תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

charms to produce the surprising effects noticed by Warton might more or less be procured at every wizard's cell. The magic of romance with "the sublime solemnity of its necromantic machinery" was obviously a matter of only traditional belief. A few vain pretenders to superior intelligence in the art, could alone have professed to accomplish its marvels, or some equally silly boasters to have witnessed them; and having sprung from the busy workings of the fancy in decorating the tamer elements of the popular faith, could have no other existence than in its own fictitious memorials. On this account it is of necessity wanting in all those poems which, like the early Icelandic songs, make the slightest pretensions to historical worth; and can only abound in such productions as either treat of subjects professedly mythological, or are the manifest creation of the writer's invention. An injudicious comparison of these very opposite kinds of composition, has clearly led to the erroneous opinion offered by Warton; and it will be sufficient to remark, that the legitimate spell of "grammarye" is to be found in the Odyssey, the Edda, and the popular tale, as well as in those romances which suggested the use of it to Tasso. If more frequently resorted to in later compositions than in the earlier fictions, we must rather attribute this circumstance to the spirit of the times in which they were written, than to any want of faith in the auditors of a ruder age: the extravagant events of Beowulf's life might make

81 Among these may be reckoned the mysterious personage, who in the sixteenth century availed himself of a widely circulated tradition to excite the public attention, and to invest himself with the title Faustus junior: Sic enim titulum sibi convenientem formavit magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus junior, fons necromanticorum, astrologus, magus secundus, chiromanticus, agromanticus, pyromanticus, et in hydra arte secundus. Mr. Görres has given this passage from a letter of Trithemius,

dated August 20, 1507. The venerable Abbot, after noticing several of his idle boasts, proceeds: In ultima quoque hujus anni quadragesima venit Stauronesum (Creutznach), et simili stultitia gloriosus de se pollicebatur ingentia, dicens se in Alchemia omnium qui fuerint unquam esse perfectisimum, et scire atque posse quicquid homines optaverint. See Görres Volks-bücher, p. 242. 82 See the Odyss. xiii. 190. Thor's adventures at Utgarda, Dæmesaga, 41. and Chaucer's Frankelein's Tale.

many a bold romancer blush for the poverty of his imagi

nation.

83

In referring to those various objects of inanimate nature whose marvellous attributes are usually classed among the chief attractions of romance, it will be equally unnecessary to enter largely into the question of their origin, as the recent labours of abler antiquaries have clearly proved that we are not indebted to the middle age for their first appearance in popular poetry. For every purpose of the present inquiry, it will be sufficient to enumerate a few of the most important points of coincidence between the fictions of the ancient and modern world; and, in noticing some of the disguises under which a common idea has been made to pass from one narrative to another, to evince the fondness of popular taste for a constant recurrence of its favourite types. MM. Grimm have already shown that the fatal garment of Dejanira,--and which by Euripides has been connected with a later fable,—still lives in the German tale of Faithful John; and that no image is more common, or assumes a greater variety of forms, in the current fictions of their native country, than the insidious present sent by Vulcan to his mother Juno4.

Another favourite symbol, and entering deeply into the decorations of romance, is the talisman of virtue, by which the frailties of either sex were exposed to public detection; and which Mr. Dunlop, with his accustomed accuracy, has referred to the trial at the Stygian fountain, and traced through the Greek romances of the Empire to the romances of chivalry and the pages of Ariosto. In the prose romance of Tristram, whence the poet of Ferrara most probably borrowed it, the ordeal consists in quaffing the beverage of a drinking-horn,

See the preface and notes to the Kinder- und Haus-Märchen of MM. Grimm; and a valuable essay on the same subject contained in the Quarterly

Review, No. xxxvii.

8 Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, vol. iii. p. 19 and 149.

which no sooner approaches the culprit's lips, than the contents are wasted over his person. In Perceforest and in Amadis, a garland and rose, which "bloom on the head of her who is faithful, and fade upon the brow of the inconstant," are the proofs of the appellant's purity: and in the ballad published by Dr. Percy, of the Boy and the Mantle, where the same test is introduced, the minstrel poet has adhered to the traditions of Wales, which attribute a similar power to the mantle, the knife, and the goblet of Tegau Euroron, the chaste and lovely bride of Caradoc with the strong arm. From hence it may have been transferred to the girdle of Florimel, in the Fairy Queen; while Albertus Magnus, in affirming that "a magnet placed beneath the pillow of an incontinent woman will infallibly eject her from her bed," has preserved to us the vulgar, and perhaps the earliest, belief on the subject. The glass of Agrippa, which, till our own times, played a distinguished part in the history of the gallant Surry, has been recently made familiar to the reader's acquaintance by the German story of Snowdrop. But this, in all probability, has only descended to us from a mirror preserved near the temple of Ceres at Patras; or one less artificially constructed, though more miraculously gifted, a well near the oracle of Apollo Thurxis, in Lycia. The zone of Hippolyte, which gave a supernatural vigour to

[blocks in formation]

the "thews and limbs" of the wearer, is not to be distinguished from the girdle of the Norwegian Thor; and there can be little doubt, that the brisingamen of Freyia, which graced the person of the same pugnacious deity on his visit to Thrymheim", is the cestus of Venus under another name and form. Without possessing either the ægis-hialmr of the Edda, or the ægis of Minerva, it might be dangerous to assert that these petrifying objects are verbally identical; since nothing short of their terrific power would be a sufficient protection against the host of Hellenic philologers, whom such a declaration would infallibly call to arms". In obedience, therefore, to the dictates of "the better part of valour," it will be most prudent to remark, that they strikingly agree in their appalling attributes, and that the thunderer of Norway was as efficiently armed for combat as his brother of Olympus. This ægis-hialmr is affirmed to have been the crafty workmanship of the dwarfs, the reputed authors of every "cunning instrument" in Northern fiction; and who manufactured for An the Bow-swinger and Orvar Odd those highly-tempered arrows which, like the fabled dart of Procris, never missed their object; and having inflicted a mortal wound, returned to the bowstring which had emitted them. Another specimen of

See Sæmund's Edda, ThrymsQuida. 91 Alvis may have meant a breastplate or helmet made of goat-skin, just as xuvin meant a skull-cap or helmet made of dog-skin; but the fable on which the Greek grammarians have accounted for the application of the term to the armour of Jupiter and his daughter, is an idle fabrication. The qualities of this weapon undoubtedly had some connexion with its name:

pidly, to be violently agitated; and hence aiyis, the tempestuous wind, and ig, the appellation given to the stormy Capella, or the star whose rising was productive of hurricanes. The ægis-bearing Jupiter of Virgil is the cloud-compeller-nimbosque cieret, Æn. viii. 354. For the same reason, and not from his goatish form, we may be assured the god of Arcadia, the author of the Panic terror, was called Ægipan. In Icelandic 'ægir" means the stormy sea; and in Anglo-Saxon we have eggian'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

ἀμφὶ δ'αρ ̓ ὤμοισιν βάλετ' αἰγίδα βυσσανό- excite, " eg-stream” a torrent, " ege

εσσαν

δεινήν, ἣν ΠΕΡΙ ΜΕΝ ΠΑΝΤΗ ΦΟΒΟΣ

fear, and "egesian" to scare.

to

29

* Compare Muller's Saga- Bibliothek, 532-41, with Hyginus, ed. Staveren,

ΕΣΤΕΦΑΝΩΤΟ. Il. v. 738. p. The verb toow, from whence this term p. 189. takes its derivation, meant-to move ra

their ingenuity is the ship of Freyr, called Skidbladnir, which though sufficiently spacious to contain the whole tribe of the Asæ, with their arms and equipments, was yet so artfully contrived, that it might be folded like a handkerchief and carried about in the pocket. The sails of this extraordinary vessel were no sooner hoisted than a favourable wind sprang up; an attribute which has descended to another ornament of Icelandic fable, the bark Ellide: but this, like the first, and oftenest sung, of ancient ships, was also gifted with the power of understanding human speech". Homer, however, has told us, that the fleets of Alcinous combined the advantage of the favouring gale with an intelligence which enabled them to divine the wishes of those they bore, and that they also had the power of reaching their destined port without the assistance of a helmsman or a guide.

So shalt thou instant reach the realm assign'd,

In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind:
No helm secures their course, no pilot guides,
Like men intelligent, they plough the tides;
Conscious of every coast and every bay
That lies beneath the sun's alluring ray.

In other fictions common to the ancient and modern world, this idea has been improved on, and applied to a vast variety of objects for conveying the person from place to place. Herodotus, with his characteristic love of the marvellous, (tempered as this passion was by an unrivalled perception of the truth,) found it impossible to pass unnoticed the fable of Abaris and his dart 95. He has, however, only mentioned the common tradition of his day, that it transported the Hyperborean philosopher wherever he wished, and left to Jamblichus the further particulars of its history. From the Pythago

93 Edda of Snorro, Dæmesaga 37.
"Muller's Saga- Bibliothek, vol. ii.

p. 459 and 592.
5 Melpom. c. 36.

« הקודםהמשך »