What I imagine to have been the real case is this. Thor’s journey to Utgardloki is a story closely parallel to the myth of the Death of Balder, and tells once more the story of the sun-god descending to the under-world. This fact is clearly shown by the name of the giant, who is nothing else than a personification of the funeral fire, the fire which surrounds the abode of souls (pp. 275, 278). All the powers with whom Thor strives are personifications in some way of death--all, or almost all. He tugs as he thinks at a cat and cannot lift it from the ground; but the cat is Jormundgandr, the great mid-earth serpent, in part the personification of the sea, but also (by reason of this) the personification of the devouring hell ‘rapax Orcus’ (compare Cerberus and the Sârameyas, and notice the middle age change of Orcus to Ogre). He (or, in the story as we now have it, Loki) contends with a personification of the death-fire, not with a mere allegorical representation of fire in its common aspect. And again he contends not with Elli, old age, but with Hel, the goddess of the under-world. This is the original form into which I read back the mythical journey to Utgardloki. It is easy to see how the story got changed. Loki is made to accompany Thor instead of to fight against him; the later mythologists not being able to understand how Loki could sometimes be a god and dwell in Asgard, sometimes be a giant of Jotunheim. With this change the others would easily creep in. Logi is invented to fight with Loki, and Elli in place of Hel appears in obedience to a desire for allegory in the place of true myth. CHAPTERS XII. AND XIII. Edkins, _Introduction to Study of the Chinese Characters_. Lenormant, _Essai sur la Propagation de l’Alphabet Phénicien_. Mahaffy, _Prolegomena to History_. Rawlinson, _Five Monarchies_. Rougé (Vte de), _Origine Égyptienne de l’Alphabet Phénicien_. Taylor, _The Alphabet_. Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_. None of the Semitic alphabets can be considered as quite complete; as a complete alphabet requires a subdivision of sounds into their smallest divisions, and an appropriate sign for each of these. But none of the Semitic alphabets in their original forms seem to have possessed these qualifications. They never get nearer to the expression of vowel sounds than by letters which may be considered half vowels. Each of their consonants (in Phœnician, Hebrew, Arabic) carried a vowel sound with it, and was therefore a syllabic sign and not a true letter.