Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

138 THE LEGENDS.

on ; in front a lion, a dragon behind, and in the midst a goat, breathing forth the dread strength of burning fire. Her Pegasus slew and brave Bellerophon.”

The astronomical works show what weird, and fantastic, and goblin-like shapes the cemets assume under the telescope. Look at the representation on page 137, from Guillemin’s work,* of the appearance of the comet of 1862, giving the changes which took place in twentyfour hours. If we will imagine one of these monsters close to the earth, we can readily suppose that the excited people, looking at “the dreadful spectacle,” (as the Hindoo legend calls it,) saw it taking the shapes of serpents, dragons, birds, and wolves.

And Hesiod proceeds to tell us something more about this fiery, serpent-like monster :

“But when Jove had driven the Titans ont from Heaven, huge Earth bare her youngest-born son, Typheus (Typhaon, Typhceus, Typhon), by the embrace of Tartarus (Hell), through golden Aphrodite (Venus), whose hands, indeed, are apt for deeds on the score of strength, and untiring the feet of the strong god; and from his shoulders there were a hundred heads of a serpent, a fierce dragon playing with dusky tongues” (tongues of Jire and smoke?), “and from the eyes m his wondrous heads fire sparkled beneath the brows; whilst from all his heads fire was gleaming, as he looked keenly. In all his terrible heads, too, were voices sending forth every kind of voice ineffable. For one while, indeed, they would utter sounds, so as for the gods to understand, and at another time, again, the voice of a loud-bellowing bull, untamable in force and proud in utterance ; at another time, again, that of a lion possessing a daring spirit; at another time, again, they would sound like to whelps, wondrous to hear ; and at another, he would hiss, and the lofty mountains resounded.

* “The Heavens,” p. 256.