RAGNAROK

THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.

BY

IGNATIUS DONNELLY

AUTHOR OF "ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD."

[1883]

PART III

The Legends

CHAPTER IV

RAGNAROK

THERE is in the legends of the Scandinavians a marvelous record of the coming of the Comet. It has been repeated generation after generation, translated into all languages, commented on, criticised, but never understood. It has been regarded as a wild, unmeaning rhapsody of words, or as a premonition of some future earth catastrophe.

But look at it!

The very name is significant. According to Professor Anderson's etymology of the word, it means "the darkness of the gods"; from regin, gods, and rr, darkness; but it may, more properly, be derived from the Icelandic, Danish, and Swedish regn, a rain, and r, smoke, or dust; and it may mean the rain of dust, for the clay came first as dust; it is described in some Indian legends as ashes.

First, there is, as in the tradition of the Druids, page 135, ante, the story of an age of crime.

The Vala looks upon the world, and, as the "Elder Edda" tells us--

There saw she wade
In the heavy streams,
Men--foul murderers
And perjurers,
And them who others' wives
Seduce to sin.
Brothers slay brothers
Sisters' children
Shed each other's blood. {p. 142}
Hard is the world!
Sensual sin grows huge.
There are sword-ages, axe-ages;
Shields are cleft in twain;
Storm-ages, murder ages;
Till the world falls dead,
And men no longer spare
Or pity one another." [1]

The world has ripened for destruction; and "Ragnarok," the darkness of the gods, or the rain of dust and ashes, comes to complete the work.

The whole story is told with the utmost detail, and we shall see that it agrees, in almost every particular, with what reason assures us must have happened.

"There are three winters," or years, "during which great wars rage over the world." Mankind has reached a climax of wickedness. Doubtless it is, as now, highly civilized in some regions, while still barbarian in others.

"Then happens that which will seem a great miracle: that the wolf devours the sun, and this will seem a great loss."

That is, the Comet strikes the sun, or approaches so close to it that it seems to do so.

"The other wolf devours the moon, and this, too, will cause great mischief."

We have seen that the comets often come in couples or triplets.

"The stars shall be hurled from heaven."

This refers to the blazing dris of the Comet falling to the earth.

[1. Anderson, "Norse Mythology," p. 416.]

"Then it shall come to pass that the earth will shake so violently that trees will be torn up by the roots, the mountains will topple down, and all bonds and fetters will be broken and snapped."

Chaos has come again. How closely does all this agree with Hesiod's description of the shaking earth and the universal conflict of nature?

"The Fenris-wolf gets loose."

This, we shall see, is the name of one of the comets.

"The sea rushes over the earth, for the Midgard-serpent writhes in giant rage, and seeks to gain the land."

The Midgard-serpent is the name of another comet; it strives to reach the earth; its proximity disturbs the oceans. And then follows an inexplicable piece of mythology:

"The ship that is called Naglfar also becomes loose. It is made of the nails of dead men; wherefore it is worth warning that, when a man dies with unpared nails, he supplies a large amount of materials for the building of this ship, which both gods and men wish may be finished as late as possible. But in this flood Naglfar gets afloat. The giant Hrym is its steersman.

"The Fenris-wolf advances with wide-open mouth; the upper jaw reaches to heaven and the lower jaw is on the earth."

That is to say, the comet extends from the earth to the sun.

"He would open it still wider had he room."

That is to say, the space between the sun and earth is not great enough; the tail of the comet reaches even beyond the earth.

"Fire flashes from his eyes and nostrils."

A recent writer says:

"When bright comets happen to come very near to the sun, and are subjected to close observation under the advantages which the fine telescopes of the present day afford, a series of remarkable changes is found to take place in their luminous configuration. First, jets of bright light start out from the nucleus, and move through the fainter haze of the coma toward the sun; and then these jets are turned backward round the edge of the coma, and stream from it, behind the comet, until they are fashioned into a tail." [1]

"The Midgard-serpent vomits forth venom, defiling all the air and the sea; he is very terrible, and places himself side by side with the wolf."

The two comets move together, like Biela's two fragments; and they give out poison--the carbureted-hydrogen gas revealed by the spectroscope.

"In the midst of this clash and din the heavens are rent in twain, and the sons of Muspelheim come riding through the opening."

Muspelheim, according to Professor Anderson, [2]means the day of judgment." Muspel signifies an abode of fire, peopled by fiends. So that this passage means, that the heavens are split open, or appear to be, by the great shining comet, or comets, striking the earth; it is a world of fire; it is the Day of Judgment.

"Surt rides first, and before him and after him flames burning fire."

Surt is a demon associated with the comet; [3]he is the same as the destructive god of the Egyptian mythology, Set, who destroys the sun. It may mean the blazing nucleus of the comet.

"He has a very good sword that shines brighter than the sun. As they ride over Bifrost it breaks to pieces, as has before been stated."

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 207.

2. "Norse Mythology," p. 454.

3. Ibid., p. 458.]

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, [1]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 sea.'

"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 Europe, 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 have, 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.

[1. "All the Year Round."]

But their very helplessness and their deaths show how immense was the calamity which had befallen the world.

The Edda continues:

"The sons of Muspel direct their course to the plain which is called Vigrid. Thither repair also the Fenris-wolf and the Midgard-serpent."

Both the comets have fallen on the earth.

"To this place have also come Loke" (the evil genius of the Norse mythology) "and Hrym, and with him all the Frost giants. In Loke's company are all the friends of Hel" (the goddess of death). "The sons of Muspel have then their efficient bands alone by themselves. The plain Vigrid is one hundred miles (rasts) on each side."

That is to say, all these evil forces, the comets, the fire, the devil, and death, have taken possession of the great plain, the heart of the civilized land. The scene is located in this spot, because probably it was from this spot the legends were afterward dispersed to all the world.

It is necessary for the defenders of mankind to rouse themselves. There is no time to be lost, and, accordingly, we learn--

"While these things are happening, Heimdal" (he was the guardian of the Bifrost-bridge) "stands up, blows with all his might in the Gjallar-horn and awakens all the gods, who thereupon hold counsel. Odin rides to Mimer's well to ask advice of Mimer for himself and his folk.

"Then quivers the ash Ygdrasil, and all things in heaven and earth tremble."

The ash Ygdrasil is the tree-of-life; the tree of the ancient tree-worship; the tree which stands on the top of the pyramid in the island-birth place of the Aztec race; the tree referred to in the Hindoo legends.

"The asas" (the godlike men) "and the einherjes" (the heroes) "arm themselves and speed forth to the battlefield. Odin rides first; with his golden helmet, resplendent byrnie, and his spear Gungner, he advances against the Fenris-wolf" (the first comet). "Thor stands by his side, but can give him no assistance, for he has his hands full in his struggle with the Midgard-serpent" (the second comet). "Frey encounters Surt, and heavy blows are exchanged ere Frey falls. The cause of his death is that he has not that good sword which he gave to Skirner. Even the dog Garm," (another comet), "that was bound before the Gnipa-cave, gets loose. He is the greatest plague. He contends with Tyr, and they kill each other. Thor gets great renown by slaying the Midgard-serpent, but retreats only nine paces when he falls to the earth dead, poisoned by the venom that the serpent blows upon him."

He has breathed the carbureted-hydrogen gas!

"The wolf swallows Odin, and thus causes his death; but Vidar immediately turns and rushes at the wolf, placing one foot on his nether jaw.

["On this foot he has the shoe, for which materials have been gathering through all ages, namely, the strips of leather which men cut off from the toes and heels of shoes; wherefore he who wishes to render assistance to the asas must cast these strips away."]

This last paragraph, like that concerning the ship Naglfar, is probably the interpolation of some later age. The narrative continues:

"With one hand Vidar seizes the upper jaw of the wolf, and thus rends asunder his mouth. Thus the wolf perishes. Loke fights with Heimdal, and they kill each other. Thereupon Surt flings fire over the earth, and burns up all the world."

This narrative is from the Younger Edda. The Elder Edda is to the same purpose, but there are more allusions to the effect of the catastrophe on the earth

The eagle screams,
And with pale beak tears corpses. . . .
Mountains dash together, {p. 148}
Heroes go the way to Hel,
And heaven is rent in twain. . . .
All men abandon their homesteads
When the warder of Midgard
In wrath slays the serpent.
The sun grows dark,
The earth sinks into the sea,
The bright stars
From heaven vanish;
Fire rages,
Heat blazes,
And high flames play
'Gainst heaven itself"

And what follow then? Ice and cold and winter. For although these things come first in the narrative of the Edda, yet we are told that "before these" things, to wit, the cold winters, there occurred the wickedness of the world, and the wolves and the serpent made their appearance. So that the events transpired in the order in which I have given them.

"First there is a winter called the Fimbul winter,"

"The mighty, the great, the iron winter," [1]

"'When snow drives from. all quarters, the frosts are so severe, the winds so keen, there is no joy in the sun. There are three such winters in succession, without any intervening summer."

Here we have the Glacial period which followed the Drift. Three years of incessant wind, and snow, and intense cold.

The Elder Edda says, speaking of the Fenris-wolf:

"It feeds on the bodies
Of men, when they die
The seats of the gods
It stains with red blood."

[1. "Norse Mythology," p. 444.]

This probably refers to the iron-stained red clay cast down by the Comet over a large part of the earth; the "seats of the gods" means the home of the god-like race, which was doubtless covered, like Europe and America, with red clay; the waters which ran from it must have been the color of blood.

"The Sunshine blackens
In the summers thereafter,
And the weather grows bad."

In the Younger Edda (p. 57) we are given a still more precise description of the Ice age:

"Replied Har, explaining, that as soon as the streams, that are called Elivogs" (the rivers from under ice), "had came so far that the venomous yeast" (the clay?) "which flowed with them hardened, as does dross that runs from the fire, then it turned" (as) "into ice. And when this ice stopped and flowed no more, then gathered over it the drizzling rain that arose from the venom" (the clay), "and froze into rime" (ice), "and one layer of ice was laid upon another clear into the Ginungagap."

Ginungagap, we are told, [1]was the name applied in the eleventh century by the Northmen to the ocean between Greenland and Vinland, or America. It doubtless meant originally the whole of the Atlantic Ocean. The clay, when it first fell, was probably full of chemical elements, which rendered it, and the waters which filtered through it, unfit for human use; clay waters are, to this day, the worst in the world.

"Then said Jafnhar: 'All that part of Ginungagap that turns to the north' (the north Atlantic) 'was filled with thick and heavy ice and rime, and everywhere within were drizzling rains and gusts. But the south part of Ginungagap was lighted up by the glowing sparks that flew out of Muspelheim.'"

[1. "Norse Mythology," p. 447.]

The ice and rime to the north represent the age of ice and snow. Muspelheim was the torrid country of the south, over which the clouds could not yet form in consequence of the heat--Africa.

But it can not last forever. The clouds disappear; the floods find their way back to the ocean; nature begins to decorate once more the scarred and crushed face of the world. But where is the human race? The "Younger Edda" tells us:

"During the conflagration caused by Surt's fire, a woman by the name of Lif and a man named Lifthraser lie concealed in Hodmimer's hold, or forest. The dew of the dawn serves them for food, and so great a race shall spring from them, that their descendants shall soon spread over the whole earth."[1]

The "Elder Edda" says:

"Lif and Lifthraser
Will lie hid
In Hodmimer's-holt;
The morning dew
They have for food.
From them are the races descended."

Holt is a grove, or forest, or hold; it was probably a cave. We shall see that nearly all the legends refer to the caves in which mankind escaped from destruction.

This statement,

"From them are the races descended,"

shows that this is not prophecy, but history; it refers to the past, not to the future; it describes not a Day of Judgment to come, but one that has already fallen on the human family.

Two others, of the godlike race, also escaped in some

[1. "Norse Mythology" p. 429.]

way not indicated; Vidar and Vale are their names. They, too, had probably taken refuge in some cavern.

"Neither the sea nor Surt's fire had harmed them, and they dwell on the plains of Ida, where Asgard was before. Thither come also the sons of Thor, Mode, and Magne, and they have Mjolner. Then come Balder and Hoder from Hel.

Mode and Magne are children of Thor; they belong to the godlike race. They, too, have escaped. Mjolner is Thor's hammer. Balder is the Sun; he has returned from the abode of death, to which the comet consigned him. Hoder is the Night.

All this means that the fragments and remnants of humanity reassemble on the plain of Ida--the plain of Vigrid--where the battle was fought. They possess the works of the old civilization, represented by Thor's hammer; and the day and night once more return after the long midnight blackness.

And the Vala looks again upon a renewed and rejuvenated world:

"She sees arise
The second time.
From the sea, the earth,
Completely green.
The cascades fall,
The eagle soars,
From lofty mounts
Pursues its prey."

It is once more the glorious, the sun-lighted world the world of flashing seas, dancing streams, and green leaves; with the eagle, high above it all,

"Batting the sunny ceiling of the globe
With his dark wings;"

while

"The wild cataracts leap in glory."

What history, what poetry, what beauty, what inestimable pictures of an infinite past have lain hidden away in these Sagas--the despised heritage of all the blue-eyed, light-haired races of the world!

Rome and Greece can not parallel this marvelous story:

The gods convene
On Ida's plains,
And talk of the powerful
Midgard-serpent;
They call to mind
The Fenris-wolf
And the ancient runes
Of the mighty Odin."

What else can mankind think of, or dream of, or talk of for the next thousand years but this awful, this unparalleled calamity through which the race has passed?

A long-subsequent but most ancient and cultivated people, whose memory has, for us, almost faded from the earth, will thereafter embalm the great drama in legends, myths, prayers, poems, and sagas; fragments of which are found to-day dispersed through all literatures in all lands; some of them, as we shall see, having found their way even into the very Bible revered alike of Jew and Christian:

The Edda continues,

"Then again
The wonderful Golden tablets
Are found in the grass
In time's morning,
The leader of the gods
And Odin's race
Possessed them."

And what a find was that! This poor remnant of humanity discovers "the golden tablets" of the former civilization. Doubtless, the inscribed tablets, by which the art of writing survived to the race; for what would tablets be without inscriptions? For they talk of "the ancient runes of mighty Odin," that is, of the runic letters, the alphabetical writing. And we shall see hereafter that this view is confirmed from other sources.

There follows a happy age:

"The fields unsown
Yield their growth;
All ills cease.
Balder comes.
Hoder and Balder,
Those heavenly gods,
Dwell together in Odin's halls."

The great catastrophe is past. Man is saved, The world is once more fair. The sun shines again in heaven. Night and day follow each other in endless revolution around the happy globe. Ragnarok is past.

RAGNAROK

THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.

BY

IGNATIUS DONNELLY

AUTHOR OF "ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD."

[1883]

PART III

The Legends

CHAPTER I

THE NATURE OF MYTHS

IN a primitive people the mind of one generation precisely repeats the minds of all former generations; the construction of the intellectual nature varies no more, from age to age, than the form of the body or the color of the skin; the generations feel the same emotions, and think the same thoughts, and use the same expressions. And this is to be expected, for the brain is as much a part of the inheritable, material organization as the color of the eyes or the shape of the nose.

The minds of men move automatically: no man thinks because he intends to think; he thinks, as he hungers and thirsts, under a great primal necessity; his thoughts come out from the inner depths of his being as the flower is developed by forces rising through the roots of the plant.

The female bird says to herself, "The time is propitious, and now, of my own free will, and under the operation of my individual judgment, I will lay a nestful of eggs and batch a brood of children." But it is unconscious that it is moved by a physical necessity, which has constrained all its ancestors from the beginning of time,

and which will constrain all its posterity to the end of time; that its will is nothing more than an expression of age, development, sunlight, food, and "the skyey influences." If it were otherwise it would be in the power of a generation to arrest the life of a race.

All great thoughts are inspirations of God. They are part of the mechanism by which he advances the race; they are new varieties created out of old genera.

There come bursts of creative force in history, when great thoughts are born, and then again Brahma, as the Hindoos say, goes to sleep for ages.

But, when the fever of creation comes, the poet, the inventor, or the philosopher can no more arrest the development of his own thoughts than the female bird, by her will-power, can stop the growth of the ova within her, or arrest the fever in the blood which forces her to incubation.

The man who wrote the Shakespeare plays recognized this involuntary operation of even his own transcendent intellect, when he said:

"Our poesy is a gum which oozes
From whence 'tis nourished."

It came as the Arabian tree distilled its "medicinal gum"; it was the mere expression of an internal force, as much beyond his control as the production of the gum was beyond the control of the tree.

But in primitive races mind repeats mind for thousands of years. If a tale is told at a million hearth-fires, the probabilities are small, indeed, that any innovation at one hearth-fire, however ingenious, will work its way into and modify the narration at all the rest. There is no printing-press to make the thoughts of one man the thoughts of thousands. While the innovator is modifying the tale, to his own satisfaction, to his immediate circle of hearers, the narrative is being repeated in its unchanged form at all the rest. The doctrine of chances is against innovation. The majority rules.

When, however, a marvelous tale is told to the new generation--to the little ones sitting around with open eyes and gaping mouths--they naturally ask, "Where did all this occur?" The narrator must satisfy this curiosity, and so he replies, "On yonder mountain-top," or "In yonder cave."

The story has come down without its geography, and a new geography is given it.

Again, an ancient word or name may have a signification in the language in which the story is told different from that which it possessed in the original dialect, and, in the effort to make the old fact and the new language harmonize, the story-teller is forced, gradually, to modify the narrative; and, as this lingual difficulty occurs at every fireside, at every telling, an ingenious explanation comes at last to be generally accepted, and the ancient myth remains dressed in a new suit of linguistic clothes.

But, as a rule, simple races repeat; they do not invent.

One hundred years ago the highest faith was placed in written history, while the utmost contempt was felt for all legends. Whatever had been written down was regarded as certainly true; whatever had not been written down was necessarily false.

We are reminded of that intellectual old brute, Dr. Samuel Johnson, trampling poor Macpherson under foot, like an enraged elephant, for daring to say that he had collected from the mountaineers of wild Scotland the poems of Ossian, and that they had been transmitted, from mouth to mouth, through ages. But the great epic of the son of Fingal will survive, part of the widening heritage of humanity, while Johnson is remembered only as a coarse-souled, ill-mannered incident in the development of the great English people.

But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals.

And then grave and able men,--philosophers, scientists,--were seen with note-books and pencils, going out into Hindoo villages, into German cottages, into Highland huts, into Indian tepees, in short, into all lands, taking down with the utmost care, accuracy, and respect, the fairy-stories, myths, and legends of the people;--as repeated by old peasant-women, "the knitters in the sun," or by "gray-haired warriors, famous for fights."

And, when they came to put these narratives in due form, and, as it were, in parallel columns, it became apparent that they threw great floods of light upon the history of the world, and especially upon the question of the unity of the race. They proved that all the nations were repeating the same stories, in some cases in almost identical words, just as their ancestors had heard them, in some most ancient land, in "the dark background and abysm of time," when the progenitors of the German, Gaul, Gael, Greek, Roman, Hindoo, Persian, Egyptian, Arabian, and the red-people of America, dwelt together under the same roof-tree and used the same language.

But, above all, these legends prove the absolute fidelity of the memory of the races.

We are told that the bridge-piles driven by the Romans, two thousand years ago, in the rivers of Europe, from which the surrounding waters have excluded the decaying atmosphere, have remained altogether unchanged in their condition. If this has been the case for two thousand years, why would they not remain unchanged for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years? If the ice in which that Siberian mammoth was incased had preserved it intact for a hundred years, or a thousand years, why might it not have preserved it for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years?

Place a universal legend in the minds of a race, let them repeat it from generation to generation, and time ceases to be an element in the problem.

Legend has one great foe to its perpetuation--civilization.

Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in Tennyson--a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces.

Hence we find the legends of the primitive American Indians adhering quite closely to the events of the past, while the myths that survive at all among the civilized nations of Europe are found in garbled forms, and. only among the peasantry of remote districts.

In the future more and more attention will be given to the myths of primitive races; they will be accounted as more reliable, and as reaching farther back in time than many things which we call history. Thoughtful men will analyze them, despising nothing; like a chemist who resolves some compound object into its original elements--the very combination constituting a history of the object.

H. H. Bancroft describes myths as--

"A mass of fragmentary truth and fiction, not open to rationalistic criticism; a partition wall of allegories, built of dead facts cemented with wild fancies; it looms ever between the immeasurable and the measurable past."

But he adds:

"Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present."

"It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact." [1]

An universal myth points to two conclusions:

First, that it is based on some fact.

Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated.

A myth should be analyzed carefully; the fungi that have attached themselves to it should be brushed off; the core of fact should be separated from the decorations and errors of tradition.

But above all, it must be remembered that we can not depend upon either the geography or the chronology of a myth. As I have shown, there is a universal tendency to give the old story a new habitat, and hence we have Ararats and Olympuses all over the world. In the same

[1. "The Native Races of America," vol. iii, p. 14.]

way the myth is always brought down and attached to more recent events:

"All over Europe-in Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland--the exploits of the oldest mythological heroes, figuring in the Sagas, Eddas, and Nibelungen Lied, have been ascribed, in the folk-lore and ballads of the people, to Barbarossa, Charlemagne, Boabdil, Charles V, William Tell, Arthur, Robin Hood, Wallace, and St. Patrick." [1]

In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact.

What dramatist or novelist has ever yet made a plot which did not consist of events that had already transpired somewhere on earth? He might intensify events, concentrate and combine them, or amplify them; but that is all. Men in all ages have suffered from jealousy,--like Othello; have committed murders,--like Macbeth; have yielded to the sway of morbid minds,--like Hamlet; have stolen, lied, and debauched,--like Falstaff;--there are Oliver Twists, Bill Sykeses, and Nancies; Micawbers, Pickwicks, and Pecksniffs in every great city.

There is nothing in the mind of man that has not preexisted in nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature? It was thought at one time that man had made the flying-dragon out of his own imagination; but we now know that the image of the pterodactyl had simply descended from generation to generation. Sindbad's great bird, the roc, was considered a flight of the Oriental fancy, until science revealed the bones of the dinornis. All the winged beasts breathing fire are simply a recollection of the comet.

In fact, even with the patterns of nature before it, the

[1. Bancroft, "Native Races," note, vol. iii, p. 17.]

human mind has not greatly exaggerated them: it has never drawn a bird larger than the dinornis or a beast greater than the mammoth.

It is utterly impossible that the races of the whole world, of all the continents and islands, could have preserved traditions from the most remote ages, of a comet having struck the earth, of the great heat, the conflagration, the cave-life, the age of darkness, and the return of the sun, and yet these things have had no basis of fact. It was not possible for the primitive mind to have imagined these things if they had never occurred.

RAGNAROK

THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.

BY

IGNATIUS DONNELLY

AUTHOR OF "ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD."

[1883]

PART II

The Comet

CHAPTER II

WHAT IS A COMET ?

IN the first place, are comets composed of solid, liquid, or gaseous substances? Are they something, or the next thing to nothing?

It has been supposed by some that they are made of the most attenuated gases, so imponderable that if the earth were to pass through one of them we would be unconscious of the contact. Others have imagined them to be mere smoke-wreaths, faint mists, so rarefied that the substance of one a hundred million miles long could, like the genie in the Arabian story, be inclosed in one of Solomon's brass bottles.

But the results of recent researches contradict these views:

Padre Secchi, of Rome, observed, in Donati's comet, of 1858, from the 15th to the 22d of October, that the nucleus threw out intermittingly from itself appendages having the form of brilliant, coma-shaped masses of incandescent substance twisted violently backward. He accounts for these very remarkable changes of configuration by the influence first of the sun's heat upon the comet's substance as it approached toward perihelion, and afterward by the production in the luminous emanations thus generated of enormous tides and perturbation derangements. Some of the most conspicuous of these luminous developments occurred on October 11th, when the comet was at its nearest approach to the earth, and on October 17th, when it was nearest to the planet Venus. He has no doubt that the close neighborhood of the earth and Venus at those times was the effective cause of the sudden changes of aspect, and that those changes of aspect may be accepted as proof that the comet's substance consists of "really ponderable material."

Mr. Lockyer used the spectroscope to analyze the light of Coggia's comet, and he established beyond question that--

"Some of the rays of the comet were sent either from solid particles, or from vapor in a state of very high condensation, and also that beyond doubt other portions of the comet's light issue from the vapor shining by its own inherent light. The light coming from the more dense constituents, and therefore giving a continuous colored spectrum, was, however, deficient in blue rays, and was most probably emitted by material substance at the low red and yellow stages of incandescence."

Padre Secchi, at Rome, believed he saw in the comet "carbon, or an oxide of carbon, as the source of the bright luminous bands," and the AbbMoigno asks whether this comet may not be, after all, "un gigantesque diamant volatilis"

"Whatever may be the answer hereafter given to that question, the verdict of the spectroscope is clearly to the effect that the comet is made up of a commingling of thin vapor and of denser particles, either compressed into the condition of solidification, or into some physical state approaching to that condition, and is therefore entirely in accordance with the notion formed on other grounds that the nucleus of the comet is a cluster of solid nodules or granules, and that the luminous coma and tail are jets and jackets of vapor, associated with the more dense ingredients, and swaying and streaming about them as heat and gravity, acting antagonistic ways, determine." [1]

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 210.]

If the comet shines by reflected light, it is pretty good evidence that there must be some material substance there to reflect the light.

"A considerable portion of the light of the comet is, nevertheless, borrowed from the sun, for it has one property belonging to it that only reflected light can manifest. It is capable of being polarized by prisms of double-refracting spar. Polarization of this character is only possible when the light that is operated upon has already been reflected from an imperfectly transparent medium." [1]

There is considerable difference of opinion as to whether the bead of the comet is solid matter or inflammable gas.

"There is nearly always a point of superior brilliancy perceptible in the comet's head, which is termed its nucleus, and it is necessarily a matter of pressing interest to determine what this bright nucleus is; whether it is really a kernel of hard, solid substance, or merely a whiff of somewhat more condensed vapor. Newton, from the first, maintained that the comet is made partly of solid substance, and partly of an investment of thin, elastic vapors. If this is the case, it is manifest that the central nodule of dense substance should be capable of intercepting light when it passes in front of a more distant luminary, such as a fixed star. Comets, on this account, have been watched very narrowly whenever they have been making such a passage. On August 18, 1774, the astronomer Messier believed that he saw a second bright star burst into sight from behind the nucleus of a comet which had concealed it the instant before. Another observer, Wartmann, in the year 1828, noticed that the light of an eighth-magnitude star was temporarily quenched as the nucleus of Encke's comet passed over it." [2]

Others, again, have held that stars have been seen through the comet's nucleus.

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 207.

2. Ibid., p. 206.]

Am Guillemin says:

"Comets have been observed whose heads, instead of being nebulous, have presented the appearance of stars, with which, indeed, they have been confounded." [1]

When Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Urania, he thought it was a comet.

Mr. Richard A. Proctor says:

"The spectroscopic observations made by Mr. Huggins on the light of three comets show that a certain portion, at least, of the light of these objects is inherent. . . . The nucleus gave in each case three bands of light, indicating that the substances of the nuclei consisted of glowing vapor." [2]

In one case, the comet-head seemed, as in the case of the, comet examined by Padre Secchi, to consist of pure carbon.

In the great work of Dr. H. Schellen, of Cologne, annotated by Professor Huggins, we read:

"That the nucleus of a comet can not be in itself a dark and solid body, such as the planets are, is proved by its great transparency; but this does not preclude the possibility of its consisting of innumerable solid particles separated from one another, which, when illuminated by the sun, give, by the reflection of the solar light, the impression of a homogeneous mass. It has, therefore, been concluded that comets are either composed of a substance which, like gas in a state of extreme rarefaction, is perfectly transparent, or of small solid particles individually separated by intervening spaces through which the light of a star can pass without obstruction, and which, held together by mutual attraction, as well as by gravitation toward a denser central conglomeration, moves through space like a cloud of dust. In any case the connection lately noticed by Schiaparelli, between comets and meteoric

[1. "The Heavens," p. 239.

2. Note to Guillemin's "Heavens," p. 261.]

showers, seems to necessitate the supposition that in many comets a similar aggregation of particles seems to exist." [1]

I can not better sum up the latest results of research than by giving Dr. Schellen's words in the work just cited:

"By collating these various phenomena, the conviction can scarcely be resisted that the nuclei of comets not only emit their own light, which is that of a glowing gas, but also, together with the coma and the tail, reflect the light of the sun. There seems nothing, therefore, to contradict the theory that the mass of a comet may be composed of minute solid bodies, kept apart one from another in the same way as the infinitesimal particles forming a cloud of dust or smoke are held loosely together, and that, as the comet approaches the sun, the most easily fusible constituents of these small bodies become wholly or partially vaporized, and in a condition of white heat overtake the remaining solid particles, and surround the nucleus in a self-luminous cloud of glowing vapor." [2]

Here, then, we have the comet:

First, a more or less solid nucleus, on fire, blazing, glowing.

Second, vast masses of gas heated to a white heat and enveloping the nucleus, and constituting the luminous head, which was in one case fifty times as large as the moon.

Third, solid materials, constituting the tail (possibly the nucleus also), which are ponderable, which reflect the sun's light, and are carried along under the influence of the nucleus of the comet.

Fourth, possibly in the rear of all these, attenuated volumes of gas, prolonging the tail for great distances.

What are these solid materials?

[1. "Spectrum Analysis," 1872.

2. Ibid., p. 402.]

Stones, and sand, the finely comminuted particles of stones ground off by ceaseless attrition.

What is the proof of this?

Simply this: that it is now conceded that meteoric showers are shreds and patches of cometic matter, dropped from the tail; and meteoric showers are stones.

"Schiaparelli considers meteors to be dispersed portions of the comet's original substance; that is, of the substance with which the comet entered the solar domain. Thus comets would come to be regarded as consisting of a multitude of relatively minute masses." [1]

Now, what is the genesis of a comet? How did it come to be? How was it born?

In the first place, there are many things which would connect them with our planets.

They belong to the solar system; they revolve around the sun.

Says Am Guillemin:

"Comets form a part of our solar system. Like the. planets, they revolve about the sun, traversing with very variable velocities extremely elongated orbits." [2]

We shall see reason to believe that they contain the same kinds of substances of which the planets are composed.

Their orbits seem to be reminiscences of former planetary conditions:

"All the comets, having a period not exceeding seven years, travel in the same direction around the sun as the planets. Among comets with periods less than eighty years long, five sixths travel in the same direction as the planets." [3]

[1. "American Cyclopia," vol. v, p. 141.

2. "The Heavens," p. 239.

3. American Cyclopedia," vol. v, p. 141.]

It is agreed that this globe of ours was at first a gaseous mass; as it cooled it condensed like cooling steam into a liquid mass; it became in time a molten globe of red-hot matter. As it cooled still further, a crust or shell formed around it, like the shell formed on an egg, and on this crust we dwell.

While the crust is still plastic it shrinks as the mass within grows smaller by further cooling, and the wrinkles so formed in the crust are the depths of the ocean and the elevations of the mountain-chains.

But as ages go on and the process of cooling progresses, the crust reaches a density when it supports itself, like a couple of great arches; it no longer wrinkles; it no longer follows downward the receding molten mass within; mountains cease to be formed; and at length we have a red-hot ball revolving in a shell or crust, with a space between the two, like the space between the dried and shrunken kernel of the nut and the nut itself.

Volcanoes are always found on sea-shores or on islands. Why? Through breaks in the earth the sea-water finds its way occasionally down upon the breast of the molten mass; it is at once converted into gas, steam; and as it expands it blows itself out through the escape-pipe of the volcano; precisely as the gas formed by the gunpowder coming in contact with the fire of the percussion-cap, drives the ball out before it through the same passage by which it had entered. Hence, some one has said, "No water, no volcano."

While the amount of water which so enters is small because of the smallness of the cavity between the shell of the earth and the molten globe within, this process is carried on upon a comparatively small scale, and is a safe one for the earth. But suppose the process of cooling to go on uninterruptedly until a vast space exists between the crust and the core of the earth, and that some day a convulsion of the surface creates a great chasm in the crust, and the ocean rushes in and fills up part of the cavity; a tremendous quantity of steam is formed, too great to escape by the aperture through which it entered, an explosion takes place, and the crust of the earth is blown into a million fragments.

The great molten ball within remains intact, though sorely torn; in its center is still the force we call gravity; the fragments of the crust can not fly off into space; they are constrained to follow the master-power lodged in the ball, which now becomes the nucleus of a comet, still blazing and burning, and vomiting flames, and wearing itself away. The catastrophe has disarranged its course, but it still revolves in a prolonged orbit around the sun, carrying its broken dris in a long trail behind it.

This dris arranges itself in a regular order: the largest fragments are on or nearest the head; the smaller are farther away, diminishing in regular gradation, until the farthest extremity, the tail, consists of sand, dust, and gases. There is a continual movement of the particles of the tail, operated upon by the attraction and repulsion of the sun. The fragments collide and crash against each other; by a natural law each stone places itself so that its longest diameter coincides with the direction of the motion of the comet; hence, as they scrape against each other they mark each other with lines or stri lengthwise of their longest diameter. The fine dust ground out by these perpetual collisions does not go off into space, or pack around the stones, but, still governed by the attraction of the head, it falls to the rear and takes its place, like the small men of a regiment, in the farther part of the tail.

Now, all this agrees with what science tells us of the constitution of clay.

"It is a finely levigated silico-aluminous earth--formed by the disintegration of feldspathic or granite rocks." [1]

The particles ground out of feldspar are finer than those derived from mica and hornblende, and we can readily understand how the great forces of gravity, acting upon the dust of the comet's tail, might separate one from the other; or how magnetic waves passing through the comet might arrange all the particles containing iron by themselves, and thus produce that marvelous separation of the constituents of the granite which we have found to exist in the Drift clays. If the destroyed world possessed no sedimentary rocks, then the entire material of the comet would consist of granitic stones and dust such as constitutes clays.

The stones are reduced to a small size by the constant attrition:

"The stones of the 'till' are not of the largest; indeed, bowlders above four feet in diameter are comparatively seldom met with in the till." [2]

And this theory is corroborated by the fact that the eminent German geologist, Dr. Hahn, has recently discovered an entire series of organic remains in meteoric stones, of the class called chrondites, and which he identifies as belonging to classes of sponges, corals, and crinoids. Dr. Weinland, another distinguished German, corroborates these discoveries; and he has also found fragments in these stones very much like the youngest marine chalk in the Gulf of Mexico; and he thinks he sees, under the microscope, traces of vegetable growth. Francis Birgham says:

[1. "American Cyclopia," article "Clay."

2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 10.]

"This entire ex-terrestrial fauna hitherto discovered, which already comprises about fifty different species, and which originates from different meteoric falls, even from some during the last century, conveys the impression that it doubtlessly once formed part of a single ex-terrestrial-celestial body with a unique creation, which in by-gone ages seems to have been overtaken by a grand catastrophe, during which it was broken up into fragments." [1]

When we remember that meteors are now generally believed to be the droppings of comets, we come very near to proof of the supposition that comets are the dris of exploded planets; for only on planets can we suppose that life existed, for there was required, for the growth of these sponges, corals, and crinoids, rocks, earth, water, seas or lakes, atmosphere, sunshine, and a range of temperature between the degree of cold where life is frozen up and the degree of heat in which it is burned up: hence, these meteors must be fragments of bodies possessing earth-like conditions.

We know that the heavenly bodies are formed of the same materials as our globe.

Dana says:

"Meteoric stones exemplify the same chemical and crystallographic laws as the rocks of the earth, and have afforded no new element or principle of any kind." [2]

It may be presumed, therefore, that the granite crust of the exploded globe from which some comet was created was the source of the finely triturated material which we know as clay.

But the clays are of different colors--white, yellow, red, and blue.

[1. "Popular Science Monthly," November, 1881, p. 86.

2. "Manual of Geology," p. 3.]

"The aluminous minerals contained in granite rocks are feldspar, mica, and hornblende. . . . Mica and hornblende generally contain considerable oxide of iron, while feldspar usually yields only a trace or none. Therefore clays which are derived from feldspar are light-colored or white, while those partially made up of decomposed mica or hornblende are dark, either bluish or red." [1]

The tail of the comet seems to be perpetually in motion. It is, says one writer, "continually changing and fluctuating as vaporous masses of cloud-like structure might be conceived to do, and in some instances there has been a strong appearance even of an undulating movement." [2]

The great comet of 1858, Donati's comet, which many now living will well remember, and which was of such size that when its head was near our horizon the extremity of the tail reached nearly to the zenith, illustrated this continual movement of the material of the tail; that appendage shrank and enlarged millions of miles in length.

Mr. Lockyer believed that he saw in Coggia's comet the evidences of a whirling motion--

"In which the regions of greatest brightness were caused by the different coils cutting, or appearing to cut, each other, and so in these parts leading to compression or condensation, and frequent collision of the luminous particles."

Olbers saw in a comet's tail--

"A sudden flash and pulsation of light which vibrated for several seconds through it, and the tail appeared during the continuance of the pulsations of light to be lengthened by several degrees and then again contracted." [3]

[1. "American Cyclopia," article "Clay."

2. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 208,

3, "Cosmos," vol. i, p. 143.]

Now, in this perpetual motion, this conflict, these great thrills of movement, we are to find the source of the clays which cover a large part of our globe to a depth of hundreds of feet. Where are those exposures of granite on the face of the earth from which ice or water could have ground them? Granite, I repeat, comes to the surface only in limited areas. And it must be remembered that clay is the product exclusively of granite ground to powder. The clays are composed exclusively of the products of disintegrated granite. They contain but a trace of lime or magnesia or organic matters, and these can be supposed to have been infiltrated into them after their arrival on the face of the earth. [1] Other kinds of rock, ground up, form sand. Moreover, we have seen that neither glaciers nor ice-sheets now produce such clays.

We shall see, as we proceed, that the legends of mankind, in describing the comet that struck the earth, represent it as party-colored; it is "speckled" in one legend; spotted like a tiger in another; sometimes it is a white boar in the heavens; sometimes a blue snake; sometimes it is red with the blood of the millions that are to perish. Doubtless these separate formations, ground out of the granite, from the mica, hornblende, or feldspar, respectively, may, as I have said, under great laws, acted upon by magnetism or electricity, have arranged themselves in separate lines or sheets, in the tail of the comet, and hence we find that the clays of one region are of one color, while those of another are of a different hue. Again, we shall see that the legends represent the monster as "winding," undulating, writhing, twisting, fold over fold, precisely as the telescopes show us the comets do to-day.

[1. "American Cyclopia," vol. iv, p. 650.]

The very fact that these waves of motion run through the tail of the comet, and that it is capable of expanding and contracting on an immense scale, is conclusive proof that it is composed of small, adjustable particles. The writer from whom I have already quoted, speaking of the extraordinary comet of 1843, says:

"As the comet moves past the great luminary, it sweeps round its tail as a sword may be conceived to be held out at arm's-length, and then waved round the head, from one side to the opposite. But a sword with a blade one hundred and fifty millions of miles long must be a somewhat awkward weapon to brandish round after this fashion. Its point would have to sweep through a curve stretching out more than six hundred millions of miles; and, even with an allowance of two hours for the accomplishment of the movement, the flash of the weapon would be of such terrific velocity that it is not an easy task to conceive how any blade of connected material substance could bear the strain of the stroke. Even with a blade that possessed the coherence and tenacity of iron or steel, the case would be one that it would be difficult for molecular cohesion to deal with. But that difficulty is almost infinitely increased when it is a substance of much lower cohesive tenacity than either iron or steel that has to be subjected to the strain.

"There would be, at least, some mitigation of this difficulty if it were lawful to assume that the substance which is subjected to this strain was not amenable to the laws of ponderable existence; if there were room for the notion that comets and their tails, which have to be brandished in such a stupendous fashion, were sky-spectres, immaterial phantoms, unreal visions of that negative shadow-kind which has been alluded to. This, however, unfortunately, is not a permissible alternative in the circumstances of the case. The great underlying and indispensable fact that the comet comes rushing up toward the sun out of space, and then shoots round that great center of attraction by the force of its own acquired and ever-increasing impetuosity; the fact that it is obedient through this course to the law of elliptical, or, to speak more exactly, of conic-section, movement, permits of no doubt as to the condition of materiality. The comet is obviously drawn by the influence of the sun's mass, and is subservient to that all-pervading law of sympathetic gravitation that is the sustaining bond of the material universe. It is ponderable substance beyond all question, and held by that chain of physical connection which it was the glory of Newton to discover. If the comet were not a material and ponderable substance it would not gravitate round the sun, and it would not move with increasing velocity as it neared the mighty mass until it had gathered the energy for its own escape in the enhanced and quickened momentum. In the first instance, the ready obedience to the attraction, and then the overshooting of the spot from which it is exerted, combine to establish the comet's right to stand ranked at least among the ponderable bodies of space." [1]

And it is to the comet we must look for the source of a great part of those vast deposits of gravel which go to constitute the Drift.

"They have been usually attributed to the action of waves; but the mechanical work of the ocean is mostly confined to its shores and soundings, where alone material exists in quantity within reach of the waves and currents. [2] . . . The eroding action is greatest for a short distance above the height of half-tide, and, except in violent storms, it is almost null below low-tide."[3]

But if any one will examine a sea-beach he will see, not a vast mass of pebbles perpetually rolling and grinding each other, but an expanse of sand. And this is to be expected; for as soon as a part of the pebbles is, by the attrition of the waves, reduced to sand, the sand packs around the stones and arrests their further waste. To form such a mass of gravel as is found in the Drift we

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 202.

2. Dana's "Text Book," p. 286.

3. Ibid., p. 287.]

must conceive of some way whereby, as soon as the sand is formed, it is removed from the stones while the work of attrition goes on. This process we can conceive of in a comet, if the finer detritus is constantly carried back and arranged in the order of the size of its particles.

To illustrate my meaning: let one place any hard substance, consisting of large fragments, in a mortar, and proceed to reduce it with a pestle to a fine powder. The work proceeds rapidly at first, until a portion of the material is triturated; you then find that the pulverized part has packed around and protected the larger fragments, and the work is brought to a stand-still. You have to remove the finer material if you would crush the pieces that remain.

The sea does not separate the sand from the gravel; it places all together at elevations where the waves can not reach them:

"Waves or shallow soundings have some transporting power; and, as they always move toward the land, their action is landward. They thus beat back, little by little, any detritus in the waters, preventing that loss to continents or islands which would take place if it were carried out to sea." [1]

The pebbles and gravel are soon driven by the waves up the shore, and beyond the reach of further wear; [2]and "the rivers carry only silt to the ocean."[3]

The brooks and rivers produce much more gravel than the sea-shore:

"The detritus brought down by rivers is vastly greater in quantity than the stones, sand, or clay produced by the wear of the coasts." [4]

[1. Dana's "Text Book," p. 288.

2. Ibid., p. 291.

3. Ibid., p. 302.

4. Ibid., p. 290.]

But it would be absurd to suppose that the beds of rivers could have furnished the immeasurable volumes of gravel found over a great part of the world in the drift-deposits.

And the drift-gravel is different from the gravel of the sea or rivers.

Geikie says, speaking of the "till":

"There is something very peculiar about the shape of the stones. They are neither round and oval, like the pebbles in river-gravel, or the shingle of the sea-shore, nor are they sharply angular like newly-fallen dris at the base of a cliff, although they more closely resemble the latter than the former. They are, indeed, angular in shape, but the sharp corners and edges have invariably been smoothed away. . . . Their shape, as will be seen, is by no means their most striking peculiarity. Each is smoothed, polished, and covered with strior scratches, some of which are delicate as the lines traced by an etching-needle, others deep and harsh as the scores made by the plow upon a rock. And, what is worthy of note, most of the scratches, coarse and fine together, seem to run parallel to the longer diameter of the stones, which, however, are scratched in many other directions as well." [1]

Let me again summarize:

I. Comets consist of a blazing nucleus and a mass of ponderable, separated matter, such as stones, gravel, clay-dust, and gas.

II. The nucleus gives out great heat and masses of burning gas.

III. Luminous gases surround the nucleus.

IV. The drift-clays are the result of the grinding up of granitic rocks.

V. No such deposits, of anything like equal magnitude, could have been formed on the earth.

[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 13.]

VI. No such clays are now being formed under glaciers or Arctic ice-sheets.

VII. These clays were ground out of the substance of the comet by the endless changes of position of the material of which it is composed as it flew through space, during its incalculable journeys in the long reaches of time.

VIII. The earth-supplies of gravel are inadequate to account for the gravel of the drift-deposits.

IX. Neither sea-beach nor rivers produce stones like those found in the Drift.

I pass now to the next question.

RAGNAROK

THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.

BY

IGNATIUS DONNELLY

AUTHOR OF "ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD."

[1883]

PART II

The Comet

CHAPTER I.

A COMET CAUSED THE DRIFT

Now, good reader, we have reasoned together up to this point. To be sure, I have done most of the talking, while you have indulged in what the Rev. Sydney Smith called, speaking of Lord Macaulay, "brilliant flashes of silence."

But I trust we agree thus far that neither water nor ice caused the Drift. Water and ice were doubtless associated with it, but neither produced it.

What, now, are the elements of the problem to be solved?

First, we are to find something that instantaneously increased to a vast extent the heat of our planet, vaporized the seas, and furnished material for deluges of rain, and great storms of snow, and accumulations of ice north and south of the equator and in the high mountains.

Secondly, we are to find something that, coming from above, smashed, pounded, and crushed "as with a maul," and rooted up as with a plow, the gigantic rocks of the surface, and scattered them for hundreds of miles from their original location.

Thirdly, we are to find something which brought to the planet vast, incalculable masses of clay and gravel, which did not contain any of the earth's fossils; which, like the witches of Macbeth,

Look not like th' inhabitants of earth,
And yet are on it; "

which are marked after a fashion which can not be found anywhere else on earth; produced in a laboratory which has not yet been discovered on the planet.

Fourthly, we are to find something that would produce cyclonic convulsions upon a scale for which the ordinary operations of nature furnish us no parallel.

Fifthly, we are to find some external force so mighty that it would crack the crust of the globe like an eggshell, lining its surface with great rents and seams, through which the molten interior boiled up to the light.

Would a comet meet all these prerequisites?

I think it would.

Let us proceed in regular order.