412
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
far skolu dyggvar
drottir byggja,
ok um aldrdaga
yn,8is Iijota1.
there the just shall
joy for ever,
and in pleasure
pass the ages.
The conviction that the virtuous would rejoice
with God in a world of happiness was of course not
derived by our forefathers merely from their hea-
thendom ; but to this we may unhesitatingly refer
their belief, that after doomsday the sun and moon
would be restored with greater splendour. The
Saxon Menology2 says very distinctly :
“At doomsday, when our Lord shall renew all
creatures, and all the race of men shall rise again,
and never more commit sin, then will the sun shine
seven times brighter than she now doth, and she
will never set ; and the moon will shine as the sun
now doth, and never will wane or wax, but stand
for ever on his course3.” That this belief was not
unknown in Germany may be argued from an ex-
pression of Treidank,
Got hiɪnel und erde Lit zergan,
unt wil derndch ein Schoenerz ban4.
Dim and fragmentary as these rays of light may be
which straggle to us through the veils of bygone
ages, it is impossible not to recognize in them traces
of that primæval faith which teaches the respon-
sibility of man, the rule of just and holy beings
ɪ Vaulu Spa, st. G2. 2 MS. Corp. Christi, No. 179.
3 See Salomon and Saturn, p. 177. It may be observed here that
the feminine gender of the sun, and masculine of the moon, have their
origin in our heathen mythology.
4 Freydanck, Beschied. p. 8.
CH. XII-] HEATHENDOM. SOYLDWA. SCEA'F.
413
superior to himself, and a future existence of joy
and sorrow, the ultimate consequence of human
actions. With what amount of distinctness this
great truth may have been placed before their eyes,
we cannot tell, but it is enough that we see it ad-
mitted in one of the most thoroughly heathen poems
of the Edda, and confirmed by an Anglosaxon tradi-
tion totally independent of Christianity. Weak as
it is while unsupported by the doctrine of a graci-
ous Redeemer, it is not wholly inoperative upon the
moral being of men ; and its reception among the
nations of the North must have tended to prepare
them for the doctrine which in the fulness of time
was to supersede their vague and powerless desires
by the revelation of the crucified Saviour.
HEROES.—It now remains that we should be-
stow a few words upon the heroic names which
figure in the Epopcea of the North, and which pro-
bably in many cases belong to the legends and the
worship of gods now forgotten, or which at least
represent those gods in their heroic form and cha-
racter ; even as the Iliad in Achilles may celebrate
only one form of the Dorian Apollo, and the le-
gends of Cadmus and Theseus may be echoes from
an earlier cult of Jupiter and Neptune.
The hero Scyld or Sceldwa1 has been mentioned ,
as the godlike progenitor of the Scyldingas, the
royal race of Denmark ; but he also appears among
the mythical ancestors of Woden, in the genealogy
From which form we must conclude for the reading Scyldu (as
Wudu, Duru).