146 THUNDERBOLTS 



One would like to see a drawing of the process, though 

 the sketch would probably much resemble the picture of a 

 muchness, so admirably described by the mock turtle. 

 The excellent Tollius himself, however, while demurring 

 on the whole to this hypothesis of the philosophers, bases 

 his objection mainly on the ground that, if this were so, 

 then it is odd the thunderbolts are not round, but wedge- 

 pliaped, and that they have holes in them, and those holes 

 not equal throughout, but widest at the ends. As a inatter 

 of fact, Tollius has here hit the right nail on the head 

 quite accidentally ; for the holes are really there, of course, 

 to receive the haft of the axe or hammer. But if they 

 were truly thunderbolts, and if the bolts were shafted, then 

 the holes would have been lengthwise, as in an arrowhead, 

 not crosswise, as in an axe or hammer. Which is a com- 

 plete reductio ad ahsurdum of the philosophic opinion. 



Some of the cerauniie, says Pliny, are like hatchets. 

 He would have been nearer the mark if he had said * are 

 hatchets ' outright. But this aycrqu, which was to Pliny 

 merely a stray suggestion, became to the northern peoples 

 a firm article of belief, and caused them to represent to 

 themselves their god Thor or Thunor as armed, not with 

 a bolt, but with an axe or hammer. Etymologically Thor, 

 Thunor, and thunder are the self- same word ; but while 

 the southern races looked upon Zeus or Indra as wielding 

 his forked darts in his red right hand, the northern races 

 looked upon the Thunder-god as hurling down an angry 

 hammer from his seat in the clouds. There can be but 

 little doubt that the very notion of Thor's hammer itself 

 was derived from the shape of the supposed thunderbolt, 

 which the Scandinavians and Teutons rightly saw at once 

 to be an axe or mallet, not an arrow-head. The 'fiery 

 axe ' of Thunor is a common metaphor in Anglo-Saxon 

 poetry. Thus, Thor's hammer is itself merely the picture 



