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no irreligion concerned with their lore. On the contrary, the possession of magical knowledge
was an especial attribute of Odin himself; and to intrude themselves upon a deity, and compel
him to instruct them in what they desired to know, was accounted not an act of impiety, but of
gallantry and high courage, among those sons of the sword and the spear. Their matrons
possessed a high reputation for magic, for prophetic powers, for creating illusions; and, if not
capable of transformations of the human body, they were at least able to impose such fasci-
nation on the sight of their enemies as to conceal for a period the objects of which they were
in search.
There is a remarkable story in the Eyrbiggia Saga ( Historia Eyranorum ), giving the result of
such a controversy between two of these gifted women, one of whom was determined on dis-
covering and putting to death the son of the other, named Katla, who in a brawl had cut off
the hand of the daughter-in-law of Geirada. A party detached to avenge this wrong, by putting
Oddo to death, returned deceived by the skill of his mother. They had found only Katla, they
said, spinning flax from a large distaff. Fools, said Geirada, that distaff was the man you
sought. They returned, seized the distaff. and burn it. But this second time, the witch dis-
guised her son under the appearance of a tame kid. A third time he was a hog, which grov-
elled among the ashes. The party returned yet again; augmented as one of Katla s maidens,
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who kept watch, informed her mistress, by one in a blue mantle. Alas! said Katla, it is the
sorceress Geirada, against whom spells avail not. Accordingly, the hostile party, entering for
the fourth time, seized on the object of their animosity, and put him to death. This species of
witchcraft is well known in Scotland as the glamour, or deceptio visus, and was supposed to
be a special attribute of the race of Gipsies.
Neither are those prophetesses to be forgotten, so much honoured among the German tribes,
that, as we are assured by Tacitus, they rose to the highest rank in their councils by their sup-
posed supernatural knowledge, and even obtained a share in the direction of their armies.
This peculiarity in the habits of the North was so general, that it was no unusual thing to see
females, from respect to their supposed views into futurity, and the degree of divine inspira-
tion which was vouchsafed to them, arise to the degree of HAXA, or chief priestess, from
which comes the word Hexe, now universally used for a witch; a circumstance which plainly
shows that the mythological system of the ancient natives of the North had given to the mod-
ern language an appropriate word for distinguishing those females who had intercourse with
the spiritual world.
It is undeniable that these Pythonesses were held in high respect while the pagan religion
lasted; but for that very reason they became odious so soon as the tribe was converted to
Christianity. They were, of course, if they pretended to retain their influence, either despised
as impostors or feared as sorceresses; and the more that, in particular instances, they
became dreaded for their power, the more they were detested, under the conviction that they
derived it from the enemy of man. The deities of the northern heathens underwent a similar
metamorphosis, resembling that proposed by Drawcansir in the Rehearsal, who threatens
to make a god subscribe himself a devil.
The warriors of the North received this new impression concerning the influence of their
deities, and the source from which it was derived, with the more indifference, as their worship,
when their mythology was most generally established, was never of a very reverential or
devotional character. Their idea of their own merely human prowess was so high, that the
champions made it their boast, as we have already hinted, they would not give way in fight
even to the immortal gods themselves. Such, we learn from Caesar, was the idea of the
Germans concerning the Suevi, or Swabians, a tribe to whom the others yielded the palm of
valour; and many individual stories are told in the Sagas concerning bold champions, who
had fought, not only with the sorcerers, but with the demigods of the system, and come off
unharmed, if not victorious, in the contest. Hother, for example, encountered the god Thor in
battle, as Diomede, in the Iliad, engages with Mars, and with like success. Bartholsine gives
us repeated examples of the same kind. Know this, said Kiartan to Olaus Trigguasen, that I
believe neither in idols nor demons. I have travelled through various strange countries, and
have encountered many giants and monsters, and have never been conquered by them; I
therefore put my sole trust in my own strength of body and courage of soul. Another yet
more broad answer was made to St. Olaus, King of Norway, by Gaukater. I am neither
Pagan nor Christian. My comrades and I profess no other religion than a perfect confidence
in our own strength and invincibility in battle. Such chieftains were of the sect of Mezentius
Dextra: mihi Deus, et telum, quod missile libro,
Nunc adsint!
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And we cannot wonder that champions of such a character, careless of their gods while yet
acknowledged as such, readily regarded them as demons after their conversion to
Christianity.
To incur the highest extremity of danger became accounted a proof of that insuperable valour
for which every Northman desired to be famed, and their annals afford numerous instances of
encounters with ghosts, witches, furies, and fiends, whom the Kiempé, or champions, com-
pelled to submit to their mere mortal strength, and yield to their service the weapons or other
treasures which they guarded in their tombs.
.
The Norsemen were the more prone to these superstitions, because it was a favourite fancy
of theirs that, in many instances, the change from life to death altered the temper of the
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