Horse flies, Druidic priests, and giants — Today’s Random Illustrations of the Day come from Mythologie du Rhin (Myths of the Rhine; 1861) by the French novelist and playwright Xavier Boniface Saintine (1798 – 1864), a very prolific author whose most famous work was Picciola; or The Prison Flower (1836), about a French count, thrown into prison, who survives and retains his sanity by taking care of a small flower growing in the prison yard. They come from the middle part of the career of Gustave Doré, who at this point was acquiring a Charles Dickens level of fame in both France and England. As Blanche Roosevelt explains in her biography of the artist:

The largeness of Doré‘s earnings was not attributable to high prices charged by him for single illustrations. It was the colossal number of drawings he executed that so amazingly swelled his revenues. From Dante to an almanack; from a review to a comic journal, there was no kind of grist that did not come to his mill. Probably the world has never known a more indefatigable worker, or a more conscientious one. Nothing of his was ever slovenly or showed the least signs of haste of carelessness.

Quite in keeping with the artist’s tremendous productivity is this volume, which features around 160 illustrations. (These images are in the public domain. You can read an 1875 English edition translated by the philologist Schele de Vere via HathTrust here.)

Father Rhine

Farewell

These ghosts can imitate all the motions of men.

He is the Lord Hackelberg.

She had rejoined her victims.

To return was as impossible as to proceed

The Druidess transformed into an accused witch

The conscientious collector of myths

The author pursues the subject

His ex-colleague Jupiter

Venus and Tannhäuser

The passing of the wizard

Quadragant vanquished

Putskuchen was in love.

The last two held each a long thorn in their hands.

Kreiss compelled to leave his position by torrents of tears

In his hand he held not a club but a lantern.

They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth.

Flight of the conspirators

A long and deep sigh of satisfaction.

He stood at first with his mouth wide open.

Our good little dwarfs

The humiliated giant

Grommelund and Ephesim

The last of the giants

Giants and dwarfs

The fall of Killecroff

The great Reformer, Martin Luther

His nurse has to be reinforced by two goats and a cow.

The Killecroffs are children of the Devil.

They are naturally easily tired.

The Zotterais are as fond of stables as the Kobolds are of kitchens.

We prefer to remember the Kobold as a cheerful household companion.

The master has nothing to do.

The Zotterais protected sheep

Four Prussian soldiers watching the water

The Vintner is hanged, and Nixcobt laughs heartily.

This creature is Nixcobt.

Niord, the Scandinavian god

The steward whispered some words in her ear.

He rose suddenly and fled to another room

He thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters

The schoolmaster’s son who had fallen in love with one of them

The nix with the harp

Imaginary music

Elementary spirits of the water

Enormous toads are posted about as watchmen.

An important personage with a will of his own.

The black fairies personify Nightmare.

Dance of the white fairies

Able to see without being seen

The Olympus of the North

Have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken

The Undines mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads.

Marietta appeared in their midst.

The blacksmiths of Ilmarinnen.

He let his heavy mace fall upon a little town.

Monstrous reptiles accompany the gods to Germany.

Perkunos, Pikollos, and Potrympos

“Miserere mei, Jesu”

Druidic worship suspended by the Romans

Ovid reciting his “Metamorphoses”

The two religions face to face

I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped.

My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph

The death of the gods

The three sacred cocks announcing the Twilight of Greatness

When the mother told her pitiful tale the iron trees wept.

Balder is amused by the game.

Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself.

“Balder, fair Balder, is going to die.”

Hela, the pale goddess

Feast in Scandinavian Paradise

A very mammoth of a boar

Beautiful nymphs of carnage

The Valkyrias

Jarl, the noble

Gefione took her four sons and changed them into oxen.

“To Egir, the seas and navigation …”

He took counsel with the Norns.

They were the Norns.

They seemed to converse with each other by significative glances.

The wolf Fenris

Balder, the bright god

Return of the eagle with the three precious vessels

Bragi and the beautiful Freya

Portrait of Freyr

The good Freyr seated at Odin’s table

Thor’s weighty hammer Mjölnir

A vulture is perching upon the loftiest top of the sacred tree.

Incessantly a tiny squirrel comes and goes.

Deer, eland, and aurochs were bounding in herds

The new creation was assuming a more pleasing appearance.

After the giants came the turn of land and sea monsters.

Ymer was the first to succumb.

Does it not look as if the first men had been born with a telescope in their pocket?

The giant Ymer has been born

Iormungondur, the great sea serpent

The German Druids gave way

The great Northern Tempest

The dauntless pirates will end by wearing white cotton night-caps

Frivolous and ill-mannered deities

He did his best to help everybody across

Once more caresses had their hoped-for effect

The vines began to adorn the banks of the river with their verdure

He had already allowed Jupiter to cross

They made him a king, the King of German rivers

Perhaps the old river remembered his grievances

“O Varus, Varus, bring me back my legions!”

Mercury, the son of Jupiter

The Hercules–so called

Her deities personified nothing but vices

The victorious march of the Romans

A Druidess endowed with the gift of prophecy

Death of Druids

The Druid-bard

The boudoir of a Celtic lady

She was a young Ionian girl, a country-woman of Aspasia

One of the chief men of the country

As there is no window I peep through the trap-door

The Druidical altars

Such were the ways of our fathers, they rejoice in facing death

Happiness consists in the fulfillment of duty

A young wife bearing the burden of united household

Herds of swine are wallowing

The shepherd,–as mournful as ever

The guard of a sword, which had been driven into the ground

A shepherd

I look around for a resting-place

These laborers seem to suffer from some restraint

Who are these other soldiers?

I turn my steps from the sacred precincts

The bloody knife of the Druids

The Germans were in full flight

A Druid teacher

Prophetic trembling and neighing

Serpents’ knots

Gauls

Mistletoe an officinal and sacred plant

Attempt to murder the mayor

Courts of justice were always held under an elm tree

The other chieftains were generally polygamists

Their creed must be judged by their rites

The Druids now appear for the first time in Germany

Dead man’s trees

A horrible custom

What happy people scholars are!

The Celts were a people from India

The first pioneers

Vast forests as old as the world

The impassive historian

Father Rhine