Algonquin Legends of New England | Page 6

and fire more
terrible and wonderful than Iceland; nay, so terrible that Icelanders
themselves were appalled by it. "This country," says the Abbe Morillot,
"is the one most suggestive of superstition. Everything there, sea, earth,
or heaven, is strange." The wild cries which rise from the depths of the
caverned ice-hills, and are reechoed by the rocks, icebergs, or waves,
were dreadful to Egbert Olafson in the seventeenth century. The
interior is a desert without parallel for desolation. A frozen Sahara seen

by Northern lightning and midnight suns is but a suggestion of this land.
The sober Moravian missionary Crantz once only in his life rose to
poetry, when more than a century ago he spoke of its scenery. Here
then was the latitude of storm and fire required by Schoolcraft to
produce something wilder and grander than he had ever found among
Indians. And here indeed there existed all the time a cycle of
mythological legends or poems such as he declared Indians incapable
of producing. But strangest of all, this American mythology of the
North, which has been the very last to become known to American
readers, is literally so nearly like the Edda itself that as this work fully
proves, there is hardly a song in the Norse collection which does not
contain an incident found in the Indian poem-legends, while in several
there are many such coincidences. Thus, in the Edda we are told that
the first birth on earth was that of a giant girl and boy, begotten by the
feet of a giant and born from his armpit. In the Wabanaki legends, the
first birth was of Glooskap, the Good principle, and Malsum the Wolf,
or Evil principle. The Wolf was born from his mother's armpit. He is
sometimes male and sometimes female. His feet are male and female,
and converse. We pass on only twelve lines in the Edda
(Vafthrudnismal, 36) to be told that the wind is caused by a giant in
eagle's plumage, who sits on a rock far in the north "at the end of
heaven." This is simply and literally the Wochowsen or Windblower of
the Wabanaki word for word,--not the "Thunder-Bird" of the Western
Indians. The second birth on earth, according to the Edda, was that of
man. Odin found Ash and Elm "nearly powerless," and gave them
sense. This was the first man and woman. According to the Indians of
Maine, Glooskap made the first men from the ash-tree. They lived or
were in it, "devoid of sense" till he gave it to them. It is to be observed
that primevally among the Norse the ash alone stood for man. So it
goes on through the whole Edda, of which all the main incidents are to
be found among the sagas of the Wabanaki. The most striking of these
are the coincidences between Lox (lynx, wolf, wolverine, badger, or
raccoon, and sometimes man) and Loki. It is very remarkable indeed
that the only two religions in the world which possess a devil in whom
mischief predominates should also give to each the same adventures, if
both did not come from the same source. In the Hymiskvida of the
Edda, two giants go to fish for whales, and then have a contest which is

actually one of heat against cold. This is so like a Micmac legend in
every detail that about twenty lines are word for word the same in the
Norse and Indian. The Micmac giants end their whale fishing by trying
to freeze one another to death.
It is to the Rev. Silas T. Rand that the credit belongs of having
discovered Glooskap, and of having first published in the Dominion
Monthly several of these Northern legends. After I had collected nearly
a hundred among the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indians, this
gentleman, with unexampled kindness, lent me a manuscript of
eighty-four Micmac tales, making in all nine hundred folio pages.
Many were similar to others in my collection, but I have never yet
received a duplicate which did not contain something essential to the
whole. Though the old Indians all declare that most of their lore has
perished, especially the more recondite mythic poems, I am confident
that much more remains to be gathered than I have given in this work.
As it is, I have omitted many tales simply because they were evidently
Canadian French stories. Yet all of these, without exception, are half
Indian, and it may be old Norse modified; for a French story is
sometimes the same with one in the Eddas. Again, for want of room I
have not given any Indian tales or chronicles of the wars with the
Mohawks. Of these I have enough to make a very curious volume.
These legends belong to all New England. Many of them