If we travel from India and from Hellas to the cold North, the same characteristic features reappear. In the Teutonic religions, _as we know them_,[76] Odin has taken the place of the old Aryan sky-god, Dyâus. The last did, indeed, linger on in the Zio or Tyr of these systems; but he had sunk from the position of a chief divinity. The change, however, is not great. The god chosen to fill his place resembles him as nearly as possible in character. Odin, or Wuotan,[77] whose name in its etymological meaning is probably the god who moves violently or rushes along,[78] was originally a god of the wind rather than of the atmosphere of heaven. Yet along with this more confined part of his character, he bears almost all the attributes of the exalted sky-god, the Dyâus or Zeus; only he adds to these some parts peculiar to a god of wind; and we can easily understand how, as these Aryan people journeyed northwards, their wind-god grew in magnitude and power.
It was Odin who lashed into fury their stormy seas, and kept the impatient _vikings_ (fjord-men) forced prisoners in their sheltered bays. He it was who rushed through their mountain forests, making the ancient pine-tops bend to him as he hurried on; and men sitting at home over their winter fires, and listening to his howl, told one another how he was hastening to some distant battle-field, there to direct the issue, and to choose from among the fallen such heroes as were worthy to accompany him to Valhalla, the Hall of Bliss.[79] Long after the worship of Christ had overturned that of the Æsir,[80] this, the most familiar and popular aspect of Odin’s nature, lived on in the thoughts of men. In the Middle Ages the wind reappears in the legend of the Phantom Army, a strange apparition of two hosts of men seen to join battle in midair. The peasant of the Jura or the Alps could tell how, when alone upon the mountain-side, he had beheld the awful vision. Sometimes all the details of the fight were visible, but as though the combatants were riding in the air; sometimes the _sounds_ of battle only came from the empty space above, till at the end a shower of blood gave the fearful witness a proof that he was not the dupe of his imagination only.[81] In other places, especially, for example, in the Harz mountains, the Phantom Army gave place to the Wild Huntsman. This phantom hunt has many different names in the different countries of Europe. With us it is known best under the name of Herne the Hunter or of Arthur’s Chase. In Brittany this last name is also used. In the Harz and in other places in Germany the huntsman was called Hackelbärend or Hackelberg; and the story went how he had been chief huntsman to the Duke of Brunswick, but for impiety or for some dreadful oath, like that which had brought vengeance on the famous Van der Decken, had been condemned to hunt for ever through the clouds--for ever, that is, until the Day of Judgment.[82] All the year through he pursues his way alone, and the peasants hear his holloa, mingled with the baying of his two dogs.[83] But for twelve nights--between Christmas and the Twelfth-night--he hunts on the earth; and if any door is left open during the night, and one of the two hounds runs in, he will bring misfortune upon that house.