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Asgard and the Gods, Tales and Traditions of Our Northern Ancestors, Adapted From the Work of W. Wägner by M.w. Macdowall and Ed. by W.s.w. Anson
Asgard and the Gods Tales and Traditions of Our Northern Ancestors Adapted From the Work of W Wgner by Mw Macdowall and Ed by Wsw Anson Author:Maria Wilhelmina Macdowall General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1884 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: PART SECOND. I THE GODS, THEIR WORLDS AND DEEDS. THE NORNS. THE three fatal sisters played a prominent part in many German talcs. They used to zrr watch over springs of water, and to appear by the cradle of many a royal infant to give it presents. On such occasions two of them were generally friendly to the child, while the third prophesied evil concerning it . Sometimes the Norns were supposed to be one, and then they were calledUrd ; but they were oftener looked upon as many, especially as the twelve Urds. In the pretty story of the "Sleeping Beauty" thirteen fairies appear. The king invited twelve of them to the birthday feast given in honour of his little daughter. Eleven had endowed the child with intelligence, beauty, wealth, and other good gifts, when suddenly a thirteenth fairy entered unbidden and ordained that the princess should die early of the prick of a spindle. The twelfth now came forward and took some of the bitterness out of the terrible prophecy by saying that the girl should not die, but should fall into a sleep of a hundred years' duration, out of which she should at last awake when the right hour for setting her free should strike. This hour came when a young hero forced his way through the thorn hedge that surrounded her, and awoke the sleeper with a kiss of love. Urd or Wurd is also connected with Hel, the goddess of death : for the Past, being dead, falls into the nether world. Hel herself appears in the story as the Norn who span the irrefragable thread of fate, and in the German version of the tale in which the fatal sisters appear, she was the bad fairy whose name, He...« less