144 I SURMOUNT ALL DIFFICULTIES. 
friends, who maintain the Christmas customs 
and gambols of our ancestors, need not that 
we should remind them of the part it plays in 
those festivities. The Druids had a species 
of adoration for a weakness so superior to 
strength. The tyrant subjugator of the oak 
appeared to them alike formidable to men 
and gods; and they related the following story 
in support of their opinion : — “ One day, 
Balder told his mother Friga, that he had 
dreamed he should die. Friga conjured the 
elements—earth, air, fire, and water; metals, 
maladies, animals, and serpents, that they 
should do no evil to her son; and her conju¬ 
rations were so powerful that nought could 
resist them. Balder, therefore, went to the 
combat of the gods, and fought in the midst 
of showers of arrows without fear. Loake, 
his enemy, wished to know the reason; he 
took the form of an old woman, and sought out 
Friga. He addressed her thus: * In the midst 
of our fight, the arrows and rocks fall on your 
son without hurting him.’ ‘ I believe it,’ re¬ 
plied Friga, ‘ all those substances are sworn to 
me ; there is nothing in nature which can hurt 
him. I have obtained this favour from every 
thing which has power. There is only one 
little plant that I cared not to ask, because it 
appeared too feeble to injure; it was growing 
upon the bark of an oak, with scarcely any 
root; it lives without soil, and is called mis- 
