often trod the earth; the three Norns or Fates, who sway the wierds
of men, and spin their destinies at Mimirs' well of knowledge, were
awful venerable powers, to whom the heathen world looked up with love
and adoration and awe. To that love and adoration and awe, throughout
the middle age, one woman, transfigured into a divine shape,
succeeded by a sort of natural right, and round the Virgin Mary's
blessed head a halo of lovely tales of divine help, beams with soft
radiance as a crown bequeathed to her by the ancient goddesses. She
appears as divine mother, spinner, and helpful virgin (vierge
secourable). Flowers and plants bear her name. In England one of our
commonest and prettiest insects is still called after her, but which
belonged to Freyja, the heathen 'Lady', long before the western
nations had learned to adore the name of the mother of Jesus. [15]
[15] Footnote: So also Orion's Belt was called by the Norsemen,
Frigga's spindle or _rock, Friggjar rock_. In modern Swedish,
_Friggerock_, where the old goddess holds her own; but in
Danish, _Mariaerock_, Our Lady's rock or spindle. Thus, too,
_Karlavagn_, the 'car of men', or heroes, who rode with Odin,
which we call 'Charles' Wain', thus keeping something, at least, of
the old name, though none of its meaning, became in Scotland
'Peter's-pleugh', from the Christian saint, just as Orion's sword
became 'Peter's-staff'. But what do 'Lady Landers' and 'Lady Ellison'
mean, as applied to the 'Lady-Bird' in Scotland?

The reader of these Tales will meet, in that of 'the Lassie and her
Godmother', No. xxvii, with the Virgin Mary in a truly mythic
character, as the majestic guardian of sun, moon and stars, combined
with that of a helpful, kindly woman, who, while she knows how to
punish a fault, knows also how to reconcile and forgive.