"Thor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... east of France by the roads of war, (God save us evermore from Mars and Thor!) Up and down the fair land iron armies came, (Pity, Jesu, all ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... Opposite the Brandenburger Thor our driver hitched the reins to the whip, climbed down, and came round to explain things to us. He pointed out the Thiergarten, and then descanted to us of the Reichstag House. He informed us of its exact height, length, and breadth, ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... Pannell, flourishing his hammer round as if he were a modern edition or an angry Thor; "does anyone say I telled on 'em? Did I tell on 'em, ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... hundred thousand, so ferocious is he in appearance; Khamisi and Kamna are before the drummers, back to back, kicking up ambitiously at the stars; Asmani,—the embodiment of giant strength,—a towering Titan,— has also a gun, with which he is dealing blows in the air, as if he were Thor, slaying myriads with his hammer. The scruples and passions of us all are in abeyance; we are contending demons under the heavenly light of the stars, enacting only the part of a weird drama, quickened into action and movement by the appalling energy ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... conversion to Christianity, the Saxons worshiped Woden and Thor, names preserved in Wednesday (Woden's day) and Thursday (Thor's day). The first appears to have been considered to be the creator and ruler of heaven and earth; the second was his son, the god of thunder, slayer of evil spirits, and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... bloodthirsty and hungry Matabele. On one of these occasions Baden-Powell was wounded. Having rounded off some cattle he was riding towards a party of niggers when he felt a sharp blow on his thigh as though Thor had given him a playful tap with his big hammer. He was bowled over, and thinking that he must have charged into the stump of a tree turned round to have a look at it; but there was no tree. Then he realised that he had only been struck with a lead-covered ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... About the Florian's Thor, with its round towers of old, sorrel-colored brick, and the Czartoryski Museum, there is nothing to say that the guide-book would not say better. In the museum, a tattered Polish flag of red silk, with the white eagle, a cheerful bird with curled ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... a piece of unparalleled audacity. To turn, as it were, just before the dissolution of his army, and cross a wide and deep river full of ice, in the dead of winter, and strike, like the hammer of Thor, upon his unwary foe, rudely disturbing his complacent dreams, was a conception of exceeding brilliancy, and it at once stamped Washington as a military genius of the first order. And with such an army ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... right cut the sign of the cross above it, then drank a draught. "Yes; but what is this with the king's right hand?" cried the company. "Don't you see?" answered shifty Sigurd; "he makes the sign of Thor's hammer before drinking!" which quenched ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... the Cook is merely a development of the magic cudgel which in so many stories (e.g. the sixth of the Calmuck tales) is often exchanged for other treasures by its master, to whom it soon returns—it being itself a degraded form of the hammer of Thor, the lance of Indra, which always came back to the divine ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... facts I have endeavoured to put into chronological order above. For example, Roman London, when walled, was a Christian city. When the Saxons had held it from about 457 to 609, it was, we know, a heathen city, and twice afterwards returned to the worship of Woden and Thor. Is this compatible with the survival of a Roman constitution? Or, again, is there any London custom or law which might not have come to it from the cities of Flanders and Gaul more easily than after ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... the Moon: "I looked down upon the great plain covered with coarse grass, and upon the barren fields. I mirrored my face in the Tyris river, while the steamboat drove the fish into the rushes. Beneath me floated the waves, throwing long shadows on the so-called graves of Odin, Thor, and Friga. In the scanty turf that covers the hill-side names have been cut.[1] There is no monument here, no memorial on which the traveller can have his name carved, no rocky wall on whose surface ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the Isle of Man. Once he had been King of the Cats of Ireland and Britain, of Norway and Denmark, and the whole Northern and Western World. But after the Norsemen won in the wars the Cats of Norway and Britain swore by Thor and Odin that they would give him no more allegiance. So for a hundred years and a day he had got allegiance only from the Cats of the Western World; that is, from Ireland and ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... and opposite the guard-house by the Bohmer-Thor of Neiss, some thirty men were lounging about in their undress, and the Frenchman stood near the sentinel of the guard-house, sharpening a wood hatchet on a stone. At the stroke of twelve, he got up, split open the sentinel's head with a blow of his axe, and the thirty men, rushing into the guard-house, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and bars" of our sturdy tars as gallantly shall wave As long shall live in the storied page, or the spirit-stirring stave, As hath the red cross of St. George or the raven-flag of Thor, Or flag of the sea, whate'er it be, that ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... with various forms of idolatry." Were it our object, it could also be shown that tree worship has been combined with Christianity. The rowan tree was held sacred by the Druids, and is often found among their stone monuments. There is a northern legend that the god of thunder (Thor), when wading the river Vimar, was in danger of being swept away by its current, but that, grasping a tree which grew on the bank, he got safely across. This tree was the mountain ash, which was ever after held sacred; and when these ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... worshiped Jupiter and Apollo, and who were themselves worshipping the Christian God, Madonna and the great saints, had no spiritual affinity with men whose ancestors could conceive of no Deities higher than Thor, Odin and the other rough, crude, and unmannered denizens of the Northern Walhalla. So Italy stood by Civilization. Her risk was great, but great shall be her guerdon in the approval of her own conscience ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... have happened as they should, my lord; But pardon Thorer that he does not come And bring himself King Olaf's head to thee— 'Twas difficult for him. Thor knows he had A sort of loathing that himself should bring it, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... soul at last is truly great That was not greatly true at first; In childhood's play are seeds of fate Whose flower in manhood's work shall burst. In the clinched fist of baby Thor Might seem his hammer ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... developing the spiritual sense. I do not say that such people have not got souls, but if they get to Heaven at all it will be in the form of granitoid nuts, and the angels will have to crack them with a Thor hammer before they can find the thing that they ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... These best localize the legends in which they appear; for which most parts of Hanover and the Cimbric Chersonesus suit indifferently, the Frisian portions pre-eminently, well. The more exalted mythology of Woden, Thor, and Balder, so generally considered to have been all-pervading in Germany and Scandinavia, finds no place in Beowulf. Our Devil and the Devil's Dam are rough analogues of Nick ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... hammer of Thor was in the form of the cross; see in Herbert's Select Icelandic Poetry, p. 11., and Laing's Kings of Norway, vol. i. pp. 224. 330., a curious anecdote of King Hacon, who, having been converted to Christianity, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... and said: "I am free-born, and never will I yield. I killed the forest chief, and honour is mine for the deed. All power is noble—Thor who hurls the thunderbolts is noble, although Odin is king of the gods. So free-born men shall never yield though kings are on the throne. In Thor's kingdom, where all strength is, worth is king, not lineage. The sword ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... no more," retorted the old man, "since we have washed ourselves in the Name of another than the mighty Thor, and taken up the weakly worship of the conquered. So my son would have it! He talked of a new Valhal of the Christian; but let him meet me where he will, he shall not reproach me that he only of all his brethren died unavenged. Where is the slayer? Set him before ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in by the most cultured and scientific peoples in the past, for it was an article of belief in Egypt and Chaldea. The Jews had regard for their phylacteries, and the Greeks and Romans had their amulets. The image of Thor was an amulet peculiar to the old Norsemen; and in Britain ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden,[219] courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Hungarian, "who makes the gypsies speak Roth-Welsch, the dialect of thieves; a pretty historian, who couples together Thor and Tzernebock." ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... their duties and treating my instructions with contempt. A curious thing about his prophecies is their confirmation of Adam's fears as to the ultimate result of these new-fangled ideas as to dress, and, what interested me more than anything else, he predicted a machine called a Moh-Thor-Cah, that not only runs along without outside assistance, but is propelled entirely by the same vapor that I have spoken of before as striking the high C in the nozzle of my tea-kettle. He goes too ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... Thor made the black cliffs, the battlements of England, Climbing to Tintagel where the white gulls wheel. Cold are the caverns there, and sullen as a cannon-mouth, Booming back the grey swell ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Opimian. In the Scandinavian mythology: one of the most poetical of all mythologies. I have a great respect for Odin and Thor. Their adventures have always delighted me; and the system was admirably adapted to foster the high spirit of a military people. Lucan has a ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... tectorum).—Also called Sin-green, or some word so sounding. It is not permitted to blow upon the roof on which it grows, for fear of ill-luck, which is strange, as it has been Jupiter's beard, Thor's beard, and St. George's beard, and in Germany is ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... original British pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. The flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. Festival fires to Thor and Woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the strong man?" In other words: How can I heal the body, without beginning with so-called 400:1 mortal mind, which directly controls the body? When disease is once destroyed in this so-called mind, the fear 400:3 of disease is gone, and therefore the disease is thor- oughly cured. Mortal mind is "the strong man," which must be held in subjection before its influence upon health 400:6 and morals can be removed. This error conquered, we can despoil "the strong man" of his goods, - ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... umbrageous trees; you might almost suppose it an earl's home; and such it was, or rather upon its site stood an earl's home, in days of old, for there some old Kemp, some Sigurd or Thorkild, roaming in quest of a hearthstead, settled down in the gray old time, when Thor and Freya were yet gods, and Odin was a portentous name. Yon old hall is still called the Earl's Home, though the hearth of Sigurd is now no more, and the bones of the old Kemp, and of Sigrith his dame, have been mouldering for a thousand years in some neighbouring knoll; perhaps yonder, where ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... point of attack, in the former siege under Soliman, had been the gate of Carinthia, (Kaernther-Thor,) and the adjoining bastions; but the weight of the Turkish fire on the land side was now directed principally against the Castle-Gate, (Burg-Thor,) lying to the left of the former, and against the curtain between the Castle bastion and that of Loebel; and on the river side from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... to the shaven men, Who neither lust nor smite, Thunder of Thor, we hunt you A hare on the ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... gardens, orchards, small villages, and compact little towns, in most of which the diligent antiquary will find something of interest—a modest belfry, perhaps, with a romance of its own; a parish church, whose foundations were laid long ago in ground dedicated, in the distant past, to the worship of Thor or Woden; or the remains, it may be, of a mediaeval castle, from which some worthy knight, whose name is forgotten except in local traditions, rode away ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... however, for having been written "within two paces of his ninetieth year," and as showing the course of the mind's empire. Landor would have been more heroic than these Idyls had he withheld them from publication, for it is not cheering to see Thor cracking nuts with his most ponderous hammer. And Landor realized as much when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the Heptarchy back again. Well, at any rate, I revoke what I said this morning—that you Milton people did not reverence the past. You are regular worshippers of Thor.' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and it is with this Parsifal that Wagner's last work is concerned. Parsifal, like Siegfried, represents free human nature in its spontaneous, impulsive action. He is styled in the text, "Der reine Thor" (the guileless fool), who, in consonance with the old mythological idea, overcomes the evil principle and gains the crown by dint of pure natural impulse. The opera differs widely from "The Nibelung Ring." The composer has ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... veneration of men. But this is an extravagance not supported by more thorough research. He has further shown with great aptness of illustration how, by its dread effects, the lightning, the heavenly serpent, became the god of terror and the opponent of such heroes as Beowulf, St. George, Thor, Perseus, and others, mythical representations of the fearful war of the elements in the thunder storm; how from its connection with the advancing summer and fertilizing showers it bore the opposite character of the deity of fruitfulness, riches, and plenty; ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... incapable of yielding poetry. We can, indeed, no longer call the sun a god and construct myths of Phoebus, nor can we seriously picture the moon descending to dally with Endymion. We can no longer see Hamadryads in the oaks or Naiads in the streams. We do not hear Zeus or Thor in the thunderclap, nor recognize in volcanic eruptions the struggles of imprisoned Titans breathing flame. But what of that? Does the essence of poetry lie at all in myths and superstitions? Because we know ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... last upon the sun, the one in the ancestral homestead under the eyes of love, the other in a distant land among strange faces, behold the wind of Thor, and out of the deep of heaven the white horses of Odin, All-Father, bearing Valkyrie, shining messengers of Valhalla. And those two world-worn women, faithful in all their lives, were caught up ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... coming," said Lan-O, "none other dares enter thus, with blaring trumpets, the city of Manator. It is U-Thor, Jed of Manatos, second city of Manator. They call him The Great Jed the length and breadth of Manator, and because the people love him, O-Tar hates him. They say, who know, that it would need but slight provocation to inflame the two to war. How such a war would ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... this glen, where Lord Normanby's lovely woods make a background for the pretty tiled cottages, the mill, and the old stone bridge, which make up East Row,[1] that the Saxons chose a home for their god Thor. Here they built some rude form of temple, afterwards, it seems, converted into a hermitage. This was how the spot obtained the name Thordisa, a name it retained down to 1620, when the requirements ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... call it boyish if we will, but its boyishness is like that of 'Titus Andronicus'. Each is the work of a young giant who in learning the use of his hammer lays about him somewhat wildly and makes a tremendous hubbub. But Thor is Thor, and such boys ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... other than they are by lecturing them. This scion of a long line of lawless bloods—a Scandinavian Berserker, if there ever was one—the literary heir of the Eddas—was specially created to wage that war—to smite the conventionality which is the tyrant of England with the hammer of Thor, and to sear with the sarcasm of Mephistopheles the hollow hypocrisy—sham taste, sham morals, sham religion—of the society by which he was surrounded and infected, and which all but succeeded in seducing him. But ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... was settled between him and Gunnlaug. The night before Thord made vows to Thor for the victory; but the next day, when they met, they fell-to wrestling. Then Gunnlaug tripped both feet from under Thord, and gave him a. great fall; but the foot that Gunnlaug stood on was put out of joint, and Gunnlaug fell ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... come to Britain were heathen, and believed in many false gods: the Sun, to whom they made Sunday sacred, as Monday was to the moon, Wednesday to a great terrible god, named Woden, and Thursday to a god named Thor, or Thunder. They thought a clap of thunder was the sound of the great hammer he carried in his hand. They thought their gods cared for people being brave, and that the souls of those who died fighting gallantly in battle ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... adventures,—having killed the giant Ymir, and made out of his body Heaven and Earth,—proceeded to form a man and woman named Ask and Embla. Chaos having thus disappeared, Odin became the All-Father, creator of gods and men, with Earth for his wife, and the powerful Thor for his oldest son. So much for the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the Herculean structure of a Jersey mosquito, I am developing a 56-lung-power voice, and I need practice, as I am to be the only student-rooter at the game tomorrow! Q.E.D.! And as for any Bannister student, except perhaps Theophilus Opperdyke and Thor, desiring to investigate the interiors of their lexicons tonight, I prithee, just periscope ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... a pile of dumb-bells, a regiment of clubs, and a pyramid of bean-bags, and stirring nervously among them a foreign-looking gentleman, the new leader of a class lately formed by Dr. Thor Turner, whose mission it was to strengthen the world's spine, and convert it to a belief in air and exercise, by setting it to balancing its poles and spinning merrily, while enjoying the "Sun-cure" on a large scale. His advent formed ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... city-bred angel," he cried heartily. "You will answer your own question inside of two days. No doubt I'm going to grow jealous of old Vulcan and Thor and Majesty. Sure, I've named them," he chuckled. "And you'll come with me into their dim cathedral to-morrow at dusk and listen with me to their old sermon. A man ought to go to church to them at least once a year, to keep his soul cleaned out ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... offences, and on the other to speak in this kindly manner on all matters, in spite of your this day having us and all our concerns in your power even as it pleases you. Now, as for myself, I shall receive the faith in Norway on that understanding alone that I shall give some little worship to Thor the next winter when I get back to Iceland." Then the king said and smiled, "It may be seen from the mien of Kjartan that he puts more trust in his own weapons and strength than in Thor and Odin." Then ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... goddesses? Ye have shivered mountains asunder, made the hard iron pliant to you as soft putty; the forest-giants— marsh-jotuns—bear sheaves of golden grain; AEgir—the Sea-Demon himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on Firehorses and Windhorses ye career. Ye are most strong. Thor, red-bearded, with his blue sun-eyes, with his cheery heart and strong thunder-hammer, he and you have prevailed. Ye are most strong, ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, far marching from your rugged Eastern Wildernesses, hitherward from the gray dawn of Time! ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... earth, and is the source of light and fruitfulness, the spirit of the world, and the All-father (Alfadhir). From the union of heaven and earth, there springs the god Thunar or Donar among the Germans, Thor among the Norsemen, the bold god of thunder who wages war against the enemies of gods and men. Besides these there are the sons of Wodan, Fro (German), Freyx (Norse), the god of peace, Zio (German), Tyx (Norse), ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... for pleaders, They boasted of their war, The pitiless bright-eyed leaders, And their battle-god was Thor. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... to know much about acting, either, though of course it's better if they happen to. The best stage-lover I ever knew, and the one that played in the most successes, did happen to understand acting thor—" ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... promised by their priests, and the old beliefs, wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead. Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the icy halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains to the earth no more. Broken are the circles and cromlechs of the ancient Druids; fallen upon the summits of the hills, and covered with the centuries' moss, are the sacred cairns. The divine fires ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to bed at night. I have been charmed myself with some of the wild little superstitions which he has adduced from Blefkenius, Scheffer, and others, such as those of the Laplanders about the domestic spirits which wake them at night, and summon them to go and fish; of Thor, the deity of thunder, who has power of life and death, health and sickness, and who, armed with the rainbow, shoots his arrows at those evil demons that live on the tops of rocks and mountains, and infest the lakes; of the Jubles or Juhlafolket, vagrant troops of spirits, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... autocracy can make no peace which is not a "German peace," which does not mean that the Emperor and the generals can ride through the Brandenburger Thor to celebrate the conclusion of what may be ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... William Grey's official papers, aided by his fluent German, enabled us to pass the barriers, and find our way into the city. He went straight to the Embassy, and sent me on to the 'Erzherzog Carl' in the Karnthner Thor Strasse, at that time the best hotel in Vienna. It being still nearly dark, candles were burning in every window ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Charibert, a fervent Christian woman. A few priests came with her to England, and the king gave them a ruined Christian edifice, the Church of St. Martin, outside the walls of Canterbury, for their worship. But it was overshadowed by a pagan temple, and the worship of Odin and Thor ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the "wizard-age", as the wizards had ended the monster or "giant-age". That they were identic with the classic gods he is inclined to believe, but his difficulty is that in the week-days we have Jove : Thor; Mercury : Woden; whereas it is perfectly well known that Mercury is Jove's son, and also that Woden is the father of Thor—a comic "embarras". That the persians the heathens worshipped as gods existed, and that they were men and women false and powerful, Saxo plainly believes. He ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... almost as abruptly as it had begun. The hammers of Thor that were trying to pound my lonely little prairie-house to pieces were withdrawn, the tumult stopped, and the light grew stronger. Whinstane Sandy even roused himself and moved toward the door, which he opened with the hand of a sleep-walker, and stood staring ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... are to be found in some of the sayings. A curse still existing says, "May Perun (i. e., the lightning) strike thee." The god Perun, the Thunderer, resembles Thor, and like him carries a hammer. He has been transformed into Elijah, the prophet Ilya, the rumbling of whose chariot as he rolls through heaven, especially on the week in summer when his festival falls, may be heard in thunder. There is a dismal custom by which the children ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... sign He made of the cross divine, As he drank, and muttered his prayers; But the Berserks evermore Made the sign of the Hammer of Thor ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... attention must be directed to the country over which he reigned, and which will be noticed in connection with Denmark; these two countries forming a greater part of the ancient Scandinavia, from which our Teutonic ancestors migrated, the land of Odin, and Frea, and Thor, those half-fabulous deities, concerning whom there are still divided opinions; some supposing that they were heroes, and others, impersonations of virtues, or elements and wonders of nature. The mythology of Greece does not more fully abound with gods and goddesses, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... not improbable that some of my readers may take a summer's trip to the Orkney Islands; let me ask them to wait at Thurso—the old town of Thor—for a handsome little steamer that leaves there three times a week for Kirkwall. It is the sole property of Captain Geordie Twatt, was a gift from an old friend in California, and ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Nature was to them no kind foster-mother, but a cruel stepmother, training them by stern discipline to battle with her and the world. 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 ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... hid there (on the mountain top) in the shadow of the moon. We left there an acorn yet green in its cup, We left also a firchatt upon the great stone hurled by Thor; To a fir branch we tied with a fine whang drawn from a bear we slew The wing feather of an eagle which span towards us, Yet it fell not to the earth, we twain caught it, The one by the quill, the other by ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... may here be made to the mythological explanation of the ebb and flow given in the Edda. Utgardloki says to Thor (Gylfaginning 48): "When thou wert drinking out of the horn, and it seemed to thee that it was slow in emptying a wonder befell, which I should not have believed possible: the other end of the horn lay in ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the night The rush and the clamour; The pulse of the fight Like blows of Thor's hammer; The pattering flight Of the leaves, and the anguished Moan of the ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... that the imagination of the people preserved more of heathendom than even such missionaries could approve; mixing up the deeds of the Christian saints with old heroic legends; seeing Balder's beauty in Christ and the strength of Thor in Samson; attributing magic to S. John; swearing, as of old, bloody oaths in God's name, over the gilded boar's-head; burning the yule-log, and cutting sacred boughs to grace ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... remember the religion of the Germans because four days of the week are named for their gods or the gods of their neighbors across the Baltic. Their principal god was Wodan, or Odin, god of the sun and the tempest. Wodan's day is Wednesday. Thursday is named for Thor, the Northmen's god of thunder. The god of war, Tiw, gave a name to Tuesday, and Frigu, the goddess of love, to Friday. The German, like his northern neighbors, thought of heaven as the place where brave warriors who had died in battle spent ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... AND POETRY. The works we have just considered were wholly pagan in spirit, but all reference to Thor or other gods was excluded by the monks who first ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... heavy static gun ready, walked at Asher's back. They came out into another cavern that stretched beyond the powerful lights. The sound of their voices echoed like thunder of the drums of Thor, and Asher realized this cavern might stretch away in Stygian blackness ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... of all nations are traced to a common fountain,—Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, Fortunio, Fortunatus, Jack the Giant-Killer; tales, like proverbs, equally familiar, under different versions, to the infant worshippers of Budh and the hardier children of Thor. I may say, without vanity, that in an examination in those venerable classics I could have ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... common-sense rules enforced with firmness by college faculties, it gives the maximum of healthful exercise, with a minimum of danger. The most detestable product of college life is the sickly cynic; and a thor- ough course in boating, under a good stroke oar, does as much as anything to make ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... old town by the Burg-thor, and crossing the Esplanade, directed our course to the Rennweg, one of the suburbs, in order to view the majestic edifice of St Charles, which is equal in the beauty of its architecture to many of the finest churches in Rome. Its facade and cupola render it one of the most striking buildings ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed one whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple habitation—one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed there. Suddenly, in the dead of the night, loud voices alarmed them. Thor grasped his hammer, and stood in the doorway, prepared for fight. His companions within ran hither and thither, in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall: they found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... vessel's side, and pulled Manetho out of the jaws of death,—a fact, by the way, of which Manetho remained ignorant until his dying day. With this new arrival, Helen's supremacy in the household ends. Thor—so they call him—involuntarily commands her, and so her subjects. Against him, the Reverend Manetho has not the ghost of a chance. To his credit is it that he conceals whatever emotions of disappointment or jealousy he might be supposed to feel, and is no less winning towards ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the partisan of "divine right," and, like the King, regards with satisfaction that hierarchical feudalism from which they are both derived. He is noble, and believes in nobility. He believes also in force, as if he had the blood of the god Thor. He believes in war, and does not hesitate to throw its "iron dice," insisting upon the rigors of the game. As the German question began to lower, his policy was most persistent. "Not by speeches and votes ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... Gemaehlde. In diesem Gang oder Halle (porticu) stehen die Weiber, und kommen nicht in die Kirchen hinein, wie auch in andere Kirchen nicht, als wann sie zum Abendmahl gehen. 2. ist die Kirche fuer sich so mit Tuerckischen Deppichen (aoreis) beleget und hat nur ein Thor. Ist ein hohes Gewoelb (laquearia) und wie auch die ueberige 2 Gewoelbe (laquearia) ganz vergueldet und uebermahlet, und die Waende von unten an biss an die Schwibboegen mit dem schoensten Marmelstein ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... is still pagan, and though the king himself is baptized, there is no certainty that, if the Christian faith do not suit his taste, he may not join the heathen party and return to the worship of Thor and Tyr, where deeds of blood would be not blameworthy, but a passport to the rude joys of Valhall. Nevertheless there is a pastoral staff across the doorway, barring the way of the king, and that staff is held against him by an Englishman, William, Bishop of Roskilde, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gave a signal to the Crown-Prince to take the Queen away. Scarcely were they out of the room, when the faint had deepened into death; and Friedrich Wilhelm, at rest from all his labors, slept with the primeval sons of Thor. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... "Thor broke them," Olaf said. "He rides through the sky and hurls his hammer at clouds and at mountains. That makes the thunder and the lightning and cracks the hills. His hammer never misses its aim, and it always comes back to his hand and is eager to ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... vision of the Mother Earth, the spirit that sleeps amongst the everlasting hills. Finally the composer gets his great chance, and shows that, like Handel and his own Donner, he "could strike like a thunderbolt." The gods are all disheartened; mists have gathered; Donner—our old friend Thor—raises his hammer and smashes something; there is a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder; the mists and clouds clear away; and we see there the rainbow bridge over which the gods wend on their way to Valhalla. We have Wagner the sublime pictorial ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Wodin and Thor had ceased to satisfy the expanding soul of the Anglo-Saxon; and the new faith rapidly spread; its charm consisting in the light it seemed to throw upon the darkness encompassing man's ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... curse the little speech I was preparing about the brotherhood of El-Islam and the mutual duties obligatory on true believers. I then turned away slowly and fiercely, for the next thing might have been a cut with the Kurbaj [bastinado], and by the hammer of Thor! British flesh and blood could never ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... of the Norseman, the Nirvana of the Hindu, the Heaven of the Christian are natural hopes of beings whose cares and disappointments here are softened by belief that somewhere, Thor, Brahma ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... predecessors and successors. The reason he alleges in excusing the legates whom he sent to Constantinople for their want of eloquence, because the graces of speech could not be cultivated amidst the incursions of barbarians, while with much difficulty they earned Thor daily subsistence by manual labor; "But we preserve," said he, with simplicity of heart, "the faith, which our fathers have handed down to us." The bishops, his legates, say the same thing: "Our countries are harassed by the fury of barbarous nations. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... descendants of Thor, christianised to human industries. Here the great hammer of the Scandinavian Thunderer descended, took nest, and hatched a brood of ten thousand little iron beetles for beating iron and steel into shapes and uses that Tubal Cain never ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... which had the strength To shove that stranded iceberg off our shores, And send the shatter'd North again to sea, Scuttle his cockle-shell? What's Brunanburg To Stamford-bridge? a war-crash, and so hard, So loud, that, by St. Dunstan, old St. Thor— By God, we thought him dead—but our old Thor Heard his own thunder again, and woke and came Among us again, and mark'd the sons of those Who made this Britain England, ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... idea of Nono's being whipped seemed to have made them uncommonly sober. Sven went into the cottage to look among his treasures for something with which to console Nono on his return from the shore. Thor was walking up and down, giving defiant looks at the twins for their want of sympathy with Nono in his humiliation. There was a sorrowful shadow over the whole family group that evening not common at ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... thar, old man Parks an' the rest of 'em whistles him through the marital chute a heap successful. When he shows up among us, his blushin' Peggy bride on his arm, he's wearin' all the brands an' y'ear marks of a thor'ughly married man; to sech degrees, ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Gjallar Trumpet, never heard Before by Gods or mortals: from their feast The everlasting synod of the Gods Rush forth, gold-armed, with chariot and with horse: First rides the Father of the flock divine, Odin, our King, and, at his right hand, Thor Whose thunder hammer splits the mountain crags And level lays the summits of the world; Heimdall and Bragi, Uller, Njord, and Tyr, Behind them throng; with these the concourse huge Of lesser Gods, and Heroes snatched from earth, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... field of action had the sway of the ancient deities been more identified than with that of atmospheric phenomena. The Roman heard Jupiter, and the Teuton heard Thor, in the thunder. Could it be doubted that these powerful beings would now take occasion, unless hindered by the command of the Almighty, to vent their spite against those who had deserted their altars? Might not the Almighty ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... be seen on the face of the rocks in the Wady Maghara sacrificing his Asiatic prisoners, now before the jackal Anubis, now before the ibis-headed Thot. The gods reaped advantage from his activity and riches; he restored the temple of Ha-thor at Den-dera, embellished that of Bubastis, built a stone sanctuary to the Isis of the Sphinx, and consecrated there gold, silver, bronze, and wooden statues of Horus, Nephthys, Selkit, Phtah, Sokhit, Osiris, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... he sprang upon his feet With the flames on every side. "I am coming!" said the king, "Where the swords and bucklers ring— Where the warrior lives again With the souls of mighty men— I am coming, great All-Father, Unto Thee! Unto Odin, unto Thor, And the strong, true hearts of yore— I am coming to Valhalla, O'er ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... of your faith?" I said. "Neot asked me of mine. As for the other, I do not know rightly what it means. I see your people sign themselves crosswise, and I cannot tell why, unless it is as we hallow a feast by signing it with Thor's hammer." ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... centuries are seen in the full midday light of history, in Britain they have lapsed into the twilight of half-legendary tradition. The Saxon and English tribes, coming from the remote wilds of northern Germany, whither Roman missionaries had not yet penetrated, still worshipped Thor and Wodan; and their conquest of Britain was effected with such deadly thoroughness that Christianity was destroyed there, or lingered only in sequestered nooks. A land once christianized thus actually fell back into paganism, so that the work ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... a majority of instances, long before the Cross rose above these sites, they had been the sacred places of faith after faith. Sun-worshippers, Nature-worshippers, Druids, votaries of Jove and Venus, servants of Odin, Thor and Friga, early Christians who were half one thing and half another, all have here bowed their brows to earth in adoration of God as they understood Him, and in these hallowed spots lies mingled the dust of every one ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Denmark's church stands—the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes gained in the war against the Danes. We follow the broad high road: it leads us close past Upsala's old hills—Odin's, Thor's and Freia's graves, as they ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... Now, by axe of Odin, and hammer of Thor, And by all the gods of the Viking's war, I swear we have quitted our homes in vain: We have nothing to look to, glory nor gain. Will our galley return to Norway's shore With heavier gold, or with costlier ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... upon a long line of ancestors. They can, without abusing the license permitted to genealogists, go back to the time when the English did not inhabit England, when London, like Paris, was peopled by latinised Celts, and when the ancestors of the puritans sacrificed to the god Thor. The novelists indeed can show that the beginning of their history is lost in the abysm of time. They can recall the fact that the Anglo-Saxons, when they came to dwell in the island of Britain, brought with them songs and legends, whence was evolved the strange ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... apples, and of her wise husband Bragi (Nature's musician). When storm-clouds loomed up from the horizon and darkened the sky, and thunder rolled overhead, and lightning flashed on every hand, they talked about the mighty Thor riding over the clouds in his goat-drawn chariot, and battling with the giants of the air. When the mountain-meadows were green with long grass, and the corn was yellow for the sickles of the reapers, they spoke of Sif, the golden-haired wife of Thor, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo, Arles and Ravenna listened with reverence to the instructions of Bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing savage rites in the temples of Thor and Woden." ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... Artilleria" ms., Milan 1592, and Diego Ufano, Artillerie, n. p., 1621, have detailed information on sixteenth century guns, and Tomas de Morla, Laminas pertenecientes al Tratado de Artilleria, Madrid, 1803, illustrates eighteenth century material. Thor Borresen, "Spanish Guns and Carriages, 1686-1800" ms., Yorktown, 1938, summarizes eighteenth century changes in Spanish and French artillery. Information on colonial use of cannon can be found in mss. of the Archivo General de Indias as follows: Inventories of Castillo de San Marcos ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... Ahriman, the Hindus called him Siva. He was represented on canvas as a mythological combination of Thor and Cerberus and Pan and Vulcan and other horrible addenda. I do not care what you call him, that monster of evil is abroad, and his one work is destruction. John Milton almost glorified him by witchery of description, but he is the concentration of all ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Thor, accompanied by Thialfi and Loke, his servants, entered upon Giantland, and wandered over plains—wild uncultivated places—among stones and trees. At nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the matchless tales of All-Father Odin, who crosses the Rainbow Bridge to walk among men in Midgard and sacrifices his right eye to drink from the Well of Wisdom; of Thor, whose mighty hammer defends Asgard; of Loki, whose mischievous cunning leads him to treachery against the gods; of giants, dragons, dwarfs and Valkyries; and of the terrible last battle that ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... at once seem apparent, and before they had time to wonder at it, Dale, who now was leading, turned in the path and glared at them. His eyes were as stern as those of a wrathful god, and his lips as resolute as Thor. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... most part of barren moors, almost destitute of trees. It presents a gradual slope from the north and east up to the heights in the south and west, where the chief mountains are Morven (2313 ft.), Scaraben (2054 ft.) and Maiden Pap (1587 ft.). The principal rivers are the Thurso ("Thor's River"), which, rising in Cnoc Crom Uillt (1199 ft.) near the Sutherlandshire border, pursues a winding course till it reaches the sea in Thurso Bay; the Forss, which, emerging from Loch Shurrery, follows a generally northward direction and enters the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... be the day of Mars, who, in the Scandinavian theology, is represented by Tuisco; so Tuisco's day, or Tuesday (Mardi), follows Monday. Then, by following the same system, we come to Mercury's day (Mercredi), Woden's day, or Wednesday; next to Jupiter's day, Jove's day (Jeudi), Thor's day, or Thursday; to Venus's day, Vendredi (Veneris dies), Freya's day, or Friday, and so to Saturday again. That the day devoted to the most evil and most powerful of all the deities of the Sabdans (sic) should be set apart—first as one on which ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... agitatedly: "Yes," he cried; "I will weld the workers of Germany—to gain their ends they must fuse all their wills into one—none of these acrid, petty, mutually-destructive individualities of the bourgeois—one gigantic hammer, and I will be the Thor who wields it." His veins swelled, he seemed indeed a Teutonic god. "And therefore I must have Dictator's rights," he went on. "I will not accept the Presidency to be the mere ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... its details. The days of the week should mean for them what they did mean, should come with a veritable personality, such as the sun and the moon gained for them by thus having actual names, like friends and playfellows. This Thor's-day was an especially great day for them; for, in the evening, when George had returned from business, and there was yet an hour to bedtime, they would come round him to hear one of the adventures of the great Thor—adventures ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... on the stone. There was a roar of tortured air from overhead and a thundering sound that was unlike anything except the tearing of an infinity of cloth combined with a sustained explosion of atomic bombs. Then it seemed as if the thunderbolt of Thor himself had blasted ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... edge of the escarpment with Poynings just below to the right is very beautiful; away to the south-west is an eminence called "Thunder's Barrow," probably Thor's Barrow; at the lower end of the Dyke is the Devil's Punch Bowl, here are two more barrows "The Devil's Grave" and "The Devil's ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... about ten o'clock in the morning. The town was stormed through the Hagenauer Thor by the Bavarians. After that we still held the Geisberg and the Chateau. You should have seen it when we left it. I'll say it was a butcher's shambles. I'd say more if Mademoiselle de Nesville were not here." He was trying ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... prevail, love reign, humanity rise, and a golden age come back again to a world-wide Arcadia. Fat and Anti-Fat! Eros and Anteros, Strophe and Antistrophe. Or, better, the old primeval tale,—Jove and the Titans, Theseus and the Centaurs, Bellerophon and the Chimaera, Thor and the Giants, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Good and Evil, Water and Fire, Light and Darkness. The world has told ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... polkas, and opera medleys. Then there is the church music on Sundays and holidays, which is largely of a military character; at least, has the aid of drums and trumpets, and the whole band of brass. For the first few days of our stay here we had rooms near the Maximilian Platz and the Karl's Thor. I think there was some sort of a yearly fair in progress, for the great platz was filled with temporary booths: a circus had set itself up there, and there were innumerable side-shows and lottery-stands; and I believe that each little shanty and puppet-show ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the great ones of Olympus, Hermes and Hephaestus, Athene in her armour, with her vanquisher the foam-born irresistible Aphrodite, these remain the authentic gods of our literature, beside whom the gods of northern Europe—Odin, Thor, Freya—are strangers, unhomely, uncanny as the shadows of unfamiliar furniture on the walls of an inn. Sprung though great numbers of us are from the loins of Northmen, it is in these gracious deities of the South that we find the familiar and the real, as from the heroes of the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... observe how apt we are to deceive ourselves when we once adopt this system of Onomatopoieia. Who does not imagine that he hears in the word 'thunder' an imitation of the rolling and rumbling noise which the old Germans ascribed to their god Thor playing at nine-pins? Yet thunder is clearly the same word as the Latin tonitru. The root is tan, to stretch. From this root tan we have in Greek tonos, our tone, tone being produced by the stretching and vibrating of cords. In Sanskrit the sound ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in common the traditions of a grand mythology, the central figure of which is a demigod or hero, who, while he is always great, consistent, and benevolent, and never devoid of dignity, presents traits which are very much more like those of Odin and Thor, with not a little of Pantagruel, than anything in the characters of the Chippewa Manobozho, or the Iroquois Hiawatha. The name of this divinity is Glooskap, meaning, strangely enough, the Liar, because it is said that when he left earth, like King Arthur, for Fairyland, he promised to return, and ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... of the avenue, the Russian evoked the ruddy figures of the implacable gods, that were going to awake that night upon hearing the hum of arms and smelling the acrid odor of blood. Thor, the brutal god with the little head, was stretching his biceps and clutching the hammer that crushed cities. Wotan was sharpening his lance which had the lightning for its handle, the thunder for its blade. Odin, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... yourself to observe detail. Looks to me like the type on a 'Thor' machine. Try the Thor Co. first. If not there, go to every typewriter firm in Paris until it matches.... Go to the offices of the Compagnie Transatlantique and get a list of sailings on the Cherbourg-Quebec route. Give no name.... Meanwhile, 'phone your ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... fight Angel, angel Angela, angel Angelica, lovely, angelic Angelina, angel Angelletta, a messenger Angelot, angel Anisia, complete Ann, grace Anna, grace Annabel, grace Annabella, grace Annaple, grace Anne, grace Annette, grace Annice, grace Annor, grace Annora, eagle of Thor Annie, grace Anstace, resurrection Antoinette, small Antonia Antonia, inestimable Antonina, inestimable Arabella, eagle heroine Arbella, God hath avenged Athaliah, time for God Auda, rich Augusta, female Augustus Aurelia, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... name did hide. Then I taught them the craft of metals, and the sailing of the sea, And the taming of the horse-kind, and the yoke-beasts' husbandry, And the building up of houses; and that race of men went by, And they said that Thor had taught them; and a smithying-carle was I. Then I gave their maidens the needle and I bade them hold the rock, And the shuttle-race gaped for them as they sat at the weaving-stock. But by then ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... the English were pagans, having a religion of beliefs rather than of rites. Their chief deity, perhaps, was a form of the old Aryan Sky-god, who took with them the guise of Thunor or Thunder (in Scandinavian, Thor), an angry warrior hurling his hammer, the thunder-bolt, from the stormy clouds. These thunder-bolts were often found buried in the earth; and being really the polished stone-axes of the earlier inhabitants, they ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... One is impressed with the striking similarity of many customs recorded of both. Two of the most frequently used ingredients in witches cauldrons were the vervain and the rue. "The former probably derived its notoriety from the fact of its being sacred to Thor, an honor which marked it out, like other lightning plants, as peculiarly adapted for occult uses," says Mr. Thiselton Dyer in his "Folk-lore of Plants." "Although vervain, therefore, as the enchanter's plant, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... 1,500 years after the Galilean name had conquered kingdoms and empires. The Norsemen were here, we know, a thousand years ago, and many a night the old sea kings of the north drank out of their mighty drinking horns good health to distant ones and honors to Thor and Odin. Then, late enough to have his coming known to letters, and hence recorded, Jacques Cartier came, himself a Breton, and hence cousin in blood to the Basque whalers, whom he found here engaged in a pursuit which their race had followed before Rome was founded or Greece was born, before Jerusalem ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... from that time to this. The triumphs of endurance have no end. The barbarism of the Caesars, the barbarism of Islam, the barbarism of Odin and Thor, all in turn did their uttermost to destroy the new religion. Persecution fell, not on armed men strong to resist, but on slaves and women and boys and girls. "We could tell of those who fought with savage beasts, yea, of maidens ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell |
