They launch'd the burning ship,
It floated far away
O'er the misty sea,
Till like the moon it seem'd,
Sinking beneath the waves.
Balder returned no more!'
It is curious to note, that among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo, the dead chief is placed in his canoe, with his favourite weapons and principal property, and is then turned adrift.
In the Scandinavian barrows, great quantities of horses' bones are found with human skeletons. The only pleasure and business of life with these old turbulent spirits, was war; and their political, domestic, and religious institutions were all founded on this characteristic. A warrior, therefore, could not but fight well when the pleasures after death were, as his religion taught him, those which he most relished during life. ‘The heroes who are received into the palace of Odin,’ says the Edda, ‘have every day the pleasure of arming themselves, of passing in review, of ranging themselves in order of battle, and of cutting one another in pieces; but as soon as the hour of repast approaches, they return on horseback all safe and sound to the hall of Odin, and fall to eating and drinking.’
With the Danes the age of tumuli or hillocks was styled Hoigold and Hoielse-tüde. The corpse was buried with all the arms he had wielded or worn during life, and all his ornaments; and his horse was killed and laid beside him.
The Patagonians, to whom the horse is, comparatively speaking, a novelty, also inter it in their burial-places, and the stories about the immense size of these people probably
