380
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
have no claim whatever to be called Christian, they
certainly have nothing to do with Anglosaxon hea-
thendom. The Grendels and Nicors of our fore-
fathers were gods of nature, the spirits of the wood
and wave : they sunk into their degraded and dis-
gusting forms only when the devils of a barbarous
sdperstition came to be confounded and mixed up
with them. There is still something genuine and
poetical in the account which a monk of St. Gall
gives of the colloquy between the ancient gods
when the missionaries settled on the shores of the
lake of Constance ; when in the dead of night, the
holy anchoret watching at his nets,
Heard, how the spirit of the flood
Spake to the spirit of the hill :
“ Volvente deinceps cursu temporis, electus Dei
Gallus retia Iymphae Iaxabat in silentio noctis, sed
inter ea audivit demonem de culmine montis pari
suo clamantem, qui erat in abditis maris. Quo re-
spondente, ‘ Adsum !’ montanus e contra: ‘Surge,’
inquit, ‘ in adiutorium mihi ! Ecce peregrini vene-
runt, qui me de templo eiecerunt nam Deos conte-
rebant, quos incolae isti colebant; insuper et eos ad
se Convertebant; ‘Veni, veni, adiuva nos expellere
eos de terris !’ Marinus demon respondit : ‘En unus
illorum est in ρelago, cui nunquam noccre potero.
Volui enim retia sua Iedere, sed me rictum proba
Iugere. Signo orationis est semper clausus, пес
umquam somno oppressus.’ Electus vero Gallus
haec audiens, munivit se undique signaculo crucis,
dixitque ad eos: ‘ In nomine Jesu Christi praecipio
vobis, ut de Iocis istis recedatis, nec aliquem hie
CH. x∙π∙ ]
HEATHENDOM. MONSTERS.
881
Iedere praesuɪnatis ! ’ Et cum festinatione ad Iittus
rediɪt, atque abbati suo, quae audieraf, recitavit.
Quod vir Dei Columbanus audiens, convocavit
fratres in ecclesiam, solitum signum tangens. O
mira dementia diaboɪi ! voces servorum Dei j>raeri-
puit wx fantasmatica, cum Iieiulatus atque u`lulatus
dirae vocis audiebatur per culmina [montium1].”
But words are hardly strong enough to express
the feeling with which an educated mind contem-
plates the fantastical, filthy and hideous images
which gross fanaticism strove to force into the ser-
vice of a religion whose end and means are love ;
the material terrors which were substituted for the
sanctions of the most spiritual, pure and holy creed ;
the vulgar, degrading and ridiculous phantasma-
goria de∖ised to destroy the essential selfishness
and impurity of men, and startle them into justice
and righteousness of life ! The Teutonic Titans,
though terrible from their rude strength, and dan-
gerous even to the gods themselves, are neither
disgusting nor degrading : they are like Chronos
and Saturn, full of power and wisdom ; they are in
constant warfare with the gods, because the latter
are the representatives'of a more humane order;
because the latter was more civilised : but as the
giant race were mighty at the beginning, so are they
to triumph at the end of the world ; and it is only
when they shall have succeeded in destroying the
Vit. Anon. Sci. Gnlli. Pertz, Monum. ii. 7. Pertzhasjustly called
attention to the metrical form of this colloquy. It is deeply to be Ia-
ɪɑɛnted that we no longer possess it in its earliest shape, and in the
a≡guage of its earliest composition.