with all heroes who have died in battle; drinking mead, but not out of their enemies’ skulls, as has been so often said.  This mistake modern scholars have attributed to a mistranslation of a word in the original, which means “curved horns,” the passage being, “Soon shall we drink ale out of the curved branches of the skull,” that is, of an animal.  Their food is the flesh of a boar, which is renewed every day.

It is not to be supposed that Odin and the other gods lived quietly on their Olympus without adventures.  Many entertaining ones are narrated in the Edda, had we room to tell them.  One of these describes the death of Baldur the Good, whom all beings loved.  Having been tormented with bad dreams, indicating that his life was in danger, he told them to the assembled gods, who made all creatures and things, living or dead, take an oath to do him no harm.  This oath was taken by fire and water, iron and all other metals, stones, earths, diseases, poisons, beasts, birds, and creeping things.  After this, they amused themselves at their meeting in setting Baldur up as a mark; some hurling darts or shooting arrows at him, and some cutting at him with swords and axes; and as nothing hurt him, it was accounted a great honor done to Baldur.  But wicked Loki, or Loke, was envious at this; and, assuming the form of a woman, he inquired of the goddess who had administered the oath, whether all things had taken it.  She said everything except one little shrub called mistletoe, which she thought too young and feeble to do any harm.  Therefore Loki got the mistletoe, and, bringing it to one of the gods, persuaded him to throw it at Baldur, who, pierced to the heart, fell dead.  The grief was immense.  An especial messenger was despatched to Queen Hela, in Hell, to inquire if, on any terms, Baldur might be ransomed.  For nine days and nights he rode through dark chasms till he crossed the river of Death, and entering the kingdom of Hela, made known his request.  Hela replied that it should now be discovered whether Baldur was so universally loved as was represented; for that she would permit him to return to Asgard if all creatures and all things, without exception, would weep for him.  The gods then despatched messengers through the world to beg all things to weep for Baldur, which they immediately did.  Then you might have seen, not only crocodiles but the most ferocious beasts dissolved in tears.  Fishes wept in the water, and birds in the air.  Stones and trees were covered with pellucid dew-drops, and, for all we know, this general grief may have been the occasion of some of the deluges reported by geology.  The messengers returned, thinking the work done, when they found an old hag sitting in a cavern, and begged her to weep Baldur out of Hell.  But she declared that she could gain nothing by so doing, and that Baldur might stay where he was, like other people as good as he; planting herself apparently on the great but somewhat selfish principle of non-intervention.  So Baldur remains in the halls of Hela.  But this old woman did not go unpunished.  She was shrewdly suspected to be Loki himself in disguise, and on inquiry so it turned out.  Whereupon a hot pursuit of Loki took place, who, after changing himself into many forms, was caught, and chained under sharp-pointed rocks below the earth.