ORDEALS AND OATHS. 319 



and intelligible formula which must very nearly represent that of 

 which we keep a mutilated fragment in our English oath. So close is 

 the connection, that two of the gods referred to, Frey and Thor (who 

 is described as the almighty god), are the old English gods whose 

 names we commemorate in Friday and Thursday. The formula be- 

 longs, with the classic ones lately spoken of, to the class of oaths of 

 conditional favor, " so help me as I shall do rightly," while Frey and 

 NiOrdh are gods whom a Norse warrior would ask for earthly help, but 

 who would scarcely concern themselves with his soul after death. It is 

 likely that the swearer was not indeed unmindful of what the skalds 

 sang of Nastrond, the strand of corpses, that loathly house arched of the 

 bodies of huge serpents, whose heads, turned inward, dripped venom 

 on the perjurers and murderers within. But the primary formula is, 

 as I have said, that of the oath of conditional favor, not of judgment. 

 With the constituents of the modern English oath now fairly before 

 us, we see that its incoherence, as usual in such cases, has an histori- 

 cal interpretation. What English law has done is to transplant from 

 archaic fetich-worship the ceremony of the halidome or consecrated 

 object, and to combine with this one-half of a pre-Christian formula 

 of conditional favor, without the second half which made sense of it. 

 Considering that to this combination is attached a theological inter- 

 pretation which is neither implied in act nor word, we cannot wonder 

 if in the popular mind a certain amount of obscurity, not to say mys- 

 tery, surrounds the whole transaction. Nevertheless, we may well 

 deprecate any attempt to patch up into Scotch distinctness and con- 

 sistency the old formula, which will probably last untouched so long 

 as judicial oaths shall remain in use in England. 



Being in the midst of this subject, it may not be amiss to say a 

 few words upon old and new ideas as to the administration of oaths 

 to little children. The Canon Law expressly forbade the exacting of 

 an oath from children under fourteen pueri ante annos XIV non 

 cogantur jurare. This prohibition is derived from yet earlier law. 

 The rough old Norsemen would not take oaths from children, as 

 comes out so quaintly in the saga of Baldur, where the goddess made 

 all the beasts and birds and trees swear they would not harm him, 

 but the little mistletoe only she craved no oath from, for she thought 

 it was too young. Admitting the necessity of taking children's evi- 

 dence somehow, the question is how best to do it. In England it 

 must be done on oath, and for this end there has arisen a custom in 

 our courts of putting the child through an inquisition as to the theo- 

 logical consequences of perjury, so as usually to extract from it a well- 

 known definition which the stiffest theologian will not stand to for a 

 moment if put straight to him, but which is looked upon as a proper 

 means for binding the conscience of a little child. 1 Moreover, children 



1 Two illustrative cases are given me by a friend learned in the law. In court lately, 

 a little girl was asked the usual preliminary question as to the consequence of swearing 



