July 15, 1796

Thomas Bulfinch (July 15, 1796 to May 27, 1867) was born into a comfortable educated family. His father was an architect and Bulfinch himself worked in a Boston bank. We remember Bullfinch today, as the author of The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855)

From his preface we glimpse a purpose to Bulfinch's scholarship, which was an
"Attempt To Popularize Mythology, And Extend The Enjoyment Of Elegant Literature."

There is a poem on the title page which I suspect capture's Bulfinch's deeper motive in retelling these old stories.

" O, ye delicious fables! where the wave
And woods were peopled, and the air, with things
So lovely" why, ah! why has science grave
Scattered afar your sweet imaginings ? "

Barry Cornwall. is listed as the author of these words.

And here is one of the stories Bullfinch includes. It concerns the Norse god Thor, and how the giants tricked him. They set before him several feats, which were not what they seemed. Thor thought he was asked to lift a cat, to prove his strength.

....."" What new trial hast thou to propose ? " said Thor." We have a very trifling game here," answered Utgard-Loki, " in which we exercise none but children. It consists in merely lifting my cat from the ground; nor should I have dared to mention such a feat to the great Thor if I had not already observed that thou art by no means what we took thee for."As he finished speaking, a large gray cat sprang on the hall floor. Thor put his hand under the cat's belly and did his utmost to raise him from the floor, but the cat, bending his back, had, notwithstanding all Thor's efforts, only one of his feet lifted up, seeing which Thor made no further attempt ."This trial has turned out," said Utgard-Loki, "just as I imagined it would. The cat is large, but Thor is little in comparison to our men." ...

The giants later admit their deceit to Thor, once they feel he can no longer harm them:

Thou didst perform a feat no less wonderful by lifting up the cat, and to tell thee the truth, when we saw that one of his paws was off the floor, we were all of us terror-stricken, for what thou tookest for a cat was in reality the Midgard serpent that encompasseth the earth, and he was so stretched by thee, that he was barely long enough to enclose it between his head and tail. ....
But now, as we are going to part, let me tell thee that it will be better for both of us if thou never come near me again, for shouldst thou do so, I shall again defend myself by other illusions, so that thou wilt only lose thy labor and get no fame from the contest with me."On hearing these words Thor in a rage laid hold of his mallet and would, have launched it at him, but UtgardLoki had disappeared, and when Thor would have returned to the city to destroy it, he found nothing around him but a verdant plain.

Bulfinch never understood, and neither did Thor, the source of the giants' power. The illusion the giants controlled to protect themselves was an awareness of the difference between the mental and the physical. That is the unappreciated meaning of the Norse myth. Thor was trying to lift the idea of a cat. And almost succeeded, because there is after all, a connection, mysterious as it may be, between the physical and the mental. Bulfinch's fables are not stories of gods and heroes. They are stories about how to understand the real world.