Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

RAGNAROK. 145

Bifrost, we shall have reason to see hereafter, was a prolongation of land westward from Europe, which connected the British Islands with the island-home of the gods, or the godlike race of men.

There are geological proofs that such a land once existed. A writer, Thomas Butler Gunn, in a recent number of an English publication,* says :

““Tennyson’s ‘ Voyage of Maeldune’ is a magnificent allegorical expansion of this idea; and the laureate has

also finely commemorated the old belief in the country of Lyonnesse, extending beyond the bounds of Cornwall: ‘A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again ; Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt, And the long mountains ended in a coast Of ever-shifting sands, and far away The phantom circle of a moaning sca.’

“Cornishmen of the last generation used to tell stories of strange household relics picked up at the very low tides, nay, even of the quaint habitations seen fathoms deep in the water.”

There are those who believe that these Scandinavian Eddas came, in the first instance, from Druidical Briton sources.

The Edda may be interpreted to mean that the Comet strikes the planet west of Enrope, and crushes down some land in that quarter, called “the bridge of Bifrost.”

Then follows a mighty battle between the gods and the Comet. It can haye, of course, but one termination ; but it will recur again and again in the legends of different nations, It was necessary that the gods, the protectors of mankind, should struggle to defend them against these strange and terrible enemies. But their very help-

** All the Year Round.”