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But even if he can give this vision in the films, his task will not be worth while if he is simply a teller of old stories. Let us have magic shoes about which are more golden dreams than those concerning Cinderella. Let us have stranger castles than that of Usher, more dazzling chairs than the Siege Perilous. Let us have the throne of Liberty, not the throne of Wodin.
Here and there is a hoary church erected in forgotten times on ground dedicated to Thor or Wodin.
No more was God in these quiet stones than He had been in that noisy theatrical Revival Meeting Lawrence was wrong. Those old religions were dead. No more could the Greek Gods pass smiling into the temples of their worshippers, no more Wodin, Thor and the rest may demand their bloody sacrifice. These old stones are dead. The Gods are dead but God? . . .
Good fairy architecture amounts to an incantation in itself. If it is a grown-up legend, it must be more than monumental in its lines, like the great stone face of Hawthorne's tale. Even a chair can reach this estate. For instance, let it be the throne of Wodin, illustrating some passage in Norse mythology.
Christianity had entered by the same, door through which paganism had come 150 years before. The religion of Wodin and Thor had ceased to satisfy the expanding soul of the Anglo-Saxon; and the new faith rapidly spread; its charm consisting in the light it seemed to throw upon the darkness encompassing man's past and future.
The Church carried out exactly the same principles in her missionary efforts amongst the heathen hordes of Northern Europe. "Do you renounce the devils, and all their words and works; Thonar, Wodin, and Saxenote?" was part of the form of recantation administered to the Scandinavian converts; and at the present day "Odin take you" is the Norse equivalent of "the devil take you."
Besides, it's filled with strange and terrible creatures, Robin Hood that's me, though I have some redeeming qualities the Erymanthean boar, the Hydra-headed monster, Medusa of the snaky locks, Cyclops, Polyphemus with one awful eye, the deceitful Sirens, the Old Man of the Mountain, Wodin and Osiris, and, last and most terrible of all, the Baron Munchausen."
That the king should belong to one of the families who derived their pedigree from Wodin, and that a son should, as natural, succeed his father, were old rules: but the barons would, as all history shews, make little of crowning a younger son instead of an elder, if the younger were a hero, and the elder an 'arga' a lazy loon; and little, also, would they make of setting aside the whole royal family, and crowning the man who would do their business best.
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