i.e., "I am very sharp and hard; Galaan made me with very great care; fourteen years old was Jesus Christ when Galaan tempered and made me." Other romances furnish with swords of Galant's workmanship both Julius Cæsar and Alexander the Great, and by inheritance from the latter, Ptolemy, Judas Maccabæus, and the Emperor Vespasian.[257] Such spurious inventions, however, lack all the value of the original symbolic legend. We read indeed in the romance of Fierabras d'Mixandre, of three famous swords made by Galans and his two brothers; of one of which it is related,—

If this idea stood alone, or was conceived in the simple spirit of the Scandinavian Vœlund-Chaunt, we might imagine it to be designed as a symbolic myth representing the advent of the Iron Period and its irresistible progress over the north; but the general spirit of the romance is characterized by the usual extravagance of medieval poetry.

The Greeks assigned to the history of Dædalus a very high antiquity, carrying him back to somewhere about the thirteenth century before the Christian era; but it may admit of doubt if Greece had then passed her own primitive stage. Among the relics of the European Stone Period preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries are some small flint-flakes and arrow-heads, gathered on the elevated mound of the tomb of the Plateans at Marathon, which it will not greatly outrage the ideas of the critical historian to assume as weapons used by the Greek patriots in repelling the Persian invader. At first the word Dædalus was, among the Greeks, like that of Weland among the Scandinavians, a generic name. Δαιδαλλω signified to work artistically, as Voelundr signified a smith in Islandic; and Dædalus was, like Weland, pre-eminently the artist and the workman. The word became a proper name only because of their attributing to this mythological being all the perfections of the art. For this reason also, it appears equally erroneous to regard the Islandic word voelund, a smith, as derived from Weland: it is the contrary that should be assumed. The word voelund existed before the history of the famous smith Weland had been invented, just as the word δαιδαλλω existed before the personification Dædalus had been adopted into the mythology of the Greeks.[259] This is no new idea. It was obviously from a recognition of it that King Alfred, when translating the De Consolatione Philosophiæ of Boethius into Anglo-Saxon, used the name of the northern Weland as synonymous with Fabricius. Mr. Singer has employed the Greek fable of Dædalus to restore the connexion of the arts of the north with the elder civilisation of Europe, and Dr. Sickler has applied the same classic legend with great ingenuity in his argument of the Phœnician origin of the Greek metallurgic arts.[260] Whencesoever that knowledge may have been immediately derived, we shall adopt the most consistent idea if we turn back to the Eastern cradle-land both of the Hellenic and Scandinavian races, and assume a common origin for the mythic fable which records with corresponding symbolic legends the restoration of the art of Tubal-Cain to the postdiluvian race.

It is a remarkable and interesting fact, that while modern learning and research have brought to light the most ancient literate forms of this northern myth, in the Edda and the Niebelungen Lied, it is in England only that it has survived to our own day as a living popular tradition; and it is due to the somewhat grotesque travesty of its rude Berkshire version inwrought into the tragic tale of Kenilworth, that it has been restored to the favour of modern Europe. Among the old Scandinavian nations, and in Iceland, where the language of their runic literature is still a living tongue, as well as in France, and throughout the whole Germanic races of the Continent, all memory of the restoration of this divine gift of the metals has utterly passed away. In England only—towards which we see the galleys of the elder inheritors of civilisation winging their way in quest of its metallic treasures with the first glimpse we catch of it as it emerges out of the night of time—the mythic legend has retained vitality till now. How the story of our northern Dædalus came to be associated with the monolithic group at the foot of White-Horse Hill, in the vale of Berkshire, it is now equally vain and useless to inquire. There, according to rustic folk-lore, dwelt the invisible smith. No one ever saw him; but he who had the courage to avail himself of his skill had only to deposit a piece of money on one of the stones, and leave his horse beside it. On his return the horse was found to be shod, and the money gone. Such was the last shadowy tradition of the venerable myth. On one of the rarer coins of Cunobeline an armourer or coiner is represented. Some numismatists have supposed it to be Vulcan forging a helmet.

May it not more probably be assumed as the northern Weland, whose metallurgic skill was so widely celebrated among the Teutonic nations? Before the great Alfred had won his way to the English throne the symbolic impersonation had assumed a perfect individuality; and in the translation of the De Consolatione Philosophiæ into Anglo-Saxon, he thus paraphrases the passage,—Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent? Quid Brutus, aut rigidus Cato?

If little importance be due to the association of Weland's name with the working in iron, not very much more is to be ascribed to the no less frequent depiction of him as a cunning jeweller and goldsmith. Nevertheless, the circumstance is worthy of notice in passing, since it is not impossible that the working in gold may have preceded even the age of bronze, and in reality have belonged, as already hinted, to the Stone Period. If metal could be found capable of being wrought and fashioned without smelting or moulding, its use was perfectly compatible with the simple arts of the Stone Period. Of such use masses of native gold, such as have been often found both in the Old and the New World, are peculiarly susceptible; and some of the examples of Scottish gold personal ornaments fully correspond with the probable results of such an anticipatory use of the metals. One very remarkable example, more particularly referred to hereafter, occurs in a pair of armillæ of pure gold, found in an urn of the rudest and most artless construction in a cist in Banffshire. They are merely hammered into rounded bars and then bent to fit the arm, and they retain the rough marks of the tool, which it is more easy to imagine one of stone than any more delicate or artificial implement. It is not impossible that it may be owing to some faint traditional remembrance of this primitive origin of the working of metals, that the oldest notices of Weland represent him chiefly as the cunning goldsmith, as in the fifth stanza of the Vœlundar Quida of the Edda:—

So it is in all the earliest existing forms of this ancient myth, the working in iron is only superadded to the skill of the famous goldsmith.

No Celtic legend preserves an equally distinct memorial of the introduction of the metallurgic arts among the ancient colonists of the British Isles. Nevertheless the Scottish Highlanders have their native Ἡφαιστος also, personified, like the Teutonic Weland, in many romantic legends. The fame of Luno, the son of Leven, who made the swords of Fingal and his heroes, is preserved in old traditional poems, which figure him as a wild savage clad in a mantle of black hide, and with an apron of similar materials. The additional features of the picture furnish no inapt personification of the classic Vulcan. He is described as lame; going on one leg, with a staff in his hand, yet remarkable for his swiftness.[262] Dr. Macculloch, in demonstrating the affinity between the Celtic and Teutonic superstitions and the Oriental and classic mythology, remarks,—"Fingal is not an absolute original himself. His sword is the sword of sharpness of the Edda, made by Velent or Weyland, the hyperborean Vulcan. It is the wonderful sword Skoffnung, and also Balmung, and it is the Mimmung in Ettin Langshanks. It is equally Tyrsing, the fairy blade of Suafurlami; and it is also the sword which Jack begged of the giant. It is the sword Durandal, with which Orlando cuts rocks in two; and it is Escalibor, the sword of Arthur."[263] Thus common as the metal from which it is forged is some form or other of the mythic legend which commemorates the restoration of old Tubal-Cain's weapon of war. Still the venerable Teutonic myth does not appear to have been preserved by the Scottish medieval chroniclers or romancers, unless in some extremely modified form, or it could hardly have escaped the notice of Dunbar, in his satire of "The Fenyeit Freir of Tungland." The incident which gave rise to this whimsical effusion of our great Scottish poet against the Italian charlatan occurred in 1507, (a year famous for the introduction of the printingpress into Scotland,) and is thus described by Bishop Lesley.[264] Referring to an embassy sent to France in that year, he remarks,—"This tyme thair wes ane Italiane with the king, quha wes maid Abbott of Tungland, and wes of curious ingyne. He causet the king believe that he, be multiplyinge and utheris his inventions, wold make fine golde of uther mettall, quhilk science he callit the quintassence; quhairupon the king maid greit cost, bot all in vaine. This Abbott tuik in hand to flie with wingis, and to be in Fraunce befoir the saidis ambassadouris; and to that effect he causet mak ane pair of wingis of fedderis, quhilkis beand fessinit apoun him, he flew of the Castell wall of Striveling, bot shortlie he fell to the ground and brak his thee bane. Bot the wyt thairof he ascryvit to that thair was sum hen fedderis in the wingis, quhilk yarnit and covet the mydding and not the skyis." The Scottish historian compares him to "ane king of Yngland callit Bladud." The poet's similes are still more pertinent; though since we learn from the Scottish Treasurers' Accounts, that the Abbot of Tungland was paid, in 1513, "to pass to the myne of Crawfurd-moor," which the king was then working for gold: and from the satire, that he sometimes practised the Blacksmith's craft: Dunbar could scarcely have avoided the addition of the Weland legend to his other similes, had it been known to him, since the points of resemblance are such, that, with less historic evidence for the truth of the Abbot's history, we might assume it as the rude Scottish version of the Vœlundar Quida:—