.... The fearful Odin Was seated beneath the ancient ash, The sacred tree whose immortal brow Rises and touches the vault of heaven. {137}On the top an eagle with eager eyes, With piercing eyes, with ever open eyes, Takes in the whole Universe in a single glance. Odin receives his swift messages. Incessantly a tiny squirrel Comes and goes; the god’s voice cheers it onward. All at once it dashes from the trunk to the top And in an instant it returns again From the top to the trunk. Odin, when it comes, Turns an attentive ear to the squirrel..... But the poet does not tell the whole story. [Illustration: 157] To act as a check upon the reports of the eagle, the ravens, and the squirrel, a vulture is perching {138}upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree, who looks over all the horizons of the earth and the universe, watching for the slightest stir and giving notice of any important event by his cries or the flapping of his wings. Still other animals, however, inhabit the great ash tree Ygdrasil. Some of these play a sinister part in the great menagerie; they are hideous reptiles, half concealed in the slimy marshes into which one of the roots of the tree finds its way, and ever striving to pour their venom into the mire; beneath another root a dragon is crouching, who constantly gnaws at it, and four starving deer, rushing through its branches, forever devour its foliage. “Do you hear? Do you understand?” asks the Edda once more. For the present we do not presume to interpret these descriptions, and before we attempt to penetrate into these dark mysteries, we will mention the principal chiefs among the Ases. The mystic marriage of Odin and Frigg resulted in the god Thor, who is held in equal veneration with his father. As his duty is to carry thunder and lightning, it is he who shakes the earth whenever he drives through the clouds in his car drawn by two goats and producing a noise represented by the words: “_Pumerle pump! Ptimerle pump! Pliz! Pluz! Schmi! Schmur! Tarantara! Tarantara!_”. {139}This onomatopoetic translation of the flashing of lightning and the rolling of thunder, is not my own; it comes directly from Dr. Martin Luther, the great Reformer. Thor is also engaged in pursuing and destroying the giants of the mountains, degenerate children of the giants of the frost, in size at least. At a later period we shall meet with giants of still smaller dimensions. Alas! that here below everything that is great and strong has a tendency to decrease steadily! [Illustration: 159] For this war against the giants Odin has bestowed upon his son three precious objects, which in the inventory of the Ases appear under the name of _Thor’s Three Jewels._ The first is his weighty hammer.