----- Footnote 775: Vaulu Spá, st. 62. Footnote 776: MS. Corp. Christi, No. 179. Footnote 777: See Salomon and Saturn, p. 177. It may be observed here that the feminine gender of the sun, and masculine of the moon, have their origin in our heathen mythology. Footnote 778: Freydanck, Beschied. p. 8. ----- HEROES.—It now remains that we should bestow a few words upon the heroic names which figure in the Epopœa of the North, and which probably in many cases belong to the legends and the worship of gods now forgotten, or which at least represent those gods in their heroic form and character; even as the Iliad in Achilles may celebrate only one form of the Dorian Apollo, and the legends of Cadmus and Theseus may be echoes from an earlier cult of Jupiter and Neptune. The hero Scyld or Sceldwa[779] has been mentioned as the godlike progenitor of the Scyldingas, the royal race of Denmark; but he also appears among the mythical ancestors of Wóden, in the genealogy of Wessex. It is a singular fact that the Anglosaxons alone possess the fine mythus of this hero; the opening division or canto of Beówulf relates of him that he was exposed as a child in a ship upon the ocean; a costly treasure accompanied the sleeping infant as he floated to the shores of the Gardanes, whose king he became; after reigning gloriously and founding a race of kings, he died, and was again sent forth in his ship, surrounded with treasures, to go into the unknown world, from which he came; he came to found a royal race[780], and having done so, he departs and nothing more is known of him. That this mythus was deeply felt in England appears from its being referred to even by the later chroniclers: Æðelweard[781] and William of Malmesbury[782] mention it at length, and a desire to engraft a national upon a biblical tradition not only causes Sceaf to be called by some authors the son of Shem, but leads to the assertion of the Saxon chronicle that Sceaf was the son of Noah, born in the ark[783], in obvious allusion to the miraculous exposure on the waters. The mention of Scani by Æðelweard may be taken in connection with a Norse tradition that Skjold was Skanunga goþ, a god of the Scanings. An Anglosaxon riddle in the Codex Exoniensis[784], and of which the answer seems to me to be only _a shield_, concludes with the very remarkable words, nama mín is mǽre, mighty is my name, hæleðum gifre, rapacious among men, and hálig sylf. and itself holy.