how can we explain their readiness with the Slavonic tongue, which they could hardly have acquired so perfectly?

The Bible was translated by them, and an alphabet invented, based mainly upon the Greek. The Russians, Bulgarians, and Serbs received their Christianity from the Greek or Orthodox Church, and have remained members of that communion to the present day. The Poles, Bohemians. and Slovenes accepted their faith from Latin missionaries, and are at this day Roman Catholics, save where some vestiges of the great Protestant struggles in those countries are still preserved, and in no part of Europe was the contest keener than there; but how Protestantism was introduced there, and why it has been so nearly stamped out, cannot be told in the present lecture, although it is one of the most startling episodes in the history of the progress of thought and religious freedom.

We may say in conclusion that the simple beliefs of the Slavs rendered them easily inclined to receive Christianity. There was no powerful religious caste to view with disfavour the new doctrines by finding itself dispossessed of power and influence. Their religion was purely of a domestic kind, and was not a state engine. There were no kings or powerful chiefs who were supposed to have the special protection of heaven. They seem to have been fairly tolerant, for in the treaties between the Greeks and Russians, the latter invoke their deities by the side of the God of the Christians. Christianity was not introduced as the cult of any conquering race, and carried forward at the point of the sword. Among the Bohemians, Poles, Russians, Serbs, and Bulgarians, it was introduced by such excellent workers as Cyril and Methodius, Adalbert and Bishop Otho of Bamberg. The accounts some of these missionaries gave of them were very favourable, and testify to their gentleness and simplicity. The biographer of Bishop Otho, whose very interesting life has been printed in the Monumenta Polonia Historica of Bielowski, remarks of the Pomeranians, the Slavonic tribe once dwelling on the coasts of the Baltic, that they never found it necessary to keep anything under lock and key. They were much astonished, he writes, when they beheld the chests and trunks of the bishop locked.

Among such a people the gentle doctrines of Christianity, as might be expected, were easily diffused, and to this day the Slavs have remained an essentially religious people. The devotion of the Russian to his Church is evident, wherever we travel in the country. Nothing strikes the stranger more than the bands of religious pilgrims continually wandering to visit sacred shrines such as that of Kiev and the Pestcherskaya Lavra, for instance, where we find large hostels built to receive these bogomoltsi, or pilgrims, for a trifling cost. Of course, it is very easy to sneer at all this; but Leroy-Beaulieu, whom I have quoted on a previous occasion, has said very plainly that in his opinion true feeling underlies this worship. If these and other customs are reliques of paganism, then the Italians, Spaniards, and even the Irish may be called pagans. The same is the case with the Pole,

who has his shrines for pilgrimages. Among the Bohemians the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism was fought in the keenest manner in the days of Huss and Zizka.

d But the subject of my lecture is strictly the old religious beliefs of the d Slavs, and these are now only remembered in quaint customs or fragments

of old songs or proverbs. It may be safely said that no peoples on the is earth have richer collections than they of these interesting traditions. t For a long time the Russians did not collect their folklore; for when the educated classes were occupied in learning the language and aping the manners of the French, it was not likely that they would pay any attention to these rude monuments of village lore. But things are now altered, and no branch of human learning is more studied than the popular one. For estimating the wealth of Slavonic folklore, you must betake yourself to the pages of the late Mr. Ralston and Mr. Wratislaw. The bilini, or legendary poems, are not much known in this country; a few have been translated. The proverbs, however, are wholly neglected; This is much to be regretted, because they throw great light upon popular life.

I will therefore now conclude my brief sketch by hoping that you will not leave without taking with you some interest in this rather strange and outof-the-way subject. It has not been in my power to give a perfect sketch of the Slavonic Pantheon, if I may use the term. I have, however, given you some broad and general outlines which I hope will not prove unserviceable.

TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM.

BY F. YORK POWELL, M.A.

IT can hardly be denied that there is an enduring interest in the subject of this lecture-the beliefs of the heathen Teutons. No one who cares for the history of the thought of our race but must feel an interest in tracing back to their springs the courses of such mighty rivers. But though on this voyage of discovery the way becomes darker and darker, and difficulties crowd around as one nears these sources, yet some part of the voyage is already mapped out.

The material investigation existing includes, first, written evidence, which, apart from the fragmentary notices preserved by Tacitus, Dio, Velleius, Florus, the Augustan historians, Marcellinus, and other classical authors, together with the scraps furnished by later Christian chroniclers, such as Eginhard, Prudentius, Asser, and Adam of Bremen, consists mainly of exact and excellent accounts of heathen ways and customs, preserved by an Icelandic priest of noble family, named Are, born in 1067, who took a great interest in the antiquities of his race, and wrote books (c. 1100-25), in which are preserved a number of most curious traditions.

Then there is a collection of old songs or lays, the so-called Older Edda, which, it is believed, was compiled in the twelfth century, probably in the Orkney or Shetland Islands, by some Icelander who retained an interest in the old heathen legends which but for him had died out of memory. He has preserved some twenty or thirty fragmentary poems. The Younger Edda (really a gradus or poetic dictionary) was compiled by Snorre Sturlason, 1178-1241, the Icelandic historian, and other scholars and poets for the benefit of those who intended to compose vernacular verse; for Icelandic poets, even after the acceptance of Christianity, were accustomed (like our own poets of last century) to make allusions to old mythological gods.

Next in value comes the Latin Historia Danica of Saxo, the monk of Lund (about 1215), who not only wrote a good history of his own times but out of ancient songs and traditions—many furnished to him by Icelanders and persons familiar with other western Scandinavian colonies-put together a curious account of the mythic days of Denmark, working after the fashion of our Geoffrey of Monmouth.1

1 The chief works of Are, Landnáma-bbc (The Book of Settlements), Libellus Islandorum, and the Story of the Conversion of Iceland, have been edited by the late Dr. Vigfusson with translation, and will shortly appear. The Elder Edda poems have been edited and translated by the same in Corpus Poeticum Boreale (Oxford, 1883). The first two parts of the prose or Younger Edda have been several times translated into English by Sir G.

Besides these main authorities there are a vast number of valuable little stories, hints, and allusions to heathen habits and beliefs, scattered through the vast mediæval literature of England, France, and Germany. These have been for the most part collected and arranged in his masterly and delightful way by Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology, now accessible to all in Mr. Stallybrass's excellent and accurate translation. This book may be supplemented by M. Rydberg's study of Saxo, entitled Teutonic Mythology, and translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1889).

Jacob Grimm and his brother William also set the example of collecting and using oral evidence, fairy tales and folk-lore of all kinds, which still linger upon the lips of the people in country places, as material for the history of mythology and of the life and thought of the old. Much has been done by Germans, Icelanders, Scandinavians, and much by such Englishmen as Halliwell and Campbell, to work this great mine of popular tradition; and recent scholars, especially Mr. A. Lang, Mr. Nutt, and Mr. Frazer, have shown the use to which it can be put in elucidating some of the more important problems of the history of man's past.

Such being, roughly, our materials, how are we to study them? What trains of thought may be most profitably followed? First of all, it must be acknowledged, that it is useless to attempt to solve the problem by one key, to explain the religion of the past by one principle.

Our early Teuton forefathers were influenced by anthropomorphism and animism, and thought that inanimate objects, as stones, stars, and the elements, and organisms such as trees, fishes, birds, and beasts, were possessed of spirits akin to their own; they believed in dreams, and used them largely as a means of foretelling the future; they worshipped the dead, and treated their deceased ancestors as gods; they held the doctrine of correspondences, i.e., that things which had a superficial likeness had a deeper resemblance -from which last doctrine there grew up some of the earlier systems of medicine; while the wizard, with his use of hypnotism, mania, poison, jugglery, and medicine, was dreaded and sometimes punished. In fact, there is hardly a superstitious use or observance, which a modern missionary may note in the barbarous Central African or South American or Polynesian tribe he is endeavouring to civilize and raise, but we may find its analogue among the practices or beliefs of our Teutonic forefathers. These things are a part of the general history of mankind, they make up a mental stage through which progressive nations pass-a stage of false but shrewd reasoning, of clever but mistaken guesses, of erroneous but plausible conclusions, a stage such as individually we all go through in infancy and childhood. Our minds are perhaps of little better quality than our ancestors', but we profit by the vast mass of accepted, tested, and recorded

Dasent and others. Are's Ynglinga-tal is translated (from a Danish version) by Laing in his Sea-kings of Norway, and by Ř. B. Anderson. Mr. O. Elton is now translating Saxo's History for the Folk-lore Society.

information which they had not. We start higher up the ladder, and therefore ought to get a little higher on the climb to knowledge.

Again, it is important that we should at once throw aside the idea that there was any system, any organized pantheon, in the religion of these peoples. Their tribes were small and isolated, and each had its own peculiar gods and observances, although the mould of each faith was somewhat similar. Hence there were varieties of religious customs and ideas among the Goths, Swedes, Saxons, and Angles. The same thing was the case in ancient Greece, and it must occur in all civilizations at the stage before small clans and tribes have combined into great leagues and centralized nations. Hence we shall find many parallel versions of leading myths. Many alternative forms of the same tale, many widespread legends attributed to different persons in different places. Then, too, one perceives that round the actual living flesh-and-blood hero of the day the stories of former heroes crystallize. Thus the stories related about King Arthur once belonged to earlier heroes-Gwyn and others; precisely as I was once told by a friend that in a country part of Italy he had heard a story of Garibaldi, which has been referred for many hundreds of years to an old Semitic hero. Garibaldi was in the hills with a small band of men, pursued closely by the cruel Whitecoats. The fugitives had been marching hour after hour in the burning sun without a drop of water; it was high noon, and in the agony of thirst several of the General's little band threw themselves down on the ground declaring they could go no farther. Garibaldi ordered a little mountain gun he had to be brought up. This gun he aimed himself at a conspicuous cliff, not far off, and fired. Scarcely had the smoke of the gun passed away when a glittering thread of water was seen trickling from the rock precisely where the shot had smitten it. The thirsty Redshirts drank their fill, marched on refreshed, and escaped their foes. In the light of such a story it is easy to see how upon Theodric, the famous East Gothic king, there descended legends which, as Professor Rhys has pointed out, belonged to an earlier and divine Theodric; how upon Ragnar the Northman, upon the Beowulf Jute, and upon SigofredosArminius the Cheruscan there have fastened tales of dragon-slaying which belonged to more mythical heroes.

With such preliminary note, one may proceed to touch on some of the beliefs of the heathen Teuton world. With regard to cosmogony, three or four different opinions have reached us, the oldest, as we should suppose, being extremely infantile. It was, that originally there was nothing but a huge giant, who nearly filled all space. Some heroic persons killed this giant, and out of his body made the world, sun, moon, etc. At first such stories were firmly believed in, then doubted, and afterwards told to children as a fairy tale. They are, of course, common among Aryan nations.

There were also tales of the earth-goddess and the sky-god, of the god of day, of the sun-goddess and the moon-god, very like those in the classic