The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862

Time rolled on—for the world was old then, though thousands of years have since faded—and from the East there was a mighty emigration to lands far away. What were the causes of this mighty movement—what was it which transplanted the seeds of new nations and new races into the distant Norway and Sweden? As yet, only dim, very dim conjecture can be made. The Mahabharata tells us of a mighty battle which sent forth hero-sages with their armies into the wide world; others have traditions of divisions between the worshippers of the Lingam and Yoni, who alternately contended for the supremacy of the male or female principle in creation. Whatever the causes may have been—priest warring with soldier for power, or a newer and a milder code casting off the older and more aristocratic rulers into outer darkness—one thing is certain, that they went forth strong in faith, fearless of destiny; for the religion of primeval times was terrible and tremendous. It was such religion, such absolute, undoubting slavery to faith, which wore away millions on millions of lives in carrying out in dim, old, barbarous days the rock sculptures of the temples of Ellora—which dug Sibyls' grots, and piled together Cyclopean walls, and pierced Cimmerian caves of awful depth and solid gloom, in the fair isles of the Mediterranean; and which, it may have been at the same time, it may have been at a later day, massed together the miracles of Stonehenge, the enormous dragon rows of Brittany, and the almost indentically similar serpent mounds of our own West. They are all of one faith.

Westward went the Æsir—the children of Light—from the land of the Banyan—In die weite weite Welt hinaus—out into the wild, brave world! Some went Greekward. There is a curious book, by an English scholar, attempting to prove that the names of hill and valley, mountain and seas, in Greece, and of the countries which lead eastward to it, are all those of India but little changed. A problem awaiting the scientific accuracy of a Max Muller or a Grimm, and not to be handily tossed into shape by a poetic Faber, or guessed at by a wild-Irish O'Brien or Vallancey, or a lunatic Betham. It is, however, worth noting that over those South Slavonian provinces, via Greece, flowed for many centuries northward a strangely silent stream of Orientalism, but little disturbed by the outer or upper currents of history. He who has dabbled in Servian-Croat-Illyrian—twin sister to Bohemian—has doubtless been amazed at the wealth of Sanscrit words it contains, albeit he may not go so far as Pococke, who asserts that with Sanscrit alone one may travel in those countries and be understood. Over this path it was, however, even down to the middle ages, that a rich store of Oriental heresies and forbidden lore flowed into freemasonry, into Waldense and Albigense sects, into many a hidden doctrine and strange brotherhood now forgotten or veiled under some horrible outbreaking of stifling passion and terrible ante-Protestantism. Over this path, on which, in earlier ages, the mitre and rosary and violet robe and confessional, and doctrines of celibacy and monkery and nun-nism, and bell and consecrated taper, and still deeper dogmas or doctrines, wandered from the East into the Church, came also heresies, terrible as Knights Templars', which in due time warred against the Church, and cleft it in twain. The doctrines of wild sects, more or less Manichæan, which came forth strangely to upper life during the fever of the Crusades, all seem to tend obscurely from a Slavonic source. The vices with their adepti were reproached by the Church, gave to most of the languages of Europe a revolting word, modified from the name 'Bulgarian.' The origin of the earlier Bohemian Hussite sects, with their strange devil-worship and doctrine of transmigration, was manifestly Oriental. At a later date the very name of the mystic Jacob Böhme—Jacob the Bohemian—indicates some secret alliance with Slavonian associations; and if the connection of the name with strange Oriental speculations be obscure, that of the teachings of 'the inspired shoemaker' with those of the East is not—witness the often marvellous identity of tone of The Aurora with that of Hermes Trismegistus. It is worth while in this connection to trace the influence of Böhme-ism on 'the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany,' on Anabaptism, and on the illuminati of the ultra Puritans in England, bringing forth Independent Fifth Monarchy men, George Fox, Flood, Law, and Pordage. The seeds of this mystical heresy were obscurely transmitted to New England, which has always had some 'God-Smith,' or Mathias with his 'Impostures,' lurking among the vulgar. I have no doubt that, through traditional influence at least, a Joe Smith and the beginning of Mormonism might be found to have a direct descent from the doctrines of early times.

Let the reader pardon the digression. I am about to speak of the Ash tree—the successor of the Banyan—which has also its connection with English popular superstition. However it was, when the wave of Oriental emigration reached the utmost limits of Northern Europe, it changed its character with the climate. From a vast pantheism of fire, it became one of ice and of snow. In the grammar of its mythology, only a little of the vocabulary was retained, but the grand system of construction remained on the whole unchanged. There is the same stupendous ground-plan of a cosmogony founded on a sublime view of the powers of Nature, and the same exquisitely poetic elaboration of details in the Edda as in the Sacred Books of India, though the one is illumined by the burning sun of the tropics, and the other by the Northern Lights of a winter midnight.

So the children of Odin needed a tree signifying All Creation, All Time, All Nature, and they chose the Ash. Its picturesque beauty, its lightness and easy flowing lines, combined with great strength, and at times with enormous size; its elegant depending foliage and lithe vigor in its prime, and its gnarled, ancient expression when old, well fitted it to set forth the extremes of existence. The firm hold of these trees in the earth, 'their obstinate and deep rooting—tantus amor terræ,' as Evelyn expresses it, gives us a reason why the Ash of their mythology was fabled to reach down to hell; while its stern vitality, expressed by Horace, fitted it to be called the tree of life:

'Per damna, per cædes, ab ipsoDucit opes animumque ferro.''By havoc, wounds, and blowsMore lively and luxuriant grows.'

So the Ash became the Banyan of Northern faith, and the great meeting place of the gods—as the reader may see in the following extracts from the Edda:

Gangler demanded: 'Which is the capital of the Gods, or the sacred city?' Har answereth: 'It is under the Ash-tree Ydrasil, where the Gods assemble every day and administer justice.' 'But,' sayeth Gangler, 'What is there remarkable about that place?' 'That Ash,' answereth Jarnhar, 'is the greatest and best of all trees. Its branches extend themselves over the whole world, and reach above the heavens. It hath three roots, extremely different from each other; the one of them is among the Gods; the other among the Giants, in that very place where the abyss was formerly; the third covereth Neflheim, or Hell, and under this root is the fountain Vergelmer, whence flow the infernal rivers: this root is gnawed upon below by the monstrous serpent Nidhoger. Under that root which stretcheth out toward the land of the Giants, is also a celebrated spring, in which are concealed Wisdom and Prudence. He who hath possession of it is named Mimis: he is full of wisdom, because he drinketh thereof every morning. One day the Universal Father (Al-Fader) came and begged to drink a cup of this water; but he was obliged to leave in pledge for it one of his eyes, according as it is said in the Voluspa: 'Where hast thou concealed thine eye, Odin? Lo! I know where; even in the limpid fountain of Mimis. Every morning doth Mimis pour Hydromel upon the pledge he received from the Universal Father. Do you, or do you not understand this?' The third root of the Ash is in Heaven, and under it lieth the holy fountain of Time-Past (fons præteriti temporis—Urdar Brun). 'Tis here that the Gods sit in judgment. Every day they ride hither on horseback, passing over the Rainbow, which is the Bridge of the Gods. * * * * As for Thor, he goeth on foot to the tribunal of the Gods, and fordeth the rivers Kormt and Gormt. These he is obliged to cross every day on foot, on his way to the Ash Ydrasil, for the Bridge of the Gods is all on fire. * * * *

'Near the fountain which is under the Ash, stands a very beautiful city, wherein dwell three virgins, named Urda, or the Past; Verdandi, or the Present; and Sokulda, or the Future. These are they who dispense the ages of men; they are called Norn[=a]s, that is, Fates. But there are indeed very many others besides these, who assist at the birth of every child, to determine his fate. Some are of celestial origin; others descend from the Genii, and others from the dwarfs.' * * * *

'Gangler proceeds, desiring to know something more concerning the Ash. Har replied: 'What I have farther to add concerning it is, that there is an eagle perched upon its branches, who knows a multitude of things, but he hath between his eyes a sparrow-hawk (qui Vederloefner vocatur). A squirrel runs up and down the Ash, sowing misunderstanding between the eagle and the serpent, which lies concealed at its root. Pour stags run across the branches of the tree, and devour its rind. There are so many serpents in the fountain whence spring the rivers of hell, that no tongue can recount them, as is said in these verses:

'Fraxinus Ygdrasil plura patitur,Quam ullus mortaliumCogitatione assequi valeat.Cervus depascitur inferius (rectius cacumen)Sed circa latera putrescit.Nidhoggius (the serpent) arrodit subtus.'

'The Destinies, who reside near the fountain of the Past, draw up water thence, with which they bedew the Ash, to prevent its branches from growing withered and decayed. Of so purifying a nature is that water, that whatever it touches becomes as white as the film which is within an egg.

'Fraxinum novi stantem,Vocatem YgdrasilProceram et sacram albe luto,Hinc venit ros,Qui in valles cadit,Stat super virenteUrdar fonte.'

'Men call this the honey-dew, and it is the food of bees. There are also in this fountain two swans, which have produced all the birds of that species.'

Does the reader care to know the meaning of all this? It is hardly worth while, since to those who feel its grotesque poetry quite enough of the symbolism is already revealed. But let the plodding German Friedreich 'have his say.' 'The name of the Ash, Yggdrasil,' he tell us, 'signifies God's Horse, from Yggr, a name of the god Odin, and drasil, the poetic term for a horse. With this name one hath God's rule over all things, since he ruleth them even as a rider controls his steed, and by Yggdrasil is consequently signified the almighty power of God. The Ash is the Universe, its twigs are the Ether, spread over the World-all; the eagle is the Infinite glance, penetrating heaven and earth; and the squirrel the medium by which the deeds and condition of the Gods are brought to men. The stags, whose swiftness betokens the restless, rapid passions of man, are the ailments of the soul; and the green leaves which they devour, are sound, healthy thoughts.' According to Hauch (Die Nordische Mythenlehre, Leipsic, 1847, p. 28), these swift stags are the four winds of heaven which scatter the leaves. The snake is the destroying force in Nature, and in the clear fountain lies wisdom—which at least teaches us the highly respectable origin of the assertion that 'truth lies at the bottom of a well.' In the next spring lies the knowledge of the future—hinting at much fortune telling by means of pools, and faces of future husbands in basins of water and mirrors; while the three virgins are the Parcæ—the goddesses of destiny. You know these ladies, reader; but here they are grander, gloomier, diviner than were our old friends Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. And the endless strife between the eagle and the serpent, stirred up by the squirrel, is the 'ever-battling, interchangeable action between Spirit and Matter, the ever hence-and-hither rolling, as of waves, to good or evil in the human heart.'

Quaint enough, yet strong, wild, and beautiful. One more explanation is however worth the giving. In all countries and in all ages, writers, from Pliny and Dioscorides down to the genial poet-author of 'Elsie Venner,' have said or hinted that the Ash is abhorred by serpents—an antipathy ridiculed by Evelyn, yet which I have heard maintained to be true by an eminent botanist. In our Edda legend, we find an enmity between the Serpent—the evil principle, and a foe to life and peace—and the Ash—the tree of fresh, vigorous life; the first ever striving to destroy the latter. Is this the origin of the old belief? So in the 'Arcana against Enchantment,' a German book of 1715, we are told that 'the antipathy between the Ash tree, blessed of God, and the Serpent, which so hateth man, is so great that a serpent would rather spring into the fire than into the shadow of an Ash tree.' And in Froschmäusler the same idea is expressed in these quaint verses:

'Ich bin von den Alten gelart,Der Eschenbaum hab diese Arth,Dass keine Schlang unter ihm bleib;Der Schatten sie auch hinweg treib,Ja die Schlang eher ins Feuer hinleufft,Ehe sie durch seinen Schatten schleyfft.''I have been by ancients told,The Ash tree hath this gift of old,That snake may never 'neath it stay,The shadow drives it, e'en, away.Sooner a snake in fire would dash,Than through the shadow of an Ash.'

There is yet another strange superstition connected with the Ash, which one hardly cares to grapple with—so vast is the mass of obscure myths and doctrines which it involves. Let it suffice to say, that from tradition and monuments, in vast variety, it appears that in very ancient times the Passing Through anything was a ceremony of deepest significance and solemnity. To go through a door, to put on a ring, to pass between upright stones (as for instance, the dolmen, or those of the serpent circle of Stonehenge), to wear armlets, all referred to going from death into life, from ignorance to knowledge, from an unregenerate condition to reconciliation. It referred to the life passing into the womb and coming forth as birth. Going into an ark and quitting it, was one form of this Passing Through. Caves were also very holy, because they furnished apt illustrations of it. Spring was typified as going down into the womb or cave or ark or casket or goblet of the earth, and coming forth or being poured out again in fresh beauty. Hence it came that marriage was surrounded in earliest times by symbols of transit, or Passing Through. Lovers plighted their troth in Great Britain, as is yet done in some remote districts of Scandinavia, by joining their clasped hands through holes in the so-called Odin stones. As the Regenerate in the mysteries were obliged to pass through passages in rocks, it was naturally enough believed that those who were ill might be benefited in like manner. Of course the Ash—the tree of Odin and of all the gods—was hallowed in popular belief by healing virtues; and Evelyn tells us that 'the rupture, to which many children are obnoxious, is healed by passing the infant through a wide cleft made in the hole or stem of a growing Ash tree. It is then carried a second time round the Ash, and caused to repass the same aperture as before.' This act of being borne or passing around a stone or stick against the course of the sun, is a ceremony common to certain rites among almost all nations. It was known to Druids and Hindoos—traces of it may be found even among the debased Fetishism which lingers among American negroes. According to the old philosophy of planetary influences, the Ash tree is peculiar to the sun; whereas serpents are consecrated to dark and gloomy Saturn—another cause for the antipathy between them, and illustrative of the reason why the ailing child should be borne around in reference to the imaginary sympathetic solar rays of the tree.

All trivial enough, doubtless; no longer a matter worthy of deep research and wise marvelling. It is not even worth the while now for scholars to inveigh against the folly of such superstition. There was indeed enough of it. It was believed that by boring a hole in an ashen bough and imprisoning a mouse in it, a magic rod was obtained which would cure lameness and cramps in cattle—the ailments being transferred to the poor mouse, who was the supposed cause of them all. 'There is a proverb, says Loudon (Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, p. 1223, edition of 1838), 'in the midland countries, that if there are no keys on the Ash trees, there will be no king within the twelvemonth.' Lightfoot says that in many parts of the Highlands of Scotland, at the birth of a child, the nurse or midwife puts one end of a green stick of this tree into the fire, and, while it is burning, gathering in a spoon the sap or juice, which oozes out at the other end, administers this as the first spoonful of food to the newly-born baby.' Trivial enough, yet worth noting as the fragments and humble remains of what was once the mighty mythology of the Northmen, hinting at the faith in the life-giving and life-preserving qualities of the great tree of life—the tree of knowledge of good and evil—the eritis sicut Deus of Runic lore.

Among the strangest and most beautiful after-echoes of this old Norse faith in the magic Ash as the great tree of life, is to my mind, one which has been preserved by Grimm in his 'Mythology' (2d edition, 2d book, page 912), and which the German poet Hoffmann has happily turned in a poem full of spirit and grace. The legend is as follows:

In the churchyard at Nortorf will one day be an Ash,No human eye hath seen it, yet silently it growsAmong the graves, and every year it bears a single sprout.Each New Year's night a rider white upon a snow-white steed,Comes silently among the graves to hew the sprout away;But there comes a coal-black rider upon a coal-black horse,And he strives to save the new-born tree and drive the foe afar:Long they fight till the New Year's dawn—until black knight yields,And the foeman hews away the twig, and rides into the dawn,But there will come a time,'tis said, when the white knight must yield,And the twig will grow and its leaves will blow until the trunk is great:So great that a proud war horse 'neath its lower branch may go.And when the branch is grown and blown will come the world's great fight;The fiercest of her battles, the last great strife of dread;And the war horse of the mighty king will stand beneath the tree,And the king will win, and all the world will be his heritage.

'The White Knight,' saith a commentator, 'is Freyr, one of the most glorious among Norse Asen, or children of the gods—he who rules over rain, sunshine, and earth's fruitfulness. His adversary is Surtur, the Black Demon—a pitiless foe of the Asen, who in the great battle will fight with the evil Loki—'the curse and shame of gods and men'—and set heaven and earth afire. But then there will come a new heaven and a new earth, in which eternal justice shall reign, and the 'Great King'—he whose steed shall wait beneath the Ash of Life—'will rule forever in peace and holiness.'

Dear reader, the battle between Freyr and Surtur is ever raging—in your heart as in all the world. But whenever a great strife for freedom and truth and man's rights is battled out, then the branch has grown, and the horse of the Great King is saddled beneath the Ash, and his rule draws nearer than ever. Even as I write the battle rages, as it never raged before on earth, between the infernal Loki and Surtur and the glorious Asen—the great children of light and of truth. You, soldier of the Lord, who read these lines—you, whose musket is borne in defence of the Union, are as true a child of the great race of light as was ever Odin or Balder, and you are in this great fight fulfilling the prophecies of a thousand years aforetime, which foretold the final battle of freedom. You too are of the Northmen, the children of Odin and of Freyr, the inexhaustible race of warriors and of workmen—the free laborers who forged the swords they wielded against the dark and wily fiend who stole his weapons from the foe ere the war began. And the Horse so easily ruled—the all-powerful Will—stands bridled beneath the eternal Ash Tree of Life; and while he lives and the tree grows, hope need not perish, and freedom cannot die.

In a Floral Lexicon I find it stated that the Ash tree signifies 'grandeur.' E ben trovato—it is not badly imagined—but its real meaning is life, and that not mere existence, but fresh, vigorous, exuberant life, the life of action and of enjoyment. The shaft of the Greek spear, which healed the wound given by the point, was, I doubt not, made of Ash, even as was that which slew Achilles. Thus the Ash, it will be seen, was an important letter in the ancient alphabet of the mysteries. May I hope that when you next sit beneath its graceful boughs, you will recall some of the lore which hallows it, and makes it a strange, living antique, not less curious than coin, weapon, or gem. Read it in all the significance, all the strange spirit of the old mythology, and then think what Nature must have been—or what it may yet be—to men finding as deep a symbol as even the Ash in every high place above the valleys, in every stream, cave, and rivulet, and in every green tree.

THE DRUM

[RÜCKERT.]'On, the drum—it rattles so loud!There's no such stirring soundIs heard the wide world round,As the drum–.'

AN ENGLISHMAN IN SOUTH CAROLINA. DECEMBER, 1860, AND JULY, 1862

CHAPTER FIRST

'The happiest people on the face of the earth, sir!'

I had heard the assertion in almost all of the slave States, and knew something of the institution on which it was based: I was now listening to the familiar sentence at an epoch that has become historical. I sat in Charleston, South Carolina, during Secession time, December, 1860.

'They are better fed and better treated than any peasantry in the civilized world. I've travelled in Europe and seen for myself, sir. What do you think of women—white women—working in the fields and living on nothing better than thin soup and vegetables, as they do in France, all the year round? And a man, with a family of nine children to support, breaking stones on the high road, in winter, for eight English shillings a week? Such a thing couldn't happen in South Carolina—in all the South, sir!'

'Perhaps not!' I didn't add that worse social wrongs might and did occur daily, in the eulogized region; knowing the utter unprofitableness of any such discussion, not to mention its danger at a period rife with excitement.

'You are an Englishman,' continued my interlocutor—a portly, middle-aged, handsome man, to whom I had been introduced just before the hotel dinner, toward the close of which our colloquy occurred—'and therefore a born abolitionist—as a matter of sentiment, that is. You know nothing at all about the workings of our institution, excepting what the d—d Yankees please to write about us, and the word slavery shocks you. Call it servitude, vassalage, anything else, it might be endurable enough. One of the advantages, by the way, that Secession is going to bring with it is, that the world will be brought into direct contact with us, and thus see us as we are, not through the eyes of the North.'

'You are in earnest about Secession, then?'

'In earnest! by – I should think we were! Don't you know we are, from what you have seen here?'

I did, and a moment's reflection might have checked my thoughtless inquiry. I said so.

'Yes, South Carolina's going out of the Union, with or without backers, and she intends to stay out, too; never were people more unanimous. The North has got so far toward being abolitionized as to elect a man avowedly hostile to our institutions, and we are only providing for our safety by seceding. It's quite time. Essentially we are a different people: we shall be the best friends in the world separate. It's all a question of difference of opinion about labor; the North prefers a system regulated by the mercenary dictates of traffic, ruled by capital, and subject to the chronic difficulties of strikes and starvation; the South, a simpler relation, binding master and slave together for their mutual benefit, abolishing pauperism, and dividing society into two unmistakable, harmonious classes—the well-fed, well-cared for, happy negro, and the wealthy, intelligent slaveowner.'