626 



HEIRLOOM 



HELEN 



England are treated as personal property ; certain 

 classes of annuities are also heritaole, which would 

 in England be personal. 



HEIKS-PORTIONERS, in Scotch law, mean either 

 two or more females, being sisters, or sisters 

 and the children, male and female, of deceased 

 Bisters, who are entitled to succeed to heritable 

 estate when their ancestor dies without leaving 

 male issue. Thus, if A dies leaving three 

 daughters, all three succeed equally if alive ; or if 

 some have already died leaving children, then the 

 children represent the parent, and succeed to the 

 parent's share along with the surviving sisters, all 

 being called heirs-portioners. In such cases the 

 eldest heir-portioner is entitled to the mansion- 

 house of an estate in the country over and above 

 her equal share of the rest. But she has no such 

 right to a house in town, or to a country villa. She 

 alone also takes a peerage or dignity, if there is any 

 in the family. In England coparceners, though re- 

 sembling heirs-portioners, have not identical rights. 



Heirloom (compounded of heir and loom, 

 originally a 'piece of property,' 'furniture'), in 

 English law, means a chattel, or movable thing, 

 which goes to the heir-at-law by special custom. 

 But the right is obscure. The word is njore fre- 

 quently used now to designate chattels bequeathed 

 or settled so as to be enjoyed by the person for the 

 time being in possession of a family estate or man- 

 sion. In Scotland a somewhat similar but by 

 no means identical phrase is used viz. heirship 

 movables, which is a wider right, and includes the 

 best articles of furniture in the house of a person 

 who left* heritable property. The extent of this 

 right is also not clearly settled. 



Hejra. See HEGIEA. 



Hel in Northern Mythology, the goddess of the 

 dead, the sister of the wolf Fenrir, and daughter 

 of the evil-hearted Loki (q.v. ), by the giantess 

 Angurboda. The All -father hurled her down into 

 NiHheim, and gave her authority over the lower 

 world, where she received all who died of sickness 

 and old age. She was of fierce aspect, and had a 

 half black, half flesh-coloured skin. To her were 

 assigned the characteristics of insatiable greed and 

 pitilessness. After the introduction and diffusion 

 of Christianity the ideas personified in Hel gradu- 

 ally merged, among all the races of Scandinavian 

 and German descent, vn the local conception of a 

 Hell (q.v.), or dark abode of the dead. 



Holder, THE, a thriving seaport and strongly- 

 fortified town in the Dutch province of North 

 Holland, 51 miles by rail NNW. of Amsterdam. It 

 stands on the Marsdiep, which connects the Zuider 

 Zee and the German Ocean, and at the northern 

 extremity of the North Holland Canal, by which, 

 too, it has connection with Amsterdam. It is one 

 of the strongest fortresses in Holland, having been 

 first fortified by Napoleon in 1811, and has several 

 naval establishments, including an arsenal and a 

 college, and an excellent harbour. Pop. (1895) 

 25,254. Nieuwe Diep, half a mile east, is the port 

 at the main outlet of the North Holland Canal. 



Helderberg Formation. In North America 



a division of the Silurian strata is called ( after the 

 Helderberg Range, in the east of New York state ) 

 the Lower Helderberg formation. It appears to be 

 on the horizon of the English Ludlow beds. The 

 Upper Helderberg formation of North America is 

 a member of the Lower Devonian strata. 



Helen, the most romantic figure of antiquity, 

 famous for her beauty and the misfortunes that 

 followed in her train. She was the daughter of 

 Zeus and Leda, wife of the Spartan king Tyn- 

 dareus, and owed her more than mortal loveliness 

 to her divine origin. At tlie age of ten she was 



earned off by Theseus and Pirithous, but was soon 

 recovered by her brothers Castor and Pollux, of 

 whom the latter was half an immortal like herself. 

 She was sought in marriage by all the noblest 

 Greek princes, whom her father bound by an 

 oath to respect the choice which ^Helen herself 

 should make. She chose Menelaus' and bore to 

 him the fair Hermione. When she was carried off 

 by Paris, son of Priam of Troy, through the con- 

 nivance of Aphrodite, Menelaus mustered all the 

 .Greek princes to revenge the wrong, and thus the 

 famous ten years' Trojan war began. After the 

 death of Pans, not long before the fall of the city, 

 Helen was married to his brother Deiphobus, and 

 she is said to have betrayed him to Menelaus and 

 so regained her husband's love. With him she 

 returned to Sparta, and there lived the rest of her 

 life in quiet happiness. The pair were at last 

 buried together at Therapnse in Laconia, although, 

 accord ing to the prophecy of Proteus in the Odyssey, 

 they were not to die, but to be translated to Ely- 

 sium. Another story makes Helen survive Mene- 

 laus, and be driven out of the Peloponnesus by his 

 sons. She fled to Rhodes, and was there tied to 

 a tree and strangled by Polyxo a crime expiated 

 only by the Rhodians building a temple to her, 

 under the name of Helena Dendritis. Yet another 

 tradition makes her marry Achilles on the island 

 of Leuce, and bear him a son, Euphorion. 



In the Homeric poems Helen survives as the 

 personification of all grace and loveliness. She is- 

 the daughter of Zeus, although there is no mention 

 as yet of the swan story of her mother's wooing by 

 the god. Into the conception of her character in 

 the Iliad there enters but little sense of moral 

 responsibility, perhaps because she is a personage 

 that has come into history from the world of 

 mythology, which is ever innocent of morals. In 

 the Odyssey, again, we find an incipient sense of 

 moral responsibility, the burden of which is, how- 

 ever, shifted from the shoulders of Helen on to- 

 those of some god (Od. xxiii. 222). It is true, 

 however, that Iliad ii. 356 and 590 may fairly be 

 interpreted to convey the meaning that Helen was- 

 carried away by force, an unwilling victim of Aphro- 

 dite. Still the fact remains that there exists a 

 notable difference of tone about this question, and 

 this is not unfairly advanced as one of their 

 strongest arguments by those who claim a later 

 date for the Odyssey than the Iliad. Others, again, 

 contend that in the Iliad there is a no less distinct 

 sense of moral responsibility, pointing out that in 

 iii. 164 and vi. 357 there is blame distinctly im- 

 puted to the gods, and that in iii. 173-176 and vi, 

 344 Helen takes the burden of the guilt upon her- 

 self. Among her warmest apologists are Mr Glad- 

 stone and Mr Andrew Lang. Indeed the former 

 makes bold to say that ' her self-abasing and self- 

 renouncing humility come nearer, perhaps, than 

 any other heathen example to the type of Christian 

 penitence. ' 



Pausanias tells us that on the chest of Cypselus, 

 a work of the 7th century B.C., Menelaus wa 

 represented as rushing on to kill Helen ; and, 

 according to a statement attributed to Stesichorus, 

 the Achfean host were about to kill her when their 

 hands were stayed by the power of her beauty. In 

 his Troades Euripides makes Helen plead her 

 cause to Menelaus with sophistical rhetoric ; in 

 the Helena he makes her remain in Egypt, the 

 Greeks and Trojans fighting merely for a shadow 

 formed by the gods out of cloud and wind. Again, 

 in his Cyclops the giant speaks of Helen in a 

 manner far removed from the high chivalry and 

 tenderness of Priam and of Hector. In the JEneid 

 we are invited to behold the hero about to slay 

 Helen crouching in terror in the temple of Vesta, 

 and only saved from this infamy by the inter- 



