had penetrated at night being stopped up, when she was discovered to be a beautiful maiden. Many a 'Mare' so struck a man's fancy that he married, and had children from, her. But when, consumed with longing for her spectral home, she asked him to draw the plug from the knot-hole, she suddenly vanished. This tale shows the ease with which the messengers of the former Storm-God Odin made their entrance and their escape through the smallest opening where his and their element-the Air-comes in. The Mârut character of the Teutonic Mar-forms is also apparent from this facility of theirs of penetrating through the smallest hole.

IX.

It is thus proved that the Night-Mare, or the Mare of the Shetland song, as well as the Mar, or Wal-Riderske, of the German tale, are remnants of an ancient Aryan and therefore Indian creed, as well as of the corresponding Teutonic belief in Valkyr maidens, or heralds of death. The question now arises as to how the name of Arthur Knight' was substituted for that of a Germanic deity in the lost Scottish and the now recovered Shetland spell-song against the Mare.

First of all it must be remembered here that in German folklore we still hear of a Realm of the Dead, which is said to be situated in Engel-land.' Engel-land, in German, literally means both the land of the Angels and of the English. In the former sense, Engelland is a later semi-Christian transfiguration of the former Teutonic Home of the angel-like Light Elves-good fays who were said to be more beautiful than the sun, whilst the Dark Elves, evil-minded beings who dwelt in the bowels of the earth, were blacker than pitch. In Anglo-Saxon we find the Home of the Light Elves mentionedtogether with Hell, Heaven, Earth, and Sea-as engla eard. Now, from Engel-land the German Mar-forms are fabled to come- a tale we can understand all the better when we remember that Alfheim, the Home of the Light Elves, was the seat of Freyr, the brother of Freia-Holda, who on her part was a leader of Valkyrs or Mares. This view, in which, at the time of the regular establishment of the Teutonic religion, there was a mixture, as it were, of light and of shadows of death, darkened afterwards into an unmitigated nocturnal horror.

The still later substitution of Britain ('Britannien') for Engelland, which we meet with in German folk-lore referring to the spectral Home or Land of the Dead, might be easily explained from an obvious misunderstanding of terms. The 'disease of language' could, in this case, have wrought a facile corruption of mythology. Yet I for my part should not wonder if even Britannien,' as meaning a

Realm of the Dead, were a corruption of some other word connected with the idea of a Hereafter.

There is a popular German locution: 'I would fain go to where the world is nailed up (bounded) with boards' (wo die Welt mit Brettern zugenagelt ist). The phrase, which points to something beyond this world, may have arisen from the boards used for the coffin, in which man is, so to say, shut out from the world, awaiting his imagined resurrection. In a double way—through a confusion of the Realm of the Dead (Engel-land) with the similar geographical term (Engelland Britannien), and through a sportive use of the word 'Britannien' for the ghostly home that is nailed up with coffin-boards (bretter), the Germanic Ruler of the Departed may, in the popular legend, gradually have assumed a 'British' and hence Arthurian guise.

The Land of the Dead was now supposed to be really and geographically situated beyond the sea, whither the departed were ferried. This transformation of the Engel-land' into a 'Britain' may have been effected with all the greater facility because among the Saxon, as among the Scandinavian, race there was, apart from the practice of fire-burial on land, also a custom of bringing dead men to the seashore and putting them in the hold of a ship with all their treasures, weapons, and armour, when the ship was allowed to drift out whithersoever the waves would carry it.16 A case of this kind is described in Beowulf—a poem probably brought over to this country by the Saxons from Germany, and whose scenes certainly are enacted not on the English, but on the other, side of the German Ocean.

X.

We now come to Arthur-Odin. We have seen that Wodan, the Storm-God and Leader of the Dead, afterwards became the Wild Huntsman, with his spectral hosts. Among the various names of the Wild Huntsman, that of King Artus or Arthur occurs in German folk-lore. It is not difficult to imagine that in connection with the tale about Engel-land or Britain, as the Land of the Dead, Arthur's name should have been introduced, after the circle of myths which had clustered round his name had been spread by troubadour and minne-singer poetry in France and Germany. At the same time it strikes me that a cognomen of Odin-Atrior-could have helped to promote, on British ground, the substitution of Arthur' as the name of the Wild Huntsman. Atrior-the Battle-Rider-is one of Odin's names in his martial aspect. 'Atriðr' and Arthur' are sufficiently near each other in sound to render a substitution easy.

6

16 See my Fire-Burial among our Germanic Forefathers: a Record of the Poetry and History of Teutonic Cremation. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

VOL. V.-No. 28.

4 D

The coincidence may be an accidental one, but similar substitutions through a confusion of names can be counted by the hundred. Thus the Germanic Wild Huntsman Herla, and the Frankish and French Hellekin, or Hellequin, have their names in all likelihood from Hel, the Mistress of the Nether World. Yet Hellequin, through mispronunciation, afterwards suddenly becomes 'CharlesQuint!-Charles V. Again, the name of the Shaksperian Herne, who is represented with horns, has been traced to Hel-unless, as I suspect, his name is identical with that of his female counterpart, Hörn-Freia,17 or Holda, the Wild Huntress, whose connection with the cow-headed Isis and Here I have explained in another essay.18

Wodan, in his quality as the Wild Hunter, has in folk-lore been converted from Woden' or 'Wod,' into a 'Wold' Hunter, and even into a World-Hunter! This latter substitution, by a mispronunciation of the name, is all the more remarkable because the myth, in spite of its decay, has thus been accidentally brought round again to the original higher idea, which conceived Wodan as the Ruler of the Winds and the stormy Breath of the Universe. So also Arthur, the valiant hero, may, by a vague similarity of name, have slid into the array of Odin-Atrior, the Battle-Rider.

There are many more possibilities of such a transformation of names through corrupt speech, at which none will wonder who has given any attention to kindred cases. Mr. Arthur Laurenson, whom I asked a question about the Shetland Spell-song against NightMares, writes to me:

The fore-name 'Arthur' is common in Shetland now, but I rather think it is only a seventeenth or eighteenth century corrupt form of the Old Northern 'Ottar.' Last century, 'Otto,' or 'Otho,' or 'Ottie,' was a frequent fore-name here; and now no case of it occurs. In our North Isles it has even been Judaïsed into 'Hosea,' so that 'Otto Ottoson' was transmuted into ' Hosea Hoseason '-so written, but pronounced 'Osie Osieson.'

A transition from Ottar' to Arthur would have been a most easy one, assuming that 'Ottar Knight' had been the original name in the Incantation. I may bring to recollection here that Freyja, the leader of the Valkyrs, or Mares, has in the Edda a young companion or knight attendant and favourite, called Ottar. He is evidently a substitute, in form, as well as in name, of Odhur, Freyja's husband, who had forsaken her and gone to distant paths, when she wept golden tears after him, and disconsolately sought him through many lands. This Ottar, Oddr, or Odhur, is but a transfiguration of Odhin, Odin, Wodan, or Wuotan. All these names come from the same root (O. N. vadha; O. S. wadan; O. H. G. watan).

Incidentally it may be mentioned that in the Orvar-Oddr Saga we come upon a figure connected with many love adventures.

"Gylfaginning, 35.

18 The Boar's Head Dinner at Oxford, and a Germanico Sun-God.

Orvar

Oddr means Odhur with the Arrows.' The opinion has therefore been advanced that Norse mythology has had a Cupid form similar to the classic one. In this case, Orvar-Oddr also would have to be looked upon as a branching off from the original figure of Odin, the male principle of all-pervading life and fertility.

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Freyja, on her part, is originally the same as Frigg, Odin's wife. The process of mythology shows a continual splitting up of divine figures into new forms, which latter retain many of their earlier characteristics. The original identity of Odhin and Frigg with Odhur Ottar and Freyja comes out clearly in the German folk-lore tale about Woud and Freid. It is not a little remarkable that in the Eddic Song of Hyndla-who herself is but a Titanic counterpart and more vulgar reflection of Freyja-the Goddess of Love goes at night with Ottar to her giant sister, proposing to ride to Walhalla on her golden-bristled boar. A nocturnal ride of Orvar-Oddr or Ottar Arthur with golden spur and candle-light, made for the object of calling in Freyja's stray night-mares or Valkyrs, suggests itself naturally in this connection.

=

In any case we come, on this supposition also, upon an Odinic origin of the apparently Arthurian myth. There can certainly be no doubt, whatever the explanation of the change of names may be, that the Lord of the Mares, in the Shetland charm-saw, is a transfiguration of the great Germanic god.

In half romantic, half boorish form, an Odinic myth is thus preserved in this Night-mare incantation-even as in the Unst Lay. The vitality of those ancient tales is wonderful indeed. Overlaid with a mass of matter foreign to them, they still breathe out their spirit of weirdness. Asgard and Walhalla have had their downfall long ago. The all-nourishing Tree of the Teutonic creed has been twined round with tongues of consuming fire. But in the smouldering ashes we still get glimpses of the hammer of Thor, of Odin's glittering helmet and spear, of Freyja's shining necklace-ay, of the spectral horses of the Valkyrs that perished on the pyre.

KARL BLIND.

STATE SOCIALISM.

THE European interest which has arisen in State Socialism is not, as yet, very intelligent. Feudality is not out of the bones of people in England, even now. Free workmen still expect from employers something of the gifts and care of vassalage, though they no longer render vassal service. Landlords still look for the allegiance of their tenants, notwithstanding that they charge them rent for their lands. In other countries, despotism, tempered by paternal government, trains the people to look for State redress and State management. Thus the mass of the people everywhere regard the State as the source of evil or of good. State Socialism is one of the diseases of despotism, whose policy it is to encourage dependence. Only free men, who intelligently understand freedom, are prepared to owe their prosperity to themselves, and elect to do it, regard State dependence as the malady of subjection, or incompetence.

The working man, with no fortune save his capacity of industry, lives under the despotism of Trade, which, better than the despotism of Government, leaves him the freedom of opportunity, though without any certainty of opportunity occurring. He remains subject to the precariousness of hire. No wonder, therefore, that Labour, imprisoned in the cage of wages, and seeing no mode of self-extrication, is ready to follow any one who offers to open the door, utterly regardless of the chance of living outside.

State Socialism, so far as any taste for it exists in England, is a growth of Toryism. Absolutism in politics has always fostered a liking for paternal government in the people. Before what we know as Toryism arose, Ecclesiasticism did the same thing. Almsgiving on the part of the churches was partly kindness and partly policy, and is still kept up by the wealthier classes of laymen. The rich, as a class, are not averse to the dependence of the poor. Patronage is pleasing to them, and ministers to their influence. The extinction of pauperism, which they believe they desire, would fill them with dismay if it were likely to take place. They only object to charitable gifts when they become too expensive; but they have a permanent objection to enable the poor to obtain a position absolutely independent, and hesitate to afford them the means of becoming so, by