outstripped them all, and brought the noble quarry to the ground.
Looking up to the stars and heaven, they saw the footsteps of the
gods marked out in the bright path of the Milky Way; and in the Bear
they hailed the war-chariot of the warrior's god. The great
goddesses, too, Frigga and Freyja, were thoroughly old-fashioned
domestic divinities. They help women in their greatest need, they
spin themselves, they teach the maids to spin, and punish them if the
wool remains upon their spindle. They are kind, and good, and
bright, for _Holda_, _Bertha_, are the epithets given to them. And
so, too, this mythology which, in its aspect to the stranger and the
external world, was so ruthless and terrible, when looked at from
within and at home, was genial, and kindly, and hearty, and affords
another proof that men, in all ages and climes, are not so bad as
they seem; that after all, peace and not war is the proper state for
man, and that a nation may make war on others and exist; but that
unless it has peace within, and industry at home, it must perish from
the face of the earth. But when Christianity came, the whole
character of this goodly array of divinities was soured and spoilt.
Instead of the stately procession of the God, which the intensely
sensuous eye of man in that early time connected with all the
phenomena of nature, the people were led to believe in a ghastly
grisly band of ghosts, who followed an infernal warrior or huntsman
in hideous tumult through the midnight air. No doubt, as Grimm
rightly remarks [D. M., p. 900: _Wuetendes Heer_], the heathen
had fondly fancied that the spirits of those who had gone to Odin
followed him in his triumphant progress either visibly or invisibly;
that they rode with him in the whirlwind, just as they followed him
to battle, and feasted with him in Valhalla; but now the Christian
belief, when it had degraded the mighty god into a demon huntsman,
who pursued his nightly round in chase of human souls, saw in the