which the Irish locahse in Blarney and which Grimm connects with CHAP,
the wishing-rod or staff of Hermes/ in the Oskmeyjar or Wish- - ^, ^: -
maidens or Valkyries who guide to Valhalla all heroes slain in battle,
and who are the wish or choice children of Wuotan, and more
especially in the Oska-byrr, or Wish-wind, in which we recognise
both in name and in the thing the iK/x,evos o'/dos of our Iliad.^ It
is this power doubtless which is denoted by the Sanskrit Kama, as
the force which first brought the visible Kosmos into being,^ and
by the Eros of the Hesiodic theogony.
The single eye of Odin points beyond all doubt to the sun, the The one- one eye which all day long looks down from heaven upon the earth ^^^^ ^^'"°" ^ tan or But when he was figured as an old man with a broad hood and a Odin, wide-flowing robe, the myth necessarily sprung up that he had lost an eye, a story which answers precisely to the myth of Indra Savitar, while it also throws further light, if any such were needed, on that of the Kyklopes.* But as the sun is his eye, so his mantle is the vapour which like the cloud-gathering Zeus Odin wraps around him- self, and thus becomes Hakolberend, the wearer of the veil, or Harbard, the bearded god. In his hand he bears the marvellous spear Gungnir, in which we see the lance of Phoibos or Artemis.
scolding, and the loss of a horse " upon the latter. In the story of the Faithful Beasts, it is a wonderful stone (the orb of the sun) which a fat old frog (the Frog Prince or Fish Sun) brings up from the waters. In the tale of the Donkey Cabbages it is a wishing-cloak, and thus we are brought back to Solomon's carpet, which in the story of the Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn, "appears as a cloth, capable, like the Sangreal, of providing unlimited supplies of food and drink, and as a beautiful carpet in the storj' of the Three Feathers. In that of the Drummer, it is a ring in the hand of the Dawn Maiden, who becomes his bride. The three posses- sions of King Putraka are the three wishes which assume many forms in folk-lore." Compare the story of the Best Wish with the wishes of the Master Smith in the Ahorse Talcs. Dasent.
' Grimm, D. M. 131.
- There is really nothing to support
the explanation which refers tKfxfvos to iKVfo^ai. The word stands to Oski, or wish, precisely in the relation of ex" to lo'x'^, or e'xfp^s to laxvp6s. ' A translation of the very remark- able hymn in which this word occurs is given in Professor Max Miiller's History of Sattskiit Literature, p. 561. The first sentence shows the train of thought in the mind of the poet : " Darkness there was: and all at first was veiled In gloom profound, an ocean without light : The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature from the fervent heart ; Then first came love upon it." On this passage Professor H. H. Wilson remarks, ' ' The term ' love ' here appears to us to convey a notion too transcendental to have had a place in the conception of the original author. The word is Kama, which scarcely in- dicates love in the sense in which it may here be understood, although not abso- lutely indefensible : but Kama means desire, wish, and it expresses here the wish, synonymous with the will, of the sole-existing Being to create." — Edin- burgh Rcviezv, Oct. 1S60, p. 384.
- Thus in Saxo he is "grandrevus
altero orbus oculo," and again " Armi- potens uno semper contentus ocello." The reason assigned by the myth is that he was obliged to leave one eye in pledge when he wished to drink at the well of Mimir.
