Popular Tales from the Norse | Page 4

to learn and not to cavil--and for such alone this
introduction is intended--must be content with results rather than
processes and steps. To use a homely likeness, he must be satisfied
with the soup that is set before him, and not desire to see the bones of
the ox out of which it has been boiled. When we say, therefore, that in
these latter days the philology and mythology of the East and West
have met and kissed each other; that they now go hand and hand; that
they lend one another mutual support; that one cannot be understood

without the other,--we look to be believed. We do not expect to be put
to the proof, how the labours of Grimm and his disciples on this side
were first rendered possible by the linguistic discoveries of Anquetil du
Perron and others in India and France, at the end of the last century;
then materially assisted and furthered by the researches of Sir William
Jones, Colebrooke, and others, in India and England during the early
part of this century, and finally have become identical with those of
Wilson, Bopp, Lassen, and Max Müller, at the present day. The affinity
which exists in a mythological and philological point of view between
the Aryan or Indo-European languages on the one hand, and the
Sanscrit on the other, is now the first article of a literary creed, and the
man who denies it puts himself as much beyond the pale of argument
as he who, in a religious discussion, should meet a grave divine of the
Church of England with the strict contradictory of her first article, and
loudly declare his conviction, that there was no God. In a general way,
then, we may be permitted to dogmatize, and to lay it down as a law
which is always in force, that the first authentic history of a nation is
the history of its tongue. We can form no notion of the literature of a
country apart from its language, and the consideration of its language
necessarily involves the consideration of its history. Here is England,
for instance, with a language, and therefore a literature, composed of
Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norse, and Romance elements. Is not this
simple fact suggestive of, nay, does it not challenge us to, an inquiry
into the origin and history of the races who have passed over our island,
and left their mark not only on the soil, but on our speech? Again, to
take a wider view, and to rise from archaeology to science, what
problem has interested the world in a greater degree than the origin of
man, and what toil has not been spent in tracing all races back to their
common stock? The science of comparative philology--the inquiry, not
into one isolated language--for nowadays it may fairly be said of a man
who knows only one language that he knows none--but into all the
languages of one family, and thus to reduce them to one common
centre, from which they spread like the rays of the sun--if it has not
solved, is in a fair way of solving, this problem. When we have done
for the various members of each family what has been done of late
years for the Indo- European tongues, its solution will be complete. In
such an inquiry the history of a race is, in fact, the history of its

language, and can be nothing else; for we have to deal with times
antecedent to all history, properly so called, and the stream which in
later ages may be divided into many branches, now flows in a single
channel.
From the East, then, came our ancestors, in days of immemorial
antiquity, in that gray dawn of time of which all early songs and lays
can tell, but of which it is as impossible as it is useless to attempt to fix
the date. Impossible, because no means exist for ascertaining it; useless,
because it is in reality a matter of utter indifference, when, as this
tell-tale crust of earth informs us, we have an infinity of ages and
periods to fall back on whether this great movement, this mighty lust to
change their seats, seized on the Aryan race one hundred or one
thousand years sooner or later. [1] But from the East we came, and
from that central plain of Asia, now commonly called Iran. Iran, the
habitation of the tillers and earers [2] of the earth, as opposed to Turan,
the abode of restless horse-riding nomads; of Turks, in short, for in
their name the root survives, and still distinguishes the great Turanian
or Mongolian family, from the Aryan, Iranian, or Indo-European race.
It is scarce worth while to inquire--even if inquiry could lead to any
result--what cause set them in