But in thus adopting the superstitions of the ancients, the conquerors of the Roman Empire combined them with similar articles of belief which they had brought with them from their original settlements in the North, where the existence of hags of the same character formed a great feature in their Sagas and their Chronicles.  It requires but a slight acquaintance with these compositions to enable the reader to recognize in the Galdrakinna of the Scalds the Stryga or witch-woman of more classical climates.  In the northern ideas of witches there was no irreligion concerned with their lore.  On the contrary, the possession of magical knowledge was an especial attribute of Odin himself; and to intrude themselves upon a deity, and compel him to instruct them in what they desired to know, was accounted not an act of impiety, but of gallantry and high courage, among those sons of the sword and the spear.  Their matrons possessed a high reputation for magic, for prophetic powers, for creating illusions; and, if not capable of transformations of the human body, they were at least able to impose such fascination on the sight of their enemies as to conceal for a period the objects of which they were in search.

There is a remarkable story in the Eyrbiggia Saga ("Historia Eyranorum"), giving the result of such a controversy between two of these gifted women, one of whom was determined on discovering and putting to death the son of the other, named Katla, who in a brawl had cut off the hand of the daughter-in-law of Geirada.  A party detached to avenge this wrong, by putting Oddo to death, returned deceived by the skill of his mother.  They had found only Katla, they said, spinning flax from a large distaff.  “Fools,” said Geirada, “that distaff was the man you sought.”  They returned, seized the distaff, and burnt it.  But this second time, the witch disguised her son under the appearance of a tame kid.  A third time he was a hog, which grovelled among the ashes.  The party returned yet again; augmented as one of Katla’s maidens, who kept watch, informed her mistress, by one in a blue mantle.  “Alas!” said Katla, “it is the sorceress Geirada, against whom spells avail not.”  Accordingly, the hostile party, entering for the fourth time, seized on the object of their animosity, and put him to death.[15] This species of witchcraft is well known in Scotland as the glamour, or deceptio visus, and was supposed to be a special attribute of the race of Gipsies.

[Footnote 15:  Eyrbiggia Saga, in “Northern Antiquities.”]

Neither are those prophetesses to be forgotten, so much honoured among the German tribes, that, as we are assured by Tacitus, they rose to the highest rank in their councils, by their supposed supernatural knowledge, and even obtained a share in the direction of their armies.  This peculiarity in the habits of the North was so general, that it was no unusual thing to see females, from respect to their supposed