he satanic companions of
witches by habit and repute.

One gentle thing only was her memory allowed to keep. When, not as an
omnipotent goddess but as a heart-broken mother, she wept the death of
her dearly-loved son, Baldur the Beautiful, the tears that she shed
were turned, as they fell, into pure gold that is found in the beds of
lonely mountain streams. And we who claim descent from the peoples who
worshipped her--

"Saxon and Norman and Dane are we"--

can surely cleanse her memory from all the ugly impurities of
superstition and remember only the pure gold of the fact that our
warrior ancestors did not only pray to a fierce and mighty god of
battles, but to a woman who was "loving and giving"--the little
child's deification of the mother whom it loves and who holds it very
dear.

THE DEATH OF BALDUR

"I heard a voice, that cried,
'Baldur the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!'
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward sailing cranes."

Longfellow.

Among the gods of Greece we find gods and goddesses who do unworthy
deeds, but none to act the permanent part of villain of the play. In
the mythology of the Norsemen we have a god who is wholly treacherous
and evil, ever the villain of the piece, cunning, malicious,
vindictive, and cruel--the god Loki. And as his foil, and his victim,
we have Baldur, best of all gods, most beautiful, most greatly
beloved. Baldur was the Galahad of the court of Odin the king, his
father.

"My strength is of the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure."

No impure thing was to be found in his dwelling; none could impugn his
courage, yet ever he counselled peace, ever was gentle and infinitely
wise, and his beauty was as the beauty of the whitest of all the
flowers of the Northland, called after him _Baldrsbra_. The god of the
Norsemen was essentially a god of battles, and we are told by great
authorities that Baldur was originally a hero who fought on the
earth, and who, in time, came to be deified. Even if it be so, it is
good to think that a race of warriors could worship one whose chief
qualities were wisdom, purity, and love.

In perfect happiness, loving and beloved, Baldur lived in Asgard with
his wife Nanna, until a night when his sleep was assailed by horrible
dreams of evil omen. In the morning he told the gods that he had
dreamed that Death, a thing till then unknown in Asgard, had come and