THOR'S HAMMER. 235 



weapons. We all know already by what gradual steps 

 the neolithic arrows 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 primitive people. It is a uni- 

 versal idea among the scientifically ignorant that light- 

 ning consists of a material weapon — the thunderbolt. 

 Hence all large weapons, or objects which look like 

 weapons, found underground, are popularly known as 

 thunderbolts. In districts where big species of belem- 

 nites — the bones of a fossil cuttle-fish — occur in any 

 numbers, these lance-like petrifications receive that 

 name. But all over England, France, Norway, Sweden, 

 Germany, Holland, and Italy, the polished stone axes of 

 the Euskarian aborigines are also known as thunder- 

 bolts, and believed to have fallen from the sky. Even 

 in countries where the Stone Age has lasted till a recent 

 period the hatchets are already regarded in this light, 

 and viewed with superstitious reverence accordingly. 

 The Jamaican negroes thus regard the beautiful green- 

 stone axes of the old Caribs ; and the Canadian farmers 

 give the same name to the finished weapons of the 

 Hurons and the ObjiDways. In Japan, Java, Burmah, 

 and West Africa the selfsame belief holds good. Every- 

 where the stone axe becomes a thunderbolt in the 

 popular estimation. 



When the old Teutonic and Scandinavian hordes 

 separated from their Aryan ancestors in Central Asia, 

 they carried away with them to their new homes in the 

 forests of Germany or by the shores of the Baltic the 

 primitive religion of the Aryan race. But the great sky- 

 god of the Aryans, the Sanskrit Dyaus, the Greek Zeus, 



