Historic Survey of German Poetry; Interspersed with Various Translations Volume 1 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 5. Odin's Paradise, but the description of a Roman recruiting- house?the effect of his religion on Northern manners and literature to be inferred from the History of the Sword, Tyrfing. The description of Valhalla, or the hall of the fallen, must have been, among the followers of Odin, the most impressive of his inventions, and the main feature of the religion which he founded; yet, no single saga remains, in which all its peculiarities are brought together, and which could be quoted as the fundamental doctrine of northern heathenism. The paradise of Odin is however but an embellished picture of those recruiting-houses, which the Romans established in the Gothic north, when they first determined to enlist barbarians into the service of the imperial army. A large hall was constructed, which served alike the purposes of an arsenal and a refectory; sleeping places for the soldiery were annexed; and the requisite offices for cooking and brewing completed these drill-barracks. From the cieling of the great room were suspended the shields of the troops; on the walls hung their coats of mail; sheaves of lances, supported in regular colonnade, stood beside the nave; and the heroes, for so the rawest recruit was taught to call himself, were invited by the sound of the trumpet to assemble for the exercise of arms.5 After going through the tournament of the morning, the trumpet again announced the hour of the repast: legs of pork, the favourite food in a land of wild hogs, were placed steaming on the board; and ale, or mead, was handed to the weary combatants, until drunkenness and sleep dismissed them to their quarters. Men are so prone to fancy that their favourite occupations in this world will again constitute their enjoyments in another, that it was natural to assure the youn...