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Apuleius, Petronius, and Lucian have similar stories. The Emperor Sigismund convoked a council of theologians in the fifteenth century who decided that wer-wolves did exist. "Norns came to him." Nornir are the fates of the northern mythology. They are three "Urd", the past; "Verdandi", the present; and "Skuld", the future.
Great churches arose over or near them, as at Walsingham, where an abbey, the holiest place in England, after the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury, threw its majestic shade over the heathen wishing-well, and the worshippers of Odin and the Nornir were gradually converted into votaries of the Virgin Mary.
In tale No. xx, when Shortshanks meets those three old crookbacked hags who have only one eye, which he snaps up, and gets first a sword 'that puts a whole army to flight, be it ever so great', we have the 'one-eyed Odin', degenerated into an old hag, or rather by no uncommon process we have an old witch fused by popular tradition into a mixture of Odin and the three Nornir.
And those two world-worn women, faithful in all their lives, were caught up in death in divine arms and borne far from the fogs of Hela to golden thrones among the battle heroes, upon which the Nornir, sitting at the loom of life, had from all eternity graven their names. And from that hour have the gates of Valhalla been thrown wide to all faithful endeavour whether of man or woman.
Enough has been said, at least, to prove that even nursery tales may have a science of their own, and to show how the old Nornir and divine spinners can revenge themselves if their old wives' tales are insulted and attacked.
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