Without attempting to furnish a full and complete description of the mythology of the Lettes^ it may be worth wliile to dwell upon those superstitions and practices, which still to this day retain their influence, and upon those which are most peculiar and characteristic of the people.
It would be as great a calumny to describe tlie old pagan Lettes as sunk in a gloomy or degrading idolatry, as it would be gross flattery to represent their descendants as pure and eidightened Christians. The ancient Lettes adored one Omnipotent and All-seeing Spirit, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, " Deevas^'' of whom they made no visible representation, and whom they worshipped as the supreme deity. Hosts of subordinate deities and spirits were indeed believed in, but it is doubtful whether they were ever worshipped in a very distinct maimer. A nation so devoted to art as the Greeks, naturally enough clothed its spiritual conceptions of the Deity in the forms of material beauty, and then worshipped the image they had moulded. The Lettes, in whom, as in other northern nations, this plastic tendency was wanting-, preserved with greater purity the idea of the spirituality of superior beings. They did not imagine their deities to dwell in their temples, but rather to inhabit the heavens, and the air, or the hidden depths of the earth and ocean.
The Lettes, who, like all nations, fashioned their heaven according to their earthly experience, imagined their supreme deity, Deevas, as an old but vigorous man, — powerful and wealthy, and the father of a large family. He was married — had sons and daughters, untiring horses and cattle, and granaries always full of corn. They generally spoke of him as ' the Old Father." All their gods they called " father,'' and all their goddesses " niother."' There was the Father of the Sea, and the Father of the Fire, the Earth-mother, the Forest-mother, the Mother of the Flowers, the Mother of the Winds, &c. The youths and maidens and children of the Greek mythology were unknown to them. They pictured all their deities as parents.
After " the Old Father," the most powerful gods were Perkuhnos, Trimjms, and Pikulis, the Thundergod, the Wateigod, and the Earthgod. Perkuhnos was very little inferior in rank to the Old Father himself. At Romove, in Prussia, stood the most celebrated temple of Perkuhnos, the Thmidergod. The image of the deity was set up under an immense oaktree, which was held in such veneration by the people, that whoever carried a branch of this tree about with him, was supposed to be secure from all diseases and other evils. At this temple the priests kept up a perpetual fire, ^^hieh was not to be let out under pain of death. White horses were sacrificed to Perkuhnos, and sometimes even prisoners of war.
The wife of the Thundergod was the Mother of tlie Sun. Every night she was said to refresh the smi, tired and dusty, from her long journey, by conducting her to the bath ; and the next morning, when the sun was thorouglily cleaned, refreshed, and rested, she continued her journey.
The goddess of Joy, LIgho, whose feast Is still celebrated at Midsummer, has Deen spoken of in a former chapter. Swinging is a very favourite amusement with the Lettes at this period, and it is a current superstition that the higher the swings fly at the feast of Ligho, the higher will grow the flax in the fields. On this day the young girls go into the meadows to pluck the roots of the five-leaved grass. These roots when young are white and tender, and their five sprouts have a great resemblance to a human hand, but the old roots, of which many always remain in the groimd, are black, withered, and shrivelled. The maiden who plucks one of the latter, will, it is believed, either never be married, or else have a very old husband ; whereas the young roots ensure a young and handsome one. Laima, the goddess of Fate, is another notable deity. She spun for every child at its birth, a web, in which were interwoven the threads of good and evil fortune, of which its life was to be composed. The belief in this goddess was never quite expelled by Chpistlanity, and the Lettes still sing of the " Fate-mother Laimar