Page:Ireland and England in the past and at present.djvu/34

It would seem also that before the Christian period there had begun to develop what may be discerned better in classical countries and Germanic and Scandinavian lands, anthropomorphic conception of the forces or objects of nature; that is, the worship of sun, moon, mountains, winds, streams, as gods, strange beings, monsters, very powerful, it may be, and often strange and uncanny, but so far as they were clearly conceived, after all essentially like men and women or the animals familiar to them. Old religions had much of this: Zeus and Hera, beautiful, splendid, and strong, who ruled gods and men from their palace high on Olympus; Pluto, gloomy in Hades, and Cerberus, his three-headed dog; Thor the god-warrior who hurled his hammer with giant strength against the giants of frost; the Valkyrs who carried valiant men from stricken fields to Valhalla; Grendel the monster whom Beowulf slew, and Grendel's more terrible mother; the witches, the fairies, the elves, the giants, the goblins. Everyone knows how much of all this has come down faintly in some way even to the present. Such deities and eery things are mentioned in the old Irish tales. There were the war goddesses who shrieked over the heads of the heroes in battle, putting fury into their hearts. There was Mannanan Mac Lir, who gave name to the Isle of Man; and Brigit the goddess of wisdom. Later on in Christian Ireland there persisted what had come from the early time, a general belief in lesser beings, who lived in rocks and in hills, where they had palaces