"Should I not have been brought up to earn my own bread if— if I had not been born at Copleston ?"

"If one thing is different, all other things are different too. Oh, Helen, I do wish you thought less of what you want and more of others. Think of your father-think how he would feel, yes, and will feel, at seeing you, Helen, turned into a paid drudge; what he would think of me for permitting you; what he would think of Alan for not being man enough to keep you safely in your own place-for no woman can lose her right place, whatever can happen to her. And think of Alan-what would he say when he returns? Think of his shame. I don't ask you to think of me, because I only think of Alan. But if there is one more way left for you to wound me, it would be your forcing me to let me see a girl with the blood of princes in her, my daughter, forgetting herself and her birth by—— No. Never let me hear you speak of such a thing again."

"But-if Alan would think only for me, ought I not to think only of him?"

"He would not think of you only. He would think of all that was due to his father, and to his name."

"His name!" The word came so hotly into her heart that it slipped from her tongue before she could call it back again. “Oh, mamma," she said, "indeed I did not mean-but

"

"Indeed I do not know what you mean," said Mrs. Reid. "I should have thought you would have known that by a man's name one does not mean merely a number of letters which may spell anything, but all the highest that his own self can be to him—all the trusts that generations have laid upon him, and all that makes him differ from others, for good or ill." Helen wondered at her mother's calmness, and was obliged to set it down to the apathy which comes from long endurance and increasing age. She did not seem even to notice that Helen's slip of the tongue betrayed a knowledge of the family shame.

"I mean," said Helen quickly, "you say a woman cannot lose her right place, whatever happens; there are ladies everywhere, doing all sorts of things."

"I mean," said her mother, "that no woman can lose her right place if she remains true in thought and true in word. In that sense there are ladies everywhere."

"And why should not I be as true in my words and my thoughts, even if I went behind a counter, as- "She could not say, “as I

am now."

"As you are now?" asked her mother for her, sadly. "Yes,

you might be that, Helen. But that is not the question now. I do not choose that you should do one least thing unbecoming Alan's sister-one least thing below that, from marriage down to doing badly what thousands can do well. . . . . . We will go and look for other lodgings, cheaper ones, and go into them as soon as we can leave here. But there is no reason why, because we have to count shillings, we should lose pride. Before I married we were all poor at home, but we never forgot ourselves. . . . . And,” thought Mrs. Reid to herself, "wherever we go, I shall not send our address to Gideon Skull." She did not add, "Nor will Helen." Weak as her daughter had shown herself, there was no need, even for an instant, to suppose her capable of carrying deliberate disobedience and concealment quite so far.

But why not, when, in doing one wrong thing, Helen felt that she had left no road open but that which led forward? What could be so mean as to let her own mother grow poorer and poorer, and leave Alan unaided, because she was afraid of helping them in spite of themselves? The greater was their pride, the less must be hers. She did not realise her own passionate hunger for life, freedom, and action which was thwarted by the tyranny of every petty detail. Gideon Skull, she felt, would find her out wherever she might be— and this bare thought almost made her look upon him as her knight, as well as her lover.

(To be continued.)

WODAN, THE WILD HUNTSMAN, AND THE WANDERING FEW.

IF

I.

F the science of comparative mythology had no other use, it would still be valuable as a means of overthrowing prejudice and dispersing the dark clouds of an antiquated bigotry. In this sense it may, even in our so-called enlightened age, not be out of place to show how the tale of the "Wandering Jew," with whose image so many ideas of religious odiousness are connected, has, after all, mainly arisen from the gradual transfiguration of a heathen divine form, not lacking in grandeur of conception, which originally and properly belongs to the creed of our own Germanic forefathers.

Of similar curious transfigurations for the worse, more than one can be proved. I need only refer to the popular custom, still prevailing in several parts of Germany and the Scandinavian North, of the so-called "Burning of Judas" about Easter time. It is instructive to trace out the upgrowth of this much-relished ceremony, which seems to have naturally originated from Christianity, whilst in truth it can be clearly fathered back to a perversion of an early heathen idea, in which undoubtedly some crude philosophical views of cosmogony had once been embodied. A few indications will render this apparent.

Among the Pagan Teutonic tribes, as among most ancient nations, the Universe was thought to have been slowly and gradually evolved from an aboriginal state of Chaos, out of which there came first a race of Giants, called Fötun in the Germanic North; and then only a race of Gods. The Gods had to wage war against the Giants, and finally vanquished them. In all likelihood, the Titans represented torpid, barren Nature; the Gods, the powers of Life, which struggle into shapely form. It is an idea of Evolution, only in anthropomorphic symbolism, such as mankind everywhere has been fond of in its attempts at guessing the great riddle of the world.

Now, a custom once existed, without doubt, in accordance with the semi-dramatic bent of all early religions, of celebrating this ine victory over the uncouth Fötun by a festival, when a giant

doll was carried round in Guy Fawkes manner, to be finally burnt. To this day there are traces of this heathen rite, but unfortunately mixed up now with a great deal of religious acrimony, owing to that misunderstanding of obsolete words which plays so large a part in the metamorphosis of myths. The rite is still performed, as it unquestionably was of yore, in Spring-about Easter, which is named after the German Goddess of Spring, Eostre, or Ostara-that is to say, at a time of the year when torpid Nature awakes into shapely forms. The doll is still burnt; only, it is called "Judas." These "Fudas-fires" evidently have their origin in the Fötun-, or giant-, burning. The transition from one word to the other was an easy one. In some places the people, misled by a further transmogrification of ideas and words, run about, wildly shouting :-" Burn the old Jew! Burn the old Jew!"

The Fötun, in fact, has been converted into a Judas, and then into a Jew. And so a Pagan superstition serves, in what is called a Christian age of the religion of love, for the maintenance of an unjust prejudice against an inoffensive class of fellow-citizens.

Similar pranks of religious animosity have been played with the name of a Germanic elf-spirit, who seems to be a diminished dwarf form of Wodan, or Odin, the great God with the Broad Hat. His broad hat symbolises the canopy of heaven. The elf-spirit is therefore naturally called by a diminutive expression, Hütchen, Little Hat, or Hattikin. At the same time, a general name for serviceable elfin spirits is in Germany Gütchen, Goody-ones--a name which originally may also have arisen from that of Wodan, who in a Longobardic form is called Gwodan, in a Frankish form Godan; whence the Godesberg, near Bonn.

The Gütchen, or Gütel, are supposed in the folk-tales to be fond of playing with children. For this reason, playthings are left about the house for the elfin visitors, so that they may amuse themselves, and be less constantly about the children; the parents not quite liking a constant intercourse. This seems all very harmless so far as it goes, though not in accordance with common sense. But, unfortunately, when mothers or nurses found that children's sleep was often disturbed, they began to bear a grudge to the spirits; and then a slight change in the name of the elfin took place. From Hütchen, Gütchen, or Gütel, they were converted into Füdchen and Füdellittle Jews! Then stories arose of the "little Jews" vexing the helpless children, of inflicting red pustules upon their rosy faces, even of burning them. Frolicsome house-gnomes of the heathen Teutonic VOL. CCXLVII. NO. 1795.

D

religion suddenly became demoniacal spirits of an "accursed race," and the flame of fanaticism was lustily fed.

We all know, alas! what deeds such fanaticism is capable of doing. The history of the Middle Ages bears fearful witness to the inhuman character of this religious animosity. A single quotation may suffice. It is taken from Matthaeus Parisiensis, a writer who also records for the first time the story of the "Wandering Jew."

Many people in England-the author in question writes in his "Historia Major "—who were about (in the reign of Richard I., in 1190) to make the voyage to Jerusalem, resolved first to rise against the Jews. All Jews that were found in their houses at Norwich were massacred by the Crusaders. So, also, those at Stamford and at St. Edmunds. At York, five hundred Jews, not counting the little children and the women, locked themselves up in the Tower with the consent of the governor and the castellan, from fear of an intended rising of the populace. On the Jews offering a sum of money as a ransom for safety, the people rejected the proposition. Then one of the Israelites, learned in the law, advised his coreligionists that it would be better to die for their law than to fall into the hands of the enemy. Upon this, each Jew in the Tower provided himself with a sharp knife to cut the neck of his wife, of his sons and daughters: then, throwing down the blood-dripping heads upon the Christians, the survivors set fire to the citadel, burning themselves and the remnant of the corpses together with the King's Palace. On their part, the inhabitants and the soldiers burnt down all the houses of the Jews, dividing their treasure among themselves.

So Matthaeus Parisiensis, who also mentions the tale of the Wandering Jew-a tale illustrated in our time by Gustave Doré in a manner calculated to leave no doubt upon the beholder that Ahasverus expiates the cruelty he is said to have shown to Jesus when the latter was bearing his cross to Golgotha. Yet, like the Judas-fires and the Jüdel tale, the story of the restless Ahasverus is also moulded upon a figure of the heathen Germanic creed!

II.

This point has been made out by eminent authorities in Teutonic mythology. In the following pages I intend supplementing and

"Eodem anno, multi per Angliam Hierosolymam properantes, prius in Judaeos insurgere decreverunt." (London edition of Historia Major, of 1571; p. 211.)