Indo-European Poetry and Myth

‘Mistress of horses’.^86 This figure may be directly compared with the well- known Celtic horse-goddess Epona: epo-= Latin equus ...

explained, as the Vedic poets and commentators understood it, from var(-u-) ‘cover, protect’.^90 Ve ̃linas is primarily the god ...

these gods are also concerned with successful harvests and with protection from blight. As for healing gods, they do occur every ...

Merseburg spell (pp. 336 f.) –– but rather as a kind of shamanic figure. He presides over the poetic art, and he is associated w ...

neonates are no less precocious. Váli avenges Baldr at one day old (Vo ̨luspá 32; Baldrs draumar 11). When Thor is pinned down b ...

literatures of the Near East.^102 But it also appears in a number of other Indo- European traditions. In the Maha ̄bha ̄rata the ...

Getting about Gods often travel long distances, and they do so swiftly and efficiently, even as pedestrians. In several of the H ...

it, as birds. In the Rigveda, where the approach of deities is not a mythical datum but a liturgical desideratum, there is, I th ...

4, Pind. Ol. 1. 41); the compound híran ̇ yaratha‘gold-charioted’ (of Agni, RV 4. 1. 8) has equivalents in Avestan zaranyo ̄.v ...

human craftsman: although he makes things that no mortal could, such as robots to serve in the house, they are all such things a ...

is especially associated with the hosting of a feast at which the Dé Danann drank an ale that made them immortal and exempt from ...

back at least to the Neolithic period, and may be assumed in some degree for the Indo-Europeans. They pictured their gods anthro ...

be fed to the gods’ horses; they too need to be immortal. Mithra’s steeds likewise ‘are immortal, having been reared on supernat ...

explicit account the Soma’s guardian Kr ̇ s ́a ̄nu shot an arrow at the bird and sheared off one of its tail feathers –– an anal ...

an elaborate narrative telling how Garud ̇ a, the mighty king of birds, captured the Soma on behalf of the Snakes, but Indra got ...

to the Brahman poets. This esoteric knowledge must have included the ‘hidden names of the gods’ (RV 5. 5. 10, deva ̄ ́na ̄m gúhy ...

in effect a poetic thesaurus cast in literary form; the Know-all is the poet himself. The compiler of the Irish bardic grammar A ...

which they fought against the Olympian gods; a Homeric allusion (Il. 14. 203 f.) refers to Zeus’ setting Kronos below earth and ...

(5. 126. 40–6; cf. 8. 24. 120). Das ́aratha helped the gods in their war against the Asuras (Rm. 2. 9. 9–12). Norse myth told of ...

Those ones seeking by magic arts to creep up, Indra, and mount to heaven, the Dasyus, thou didst shake down. (8. 14. 14; cf. 1. ...