THOR'S HAitMEK, 223 



Thor ? The Euskarians are separated in our island 

 from the Anglo-Saxons and Danes by all the long inter- 

 val of British and Roman times. How can a polished 

 hatchet of the later Stone Age have anything to do 

 with the chief deity of a race who peopled Britain a 

 couple of thousand years after the hatchet itself had 

 been safely buried beside the dead chieftain in yonder 

 barrow ? Well, the connection is far closer than one 

 would at first sight be tempted to suppose. We must 

 remember that philology, though it tells us a great deal 

 about the origin of myths, does not tell us everything. 

 Popular superstitions, in fact, do not as a rule gather 

 about language at all, but about certain tangible and 

 material objects, supposed to have a mystical virtue. 

 It may be a crooked sixpence, or a horseshoe, or a blood- 

 stone, or the charms on a watch-chain. It may be a 

 standing stone, or an oak, or a mistletoe bough. It may 

 be Dr. Dee's crystal, or the Lee penny, or the Luck of 

 Edenhall, or the Stone of Ardvoirloch. But whatever 

 it is, it is usually a definite thing, to be seen and handled 

 by all : something, as a rule, which in some way excites 

 one's curiosity, or suggests by the mode of its occurrence 

 a supernatural origin. 



Now, objects dug up from the ground, and not known 

 to be of human workmanship, are specially apt to meet 

 with such superstitious reverence. Among them the 

 commonest, in Europe at least, are stone weapons. We 

 all know already by what gradual steps the neolithic ar- 

 rows came to be regarded as elf bolts or fairy darts ; but 

 a somewhat different belief grew up about the larger and 

 more formidable-looking stone axes of the same primi- 

 tive people. It is a universal idea among the scientifi- 

 cally ignorant that lightning consists of a material 

 weapon the thunderbolt. Hence all large weapons, or 



