is especially associated with the hosting of a feast at which the Dé Danann
drank an ale that made them immortal and exempt from old age and dis-
ease.^120 This recalls Tvas
̇
t
̇r
̇’s and the R
̇bhus’ intimate connection with the
vessel or vessels that held the gods’ drink. In the Iliad (1. 597 f.) Hephaestus
appears as the cupbearer who plies the gods with draughts of nectar. We
cannot but suspect a common background to these stories.
Although there is no smith among the Æsir, the Edda does know of a
legendary smith Volund, of Lappish descent, not a god, but called álfa lióði or
vísi álfa, ‘prince of elves’ (Vo ̨lundarkviða 10. 3, 13. 4, 32. 2). He appears in Old
English poetry as We ̄land, and since the tenth century, at least, megalithic
barrows in southern England have been identified as Wayland’s Smithy. He
made famous weapons for heroes, such as Waldere’s sword Mimming and
Beowulf ’s coat of mail.^121 In the Vo ̨lundarkviða he is enslaved to a Swedish
king, kept on an island, and lamed to prevent his escape, but he overcomes his
master by cunning and escapes by flying. The story was well known in Eng-
land, as artistic evidence and literary allusions show.^122 The laming recalls
Hephaestus, while the escape from an island by flying is paralleled in another
Greek myth about an outstanding artificer: Daedalus, whom Minos detained
in Crete.^123
According to a Russian text of 1261, the gods to whom the Lithuanian
pagans sacrifice include ‘Telyavelik, the smith (кузнец) who forges the sun
... and sets it up in the sky’.^124 This seems to have been conceived as a daily
event. A series of Latvian folk songs refer to a celestial smith, working at his
forge in heaven, or sometimes in or beside the sea; the sparks fly, the cinders
fall to earth. He is making a crown for his sister, a crown, a gold belt, or a ring
for the Daughter of the Sun, spurs for the Sons of God, etc.^125
There is considerable diversity among these myths, and none of the smiths’
names is related to any other. The argument for a single mythical prototype
is not strong. As J. P. Mallory observes in a judicious entry in EIEC (139 f.),
‘deities specifically concerned with particular craft specializations may be
expected in any ideological system whose people have achieved an appropri-
ate level of social complexity’. On the other hand, craft specialization goes
(^120) Altram Tige Dá Medar in E. O’Curry, Atlantis 3 (1865), 385, 387 f.; W. Stokes,
RC 12 (1891), 61ff. §§96, 122; Book of Fermoy 111 f.; Acallam na Senórach pp. 180 and 191
Dooley–Roe.
(^121) Waldere A 2, cf. Waltharius 965 Wielandia fabrica;Beowulf 455.
(^122) See Dronke (1997), 269–71, 276–80.
(^123) On these motifs see Dronke (1997), 265–8. She points out that mythical smiths often have
some physical disability or deformity, and she sees the magical flight as a shamanistic element,
to which Volund’s Lappish origins are relevant. But the influence of the Daedalus myth (by way
of Ovid) is also possible.
(^124) Mannhardt (1936), 58–60, cf. 65–8. (^125) Jonval (1929), nos. 453–63.
156 3. Gods and Goddesses