of Loki trickles down upon his face. — Tylor, and Prometheus is thus precisely the Frimitive Culture,. 329. same. In each case the benefactor of * Grimm, D. M. ii. 227. For some man is a being as subtle as he is wise, further remarks on week-day names and and as such he is expelled from the the system of week-days, see Max family of the gods. The vulture of ^.xqx. Selected Essays,. ^,60, et icq. Prometheus is in the case of Loki re- ' Odyss. i. 52; Grote, Jlist. Gr. i. placed by a serpent whose venom loi.