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British Edda |
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...The truth is that the subjects dealt with [in the Edda] are not really mythological at all, or at least to anything like the extent that has been supposed [by former translators]; but, in the main, historic; and that the key to a right arrangement, and to an appreciation of the artistic unity of the poems lies in regarding them as a record of early experiences, not of Icelandic or Scandinavian, but of specifically Gothic and British ancestral peoples. The Edda is historic, not only in the sense in which epic poetry in general is historic, in respect that is to say that it expresses the ideas and aspirations of a nation at some great stage or crises of its development; but also in the sense and by reason of the circumstance that all its main incidents are both in spirit and in actual fact things which befell the ancestors of the people among whom the poet lived, and for whom he composed his epic. The historicity of the Eddic personages and events is attested both by pre-Roman British monuments and coins and by the ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite, Phoenician, Egyptian, Indian and Greek inscribed sculptures and literary remains. No more striking demonstrations of it could be given that in the fact that over a hundred pictorial illustrations of the Edda text in this work are taken by me from ancient Sumerian, Babylonian and Hittite sacred seals, dating from about 3400 B.C. to 1500 B.C., and agreeing in their minutest details with the Edda as handed down to us by our own British ancestors. Thus the British Edda supplies the coping-stone to the great organic and fully documented body of proofs which I have built up in former works, demonstrating the identity of the Sumerians with the Early Aryans or Goths, the ancestors of the Early Britons and Anglo-Saxons. The Edda, as now reconstructed in sequence from its hitherto disjointed lays, is disclosed to be all unsuspectedly the great national epic of the ancient Britons of the pre-Christian period, which was sung adown the ages by our ancestors in these islands. It is also seen to be the hitherto unknown source of the floating British tradition on which were based the fascinating legends of King Arthur and his knights and ladies and their Holy Grail, of "St George of Cappadocia and Merrie England," with his Red Cross, of many of our Nursery Tales, and much of the imagery of Milton, and of the Faerie Queene. It also preserves early and authentic historical versions of the Adam-Eve-Eden legend, and of the historical human originals of the leading gods, demigods and goddesses of classical antiquity, who were deified or canonized in gratitude for their great benefactions to mankind. And nowhere else, except in the Edda, do we find a complete ancient literary tradition of the Early History of the World and of pre-Adamite man which will bear examination in the light of the ascertained facts of Science. The thrilling adventures and exploits of its heroes, both protagonists and antagonist, are as full of dramatic pathos and passion, comedy and tradedy, courage and devotion, humour, grim and otherwise, sportsmanship and chivalry, melodrama and villainy, as modern works of romantic fiction. And it has its heroines, golden-haired, blue-eyed and dark beauties, and its "love interests." It is a mighty "unshot film" of the greatest of all epochs in the heroic history of the old world, with its actors vividly portrayed as if in flesh and blood, moving as a noble, articulate pageant before our eyes.
Table of Contents |
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The Sibyl's Vision of the Past: |
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414 Pages, 6 x 8.5, Hardback, Illustrated Price - $25.00 |
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From the Foreword:
