392
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book i.
singing sweetly to them in the evening, detaches
from his hoary hair the sweet blossoms of the
water-lily, which he wafts over the surface to their
hands.
HEL.—Among the fearful beings whose power
was dreaded even by the gods, was Hel, mistress of
the cold and joyless under-world. Called, through
the fate of battle, to the glories of Wælheal, the
Teutonic or Norse hero trembled at a peaceful
death which would consign him to a dwelling
more desolate and wretched than even that which
awaited the fallen warriors of heroic Greece1, and
many a legend tells of those whose own hand saved
them from a futurity so abhorred2. But Hel was not
herself the agent of death ; she only received those
1 Odyssey, book xi.
2 This is so completely familiar to the student of antiquity, that I
shall not multiply examples : they may be found in Bartholinus. But
one instance I may be excused for citing, inasmuch as it proves how
long the heathen spirit sur∖i∖ed despite the peaceful hope and promise
of Christianity. Henry of Huntingdon, in the sixth book of his history,
relates of Sigeweard the great duke of Northumberland, that hearing
of the loss of his son in battle, he exclaimed, “ Recepitne vulnus Ie-
thale in anteriori vel posteriori corporis parte ? Dixerunt nuntii : In
anterioyi. At ille : Gaudeo plane, non enim alio me, vel filium meum
digner funere.” In 106δ however, oppressed with sickness, he found
that his desire was not to be fulfilled. “ Siwardus, consul rigidissiɪnus,
profluvio ventris ductus, mortem sensit imminere, dixitque : Quantus
pudor me tot in bellis mori non potuisse, ut vaccarum morti cum de-
decore reser∖arer! Induite me saltern lorica mea impenetrabili, ρrae-
cingite gladio, sublimate galea : scutum in laeva, securim auratam mihi
ponite in dextra, ut militum fortissimus modo militis moriar. Dixerat,
et, ut dixerat, armatus Iionorifice spirituni exhalavit.” Through every
word of this passage breathes the old heathen spirit of Haralldr Hil-
ditavn, and one feels that to Christianity alone it was owing, that Sigθ-
weard did not prevent an inglorious by a voluntary violent death.
ÇH. x∏∙]
HEATHENDOM. НЕЕ.
893
who had not earned their seat in OJ>inn,s hall by a
heroic fall, and the Waelcyrian or Shieldmays were
the choosers of the slain. The realm of Hel was all
that Wælheal was not,—cold, cheerless, shadowy ;
no simulated war was there, from which the com-
batants desisted with renovated strength and glory ;
no capacious quaighs of mead, or cups of the life-
giving wine; no feast Continuallyenjoyed and mi-
raculously reproduced ; no songs nor narratives of
noble deeds ; no expectation of the last great battle
where the einherjar were to accompany Allfather to
meet his gigantic antagonists; no flashing Shield-
mays animating the brave with their discourse, and-
Iightening the hall with their splendour ; but chill
and ice, frost and darkness ; shadowy realms with-
out a sun, without song or wine or feast, or the
soul-inspiring company of heroes, glorying in the
great deeds of their worldly life.
For the perjurer and the secret murderer Na-
strond existed, a place of torment and punishment
—the strand of the dead—filled with foulness,
peopled with poisonous serpents, dark, cold, and
gloomy: the kingdom of Hel was Hades, the in-
visible, the world of shadows1 : Nastrond was what
we call Hell. Christianity however admitted no
goddess of death, and when it was thought neces-
sary to express the idea of a place of punishment
after death, the Anglosaxon united the realm of
* So the Greeks :
∏ωr ?τληs *Aiδoσδe κατeλΛ'∕xfV, tl∕0aτf vtκpoι
,Aφpaδees valoυσι, βpoτωv eιδωλa κap6vτωv ;
Odyss. xi. 473.