arth with hoar-frost; and
he was doomed to a long banishment from music and the sunlight. The
laughing party then set up a wooden likeness of the worsted winter-king,
and pelted it with stones and turf; and when they were tired they threw
it down, and put out its eyes, and cast it into the river. And then a
pole, decked with wild-flowers and fresh green leaves, was planted in
the midst of the sward, and all joined in merry dance around it. And
they chose the most beautiful of all the maidens to be the Queen of May,
and they crowned her with a wreath of violets and yellow buttercups; and
for a whole day all yielded fealty to her, and did her bidding.

It was thus that May Day came in Burgundy. And in the evening, when the
party were seated in King Gunther's hall, Siegfried, at the command of
the May-queen,--who was none other than Kriemhild the peerless,--amused
them by telling the story of

Idun and Her Apples.

It is a story that Bragi told while at the feast in AEgir's hall. Idun
is Bragi's wife. Very handsome is she; but the beauty of her face is by
no means greater than the goodness of her heart. Right attentive is she
to every duty, and her words and thoughts are always worthy and wise.
A long time ago the good Asa-folk who dwell in heaven-towering Asgard,
knowing how trustworthy Idun was, gave into her keeping a treasure
which they would not have placed in the hands of any other person.
This treasure was a box of apples, and Idun kept the golden key safely
fastened to her girdle. You ask me why the gods should prize a box of
apples so highly? I will tell you.

Old age, you know, spares none, not even Odin and his Asa-folk. They all
grow old and gray; and, if there were no cure for age, they would become
feeble and toothless and blind, deaf, tottering, and weak minded. The
apples which Idun guarded so carefully were the priceless boon of youth.
Whenever the gods felt old age coming on, they went to her, and she gave
them of her fruit; and, when they had tasted, they grew young and strong
and handsome again. Once, however, they came near losing the apples,--or
losing rather Idun and her golden key, without which no one could ever
open the box.

In those early days Odin delighted to come down now and then from his
high home above the clouds, and to wander, disguised, among the woods
and mountains, and by the seashore, and in wild desert places. For
nothing pleases him more than to commune with Nature as