well notice some of the other moon-myths: though in the case of these, as of the myths of the sun, our only object must be to show the characteristic forms which this order of tales assumes, so that the way may be partly cleared for their detection; nothing like a complete list of the infinitely varied shapes which the same nature-story can assume being possible. One of the most beautiful of moon-myths is surely the tale of Artemis (Diana) and Endymion. This last, the beautiful shepherd of Latmos,[117] by his name ‘He who enters,’ is in origin the sun just entering the _cave_ of night.[118] The moon looking upon the setting sun is a signal for his long sleep, which in the myth becomes the sleep of death. The same myth reappears in the well-known German legend of Tannhäuser. He enters a mountain, the Venusberg, or Mount of Venus, and is not sent to sleep, but laid under an enchantment by the goddess within. In other versions of the legend the mountain is called not Venusberg but Horelberg, and from this name we trace the natural origin of the myth. For there was an old moon-goddess of the Teutons called Horel or Hursel. She therefore is the enchantress in this case; and the Christian knight falls a victim to the old German moon-goddess. It has been supposed that the story of the massacre of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins--whose bones they show to this day at Cologne--arose out of the same nature-myth; and that this St. Ursula is also none other than Hursel, followed by her myriad troop of stars.[119] * * * * * The northern religion, or say the old German creed its [Sidenote: Northern sun-myths, etc.] first cousin, has been fruitful in myths which were repeated all through the Middle Ages and out of which the greater part of our popular tales have sprung. Thor, originally the sun and now the god of thunder, the champion of men, and the enemy of the Jötuns (giants), becomes in later days Jack the Giant Killer; Odin, by a like descent, the Wandering Jew, or the Pied Piper of Hamelin. And thus through a hundred popular legends we can detect the natural appearance out of which they originally sprang. Let us look at them first in their old heathen forms. Thor, the hero and sun-god, the northern Heracles, distinguishes himself as the implacable enemy of the rime-giants and frost-giants, the powers of cold and darkness; and to carry on his hostilities, he makes constant expeditions, ‘farings’ into giant-land, or Jötunheim, as it is called; and these expeditions generally end in the thorough discomfiture of the strong but rude and foolish personifications of barren nature.