It is more likely that it was summoned to destroy the chiefs wigwam,
but the narrator, confused with the subject of the hero's strength,
changed the original. The invocations of Lightning, and subsequently of
the Storm Bird are probably entirely Indian, though there are Norse
invocations to Hroesvelgar, or the Eagle of the Northwest, as we read
in Scott's Pirate.
The black whelp or small black dog is in this tale ominous of evil. It
causes oblivion. In the Edda to dream of the same thing is the most
evil of all Atli's bad dreams (vide the second lay of Gudrun, 41):--
"Seemed to me from my hand
Whelps I let slip.
Lacking cause of joy;"
and in the very same song (24) be takes a potion which causes oblivion.
But there is even a third point in the Atlamal in Groenlenzku, which
resembles one in the Indian tale. It is where the half enchantress
Kostbera warns Hogni against leaving her:
"From home thou art going:
Give ear to counsel;
Few are fully prudent;
Go another time."
In the Norse lay we are told that to dream of a white bear indicates a
storm, but here it means a strange and terrible event. Long before I
met with this, I observed that the introduction, or mention, of a white
bear-skin in these Indian stories invariably intimates some strange
magical change.
But it is most remarkable of all, that, while the poems of the Edda
have nothing but a very few incidents in common with the traditions of
the western tribes, they are inspired throughout with a strange and
mysterious sentiment or _manner_ wonderfully like that of the
Wabanaki.
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