There are, of course, exceptions, such as _Easter_, from an old Teutonic goddess of the spring, _Old Nick_ from ‘nicor’, a fabulous sea-monster, and _nightmare_ from the demon Mara, while the concepts _earth_ and _lie_ (untruth) may possibly have been brought to birth in men’s minds by the divinities Erda and Loki. But compared with the number of derivations from older myths these examples are practically negligible. There is an accidental quality about them, and few have entered very deeply into our language. The Aryan family was now growing older and more firmly knit. While Slavs, Teutons, and Celts were still uncivilized, their cousins, the Greeks and Romans, had already developed an elaborate culture. Had the former been left alone like the latter, their mythology, too, might in time have grown down into the language. But that was not to be. The great Aryan family did not lose touch long enough. When Rome came, and with her Christianity, the missionaries naturally assured the believers in Thor and Wotan that Thor and Wotan were not. And coming, as they did, from a developed civilization, they not only ousted the old Teutonic gods from the language, but brought with them a supply of ready-made Greek and Latin words, many of which—did they but know it—drew their peculiar shades of meaning from a pagan mythology which they held in equal abhorrence. The classical gods and goddesses faded so slowly into the thin air of abstract thought that the process was hardly perceived, but the Nibelungs and Valkyries, the Siegfrieds and Fafnirs of Teutonic myth, were doomed while they were still alive. Thus our fathers beheld the death of Baldur with their own eyes, and were awake during the twilight of the gods.