38 Mr. Ferguson on the Antiquity of the Kiliee or Boomerang. 



Thor og tuad ai mundl blla throl ad llsta og if hann yrpi hunum til tha mundi 

 hann aldri missa og aldri fliuga so longt ad ei mundi hann soetia hond heim." — 

 {Edda Mythologica lix. Apud. Stephan. in not. uherior. in Sax. Gram.) The 

 name of this weapon was " Miolner," which means "the crusher," and with it 

 Thor accomplished labours quite as wonderful as those of his southern prototype. 



Now this weapon, although called Clava by Saxo, appears to have been 

 regarded as of a hammer shape from a very early period ; for it is related by 

 Snorro, that when Haco, one of the first Christian kings of Scandinavia, was 

 presented by his pagan subjects with the horn of Odin, and made upon it the 

 sign of the cross, Sigurd, one of his counsellors, excused the apparent profana- 

 tion, by telling the people that this was the sign of Thor's hammer, which the 

 king had drawn upon the sacred vessel. — {Snorro Sturl. \. iii. c. 18.) Accord- 

 ingly it is found that a T, or hammer-shaped instrument, exhibits the peculiar 

 flight of the Cateia in a very perfect manner. The cross on many Scandinavian 

 monuments, of an age apparently anterior to the introduction of Christianity, 

 has been long since conjectured by Keysler and others to be a representation of 

 this instrument. Hence it appears very probable that those double crosses which 

 appear on the British coins of Cunobeline, and the single crosses in the hands of 

 some of the Anglo-Saxon kings, (see Ruding,) are intended for weapons of 

 the same description, (PI. II. figs. 7, 8 ;) especially as it is found that instru- 

 ments formed on the same model exhibit the reverse flight equally well with the 

 common Boomerang ; and as the tradition of cruciform missiles, called cpioy^ac, 

 having been used in war, is still preserved in some of the older Irish remains 

 relating to Cuchillin and the Finns. It is true there is no peculiar flight 

 ascribed to these weapons in the romances, at least so far as has been ascertained ; 

 but it is a remarkable fact, that the throwing of wooden crosses, having all the 

 properties of the Boomerang, became a general amusement among the children 

 of the lower orders here, immediately after the first introduction of the Australian 

 instrument ; and that this practice cannot be traced to any inventor among them, 

 but appears to have sprung up spontaneously, as the revival of something that 

 had been long disused, but was not altogether forgotten. 



The ascertaining of these varieties in shape may, perhaps, prove useful in 

 furnishing data for an investigation of the law which governs the flight of such 

 missiles. For although, generally, any flat lamina, dismissed with a rotatory 



