When the Valkyries Come

The God Teutates

 

 by Brett Rutherford
Translated and adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "December 1870"

Dark vision! one people murders another.
Yet, Saxons, we have the same origins,
and we came out of the same mother’s belly!
Germania and Gaul once joined arms
in that ancient Europe whose history is still taking shape.[1]
To grow side-by-side was our long-time strength.
Two peoples gave mutual aid, a happy and tender,
triumphant couple, even as little Cain
     once loved the infant Abel.
We were a great people, equal in might to Scythia;
and it is concerning you, Germans, and us, too, that Tacitus
said: — Their soul is proud. A strong god supports them,
whose name at home makes women weep,
     and the men remember all. —
If Rome invaded our moors and risked its eagles there,
the Celts heard the warlike call of the Vendes,[2]
and Rome’s praetor was beaten, its consul chased away.
So, too, Teutates came to the aid of Irmensul;[3]
we gave each other a glorious and faithful support
sometimes with a stroke of the sword
     and sometimes with sheltering wings.
The same stone altar, strange and full of voices
compelled its worshipers to kneel
     on the grass, as the Teutons did at Cologne,
     or at the water’s edge, as did the Bretons of Nantes.[4]
And when the Valkyrie, winged and shivering,
spanned over the shadowy sky,
     your Hermann[5] and our Brennus[6]
saw between her two bare breasts
     an identical star.
Germans, look above your heads,
to the vast heavens:
while you are hell-bent on conquests,
you, Germans, you come to stab the Gauls,
trample on all the ancient laws.
Your treacherous victories
     do not make you larger:
          they soil you.
Dying, you will go on to see
your ancestors saluting ours.

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[1] Hugo’s pleading for common origins or religions for Gauls and the Germanic people may have been conceivable in 1870, but the distinct differences between Celtic and Germanic myth are now better understood. In any case, there was no “Germany” in our sense of the word until 1870. One might see the parallel histories of the French kingdom and the Holy Roman Empire as fitting Hugo’s conception of two cultures maturing side-by-side.

[2] This line makes no sense as the Wends (Vends) were a Slavic people who struggled against, and were gradually subsumed into Geman culture.

[3] Teutates, or Teutatis, a principal god of the Celts in Britain and Gaul. Irmensul was either an idol or a god associated with Wodan among the Germanic tribes. Hugo’s connection between these two deities is purely speculative.

[4] Bretons. The Breton were a Celtic people who emigrated to France

[5] Hermann. Arminius (18 BCE- 21 CE), the Germanic general who gave Rome its worst defeat, turning back Roman power from the eastern German region.

[6] Brennus, a Gallic chieftain of the Senones, who defeated a roman army at the Battle of the Alia, c. 390 BCE. He later attacked and sacked Rome.