382
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book i.
gods of Oj>inn,s race, that they will themselves va-
nish from the scene, and the glorious reign of All-
father commence. Loki alone has something mean
and tricksey in his character, something allied to
falsehood—a slight spice of the Mephistopheles.
But it is not probable that this belongs to his earliest
form, and it appears rather to mark the deteriora-
tion of a myth becoming popular, and assuming
traits of the popular, humorous spirit, which takes
delight in seeing power counteracted by cunning,
and revenges itself for the perfection of its heroes by
sometimes exposing them to ludicrous defeat. But
even Loki was at first the friend and associate of
the gods: he was united with them by the most
sacred bonds of brotherhood, and his skill and
wisdom secured them victory in many a dangerous
encounter. Like Lucifer, he had been a tenant of
heaven : why he and the gods ultimately parted in
anger we are not told ; but we find him pursuing
them with the utmost malice, till at length he
causes the death of Baldr. ELe is then bound and
cast beneath the worlds, the poisonous snake hangs
over him distilling torturing venom : his faithful
wife sits by and catches the drops as they fall, but
when the vessel in which she receives them is full
and she turns for a moment to empty it, the deadly
juice reaches the prostrate god, and in his agony
he trembles in every limb. This convulsion is
known to men as the earthquake. It is only in the
twilight of the gods that he will break his chain and
lead the sons of Muspel to avenge him upon the
race of 0)?inn.
c∏. sɪɪj
HEATHENDOM. DEVIL.
383
But Loki is no devil in the Anglosaxon sense of
Satan and his son ; he is no deceiver or persecutor
of men ; least of all is he their torturer in another
world. He suffers indeed, but like Prometheus, or
Enteleclius, or Ægeon, and his hour of triumph is
to come. There is in his genuine character nothing
mean or little,—much indeed that is terrible, gloomy
and vague, but nothing ridiculous or disgusting.
<λ**v-*. O ’ l-? G> c>
The Saxon devil with horns, tail, cloven feet, sul-
phur and pitch, torches, red-hot tongs, pincers and
pitchforks is less creditable to the imagination,
and more dangerous to the moral being, of his in-
ventors.
Nor are the occupations of such a fiend less vul-
gar than his form : he blasts the corn, wounds the
cattle, fetters the hands of the doomed, enters the
mouth of those who have not guarded it by the sign
of the cross, and in a future state becomes the
torturer—in the most material and mechanical way
—of those whose life has been spent in the service
of sin. The coarse fancy of Marlowe himself halts
after the descriptions of the Anglosaxon divines and
poets, revelling in this fruitful theme. Unpleasant
as such records are, and revolting to our sense of
i'ɪght, it is necessary that we should know what was
taught or peɪmitted by the clergy, if we are to know
anything of the mode of life and mode of belief of
our forefathers.
As early even as the eighth century, we find so
gιeat a man as Beda condescending to admit into
ɪɪis ecclesiastical history, such melancholy evidence
°f Manichæan materialism as the vision of Driht-