M._, 447.] that the bear is called familiarly grandfather in the
North, and that the Lapps reckon him rather as akin to men than
beasts; that they say he has the strength of ten and the wit of
twelve men. If they slay him, they formally beg his pardon, as do
also the Ostjaks, a tribe akin to the Lapps, and bring him to their
huts with great formalities and mystic songs. To the Wolf, whose
nickname is 'Graylegs', [28] these tales are more complimentary. He
is not the spiteful, stupid, greedy Isengrim of Germany and France.
Not that Isengrim, of whom old English fables of the thirteenth
century tell us that he became a monk, but when the brethren wished
to teach him his letters that he might learn the paternoster, all
they could get out of him was _lamb, lamb_; nor could they ever
get him to look to the cross, for his eyes, with his thoughts, 'were
ever to the woodward'. [Douce, _Illust. to Shakspeare_, ii, 33,
344, quoted in _Reinhart Fuchs_, ccxxi.] He appears, on the
contrary, in 'The Giant who had no Heart in his body', No. ix, as a
kindly grateful beast, who repays tenfold out of the hidden store of
his supernatural sagacity the gift of the old jade, which Boots had
made over to him.

The horse was a sacred animal among the Teutonic tribes from the
first moment of their appearance in history, and Tacitus
[_Germania_, 9, 10.] has related, how in the shade of those
woods and groves which served them for temples, white horses were fed
at the public cost, whose backs no mortal man crossed, whose
neighings and snortings were carefully watched as auguries and omens,
and who were thought to be conscious of divine mysteries. In Persia,
too, the classical reader will remember how the neighing of a horse
decided the choice for the crown. Here, in England, at any rate, we
have only to think of Hengist and Horsa, the twin-heroes of the