confessedly from India, made up of two of our Norse tales, 'Rich
Peter the Pedlar' and 'The Giant that had no heart in his
body' [_The Deeds of Bogda Gesser Chan_, by I. J. Schmidt
(Petersburg and Leipzig, 1839).]? How should all these things be, and
how could they possibly be, except on that theory which day by day
becomes more and more a matter of fact; this, that the whole human
race sprung from one stock, planted in the East, which has stretched
out its boughs and branches laden with the fruit of language, and
bright with the bloom of song and story, by successive offshoots to
the utmost parts of the earth.





NORSE MYTHOLOGY

And now, in the second place, for that particular branch of the Aryan
race, in which this peculiar development of the common tradition has
arisen, which we are to consider as 'Norse Popular Tales'.

Whatever disputes may have existed as to the mythology of other
branches of the Teutonic subdivision of the Aryan race--whatever
discussions may have arisen as to the position of this or that
divinity among the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Goths--about the
Norsemen there can be no dispute or doubt. From a variety of
circumstances, but two before all the rest--the one their settlement
in Iceland, which preserved their language and its literary treasures
incorrupt; the other their late conversion to Christianity--their
cosmogony and mythology stands before us in full flower, and we have