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They peopled the earth with gnomes and cobolds and giants, and their nymphs were the Valkyre. Their God was Thor, of the thunderbolt and hammer, and who yet lived in continual dread of the hostile powers of Nature. A Norse prophet or prophetess standing beside Elijah at Horeb would have bowed down before the earthquake or the fire; the oriental waited for the "still small voice."
They were either Cobolds house spirits who attach themselves to the fortunes of the family, and, if well fed and treated, nestle beside the domestic hearth or Gnomes, who haunt deserted mansions and deep caverns. The mountain echoes are the mingled sounds of their voices as they mock the cries of the wanderer, and the fissures of the rocks are the entrances to their subterranean abodes.
Thus among the divinities of the household we shall see later that the Genius and even the Lar Familiaris, though they attained great dignity of conception, and were the centre of the family life, and to some extent of the family morality, never quite rose to the position of full-grown gods; while among the spirits of the field the wildness and impishness of character associated with Faunus and his companion Inuus almost the cobolds or hobgoblins of the flocks reflects clearly the old 'animistic' belief in the natural evilness of the spirits and their hostility to men.
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