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 "Judas-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

1 46

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

grouping together the scattered evidence, adding here and there some fresh points and suggestions.

By way of comparison, it will be useful first to bring to recollection that legends about men living on for ever are to be found among various nations of the East. Biblical personages, like Enoch and Elias, have thus been used in Oriental folk-lore for the purpose of a myth symbolising eternal existence. Similar ideas are personified in fabulous accounts founded on the epic "Schahnameh" of the Persian poet Firdusi, as well as in legends of Mohammedan Arabs.

It is not to be denied that these Oriental fictions may, in some cases, have served to influence European folk-tales. The Crusades, indeed, brought about a great intermixture of thought between the East and the West. At the same time, we find on Western soil such strongly marked typical figures of Teutonic fancy-bearing so thoroughly, in their characteristics and their attributes, a likeness to the forms of the decayed creed of the Germanic heathens-that we cannot but believe them to be entirely of native growth, and to have served even as moulds in which some legends of apparently Christian origin were cast.

Thus, in Germany, there is the tale of the "Eternal Huntsman," in some parts of the country called Hakelbernd, or Hakelberg-evidently a mythic creation dating from the time of the Asa religion of our forefathers. There is the tale of the "Eternal Waggoner," Hotemann, chiefly to be met with among the descendants of the Nether Saxons, who, among all the tribes of Germany proper, held out longest in their Wodan worship against the conquering and Christianising policy of the Frankish emperor Karl the Great. There is, further, the curious tale of a "Flying Seafarer," which Richard Wagner, who has treated so many subjects of national mythology, has used for a well-known operatic text. To the same cycle of myths is attributed the tale of the Ewige Jude, or "Eternal Jew."

The thesis is, that the Wandering Jew has been evolved, as regards the main component parts of his individuality in Germany, from the figure of the Wild Huntsman, who himself is provably a later mask of the chief Teutonic deity Wodan, or Odin, after the latter had been deposed from his high status through the spread of Christianity. In proof of this thesis it can certainly be shown

1. That there are German Tales of the Wild Huntsman, accounting for his forced peregrinations, in which no Few whatever is mentioned, though an alleged insult offered to Christ forms a part of the myth.

2. That these same tales repose on an essentially heathen basis;

so much so, that the Wild Huntsman who restlessly wanders about as an expiation for some insult committed against Christ, is actually identified with a horse-flesh-eating race, as the ancient Germans and Scandinavians are known to have been.

3. That in various German tales the "Eternal Huntsman" and the "Eternal Jew" are said to be the same person.

4. That several chief attributes of the Wild Huntsman and the Wandering Jew are the same, and that, to all appearance, there has been even a similar word-transmutation, as in the case of Jötun into Judas, and of Gütchen into Jüdchen.

III.

Before approaching the German myth of the Wandering Jew, it will be well to cast a glance at the character of the God upon whom his figure is now assumed to have been modelled.

Odin or Wodan, the Spirit of the Universe, was conceived by our forefathers as a great Wanderer. His very name describes him as the All-pervading. Watan in Old High German, wadan in Old Saxon, and vadha, in Old Norse, are of the same root as the Latin vadere and (with the introduction of a nasal sound) the German wandern to go, to permeate, to wander about. Wodan is the Breath of the World; his voice is in the rushing wind. Restlessly he travels through all lands. The Sanskrit wâta, which etymologically belongs to the same root, signifies the wind; and the wind, in that early Aryan tongue, is also called "the Ever Travelling."

Hence several of the many names under which Odin was known represent him as being for ever on the move. In the poetic Edda he is called Gangradr; Gangleri (still preserved in the Scottish 'gangrel," that is, a stroller); and Wegtam-all meaning the Wayfarer. In one of the Eddic songs, in which he appears incarnated as Grimnir, he wears a blue mantle-a symbolic representation of the sky, of which he is the lord, and along which he incessantly travels. In the prose Edda, where his image is reflected, in the "Incantation of Gylfi," under the guise of a man who makes enquiries about all things in the Heavenly Hall of Asgard, he assumes a name meaning "The Wayfarer." He there says that he "comes from a pathless distance," and asks "for a night's lodging "-exactly as, in later times, we find the Wandering Jew saying, and asking for, the same.

In the Icelandic Heimskringla (the "World Circle ") the semihistorical, semi-mythical Odin, whose realm lay near the Black Sea,

1 See Wafthrûdnismâl; Grimnismál; Vegtamskvidha, and Gylfaginning.

and who ruled in company with twelve temple-priests, called Diar (that is, Gods, or divines), again appears as a great migratory warrior. He was "often away for years, wandering through many lands." The story of this powerful captain in war, who led the Germanic hosts from Asia or Asa-land, through Gardariki (Russia) and Saxon-land (Germany) to the Scandinavian North, is inextricably mixed up with the story of the Odin of mythology. But it is noteworthy that a restless, peregrinatory spirit-that spirit which, later on, made the Teutonic tribes overrun all Europe, and even the North of Africa -is also the characteristic of the warlike leader of the Icelandic herochronicle.

The

Saxo calls Odin the viator indefessus-the Indefatigable Wanderer. The Northern sagas are full of the records of his many journeys. In the Ragnar Lodbrog Saga, however, we see Odin already changed into a grey-headed pilgrim, with long beard, broad hat, and nail-clad shoes, pointing out the paths to Rome. broad hat everywhere characterises the great God in Teutonic lands. It signifies the cloud region-the headdress, as it were, of the earth. In many Germanic tales, the once powerful ruler of the world wears a motley mantle of many colours pieced together. This seemingly undignified garment is but another symbolic rendering of the spotted sky.

Now, the motley, many-coloured mantle, as well as the enormous broad hat and the heavy shoes of the Wandering Wodan, recur, on the one hand, in the curious shirt of St. Christophorus, and, on the other, in two of the chief attributes of the Wandering Jew. The coincidence is so striking, that Gotthard Heidegger already declared, at a time when the science of mythology was little developed yet, that "the great Christophorus and the Wandering Jew go together." At present, little doubt is entertained that, so far as the Church legend is concerned in Germanic countries, Christophorus carrying the Saviour over the water has replaced the older heathen tale of the giant Wate carrying Wieland over the water. Curiously enough, this tale has its prototype in a Krishna legend in India. Wate, as even his name shows, was only a Titanic counterpart of Wodan, who himself appears in the Asa religion also under the form of a water-god, or Neptune.

But before going into a comparison between the symbolical attributes of the errant Ahasverus and those of Germanic deities, the tale of the Wild Huntsman has to be looked at, for he is the link between Wodan and the Wandering Jew.