haps, was a form of the old Aryan
Sky-god, who took with them the guise of Thunor or Thunder (in
Scandinavian, Thor), an angry warrior hurling his hammer, the
thunder-bolt, from the stormy clouds. These thunder-bolts were often
found buried in the earth; and being really the polished stone-axes of
the earlier inhabitants, they do actually resemble a hammer in shape.
But Woden, the special god of the Teutonic race, had practically usurped
the highest place in their mythology: he is represented as the leader of
the Germans in their exodus from Asia to north-western Europe, and since
all the pedigrees of their chieftains were traced back to Woden, it is
not improbable that he may have been really a deified ancestor of the
principal Germanic families. The popular creed, however, was mainly one
of lesser gods, such as elves, ogres, giants, and monsters, inhabitants
of the mark and fen, stories of whom still survive in English villages
as folk-lore or fairy tales. A few legends of the pagan time are
preserved for us in Christian books. _Beowulf_ is rich in allusions to
these ancient superstitions. If we may build upon the slender materials
which alone are available, it would seem that the dead chieftains were
buried in barrows, and ghost-worship was practised at their tombs. The
temples were mere stockades of wood, with rude blocks or monoliths to
represent deities and altars. Probably their few rites consisted merely
of human or other sacrifices to the gods or the ghosts of departed
chiefs. There was a regular priesthood of the great gods, but each man
was priest for his own household. As in most other heathen communities,
the real worship of the people was mainly directed to the special family
deities of every hearth. The great gods were appealed to by the
chieftains and by the race in battle: but the household gods or deified
ancestors received the chief homage of the churls by their own
firesides.

Thus the Anglo-Saxons, before the great exodus from Denmark and North
Germany, appear as a race of fierce, cruel, and barbaric pagans,
delighting in the sea, in slaughter, and in drink. They dwelt in little
isolated communities, bound together internally by ties of blood, and
uniting occasionally with others only for purposes of rapine. They lived
a life which mainly alternated between grazing, piratical seafaring, and
cattle-lifting; always on the war-trail against the possessions of
others, when they were not specially engage