or not at his will.  As soon as it was born, the child was laid upon the bare ground; and until the father came and looked at it, heard and saw that it was strong in lung and limb, lifted it in his arms, and handed it over to the women to be reared, its fate hung in the balance, and life or death depended on the sentence of its sire.  After it had passed safely through that ordeal, it was duly washed, signed with Thorns holy hammer, and solemnly received into the family.  If it were a weakly boy, and still more often, if it were a girl, no matter whether she were strong or weak, the infant was exposed to die by ravening beasts, or the inclemency of the climate.  Many instances occur of children so exposed, who, saved by some kindly neighbour, and fostered beneath a stranger’s roof, thus contracted ties reckoned still more binding than blood itself.  So long as his children remained under his roof, they were their father’s own.  When the sons left the paternal roof, they were emancipated, and when the daughters were married they were also free, but the marriage itself remained till the latest times a matter of sale and barter in deed as well as name.  The wife came into the house, in the patriarchal state, either stolen or bought from her nearest male relations; and though in later times when the sale took place it was softened by settling part of the dower and portion on the wife, we shall do well to bear in mind, that originally dower was only the price paid by the suitor to the father for his good will; while portion, on the other hand, was the sum paid by the father to persuade a suitor to take a daughter off his hands.  Let us remember, therefore, that in those times, as Odin was supreme in Asgard as the Great Father of Gods and men, so in his own house every father of the race that revered Odin was also sovereign and supreme.

In the second place, as the creed of the race was one that adored the Great Father as the God of Battles; as it was his will that turned the fight; nay, as that was the very way in which he chose to call his own to himself,—­it followed, that any appeal to arms was looked upon as an appeal to God.  Victory was indeed the sign of a rightful cause, and he that won the day remained behind to enjoy the rights which he had won in fair fight, but he that lost it, if he fell bravely and like a man, if he truly believed his quarrel just, and brought it without guile to the issue of the sword, went by the very manner of his death to a better place.  The Father of the Slain wanted him, and he was welcomed by the Valkyries, by Odin’s corse-choosers, to the festive board in Valhalla.  In every point of view, therefore, war and battle was a holy thing, and the Northman went to the battlefield in the firm conviction that right would prevail.  In modern times, while we appeal in declarations of war to the God of Battles, we do it with the feeling that war is often an unholy thing, and that Providence is not always on the side of strong battalions.  The Northman saw Providence on both sides.  It was good to live, if one fought bravely, but it was also good to die, if one fell bravely.  To live bravely and to die bravely, trusting in the God of Battles, was the warrior’s comfortable creed.