A LEGEND OP THE TRENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10625, 21 March 1896, Page 6

A LEGEND OP THE TRENT.

The river is flswicg oat.to the sea. T&s water is black, and its surface nnmarksd by a ripple. It is skktsd by willows which find! a dull reflection in the flood. For boors tha water has been ebbing away, and there are' long stretches of- browa slimy warp. CoaJ barges, strangely like those yon see on the Parch canals, lie listless in mid-stream. Eage, unwieldy tblßgs they are, and the boatmen Bit by the anchor chain amokiDg and listening, listening and sraoking. The day is failing, and the gloom of night comes sweeping over the marshes. The sails of gaunt windmills show plainly against the thin, pale, western tight. You hear the call of the peewit as it scars and whirls and then sinks in the fen. You feel the solemn stillness of the eventide. It plays strange tricki with the fancy, arsd yonr thoughts go rambling away to the time of Hareward the Wake, and in the curling raistß of the fields yon see the white chargers speeding towards the sea. The silence is broken by a distant swish and a roar, and far down the river, like tha faintest echo, yon hear the csll "'Ware jE^ir!" Every boattaan, when he hears, shea's it again up-stream—" 'Ware .3lgir I 'Ware JSgir I " —a strange eerie warning. Away down the river, away up the river, you hear it. On tbe bsrgas there is clanking of the anchor chain?. The war becomes loader. You goo advancing like a wall a wave stretching from bank to bank, white and seething and f arkras at its edges, swiahing through tbe wUiowa, tossing boats like shells, craehing like a monster against the wharves. You remember Jean Ingelow'i lines in " The High Tido " :—

And rearing LiDdis backward pressed, Shook all her trembling bankes amane; ' Then madly at tha Eygre's bre»st , flung up her weltering walls again. The barges rise, upon the advancing flood, swing round with tbs turn of the tide, and grcan as they pull at their chains. A mlnuta ago the river was pi acid and low; now it it turbulent, and risen many feet. On and on the wave sweeps, and the call of " 'Ware jEgir!" sinks and fades away, and night closes in, and all is still again.

■ Mgh was the Norse god of the turbulent waters, with hie habitation far out at sea where no human boat dared penetrate. He was a god of a twofold nature. He was a giant, but he held communion with the other gods. There are many stories about The one best known is that telling how,,'when tha other gods visited him, his brewing kettle to make ale was found too small. So Tbor had to go eff ro acother giant, and had to fight him to get a caldron large enough— it was a mile in depth and I kcow not how wide—and then Thor clapped the pot on nil head, like a huge bat, and returned to the hails of JEgir with it. ■ These halls, we read, were always lighted up with bright gold, and the ale pawed round spontaneously—a plan which would be fully appreciated even in these days. . The wife o£ iEgir was called Rtn, and she had a net to catch the sailors who ventured out to sea. The con pie had nine daughters, and naturally where there were nine daughters there was considerable variety in temperament. These daughter! had paly locks and white veils, and, contrary to daughters nowadays, they always obeyed tbelr father. Their names represented th« waves in various magnitudes. Hefring meant the swelling; Kolga, the racing sea; Duva, the diver; Himingloera, the «ky clear ; Blodughadda, the pnrple-haired ; and so on.

Of course the god JSgir, the goddess Ban, and their daughters are to as only symbolical of nature, bat to the Norsemen they were very real indeed. .ZSgir symbolises the uproarious sea; Ran represents the sea as craving the sacrifice of human life; and the daughters are the waves. And how, yon may ask, did the stories aviso about feasting the gods with ale in halls all lit with goldi Here again we find the symbolic poetry so common to the child-man. It was customary for the Norsemen to say that the sea brews and seethes. This suggests Mgii's kettle. The foaming ale passes itself round, for there is plenty. The illuminated hall shining with gold, does not that refer to the •phosphorescent light on the sea? Id the dead past what a thrill of terror most have shaken the frames of the hardy Norsemen when "'Ware JEgirt" caught their eargi We learned at school all Evbout tidal waves, and the cry has few terrors for us. We are awed and impressed, nevertheless, by the msjestio rush of the waters, gathering force and leaping high until, far up stream, opposite the dismantled castla of Torksey (near which, in the old days, a priory of Austin canons and a nunnery of the Benedictine order stood), the sturdy old god tires himself out. This jEgir is one of the most inspiring and suggestive things I Unow. It was left to an American, Professor Anderson, to find a historical parallel: "England, that proud mistress of the sea, 13 the reflection of the myth of .ffigir, showing what grand remits are achieved when human enterprise and heroitm enter into friendly relations with the sea, making it serve the advancement of civilisation, like when the gods go to .ffigir'a hall to banquet."—John Fosteb Fbaseb, in the Windsor Magazine.