Wading into Kudrun; on the Trail of a Legendary Mystery Man

Wade of Kudrun sits uneasily as a migration era hero in a high medieval romance. (Photo illustration by Rachel Hellman.)

Not much is as troubling as the discovery that you’ve lost something, particularly something of value. Medieval writers suggest that we should have a story about a figure that we know just enough about to be tantalized, and troubled. The mystery of Wade is a good tale. Scandinavia recalls him as a sea giant. Mallory knew him to be a great knight. Chaucer obliquely recalls his boat and a tale that could be told. The breadcrumbs are lined up and it’s difficult not to follow.

Every known reference to the legendary Wade has been gathered neatly together for generations. The trail seems to begin sometime in the tales spread by Germanic-speaking tribes as they fanned out across Europe. All of the English literary references to Wade had faded to almost a name. Old English recalls him as a legendary ruler. Middle English celebrates him for his strength, chivalry and the defeat of a dragon. Folklore in England connects his name to sites in the north related to a giant. The Old Norse Wade was a giant, the son of a king and a sea woman (often translated to mermaid.) 

But it is the German Wade, I feel, that requires our attention, as this Wade gives us the most insight into who readers of a specific time knew him to be, and how he may have changed from the distant past. Unlike other extant literary sources, Wade is a major character in the anonymously-written mid-thirteenth-century poem called Kudrun. Kudrun presents a Wade that seems to have become a stock figure of fiction, a blustering, sometimes comic, sometimes troubling old curmudgeon who prefers to do things the old way. But the poem preserves features of Wade that would have been a perfect fit in the Beowulf era and maybe even earlier, when he could have been a mythological figure, even a deity.

Throughout Kudrun, Wade’s most obvious attributes are his age, his strength, and his terrifying violence on the battlefield. What most struck me as a reader though, were clues that this continental, thirteenth-century Wade (Wate in German) was already a known commodity to readers. He performs a function in the story that presumes that the reader is already aware of him. Wade is mentioned by name in the poem before the royal lover, whose difficult suit Wade will facilitate, against a king who murders the envoys of his daughter’s suitors. It is a job only Wade can perform, the young king is told, though the strategy, to sneak into the kingdom disguised as a merchant, does not sit well for him: “I’m not suited to selling pretty trinkets to women.” Wade’s discomfort in this role is the beginning of a series of comic moments predicated on his being a warrior of an earlier time being forced into a courtly romance. 

The character who most dislikes the need to pretend to be something he isn’t, is, of course, the character most comic to be pressed to play a role. Despite Wade’s misgivings to play the part, everyone in the foreign court wants an audience with him. Scholar R.W. Chambers suggested that it is his rich clothing that draws their attention, but the Kudrun poet maintains that all of Wade’s contingent is dressed in the finest clothing possible as a means of disarming the Irish king into allowing them close to his daughter. Yet, in the midst of younger courtiers in his throng, everyone is curious about Wade, whose only described attribute is his large gray beard.

Perhaps it is just the beard that marks Wade as different from the younger courtiers, who would seem more likely to attract the attention of young ladies, but the ladies of the court pay the most attention to “old” Wade. The queen says that Wade “is such a strange man,” that she wishes to see him and even rises from her seat when he enters. The young ladies study Wade to see his behavior, and they flirt as girls might with an aged man they find funny. They ask whether Wade is more comfortable with young ladies or in danger on the battlefield, to which he states his preference is the battlefield. It is hard to know how the ladies would be able to tell that this is a warrior, but perhaps Kudrun’s intended audience already knew that Wade was a man from from before the civilized times of this romance.

The reader discovers that Wade’s lack of control over his rage and tendency to be gruff to the point of rudeness are characteristics that become so predictable about him. Given this, I suspect that the scene with the ladies and others are predicated on dramatic irony, the reader’s knowledge that Wade is only at home slaughtering enemies, and putting him in fine clothes in a courtly setting would effectively be a condition to cause him to blow his cover as a merchant in the scheme. The Kudrun poet must have thought that this scene would be so enjoyed by readers that he wrote two more based on the same joke, one where the princess essentially asks for a second meeting to study Wade (though not to kiss him!) and a scene with her father, King Hagan, a man in the mold of Wade.

Hagan also picks Wade out from all of the courtiers, to test his fighting skills. Hagan seems up to mischief and perhaps means to pressure Wade into a sword demonstration with Hagan’s best swordsman. Wade feigns ignorance of swordplay and even a reader who has not seen Wade fight expects a situation in which all are shocked to find Wade to be the greater fighter. Hagan’s fencing master quickly fears for his life fighting Wade, which leads Hagan himself to face him. Hagan’s strength, prowess, and battle rage are all established earlier in the tale and Hagan’s danger is the entire cause of Wade’s charade in his court, to avoid facing him in battle. Testing Wade, Hagan quickly learns that Wade is as strong as Hagan is (it is said of both Wade and Hagan that they have the strength of twenty-six men) and an expert swordsman. Hagan has to steel himself not to lose his temper in their friendly match. For his part, Wade drops the act that swordplay is unknown to him and attacks Hagan “like a wild Saxon or Frank.” The scene is made more interesting supposing the dramatic irony of knowing that Wade is more than a match for Hagan or his sword-master. The humor of Wade’s protesting not knowing how to fight and of Hagan’s patronizing him by offering to teach Wade “out of affection” for him, is greater if the reader knows what happens to anyone who fights Wade. Wade’s response that Hagan must vow not to kill him further raises the comic stakes, and demonstrates a level of coyness that fits the comic scene more than the incendiary Wade.

Wade Represents an Earlier Ethos

Wade’s fighting prowess is essential in all of the military actions in Kudrun, and must have been an understood element of the character. But the developing difficulty in Kudrun, is that Wade represents a theory of war that is out of step with the rest of the characters of the story. This further places Wade as a fish out of water, and is played for humor as Wade goes far beyond what is acceptable for this time. Where Wade’s young prince and princess would prefer to take hostages in battle and enact political marriages, Wade will slaughter to the last, even women and children. He is described as terrible and terrifying, dreadful, wild and ferocious. He fights like a wild lion, bellows like a wild boar. His eyes blaze, his teeth grind and he is at times drenched in the blood of his enemies. He is repeatedly described as merciless. Wade’s friends must continually pull Wade back to save the men he is fighting. But they cannot always stop him. In this manner, he slaughters babies in cribs. He cuts off the heads of noblewomen who have begged quarter. 

Wade’s practice to become enraged in battle, and dangerous to both friend and foe, was a feature of heroes in the Beowulf mold, whom Wade could have once been. Beowulf, like his monstrous adversaries–or our own, modern, Incredible Hulk–physically swells with rage during his fights. Beowulf is once praised for never killing a kinsman, hardly a high bar in many other places and times, certainly in the era of Kudrun. Wade’s friends only approve of his violence to the moment when the enemy is ready to surrender, while Wade is unwilling to stop until he has killed everyone, even threatening to kill both friend and foe to achieve his aims. Wade, the hero, the victor, is censored for his slaughter: “What good would come of it, if you killed everyone in this land of his?” one comrade complains. This version of Wade is more at home with the figure of the berserker of the Lewis Chessmen, biting his shield, ready to storm into battle.

Like the Incredible Hulk, Wade becomes a figure in Kudrun that cannot turn off the violence, and as with the Incredible Hulk, this is sometimes played for humor. After failing to stop him from executing the evil queen and a traitorous gentlewoman in front of her terrified ladies in waiting, Kudrun recognizes that they will just have to agree to disagree: “Wate can do what he wants with his own hostages.” Kudrun’s comment is funny because it understates her lack of control over him.  Just as humorously, Wade complains that his friends are too merciful. To the man who complains about Wade killing children, Wade retorts, “You’re like a child yourself.”  When Kudrun’s kidnapper prays for his freedom, Wade responds, “I would quickly make sure that his chains never bothered him again.” Wade’s frustration with Kudrun and his younger relations is that they would take the opportunity at victory to promote a lasting peace by intermarrying with their enemy’s family, which seems a larger message of the poem. But Wade sees in orphans a future war party returning for vengeance, as has happened in the story already.

Hints of a Mythological Past

Chambers detected the hint that Wade began life as a storm deity in the manner of his death in Thidreks Saga: being buried by an avalanche. There are myths about storm gods being trapped underground or in the underworld realm of death. Chambers’s logic works on the premise that mythological tales sometimes undergo changes that make them appealing to audiences that no longer seek mythology or deities in tales. Gods then become mortal heroes, here a storm god demoted to a giant who wades across the sea and happens to be killed by a landslide. Chambers’s logic applied to Kudrun reveals details that could also suggest a mythological figure transformed into an exceptional man. One may start with Wade’s perpetual stage of agedness.   

Ever Gray

Kudrun does not imbue its characters with the sort of detail one expects of modern fiction. No character’s age is addressed with specificity. So it is not strange that Wade’s specific age is never stated. What does seem to be unusual, even within the style of the poem, is that Wade is old at the beginning of a story that spans generations and is old at the end. Wade kidnaps a princess at the beginning of the poem, and then rescues that princess’s adult daughter at the end. Wade, who was an old man when he met the mother, says he will have to wait for children to grow up to seek vengeance. Wade has no doubts of his longevity, but the mother’s response is “Ah, if only I could live that long.”  It may not be exceptional for a normal person to live through several generations, but it is strange that the queen, who viewed Wade as an aged curiosity when she was young, expects that she will not outlive him.

A Man with a Storied Past

Of the characters of Kudrun, Wade is the only one with a past that extends beyond the action of the narrative. Not only does Kudrun’s Wade have a past, but all of the details of his past are remarkable for their connections to magic. In the first bloody battle of the tale, when Wade faces off against the similarly powerful Hagan, Hagan’s kidnapped daughter begs her captors to stop Wade from killing her father. It is then revealed that Wade is a “master” healer: “They had heard a long time ago that Wate had learned healing from a forest woman.” Kudrun translator William Whobrey shares that his translation of wilden wibe has the possible sense of herbalist, healer, witch, and even creatures half woman, half animal. He shares the glosses “woman adept in magic,” and “wise woman of the woods” that two other translations have used. After all of Wade’s bloodshed in this battle, he is able to save lives and bring wounded men back to health. Wade’s sudden willingness to heal his enemies, if not his ability to heal itself, is incongruous with his behavior in the rest of the story.

Wade also tells a story when his fleet of ships is captured by a magnetic force when they pass the mountain at Givers, a geographically indeterminate location given the hazy geography of Kudrun: “Long ago as a child, I heard tell seafaring stories that in the mountain at Givers a great kingdom was founded. People live in comfort there.” Wade goes on to describe rivers of silver and gold and says that all who are pulled to the mountain are rich forever. Wade, on his dire mission of rescue and revenge, then prays they are pulled to the mountain, as if lost in reverie, while his companions remain in the moment and wish to escape the magnetic power. The overpowering strength of the seas on ships has probably led to many myths. The Odyssey has the whirlpool Scylla, the Sirens and Circe, who all overpower seafarers in various ways. By sharing his story, Wade recalls a childhood that gives him a history outside the boundaries of the story, which make him exceptional in Kudrun.

Mythological Connections to the Sea

Wade frequently travels in ships in the poem Kudrun, but I noticed details that I think have the flavor of a deity connected to the sea. The first is Wade’s horn, which he uses to rouse his troops to battle at dawn. His first horn blast can be heard thirty miles from shore. His second blast moves all of the troops into position, but the description of the third blast stuck out to me: “He signaled a third time with such great force that the shore quaked and the waves echoed the sound. The cornerstones of Ludwig’s castle could have been shaken loose.” The horn and the power of creating earthquakes are attributed respectively to the sea gods Triton and his father Poseidon, the earth shaker. This is also not the first time in the poem that Wade shook the earth. In his fight with Hagan early in the story, the text runs: “Then old Wate bore down and the shoreline shook.” 

The three major battles Wade fights in Kudrun are on the shore near ships that he has piloted, as others have noted, “strong rudder in his hand.” It seems unusual, if not implausible, that each of these battles take place on the beach, as if to accommodate a figure traditionally connected to the sea, or who may have traditionally gained power from the sea. In the first battle, Wade’s forces debark to find Hagan’s forces approaching from sea. During the second battle Kudrun’s kidnappers debark on an island that is not their destination for reasons not explained. Finally, Kudrun’s kidnappers’ castle that Wade shakes with a blast of his horn is also on the sea, above a beach that Wade’s forces have landed on.

The Man from Stormland

Finally, Kudrun’s Wade is from a place that Whobrey gives alternately as Stormarn and Stormland. No detail is ever given of this location, but Wade is summoned from there frequently and returns there between quests for his king. Though the geography of Kudrun is hard to relate to real places, locations are often named, some, like Ireland, seem to correspond to a real location, others, like Waylays and Ormanie, which bear similarities to the lands Wales or Normandy, but do not seem to correspond to them. Stormarn could refer to the district of Schleswig-Holstein of modern Germany, but, again, the inner logic of place names in Kudrun, if there is one, is not understood. Obviously, a figure associated with storms and the sea hailing from Stormland would seem significant.

There are details of Wade’s battles that can be interpreted as related to storms. In his battle with Hagan, “many brave men saw sparks flying off the helmets like flashes from a smithy’s fire…then old Wate bore down and the shoreline trembled.” Though I have suggested that the ground trembling could be the hint of a figure able to cause earthquakes, it is also possible to envision the flashes of fire and trembling earth as thunder and lightning. In a later battle, Wade’s charge in battle darkens the sun with a cloud of dust, which could hint at a gathering storm cloud.

A Retirement 

Wade ends his story in Kudrun being given a position of honor in the queen’s household, which seems a bit of a downgrade from his job of commanding one of the king’s castles, which was his role at the beginning of it. Whobrey’s translation says he is made “seneschal,” which is a court officer in charge of ceremonies and feasts (the German was truhsæze), but the etymology of seneschal indicates that it once meant “old servant,” which Wade clearly was in the history of this kingdom. I see the shift as an indication that the queen recognizes that the time of Wade as the commander of armies and warrior-in-chief have passed. I like to see it as a fond farewell to a figure whose time had really passed in the era of Kudrun, to the extent that he has fairly or unfairly lapsed into the role of a comical figure. In this manner Wade sits uneasily in Kudrun given that he is the only figure who enables the happy ending that this romance wants as its proper conclusion. 

We have lamented the loss of a “Tale of Wade,” that elaborates on his magic boat and whether that version of Wade relates to the giant of the sea. However, here we have a Wade that seems modeled on the wild Saxon or Frank (or Geat) that would have fit into migration age stories represented in the poems “Widsith,” and “Deor.” That may not bring us closer to understanding who Wade was in his lost English tale, but it fills in a gap for a character long enough lived for literature to ease him into retirement. 

The Privilege of Hubris

A medieval miniature of Alexander the Great being lowered into the sea in a bathysphere, from Le Livre et le vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre, ca. 1420, f. 77v (Wikimedia). The bathysphere is curiously shaped like Reza Baluchi’s “hamster wheel.”

Mythological hubris and its attendant risks and rewards are increasingly beyond the common man’s reach even as the wealthy capitalize on daring, foolhardy adventure. Hubris is defined as excessive pride or confidence. What I call mythological hubris, or classical hubris, is the same, but it incorporates the desire to overcome a sphere that is by nature off limits to human beings. Today in the United States a number of the ultra-wealthy seem to see no natural limits, and without government controls, like the tragic heroes of yore, they have only the natural consequences of their actions to face. This is not so for the average person.

Reza Baluchi and one of his water craft by Jim Rassol from the Florida Sun Sentinel.

Take the example of Reza Baluchi, the extreme athlete and eccentric inventor who seems intent on imperishable fame whether or not it amounts to his death. In August, the US Coast Guard stopped Baluchi from a trans-Atlantic crossing in what authorities have described as a “hamster wheel” held afloat by buoys in a metal frame. The Coast Guard officers saw a man in danger, but the power they wielded to save him was the bureaucratic power of the modern state: Baluchi’s craft was not registered.

The Fall of Icarus, alternate title: Daedalus Icaro alta nimis ambienti orbatur. Etching appeared in: The Metamorphoses of Ovid, plate 75, second edition illustrated by Antonio Tempesta, published 1606.

It’s hard to imagine such a thing happening to Daedalus, who strapped on wings of his own invention and conquered the sky. Of course there was no modern bureaucratic state, no FAA to report him to, as airline pilots reported kindred-spirit Larry Walters, the man who in 1982 rose to 16,000 feet in a lawn chair attached to a multitude of weather balloons. Like Walters, who later took his life, Baluchi seems like a troubled man. Faced with being stopped from running 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to London, England, Baluchi threatened to harm himself with a knife and to blow himself up with wires he claimed were attached to a bomb. It was Baluchi’s fifth attempt to make a major ocean crossing in a similar, self-made craft. In 2016 the Coast Guard shot and scuttled his vessel, sending it to the bottom of the ocean. Baluchi’s friend said that Baluchi had invested more than $120,000 into the craft.

Larry Walters in his lawn chair from the Smithsonian Magazine.

Perhaps if Baluchi had the money and clout to charge a small group of wealthy passengers $250,000 a spot to join him on his perilous mission, like the doomed entrepreneur Stockton Rush, he would have been allowed to run as far as his legs could take him. The cost of legally facing life-threatening danger that allows people to travel to spaces unfit for our survival has become the rich man’s game. Rush’s cofounder Guillermo Söhnlein recently announced his desire to build a colony in the hellish atmosphere of the planet Venus. Elon Musk has garnered attention with his plans to reach the planet Mars. These modern-day Nimrods will commission others to die building their Towers of Babel and chances are, they will find a way around zoning restrictions.

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563, from Wikipedia. Extra-biblical traditions name Nimrod as the ruler who commissions the Tower of Babel.

Our modern bureaucracy may stand in the way of ordinary mortals seeking fame or death, but it isn’t against using mythological wonder to inspire us to support expensive ventures with our tax dollars. NASA has long used the cache of myth to inspire Americans, by naming missions after Greek gods and heroes. The Artemis Program to return Americans to the moon is only the latest example of this. NASA’s advertising department created colorful cell phone and desktop backgrounds for Artemis in an attempt to excite the public imagination. The Smithsonion’s Air and Space Museum isn’t above celebrating Walters’s illegal flight by displaying his lawn chair. Give the government some time and it might look back more charitably on Baluchi’s hamster wheel.

Larry Walters's lawn chair, from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

We all presumably have the mythological wonder to appreciate the dreams that inspire men like Baluchi and Walters. It is not hard for me to understand what drove Baluchi to brave the laws of man and nature to make five different attempts at crossing the ocean in a self-built, self-propelled bubble-wheel. It isn’t hard for me to understand Walters, who reportedly said “It was something I had to do. I had this dream for twenty years, and if I hadn't done it, I think I would have ended up in the funny farm.” Nothing separates these intrepid, slightly mad adventurers from the rest of us, but the will to carry out their dreams, no matter the cost. And nothing separates them from the men who take those risks without fear of government interference, but a few cool billions.

Sons of Earth and Fire; The Strange Case of the Narts’ Metallic Men

Batraz blasts down from the heavens, landing in the hearth of the Narts, the force of it burying him to his thighs, by artist Andrew Jones. Image commissioned for this article.

They are curiously kindred. Ossetian Shoshlan and his cousin, Batraz, are beings of steel and fire who become metal by being placed in a forge by a heavenly blacksmith. In the tradition of heroic tales of the northern Caucasus these figures also share a trove of contradictory and redundant traits that raise my myth-reading eyebrow and pose serious questions, starting with: why does a mythology need two metal men? They have alternately been understood as solar and storm figures, but they are also associated with stone, with fertility, and tantalizingly, with stars falling from the heavens and landing in the earth. Who are Shoshlan and Batraz, and where do they come from?

Ossetia is a region that straddles the Greater Caucasus mountain range south of Russia and north of Georgia. The people of Ossetia and their Circassian neighbors have a tradition of legends and myths about a superhuman race that mixed with gods and fought against monsters. These heroes go by the name of the Narts, a term that means manly hero, but is used in the tales almost as an ethnic or racial identity. A few months ago I interviewed translator and Caucasus expert John Colarusso about his translation of the Circassian Nart tales, but I enjoyed the stories so much I dove directly into Colarusso’s edition of the Ossetian Nart tales, which expanded on characters I found fascinating in the Circassian corpus: the men whose bodies were made of steel.

Shoshlan and Batraz have unusual origins and were both put into forges as children, turning their bodies into steel, each with a vulnerable spot. Shoshlan was born red hot from a stone, suggesting a myth about smelting iron, and blacksmithing. Shoshlan Batraz was born fiery hot from a lump in his father’s back, suggesting—I don’t know what! Batraz’s mother, a little person from the water people, divorces her husband for breaking a vow and “blows” the developing baby into his body. Batraz comes out of his father’s back and lands right in the sea, causing it to evaporate and beginning his short, strange career as an aquatic figure. Russian Ossetian scholar Vaso Abaev differentiated the tempering of Shoshlan and Batraz, suggesting that the element of wolf’s milk in Shoshlan’s hardening represented a shamanistic tradition, while Batraz was made steel through the raw technology of the forge. However, Batraz’s forging required dragon bones to superheat the forge. Surely this diverges from the notion that Batraz’s forging is meant to represent purely technological power.

Fiery Origins

Shoshlan and Batraz have their skin hardened in the forge by the heavenly smith Kurdalagon. Image by by Makharbek Tuganov.

After their forging, Shoshlan and Batraz’s paths diverge. Though he has plenty of heroic stories, Shoshlan’s steel skin does not figure prominently in them until his death, which exploits his only weakness, his knees, which were not hardened to steel. Batraz, however, is aglow in stories that recall his fiery birth and his steel skin. His steely body and its tendency to overheat feature prominently in tales. It makes me wonder whether the seemingly redundant detail of the blacksmith and hardening of their bodies represents a point in the oral storytelling where bards had begun to conflate the two. Perhaps writing the tales froze the figures in place before all of the stories about Shoshlan began to be associated with Batraz, at least in the Ossetian tales of the Narts.

Ossetian Batraz already has a buffet of curious attributes and associations that seem a bit too multifarious to me to belong to a single figure of myth. Myths help explain greater truths. The Scandinavians told the story of Thor’s hammer to explain thunder. The Greeks told the story of Persephone in the underworld to explain winter. It is hard to pinpoint just what Batraz’s many attributes would be used to explain. Born fiery, Baraz is doused in the sea and lives among his watery kin until he is coaxed out of the water to live with his father’s people. Stories of his childhood with the Narts repeatedly place him near the hearth, where he is often sooty and warming his feet. After he goes to the heavenly smith Kurdalagon to have himself hardened in the forge, the detail arises that he spends most of his time in the clouds and that when he is needed for help, one must send a bird as a messenger to call him down.

Projectile Hero

When he doesn't fly himself, he still finds a way into the air. “Batraz on the Arrow” by Makharbek Tuganov.

Batraz in battle is superhuman, but his kryptonite is his own heat. Though his steel fists pummel or crush adversaries—in one tale he is is even shot on a giant arrow and he breaches a castle wall like a cannonball—he overheats in combat and must cool himself. In one tale he has his horse kick him into the sea. Another tale begins with him on a glacier fresh from fighting. Batraz is finally defeated and killed when his enemies deprive him of a watery refuge and his one flesh intestine—hitherto unmentioned in the tales—burns up.

When I spoke to Colarusso he shared his theory that Batraz’s Circassian cousin Sosruquo (rendered Shoshlan in the Ossetian corpus) might share a common heritage with those nigh-invulnerable figures of European legends, Achilles, Cuchulainn and Sigurd, all of whom are either dark-skinned or connected with a blacksmith in some manner. At the time we were only discussing Colarusso’s translation of the Circassian Nart tales, as I had not yet read the Ossetian tales. Everything Colarusso said of Circassian Sosruquo applies even more appropriately to Ossetian Batraz. Batraz is described as dark and dusty from the hearth he plays in as a child. He relates more directly to the Irish Cuchulainn, who overheats in battle, and in one tale is thrown in successive barrels of water, which explode or completely evaporate until his body is cooled down. But these details only tie the Circassian Shoshlan and Ossetian Batraz to the forge.

Shoshlan’s Circassian tales, while omitting much of Ossetian Batraz’s superheroic flying and overheating, more than once place him in the realm of fertility figure. He recovers grain stolen by an ogre-like figure in one tale. In Circassian and Ossetian corpuses, when his enemies cannot kill him, they simply bury or entomb him alive, where he goes on living forever after blessing various animals with his strengths. Ossetian Batraz likewise has the markers of a fertility figure. In one tale he melts a glacier to cool his overheating body, the water runs from his face and falls on the earth. As already noted, he evaporates a sea when he is born, and Earth’s system of precipitation relies on evaporation. While he is not caught, Batraz’s enemies do try to bury him once and notably, in “Batraz and Tykhyfyrt Mukara” when “[Batraz flings] himself down from the heights and [falls] right into the fireplace of the Narts” landing so hard he buries himself “up to the middle of his thighs in the hearth.”

In a private email, Colarusso said that Batraz does seem to be an offshoot of Circassian Shoshlan and also that in formalizing the Ossetian corpus into the coherent cycle we have today, Abaev stripped out old details, the accretion of oral transmission over many generations, that would confuse readers. In reading and being able to compare the Ossetian and Circassian tales in Colarusso’s collections, this has been my impression. The Circassian tales retain a wildness that is embodied in details that seem significant, but go unexplained and may even contradict one another. This is not a criticism of the Ossetian corpus, which does have fun mysteries and contradictions, particularly when previously unmentioned divine figures make appearances.

Sky Iron

Iron does occasionally fall from the sky in the form of hot, burning meteorites. “The Terrible Comet” from the Augsberg Book of Miracles, 16th century, private collection, Wikipedia.

While Batraz and Shoshlan may have come by their metal and accompanying traits via associations with thunder and the earth’s fertility, another, wilder idea has occurred to me. I’ve left it for the end of this piece to segregate it from my firsthand reading and reporting of details from the Circassian and Ossetian Nart corpuses because I feel it is fanciful, but I also feel it is worth thinking about. And while he did not go so far as endorsing the theory, Colarusso (via email) did support the premise, which is that the earliest iron to be forged was that to be found in meteorites. It was hard for me to read about a figure whose early tales so connected him with fire and metal and then so abruptly shifted to having him crash down from heaven and embed himself in the earth without thinking about meteorites, those rocks that breach our atmosphere and strike the earth. I had remember in the Circassian corpus another story that seemed to be about a meteorite, associated with Shoshlan. In “How Sasruquo Plucked Down a Star” Sasruquo (a Circassian variant spelling of Shoshlan) fires a lead-weighted arrow into the sky and pulls it down to earth for the purpose of warming his comrades, who are freezing. Later in the same tale, when he returns with a brand of fire to make a fire, he is described as “glowing like a falling star.” The story struck me as unusual in that I could not recall other legends that seemed to be about meteorites. Could fiery, stelling Batraz’s (or Shoshlan’s) origins have been in a hunk of hot metal that fell from the sky?

With the origins of Shoshlan and Batraz so intertwined with the forge and metal, it is worth considering that before the advent of smelting, meteoric iron was the only source for the metal. Artifacts made of meteoric metal have been found in Asia, Africa and the Americas. The Tutankhamun dagger, found in the Egyptian king's 14th century BCE tomb, is only one of the known examples of meteoric iron being forged into an object. Inuit hunters in the Americas are known to have topped a narwhal tusk with meteoric metal and an axe head made of the metal was found in Ugarit in Syria. The articles I’ve found on the worship of meteorites are dated, but more than one scholar has written of instances of meteorite worship by peoples around the globe. Hubert Newton’s “The Worship of Meteorites,” published in Nature in Aug. 12 1897, considers the instance of the black stone in the Kaaba of Mecca (which has never been proven to be a meteorite) and other tales from antiquity. Oliver Farrington, in the Journal of American Folklore, 1900, tantalizingly, relates a story that proves that meteorites have sometimes been considered the physical remains of thunderbolts. This would connect Batraz and Shoshlan’s storm god statuses with hunks of hot metal falling from the sky. Farrington quotes from a letter to the British Museum that accompanied the Nejed meteorite, from Najd, Saudia Arabia. The letter writer Hajee Ahmed Khane Sarteep, refers to the meteorite and other meteorites as “thunderbolts.” (From “The Worship and Folk-lore of Meteorites”)

I don’t mean to lay out a treatise on meteoric worship in this piece, and I also can’t think of another instance where a meteorite was personified as Shoshlan or Batraz would have been if this theory could be proven. It seems unlikely that such characters would arise only in one mythology, but the correspondances seem worth studying. While the theory seems, at the moment, farfetched, it is fun and I will continue to research the matter.