She saw a hall Far from the sun In Náströnd standing, Northward the doors look, And venom-drops Fall in through loopholes. Formed is that hall Of wreathed serpents. There saw she wade Through heavy streams Men forsworn And murderers. These names for the heavenly regions and their occupants indicate sunshine and fire. Gimil means fire (gímr): Brimir (brími, flame), the giant, and Sindri (cinder), the dwarf, jeweller of the gods, are raised to halls of gold. Nothing is said of a garden, or walking therein 'in the cool of the day.' On the other hand, Ná-strönd means Strand of the Dead, in that region whose 'doors face the north, far from the sun,' we behold an inferno of extreme cold. Christianity has not availed to give the Icelanders any demonic name suggestive of fire. They speak of 'Skratti' (the roarer, perhaps our Old Scratch), and 'Kolski' (the coal black one), but promise nothing so luminous and comfortable as fire or fire-fiend to the evil-doer. In the great Epic of the Nibelungen Lied we have probably the shape in which the Northman's dream of Paradise finally cohered,--a Rose-garden in the South, guarded by a huge Worm (water-snake, or glittering glacial sea intervening), whose glowing charms, with Beauty (Chriemhild) for their queen, could be won only by a brave dragon-slaying Siegfried. In passing by the pretty lakeside home of Richard Wagner, on my way to witness the Ammergau version of another dragon-binding and paradise-regaining legend, I noted that the old name of the (Starnberg) lake was Wurmsee, from the dragon that once haunted it, while from the composer's window might be seen its 'Isle of Roses,' which the dragon guarded. Since then the myth of many forms has had its musical apotheosis at Bayreuth under his wand. England, partly perhaps on account of its harsh climate, once had the reputation of being the chief abode of demons. A demoness leaving her lover on the Continent says, 'My mother is calling me in England.' [48] But England assigned them still higher latitudes; in christianising Ireland, Iona, and other islands far north, it was preliminary to expel the demons. 'The Clavie,' the 'Deis-iuil' of Lewis and other Hebrides islands--fire carried round cattle to defend them from demons, and around mothers not yet churched, to keep the babes from being 'changed'--show that the expulsion still goes on, though in such regions Norse and christian notions have become so jumbled that it is 'fighting the devil with fire.' So in the Havamal men are warned to invoke 'fire for distempers;' and Gudrun sings-- Raise, ye Jarls, an oaken pile; Let it under heaven the lightest be. May it burn a breast full of woes! The fire round my heart its sorrows melt. The last line is in contrast with the Hindu saying, 'the flame of her husband's pyre cools the widow's breast.'