CLOUD-BUILDERS.

25

so that if the lightning should enter the house it may have free vent to get out again. I can also testify from personal knowledge, that the same practice, with the addition of opening all the doors as well as the windows, is carefully observed in some places in Hertfordshire and Essex.

In the elevated and inland region of Arya, winter was a rigorous season of seven months' duration. Its cold and its gloom were believed, like the burning heat of the dog-days, to be the work of a demon, who weakened the light of the sun in the dwindling days before the winter solstice, locked up the waters of the sky, and bound those of the earth in icy fetters. Or, as the Aryans expressed the fact, he built himself seven wintry castles (i.e., the clouds piled up by the wintry winds), in which he confined the women, the cows, and the gold of the sun. Such cloud-built towers and their architects occur frequently in the Grecian and German mythologies. An offer was made to the gods, by one of the Norse giants, to build them a strong castle in a year and a half, if they would give him the sun and moon, and the great goddess, Freyja. After consulting together upon the proposal, the gods resolved to accept it, on these conditions: the giant was to complete the building in one winter, and to do it all alone

26

CLOUD-BUILDERS.

without any man's help; if any part of it were unfinished by the first day of summer, he was to forfeit all claim to remuneration. The giant, aided by his strong horse, Svadilfari, nearly completed the building, though hindered by Loki (for the gods had repented of their bargain), and at last he was killed by the lightning god, Thor.

A

This myth, says Grimm, after passing through those curious fluctuations which are often observable in genuine popular traditions, survives in a new form, in other times, and on other ground. German popular tale puts the devil in place of the giant, and there is a whole string of legends, in which the devil erects buildings and flings stones, just like the giants of yore. The devil contracts to build a house for a peasant, and to have his soul for the job; but he must complete it before the cock crows, otherwise, the peasant goes scot-free. The work is all but finished, there only remains one tile to be put upon the roof, when the peasant imitates the crowing of a cock, all the cocks in the neighbourhood fall a-crowing, and the fiend is foiled of his bargain. A Norwegian legend of a more archaic kind, tells that King Olaf, of Norway, was wending his way, in deep thought, over hill and dale; he had it in his mind to build a church, the like of

ST. OLAF AND THE GIANT.

27

which should nowhere be found, but he saw that he could not complete the building without greatly burthening his kingdom. In his perplexity, he was met by a man of strange appearance, who asked him why he was so thoughtful. Olaf told him what he was meditating, and the giant, or troll, offered to complete the building singlehanded, by a certain time, stipulating that he should have for payment the sun and moon, or St. Olaf himself. The bargain was struck, but Olaf laid down such a plan for the church, as he thought could not possibly be fulfilled; the church was to be so big that seven priests could preach in it at once, without disturbing each other; the pillars, and the architectural ornaments, without and within, were to be carved out of hard flint, &c. All this was soon done, and nothing remained wanting, but the roof and the spire. Again disturbed in mind at the bargain he had made, Olaf wandered over hill and dale. All at once he heard a child crying within a hill, and a giantess soothing it with these words: "Hush! Hush! To-morrow WIND AND WEATHER, your father, will come home, and bring with him the sun and the moon or St. Olaf himself." Delighted with this discovery (for with the name of the evil spirit one can destroy his power), Olaf turned and went home. The work was finished,

28

RAKSHASAS. OGRES.

even to the point of the spire. Then said Olaf, “Wind and Weather! you have set the spire awry.' At the word, down fell the giant with a horrible crash from the roof-ridge of the church, and broke into a great many pieces, and every piece a flint stone.*

*

In the middle ages, the devil, who is proverbially busy in a gale of wind, was in very extensive practice as an architect, but his buildings were always left unfinished, or were ruined, as those of the Aryan demon were by the thunderbolts of Indra.

To come back to the southern Aryans, their Rakshasas, a very numerous tribe of demons, are also called Atrin, or devourers, and are palpably the earliest originals of the giants and ogres of our nursery tales. They can take any form at will, but their natural one is that of a huge mis-shapen giant, "like a cloud," with hair and beard of the colour of the red lightning. They go about open-mouthed, gnashing their monstrous teeth and snuffing after human flesh. Their strength waxes most terrible in twilight, and they know how to increase its effect by all sorts of magic. They carry off their human prey through the air, tear open the living bodies, and with their faces plunged among the entrails they suck up

* D.M. p. 514.

COMMON INDO-EUROPEAN GODS.

29

the warm blood as it gushes from the heart. After they have gorged themselves they dance merrily. Sometimes it happens that a giantess, smitten with love for the imperilled man, rescues him from the Rakshasa, and changes her shape for his sake into that of a beautiful maiden. Besides the demon giants there are demon dwarfs also, called Panis.

The collective appellation of the Vedic gods is Dêvas, and this name has passed into most of the Indo-European languages; for corresponding to the Sanscrit dêva is the Latin deus, Greek theós, Lithuanian déwas, Lettish dews, Old Prussian deiws, Irish dia, Welch duw, Cornish duy. Among the German races the word dêva survives

only in the Norse

plural tìvar, gods; and among those of the Slave stock, the Servians alone preserve a trace of it in the word diw, giant. The daêvas of the Medes and Persians were in early times degraded from the rank of gods to that of demons by a religious revolution, just as the heathen gods of the Germans were declared by the Christian missionaries to be devils ; and the modern Persian div, and Armenian dev, mean an evil spirit. Dêvá is derived from div, heaven (properly "the shining"), and means the heavenly being.

Hence it appears that certain gods were common