DEATH-DEALING ASVATTHA.

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which was intended for hostile purposes. The incantation runs thus :

"A man from man has it sprung, an asvattha upon the khadira; may it kill my foes whom I hate, and who hate me. Do thou, O asvattha, tear to pieces the foes. .. thou who art the companion of the Vritra-slayer Indra, of Mitra and Varuna. As thou, O asvattha, dost smash and shatter in the great sky sea, so smite all those whom I hate and who hate me. Thou who marchest victorious as a strong steer, through thee, asvattha, may we vanquish the foes; may Nirriti bind, O asvattha, with the indissoluble bonds of death my foes whom I hate and who hate me. As thou, O asvattha, ascendest the trees and makest them subject to thee, so cleave my foes' heads and be victorious. Down may they go like a ship torn from its mooring, chased away. may they not return. Forth I drive them with mind, and with thoughts, and with prayer, forth drive we them with branch of the asvattha tree."

There cannot be the least doubt that the power here ascribed to the asvattha was derived from the lightning it contained; and hence the whole passage has served perfectly, in Dr. Kuhn's hands, to explain for the first time a very remarkable legend and custom of ancient Scandinavia. At the battle of

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ODIN HAVE YOU ALL!

Fyrisvall, King Erich turned towards Odin's temple, and prayed for victory over his opponent Styrbjörn, in return for which the god should have his life after ten winters. When that term had elapsed the king would cheerfully quit the earth for Valhalla. Soon afterwards there appeared a stalwart man, easily known as Odin by his one eye and his broadbrimmed hat, who put a reed * into Erich's hand, and bade him hurl it over the heads of the enemy, with the words, "Odin have you all!" The king did so, the reed became a spear as it flew through the air, and Styrbjörn and his men were struck blind. From this event arose the Norse custom of devoting the enemy to death by hurling over their heads a spear consecrated to Odin, or received from him, and crying out,." Dismayed is your king, fallen your duke, sinking your banner, wroth with Odin." +

you is

The analogy between this Norse usage and the ancient Roman mode of declaring war has been remarked by Simrock and others. The Roman fetialis advanced to the enemy's boundary, and along with the declaration of war he hurled across

* In the original, reyrsproti, 'reed-sprout.' "One is almost tempted," says Kuhn, "to read 'reynisproti,' a rowan twig.”. + Mannhardt, p. 162.

ROMAN DECLARATION OF WAR.

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it a bloodstained spear, burned at the further end or tipped with iron. It is to be inferred that this spear must have been one dedicated to Jove the Thunderer, for that god was specially invoked on the occasion along with Janus Quirinus (the commoner reading is Juno, Quirine). The other attributes of the fetialis also point the same way, particularly the Jupiter lapis, or Jove-stone, which was plainly the thunderbolt, for so was the Thunderer's weapon often represented among the Romans as well as among the Germanic nations. The same inference is increased in force by an ancient war custom of the Greeks.* Instead of trumpeters they employed in early times priests of Ares, called "fire-bearers (πʊрþóрο). These men advanced from either army into the space between, each bearing a lighted torch which he flung forwards, and then retired out of danger. This torch was another and still more selfevident symbol of the lightning.

In Odin, the old storm-god, are combined the characteristics of Rudra, the father of the Maruts or winds, and of Indra. His ashen spear Gungnir, like Indra's asvattha spear, returns of itself to his hand every time he throws it. Its nature is that of the lightning, a fact which was fully manifested

* Described by the Scholiast on Euripides. Phoen. 1386.

when it smote Styrbjörn and his army with blindness.

Human sacrifices were offered to Odin, and hanging was a favourite mode of despatching the victims. Vikarr, king of Agdhir, being wind-bound on a cruise, his followers cast lots that they might learn the will of Odin. The god required that one of the warriors should be sacrificed to him, and the lots being cast again, the choice fell upon King Vikarr. That night Odin, in the form of an old man who called himself Hrossharsgrani (i. e., Horsehair-beard) commissioned the gigantic hero Starkadhr to accomplish his will, and gave him his spear, which to human eyes appeared but a reed. Next morning the king's councillors resolved to proceed to the sacrifice, but to perform it only in a typical and harmless fashion. Starkadhr fastened one end of a calf's gut to the top of a pine sapling that grew near an old stump, and telling the king that the gallows and the noose were ready, begged he would mount the stump; no harm would happen to him. The king complied and put the noose round his own neck, whereupon Starkadhr hurled the reed at him, exclaiming, "Now give I thee to Odin." Instantly the reed became a spear and pierced Vikarr through nd through; the old stump broke down under

his feet; the sapling shot up into a tall tree, dragging the king with it; the calf's gut turned into a stout rope; and thus Odin received his victim. From this mode of sacrifice, and from the fact that Odin himself hung for nine days and nights on Yggdrasil, he was surnamed god of the hanged, gallows lord, gallows ruler. Hence also the superstition, very common in Germany, and not extinct in England, that every suicide by hanging produces a storm. Odin comes with his wild host to carry off the soul of his self-immolated victim.

Odin's spear figures in popular tales, retaining its marvellous qualities, but its form is necessarily changed; for the spear has long been an obsolete weapon, and the costume and stage properties, so to speak, of popular tales are always those of the narrator's own times. Thus the spear of the ancient god becomes for later generations a stick which can send heads flying from their bodies at a touch, or make whole armies come and vanish in a moment. This is still grand enough, and some at least of the actors in such tales are persons of royal race; but in the course of time the story descends from tragedy or heroic drama to low comedy and farce. The actors in it are ordinary workmen and peasants who want no armies to settle their quarrels with one

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