Here we have the same great battle between Light and Darkness.  The Darkness proposes to be perpetual; it says, “There shall be no more day.”  After a long struggle the Light triumphed, the sun returned, and the earth was saved.

Among the Tupis of Brazil we have the same story of the battle of light and darkness.  They have a myth of Timandonar and Ariconte: 

“They were brothers, one of fair complexion, the other dark.  They were constantly struggling, and Ariconte, which means the stormy or cloudy day, came out worst.”

Again the myth reappears; this time among the Norsemen: 

Balder, the bright sun, (Baal?) is slain by the god Hodur, the blind one; to wit, the Darkness.  But Vali, Odin’s son, slew Hodur, the Darkness, and avenged Balder.  Vali is the son of Rind—­the rind—­the frozen earth.  That is to say, Darkness devours the sun; frost rules the earth; Vali, the new sun, is born of the frost, and kills the Darkness.  It is light again.  Balder returns after Ragnarok.

And Nana, Balder’s wife, the lovely spring-time, died of grief during Balder’s absence.

[1.  Brinton’s “Myths of the New World,” p. 200.]

{p. 240}

We have seen that one of the great events of the Egyptian mythology was the search made by Isis, the wife of Osiris, for the dead sun-god in the dark nether world.  In the same way, the search for the dead Balder was an important part of the Norse myths.  Hermod, mounted on Odin’s horse, Sleifner, the slippery-one, (the ice?) set out to find Balder.  He rode nine days and nine nights through deep valleys, so dark that he could see nothing;[1] at last he reaches the barred gates of Hel’s (death’s) dominions.  There he found Balder, seated on a throne:  he told Hel that all things in the world were grieving for the absence of Balder, the sun.  At last, after some delays and obstructions, Balder returns, and the whole world rejoices.

And what more is needed to prove the original unity of the human race, and the vast antiquity of these legends, than the fact that we find the same story, and almost the same names, occurring among the white-haired races of Arctic Europe, and the dark-skinned people of Egypt, Phœnicia, and India.  The demon Set, or Seb, of one, comes to us as the Surt of another; the Baal of one is the Balder of another; Isis finds Osiris ruling the underworld as Hermod found Balder on a throne in Hel, the realm of death.

The celebration of the May-day, with its ceremonies, the May-pole, its May-queen, etc., is a survival of the primeval thanksgiving with which afflicted mankind welcomed the return of the sun from his long sleep of death.  In Norway,[2] during the middle ages, the whole scene was represented in these May-day festivals:  One man represents summer, he is clad in green leaves the other represents winter; he is clad in straw, fit picture of the

[1.  “Nome Mythology,” p. 288.