338 The Honey-Makers 



In northern mythology as among other nations, honey 

 gave the gift of poetry. 



The way it acquired this power is related at length in the 

 " Younger Edda," where we learn there once lived a very 

 wise man, Knaser, so wise that no one could ask him a 

 question he could not answer. 



He travelled much about the world, teaching men wis- 

 dom, until he came to the house of the dwarfs Fjalar and 

 Galar. They called him aside, saying they wished to 

 speak with him alone, then slew him and let his blood run 

 into two jars called Son and Bodu, and into a kettle called 

 Odrarer. They mixed honey with the blood, and thus was 

 produced such mead that whoever drinks from it becomes 

 a skald and sage. 



How this mead was taken from the dwarfs and finally 

 made accessible to man one can discover by reading the 

 " Edda." 



Lorenzo de' Medici did not receive his gift of poetry 

 from the mead of Valhalla nor from literal honey, though 

 he needed the bees and their hive to explain the phenome- 

 non, as Henry Morley in his " English Writers " informs us: 



" Lorenzo [de' Medici] himself, in a love sonnet, tells 

 how the gods made him poetical. 



" The rays of love from the eyes of his lady penetrating 

 through his eyes to the shadow of his heart, as rays of the 

 sun enter the dark bee-hive by its fissure, caused the hive 

 to awake, and fly hither and thither in the forest sipping 

 from the flowers." 



