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AUTHOR: 
 
 GUMMERE, FRANCIS 
 
 TITLE: 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 PLACE: 
 
 LONDON 
 
 DA TE : 
 
 1892 
 
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 numnere, Francis Barton, 1855-1919. 
 
 Germanic origins. A study j.n prjnitive cnl- 
 tiiro. London, Nutt, 1892. 
 
 viii, 490 p. 
 
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 From the library of 
 
 Samuel M. Lindsay 
 
\ 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 A STUDY IN PRIMITIVE CULTURE 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS B. GUMMEEE, Ph.D. 
 
 Professor op English in Haverpord College 
 
 LOXDON 
 DAVID NUTT, 270, STEAND 
 
 1892 
 
I 
 
 
 FROM THE UBRARY OF 
 SAMUEL M. LINDSAY 
 
 Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's Sons, 
 for the United States of America. 
 
 Printed by Berwick & Smith, 
 Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 One needs no longer to fetch an omcle, -^ antiquam 
 exquirite matrem, for example, — in order to compel 
 attention when one writes about the sources of lan- 
 guage, literature, and institutions of the great Eng- 
 lish-speaking race. This volume aims to give an 
 account of the founders of that race while they still 
 held their old home, their old faith, their old cus- 
 toms ; and the sole purpose of these " forewords " is 
 to explain what materials and what method have 
 been employed. The author has tried to free his 
 text from cumbrous allusions, and to put into the 
 notes material for wider study. These notes, as well 
 as a portion of the introductory chapter, tell the 
 reader what sources have been consulted in the 
 making of the book itself. Quotations at second 
 hand occur only where the authority from which 
 they are taken is itself of the first class, such as 
 Grimm on mythology, Miillenhoff on archseology, 
 or Waitz on institutions. All quotations from the 
 range of Early Germanic literature are at first hand, 
 and the same statement holds good of classical 
 
 • • • 
 
 111 
 
IV 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 sources like Tacitus or Caesar. Ti-anslations from 
 
 Anglo-Saxon and German poetry have been made 
 
 by the author; those from the Edda are in the 
 
 majority of cases by Vigfusson and Powell, but are 
 
 always duly credited. 
 
 ^ F. B. G. 
 
 Haverford College, 21 December, 1891. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION ^ 
 
 Germanic and Celtic in the English race — Appearance of the 
 Germanic element in European history — Clash of Roman and 
 German — Sources of information about the early Germans — 
 Chronological and geographical d&ta. — Germania of Tacitus 
 chief authority — The Ingaevonic tribes. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 30 
 
 The German in Germany — His former home — Inherited and 
 actual culture — Country and climate — Pastures, flocks, and 
 herds — Nomad or farmer ? — Boundaries. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 67 
 
 Stature and features — A fair-haired race — Sense of personal 
 beauty — Food and drink— Habits of daily life — Clothing — 
 Adornments. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE HOME 90 
 
 Hatred of cities — Underground dwellings — Houses wooden and 
 frail — Construction, and later improvements — The burg, and 
 the hall — Descriptions in Beowulf— BsLnqnet, songs, flyting, 
 etc. — Amusements and vices — Hunting — The primitive house 
 compared with modern dwellings. 
 
 V 
 

 ▼1 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Vll 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 129 
 
 The husband a warrior, the wife housekeeper and farmer — 
 Rights of women — Germanic chastity — Woman as sibyl — Her 
 courage — Wooing and wedding— How far love was a factor- 
 Dower or price— Ceremony of marriage — Punishment for infi- 
 delity. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE FAMILY 162 
 
 Hospitality and gifts — Responsibilities of the head of a family 
 — Importance of kinship — Conflicting duties — Feud — Wer- 
 gild, and other substitutes for feud — Paternal power — Expos- 
 ure— Education of children — Names — Old age. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 206 
 
 Household industries — The smith — Commerce — Exports 
 Amber — Myths relating to commerce and seaf earing— Ships 
 Love of the sea — Money and bargains. 
 
 CHAPTER Vni 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 Military service of two kinds — War the chief business of Ger- 
 manic life — Courage — Types of the warrior — Cowardice — 
 Germanic weapons -Armor -Cavalry -Importance of the in- 
 fantry - Tactics of the army - The onset - Second kind of 
 mihtary service -The Comitatus -Its meaning in Germanic 
 life and history- Age at which the German took up arms 
 
 226 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 270 
 
 The kmg originally a creation of the race -His authority and 
 duties - Inheritance and election - Ideals -The queen - Nobles 
 by birth and by office -The Germanic freeman -The freedman 
 and the slave — The alien. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 289 
 
 Gifts, not taxes — Organization of government — Elements of 
 monarchy and of democracy — Popular councils and assem- 
 Ijlies — The town-meeting — Legal system — The function of 
 priests in civil administration — Punishments for crime — Forms 
 of law — Ordeal and trial by battle. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE FUNERAL ^^ 
 
 The weapon-death — Burning and burial — The former a primi- 
 tive Germanic habit — The mound or barrow — Its position — 
 What was burnt or buried with the dead — Sacrifice of the liv- 
 ing—Ship burials — The land of souls — Germanic horror of the 
 grave— The elegiac mood in our poetry — Games and feasts at 
 the funeral — Ceremonies at the burial of Attila and of Beowulf. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 337 
 
 Germanic religion in general — Cult and creed — Heathen scepti- 
 cism—Agreement of old and new faiths — Cult of ancestors, 
 and superstitions about the dead — Survivals — All Souls — 
 Swiss customs — Heathen rites made Christian — The patron- 
 saint and the fylgja. 
 
 CHAPTER Xni 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 366 
 
 Dualism in worship — Spirits of the natural world — House- 
 spirits — Spirits of the air — The Mighty Women — Charms — 
 The Wild Hunt — Spirits of the earth — Wood-spirits — Tree- 
 worship — Water-spirits and well-worship — The Swan-maidens 
 — Giants — Worship of the elements — Water, air, and fire — 
 Mother Earth — Sun, moon, and stars — Day, night, and the 
 seasons. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 416 
 
 Germanic gods and goddesses — Evidence of their cult — The 
 days of the week — Woden — Thimor — Tins- Nerthus, and 
 the Ingaevonic group — Other deities. 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 440 
 
 Places of worship — Temples — Images and columns — Priest 
 and priestess — Prayer, offering and sacrifice — Survivals — 
 Divination and auguries — Runes. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE HIGHER MOOD 472 
 
 Public and private standard of morals — Ideals of the race — 
 Esthetics — Germanic faith — Notions about a future life — Con- 
 clusion. 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 A STUDY IN PRIMITIVE CULTURE 
 
 I 
 
GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 " Under the drums and tramplings of three 
 conquests. . . ." 
 
 Sir Thomas Browni. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Germanic and Celtic in the English race — Appearance of the 
 Germanic element in European history — Clash of Roman and 
 German — Sources of information about the early Germans — 
 Chronological and geographical data — Germania of Tacitus chief 
 authority — The Ingaevonic tribes. 
 
 Who were the founders of our race? Working 
 backwards, up the stream of national descent, we 
 come to the great influx of Norman people, Norman 
 words, Norman ways ; and we stop to reckon with 
 this fact in the development of English life. A very- 
 brief study, a few minutes of consideration, assure us 
 that here are no founders of England, but only gen- 
 erous contributors ; immigrants we may call them, who 
 brought along valuable property, and furnished us 
 with some new and desirable elements of civilization. 
 Again, and for still stronger reasons, we reach the 
 same conclusion with regard to that earlier conquest 
 of England by the Northmen. The Danes gave us a 
 few words, — the common vocable " are," for example, 
 — a few customs, a few laws ; and that is the whole 
 
 1 
 
2 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 story. It lies, therefore, between the Celts, the peo- 
 ple whom Caesar found in his Britain, and the Ger- 
 manic invaders and conquerors who seized upon the 
 island when the Roman legions were withdrawn. Of 
 these two claimants, the latter race is recognized by 
 history and criticism as furnishing the real foundation 
 of our national life. True, there is more or less oppo- 
 sition in the matter of actual descent. We are Ger- 
 manic in our institutions, concedes Professor Huxley ; 
 but the race itself is at least half Celtic in its blood. 
 " Not one half," Mr. Grant Allen is inclined to think, 
 "of the population of the British Isles is really of 
 Teutonic descent;" and he carries the battle into 
 still remoter territoiy when he concedes our language 
 to Germanic origins, but claims our literature, espe- 
 cially the imagination displayed in it, for Celtic influ- 
 ences. Furthermore, the greatest of our critics in 
 literary matters, the late Matthew Arnold, has broken 
 a lance for this Celtic influence in our national devel- 
 opment, and is half inclined to answer the question, 
 " What is England ? " by saying, " A vast obscure 
 Cymric basis with a vast visible Germanic super- 
 structure." ^ In particular, Arnold attributes so high 
 a quality of our literature as its humor — and what 
 quality is so peculiarly its own, so triumphantly its 
 own ? — to the dash of Celtic impulse and fancy, 
 clashing with our Germanism.2 And he goes on to 
 say, that our poetry probably got its turn for style, 
 probably its turn for melancholy, and certainly its 
 " natural magic," from the Celtism in our character. 
 Such statements as these from a man who on his own 
 
 I ?uV^^ ^^""^'-^ ""^ ^'''*' ^^^^^^^^^^ (MacmiUan & Co., 1883). p. 64. 
 ''Ibid. p. 101. '^ 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ground had no rivals deserve most careful considera- 
 tion. Arnold, however, is off his own ground when 
 he asserts that rhyme, which he calls the main source 
 of the romantic element in our poetry, " comes . . . 
 from the Celts." Kluge has shown, in an article deal- 
 ing with strictly scientific evidence, that our Anglo- 
 Saxon poetry, which already possessed that form of 
 rhyme loosely called alliteration, was in its own 
 fashion developing that form which we commonly 
 understand when we use the general term.^ Now 
 this mistake of Arnold's, trifling as it may be, shows 
 us the need of very severe tests when we attempt to 
 pass judgment on questions so intricate and rooted 
 in such difficult and distant soil. It is a little too loud 
 protesting when Mr. Grant Allen, though he may 
 well be quite in the right, lays down the positive law 
 that " our modern poetry " — and a fortiori^ our prose,^ 
 — " is wholly Romance in descent, form, and spirit." 
 We are tempted to ask Mr. Allen for definitions, for 
 sources, for proof. It is just the same hesitation that 
 besets us when he says that while our social and 
 political organization must be regarded as Germanic, 
 this Germanic element did nothing for our culture, 
 which is "wholly Roman." ^ 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 120 ; Klage in Paul-Braune, Beitrdge zur Geschichte d. 
 deutschen Sprache u. Literature Vol. IX. 
 
 2 Anglo-Saxon prose is vigorous, and sometimes, as in uElfric, not 
 without a certain compactness and form. But every one knows that 
 the best qualities in the older period of English prose — as in Hooker 
 or Milton — were Latinistic, and that the best qualities in the later 
 period are distinctly indebted to the French. 
 
 8 See Grant Allen, Anglo-Saxon Britain, pp. 106, 224, 227. For the 
 other side, see Professor Freeman, — who opposes "the witness of 
 speech" to "the witness of skulls," and insists on the continuity of 
 our race from Schleswig to New England, —in his Fowr Oxford Lec- 
 tures, 1887 (Macmillan & Co., 1888), especially pp. 71, 78, of the lecture 
 on Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and Britain. 
 
\ 
 
 s"<^ 
 
 4 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Granting all that these critics claim, we find in their 
 concessions of speech, custom and law, broad enough 
 basis for our assumption that the Germanic race is 
 the source of English life, and that the Germanic 
 invaders of Britain may fairly be styled founders of 
 England. Moreover, in regard to the disputed terri- 
 tory, while we feel sure that Arnold has considerable 
 justice in his claims for Celtic liveliness as a factor 
 in the imaginative qualities of our literature, we do 
 not wish to see the Germanic element fairly elbowed 
 out of our poetry. We are willing to concede that 
 Prospero found his Ariel on the island; but what 
 shall we say of Prospero himself? 
 
 Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur, 
 
 Des Lebens ernstes Fiihren, 
 Von Miitterchen die Frohnatur 
 
 Und Lust zu fabuliren, — 
 
 sang Goethe of his own " origins " ; and father Ger- 
 manic and mother Celtic may have contributed the 
 same elements in the case of English poetry. But 
 Mr. Grant Allen says that our Germanic origin gave 
 our literature "patience and thoroughness," and noth- 
 ing more.^ 
 
 It is little better than beating the air to argue in 
 general terms against these random conclusions. It 
 is a question of facts; and we must first of all inquire 
 how we can best reach the facts. We could take that 
 complex mass which we call English Literature, and 
 by a grand Quellenjagd, such as the modern German 
 loves, spread origins and sources over every land and 
 time. It is ea^y with a certain facility in tailor-lore 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 229. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 to show how oddly this literature is " suited," to trace 
 the doublet to Italy and the round-hose to France, — 
 pretty sport and often profitable, — but how is it with 
 the flesh and blood of literature ? Is the heart of our 
 literature Germanic or Celtic ? Or is it neither ? Is 
 it rather the result of classical or even Romance tra- 
 ditions ? How can we so much as begin to answer 
 these questions until we know what "Germanic" 
 means? If we wish to know what elements in our 
 literature or our life we ought to refer to the Ger- 
 manic invadei^ of Britain, it is of prime importance 
 to study this Germanic invader in his habit as he 
 lived. He is the subject of these pages ; and it is to 
 be hoped that a view of him, in different types and 
 periods, may leave some general impressions — we 
 may not hope for a sharp picture — of the Germanic 
 character. 
 
 Our knowledge of the early German must be de- 
 rived from three main sources, — the accounts of his 
 foreign contemporaries, the early literature of Ger- 
 manic races, and survivals ; the G-ermania of Tacitus, 
 our Anglo-Saxon BSowulf^ and the church festival of 
 All Souls, are respectively examples of the three 
 sources. In all of these classes our material must be 
 sifted with extremest caution, but particularly in the 
 second and third. No direct literature remains to us 
 from the Germans of Tacitus, and the songs ^ about 
 god or hero which they chanted in those early days 
 have perished quite beyond the faintest hope of recov- 
 ery. But heroic legend was richly developed by the 
 Germans of the " Wandering," the period when Roman 
 and barbarian were opposed in the hottest struggle ; 
 
 1 Tac. Germ. II. ; Ann. II. 88. 
 
^■•^i^ 
 
 6 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 and these legends have passed with more or less purity 
 into early Germanic literature. The Christian setting 
 often contains a purely heathen jewel. 
 
 Evidently, with material scattered over so great a 
 stretch of time, one is in danger of rescuing no old 
 German at all, but rather of holding up a bit of liter- 
 ary patchwork, a veritable scarecrow of ill-matched 
 garments passing for a man. The danger is real ; but 
 it must be remembered that a type is far easier to 
 establish for primitive than for modern times. Facts 
 have wider bearings and life is more uniform of tone, 
 the further we go back in history. Early times lacked 
 diversity of employment, fine divisions in the drift of 
 thought and feeling. It is civilization which brings 
 out the individual and lays emphasis on his impor- 
 tance—consider the "interview," — which creates 
 distinctions, and puts a thousand angles of vision 
 to-day for a hundred in the past. One reason why 
 Shakspere seems so much more modern than Chau- 
 cer is that the latter still drew types, while the former 
 drew men and women. The Squire becomes Romeo, 
 and the Wife of Bath yields to Mrs. Quickly of East- 
 cheap. What we must particularly avoid is to con- 
 fuse types, to treat on one plane the German of Taci- 
 tus and the German who has absorbed elements of 
 classical and Christian culture. The players of the 
 fifth act must not be huddled in one group with the 
 simple and hardy characters who open the action and 
 set the play upon its path of development. First 
 of all, moreover, we must glance at the stage itself 
 on which our German made his rude and clanging 
 entrance ; we must study the scene. 
 
 Civilization in the first centuries of our era re- 
 
 vV 
 
 INTRODUCTION T 
 
 volved about the Mediterranean, where a complex of 
 races was held together by the organizing genius of 
 Rome. But the Roman state was in decay ; its lack 
 of moral greatness combined with certain political and 
 physical defects to bring about what a French scholar 
 has called the " mortal illness " of epochs which are 
 destitute of lofty aims and firmness of conviction. The 
 slow " death of Rome," ^ consequence of this malady, 
 may be said to begin with the invasion of Alaric in 
 402, and to end with the invasion of Alboin in 568. 
 With the latter name we touch mediaeval literature ; 
 for Alboin is mentioned in our oldest piece of Anglo- 
 Saxon poetry, in the curious medley of description 
 and memories put into the mouth of an ideal Ger- 
 manic minstrel, Widsith, " the far-wanderer." 
 
 When the historian begins to reckon the causes of 
 downfall, he has the right to put first and foremost 
 the general corruption of the age. But, as was just 
 now hinted, there were other and specific causes,^ such 
 as thriftless administration of public and private prop- 
 erty, excess of taxation, and high cost of living. The 
 individual was crushed by the dead weight of im- 
 perial organization. Trade and manufactures must 
 needs languish ; science led to no practical results ; 
 and there was absolutely no material progress to keep 
 pace with wider responsibilities. As Hehn remarks, 
 the empire stretched further and further, and yet 
 Roman ships remained what they always had been, 
 coasting vessels, unable to contend with the perils of 
 winter or the open sea. Where commerce did find 
 
 1 Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, I. 3. 
 
 2 Best summed up by Victor Hehn in his wholly admirable book 
 Cultw-pflanzen und Havsthiere in ihrem Uehergang aus Asien, u.8.xo., 
 4th ed., Berlin, 1883, p. 394 flf. 
 
 ,38.* 
 
8 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 its way, it gave no spur to invention, and accom- 
 plished little for the arts of life ; like the sailor, the 
 farmer clung to the methods and implements of his 
 forefathers. In the world of mind it was no better, 
 and literature gradually lost itself in rhetoric, its 
 only remaining form. A deep scepticism prevailed, 
 stifling all creative joy; the old gods were merely 
 excuses for a priesthood, objects of a cult in which 
 no one really believed. 
 
 Over and through this outworn civilization swept 
 two great waves, — Christianity from the east, Ger- 
 manic invasion from the north. In one sense, both 
 of these movements were hurtful to literature ; for 
 the invaders doubtless annihilated a mass of precious 
 material, and what they spared was often the prey of 
 monkish bigotry .^ As a piece of revenge, the answer- 
 ing wave of culture, the reacting civilization which 
 carried rudiments of criticism and letters among the 
 barbarians, went far toward destroying whatever na- 
 tive elements of literature were to be found. The 
 spirit of Christianity rudely checked the development 
 of the heathen epic poetry; and such song as had 
 reached form and substance was put under ban. The 
 Prankish or Saxon monk disdained in most cases the 
 artless poetry of his vernacular ; and in the hands of 
 the monk lay all destiny of letters. Still, in that 
 general wreck of literature, it was Christianity which 
 
 1 See the famous story of the Athenian libraries which the Goths 
 were about to burn during a raid into Greece, near the end of the third 
 century. It is told in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Chap. X. The " big- 
 otry,'' by the way, was not always "monkish." Under Valentinian 
 and Valens the persecutions on account of supposed " magic " involved 
 the destruction of a vast amount of philosophical and classical litera- 
 
 r 'vl^'^K^'' ^t'xf ^^''''^^' ""' '^"'P^y theological persecution. See 
 Gibbon, Chap. XXV., and Hodgkin, Italy, I. 40. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 manned the only life-boat. Christian zeal rescued 
 many precious remnants of classical culture, keeping 
 them for a time that could use and value them aright. 
 Patriotic monks were here and there found who 
 would set down the songs and legends of the father- 
 land, notwithstanding occasional survivals of heathen- 
 dom which crept between the lines, — so we have a 
 BSowulf, a Lay of Hildebrand ; or else the old sub- 
 jects were treated in the new style, as where German 
 Ekkehard sings in vigorous Latin hexameters the 
 story of Walter and Hildegund. 
 
 This last example brings us to the greatest service 
 which the church ever did for the cause of letters. 
 It established a neutral ground on which classics and 
 barbarism could in some manner join hands and so 
 save what was best in each. Christianity inspired, an 
 international literature. Despised by the learning of 
 a riper age, this literature nevertheless saved the 
 classics and preserved those early records of the Ger- 
 manic nations which we now value beyond price. To 
 it we moderns owe what a great scholar owes to the 
 simple books and lessons of his first school-days. With 
 its universal medium of Latin, it controlled and shaped 
 the beginnings of every literature which arose in the 
 states of Europe. Its great advantage was univer- 
 sality; its defect was monotony. It already realized, 
 as Ebert points out,i the later dream and longing of 
 Goethe for a World-Literature ; but it lacked the vital- 
 ity of a national consciousness, is everywhere the same, 
 and has an air of saying its lesson, — not always too 
 
 1 The standard work for this subject : Adolf Ebert, Allgemeine Oes- 
 chichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande, 3 vols., Leipzig. 
 1874-1887. * f B» 
 
10 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 fluently, —after its teacher.^ This Christian Latin lit- 
 erature was the village-school of learned Europe ; but 
 while it trained, it could not create. The vital power 
 of mediaeval literature lay in the poetic impulses of 
 old Germanic life, — we are speaking here of the 
 northern nations alone, — in that joy of " singing and 
 saying" which our forefathers brought out of their 
 forests. The original songs have vanished. One lay 
 about Arminius, such as Tacitus assures us was sung 
 in his time, were worth its millions. But the later 
 legends, which sprang up with the national con- 
 sciousness in the victories over eastern and western 
 Romans, still keep the early note and give us some of 
 our best material for studying the ancient German. 
 True, they are inspired by contact with civilization, 
 but the contact calls out a national and original 
 utterance. 
 
 It is in the first flush of Germanic conquest, in the 
 clash of a fresh, ignomnt race with a corrupt, out- 
 worn but highly civilized race, in the awakening 
 of national consciousness, that we should like to 
 make our picture of the ancient German. But 
 such a picture is no easy affair. The clash of Ger- 
 many and Rome lasted five hundred years ; and the 
 Goth had grown as civilized as the Romans at a time 
 when his Saxon brother was still the barbarian of 
 Tacitus. We must look to our historical and geo- 
 graphical perspective. 
 
 The pressure of Germanic invasion which finally 
 burst the barriers of Rome was not altogether spon- 
 
 1 "One feels," says Mullenhoff, "that the early middle ages wore 
 another color and spoke another speech than we find in their chronicles 
 and documents." Deutsche Alter thumskunde, Vol. I. Vorrede p v 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 11 
 
 taneous. For a long time previous to the fall of 
 the empire, there had been a restless movement in 
 the heart of Germany; and while we find some ex- 
 planation for this in the nomadic character and mili- 
 tary instincts of the race, we must attribute no small 
 share to the pressure of Huns and other tribes upon 
 Germans of the east and north. The actual " move- 
 ment of the tribes," or Volkerwanderung^ is usually 
 referred to a round century from the flight of 
 the WestrGoths into Roman territory, — they were 
 driven by the Huns, — until the fall of the Western 
 Empire.^ The late Professor Scherer tells us^ that 
 the historic consciousness of the Germans dates from 
 this movement ; and we may say that it was during 
 this entire period that German after German came out 
 of his barbaric environment and took up that strange 
 battle between an old civilization and a new race in 
 which each is victor and each is vanquished. It is 
 in this period that we have the real conflict between 
 Roman and German, a struggle along the entire line 
 and fought for life or death; but there had been 
 many a previous encounter. Southern Aryans first 
 heard of their kinsmen in the north, not so much by 
 conquest, as in the peaceful way of trade. Miillen- 
 hoff is of opinion ^ that nearly all the supply of tin 
 came from Britain, and that the trade began in times 
 too early for computation. Tin was needed for the 
 making of bronze ; but another eagerly sought article 
 was valued for itself. Amber — it is mentioned in 
 the Odyssey — was in all probability the means of 
 putting Greeks in communication with the shores of 
 
 1 See F. Dahn, Bausteine, I. 282. 
 
 2 Oeschichte d. deutschen Lit. p. 22. 
 
 8 D. A. 1. 211. 
 
12 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGIlSrS 
 
 the Baltic, and with the Germanic tribes who lived 
 there. Greek coins of the fifth and sixth centuries 
 before Christ have been found near the Baltic ; but 
 in Miillenhoff's opinion, commerce at that time was 
 indirect, and articles were forwarded from tribe to 
 tribe. The first person, therefore, who brought to the 
 Greeks a definite knowledge of the north, was Pytheas 
 of Marseilles, a Grecian geographer of the fourth cen- 
 tury before Christ, who " followed the old path of 
 the Phoenicians," and was an eye-witness of the tin- 
 mining processes in Britain.^ He went further. We 
 may assume, concludes Miillenhoff, after a most elab- 
 orate investigation, " that Pytheas saw with his own 
 eyes the islands and shores of the North Sea, passed 
 the mouths of the Rhine, and the boundary between 
 Celts and Scytho-Teutons ; but found it best to 
 push no further among unknown races, and so con- 
 tented himself for the rest with what he heard of 
 them." 2 
 
 Thus, so far as we know, came the first tidings 
 about our ancestors to the ancient world. Their firet 
 actual appearance on the border of the civilized coun- 
 tries about the Mediterranean, is not definitely set- 
 tled. Miillenhoff thinks the Bastarnse were Germanic, 
 a tribe mentioned by Tacitus and Pliny; they appeared 
 on the lower Danube about the beginning of the 
 second century before Christ. A king of Macedonia 
 
 1 Mullenhoff, D. A. I. 375, 472. " The Humboldt of antiquity," as 
 Pytheas is called, is also discussed, with less critical knowledge, by 
 Elton, Origins of English History, p. 6 ff. It should be added that 
 Professor Rhys, Celtic Britain, p. 47, says there was no direct trade 
 between Cornwall and the continent, and adds that there is no " scrap 
 of evidence, linguistic or other, of the presence of Phoenicians in 
 Britain at any time." 
 
 ^ n. A. I. 495. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 13 
 
 is said^ to have sent an embassy to them and to 
 have asked them for troops as allies. According 
 to Miillenhoff, the Bastarnse came from the neigh- 
 borhood of the upper Vistula, attracted by southern 
 fertility ; in the third century of our era they vanish 
 utterly. 
 
 Next of Germanic races to tread the tempting but 
 perilous path southward were the Cimbrians and 
 Teutons. A large part of the second volume of 
 Miillenhoff's great work on German Archaeology, the 
 Deutsche Alterthumskunde, is devoted to a searching 
 investigation into the details, scanty and disconnected 
 as they are, which Greek and Roman writers have left 
 us in regard to this movement, — a movement which, 
 like the battle of Marathon, though less decisively, 
 struck into the very heart of history .^ Miillenhoff 
 makes ^ it strongly probable that these tribes were 
 Germanic, and that their names — for the later term 
 ' Germanic ' was not used at Rome till about 80 B.C.* — 
 were given to them by neighboring Celts. Cimbrians^ 
 may be translated " robbers," and Teutons " bands," or 
 " multitudes." They came, after a succession of Celtic 
 movements had left vacant tracts between the Weser 
 and the Rhine, from the old home of the Germans, a 
 region bounded by the Oder, the Harz mountains, 
 and the Thuringian hills. Till a couple of centuries 
 before Christ, if Miillenhoff is right, this girdle of 
 
 1 For references, see Zeuss, Die Deutschen und ihre Nachhar- 
 stamme, p. 129. Zeuss says without reservation : " Die Bastarnen sind 
 das erste deutsche Volk welches auf dem Schauplatze der Geschichte 
 auftritt. ..." 
 
 2 The author reminds us that it is now about two thousand years 
 since that Cimbrian terror heralded the Germanic invasion of Europe. 
 
 « D. A. II. 207. * Ibid. II. 189. 
 
 fi The name has nothing to do with ** Cymry," etc. Ibid. II. 116. 
 
14 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 15 
 
 primeval forest^ had separated the Germans from 
 the Celts. Now they broke their bounds and streamed 
 southward, the Cimbrians a swarm made up from 
 various tribes along the middle Elbe,^ the Teutons 
 mainly from the coasts of the North Sea. The 
 Romans had a tradition that this great invasion was 
 caused by floods, which drove Cimbrians and Teutons 
 out of their homes " in the uttermost parts of the 
 earth.'' 3 
 
 What havoc they wrought in Italy we know from 
 Livy and Plutarch.* Rome was saved at Aquae Sex- 
 tise by the genius of Marius ; and the great barbarian 
 wave melted away to the northward almost as suddenly 
 as it had come. Not very long afterward, however, 
 a kinsman of Marius, bent on the conquest of Celtic 
 Gaul, found, across his path and intent on the same 
 errand, an army from east of the Rhine, the hordes of 
 Ariovistus the German. Caesar was quick to see that 
 here was the deadliest foe of Rome.^ The destruction 
 of the Suevians, the Rhine-bridge, the legions led upon 
 German soil, are evidences of Caesar's greatness as 
 statesman as well as soldier. His achievements not 
 only furnished a model for the few victorious cam- 
 paigns of his successor, not only saved Gaul to 
 the Romans, but in the judgment of competent men, 
 prolonged by centuries the very existence of Rome 
 
 1 See also Kiepert, Alte Geographic, p. 635. 
 
 2 D. A. II. 289. 
 
 8 Dahn (see next note) finds this notion credible. 
 
 ^ A vivid account of the invasion is given by Dahn, Urgeschichte 
 der germanischen nnd romanischen ViUker, in Vol. U. Of course Plu- 
 tarch's Marius is the most detailed ancient account 
 
 5 Read^^e//. Gall I. 33, his own words upon this danger to his 
 country Chapters 43^, describing the interview of C^sar and Ario- 
 vistus, have high dramatic interest. 
 
 itself. There is something almost theatrical in that 
 opening clash of arms between the conquerors of the 
 world, with perhaps the greatest of all generals at 
 their head, and a mass of half-naked barbarians, — in 
 this beginning of a war which lasted for five hundi-ed 
 years, which saw the old world with its arts and 
 learning go down in wreck, and the new world 
 arise in all its incompleteness and rawness, but in 
 all its immense and eager vitality. Rude as they 
 were, these Germans henceforth held a foremost place 
 in the eyes of statesmen who knew how to estimate 
 the perils of the empire. Germans were sought as 
 soldiers, as allies ; the two nations came in touch ; 
 what Germans were and what they did became a 
 matter of interest. Caesar fixed his keen eye upon 
 them ; a century or so later came Tacitus and studied 
 them. Roman statecraft now bought, now fought, 
 but always kept planning the destruction of such 
 unwelcome neighbors. At first, Drusus and Ger- 
 manicus almost completed Caesar's policy of con- 
 quest ; but later this was given up, and a system of 
 border fortifications ^ threw the Germans back upon 
 themselves, brought about their solidarity, checked 
 the old nomadic drif tings of the tribes, and organized 
 them into nations. Four centuries of wai^ and treaties, 
 bribes and bargains, — the Germans fighting together 
 against the Romans, as allies with the Romans, and 
 against one another, — must have sent a vast amount 
 of civilization, both for good and for evil, across the 
 
 1 The so-called Limes ran from about the junction of Lahn and Rhine 
 to a point near the junction of the Altmiihl and the Danube. This 
 line was held by the Romans for two centuries. See Arnold, Deutsche 
 Urzeit, p. 81 f . 
 
16 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Rhine. Indeed, most of the early lessons which Ger- 
 mans learned of Rome seem to have lain in the 
 direction of perfidy and bribes. " We have taught 
 them," even Tacitus could say, " to take our money ; " ^ 
 and they soon became skilled in the art of selling a 
 treaty, and of breaking it. Vellejus ^ says that the 
 Germans, for all their barbarism, are thoroughly sly 
 and seem born for lying and deceit. But this opinion 
 is provoked by the victory over Varus. Large bodies 
 of soldiers were formed who lived along the Roman 
 border, separated from the good influences of home 
 and family ,2 and exposed to all the vices of mercenary 
 warfare ; centuries of this life must have destroyed 
 much of the old Germanic virtue. The low-water 
 mark of Germanic morals was reached by the Mero- 
 vingian Franks. Stubbs does not seem to think that 
 much change was wrought in Germanic character 
 during the early part of the period we have described. 
 The institutions of our forefathers, he believes, re- 
 mained practically the same for the two centuries 
 succeeding the time of Tacitus; "nor is there any 
 occasion to presume a development in the direction 
 of civilization." * Much of this may be true for the 
 remote tribes, for Angles and Saxons ; but the border 
 
 1 Germ. XV. a n. 118. 
 
 8 See Loebell, Gregor von Tours, 2d ed. p. 75 f. A description of 
 certain German tribes, who were still heathen, and whose virtues are 
 held up to the dissolute Christians of Rome and Gaul, is often quoted : 
 "Gothorum gens perfida, sed pudica est [the Goths held the Arian 
 heresy], Alamannorum impudica sed minus perfida. Franci mendaces, 
 sed hospitales, Saxones crudelitate efferi, sed castitate mirandi." That 
 is, the Goths are faithless but chaste, Alamanniaus unchaste but less 
 treacherous, Franks liars but hospitable, Saxons ferociously cruel but 
 of admirable chastity. Salviauus, however, has a suspicious leaning 
 toward antithesis. See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 4th ed. III. 1 f. 
 
 * Const Hist. England, I. 37. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 17 
 
 and interior tribes of Germany must have changed 
 greatly, and some faint ripple of these changes may 
 have reached the north. Victor Helm, in the admira- 
 ble book already quoted,^ says that the Romanizing 
 process began before the movement of the tribes; 
 and he calls attention to the great part played by 
 Belgium in mediating between culture and barbarism. 
 
 With the overthrow of the empire we have a level- 
 ling of walls and dikes, a rush of strange elements in 
 each direction. Barbarians sit on the throne of the 
 Caesars, and Roman laws are current in the forests 
 of Arminius. Over all is the mediation of the new 
 faith. Wattenbach reminds us that while later ac- 
 counts attribute the spread of the Christian religion 
 to individuals, apostles like Boniface or bishops 
 and missionaries like Augustine, in reality much 
 was done by persons of no name or fame, — mer- 
 chants, soldiers, laborers, — converted men, who 
 worked in many places and with great effect.^ We 
 can extend this humble but potent influence to other 
 fields. Culture of every kind must have been car- 
 ried in this fashion to all parts of northern Europe, 
 which were open to Roman and German. 
 
 Enough has now been said to show that our typi- 
 cal German, like Plato's ideal horse, is a very difficult 
 matter to define and draw ; and, indeed, he has been 
 drawn in every shade from absolute savagery to a 
 graceful and accomplished person, as unlimited in 
 courtesy and intellect as in muscular development, 
 who "cultive ses jardins, les vertus et les arts." 
 Jacob Grimm had some indulgence for this nobler 
 
 1 p. 403. 
 
 2 Wattenbach, Deiitsehlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, 5th 
 ed. p. 37 f. See also Winckelmann, Geschichte der Angelsachsen, p. 22. 
 
M 
 
 18 
 
 GERMANIC OldGINS 
 
 type; and while one would rather err with Grimm 
 than be right with Adelung, one must nevertheless 
 admit that love for the Germanic past has sometimes 
 carried even the greatest scholar of our century too 
 far. There are two assumptions. One is that the 
 German of Tacitus was a mere nomadic barbarian, 
 and all attributes of civilization found in him a few 
 centuries later are the result of contact with Rome. 
 The other assumption clothes the primitive German 
 with these same attributes, — that is, with the virtues 
 and mental habit, if not with the accomplishments, 
 of civilization. The advocates of both theories can 
 find in the chaos of material whatever facts they 
 need. In recent times, modern savage life has been 
 heavily drawn upon to supply pictures of early 
 Germanic culture. It is the disciples of ethnology 
 who depict our ancestor in such a degraded guise ; 
 while the philologists still paint a portrait that glows 
 with too many hues of civilization.^ Of course it is 
 the point of view that is continually shifted with 
 such disastrous results. What an enormous differ- 
 ence between the Germany of Boniface and the 
 Germany of Tacitus or Csesar ! We turn from the 
 idle, half-naked brawler of the G-ermania, the chief- 
 tain of Tacitus, to Theodoric the Goth quoting Taci- 
 tus himself on the subject of amber ..." Cornelia 
 scribente;' he says, just as any Roman would mve us 
 a line of Virml.2 
 
 o 
 
 1 Wackernagel thought a fair mean could be obtained by taking the 
 civihzation of the Greeks as described by Homer, and assuming the 
 "^TtkT P'"^^^'^« Germany. See Kleinere Schriften, I. 2. 
 
 Ihe kmg - through Cassiodorus - is thanking a tribe by tlie Baltic 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 19 
 
 Basis of our description must be the Germania 
 of Tacitus. But we are justified in adding to this 
 picture those traits of Germanic temperament which 
 were developed under pressure of the later struggle 
 with Rome. Thus the virtues of Siegfried are not 
 classical or Roman virtues ; they are the attributes of 
 an ideal German of the warrior type, blending with 
 conceptions of the Germanic myth. But where are 
 we to stop in this process? Where shall we draw 
 the line which separates Germanic from Christianized 
 and Romanized Germanic ? The answer is involved 
 in the question. Christian faith and Roman culture, 
 from the time of the tribal movement on, went hand 
 in hand ; and where the German stands hostile to 
 these, he must retain most of his primitive character- 
 istics. Now the West-Goths were converted in the 
 fourth century, about 375, then the East-Goths and 
 Vandals ; early in the fifth century the Burgundians, 
 later the Franks ; in the sixth, Alamannians and 
 Lombards; Bavarians in the seventh and eighth; 
 Frisians, Hessians, and Thuringians in the eighth; 
 Saxons in the ninth. This is for the Continent. 
 Anglo-Saxons were converted about 600, and took 
 the lion's share in converting their continental breth- 
 ren. Scandinavians accepted Christianity in the 
 tenth and eleventh centuries.^ It is evident not only 
 that these tribes must have varied in the extent and 
 accuracy of their heathen traditions, but also that we 
 are at liberty to use primitive material even when we 
 find it covered with more or less theological varnish 
 
 1 Legend said that King Arthur had conquered and Christianized 
 Norway and Iceland, and it even went so far as to make the apostles 
 themselves carry the gospel to Scandinavia. 
 
■m 
 
 20 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 from the hands of a monkish scribe. Moreover, let 
 us remember that the epoch of heroic legends was 
 closed about the end of the sixth century, when at 
 least half the Germanic tribes were unconverted. 
 The Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and perhaps Danes, who 
 conquered and settled Britain in the fifth century 
 were absolute heathens; and it needed three hun- 
 dred years more to bring the gospel to those swamps 
 and forests which stretched along the German ocean 
 and mto the Cimbrian peninsula. The continental 
 Saxons had the reputation of great conservatism, and 
 up to the tune of the exodus to Britain had wan- 
 dered least of all the Germanic tribes.^ We must 
 therefore be careful to abstract from our notion of 
 the Germanic settlers of England whatever traits, 
 found in the continental German, are to be ascribed 
 to a long contact vnth Christianity and Roman 
 culture. 
 
 Chronology in some wise determined, and enough 
 hxstoncal perspective assured for our purpose, we 
 need to fix clearly the geographical limits and divis- 
 ions of Germany. All work done in this field rests, 
 m the first instance, on the information given us by 
 
 tiic ixermama.^ Ihere have been douhts 
 -sed regarding the trustwoxthiness of tWs book 
 none, perhaps, going so far as a general denial, but in 
 one mstance at least, making, if successfully proved 
 
 of S; r ^" ^^^' ^^' ™"«^ outspoken enemy 
 
 of the Germama; he assails its ethno^raphv and 
 opposes .ts statements. « Much," he s.y^XlicTts 
 
 ' Dahn, Urgeschichte der german. und roman. Volker, II. 307. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 21 
 
 held to be German is Slavonic," and he insists that 
 there were " Slavonians from the Teutoburger Wald 
 to the Vistula." 1 These assertions of Dr. Latham 
 are rejected utterly by modern criticism. There is, 
 however, another sort of opposition, not yet silent, 
 which attacks not so much facts as motives. Most 
 energetic in this respect is the commentator Baum- 
 stark, who has somewhere spoken of the "rose-red 
 romanticism of the sickly sentimental Tacitus," — in 
 troth, my captain, bitter words ! And another writer, 
 but of a very different school, Lippert, the follower 
 of Spencer, tells us that Tacitus, for the sake of the 
 moral effect upon his countrymen, makes out of every 
 German necessity a German virtue, and so gives us 
 a quite false picture of German civilization.^ That 
 is no new accusation. The poet Heine speaks of 
 hearing E. M. Arndt lecture on the Germama, and to 
 our satiric young Hebrew the enthusiastic professor 
 seemed to " seek in old German forests those virtues 
 which he missed in modern drawing-rooms." 3 More- 
 over, the same Heine, in a less playful mood, com- 
 pares the Germama with Madame de Stael's book 
 De UAllemagne, and thinks the former " a satire on 
 Rome." * Are we, then, to regard this study of the 
 Germans as partly an idyl and partly a political pam- 
 phlet? Is it a Roman "Utopia"? There may be 
 some justice in this conclusion. One recent writer 
 has based it upon a critical study of the method em- 
 ployed by Tacitus, and shows, or tries to show, that 
 
 1 In Kemble's Horx Ferales, pp. 1-35, and especially p. 47. 
 
 2 Religion der europdischen Culturviilker, p. 120. 
 
 8 Heine, '• Works," Hoffman und Campe, 1885, Vol. 13, p. 49. 
 * Heine, Die Eomantische Schule, " Works," Vol. 7, p. 168. 
 
22 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 23 
 
 in the arrangement and description of the different 
 races of Germany,' the Roman historian was governed 
 mainly by the idea of artistic grouping and picturesque 
 effect.* Much of this claim may be granted. True, 
 so great an authority as Waitz insists 3 that Tacitus 
 wrote purely as a historian, and not as a moralist. 
 But we may concede something to the artist in Taci- 
 tus, It is likely enough that he cared more for his 
 coloring and contrasts than for the accuracy of his 
 Ime. He paints the Chatti ferocious to a fault the 
 Chauci full of the fruits of peace. But granted that 
 he purposely arranges his models, and here or there 
 exaggerates their peculiarities, no one can doubt that 
 the group as a whole is true to nature. His chief 
 sources of information were the works of Sallust 
 Cffisar, Livy, and Pliny the Elder, in addition to the 
 reports of officers and soldiers who had served in 
 Germany. It is hardly likely that Tacitus saw much 
 with his own eyes ; but as politician and office-holder 
 he had many indirect opportunities of studying his 
 subject Aft«r the fiercest possible light has bfaten 
 for centunes upon his work, the author of the <}erma. 
 ma IS haile.d by modem criticism as a keen observer 
 and an accurate historian. 
 
 The name « German " has given rise to a great deal 
 of discussion. It seems to be of Celtic origin and 
 rS" ^ii^- "-^hbors" or "those whrit 
 m battle. Tacitus explains it to be of late origin 
 
 * Germ. XXVI.-XLIV. 
 
 » yerfassxiugsgeschichte, 3d ed I n S^ wk 
 pleading in Tacitus it i« nf T I, ^' ' ^^^^^^ ^^ find special 
 XXXVII. ' '' '^ * °"^^^ ««'*' "k« the fine outburst in Cap! 
 
 and due to the fact that a tribe, in his day called 
 " Tungri," but earlier known as " Germani," crossing 
 the Rhine and driving away the Gauls, had brought 
 it about that the name of a single tribe was extended 
 to all the race.^ It is reasonable enough that a race 
 should get its name from abroad. Jacob Grimm 
 remarks ^ that names of tribes, like names of human 
 beings, are given to them by others: "the need is 
 greater to name a third person than to name our- 
 selves." Still, the Germans had a sense of relation- 
 ship, even if they lacked " solidarity." ^ Long after- 
 wards, they called their own tongue " belonging to 
 the people," — in Anglo-Saxon, theodisc, as opposed 
 to " Welsh," the talk " of the stranger." It was long 
 a favorite gibe with Englishmen that the fiends in hell 
 spoke this latter language ; and from a passage in the 
 Anglo-Saxon Life of St. Guthlac (in prose), down to 
 Hotspur's remark : " Now I perceive the devil under- 
 stands Welsh," this notion held both in jest and in 
 earnest. Dunbar, the Scottish poet, refines the fun 
 a little by making even the devil rebel against the 
 hideous Gaelic of his followers.* To this day, Ger- 
 mans call Italy " Walschland." The names of the 
 different tribes or clans were gentile, sprung from the 
 family system.^ 
 
 1 Germ. II., a much disputed passage, but clear in the fact, if not 
 in the reason for the fact. The best recent summary of criticism is by 
 Mullenhofl, Deutsche Alter thumskunde, II. 198 f. See also Baum- 
 stark, Germania, 100 ff. 
 
 2 Geschichte d. devtschen Sprache (henceforth G. D. S.), p. 108. 
 8 A fine defence of it in Grimm's G. D. S. p. 792. 
 
 4 See his famous Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins, in Schipper's 
 beautiful edition, now appearing in Vienna, Part II. p. 133, and note. 
 
 6 Stubbs, Const. Hist. England, I. 38. Compare further Birming- 
 ham, Walsingham, etc., also the names of tribes in the WidsiS Lay. 
 
24 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 25 
 
 How much territory the Germans occupied in the 
 first century of our era is stated with sufficient clear- 
 ness by Tacitus. " Germany as a whole,"— that is, 
 Greater Germany, east of the Rhine, not the Gallic 
 provinces called Germania, — " is sundered from 
 Gaul, Rhsetia, and Pannonia by the rivers Rhine and 
 Danube, from Sarmatia and Dacia by mutual fear 
 or by the mountains : the rest is bounded by Ocean, 
 which flows around broad peninsulas and huge 
 islands." ^ In tliis description it suited the political 
 purposes of Tacitus, so conjectures Miillenhoff,^ to 
 leave Germany practically unlimited in at least one 
 direction ; else the Vistula would have been given as 
 a boundary. Moreover, for artistic reasons it may 
 be, Noricum is also omitted from the contiguous 
 countries. Still, the, general facts are clear enough. 
 
 Within the territory named, Tacitus informs us, 
 the population of Germany may be divided into three 
 groups: the Ingsevones (or Ingvseones) who lived 
 nearest the ocean ; the middle race of Herminones ; 
 and in the south the Istsevones (or Istvseones). 
 Pliny adds another group, the Hilleviones ; these 
 Zeuss assigns to Scandinavia.^ The fact that these 
 three continental tribes have names which are bound 
 together by rhyme — so-called " alliteration " — in the 
 well known Germanic fashion,* makes their genuine 
 character extremely probable. The traditions which 
 held together each of these groups were probably of 
 
 1 He seems to think North Germany full of islands, and long after 
 his time Scandinavia itself passed for the greatest of them. 
 
 2 D. A. II. 3 f. 
 
 8 Germ. II. ; Zeuss, Die Deutschen u. die Nachbarstamme, p. 77. 
 ^Hengist and Horsa; Heorogar, HroSgar, and Halga in Beowulf; 
 Gunther, Giselher, and Gemot in the Nibehingen Lay, and others. 
 
 a religious nature, and were retained in a common 
 cult.^ The Ingfevones, our own ancestors, held 
 Ingvas as father and founder of our race ; and we 
 find Ing mentioned, seemingly as a god, in the Anglo- 
 Saxon Rune-Lay. Ermanas and Istvas were similarly 
 the founders of their respective clans. The three 
 names, if we may follow MiillenhofTs interpretation,^ 
 mean " He who is come," " The exalted one," " He 
 who is desired and honored." In ancient song, says 
 Tacitus, our forefathers record (^celehrant^ these three 
 as sons of Mannus, the original man, himself son of 
 Tuisto, whom Tacitus calls " a god born of the earth," 
 deum terra editum. In this way the clans about the 
 North Sea and along the Cimbrian peninsula, though 
 hardly a united political body, felt a close tie of kin- 
 ship. It was emphatically a sea-loving race, — Fris- 
 ians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons : these are our forefathers, 
 together, it is probable, with a few of the Danes. 
 It is significant enough that Saxons, Danes, and Nor- 
 mans made the three conquests of Britain. 
 
 Let us glance a moment at the separate tribes of 
 these three groups. In the first and second centuries 
 after Christ,^ the Saxons were settled on the right 
 bank of the Elbe opposite the Chauci, with Reudigni 
 and Anglii north of them and running well up into 
 the peninsula. Southeast of the Saxons and east of 
 the Langobardi were the Suevi-Semnones. Scandi- 
 navia was already settled by Germanic tribes. The 
 Goths were still on the right bank of the Vistula, 
 
 1 Waitz. Ver/assungsges. 1. 15, thinks the division was based on lin- 
 guistic differences. 
 
 2 HaupVs Zeitschrift fur deutsches Alterthum, 23. 1 ff. 
 
 8 See maps I. and II. at the end of Mullenhoff's D. A. II. ; also 
 Kiepert, Alte Geographic, p. 537 ff. 
 
4 
 
 26 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 27 
 
 with Slavonic and other neighbors on the east and 
 northeast. Such was the situation in the earliest cen- 
 turies of our era. Then came the great movement 
 of the tribes, which changed completely the positions 
 of many German nations ; but Frisians, Angles, and 
 Saxons held their ground. The latter had long been 
 known as desperate pirates, — in fact, as early as the 
 second century. They gave the name to that " Saxon 
 Shore " of Britain, and made necessary the appoint- 
 ment of a Comes Litorls Saxonici per JBritanniam, one 
 of the most important officials of the empire, with his 
 "nine strong castles dotted along the coast from 
 Yarmouth to Shoreham." i These Saxon pirates, 
 with their Frisian and Anglian neighbors, clung to 
 the coast, while the Goths were wandering from 
 the mouth of the Vistula to the shores of the Black 
 Sea, or while the Lombards made their slow way 
 to Italy .2 The sea-myths of the latter tribe were 
 changed to suit an inland life ; what was once an 
 ocean legend was forced to adapt itself to the tamer 
 scene of a river.^ As our forefathers had been, so 
 they remained ; and it was no new path they sought, 
 when, about the time that Attila was crushed upon 
 the Catalaunian plains, these heathen Germans were 
 " driving their foaming keels " over the North Sea 
 towards the coast of Britain, no longer pirates, but 
 invaders, conquerors, settlers. Nor need we assume 
 
 1 Hodgkin, Itahj, I. 228. 
 
 2 Possibly the three families of Ingaevones. Herminones. and Istsevo- 
 nes failed to keep strict lines in this general movement. Possibly some 
 of the later groups, like Franks or Thuringians, may have been formed 
 from two of these divisions. See Arnold, Deutsche Urzeit, p. 125. 
 
 8 The story of Lamissio, Paulus Diac. 1. 15, and Mullenhoff. Beovulf, 
 
 any pressure from enemies at home, the Danes for 
 example, as sending our forefathers into exile. ^ They 
 were men of their hands, and had that love for fight 
 and adventure, that habit of seeking war afar if they 
 could not find it at their dooi*s, which Tacitus records 
 of the Germans at large. Indeed, the Ingaevonic race 
 is early known in history. The Romans had no more 
 dangerous foes and no more valued allies than the 
 men of this same strain. Thus the Frisians, to whom 
 we are closely related, are first mentioned during the 
 campaigns of Drusus ; with the Batavians, they dwelt 
 on the northwestern coast of Europe, near the mouth 
 of the Rhine. 2 They threw off the Roman yoke and 
 were free and unmolested until the year 47 A. D. 
 Again they fought, and were enrolled against Rome 
 in the i-evolt headed by Civilis. 
 
 The large and powerful tribe of the Chauci were 
 also first known through the expedition of Drusus.^ 
 They lived on both sides of the Weser, where they 
 were seen by the elder Pliny ; they stretched over a 
 large territory which, says Tacitus, "they not only 
 hold, but fill (implen{)y Huge of stature, bold of 
 heart, sound in morals, they are praised extravagantly 
 by Tacitus* as "the noblest race of the Germans"; 
 they are self-contained, dignified, justice-loving, mo- 
 lesting no one, always maintaining honorable peace, 
 but ready to rise in arms upon provocation, horse 
 and foot in multitudes.^ Pliny, however, Pliny the 
 
 1 Mullenhoff, Nordalbingische Studien, 1. 125. 
 
 2 Zeuss, 136 ff. ; Tacitus, Ann. IV. 72, 79. 
 
 « Zeuss, p. 139. Moller, das altenr/lische Volksepos, p. 86, thinks 
 that Chauci settled in Kent and Northumbria, and so play a decided 
 part in our ancestral history. 
 
 * Germ. XXXV. 5 Vellejus confirms Tacitus ; see Zeuss, p. 140. 
 
28 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 29 
 
 eye-witness, seems to have received a very different 
 impression. In his Natural History,^ he tells us that 
 he saw them in their desolate swamps where ocean 
 claimed almost as much right as the earth itself, 
 forcing the miserable inhabitants to seek such high 
 places as can save them from the tide. "There a 
 wretched race of men must seek refuge on the hil- 
 locks or in dwellings laboriously raised above the 
 highest known tides. When the water covers their 
 neighborhood (at high tide), they are like sailors; 
 when it recedes, they are like shipwrecked folk. The 
 fish going out with the tide are caught close by the 
 huts. These people have no herds as their neighbors 
 have, and do not live on milk ; nor do they hunt wild 
 beasts. For fish-nets they braid ropes of sedge and 
 swamp-grass. For fuel they use peat. . . . They 
 have no drink save rain-water caught in a trench 
 about the houses." Then Pliny adds his rhetoric 
 and his compliment. "Enamoured of their barba- 
 rism," he exclaims, " these men actually declare that 
 if they were to be conquered to-day by the Roman 
 people, they would call it slavery ! " But evidently, 
 as Zeuss points out, Pliny is here, quite as much as 
 Tacitus, the seeker after rhetorical and artistic effect. 
 One wishes to emphasize the virtues of the people ; 
 the other is bent upon a completely dreary picture of 
 the land and the climate. 
 
 The Saxons, whom we must not too quickly con- 
 fuse with the great nation which Charlemagne so for- 
 cibly converted to Christianity in the ninth century, 
 are first named by the geographer Ptolemy .2 He 
 means the separate tribe which afterwards helped so 
 
 
 much to conquer and settle England. They were 
 not only pirates; a land-expedition which they sent 
 against \he Roman province provoked the descrip- 
 tion of them as "a race who live in the trackless 
 coastlands and swamps of ocean, and are terrible for 
 bravery and agility." They were seated at the foot of 
 the peninsula and by the mouth of the Elbe. Next 
 to them were the Anglians ; the traditions of this 
 old home held long in England, and there seems no 
 good reason to doubt the truth of Beda's statements.^ 
 The Anglians lived in what is now Schleswig.^ The 
 Jutes lived in modern Jutland and must have been 
 close neighbors of the Danes. 
 
 We have laid more stress upon the Ingsevonic 
 tribes because they were beyond question the 
 founders of our so-called Anglo-Saxon race. In 
 the middle parts of Germany, however, were the 
 Herminones, Suevi, Hermunduri, Chatti, and Che- 
 rusci: out of these tribes, not without mixings and 
 shiftings, emerge the later Thuringians and Franks.^ 
 Other minor divisions are given by Pliny and Tacitus. 
 It should be mentioned that philologists have divided 
 the Germanic race into two broad groups, — the East- 
 Germanic and the West-Germanic. The former in- 
 cludes Scandinavian and Gothic; the latter. High 
 German and Low German, — Low German naturally 
 covering the Ingsevonic tribes. 
 
 1 References in Zeuss, p. 495 ff. « Mullenhoff, Beovulfy p. 59. 
 
 3 Waitz ( Verfs. I. 14) says the Franks were Istaevones ; Simrock 
 says Ingaevones ; Zeuss (p. 80) as in our text. 
 
 1 XVI. 1. 
 
 2 Zeuss, p. 150. 
 
30 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 The German in Germany — His former home — Inherited and 
 actual culture — Country and climate — Pastures, flocks, and 
 herds — Nomad or farmer ? — Boundaries. 
 
 In a district bounded by the Elbe and the Oder, 
 north of the mountain ranges, and protected by the 
 vast forest of Southern Germany, Germans had grown 
 into a peculiar race, a geiis tantum sui similis,^ But 
 it is improbable that they were original inhabitants 
 of the land. Their forefathers must have broken, 
 centuries before the time of Tacitus,2 from that mys- 
 terious East which has sent out wave after wave of 
 western conquest; and must have driven away, or 
 possibly enslaved, the primitive tribes which held the 
 land. No legends, no dim traditions even, seem to 
 have survived from this remote epoch to tell the story 
 of the conquest or keep memorial of an older home.3 
 Dahn, indeed, suggests that some vague recollection 
 of conquest may lurk in those legends of a dwarfish 
 folk which fled from men and sought refuge in the 
 
 1 Germ. IV. ; Mullenhoff , D. A.V.I 
 
 CrL^^^^TuV' '°'"°'^ '° P^^"' '^'' ^^'^ "^ «^rly a« the entry of 
 Greeks and Italians upon their respective peninsulas 
 
 SchmMt'r>r,^''''^'l^''^'r ''' '''^ fur Autochthouen." Mullenhoff. 
 bchmidt s Allgem. Zeitschr.fiir Geschichte, VIII. 216. 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 31 
 
 crevices of rock and field and moor, — in other words, 
 an indigenous race, smaller and darker than the Ger- 
 mans.^ Grimm is more poetical than clear when he 
 speaks of rumors, still faintly pulsing (nachzucken) 
 among all Germanic races, of primitive emigration 
 out of Asia, rumors that connect themselves with 
 the legends of Alexander, of Priam and JEneas, 
 and furnish to mediaeval tradition the origins of 
 British tribes.^ But this is extremely uncertain. 
 The tribes which our forefathers drove before them 
 may have been such as the Finns, a hunting folk low 
 enough in the scale of civilization, who " had neither 
 wool, salt, nor wagons with wheels, and could not 
 count to one hundred." ^ 
 
 Where the Germans parted from their Aryan kins- 
 men ; where, moreover, all the Aryan race once 
 dwelt, and whence the various families set out, — 
 these are questions which bid fair to be long dis- 
 cussed and very late decided. The general assump- 
 tion has pointed to Asiatic origin and a mainly 
 westward course of Aiyan conquest; but against 
 such a view decided protest was made some time ago 
 by Dr. Latham and Benfey, and lately by Canon 
 Isaac Taylor and Professor Sayce.^ As rivals to the 
 
 1 Bausteine, I. 285. 2 g. D. S. 520. « Hehn, p. 18. 
 
 ^ The isolated German attacks of Penka and others became a gen- 
 eral advance at the meeting of the British Association in 1887. In 
 addition to the philological arguments, Huxley has thrown the weight 
 of biological research into the scale for a European origin of the 
 Aryans. (See Nineteenth Century for November, 1890: "The Aryan 
 Question and Prehistoric Man.") His arguments arrive at much the 
 same conclusion (see p. 7G6) as that reached by Dr. Latham. The best 
 book on the subject is Dr. Otto Schrader's Sprachvergleichung und 
 Ur geschichte, now accessible in an English translation by F. B. Jevons, 
 1890. Dr. Schrader collects the material and gives a fair summary of 
 the arguments advanced in opposition to the old belief. 
 
32 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 33 
 
 old table-lands of Asia, may be mentioned the coun- 
 try north of the Black Sea, modern Germany itself, 
 and Scandinavia. Indeed (limiting the question to 
 our own race), in the older generation of Germanists 
 there were men like P. A. Munch, the historian of 
 Norway, and Wilhelm Wackernagel, who believed 
 that our ancestors came out of Scandinavia down 
 upon the continent and drove the Celts before 
 them. 
 
 A candid critic is forced to admit that the whole 
 question hangs in the air, belongs to a time quite 
 beyond the reach of investigation, and probably will 
 never be settled. If there is any drift of argument 
 to decide the matter after we have looked at such 
 results as Hehn has given us, it is in favor of Asia.i 
 
 Easier to answer is the question of inherited cul- 
 ture, brought by the Germans from their earliest 
 home. The absurd practice long prevailed of col- 
 lecting all facts of culture which could be found in 
 older Sanskrit literature, applying these first to the 
 primitive Aryans, and then, by easy implication, forc- 
 ing them bodily upon the early Germans. Victor 
 Hehn has done something to check these unbridled 
 imaginings, and he is sustained by such an emi- 
 nent philological authority as Professor Johannes 
 
 1 A vivid and plausible sketch of the Aryan invasion of Europe is 
 given by Hehn in his monograph. Das Salz. p. 21 f. Referring to the 
 
 dZr /h' '" ^T''' ''^^^" ^^'^^ *^ ^^««d «- ^he character of 
 domesticated animals and cultivated plants, Huxley, in the article 
 
 n: ,a\ ' T'' ^^- '''^ ' " ^"^ ^^^° ^^^^ argume/t does not ne es! 
 sarily take us beyond the limit of southeastern Europe- and it needs 
 
 c^ralf^or r^^^ ^^ ^'^ ^^^"^- ^' ''^'-^' .^y^anH? 
 not^r^'to do Lth n ° "^"'rr' ^" '^' ^"""^^"^ P^^^«' ^^'^^ ^ave 
 aS value ^"' ^'^'' ''^'' "^^"'^ conclusions have 
 
 Schmidt.^ In the first place let us take the primitive 
 Aryans, the parent stock of our race. What culture 
 had they as common dower for all the members of 
 the family, as one after another left the early home ? 
 Conservative inference from the facts of philology 
 assures us that the primitive Aryan was on a higher 
 plane of civilization than the North American Indian. 
 The Aryan was no longer a mere hunter ; he knew 
 horses and cattle, though the latter were used mainly 
 for the yoke. The dog was already domesticated; 
 but, oddly enough, the cat, most domestic of animals, 
 was not known to the household until modern times.^ 
 The Aryan plucked — not sheared — the wool of 
 sheep and braided from it a sort of felt^ for he did 
 not as yet know how to weave. He knew the use of 
 barley, but had little or no regular agriculture ; for 
 the use of wild grains can be assumed where there is 
 no attempt to plant and cultivate. Flesh was eaten, 
 though probably the Aryan had no salt.^ Milk was 
 a favorite, and butter ; while out of honey was made 
 a fermented liquor, — mead. Houses, wagons, boats, 
 and swords were common. The state was organized 
 on the basis of the kin, and there were some begin- 
 nings of a legal system. The decimal system liad 
 been invented for counting, and time was reckoned 
 by the moon, " the measurer " ; hence the habit of 
 
 1 In his lectures on Comparative Philology, as well as in his special 
 works. See also Hehn, Cultitrpflanzen, p. 14 ff. 
 
 2 Hehn, p. 374. Against an assertion that the Romans did not have 
 the domesticated cat, see Thomas Wriglit, Womankind in Western 
 Europe y p. 18. 
 
 8 Races still without use of salt are mentioned by Hehn, Das Salz, 
 p. 16. Hehn thinks the Aryans first found salt in the neighborhood of 
 the Caspian Sea. 
 
 \\. 
 
34 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 35 
 
 our ancestors to count by nights (as in " fortnight ") 
 rather than by days. 
 
 Above this stage of culture we need not fancy the 
 Germans of Tacitus very far advanced ; nor, on the 
 other hand, must we picture them below it. Philol- 
 ogy insists that the words brought from a common 
 Aryan vocabulary represent things and thoughts 
 brought from a common Aryan life. Moreover, it is 
 well worth noting that the conclusions of archaeolo- 
 gists, especially those of the north, make Scandinavia 
 emerge from the stone age about 1500 b.c. ; place the 
 bronze age, with considerable culture evinced by its 
 relics, from that date until 500 B.C. ; and from this 
 point date the iron age. For the time of Tacitus, 
 therefore, savagery cannot be assumed of the Ger- 
 manic races, unless we believe that some great revolu- 
 tion or invasion, some social cataclysm which washed 
 away one race and floated in another, made a breach 
 with the past. It might be alleged to suit this the- 
 ory that graves of the later bronze age do not contain 
 so many or so fine objects as the earlier burial-places, 
 and rarely have weapons in them.i But the burning 
 of bodies, which came in about this time in place of 
 the older and simpler burial, may account for the 
 change ; and, again, we have the hard facts of phil- 
 ology. Montelius says that Southern Scandinavia 
 three thousand years ago had a civilization like that 
 described in the Homeric poems. 
 
 In the time of Caesar and Tacitus, Germany was 
 covered with dense forests. Pomponius Mela, who, 
 
 iTea^'d biz'!"' """^ ^"^'^^^^^^^ ^^' - ^^^ -^ copper between 
 
 in the reign of Claudius, wrote a sort of geography, 
 tells us that the land was crossed by many rivers, 
 rough with many mountains, and for the most part 
 impassable because of woods and swamps.^ Swamp 
 and forest, while they held back German culture, 
 made mightily for German independence. Without 
 these vast and dangerous reaches of woodland and 
 morass, the military skill of Drusus would doubtless 
 have conquered Germany as the genius of Caesar con- 
 quered Gaul ; for Gaul had been no wilderness, and 
 in some branches of agriculture had given lessons to 
 the farmers and gardeners of Rome. But Germany 
 was one vast forest, broken by swamp or meadow, 
 with here and there a stretch of open land : nothing 
 about it was likely to attract an Italian. " Who," 
 cries Tacitus, " would leave Asia or Africa or Italy 
 to come to Germany, with its desert aspect, its harsh 
 climate, its lack of cultivation, — a dreary world!" 
 The German swamps are often mentioned, and 
 abounded particularly in the north; what difficul- 
 ties they made for the Roman soldier may be read 
 in the nervous Latin of Tacitus.^ Quicksands were 
 plentiful enough. Jordanes, the historian of the 
 Goths, tells, in his fourth chapter, a legend of the 
 early wanderings of his race. They had come to 
 Scythia,^ drawn by fruitful soil; and as they were 
 crossing a bridge it broke, and numbers of them 
 perished, not only in the stream but in the tremulis 
 paludibus on both sides. With a touch evidently 
 taken from old song about the tragedy, Jordanes 
 adds that even in his time voices of cattle could be 
 
 1 Pomp. Mela, de situ Orbis, III. 3. 2 For example, Ann. I. 63. 
 8 Probably we are to think of Lithuania as the scene. 
 
 V 
 
36 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 37 
 
 heard there, and forms of human beings could be 
 seen. liow swamp and fen and moor must have 
 abounded in the low country northwards by the sea, 
 the land of our Ingievonic forefathers ! In their 
 myths we find many allusions to these moors. The 
 coast-line of northwestern Europe has changed since 
 those days ; where now is firm land was then a maze 
 of islands, inlets, and marshes.^ The epic of Beoivulf 
 deals largely with a demon of swamp and seaside ; 
 and even if, with Uhland and Laistner, we regard 
 this monster as a fog-demon, he rises from the waters. 
 Ingtevonic poetry seldom wanders far from the scent 
 of brine and dash of waves. 
 
 The winters were keen and long. True, the " harsh 
 climate " of Tacitus would be echoed by a modern 
 Italian ; but swamp and forest of that day made the 
 winter far more severe than it is now : there was 
 more ice and snow, more fog and rain. Like land, 
 like people. The genius of Germanic poetry is tragic, 
 and is fain to sing the fall of empire, such as the 
 ruin of the Burgundian house, or the collapse of 
 Theodoric's great kingdom. But back of the tragedy 
 lies the melancholy temperament, and back of this 
 the gloomy world in which our forefathers dwelt. 
 Their song echoes to a homelier note of sorrow, — to 
 hunger and cold, howl of wolf, grinding of ice, exile 
 and misery of friendless men, bitter toil on a wintry 
 ocean ; such is the shadow to which a fierceness of 
 delight in battle and slaughter makes the only con- 
 trast. So far as Germanic fancy pictured an under- 
 world of sorrow and gloom,— not, of course, of pain 
 
 iMullenhoff, JVordalbingische Studien, I. p. 117: "Die deutschen 
 Volker an Nord- und Ostsee in altester Zeit." 
 
 or of punishment, — it was a world of cold and 
 cheerless watei-s : a " water-hell," men have named 
 it. In the Old English ballad of Thomas the Rymer, 
 or Thomas of Ercildoune, we hear of these chill and 
 gloomy waters. Thomas is led away to Elfin Land 
 by the Elfin Lady : — 
 
 Scho ledde him in at Eldoiiehill 
 
 Uiidiniethe a derne lee, 
 Whare it was dirke als mydnyght myrke 
 
 And ever water till his knee. 
 
 The montenans of dayes three 
 
 He herd bot swoghi/nge ofthejiode ; 
 At the laste, — etc.^ 
 
 Scandinavian poetry would yield us a plenty of 
 similar examples. 
 
 These swamps, these vast and sullen forests, made 
 the German of fitful and passionate temper, savage, 
 inclined to gloom or to unchecked revelry. The 
 furor Teutonicus was no fiction. Yet the German 
 loved his forest; and trees are everywhere near to 
 his heart.2 The grove was his temple, with dark and 
 horrid rites that suited the scene; the dead were 
 often buried under trees, as in old Hebrew days 
 when Rebecca's nurse, Deborah, is said to have been 
 buried under an oak, afterwards called " the oak of 
 weeping " ; ^ and the boundaries of estate or mark 
 were designated by some tree, as oak, ash, beech, 
 thorn, elder, lime, and birch.* These sacred trees 
 long continued to be a source of anxiety to the 
 
 1 Thomas of Ercildoune, ed. Brandl, p. 83 f. 
 
 2 See Mannhardt, Raumkultus der Germanen, which brings together 
 a great mass of material. 
 
 8 Genesis xxxv. 8. * Kemble, Saxons in England, I. 52. 
 
38 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 89 
 
 
 
 authorities of the church, and one was cut down by 
 the apostle of Germany, St. Boniface. Under a tree 
 was held the old Folk-Moot, the primitive court and 
 local assembly ; ^ and the Westphalian descendant of 
 these older courts, the famous Vehmgericht^ not only 
 held its sessions under such a sacred shadow, but 
 hanged the victims of its process " on the nearest 
 convenient tree," after the manner of early Germanic 
 executions.^ The peasant still loves to plant trees 
 about his home, and in olden days the tree itself was 
 centre and prop of the house ; even in our prosaic 
 America,^ one can often tell from far away where 
 the different farm-houses stand, simply by the groups 
 of tall pine trees that cluster about each home. Of 
 the German forests, however, we find here and there 
 such a picturesque periphrase as " where the squirrel 
 leaps for miles from tree to tree."^ The oak tree 
 was the dearest; and it has held its royalty. It 
 gave acorns to the swine ; and where game was 
 scarce and other food exhausted, the same humble 
 fruit kept life in man himself. Later times in- 
 quire carefully about the ownership of acorns which 
 drop into a neighbor's ground.^ Next to the oak 
 stood the beech, and these two are " noble " trees ; ^ 
 although the ash often took high rank in Anglo- 
 Saxon days. The ballads preserve traditions of 
 their sanctity. 
 
 1 G. L. Gomme, Primitive Folk-Moots, passim. 
 
 2 " Proditores et transfugas arboribus suspend unt " Tac. Germ 
 
 XII. 
 
 8 Especially in New Jersey. 
 
 * J. Grimm, Rechtsalterthumer (henceforth, R. A.), p. 497. 
 
 5 J. Grimm, R. A. 550. 
 
 ^ R. A.50G; Mythologie,^ p. 540 fif. 
 
 Glasgerryon swore a full great othej 
 
 By oake arid ashe and thorne : 
 " Lady I was never in your chamber 
 
 Sith the time that I was borne." * 
 
 Punishments for injuring trees were inconceivably 
 harsh ; and beheading is among the milder penalties.^ 
 Fallen into disuse in historic times, — we find no 
 examples recorded of the worse punishments, — these 
 old laws were, nevertheless, once part and parcel of 
 the system and were doubtless rigidly enforced. 
 
 Inhabitants of such a land must have been more 
 nomadic than agricultural ; but, although marsh and 
 forest predominated, Germany was not without fer- 
 tile fields and a rude system of farming. We read 
 in Tacitus of good farming land offered as an induce- 
 ment for German tribes to make peace with Rome. 
 The proportion of cultivated fields to pasture and 
 woodland might perhaps serve as a test of civiliza- 
 tion; and Arnold calls the German now a "nomad- 
 farmer," now a " farmer-nomad." Again, the bronze 
 sickles and the hand-mills found in graves show that 
 tillage was known in Sweden previous to the fifth 
 century before Christ.^ Caesar, to be sure, discovered 
 very little which testified of agriculture among the 
 Germans ; but Tacitus mentions it in more favorable 
 terms. The increase of population acts on a nomadic 
 race as a stimulus to further wanderings ; but when 
 Roman barriers threw the Germans back upon them- 
 selves, there was natural demand for some steadier 
 supply of food, and they learned to till the soil. The 
 Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, once settled in the fertile 
 
 1 Child, Ballads,2 III. 138 : Glasgerion, stanza 18. 2 r, a. 518 ff. 
 8 Montelius, work quoted, p. 71. See also Waitz, Verfassungsges. 
 
 1.16. 
 
V 
 
 40 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 41 
 
 fields of Britain, became as outright farmers as were 
 ever seen. Nevertheless, nomadic instincts were very 
 strong with the German, and, on the Continent at 
 least, he put his chief trust in flocks and herds. The 
 German pastures were famous. Among the Ingaevonic 
 tribes especially, swine must have been raised in great 
 numbers, and, though of an inferior breed, doubtless 
 were a prime source of food.i The horse was raised 
 or hunted, not for modern reasons, nor yet for the 
 milk of the mares,^ but for its flesh. Like the oak, 
 horses had a sacred association, and were among the 
 noblest offerings that could be rendered to the gods. 
 White horses were used for divination,^ and the color 
 still remains a mark of royal ownership. Modern 
 anthropology is inclined to associate the prominence 
 of the horse for sacrifice with its prominence as an 
 article of food.* Certainly the eating of horse flesh 
 at feasts and celebrations was a practice which the 
 church in Germany opposed as strenuously as pos- 
 sible, and drove out only after a long and hard strug- 
 gle. About the year 732, Gregory, wisest and best 
 of popes, wrote as follows to Boniface in Germany : 
 " Thou hast allowed a few to eat the flesh of wild 
 horses, and many to eat the flesh of tame ones. From 
 now on, holy brother, permit this on no account." 
 Perhaps, hints Hehn,^ the apostle of the Germans 
 
 1 Tacitus does not mention them. See Hehn, p. 16; Waitz, I. 36. 
 
 2 '• Das melken der Stuten ist bei reinen Germanen nie Branch 
 gewesen." Hehn, p. 45. 
 
 3 Tac. Germ. X. : " candidi et nullo mortal! opere contacti." 
 * Lippert, Culturgeschichte, 1. 160. 
 
 5 Culturpfl. p. 22. The church also forbade the eating of storks, 
 beavers, and hares. Caesar says, in Britain leporem et gallinam et 
 anserem giistare non fas pntant — 8iga of sacred associations. Hehn, 
 p. 272. 
 
 had been thus liberal because the custom was known 
 to him in his native England, while it seemed but 
 abomination to the Italian. The horse was cared for 
 in droves and was watched by herdsmen. In the Old 
 Saxon Heliand^ a paraphrase of the gospels made 
 early in the ninth century, the " shepherds " of the 
 original become in Germanic rendering ehuskalkds^ 
 horse-servants, who were not watching their flocks 
 by night, but rather were guarding their horses.^ 
 Down to the year 1000, horse flesh was eaten in 
 Germany ; and in Poland horses were objects of the 
 chase as late as the seventeenth century. It must be 
 noted, however, that certain rock-pictures of the 
 Scandinavian bronze age show the horse in regular 
 cavalry combats ; and it was doubtless used for rid- 
 ing, not hauling, in the earliest Germanic times. 
 
 Cattle came later than horses, and at first were 
 used mainly for the yoke. As with the horses, which 
 were neither fleet nor handsome, and with sheep, 
 Tacitus notes in German cattle an inferior breed ; 
 and he points out the lack of that gloria frontis^ the 
 stately horns of an Italian herd. A German com- 
 mentator on Tacitus murmurs in a note that the 
 short-horns probably gave much better milk ! In 
 the year 225 of our era enormous herds of cattle 
 are reported as covering Germany. It is a charac- 
 teristic trait of nomadic times that cattle might be 
 honorably stolen from a neighboring tribe, provided 
 it was done openly, — just as wood might be cut and 
 hauled away if the act was accompanied by noise and 
 shouting. The mortality of cattle in those days must 
 
 1 Pointed out by Vilmar in his excellent little work, Deutsche 
 Altertumer im Heliand. 
 
i 
 
 42 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 43 
 
 have been enormous: with all modern resources, a 
 severe winter kills thousands upon our western plains, 
 and it was infinitely worse with the Germans. 
 
 As in the case of oak tree and of horse, cattle, 
 which entered so closely into the life of the Germans, 
 were connected with sacrifice and rites of worship. 
 Kemble ^ sees signs of a cult of this sort in the fact 
 that bones of oxen and cows, as well as of horses, 
 have been found in divers Germanic graves. He also 
 notices the cows which drew the wagon of Nerthus, 
 chief goddess of the Ingaevonic race, and the oxen 
 yoked to the chariot of the Merovingian kings. 
 Cattle were of course supremely important to the 
 nomadic Aryan. One thinks of the great part played 
 by the cow in Sanskrit literature, of the heavenly 
 cattle, more or less frequent in all Aryan mythology, 
 and of the customs which we can easily revive for 
 our imagination from such fossils as the Latin " pecu- 
 nia " or the English " fee.'' The clouds, those fasci- 
 nating objects for early myth-makers and modern 
 myth-mongers, are represented as horses, ships, swans, 
 — but most of all as cows, which are milked by In- 
 dra or our own Thunar.2 There was a " holy cow, 
 first-born of all things," in Hindu myths ; and the cow 
 remained, for the whole race, chief synonym of good. 
 In Scandinavian cosmogony, a cow appears on the 
 scene at the earliest possible moment ; and we even 
 hear of a certain Swedish king who was wont to take 
 a cow with him into battle. Good reason for all this. 
 Alive, cattle gave milk and drew loads ; dead, they 
 were useful in many ways, — flesh for food, skin for 
 
 1 HorsB Ferales, p. 68. 
 
 2 So interprets Mannhardt, Germanische My then, p. 1 ff. and p. 37, n. 
 
 clothing, sinews for bowstrings, horns for cups, bone 
 for needles and tools.^ Even to-day, proverbial wis- 
 dom insists that there is " nothing like leather," and 
 leather is palpably a weaker avatar of the holy cow 
 herself. 
 
 Fowls and bees are not unknown to nomadic life ; 
 and they were common with our forefathers. Of 
 fowls we meet geese, ducks, and chickens. Pliny 
 tells of the famous German goose-feathers, highly 
 valued for bed-coverings in Rome, and fetching enor- 
 mous prices ; though we are reminded that such use 
 of feathers for stuffing cushions and pillows was not 
 originally Roman, but borrowed from Gaul and Ger- 
 many.2 Geese were even kept as pets, and we have 
 a case recorded where they sympathize audibly with 
 the grief of their mistress : — 
 
 Lamented Gudrun, Giuki's daughter, 
 so that tears flowed . . . 
 clamor'd answer geese in courtyard, 
 beautiful fowls the fair one owned.' 
 
 As for the bee, its industry did something more 
 than point a moral for our ancestors and provide an 
 occasional luxury. It furnished them with fermented 
 liquor ; while honey itself was prized far beyond any 
 standard of modern times. This is true of nearly all 
 nomadic races, and at fii'st concerns only the wild 
 honey ; later there sprang up a regular bee-culture. 
 In Slavonic lands, we can trace for a long while the 
 custom of paying taxes and tribute in honey ; in Ice- 
 land, wax was used for the same purpose.^ The old 
 
 1 Hehn, p. 14. a Hehu, p. 302. 
 
 * Edda, ed. Hildebrand, GufJriinarkvi JSa, 1. 16. 
 
 * Weinhold, Altnordisches Leben, p. 89. 
 
t 
 
 44 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 45 
 
 laws were very strict and minute in their treatment 
 of property in bees, particularly the right to mark 
 and keep a tree in which the insects have taken quar- 
 ters, — evidently nomadic jurisprudence : ^ a fine 
 was imposed on him who took the bees from such a 
 marked tree, *' de arbore signato in silva alterius apes 
 tulerit." If the tree had no mark, no fine could be 
 levied.2 In the Anglo-Saxon " Rectitudines Singula- 
 rum Personarum," we find the functions of the bee- 
 churl, hSo'CeorU clearly defined ; among others, he is 
 to pay so much tax in honey.^ He is evidently an 
 important personage, and much in demand. In that 
 priceless account of the voyages of Ohthere and 
 Wulfstan which English King Alfred added to his 
 translation of the History of the World, by Orosius, 
 we have Wulfstan's description of the Esthonians (i.e. 
 the Old Prussians) as follows : " And there is very 
 much honey and fishing ; and the king and the rich- 
 est men drink mares' milk (the fermented liquor) ; 
 poor folk and slaves drink mead. . . . And there is 
 no ale brewed among the Esthonians, but there is 
 mead a plenty." Alfred's own people used honey in 
 all cases where later times employ sugar.* The older 
 Anglo-Saxons drank mead galore ; their chief build- 
 ing was the " mead-hall." Indeed, as late as the reign 
 of William the Conqueror, a very large proportion of 
 the products of the country, as shown by Domesday 
 
 1 Grimm, R. A. 59G ff. Agricultural races, of course, raise barley 
 and hops, and soon turn to beer-brewing. 
 
 2 Homeyer, Haus und Hofmarken, p. 10. 
 
 8 Schmid, Gesetze der Angelsacsehn, p. 376. Moreover, we have the 
 '• bee-thief." In Alfred's laws (Schmid, p. 70) three special thieves are 
 named, —of gold, of horses, and of bees. 
 
 4 Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcitnning, and Starcra/t, II. p. ix. 
 
 Book, consisted in honey, used chiefly for the making 
 of mead.i There is a question in the Demaundes 
 Joyous, printed after the French by Wynkyn de 
 Worde in 1511, and quoted by Kemble in his Sala- 
 mon and Saturnus : 2 " Whiche is the moost profyta- 
 ble beest and that man eteth leest of ? — This is bees." 
 Finally, bees passed into religion and superstition. 
 He that kills a bee is the devil's own. Bees speak 
 to one another, and understand what is said to them.^ 
 We "tell the bees" of a house-owner's death; and in 
 old times people added a humble request that the 
 bees would kindly remain with their new master. In 
 Westphalia, they sing on such an occasion : — 
 
 Ime, din bar es dot, 
 veria^tt mi nit in miner not ! 
 
 Bee, thy lord is dead : 
 forsake me not in ray need ! 
 
 When the bride was led to her new house, a similar 
 rite was performed : — 
 
 Imen in, imen ut, 
 
 hir es de junge brut ; 
 
 imen iim, imen an, 
 
 hir es de junge mann : 
 
 imekes, verUtt se nit 
 
 wenn se nu mal kinner kritt ! 
 
 That is, " Here is the bride and here is the groom ; 
 good bees, don't leave them when the children come." 
 One of our old bits of English poetry is a charm to 
 prevent bees from deserting their home.* They are 
 
 1 T. Wright, Domestic Manners, etc., p. 91. 
 8 Wuttke, Deutscher Aherrflaube, p. WX 
 1 Grein, Bibl. d. ays. Poesie,'^ I. 319 f. 
 
 2 p. 287. 
 
46 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 called sigewif^ a name of the Valkyrias, "victory- 
 women," and are evidently not far from active myth. 
 Like the cow, honey is a precious thing among the 
 Germanic (or at least, the Scandinavian) gods. It 
 is the main ingredient of their drink ; it is connected 
 with the origin of poetry, their gift to men; and 
 Grimm reminds us that, in like manner, Grecian 
 fable made bees carry to Pindar — or any other con- 
 venient poet — the divine gift of song.^ 
 
 All these things point very strongly to a nomadic 
 existence ; but there was, nevertheless, a certain 
 amount of farming practised even by the Germans 
 known to Caesar and Tacitus. We need not in our 
 haste hand them over to barbarism or savagery .^ 
 Guizot, in his Hlstoire de la Civilisation de la France^ 
 assumes that our forefathers were savages outright, 
 and he prints along with the Germania parallel pas- 
 sages describing American Indians and other equally 
 barbarous races.^ Aside from positive evidence to 
 the contrary, we may reasonably object to this view, 
 as confounding what the Germans call Uncultur and 
 Vorcultur, The former is the state of tribes which 
 never come to anything better than a raw clanship 
 and remain mere hordes; the latter is the note of 
 those races which are passing through the clan-stage 
 to higher forms of national life.* The Germans of 
 Tacitus are a developing, ardent, ambitious race, 
 destined soon to become a dominant race. They 
 undoubtedly had more or less agriculture ; and this 
 
 1 Deutsche Mythologies (henceforth, D. M.), p. 579. 
 
 2 A. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 1. 222, calls the society of the 
 Germans of Tacitus "a higher barharism," like that of the Scythians 
 of Herodotus. 
 
 8 See Waitz, I. 32. 4 Dahn, Bausteine, II. 77. 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 47 
 
 is perhaps the best standard of civilization, seeing 
 that it marks definite advances from the merely 
 nomadic state. Agriculture among the earliest 
 Germans has left ample proof at least of the begin- 
 nings of its existence. In the first place, we have 
 Caesar's account, derived from his contact with a 
 warlike and aggressive tribe. He says the Germans 
 do not care much for farming, since they depend for 
 food mainly upon milk, cheese, and flesh of animals.^ 
 They have no individual farms, — but he goes on to 
 tell how they cultivate their fields. Moreover, he 
 tells us that Germanic tribes, Usipites and Tencteri, 
 crossed the Rhine with a great mass of men, in the 
 year 33 B.C., driven out of their homes by the Suevi, 
 ivho hindered them in their farming (agricultura pro- 
 hibebantur^. Again, Caesar tells of Germans who 
 went into Belgium on account of the fertile land 
 there, and this '' in ancient times." He himself 
 burns the villages and destroys the crops of the 
 Sigambri.2 What the warriors whom Caesar met 
 would think and say of such a peaceful pursuit as 
 farming, appeared to the Italian almost a denial of 
 the fact. Farming was entirely a matter for slaves 
 and women, not in any way the freeman's business. 
 By the time of Tacitus, — and he had doubtless better 
 information than Caesar could elicit in the hurry of a 
 campaign, — farming is a more important subject.^ 
 The description given in tlie twenty-sixth chapter of 
 the Crermania is unfortunately so brief and obscure as 
 
 1 Bell. Gall. VI. 22. See also IV. 1. « B. G. IV. 19. 
 
 8 Grimm, G. D. S.^ 16, believes that the Germans were mainly 
 nomads (not, of course, savages) when they first appeared in history, 
 but admits the beginnings of agriculture. 
 
48 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 to remain one of the favorite skirmish-grounds of a 
 work that furnishes opportunity for battle in almost 
 every page. But whatever the real method of Ger- 
 manic agriculture as the Roman here describes it, 
 there is no doubt at all about the fact ; there was a 
 respectable amount of farming carried on in Germany 
 when Tacitus wrote his book. Land, however, was 
 plentiful, and pastures were probably much in excess 
 of cultivated fields. 
 
 Moreover, we have older evidence, not so direct, 
 indeed, but of a very convincing character. The 
 best writers on Scandinavian antiquities find it prob- 
 able that in the later stone age agriculture was 
 known and practised; while for the bronze age the 
 same assertion is made with absolute certaint3^ 
 Rock-pictures of that time show scenes from the 
 farmer's life with plough and oxen; and grain has 
 been found in the graves.^ Not so sure a witness is 
 the allegory of Germanic myth ; and yet, if Miillen- 
 hoff's brilliant interpretation be correct, the prelude 
 of our own great epic, Beowulf, tells in mythical 
 language the story of agricultural beginnings among 
 our far-off ancestors by the North and Baltic seas.^ 
 The Anglo-Saxon kings boasted descent from Woden, 
 the chief divinity of the Germanic race in the time 
 of Tacitus ; but the genealogies go even farther back 
 than Woden. The remotest ancestor that appears in 
 any of them is Sc^af ;3 for Anglo-Saxons he seems 
 to have been the type of the oldest times, the most 
 
 1 Kalund in Grundriss d. germ. Philol II. 2, 209 f. 
 
 2 First developed in HaupVs Zeitschrift, VII. 410 ff.; then in the 
 book Beovulf, printed after MuUenhoff's death. 
 
 8 Grimm, D. M. III. 386. See also MullenhofP, Deovulf, p. (J. 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 49 
 
 ancient of all kings and heroes. The Saxon Chronicle, 
 with the customary confusion of two religious systems, 
 asserts that Sc^af was born in Noah's ark. An ex- 
 quisite myth is told about him, standing in evident 
 relation to those later romances and legends about 
 the swan-knight which are most familiar to us in the 
 story of Lohengrin.i In some Scandinavian country, 
 or possibly in the old seat of the Angles on the Cim- 
 brian peninsula,^ a ship without oars or rudder 
 drifted one day to land, its only freight a new-born 
 boy lying asleep upon a sheaf of grain and sur- 
 rounded with treasure and weapons. It was a king- 
 less land, and the folk hailed this omen joyfully, 
 named the boy Sc^af (sheaf), and brought him up to 
 be their king. We shall see more of this legend 
 when we come to speak of Germanic ship-burial;^ 
 for the present we are concerned with Miillenhoff's 
 interpretation. "If we look closer at the legend," 
 he tells us, "ship and sheaf must evidently mean 
 navigation and agriculture, weapons and treasure are 
 as much as war and kingship ; and thus all four gifts 
 point to the chief elements and foundations of civi- 
 lization among the ancient Germans by the sea." 
 Miillenhoff goes on with his deus illefuit; but what- 
 ever the truth may be about Freyr and the rest, it 
 certainly seems safe to believe that our heathen fore- 
 fathers held traditions of a dim past in which the 
 first shadowy figure is the " culture-hero," the bene- 
 factor of his race, who shows them how to till the 
 
 1 D. M. III. 391. 2 MullenhofT, Beovulf, p. 6. 
 
 3 The prelude of Ddowxdf is translated below, p. 324. Sceaf is here 
 confused with his son Scyld, the warlike king, " Scyld Scefing." The 
 story certainly relates to the old Inga;vonic legends, perhaps to Ing 
 himself. 
 
50 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 soil. Moreover, the myth comes from a neighborhood 
 where heathendom held stubbornly for long centuries 
 after Southern Germany had been converted. From 
 all this various evidence it seems clear that the early 
 Germans were, to a certain extent, farmers; they 
 sowed and tilled and reaped ; but how much they 
 gathered into barns is a more difficult question. 
 
 We should like to know how far the idea of individ- 
 ual ownership of land had become fixed, and how far 
 a legal and executive system had taken the place of 
 mere paternal or patriarchal jurisdiction ; for farming 
 means property, and property means law. J. Grimm ^ 
 points out that a nomadic race is naturally most 
 interested in public or common lands, but farmers in 
 private and divided estates. As we go back to the 
 beginnings of our institutions and laws, folk-land, as 
 the Anglo-Saxon terms run, grows more important 
 than book-land, — the mark or common than the 
 farm. Uncultivated land is highly important to the 
 nomad; he looks to it for his hunting, his grazing, 
 and his bee-tracking. For this reason, we hear so 
 much about the mark. Moreover, land was very 
 plentiful ; there was enough for everybody, as Taci- 
 tus expressly tells us. It is likely that farming tracts 
 were occupied by small clans or families, and land 
 was assigned by lot to the individuals. We thus 
 have farmsteads {Einzelhofe), scattered about the 
 country as this or that locality invited settlement.^ 
 With advancing need of land for agriculture came 
 the increased power of single leaders and princes, 
 
 1 R. A. 495. 
 
 2 Germ. XVI.: "colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut 
 nemus placuit." 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 51 
 
 who doubtless took up by conquest, or otherwise, large 
 tracts of country and let them out to tenants under 
 conditions which varied according to the time and 
 the locality ; the conditions grow more complicated, 
 step by step, until we come to mediaeval Europe and 
 the full-blown feudal system. The individual owner- 
 ship of land seems to have found earliest and sharp- 
 est development among the Anglo-Saxons; but on 
 the continent it was not unknown. To own land 
 came to be the test of one's gentle condition ; and 
 some writers are fain to carry back this instinct to 
 the most primitive times. Waitz, for example, thinks 
 that the individual ownership of land measured the 
 amount of wergild^ and formed the very foundation 
 of personal freedom.^ On the other hand. Von Sybel 
 denies that primitive Germans had any interest what- 
 ever in separate ownership of land. Arnold, in a 
 more temperate spirit,^ simply decreases the amount 
 of private holdings and increases the area of common 
 land, the further we penetrate into the Germanic 
 past. Permanent, settled ownership came into full 
 force, he thinks, about the fifth century.^ 
 
 This vexed question is one that we may well leave 
 to the historian of our institutions. Philology and 
 literature, however, are not altogether silent on the 
 subject. The names of our popular fruits and vege- 
 tables show conclusively their origin in Italy ; * and 
 the same holds true of the refinements of gardening 
 and the processes of the vineyard. But if the rude 
 
 1 Work quoted, 1. 126, 133. 2 Dentsche Urzeit, p. 231. 
 
 8 There is much literature on this subject. See, among other books, 
 Seebohm, Primitive Villar/e Community, and D. W. Ross, The Early 
 History of Land-Holding among the Germans. Ross gives a host of 
 references. ■* Hehn, p. 405. 
 
52 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 German bad no such arts or resources as these, he 
 nevertheless very early learned the luxury of owning 
 land. The warrior who served his king was rewarded 
 not only by the arm-rings of gold or silver or bronze, 
 but by land. The young clansman of Beowulf, 
 Wiglaf by name, who has left his prince to struggle 
 alone against a dragon, is overwhelmed with shame 
 when he thinks of the benefits the old king has 
 heaped upon him. — 
 
 He minded the holding his master had given him, 
 stately homestead of sons of Wsegmund, 
 all the folk-right his father had owned, — ^ 
 
 where Professor Scherer interprets folk-right to mean 
 "share in the folk-land." ^ This is, of course, open 
 to question ; but in our two oldest Anglo-Saxon 
 poems, both of them based on quite heathen tradi- 
 tions, we have reference to the gift of land to a person 
 in reward for actual service. Widsith, " the ideal 
 minstrel," says that he was with a king of the Goths 
 a^nd had from this monarch a precious ring : — 
 
 , and this to Eadgils then I gave, 
 my helmet-lord, — when home I fared, — 
 to the lov'd one in pay for the land he gave me, 
 my father's heritage. ... * 
 
 The minstrels, however, seem to have held their 
 estates by an uncertain tenure. That altogether 
 charming little poem which worthily heads the list 
 of English lyrics, " The Consolations of D^or," tells 
 
 1 B^oio. 260G ff. 
 
 2 In the Zeitschrift filr oesterreichsche Gijmnasien, 1869, p. 89 ff. 
 Professor Kluge also makes are in v. 2606 as much as " Besitz " (see 
 Paul-Braune, Beitrafje, IX. 192), and so I have translated "holding," 
 — awkwardly enough. » fridsiS, 92 ff. 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 63 
 
 in the first person how a singer comfort's himself for 
 the loss of his position as court-minstrel. After enu- 
 merating some cases of particularly bad fortune taken 
 from German heroic legend, Wayland the Smith 
 coming first of all, D^or tells in the last stanza all 
 about his own plight : — 
 
 Now I will say of myself, and how 
 
 I was singer once to sons of Ileoden, 
 
 dear to my master, and Deor was my name. 
 
 Long were the winters my lord was gracious 
 
 and happy my lot, — till Heorrenda now 
 
 by grace of singing has gained the land 
 
 which "the haven of heroes" erewhile gave me. 
 
 That past over, — and this may too ! 
 
 Lastly, we may appeal to immemorial custom and 
 the poetry of our old laws. Primitive is the fasliion 
 prescribed in oldest Germanic laws for one who should 
 take possession of a piece of land. It was done by 
 certain symbolic acts ; one must break a branch from 
 some tree on the property, or set one's chair in the 
 midst of the field, or drive a wagon across it, or 
 kindle a fire upon it.^ 
 
 In regard to the whole question of nomad or 
 farmer, it seems most probable that the German of 
 Tacitus was a nomad Avith the beginnings of agricul- 
 ture, but also with a passion for warfare that threw 
 all his other tendencies into the shade. He was a 
 warrior : his nomadic traditions and his agricultural 
 instincts found no expression in his own acts, but 
 were left to slaves, captives, and women, the old 
 and the infirm .2 His farm was mainly in pastures 
 
 1 Grimm, R. A. 109. 
 
 2 Genn. XV.: "delegata domus et penatium et agrorum cura femi- 
 nis senibusque et infirmissimo cuique ex familia." 
 
\ 
 
 54 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 LAND AND PEOPLE 
 
 55 
 
 If 
 
 with a few cultivated fields, in which he raised 
 barley, perhaps oats, and rye, — the latter in the 
 north, — and, of course, flax for his linen. 
 
 It makes against the theory of mere nomadic life 
 among the Germans that they were so careful about 
 their boundaries. The main boundary of a land, 
 called the " Mark " in German, and in English " March," 
 mostly neutral and uninhabited, was generally a forest ; 
 at any rate, the word meant both boundary and woods. 
 Marcomanni can be " men of the wood," or " men of 
 the border." ^ Or the boundary might be a moor, 
 a stretch of swamp, as would naturally happen in 
 North Germany and in parts of England. The lore 
 of metes and bounds is evidently of great antiquity 
 in Germanic law, and particularly with regard to the 
 smaller estates. Boundaries are fixed by many a 
 curious fashion ; as far as the salmon swims up the 
 stream, where a certain shadow falls, as a bird flies, 
 or an egg rolls, or a hammer is thrown. ^ Later, but 
 still in primitive times, rude marks, often of a sacred 
 character, were cut into a tree.^ As in classical lands, 
 these border marks and signs acquired a sacred char- 
 acter, and came into touch with myths. Perforated 
 stones, which the ancients seem to have held sacred,* 
 served as sign of the boundary ; and so did the huge 
 mound which marked a grave. Nay, the gods them- 
 selves were thought to have laid out the boundaries 
 of land and land ; for not only have we the general 
 
 1 J. Grimm, Grenzalterthumer, Kleinere Schriften, II. 33. 
 
 2 Grimm, R.A.55; Kl. Schr. II. 48 ; von Amira in Paul's Gnmdriss 
 d. germanischen Philologie, II. 2, 110. 
 
 3 " NotsB in arboribus, quas decurias vocant. ..." Homeyer, p. 11. 
 ^ Grimm, D. M.* 976. A feeble child, people thought, would gain 
 
 strength if he were made to sit in one of these holes. 
 
 testimony of such a word for "god" as Anglo-Saxon 
 metod, measurer, but we find everywhere bold, irreg- 
 ular lines of rock, or huge, isolated stones, standing 
 in some connection with the devil, — behind whom, 
 remarks Grimm, there lurks an ancient god. Such a 
 devil's wall the modern tourist of the Harz Mountains 
 may still see in the neighborhood of Blankenburg. 
 The Scandinavian Thor had to do with boundaries. 
 Often the border-line was marked by a place of wor- 
 ship and sacrifice ; and since any legal punishment in 
 those days could be regarded as the offering to an 
 offended deity, it is quite evident why a criminal 
 should be punished "on the border." Kemblei 
 refers to the well-known case in our Anglo-Saxon 
 poem, Juliana. This saint and martyr is led "to 
 the borders of the land, to that place where the stern 
 ones determined in their hatred to behead her." 2 
 Other sacred traditions of the boundary-places are 
 collected by Grimm in his essay on Grenzalterthumer. 
 Duels, ordeals, trials by combat, took place at the 
 border, or on an island, — whence was derived the 
 Old-Norse name for such a duel, holmgang. Equally 
 romantic and far more peaceful customs, such as 
 wedding or betrothal, may also have been observed 
 upon the boundary; certainly it was custom for a 
 prince to receive his bride on the frontier of the 
 realm, as witness G-udrun : — 
 
 In fair and noble fashion they met the lovely maid 
 At the border of two kingdoms. . . . » . 
 
 Nothing, however, testifies so clearly to the anxiety 
 with which the German regarded the preservation of 
 
 1 Saxons, I. 49, note. ^ Jul, 635. 8 Kudrun, ed. Bartsch, 13. 
 
56 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 57 
 
 boundaries, as his excessive punishment for violating 
 them. The severity of these penalties reminds us of 
 the laws about wilful injury done to a tree ; and 
 where the power of earthly law was brought to an 
 end by the death of the offender, superstition took 
 up the tale and told of many a wretch whose ghost 
 haunted in this or that painful fashion the place where 
 he had done his evil deed. It is perhaps not altogether 
 accidental that in a bit of Danish popular tradition 
 the punishment for this offence is the old Germanic 
 horror of cold and freezing. Strande's wife had 
 helped her husband move a boundary-stone ; and now 
 she is dead and haunts the place each night, and is 
 heard crying pitifully to her husband — his punish- 
 ment may be even worse — " O Strande, I'm freez- 
 ing ! " ^ Reaching down into modern times is the 
 custom prescribed for a new purchaser of land, for 
 an heir, or even for the king who has just obtained 
 his throne. From all of these, custom demanded a 
 formal inspection of bounds and borders ; as is so 
 often the case, even comedy and farce seize at last 
 upon a grave tradition, and we hear of villagers 
 whipping their children at the border of the hamlet 
 in order that this important boundary may be indeli- 
 bly impressed upon the memory of future townsmen. 
 In fine, we conclude from all this mass of boundary- 
 lore that the desire to have and hold a settled terri- 
 tory is Germanic instinct, is original, and needed no 
 importing. 
 
 1 Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagn, II. 126. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 Stature and features — A fair-haired race — Sense of personal 
 beauty — Food and drink — Habits of daily life — Clothing — 
 Adornments. 
 
 We have long enough discussed the Germanic 
 type; let us look at the individual German, his per- 
 sonal appearance, his home, the habits of his private 
 and public life. About his bigness but one tale is 
 told, from Caesar, Quintilian, and Tacitus, down to 
 the writers of the dying empire; all agree that he 
 was huge of stature. To the small but wiry Roman 
 this unspoiled son of the woods seemed a veritable 
 giant. Even as late as Senlac, the Saxon is larger 
 and taller than the Norman, whose Germanic blood 
 had been crossed with a Gallic strain ; ^ and for the 
 earlier period, skeletons seven feet in length bear 
 similar witness. The race seems to have been pure, 
 so that these bodily traits were shared by all its mem- 
 bers ; 2 while the rigors of life and climate worked to- 
 gether for a very strict survival of the fittest. Puny 
 or undersized children, pronounced weaklings, were 
 
 1 Freeman, Norman Conquest,'^ III. 480, note. 
 
 2 Germ. IV. See also Huxley's article, already quoted, in Nine- 
 teenth Century, November, 1890, p. 756 £f. The skull is of the " long " 
 variety. 
 
 It 
 
H t 
 
 1 i 
 
 68 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 59 
 
 either treated as we treat superfluous kittens, or else 
 were thrust aside into the byways of household and 
 menial labor. 
 
 The giant was no lolling, good-natured fellow ; his 
 huge frame was easily shaken by passion, and in the 
 hour of rage or battle, his blue eyes flashed an un- 
 canny tire.^ Even the Gauls, says Csesar, were dis- 
 mayed by the wild glances of their neighbors across 
 the Rhine. Hehn is inclined to think that this feroc- 
 ity is inherent in the glance of all nomads; but it 
 was a characteristic of the Scandinavian down to re- 
 cent times, and was known among them as the snake 
 in the eye, — ormr i auga. Svanhild was daughter 
 of Gudrun and Sigurd, and had all the pride and fire 
 such blood should bring. On a false charge of dis- 
 honor, she is condemned to be put under the feet of 
 wild horses, that they may trample her to death ; and 
 it is done. " But when she looked up at them, the 
 horses durst not tread upon her, and Bike [Bicci, 
 Sibich, the treacherous counsellor of the king] had a 
 sack drawn over her eyes . . . and so she ended her 
 life."^ It was easy for this fearful glance to attract a 
 superstitious terror, and pass into the domain of spells 
 and enchantments. We read that when a sorcerer 
 was executed in Norway, it was customary to throw 
 a sack over his head, for his dying glances might 
 well be big with harm.^ 
 
 1 Truces et cserulei ocuH. — Germ. IX. Plutarch (in Marius, XI.) 
 speaks of the Cimbrian eyes as *' sky-blue." The blue eye and fair 
 or ruddy hair were admired by the Hellenic race, and may have been 
 their original type. Certainly their epithets for gods and goddesses 
 bear out this view. 
 
 2 P. E. Miiller, Sagahihliothek, II. 83. 
 
 « Maurer, Bekehrung d. norweg. Stammes z. Christenthume, II. 119. 
 
 Huge of frame, blue of eye, — often one may fancy 
 it a keen, hard gray, — the German rounded out the 
 list of his blond attractions with golden or ruddy 
 hair. We are not to forget that he was a cavalier, 
 at least in his flowing locks ; to be a roundhead was 
 to be a slave. This long hair was the German's con- 
 spicuous feature, for he used various means to heighten 
 its color, and we read of a Roman army in Gaul sur- 
 prising certain Germans who had been making a raid 
 in the provinces and were engaged in the amiable 
 occupation of hair-dyeing. The Roman leader, says 
 our chronicle,^ found them by a river, " some bath- 
 ing, some, after their custom, coloring the hair red, 
 and many engaged in riotous drinking." When 
 Caligula was fain to make his Roman subjects believe 
 that there were Germans among the captives whom he 
 led in triumph, he made certain Gauls dye their hair 
 red. Another emperor, Caracalla, went so far as to 
 wear a blond "German" wig; and it became fashion- 
 able for ladies in Rome to dye their hair with a peculiar 
 German soap imported for the purpose, — that from 
 Batavia was the favorite, said to have been made of 
 ashes mixed with goat's fat, — with which they ob- 
 tained either a golden or a ruddy tint. Still better 
 was actual German hair, — blonde wigs, — which they 
 often affected.2 
 
 We have said that the German cherished his flow- 
 ing hair ; it was his outward and visible sign of free- 
 dom, a precious thing. The gift of a lock of one's 
 hair was a symbol of submission. Among the 
 
 1 Ammianus Marcell. 27, II. 2. It was in the year 367. 
 
 2 For the popularity of yellow hair in Rome, see Wright, Woman- 
 kind in Western Europe, p. 11. 
 
60 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 61 
 
 , 
 
 Frisians, men who took oath to anything touched hair 
 or beard ; i and a story quoted by Grimm tells how 
 those who were about to be beheaded took measures 
 to save from stain of blood their long golden hair. 
 Possibly some faint echo of this tradition lingered 
 with Sir Thomas More when on the scaffold he 
 « moved his beard carefully from the block." Par- 
 ticularly the kings, the reges criniti of the Franks, 
 were marked by flowing hair ; and if this were lost, 
 with it went the fact and chance of kingship. Paul 
 the Deacon, in his history of the Lombards, tells a 
 pretty tale about one of their princes. A hostile tribe 
 had resolved to put to death all the adult Lombards, 
 and three of the princes escape on fleet horses. A 
 younger brother, Grimuald, they deem incapable of 
 keeping himself so long in the saddle, and are about 
 to kill him that he may not pass into slavery ; but as 
 the spear is lifted against him, the boy begins to 
 weep, and crying, " Do not kill me ! I can hold my- 
 self on horseback ! " is spared, and rides away with 
 his brethren. Nevertheless, he is overtaken by a foe- 
 man and is again in danger of death ; but his enemy, 
 impressed by the noble figure, the glittering eyes, and 
 above all by the long blond waving hair, spares him, 
 and leads him, still mounted, to the camp. But royal 
 blood is in the boy's veins. He chafes at his disgrace ; 
 draws a short sword, " such as lads carry," splits his 
 captor's head to the skull, rides off, and triumphantly 
 rejoins his brethren. ^ The long locks were sign of 
 
 iGrimm, 72.^.147,285. 
 
 2 Paul Diac, Langoh. IV. 37. Paul in IV. 22 describes the old fashion 
 among his race as requiring neck and back of head to be shorn, and 
 allowing the hair, parted in the middle, to fall over the cheeks down to 
 the mouth. 
 
 freedom in woman as in man. Fri-wif loc-hore — " free 
 woman with curly or flowing hair " — is the phrase 
 applied in an old Anglo-Saxon law.^ 
 
 It needs not to add that Germanic complexions were 
 blonde, to suit the hair and eyes. The type is seldom 
 found in modern descendants, and was broken in Eng- 
 land by intermarriage with the native population ; for 
 while " the pure Anglo-Saxons were a round-skulled, 
 fair-haired, blonde-complexioned race," the Celts had 
 "mixed largely in Britain with one or more long- 
 skulled, dark-haired, black-eyed, and brown-complex- 
 ioned races," ^ and our present Englishman shows the 
 crossing. In some parts of Scandinavia and in Sax- 
 ony one can still find the "white girls and black 
 bread." Recent German school-statistics ^ of one of 
 these favored localities gave, out of 468,763 children, 
 317,444 who were "blonde," and 136,014 who were 
 " brown." Andree, however, asserts * that to-day the 
 majority of that great "white" race, the Aryans, 
 whose career of conquest helped Spencer to draw 
 the conclusion that white races are "habitually the 
 dominant races " in the struggle for existence, have a 
 dark complexion ; among these white families, " does 
 not the dark-haired type," asks Victor Hehn, "always 
 conquer the blond?" How different is the story with 
 our Germanic ancestors, or even among those early 
 races whose modern representatives are uniformly 
 
 1 Schmid, Gesetze der Angelsachsen (hereafter Ags. Ges.), p. 8, § 73. 
 As for color, compare our names Fairfax (fair-hair) and its opposite 
 Colfax. 
 
 2 Grant Allen, A.-S. Britain, p. 56. 
 
 8 See Richard Andree in the Zst.f. Ethnologic, 1878, p. 343. 
 4 Ibid. p. 335 ff. See, moreover, an essay by the present author in 
 the Uaverford College Studies, 1. 132 ff. 
 
62 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 4 
 
 h ■' 
 
 I 
 1 
 
 dark! For in Greece the gods, Eros, for example 
 were represented with golden hair, just as in our 
 mediaeval miracle plays and mysteries the sacred per- 
 sonages were always given golden hair and beards, 
 and the angels wore "gold skins and wings." In 
 the purely Germanic races gold and white are the 
 aristocratic colors, and a Scandinavian legend ^ tells 
 how god Heimdall, " whitest of the ^sir," wandering 
 the green ways of earth under the name of Rigr, 
 begets in succession Thrall and Karl (Churl) and 
 Jarl (Earl). Thrall's complexion was black, and he 
 was straightway a hewer of wood and a drawer of 
 water, worked afield, fed swine, dug peat. Karl the 
 freeman tamed oxen, raised crops, made ploughs, 
 built houses and barns and wagons. One of his 
 sons is named Smith, or the artisan; and he and all 
 his breed are of a ruddy hue, and are like their 
 favorite god, plain old Thor. Highest of all was 
 Jarl ; when he was born he was " swaddled in silk," 
 " his hair was yellow,^ his cheeks were rosy, his eyes 
 were keen as a young serpent's"; and as his com- 
 plexion, so also his callings were of another color 
 than Karl's or Thrall's. He learned to brandish the 
 shield, to wind the bowstring, to span the elm-bow, 
 to fit the arrow, to hurl lance and spear, to egg on 
 the hound and tame the stallion, to swing the sword, 
 and swim through the sea. To match this aristo- 
 
 1 Rigsmdl : Edda, ed. Hildebrand. 112 ff. Simrock's Edda, p. Ill ff. 
 Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale (hereafter C. P. B.), 
 1, 2S4ff. 
 
 2 Meyer, Alt germ. Poesie, p. 200, without special references, says that 
 the typical Germanic hero's hair is not "blonde" but "braunlich." 
 The " jugendkrjiftige Mann" whom we have met in description of 
 Germanic heroes, is certainly " blonde." 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 63 
 
 cratic type of earth, we find Balder, darling of the 
 gods, " so fair to look upon that light streams from 
 him, and the whitest of all flowers [or grasses] is 
 likened to his eyelashes." ^ So the tradition passes 
 down into the ballads ; and what reader of these 
 abstracts and brief chronicles of old time does not 
 remember how all the knights and all the ladies 
 have fair skin and yellow hair? Even Robin Hood 
 has "a milk-white side." Churlish dispositions crop 
 out in the dusky color of face or eyes or locks ; in 
 some versions of The Ttva Sisters^ "the younger sis- 
 ter is fair, and the older dark" to suit their char- 
 acters : 2 — 
 
 Ye was fair, and I was din (dun). 
 
 Dark complexion is a badge of low birth, and then 
 comes to be the note of undesirableness in English 
 feminine beauty. Again and again Shakspere re- 
 turns to this theme in his sonnets about the "dark 
 lady,"^ that "woman colour'd ill," with "mourning 
 
 eyes " : — 
 
 In the old age black was not counted fair, 
 
 Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name. . . . 
 
 Tn a Scandinavian saga, twins of a dark complexion 
 are born to a certain queen, but her husband calls 
 them " hell-skins " and refuses to own them.* It is 
 prejudice of race, this passion for the blonde, — at 
 least in modern times ; and we find the Arabian prov- 
 erb just as scornful of fairness as the German could 
 
 1 Prose Edda, Gylfaginninrj, XXII. 2 child, Ballads,2 1. 120. 
 
 8 See, especially, Sonnets 127, 130, 131, 132, 137, 141, 147, 150, 152. 
 
 ^ Here we meet not only a touch of theolo^, but also that absurd 
 old notion, brought out — amon<: many other instances — in our English 
 romance of Octavian, that of twins one child must be illegitimate. 
 
64 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGIXS 
 
 h 
 
 be of the brunette : " Ruddy of moustachio, blue of 
 eye, and black of heart," which matches a phrase in 
 our old friend the Arabian Nights : " Blue of eye and 
 foul of face."^ An international summary of the 
 whole matter may be found in a proverb quoted 
 by Uhland:^ "Beware of a black German, a white 
 Italian, a red Spaniard, and a Dutchman — of any 
 color ! " It would seem to run counter to this doc- 
 trine that we find in all Germanic nations, from about 
 the year 1000 of our era, a decided prejudice against 
 red hair. The so-called proverbs of Alfred affirm 
 the red man to be a rogue ; while 
 
 Alder-wood and red hair 
 on good soil are rare, 
 
 is a proverb found in nearly every Germanic dialect.^ 
 To explain this we need not drag in honest old 
 Thor by his red beard, — not even red-haired Loki, — 
 nor appeal to the pictures of Judas Iscariot. It is 
 the red which verges upon black, the dusky color 
 that is meant, like those dull flames of hell which 
 make darkness visible. The light, ruddy color, the 
 golden red, has always a noble and gallant connota- 
 tion ; of such complexion and such hair was Kaiser 
 Friedrich Barbarossa, or the West-Goth Theodoric 
 II., who is described by Sidonius Apollinaris as hav- 
 ing long and curly hair, snow-white teeth, and a skin 
 colored like milk and flushed with manly red, — evi- 
 dently a pattern of kings and Germans.* It is not all 
 
 1 Transl. Sir R. Burton, IV. 192, and note. 
 
 2 Kleinere Schriften, IV. 45. 
 
 3 R. Andree, work quoted, p. 335 ff. All witches are red-haired ; 
 trolls and nixies tend the same way. See sufficient evidence in Roch- 
 holz, Deutscher Glauhe und Branch, II. 223 f. 
 
 4 Rochholz, work quoted, II. 222. 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 65 
 
 rhetoric, again, when Sidonius, describing the wed- 
 ding of a young Frankish prince, arrays him in glit- 
 ter of gold, in flame of scarlet, in sheen of whitest 
 silk, — but assures us that all these were easily peered 
 by the gold of the flowing locks, and by the fairness 
 and flush of the complexion.^ Add to these florid 
 graces the power to hold us by his glittering eye, and 
 we have a kinsman of whom we need not be ashamed. 
 Even after we have stript the rhetoric from the de- 
 scription, and the robes of civilization from the 
 prince, after we have put him into a simple dress of 
 skins, and a bit of linen, and thrust him back into his 
 forest, there still remains a huge, keen-eyed, florid, 
 yellow-haired person, impetuous, melancholy, cruel, 
 passionate, fitful, with dreams of conquest, with long- 
 ings dull and indefinite, with a contempt for civili- 
 zation, and an eagerness to touch and keep some of 
 its nobler elements, — a person, in short, whom no 
 amount of ethnology is going to put on a par with 
 the modern African savage. 
 
 How far the sense of personal beauty was devel- 
 oped, how far his "lassie wi' the lint-white locks" 
 bewitched a Germanic youth with something higher 
 than mere physical attraction, is a question not easy 
 to answer. We must not inject too liberal a measure 
 of romance into that old courtship ; but yet there was 
 surely something of the grace of love even in Ger- 
 manic forests. Late as the myth may be, we feel sure 
 
 1 In the ballad Willie o* Winsbury, Child,2 jy. 399, we have a fine 
 match for the older figure : — 
 
 •• But when he came the king before, 
 He was clad o' the red silk, 
 His hair was like to threeds o' gold, 
 And his skin was as white as milk." 
 
f * 
 
 66 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 that when the Scandinavian god falls into utter love- 
 madness for his longing after Gerthr, whose " white 
 arms lightened all the sea and land," this was no 
 new viking invention, ])ut had its prototype in the 
 passion of many an early warrior. BSowulf and 
 the epic fragments show in their phrases a monkish 
 abstinence when speaking of women: "gold-adorned," 
 "fair-haired," "white," "fair," are the traditional 
 epithets. There is more sense for manly beauty 
 than for that of woman. In the one simile applied 
 to woman, which is found in our wreckage of Ger- 
 manic poetry, she is compared with the sunbeam.^ 
 
 Un romantic but useful is the query what this glit- 
 tering and florid person had to eat. For in spite of 
 his gigantic frame, he lacked endurance, — not so 
 much the natural quality as that which is born of dis- 
 cipline, systematic campaigns, and regular supplies. 
 That he could bear cold better than heat, hunger 
 better than thirst, is natural criticism for an Italian ; ^ 
 and Plutarch notes the advantage enjoyed in this 
 respect by the Romans in their fight with Cimbrians 
 at Vercellse. No doubt, however, the uncertain 
 amount and kind of food helped to make the Ger- 
 mans less patient of fatigue. Often the larder must 
 have been bare, often filled to excess. Their feasts, 
 says Tacitus, while not of great variety and exquisite, 
 are yet abundant ; ^ — and this is concession from a 
 Roman of the empire. They ate the flesh of wild or 
 half-tamed horses and of swine, with other kinds of 
 game, mostly fresh, — recensfera, says Tacitus,* — but 
 doubtless often dried or salted. Caesar seems to have 
 
 1 Meyer, Altgerm. Poesie, p. 112 f. 
 3 Ibid. XIV. 
 
 2 Germ. IV. 
 4 Ibid. XXIII. 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 67 
 
 believed a decidedly indigestible story about the habits 
 of a German elk and the popular mode of snaring it. 
 He says ^ that it does not lie down, nor can it rise if 
 it has fallen ; but it takes its rest by leaning against 
 a tree. The hunter has simply to cut nearly through 
 such a tree and leave it standing apparently in its 
 usual case ; the elk leans against it, overturns it, and 
 falls with it to the ground. 
 
 It must be admitted that these statements about 
 the German larder point to nomadic life and tend to 
 confirm the view of Jacob Grimm, who saw " nomad " 
 writ very large over primitive Germany. But it is 
 going too far to seize upon an assertion of Pomponius 
 Mela to the effect that our forefathers ate raw meat,^ 
 and hastily assign them to outright savagery. For 
 they had milk, and probably butter and cheese ; ^ as 
 time went on, they used more and more meal, whether 
 baked in bread or eaten in a thick broth. In the ear- 
 liest times they had nothing save wild fruits, apples, 
 of an ignoble sort, one may think, and berries. All 
 our modern fruits and vegetables came from Italy, 
 and brought their foreign names along with them. 
 Pytheas of Marseilles, already named as the earliest 
 visitor to our shores who came from classic land, said 
 that German tribes by the North Sea had hardly 
 any garden produce or domestic animals such as the 
 Greek knew, but that they lived on millet and other 
 plants, on roots and berries.* Perhaps the earliest 
 vegetable which the Germans imported from their 
 
 1 B, G. VI. 27. 
 
 2 " Victu ita asperi incultique ut cruda etiam came vescantur." 
 Pomp. Mela, III. 3. 
 
 ^ Lac concretum, says Germ. XXIII., which may mean these, or 
 simply thickened milk. ^ Hehn, p. 122. 
 
68 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 69 
 
 neighbors in Gaul was the leek, a plant, it would 
 seem, of decidedly magical qualities. Thrown into 
 one's mead, it was a safeguard against treachery ; ^ 
 and for whatever reason, when the great Helgi is 
 born, his father comes back from battle with "a 
 noble leek" for gift.^ Even among the Anglo-Saxons 
 there were few vegetables, and chief of these was the 
 leek; a garden is called outright "leek-enclosure," 
 leac-tun, and the gardener is " leek-ward." ^ A Dan- 
 ish ballad quoted by Professor Child * speaks of the 
 happy land where all birds are cuckoos, all the grass 
 is leeks, and all the streams run wine. There were, 
 however, other Germanic vegetables. There was 
 asparagus, or something very much like it; the 
 radish, of extremely large size ; and sweet turnips 
 that were good enough to be imported for the ex- 
 press use of the Emperor Tiberius.^ 
 
 Saxons and Frisians by the^sea ate fish; and of 
 course the Scandinavians did likewise. Montelius 
 cites King Sigurd Syr, stepfather of St. Olaf, who 
 gave his guests fish and milk one day, and meat and 
 ale the next. In a lay of the Edda, old Thor, who 
 represented the homely life of days before the vikings 
 were in vogue, says that he has been eating " herring 
 and oatmeal porridge." ^ Salt was valued highly, not 
 
 "^ Sigrdrifumal, 8: "Throw leek in the drink, then I am sure thy 
 mead will never be mixed with treacherous poison." Hildebrand, 
 Edda, p. 205. 
 
 2 Helgakv. Hundingsh. 7, Edda, Hildebrand, p. 151. 
 
 3"Holitor (for Olitor) leacweard," Wright-Wulker, ^ngr^o-Saxou 
 Glosses, 416, 30. See also Wright, Domestic Manners, etc., p. 294. 
 
 4 Ballads,2 I. 89. 
 
 5 See references in Wackernagel, Kleinere Schriften, I. 23. 
 
 6 Hdrbdrtisliod, 3, 7. Hafra is not certain in meaning. Vigfusson 
 and Powell translate " goat-venison " instead of oatmeal. 
 
 only as the best of all seasonings, but also for its anti- 
 septic qualities. It kept the hunter's game, the coast- 
 folk's fish. In Anglo-Saxon larders, salt meat was 
 very prominent, and hence, as Wright reminds us, 
 arose the custom of boiling nearly all flesh that was 
 eaten.^ The Germans themselves seem to have had 
 no skill in the preparation of salt, an art first devel- 
 oped by the Celts ; but Germany was especially rich 
 in salt-springs, and these were the cause of many a 
 desperate fight between neighbor tribes struggling 
 for possession. Pliny and Tacitus testify to the ex- 
 tremely rude fashion of salt-making among the Ger- 
 mans. It seems that they piled up logs in the 
 neighborhood of such a spring, set them on fire, and 
 then quenched the flames by liberal application of 
 the salt water. When the fire was out, a crust of 
 salt was found clinging to the embers. 
 
 Once more we see the close connection between a 
 necessary or favorite article of food and the cere- 
 monies of primitive religion. The salt-springs were 
 places of worship, and a story told by Tacitus about 
 the desperate war waged between Chatti and Her- 
 munduri for the ownership of such a prize is of 
 interest in many ways.^ The Germans, we are 
 assured, held the place holy, deemed it in the imme- 
 diate neighborhood of heaven, and believed that 
 prayers nowhere else were wafted so quickly to the 
 gods, — gods by whose grace it came about that salt 
 was formed whenever the waters of the spring were 
 poured upon a heap of burning logs. In the time of 
 Emperor Julian, several hundred years later, we find 
 
 1 Domestic Manners and Sentiments, p. 26. 
 
 2 Tac. Ann. XIII. 57. 
 
 I *■ -.' 
 
TO 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 IVIEN AND WOMEN 
 
 71 
 
 r 
 
 P 
 
 II 
 
 Alamannians and Burgundians fighting for the same 
 sort of treasure.! jn short, salt and its not particu- 
 larly congruent rival, honey, were the main condi- 
 ments of the primitive German. 
 
 How far more rich was the store of an Anglo- 
 Saxon franklin ! Even a modern epicure might not 
 be displeased with such a larder as Cockayne 2 has 
 discovered. The Germans who conquered Britain 
 did not "stuff their bellies with acorns," maintains 
 this lively editor ; and the Saxon descendant knew 
 well how to live, as witness a bewildering array of 
 flesh and fish, with such side-lights as "oyster patties" 
 and "junkets," and minor meats galore. We have 
 testimony, a little later, about the boy's ordinary fare 
 in an Anglo-Saxon monastery, — " worts and eggs, 
 fish and cheese, butter and beans, and all clean 
 things." Flesh he rarely got.^ But we cannot argue 
 back from all this into the German forests. Only 
 what seems sanctioned by an old tradition, or has 
 come in touch with cult, has any value of this sort. 
 For example, cheese enters into cult ; even in modern 
 times it was thrown into a sacred well in Scotland, 
 hence called Cheesewell, by way of propitiation and 
 offering.^ Frisians and Anglo-Saxons had an ordeal 
 called the corsnced, in which a bit of bread and cheese 
 was put into the mouth of the accused ; if he swal- 
 lowed it, good ; if he was choked, it was a sign 
 of guilt.^ As for milk, we have the sacred cow 
 
 1 Hehn, Das Salz, 31 ; Amm. Marc. 28. 5. 
 
 2 See bis Leechdoms, ii., vii. ff. 
 
 8 Colloquy of ^Ifric, in Wright-Wulker, Glosses, p. 102. 
 
 4 Liebrecht, Otia Tmperialia, p. 10. 
 
 5 R. A. 931 f . Rocbholz, Deiitscher Glauhe und Branch, p. 12 ff., gives 
 a number of cases wben cheese or milk formed the staple of a myth, 
 and hence belonged to the tradition of cult. 
 
 already noted, or the goat which in later Valhalla 
 belief feeds upon the branches of the World- Ash and 
 gives the milk of immortality to heroes of Odin. 
 Here, too, belongs butter. Hehn draws a geographi- 
 cal line between the realm of " beer and butter " and 
 the realm of wine and oil. According to Pliny's 
 Natural History,^ the Germans "made out of milk 
 an article called butter, noblest food among barbar- 
 ous races and one which sundered rich from poor." 
 Butter was even used as a sort of ointment, northern 
 pendant to the oil of southern lands. Milk and its 
 products were of supreme importance to the nomad ; 
 no wonder that Scandinavian goat, German cow, and 
 Slavonic mare should loom out of the past in such 
 heroic proportions. With the herd there must be a 
 dog, and very properly we find a magnified and non- 
 natural dog barking fearfully as herald of Ragnarok, 
 the end of all things, in a late Scandinavian myth.^ 
 The tradition of nomadic times pure and simple would 
 seem to be preserved in Be da's explanation of the 
 Anglo-Saxon name for the month of May, — " Three- 
 Milk-Month " ; that is, says Beda, the month when 
 the cows (^pecora) used to be milked three times a 
 day : " So great was the abundance which once 
 reigned in Britain and Germany." ^ 
 
 With butter, as soon as any of the necessary grain 
 can be raised, is ranged beer, which gradually takes 
 the place of mead, the original Aryan beverage. On 
 the subject of beer Hehn lavishes his learning with a 
 
 1 XXVIII. 133; Hehn, Culturpfl. p. 132. 
 
 2 The Cimbrians had watch-dogs with them in Italy. 
 
 8 "Talis enim erat quondam ubertas Britanniae vel Germanise." 
 See also Grimm, G. D. S.^ 66 f. The extract is from Beda de temporum 
 ratione, Cap. XIII. 
 
72 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 73 
 
 fond indulgence. Beer, as he tells us,^ once held 
 far wider sway than now ; Egypt knew it, and Spain, 
 and many a land which later bore only the olive and 
 the grape. Pytheas of Marseilles found our ances- 
 tors drinking mead and beer ; while among the Celts 
 of Gaul beer Avas the common drink, and only the 
 rich and great used wine. This was the case in 
 England, and for even better reasons. In the col- 
 loquy just quoted, the master asks our monastery-boy 
 what he drinks. " Ale [beer] if I have it, or water 
 if I have no ale." "Don't you drink wine?" "I 
 am not so rich as to buy me wine ; and wine is not a 
 drink for children or fools, but for old and wise 
 people." The Emperor Julian made a satiric epigram 
 in Greek on this custom of drinking beer, which in 
 his day was so common with Gauls and Belgians .^ 
 For Germans, Tacitus bears ample testimony ; but 
 inasmuch as beer is inseparable from agriculture, we 
 may argue not only that our ancestors of that time 
 had taken some steps above the nomadic state, but 
 also that beer could not have been their original 
 drink.3 In earliest times mead ruled alone. Grimm 
 sees in the name of the English river Medway a trace 
 of the nomadic beverage ; Medway would be " mead- 
 cup," and there would be the mythical and classical 
 whim of a stream " flowing from the horn or urn of a 
 river god."* Certain is the name of an Anglo-Saxon 
 banquet-room ; it is a " mead-hall," medo-cern^ where, 
 
 1 Cultnrpfl. p. 117 ff. 
 
 2 Cider also was used by the Gauls. Amm. Marc. XV. 12, 4. 
 
 8 There are traces of mead-drinking in Greece previous to the epoch 
 of wine. Hehn approves the etymology of hier from bibere, and ale 
 from oleum ; neither word nor thing original. Culturpfl. p. 125. Others 
 assail the etymology, and claim native origin. * G. D. S.^ 457. 
 
 ( 
 
 however, beer-drinking, beor-pegu, goes on, and the 
 ale-cup, ealo-ivmge, makes its round. Wine, of course, 
 came later to the Germans, and in the time of Tacitus 
 was bought now and then from Roman merchants on 
 the border, — no national drink.i Its origin is prob- 
 ably Semitic. We owe this race, along with the art 
 of crushing from grapes the sweet poison of misused 
 wine, the nobler gifts of measuring, of money, of 
 the alphabet, and of what Hehn calls the profound 
 abstraction, Monotheism,^ — a heavy balance in favor 
 of the Orient ! But let us return to our beer. Csesar 
 does not mention it, nor Pliny ; it was in its begin- 
 nings, like the parent art of agriculture ; but Tacitus 
 speaks very distinctly, and opens his twenty-third 
 " chapter " as follows : " For drink they have a liquor 
 brought into some resemblance to wine by process of 
 fermentation ^ from barley or wheat." * He gives no 
 name for this liquor, but it is undoubtedly beer ; and 
 the trick of making it must have been learned from 
 the Celts of the lower Rhine and the Danube.^ But 
 it was not by any means modern beer, and Hehn 
 warns the enthusiastic German youth not to fancy 
 his remote ancestor indulging in such a beverage as 
 the Fatherland boasts to-day ; for hops, a most im- 
 portant element, were not used in breweries until the 
 Middle Ages. Naturally we find beer in ceremonies 
 of Germanic religion. St. Columbanus, about the 
 year 600, surprised a group of Suevi who were sit- 
 
 1 It was prohibited as imported ware among the Suevi, because it 
 made men soft and effeminate. Caesar B. O. IV. 2. 
 
 2 Culturpfl. p. 64. 
 
 8 In the original, one word, corruptus, over which there has been 
 much throwing about of brains. 
 
 ^ Frumento : wheat, or rye ? 6 Hehn, 124. 
 
74 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 ting around a huge keg or vat ^ of beer, which they 
 intended to offer to their god Woden ; and later, as 
 a more indirect sacrifice, we hear of tithes paid to 
 the church in beer. 
 
 How much did the Germans drink ? This parlous 
 question is sufficiently answered by Tacitus. The 
 German meals, he says, are frugal, but with regard 
 to thirst, there is not the same temperance ; and it 
 is evident that these barbaric potations dismayed the 
 moderate Roman. Much in the fashion of our famil- 
 iar laments over the weakness of the Red Man, Taci- 
 tus bewails as a moralist and exults as a Roman that 
 this German " is conquered as easily by his own vices 
 as by foreign arms." But even immoderate drinking 
 has its amenities ; and civilization has witnessed as 
 much excess as barbarism itself. How far the re- 
 finements which we easily see in the banquets of later 
 Germanic races — those, for example, described in 
 BSowulf — may be assumed for earlier times, is a 
 matter of doubt. We find certain courtesies of 
 feasting prescribed by law for the Anglo-Saxons. A 
 Kentish law of the seventh century ordains that if 
 any one shall take away another's stoup (^steap) or 
 cup where men are peaceably drinking, let him pay 
 accordifig to the old law one shilling to the owner of 
 the house, six shillings to the offended person, and 
 twelve shillings to the king.2 As Schmid points out, 
 to remove a man's drinking-cup was a palpable insult, 
 and would easily precipitate a quarrel among men 
 who were wont to plead guilty to any charge sooner 
 than to that of being pigeon-livered. The next laws 
 
 1 " Vasque magnum quod vulgo ciipam vocant." See D. M.* 45. 
 
 2 Schmid, Ags. Ges. p. 12, §§ 12, 13, 14. 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 75 
 
 impose a fine of one shilling, paid to the owner of a 
 house where people are drinking, upon him who 
 draws his arms in such a company, and twelve shil- 
 lings to the king ; and if the house (flet, really the 
 floor) be stained with blood, one must pay to the man 
 liis mundhyrd, a fine varying according to the rank 
 of the person in question. The law of Ine, after 
 fixing penalties for several sorts of fighting, goes on 
 to say that if the quarrel begins at a banquet {gehSor- 
 scipe) or beer-drinking, and if one of the disputants 
 bears it all with patience, the other is to pay a fine of 
 thirty shillings.^ In a law of iEthelred, of course 
 much later, the various breaches of decorum taper 
 down from the king's peace itself to the good order of 
 an alehouse ; the fine for breaking the latter depends 
 on whether you kill your man, or simply wound him.2 
 All these laws testify to the Germanic habit of drink- 
 ing, quarrelling, and fighting, with quarrelling proper 
 as a vanishing element in the situation ; words soon 
 yielded to blows, and the German would rather strike 
 than revile. Holtzmann quotes very happily from 
 the Nibelungen Lay : — 
 
 . . . I low fits it heroes bold, 
 Like a pack of women to quarrel and to scold ? 
 
 Evidently there was a certain measure of safety, if 
 one could do it, in following the implied advice in 
 Ine's law about the man who bears all in patience. 
 To let the tongue wag was dangerous. Li an Anglo- 
 Saxon poem on the Destiny of Men,^ we are told 
 that the sword shall slay many a man on the ale- 
 
 1 Schmid, p. 24. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 212. 
 
 8 vv. 48 fP. 
 
76 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 bench, many an angry tippler heavy with wine ; " he 
 hath been too hasty with his tongue." 
 
 Still, the flyting was by no means unknown at 
 these banquets. There seems to have been a sort of 
 formal entertainment in which first one, then the 
 other, would hurl smart but pointed remarks at the 
 opponent, delicacy being no object. For swing and 
 dash, an Old Norse poem known as Lokasenna, " The 
 Flyting of Loki," takes easy precedence. Loki enters 
 a hall where all the other gods and goddesses are 
 assembled, demands drink, and passes the time of day 
 with each deity in turn. The following, in Vig- 
 fusson and Powell's translation,^ may serve as ex- 
 ample : — 
 
 Byggvi. Be sure, if I had a heritage like Frey, the Ingowin, 
 and such a seemly seat, I would pound thee to marrow, thou 
 ill-omened crow, and maul thine every limb. 
 
 Loki. What is the tiny thing I see there wagging its tail, 
 snuffling about (doglike)? Thou wilt be always at Frey's 
 hearth, yapping at the quern. 
 
 Milder, but still forcible, is the flyting between Beo- 
 wulf and Hunferth, which will be found below ; ^ 
 while the language of the dialogue between Salomon 
 and Saturn, and of the famous dispute between Soul 
 and Body, may be termed parliamentary. Still an- 
 other fruit of the banquet was the personal boast, — in 
 Anglo-Saxon, gilpeivide^ — the proclamation of one's 
 
 1 C. P. B. 1. 107. 
 
 2 See p. 114. For a vigorous aftergrowth of this style, see Dunbar's 
 Flyting with Kennedy; as to influence of the French jeu-partij see 
 Schipper, William Dimbar, p. 64 f. Schipper, by the way, in his edi- 
 tion of Dunbar, pp. 141, 151, thinks there is little connection of develop- 
 ment between Dunbar's flyting and these Germanic specimens. He 
 assumes Celtic influence and French models. 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 77 
 
 own and singular virtues, together with vigorous re- 
 vilings of one's foe, and promises of deeds of valor 
 in the next fight. 
 
 Yet the outcome of revelry was not always of this 
 bellicose nature. In the frankness and brotherly con- 
 fidence begotten of their cups, the Germans opened 
 heart and mouth in council and discussed public 
 affairs. Reserve and suspicion were banished. When 
 they were sober again, they made a decision upon the 
 question which they had debated at their feast ; and 
 thus, says Tacitus, in admiration of so excellent an 
 arrangement, "they deliberate at a time when con- 
 cealment and deception are out of the question, and 
 they come to a conclusion when mistakes are impos- 
 sible." ^ He omits to note the probable interval of 
 repose, which may have done its good service as well 
 as the other factors ; for Germanicus surprised the 
 Marsi after one of their great banquets, and the le- 
 gions had easy work wi^h a mass of prone and drowsy 
 warriors, — " drunken," as the historian calls them.^ 
 
 The German did not simply eat and grow strong, 
 but he helped nature by exercise. He also understood 
 the value of baths, for sanitary if not for personal and 
 altruistic reasons. Races which wear fur or skins of 
 any sort, instead of linen or similar texture, are apt 
 to suffer from vermin to an almost incredible degree ; 
 so that the story which follows may well come, as 
 Hehn remarks, from the sincerest depths of Germanic 
 consciousness. A certain king, in an Old Norse saga, 
 
 1 Germ. XXII. The Rev. Mr. Sterne, in his Tristram Shandy , ap- 
 plauds this arrangement. Similar practices prevailed among the Per- 
 sians, and with uncivilized races in South America. 
 
 2 Temulentos; and they were "stratis etiam tum per cubilia prop- 
 terque mensas. ..." Tac. Ann. I. 50. 
 
V. 
 
 78 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 catches a merman, and the latter lives among human 
 beings long enough to know their ways. The king 
 asks him what has pleased him best of all that he has 
 seen. "Cold water," he answered, "for the eyes; 
 flesh for the teeth ; and linen for the body." ^ When 
 the Germans took to linen, — which meant that they 
 lirst learned to raise flax, — this must have mitigated 
 their sufferings ; but even linen could not entirely 
 protect them from the pests, and hence a passion for 
 bathing. The Cimbrians were bathing when they 
 were surprised by the Romans at Aquae Sextise. 
 Warm baths were a great luxury ; and in later times 
 a German house had its bath-room, even among the 
 less flourishing classes. In Iceland the warm springs 
 were used eagerly for this purpose ; and such natu- 
 ral baths were everywhere coveted property and 
 caused many a sharp struggle for possession. The 
 Goths were plundering Thrace, says Jordanes,^ and 
 found on their march certain warm springs; these 
 stayed for a while their impetuous career, and they 
 lingered "many days" to enjoy the luxury. Of 
 course, as Jordanes tells us in this special case, there 
 was always more or less medicinal and healing virtue 
 ascribed to such a well and to the divinity which 
 protected it. 
 
 From the Germanic bath we properly pass to the 
 Germanic wardrobe. Linen has already been men- 
 tioned ; but it is doubtful whether it formed part of 
 the German's original clothing.^ It was introduced, 
 
 1 Hehn, p. 153 ; Weinhold, Altnordisches Lehen, p. 100. 2 Cap. XX. 
 
 3 Traces of linen, however, are found by antiquaries in remains of 
 the Scandinavian bronze age, along with proofs of agriculture. See 
 Kalund in Paul, Grundr. d. germ. Phil. II. 2, 210. 
 
 MEN AND AVOMEN 
 
 79 
 
 however, veiy early in the historical period. Goths, 
 Franks, and tlie rest come upon the stage dressed in 
 linen as well as skins ; " dirty linen and short skins " 
 is the costume in which certain West-Goths make 
 their appearance.^ Wool, on the other hand, is of 
 very ancient date as an element in our forefathers' 
 clothing. A find, described by Montelius,^ shows 
 excellent woollen garments in use in Denmark dur- 
 ing the bronze age, — that is, at least as early as 
 500 B.C. The outfit consists of a cap, a long man- 
 tle, and a sort of covering for the legs. Another find 
 shows the clothing of a woman of the same period ; 
 it was much like the dress of the man, and was abun- 
 dant in quantity. We even find nets for the hair. 
 
 With regard to the clothing of Germans in the 
 time of Tacitus, there are two opinions. The Ger- 
 mania tells us that the common garment of the people 
 was a mantle or cloak fastened by a buckle or even by a 
 common thorn. Without other clothing (^cetera intecti) 
 they spend whole days by the fireside. The richest peo- 
 ple are distinguished by a garment (yeste)^ which is 
 not worn loose, in the fashion of Sarmatia and Parthia, 
 but rather clings to the figure and the limbs. More- 
 over, the Germans wear skins of wild beasts, paying 
 more attention to selection and adornment, the fur- 
 ther they are removed from lloman influences. The 
 dress of the women is like that of the men ; only the 
 women are wont to wrap themselves in garments of 
 linen, which they embroider with purple,^ but use 
 
 1 Hehn, p. 151. 
 
 2 Civilization of Sweden in Ancient Times, trans, by Woods, 1888, 
 p. 59 ff . 
 
 8 As the commentators point out, this is not the Roman purple, but 
 probably a native vegetable dye. 
 
80 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 81 
 
 without sleeves, leaving bare the arms, the shoulders, 
 and the upper part of the breast. So far Tacitus.^ 
 Pomponius Mela, the geographer, follows the in- 
 stincts of his kind in making barbarism very barbar- 
 ous indeed. Even in severe winter weather, he says, 
 the German men are clad in mantles,^ or with the 
 bark of trees ; and it is by exposure to cold that 
 they harden their huge frames. Boys go naked.^ 
 Lastly, Csesar and his Suevi may give evidence. 
 These warlike Germans are described in the usual 
 Roman fashion, as undisciplined and impetuous giants, 
 who in that cold climate go without any clothing 
 save skins, and these so small as to leave large por- 
 tions of the body utterly bare.* Caesar says the same 
 thing of the Germans as a race, — they wear skins 
 or aprons, which leave naked a large part of the 
 body.^ 
 
 It must be admitted that these accounts make for 
 a very slender outfit of clothing. But Miillenhoff 
 enters the lists for a larger Germanic wardi'obe.^ In 
 the first place, he bids us look at the climate ; it 
 demanded at least a sufficient undergarment made 
 of woollen or linen, together with a mantle or jacket. 
 Instead of understanding Tacitus to say that the 
 richest Germans are distinguished " by a garment " 
 
 1 Germ. XVII. 
 
 2 Sagis : the same word which Tacitus uses ; probably made of thick 
 and rough woollen material. 
 
 spomp. Mela, III. 3: "qui habitant immanes sunt animis atque 
 corporibus et ad iusitam feritatem vaste utraque exercent, bellando 
 animos, corpora assuetudine laborum, maxime frigoris. nudi agunt 
 antequam puberes sint, et longissima apud eos pueritia est. viri sagis 
 velantur aut libris arborum quamvis saeva hieme." 
 
 4 Caesar B. G. IV. 1. 5 ibid. VI. 21. 
 
 6 In IlaupVs Zeitschri/t, X. 553 ff. 
 
 which fits closely to the figure, Miillenhoff would 
 read, "by the garment," and would make the rich- 
 ness and adornment of its material the test of its 
 wearer's rank. That is, he would make not only the 
 sagum, but also the vestis^ common to all Germans ; 
 whereas many commentators understand Tacitus to 
 mean that the rich have a peculiar kind of garment, 
 an exceptional garment.^ This view is borne out by 
 the testimony of Pomponius Mela, and of Ccesar, who 
 does not even mention the mantle. On the other 
 hand, however, the complete woollen outfit found in 
 Denmark, later customs, and several other consider- 
 ations, go to support the claim of Miillenhoff. The 
 neighboring Gauls wore trousers and shoes, — Gallia 
 Bracata would be nearest Germany in these respects, 
 — and a northern climate would force some such habit 
 upon the nations. Summer and winter would natu- 
 rally make a difference, and Germans may have 
 showed themselves oftenest to Roman eyes in scanty 
 raiment, such as we know they affected for the hour 
 of battle. Finally, the rhetorical impulses of the 
 most truthful and sober Roman would exaggerate 
 every difference of garb between the two races. It 
 may well be true, remarks Miillenhoff, that a Ger- 
 man warrior would sit whole days by his fire in such 
 an undress as Tacitus describes ; but it is not said 
 that he went thus out of doors. Miillenhoff gives in 
 good faith a somewhat amusing illustration of the 
 ancestral habit drawn from the ways of a modern 
 German professor. "Does not many a man," he 
 asks, " content himself, when he rises from bed, with 
 dressing-gown, one other garment, and slippers, and 
 
 1 Baumstark, Germania, pp. 585, 592. 
 
82 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 so work through the morning until he arrays him- 
 self to go out?'' 
 
 The question seems to hinge on the vestis of Taci- 
 tus, — whether it was a general garment worn by 
 high and low, which differed in its making and ma- 
 terial, or whether it was a "lending" of Gallic or 
 other culture, foreign to the Sabine austerity of a 
 true primitive German. It is not an easy question 
 to decide, and the doctors disagree radically. On 
 one of the triumphal columns in Rome, German 
 soldiers are represented in trousers and shoes, and, 
 for the rest, either in a short doublet or else naked 
 to the girdle. Of course they fought in scanty 
 clothing ; ^ and Paul the Deacon even tells us of 
 a battle between his countrymen and the Heruli, 
 where the latter went into the fight with nothing 
 but a cloth about the loins, "either to fight more 
 freely or else to show contempt for wounds " : the 
 explanation, however, would seem to make this uni- 
 form an unusual one. Children at play wore little 
 clothing ; witness Pomponius Mela above, and Tacitus 
 with his 7iudi ac sordidly " naked and dirty." 
 
 Even if we take the description of Tacitus, much as 
 it leaves to be desired, for an authentic description of 
 the Germanic dress, we may fancy at least a noble or 
 wealthy freeman of that time in woollen sagum, or 
 cloak, woollen, or perhaps now and then linen under- 
 garment, something like trousers, and his inevitable 
 arms. We may safely add shoes, made out of leather 
 which was tanned with the aid of bark. Clothing 
 was made chiefly by the women, who span and wove 
 steadily through the long German winter ;^ for Egypt 
 
 1 Tac. Hist. II. 22. 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 83 
 
 is the only country of old times where men did the 
 weaving.! German women had great skill in this art, 
 and may well have taken pride in the raiment of their 
 sires and husbands, and indeed in their own garb. 
 The priestesses who came with the Cimbrians to Italy 
 had white robes, with a girdle, and mantles of fine 
 linen. Men whose wives and daughters are famous 
 websters and spinsters — Pliny waxes fairly enthusi- 
 astic on this subject — could not have been like Afri- 
 can savages, and would hardly have gone naked for 
 the sake of enduring the cold. A Danish variation 
 of " carrying coals to Newcastle " is " to give white 
 bread to a baker's boy " ; and surely it is the same 
 thing when we assert that foreign culture had to 
 bring the merest beginnings of raiment to a race 
 whose women were experts in weaving and spinning ! 
 The tradition held. Charlemagne, who clung to the 
 old Frankish dress, made his daughters learn to spin 
 and weave. Even in the time of Tacitus, rent or 
 tribute from slave to master was often paid in cloth- 
 This, too, is hardly characteristic of the naked 
 
 mg.- 
 
 savage. 
 
 We may conclude our brief description of Germanic 
 dress, just as we began it, with a notice of some gar- 
 ments found in a bog not far from the old home of 
 the Angles on the Cimbrian peninsula. These clothes 
 were in a good state of preservation, and seem to date 
 from about the year 300 A.D.^ They probably be- 
 longed to a wealthy man, and consist of two mantles 
 of a square piece of woollen cloth (the sagum of 
 
 1 Lippert, Culturgesehichte, 1. 173. 2 Germ. XXV. 
 
 8 Weinhold, Deutsche Frauen,'^ II. 221. His description is taken 
 from the Danish ; the articles themselves are in the museum at Kiel. 
 
84 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 85 
 
 r\ 
 
 Tacitus), with fringe one side and hogged on the 
 other, and originally green in hue. There was also 
 a coat of woollen, with sleeves of stronger material 
 than the rest ; of still heavier material were the two 
 pairs of long trousers, to which stockings were sewed 
 fast. There wa3 a place for the belt. Further, there 
 were leather sandals with attempt at ornamentation. 
 Not unlike this fashion was the garb of those Hen- 
 gists and Horsas, who, not simply "in 449," but 
 many long years before, were wont to take ship for 
 the tempting shores of Britain. 
 
 It is a well-known fact in ethnology that the cus- 
 tom of wearing clothes springs in the first instance not 
 from the sense of decency, and hardly from the desire 
 of warmth, but from the passion for adornment. 
 Ornaments were familiar to our remotest ancestors. 
 In the stone age of Scandinavia, more than a thou- 
 sand years before the beginning of our era, men and 
 women had an abundant supply of this aid to individ- 
 uality, — which some philosopher has discovered to 
 be the cause of personal adornment, — mainly articles 
 made of amber. Some centuries later, in the bronze 
 age of the same country, amber has yielded to metal, 
 and rings, buckles, buttons, combs, and the like, are 
 found in great profusion.^ The yet later Germans 
 were not without such adornments. Many articles, 
 thinks the sanguine Waitz,^ were of domestic manu- 
 facture ; but the greater part were taken as booty or 
 obtained in the way of barter. Gold, in the historic 
 period, was furnished by the Byzantine coins sent to 
 Goths on the Danube, and thence by the old trade- 
 
 1 Kalund in Paul's Grundr. d. germ. Phil. II. 2, 210. 
 
 2 Verfassungsges. I. 21, note. 
 
 route through Poland to the Vistula, and so to the 
 Baltic Sea; and this tribute-gold may have been 
 worked into rings and collars by the domestic smiths. 
 Perhaps, however, the jewellers of Byzantium sent 
 actual ornaments to their northern trade, and half- 
 breed bagmen may have wheedled into purchase 
 many a chieftain and many a matron of the German 
 forests.^ Like weapons, the old Germanic ornaments 
 had a pedigree, and in the poetry of the day are 
 called " work of giants," " the making of old days," 
 " heirlooms of price." In BSowulf, the Danish king 
 says that he has settled a feud by paying tribute to 
 the enemy, — 
 
 To the Wylfings sent, o'er the water-ridges, 
 olden treasure . . .2 
 
 and at the end of the same epic we are told that the 
 
 hoard, watched by a dragon and concealed in a cave, 
 
 consists of — 
 
 old-time treasure . . . 
 the huge bequest of high-born race.s 
 
 This mystery and this antiquity which hedge about 
 Germanic treasure would seem to indicate that most 
 of it was bought or stolen, and the making of it no 
 common and palpable affair, to be seen in any gold- 
 smith's shop. The same sense of mystery induced 
 the poets of Christian days to talk of "heathen 
 gold," which had come down from the olden time. 
 As to the value of these ornaments in the regard of 
 their owners, we have the sequence of Florus, "horses, 
 
 1 See also Montelius, work quoted, p. 126 f. 
 
 2 B^ow, 472. 8 Ibid. 2233 ff. 
 
86 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 87 
 
 cattle, and necklaces," as the summary of German 
 spoils made by Drusus. 
 
 Nearly all the metals seem to have been known, 
 but neither gold nor silver was mined by the natives ; 
 and hence the lack of costly plate. When Tacitus 
 tells us that his Germans care no more for silver than 
 for common earthen vessels, we may certainly assume 
 a rhetorical rebuke meant for the Eoman collectors 
 of such ware at fabulous prices, — German simplicity 
 once more a foil to imperial prodigality. Massive 
 articles made of the precious metals, such as those 
 silver vases which the historian mentions as now and 
 then seen in Germany, would hardly appeal to native 
 taste ; but ornaments of these metals, as well as of 
 amber and glass, were freely worn by men and women. 
 The conventional adjective of the minstrel, when he 
 sings about dames of high degree, is " gold-decked," 
 "gold-laden"; such is Hrothgar's queen in Beowulf, 
 and such is even the Hebrew Judith, whom the Anglo- 
 Saxon poet calls "adorned with rings." But the 
 men by no means despised such decoration, especially 
 kings and chieftains, who are called " gold-givers " 
 and " ring-breakers " from their habit of wearing upon 
 the arm spirals of gold, which they were wont to break 
 off and bestow upon a valiant clansman. Neck-rings 
 of massive gold — the so-called " snake-rings " — were 
 the rarest and costliest of these treasures, arm-rings 
 and finger-rings the commonest ; besides, we find in 
 the graves necklaces, clasps for mantles, buckles, and 
 so on, made of gold, of silver, and of a mixture of 
 the two metals. Perhaps the spirals are best repre- 
 sented in the museums of Europe ; for not only the 
 warrior but the singer was rewarded by these rings. 
 
 and sang the bounty of his patron from tribe to tribe. 
 Widsith, the ideal minstrel of early Anglo-Saxon 
 times, tells us : — 
 
 And from the Burgundians got I a ring ; 
 there Guthhere gave me glittering treasure 
 in pay for my song, — no puny king ! ^ 
 
 ^Ifwine, too (Alboin), is generous to the minstrel, 
 and Ermanric gives him another ring, which he spends 
 for land, only to have gift of yet another from his 
 gracious queen : — 
 
 Thus moved her fame thro' many lands, 
 whenever chanced I was charged to say 
 where under heaven I'd heard of the best 
 gold-deckt queen her gifts dividing. 2 
 
 " To have gift of red rings," as Weinhold remarks, 
 sounds much better than to draw wages or to take 
 money ; but it was all the same thing. The love of 
 these rings was as keen as the love of money nowa- 
 days, and the appetite increased with what it fed 
 upon. The Chatti, who regarded the wearing of 
 rings as a sign of slavery, make, if the story which 
 Tacitus tells ^ be true, an exception. It was a franker 
 and more childish love of gold than our modern and 
 tempered affection, in days when we have so many 
 people to tell us of the vanity of riches. For instance, 
 in the Hildebrand Lay — that solitary bit of jetsam 
 from the wreck of strictly German heroic poetry — a 
 chieftain returning home after years of exile finds on 
 the border of his land the son whom he left an infant 
 in the cradle, now a warrior in arms. The son insists 
 
 1 Widsi^, 65 fP. 
 
 2 Ibid. 99 ff. 
 
 8 Qerm, XXXI, 
 
88 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 upon fighting liis father, whom he deems to be an 
 impostor, and the old hero expostulates in vain. 
 When, finally, all persuasion fails, the sire appeals to 
 the last infirmity of barbaric mind, and offers his arm- 
 rings ; — 
 
 Unwound from arm winding rings 
 
 of Kaisergold wrought. . . . 
 
 In fact, plenty of this treasure and a good wife — 
 with flocks and herds enough, Men entendu — made 
 up the domestic ideal of the German. Says Giant 
 Thrym in the Edda, waiting impatiently for the arrival 
 of his bride : " Golden-horned cattle go about in 
 my yard, all-black oxen. ... I have plenty of 
 jewels and plenty of rings, — I lack nothing but 
 Freyja ! " i 
 
 Finally, as in so many cases, the thing dear and 
 desirable to man is lovely in the sight of the gods. 
 Rings occur in cult and in myth. In the rites of 
 Scandinavian heathendom, an oath was sworn upon 
 the holy ring of the altar ;2 it was smeared with 
 blood of the sacrifice, and was worn on the hand of 
 the chieftain at all assemblies of the people. In the 
 mytlis, we find Odin taking oath upon a ring. An 
 interesting case is mentioned by Maurer,^ where the' 
 vikings in England during King Alfred's reign sol- 
 emnly swear to leave the country. They take oath 
 first upon the arm-ring, and then upon the Christian 
 
 1 Xirymskvi^a, 92 ff. See C. P. B. 1. 179. 
 
 2 Maurer, Bekehrnng d. Norweg. Stdmme, II. 221 ; and II. 190, note ; 
 Grimm, R. A. 895 f . ; Vigf usson and Powell, C. P. B. 1, 422 ff. The ring 
 was of gold or silver, and weighed from two to twenty ounces. 
 
 8 Work quoted, I. 68. Maurer notes that only Asser and Florence of 
 Worcester mention the relics. See also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ anno 
 876. 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 89 
 
 relics. Our usual "magnified and non-natural" 
 ring is also forthcoming in the pretty Scandinavian 
 myth — allusions to it occur in Anglo-Saxon poetry 
 — of the necklace belonging to the goddess Freyja 
 (or Frija), made for her by the dwarfish smiths of 
 the hillside.^ Grimm compares it with the necklace, 
 and even the cestus of Venus ; ^ and the interpreters 
 are ready with a host of explanations, — grass, crops, 
 twilight, stars, what not. Our main interest lies in 
 the fact that old Germans, like old Greeks, gave a 
 necklace to their goddess of love. We may conclude 
 the subject with a bit of Germanic paraphrase. The 
 translator of the gospels who made the Old-Saxon 
 Heliand^ with the passage before him: "Cast not 
 your pearls before swine," puts it as follows : " Ye 
 shall not hang your pearls on the neck of swine, the 
 treasure of jewels, the Jioly nechlace^^ — and this last 
 alliterative expression, h^lag halsmeni^ Vilmar counts 
 as a bit of the old heathendom.^ 
 
 1 A minute investigation of the myth by Miillenhoff in HaupVs 
 Zeitschr. XXX. 217 ff., Frija und der Halshandmythus. 
 
 2 D. MA 255. 
 
 « Heliand, ed. Heyne, v. 1722 ff., and Vilmar, Altertumer im HelU 
 and, p. 45. 
 
 W 
 
90 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 Hatred of cities — Underground dwellings — Houses wooden 
 and frail — Construction, and later improvements — The biirg, and 
 the hall — Descriptions in Beoiculf — Banquet, songs, fly ting, etc. 
 — Amusements and vices — Hunting — The primitive house com- 
 pared with modem dwellings. 
 
 We pass to the Germanic house. The nomad has 
 little need of cities, which are indeed a good index of 
 civilization, if one bears in mind Aristotle's definition 
 of man as " a political being," a being with gregarious 
 instincts. Cities, we know, the German could not 
 brook; his nomadic instincts were too strong, and 
 these hated walls of stone, which so often set a limit 
 to his raid and kept him from his booty, were but the 
 munimenta servitii^ ramparts and refuge of slaves.^ 
 Such confinement, cried a German orator, robs even 
 wild beasts of their courage. Indeed, the city is in 
 every way offspring and lover of peace. It is inter- 
 esting, as Leo points out,^ to note that among all 
 Germanic races, the names of towns have no warlike 
 reference such as we find in the names of people. 
 Towns are named after races and families (Canterbury, 
 Birmingham), or even after trees, stones, and natural 
 
 1 Tac. Hist. IV. 64. 
 
 2 Rectitudines Singularum Personaruniy p. 14. 
 
 |i 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 91 
 
 peculiarities. Not till he became at least in part a 
 man of peace, did the German build his towns. Such 
 cities as he took from his enemies were given over to 
 plunder, and then left to crumble away in neglect. 
 So fared the Roman towns of Britain at the hands of 
 our invading forefathers.^ 
 
 When actual German towns are mentioned as the 
 seat of chieftain or king, nothing is to be understood 
 which could compare with the Roman city, — only a 
 cluster of wooden houses, convenient place for the 
 assembly of tribes or clans. Such may have been 
 Mattium, the capital town of the Chatti,^ which Ger- 
 manicus burnt on one of his raids. This was doubt- 
 less a very easy task, since there was nothing used but 
 wood in the construction of a German house. The 
 use of stone, like so many other arts, was quite for- 
 eign to the north of Europe ; it is first found "by the 
 southeastern corner of the Mediterranean, and spreads, 
 like the use of wine and oil, step by step along the 
 coasts and peninsulas of southern Europe, and thence 
 over the civilized world." ^ Stone masonry meant 
 to the German something mysterious, uncanny, the 
 doing of demigods in old time ; and so it easily fell 
 under the ban of the supernatural. This massive 
 solidity seemed hardly of human origin ; and the ear- 
 liest Englishmen called such a building " the burg of 
 
 1 For example, the city of Anderida. Whether our Anglo-Saxon 
 poem, "The Ruin," is to be referred to the Roman city of Bath — as 
 Leo and Professor Earle think it should be — is doubtful. See Wulker, 
 Grundr. d. ags. Lit. p. 211 ff., for the various opinions. Green {The 
 Making of England) and Grant Allen (Anglo-Saxon Britain, p. 47) 
 hold that the Saxons left the Roman cities of Britain to decay; but 
 T. Wright (The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 510) asserts that 
 such towns were not generally destroyed. 
 
 '^ Tac. Ann. I. 50. s Hehu, p. 111. 
 
 it 
 
92 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 giants," " the giants' ancient work." In the Heliand, 
 " greatest of stone-works " is the phrase applied to 
 the temple at Jerusalem. Moreover, it is not un- 
 likely that Stonehenge and other works of the sort 
 are monuments of a race which preceded Aryans in 
 the possession of southern and western Europe, a 
 race which "stretched from the Nile valley along 
 North Africa, and so through Spain and France to 
 the Atlantic." ^ 
 
 In the time of Tacitus, the Germanic house was 
 built entirely of wood, — etymology tells us that 
 Latin domus and English timber are the same word, 
 — and was either an isolated dwelling surrounded 
 by cabins for slaves and dependents, like the modern 
 Hof in Baden and Westphalia, or else stood in a 
 village. The latter is the type of house in our hdm 
 or tUn. The house itself was not very substantial, 
 if we may argue from the custom of going under- 
 ground in winter; and was probably even in the 
 time of our historian a comparatively new experi- 
 ment. The primitive house must be sought for the 
 noi-thern tribes mainly in those same underground 
 dwellings which so rudely blot our picture of the 
 Germanic home. These are not specially Germanic ;2 
 Scythians, Armenians, races from all quarters of the 
 globe, have used them. Hehn makes the later house 
 an outgrowth of this primitive burrow ; from a mere 
 cave, the dwelling grew in size and form, and " little 
 by little rose the roof of turf, and the cavern under 
 the house served at last only for winter and the 
 abode of the women." Villages made up of such 
 houses can still be seen in Russia. We must not shut 
 
 1 Hehn, p. 114. 2 Again see Hehn's admirable work, p. 436 f. 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 93 
 
 li 
 
 1^ 
 
 our eyes to the darker side of Germanic life which 
 this dwelling shows us ; in evading the cold of win- 
 ter, our forefathers found an atmosphere foul almost 
 to suffocation, and abundance of every sort of ver- 
 min, — as is still the case with many places in Siberia. 
 Yet here sat the women of the Germanic family and, 
 as Pliny tells us, wove and spun, producing their 
 exquisite linen in spite of all the squalor. Indeed, 
 Virgil paints us a far cosier scene : ^ " For the peo- 
 ple,^ they keep careless holiday in caves delved deep 
 under the earth, with store of timber, nay, whole elms 
 pushed up to the hearth, and heaped on the blaze — 
 there they lengthen out the night in games, and 
 jovially imitate draughts of the wine with fermented 
 grains and acid service-juice." ^ 
 
 In later times than those which Tacitus describes, 
 the Norwegian farmer had a subterranean room by 
 his house, or even under it, with a secret passage 
 leading afield, which served as an escape from the 
 attacks of the foe or from a sudden outbreak of fire.* 
 
 Such was the nomadic German's winter home. In 
 summer he had his wagon-like house, which could be 
 pitched, after the fashion of a tent, for a day or two ; 
 and which, even after agriculture had begun to tighten 
 its hold and fasten men to the soil, was still a very 
 flimsy affair. The primitive German, though led by 
 his fate to the forest with its abundant material for 
 building, set up nevertheless no substantial house, — 
 why should he do it ? Uhi bene, ibi patria ; all he 
 asked was grazing and hunting and the coveted salt- 
 
 1 Georg. III. 376 ff. 
 
 2 Of the north, — Scythia, Germany, — " the frozen north " generally. 
 8 Conington's translation. The beverage is beer. 
 
 * Weinhold, Altnord. Lehen, p. 227. 
 
1.1 
 
 
 94 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 spring.i Tiles, mortar, and the like were unknown 
 to the German ; and he seems to have been long in 
 learning to use actual timber. Wattled work, twigs 
 or flexible branches woven together, seemed to give 
 enough stability for all his purposes ; and even on the 
 column of Marcus Aurelius what we may take to be 
 contemporary German houses are "of cylindrical shape 
 with round vaulted roof, no window, and rectangu- 
 lar door ; they appear to be woven of rushes or twigs, 
 and are bound about with cords." Tacitus says the 
 sole material for German houses of his time is wood; 2 
 and this we may take to include the just-described 
 twigs and rushes of the later Quadi and Marco- 
 manni. When the German settled down to till the 
 fields, he began to use the heavy rough-hewn timber 
 of his forest. Nevertheless, the nomadic trick of 
 carrying about parts of one's house was slow to die 
 out. The Aryan's dwelling was his temple ; there 
 hovered the souls of his ancestors, and there he had 
 often buried their bodies. When the Norwegian 
 emigration to Iceland was in progress, certain men 
 arriving off the island coast, and ignorant where they 
 ought to land, threw into the sea the house-posts 
 which they had brought with them; wherever the 
 timbers drifted to the shore, in that spot they built 
 their new abode.^ Parts of a heathen temple were 
 also carried to Iceland. 
 
 1 Hehn quotes Seneca de Prov. IV. 4 : " Nulla illis domicllia null»que 
 sedes sunt, nisi quas lassitude in diem posuit " 
 
 2 Germ. XVI. 
 
 8 Eyrhyggiasaga, in P. E. MuUer's Sagabibliothek, 1. 189 f. For the 
 rest, R. Henning, Das devtsche Haus, " Quellen und Forschungen." 
 No 47, Strassburg, 1882, p. 163 ff., gives examples of such a removal 
 of houses, taken from Indian, Greek, and modern German history. See 
 also below, p. 443. 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 95 
 
 Evidently the house which Tacitus describes must 
 have been a very light structure, wholly made of 
 wood, or with plaited work in the less stable parts. 
 According to William of Malmesbury, the first Chris- 
 tian church in England was of the wattled material 
 or hurdle referred to above. Foundation and floors 
 are of more recent date, and the Norse flet is simply 
 the earth itself stamped hard and firm. The modern 
 peasant-house, which best shows in survival our old 
 Germanic dwelling, is built directly on the earth, — 
 this is particularly true of Saxony, — or else on a 
 foundation made of posts.^ To be sure. Professor 
 Moritz Heyne, in his excellent monograph on the 
 hall described in Beowulf, ^ says that all Anglo-Saxon 
 houses had a stone foundation, and quotes both Anglo- 
 Saxon and Gothic words in support of the assertion. 
 But the general words for " foundation " do not prove 
 for primitive times the existence of the specific part of 
 a house, being rather applied later to the imitations of 
 Roman architecture. Further proof of the absence 
 of any elaborate foundation is seen in certain old Ger- 
 man laws which seem to us not far removed from 
 burlesque. But our ancestors doubtless took very 
 seriously the law providing punishment for any man 
 who should dig his way under the walls of a house, 
 and so make criminal entrance. Still more sugges- 
 tive is the ordinance against him who throws down or 
 tears apart another man's house.^ Further proof of 
 frailty comes from the Anglo-Saxon, where the " tree- 
 wright," as a builder was called, certainly did not 
 make houses which would last till doomsday. Wright * 
 
 1 Henning, p. 166. 
 
 2 Ueher Lage und Construction d. Halle Heorot, p. 32. 
 
 8 Hehn, p. 114. ■♦ Domestic Manners and Sentiments, p. 14. 
 
96 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 calls attention to an episode in the story of Here ward, 
 where the " bower " or ladies' room of a certain house 
 was built in such a weak fashion, that when one day 
 a bear broke loose and rushed for the bower, in 
 which the lady of the mansion had taken shelter, 
 it was only the prompt slaughter of the bear that 
 saved her. 
 
 The roof of the Germanic house was made of reeds 
 or straw, was steep, and projected over the sides. By 
 the nature of the case, fire must have been a dreaded 
 foe ; and the burning of a German village is often 
 mentioned in history as well as pictured on columns 
 of triumph in Rome. In later times, the German 
 lighted his hall in the long winter evenings with flar- 
 ing torches, or with candles, — mere lumps of fat, — 
 and the fire burned freely on the middle of the floor.^ 
 Very picturesque was the Old Norse hall with its 
 blazing fires, of which the Sagas and the Edda tell us ; 
 but the element of danger, said always to heighten 
 the romantic, was not far to seek. Roof and walls in 
 this constant smoke would dry to a perilous extent ; 
 a bit of quarrel in the midst of drinking and revels, 
 and we can imagine many an overturned torch or 
 scattered fire, and many a banquet hall bursting into 
 sudden flames. This wild gleam of fire lights up our 
 old poetry on every hand. Hrothgar's palace, in BSo- 
 wulf, is one day destined to fall a prey to " hostile 
 waves of flame." 
 
 There towered the hall 
 high and horned ; the hot waves biding 
 of angry flame. . . .2 
 
 1 ". . . accenso quidem foco in medio et calido effecto cenaculo " 
 
 Beda, Ecc. Hist. II. 13. 2 Beoiv. 81 f. 
 
 1) 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 97 
 
 The fine fragment of Finnshurg alludes to this as a 
 common fate of castles ; while for Old Norse, Loki at 
 the end of his famous flyting predicts a like destiny 
 for the hall where he has been feasting.^ In the Nial- 
 saga, most dramatic of all the Icelandic stories, we are 
 told how the avengers, letting "housecarls" and 
 women and children first go out, set Nial's house in 
 flames. Similar flames, but on a far grander scale, 
 and with an epic splendor, light up the tragic close 
 of the Nibelungen Lay. Moreover, even if earthly 
 flame spared, one had to reckon with the heavens. 
 Lightning made sad havoc, and the Saxon Chronicle 
 tells how one year " the wild fire " destroyed a vast 
 amount of propert3\' 
 
 The proportion of adornment to utility in the Ger- 
 man's dress gives us a hint of what we may expect in 
 his house. Frail as his dwelling might be, and built 
 for the simplest need, it nevertheless showed an incip- 
 ient decoration ; and he began to adorn it long before 
 he had made what we should call the merest begin- 
 nings of comfort. We learn from Tacitus that the 
 Germanic house was painted here and there with a 
 glistening color, which was obtained from the earth, 
 — probably of the description still found in the 
 " ochre-swamps " of the Harz region ; but whether 
 this painting was exterior or interior, or both, is 
 hard to understand from the diflicult passage of the 
 Grermania,^ In any case, the early German painted his 
 
 1 Lokasenna, 65, Edda, ed. Hildebrand. 
 
 2 Our ballads are often as vivid as the sagas. See " Edom O'Gor- 
 don," "The Fire of Frendraught," and other songs of the border. 
 Child, Ballads,2 VI., VII. 
 
 8 Cap. XVI. QusBdam loca, he says, " certain parts." 
 
If. 
 
 98 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 99 
 
 'Si 
 
 11 ! 
 
 # 
 
 dwelling. Later, he carved the woodwork of it into fan- 
 tastic forms, an art which found its best development in 
 certain parts of Germany and in the wooden churches 
 and houses of Norway; and he adorned the inner 
 
 walls with paintings and even with tapestry, the 
 
 latter an imported luxury. It is not unlikely that in 
 the oldest times shield and spear and other weapons 
 were hung upon the wall, with trophies of the raid 
 and of the chase. 
 
 Whatever the primitive house, development was 
 rapid ; for war, and captivity, and service in Roman 
 legions, put many a new notion under the Germanic 
 helmet. Tricks of fortification were learnt from the 
 imperial engineers ; and it is quite certain that our 
 Angles and Saxons made extensive use of the mili- 
 tary improvements which Rome had given to her 
 province. The " street " (strata via} and the " cea- 
 ster " (castra) were soon borrowed, thing and word ; 
 and in BSowulf we are told that the road which led 
 
 up to Hrothgar's burg was "stone-variegated," 
 
 strait wcBS stdnfdh, — paved in the Roman fashion ; 
 although it is plain that, as with stone in houses, so 
 with these paved roads, the Germanic instinct re- 
 garded the process as something uncanny and savor- 
 ing of those mysterious giants who long ago had 
 rolled up the huge piles of masonry. So we read in 
 Andreas : — ^ 
 
 Manful they marched by mountain-dales, 
 stout of heart o'er the stony cliffs, 
 as far as ran the roads before them, 
 once built by giants, the burgs within, 
 , stone-gay streets. . . . 
 
 1 Wulker-Grein, Bibliothek d. Ags. Poesie, 11. v. 1232 ff. 
 
 These roads are referred to the same source as cer- 
 tain pillars and statues of stone which are mentioned 
 in the same poem, and are called by this stereotyped 
 phrase, " old work of giants," — eald enta geweorc} 
 
 While wall and ditch were soon adopted for pur- 
 poses of defence, the burg was often put upon a hill, 
 or in some equally commanding place. In Anglo- 
 Saxon poetry, the burg is called " lofty," " steep " ; it 
 stands on " the hoary stone." ^ A wall, of whatever 
 material, soon encircled the place ; tiin^ " town," is 
 like German zaun^ a fence or hedge ; and in Anglo- 
 Saxon the word eodor^ "hedge or wall," soon passes 
 into the general notion of house or fortified place ; 
 while in poetical speech the prince is called eodor of 
 his subjects, their shelter. We have to distinguish 
 between the " door " and the " gate," the latter being 
 a most important strategic point, where the hottest 
 struggle of a siege was mostly fought. The Anglo- 
 Saxon Chronicle, in what Sweet calls "the oldest 
 historical prose in any Teutonic language," gives us 
 a vivid account of the siege of a king who is visiting 
 at a house in Merton. It is set down for the year 
 755. The king has come to see a woman, and is 
 with her in her bower (iwr), when an enemy of his, 
 one Cyneheard, comes up with a besieging party, 
 breaks through the " gate " and surrounds the bower 
 itself. The king, aware of the danger, comes to the 
 door, fights manfully and with success, until he spies 
 his foe, the " aetheling," and so in sudden rage, rushes 
 out upon him, away from the vantage-ground of the 
 door. They all set upon the king and kill him. 
 
 1 Andreas, 1495. 
 
 2 Heyne, work quoted, p. 9; Vilmar, Altert. im Eel. p. 10. 
 
100 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Alarmed by cries of the woman, the king's thanes, 
 who form his body-guard, come running up, — pre- 
 sumably from the hall, of which the bower was a de- 
 pendency, — and vainly fight the besiegers, falling all 
 of them about the dead body of their lord. Next 
 morning the tables are turned; up ride the roused 
 thanes and soldiers of the king; the late besiegers 
 shut the gates, and are in turn besieged, stormed, and 
 cut down, — all save one. It is easy to see that the 
 English house of 755 has made considerable progress 
 from the Germanic house described by Tacitus, for 
 an active race does not stand still during six centu- 
 ries, even to be photographed ; and yet the dwelling 
 preserves many of the old characteristics. The bower, 
 detached from the hall, must have been fairly primi- 
 tive; and very early, we may think, provision was 
 made for the domestic animals. True, in the houses 
 of ordinary men, as still in some peasant-dwellings of 
 Europe, man and beast lived under one roof ; but the 
 home of chief or king must have been from the first 
 independent of the domestic apartment and the stalls 
 for cattle. In this case, we have to imagine the hall, 
 with its sacred associations, its hearth and its fire, in 
 the middle of a group of buildings ;i nearest to it, 
 and sometimes part of it, were the sleeping-rooms, 
 then store-houses, bake-houses, barns, treasure-house. 
 Such a group of houses, with a gradually increasing 
 family to occupy them, lying in open country, and 
 protected by a hedge or wall, was a tdn (" town ") or 
 a hdm ; when it was a fortified place, high, a home 
 of warriors, it was a hur^. However, as Heyne re- 
 
 1 The plural is often used in speaking of a single place : on burgum. 
 See Heyne, p. 38. 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 101 
 
 marks, this distinction is not constant.^ The hurg 
 might hold a single family or a whole city full ; 
 and A«7?i, tun^ hurg^ and hyrig are all used indis- 
 criminately in the names of later English towns. 
 With the rise of towns, we bid farewell to primitive 
 Germanic relations, and note not only the use of 
 older walls and roads, but imitation of Roman archi- 
 tecture. In this imitation, Anglo-Saxons were far 
 more apt than their brothers on the Continent ; 
 though it must be conceded that with all his borrow- 
 ings, the Englishman kept a certain independence ; 
 and while his language and his verse show material 
 taken wholesale from classics or Romance, yet the 
 heart of his speech, and the pulse of his poetry re- 
 mained Germanic. There is, however, scarcely any 
 material left to form a basis for our judgment in the 
 matter of oldest English houses. Of the so-called 
 Saxon architecture, very little has come down to us ; 
 and these meagre remains, says Liibke,^ " remind one 
 more of the carpenter than of the mason." Elaborate 
 buildings, such as church or palace, were erected by 
 workmen from abroad. How many of these foreign 
 elements had crept into the Anglo-Saxon notion of a 
 royal burg at the time when the materials of Beoivulf 
 were drifting together, or even how far the poet of 
 that epic added his own ideas to the traditional ac- 
 count of Heorot, is a very difficult matter to deter- 
 mine ; in any case, we must remember that the his- 
 torical events of BSowulf are removed from the time 
 
 1 Work quoted, p. 9. See also Kemble, Saxons, II. 550 ff. He gives 
 a list of the towns mentioned in the Chronicle. Significant is the word 
 msegburh as used to indicate the collective notion of a family, the clan 
 in a narrow sense. 
 
 2 In an essay on Gothic Architecture, in the Zeits. f. Vdlkerpsycho- 
 logie 11.S.IV. II. 266. 
 
102 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 10.^ 
 
 of Tacitus by four hundred years, although the north- 
 ern heathens would naturally preserve old traditions 
 much longer than the converted border tribes. Let 
 us assume that the burg itself, — the complex of build- 
 ings, — as described in Beowulf^ is modernized; but 
 why should not the hall be authentic? We will 
 simply transcribe Heyne's account of the burg of 
 Hrothgar, and then return to our study of the Ger- 
 manic hall. 
 
 This burg, probably surrounded with a wall, is the 
 home of the royal race of the Scyldings, or sons of 
 Scyld; and here, with thane and thrall, with queen, 
 children, relatives, and slaves, lives King Hrothgar. 
 Chief of all the buildings is the hall ; and near it is, 
 of course, the bower of the queen, the hrpd-hi1.r^ where 
 she and her children spend their time, whenever some 
 particular occasion does not call her into the hall, to 
 greet a guest at the banquet, or to bear the first 
 beaker to her lord. " Hall and Bower " long remains 
 an evident metonymy for Lord and Lady, — as in 
 Wordsworth's famous sonnet.^ To this bower, more- 
 over, comes the king at night when he has closed the 
 banquet in the hall : — 
 
 Then Hrothgar went with host of thanes, 
 " shelter of Scyldings " 2 stept from hall, 
 warrior mighty would Wealhtheow seek, 
 couch of his queen. . . .» 
 
 Scattered in the neighborhood of this bower, and thus 
 submitted to the oversight of the mistress, lay those 
 
 1 To Milton : — 
 
 " Altar, sword, and pen, 
 Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower. . . ." 
 
 other domestic buildings for store and kine and cook- 
 ing of food, which are below the dignity of epic 
 mention. A special house, however, is named as 
 affording accommodation for Beowulf and his com- 
 panions. Finally, on a cliff overlooking the sea, is a 
 sort of fortified watch-tower, whence the strand-ward 
 and his men keep sentry over the ocean approaches 
 and guard the burg from surprise of sudden raids. 
 Such is the Germanic burg as painted in an epic of 
 the seventh century ; but it is difficult to shut our 
 eyes to a certain touch of the mediaeval castle in 
 some of these arrangements, let the background be as 
 primitive as one please : the " stone-gay " path from 
 the sea to the palace, the courteous challenge of the 
 strand-ward as Beowulf's ship comes to shore, and 
 the highly parliamentary answer of the chieftain, — 
 these must be outward flourishes of the story, added 
 by the monkish poet who was fain to let some bit of 
 southern color fall upon this passing sombre legend 
 of the north. If when, after the song of the min- 
 strel in Hrothgar's hall, — 
 
 The bench-joy brightened, bearers drew 
 
 wine from wonder-vats. 
 
 • • • 
 
 2 Kenning or metaphor for a prince. 
 
 8 B^oiv. 662 ff. 
 
 and the revellers thus forget their Germanic beer, we 
 know that many other departures from the primitive 
 order must be reckoned with in our epic. 
 
 Such beautifyings might be tolerated in the vaguer 
 architecture and the unimportant details, but when 
 it comes to the hall itself, the scene of that struggle 
 between hero and monster which had doubtless 
 formed the subject of more than one old ballad, here, 
 
 1 Beow, 1161 f. 
 
ifi 
 
 1fti 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 i 
 
 in a locality connected at every turn with tradition, 
 we may expect the primitive arrangement. 
 
 The hall Heorot or " Hart," probably named so on 
 account of the antlers which adorn its gables, differs 
 from the usual centre and nucleus of a Germanic 
 home, in that it lies outside the walls of the burg. 
 The old hall had been within ; but riches and power 
 incline the king to build a new one, which shall out- 
 shine anything of the sort ever known to man ; and 
 since within the enclosure there is no room for such 
 an edifice, it is built nearer the sea, and probably on 
 lower ground. The material is wood; the general 
 plan an oblong. Massive pieces of timber are held 
 together by iron clamps, and rest, if we are to follow 
 Heyne, upon a stone foundation. If so, these are 
 modern touches. We are told that the floor was 
 gleaming, bright, of variegated colors, — 
 
 On glittering floor the fiend then trod.^ 
 
 It would seem that there were two doors, one at each 
 end of the building; and this is borne out by the 
 often-quoted passage from Beda : " So seems to me, 
 O king, man's life in this world compared with that 
 which we do not know, as if you were sitting at meat 
 among your thanes and nobles in the winter time, 
 with a fire burning in the midst, and the hall full of 
 warmth and light, but outside a raging storm of 
 wind and snow, — and a sparrow should fly swiftly in 
 by one door, and presently fly out again by the 
 other. . . ."'-^ 
 
 1 B^ow. 725. 
 
 2 Hist. Ecc. II. 13. A briefer and more spirited rendering is Green's 
 in the Shorter History of England. Wordsworth has put the speech 
 into verse, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, XVI. 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 105 
 
 The hall was entered on a level, or by a very few 
 steps ; for, as Heyne points out, the hoi-ses which are 
 presented to Beowulf as a reward for his gallantry, 
 are led directly into the hall ; and we may add the 
 later custom mentioned in an English ballad, where, 
 by the way, the gift of an arm-ring has a decidedly 
 ancient flavor : — 
 
 King Estmere he stabled his steede 
 
 Soe fay re att the hall-bord ; 
 The froth that came from his brydle bitte 
 
 Light in Kyng Bremor's beard. ^ 
 
 Professor Child gives abundant references to older 
 literature which support the custom, the most familiar 
 being from the Squire's Tale : — 
 
 Whil that the kyng sit thus . . . 
 
 In atte halle dore sodeynly 
 
 Ther com a knight upon a steed of bras.^ 
 
 Outside of the hall and along the wall, in which was 
 the principal door, ran a row of benches ; here sit 
 Beowulf and his men until admitted to an audience 
 with the king, and here they stack their "gray- 
 tipped" spears. The roof and outer walls were 
 probably painted in gay colors, a development of 
 the art mentioned by Tacitus, and practised in the 
 middle ages by the builder of a German castle.^ 
 Our poem insists on the fact that Heorot "glistens," 
 " shines far over the land " : it is once called " gold- 
 gay," and some have thought of a tile-roof in different 
 colors, or even that the roof was plated with actual 
 gold. But we need assume nothing more than the 
 
 1 Child, Ballads,2 II. 51, 54. 
 3 Heyne, p. 44. 
 
 2 Aldine ed. Chaucer, II. 357. 
 
n 
 
 106 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Germanic trick known to Tacitus. Huge antlers 
 decked the gable. All burgs, it would seem, had 
 such a decoration. Both the Anglo-Saxon author of 
 Andreas and the Old Saxon poet of the Heliand speak 
 even of the temple and houses of Jerusalem as fur- 
 nished with these " horns." An Anglo-Saxon riddle ^ 
 has such a horn for subject. A picture of an Anglo- 
 Saxon house, reproduced in Wright's book^ from a 
 manuscript of the ninth century, shows the roof of 
 a building which must be the " hall," adorned with 
 a stag's head and antlers. The windows of the Ger- 
 manic hall had, of course, no glass ; ^ they were high 
 up in the wall, or even in the roof itself. In simpler 
 halls the smoke of fires escaped as it could, through 
 door or window ; but there was often an opening in 
 the roof directly over the fire, protected from rain by 
 another and smaller roof above. 
 
 Within, the hall is supported by a single central 
 pillar, which, as Henning tells us,^ is one of the oldest 
 characteristics of the Aryan house. Such was the 
 olive tree about which Odysseus fashioned his sleep- 
 ing-room;^ such the huge oak in the hall of the 
 Volsungs, into which Odin thrust the sword. For 
 the king there is a special "High Seat," which in 
 Heorot, Heyne thinks, was placed at this central 
 pillar;^ in Scandinavian halls it was put on the 
 
 1 No. 85 of the so-called Riddles of Cynewulf. 
 
 2 Domestic Manners, etc., p. 15. 
 
 8 It was introduced in England, for church purposes, about 676. 
 Heyne, p. 46. 
 
 ^Das deutsche Hmis, p. 171. 5 Odyssey, XXIII. 190 ff. 
 
 « Against this view, see Sarrazin, in his somewhat futile Beowulf- 
 studien, p. 19. He claims Beoioulf as a Scandinavian poem, and says 
 Heorot is "plainly a Scandinavian tavern." 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 107 
 
 north side. A second seat or bench of distinction, 
 probably opposite the throne, was meant for the 
 prince and royal guests, like Beowulf. The High 
 Seat had room for two persons besides the king, — 
 the queen and his nephew ; while at his feet, on a sort 
 of dais, lay the thyle^ a combination of master of the 
 revels, orator, poet laureate, and jester. Inasmuch 
 as the kin-system was the unit of Germanic life, the 
 head of a house needed every conspicuous sign of 
 authority ; and this High Seat was no kingly symbol 
 alone, but was used by each householder. It was 
 probably found in all Germanic houses, no matter how 
 rudimentary its grandeur; and it may still be seen 
 in the cottages of Scandinavian peasants. On the 
 death of a householder, the eldest son took possession 
 of this seat with all pomp and ceremony, and dis- 
 pensed the hospitalities of his house to relatives and 
 friends. If he were chieftain or prince, he would 
 thenceforth, sitting on this throne, called from such 
 associations gifstol^ or gift-seat, bestow on vassal or 
 neighbor the ring which he twisted from its spiral, 
 or some other piece of treasure, even the right to 
 hold estates in land, — and so gladden the hearts of 
 his retainers. Last stage of all, we find this gift-seat 
 in the tomb. The Scandinavian sepulchre was some- 
 times built like a house, the freeman's final and per- 
 manent ''hall," where he is now and then found 
 sitting on the High Seat and ruling over his ghostly 
 home.i 
 
 About the other sides of the hall were tapestries, 
 of course no primitive adornment, though not neces- 
 
 1 Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, p. 498. See also the description of the 
 tomb of Charlemagne. 
 
f ; 
 
 108 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 109 
 
 sarily late in the history of Germanic decoration. In 
 BSowulf they are called weh : ^ — 
 
 . . . Gold-gay shone 
 webs along walls, wonders many 
 for sight of the heroes that stare at such. 
 
 The use of " weaving " in many figures of speech, — 
 as " peace-weaver " for " wife," ^ — together with the 
 analogy of ornaments in dress, allows us the inference 
 that rude tapestries may have ornamented the Ger- 
 manic hall in comparatively early times. Under the 
 tapestries, and adorned with carvings or even with 
 gold, ran the benches of the retainers, the trusty vas- 
 sals of the king, who drank his mead or ale, feasted 
 and sang, and shared his treasures. These treasures 
 were doubtless kept in the hall itself under a picked 
 guard, or else were assigned to a fortified separate 
 building. 
 
 Bearing in mind the date of our poem, but remem- 
 bering as well the conservative nature of custom and 
 of the traditions of social or family life, let us glance 
 a moment at the picturesque scene which the poet of 
 BSowulf shows us in Heorot. 
 
 Ranged along the walls are the benches filled with 
 vassals, warriors old and young, — as the old English 
 phrase ran, dugw6 and geogd^^ — who drink from horn 
 or cup, replenished by servants who hasten with ves- 
 sels of ale about the room. On the throne sits the 
 king, and at his feet lounges Hunferth the ihyle, 
 Beowulf is announced, and his peaceful message ; 
 the king bids his chamberlain go back, see that the 
 
 1 Beow. 994 ff. 
 
 2 See Bode, Die Kenningar in der Ays. Dichtung, p. 48. 
 
 weapons are stacked without, and usher in the guests. 
 Leaving a small guard over spears and shields, Beo- 
 wulf and his men, clad in their armor and helmets, 
 enter the hall. Then Beowulf salutes the king, 
 tells his name with a brave deed or two by way of 
 credentials, and announces the purpose of his visit.^ 
 
 Then the warriors went as the way was showed them 
 
 under Heorot's roof ; the hero stepped 
 
 hardy 'neath helm, till the hearth ^ he neared ; 
 
 Beowulf spake — his breastplate shone, 
 
 war-net woven by wit of the smith : — 
 
 « Thou Hrothgar, Hail ! Higelac's I, 
 
 his kinsman and follower ; fame a plenty 
 
 have I gaiu'd in youth. This Grendel-deed 
 
 in my native land is known full well. 
 
 Seafarers say how stands this hall, 
 
 best of houses, for heroes now 
 
 empty and useless, when even-light 
 
 in the harbor ^ of heaven is hidden away. 
 
 Then my retainers told me this, — 
 
 brave and wise, the best of men, — 
 
 that I, O King, should come to thee ; 
 
 for my nerve and might they knew right well. 
 
 Themselves had seen me from slaughter come, 
 
 blood-fleck'd from foes, where five * I bound, 
 
 wasted the giants : i' the waves I slew 
 
 nicors by night, in need and stress, 
 
 1 This long extract from Beowulf is given not only for its illustra- 
 tion of the ways of a Germanic hall, but also on account of its allusions 
 to other parts of our subject. The author is responsible for these, as 
 for other translations from Anglo-Saxon which occur in the book. 
 
 2 Reading heor^e for heofie : see Holder, Beoiculf, and others. 
 
 8 Reading hador for heatSor '* receptaculum," with Grein {Sprachs. 
 II. 40) and Heyne. WUlker-Grein, Bihl. and Holder read hador = " bright- 
 ness." Grendel, the monster, came to plunder the hall every night, and 
 killed any whom he found there. 
 
 4 Owing to discrepancy of this and the narrative below, Bugge would 
 read " on the monster-sea " — the sea that breeds monsters. See Paul- 
 Braune, Beit. XII. 367. 
 
N 
 
 110 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 avenged the Weders ^ for woes they bore, 
 
 crush'd the griin-ones. — Greiidel now, 
 
 monster direful, is mine to quell 
 
 in single battle. — And so from thee. 
 
 Prince of the Danes, I pray indeed, 
 
 thou Scyldings' Bulwark, a single boon ; — 
 
 refuse it not, O thou Friend of Clans, 
 
 Warriors' Shield, ^ now I've wandered far: 
 
 that I alone with my liegemen here, 
 
 a hardy band, may Heorot purge I 
 
 More I hear, that the monster dire 
 
 in his w^anton mood no weapon recketh ; 
 
 hence shall I scorn — so Higelac bide, 
 
 king of my people, kind to me ! — 
 
 brand or broad shield to bear in fight, 
 
 no golden ^ targe ; but with grip alone 
 
 must I front the fiend and fight for life, 
 
 foe against foe. There faith be his 
 
 in the doom of God whom death shall take ! 
 
 I ween that fain — if the fight he win — 
 
 in battle-hall my band of Jutes 
 
 will he eat unfearing, as oft before * 
 
 the main of Hrethmen.^ — For me, then, needless 
 
 to hide my head ; ^ his shall I be, 
 
 dyed in gore if death shall take me. 
 
 The bloody booty he bears afar, 
 
 ruthless devours it, the Roamer Lonely, 
 
 1 Sc. the Weder-Geatas, Jutes (according to some, Swedes) , the race to 
 which Beowulf belongs. 
 
 2 Notice the complimentary heaping of metaphors for the king's 
 person. 
 
 8 Yellow ; the color of the linden bast with which the shield was 
 covered. (Heyne.) 
 
 * Sc. *' he ate." "Main " (A. S. rnasgen) = " chief power." " Goes 
 it against the main of Poland, sir ? " Hamlet, IV. 4. 
 
 fi Danes, the men of Hrothgar whom Grendel has previously de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 6 These words are interpreted by some (see Heyne's note in his 5th 
 ed.) to mean: "I ask thee to give me no guard of honor this night; I 
 will meet the foe alone." Others refer it to burial; "Grendel will 
 devour me, and hence I shall need no grave." 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 111 
 
 marking the moorlands : ^ no more thou need'st 
 
 for food of my body further care. 
 
 To Higelac send, if Hild 2 shall take me, 
 
 noblest war-weeds warding my breast, 
 
 fairest armor, heirloom of Hrethel, 
 
 and work of Wayland » . . . fares Wyrd * as she must." — 
 
 Hrothgar spake, Helmet of Scyldings : — 
 
 " For fight defensive, friend my Beowulf, 
 
 for sake of helping, hast sought us here. 
 
 Fought thy father ^ a feud unequalled ; 
 
 Heatholaf with his hand he slew 
 
 among the Wylfings ; Weder kin 
 
 failed to hold him for fear of the host. 
 
 Thence he sought the South-Dane folk, 
 
 over wallowing waters the well-thewed Scyldings, 
 
 when first I was wielding folk of the Danes, 
 
 youthful ruled o'er the rich in gems, 
 
 hoard-burg of heroes. Was Heregar dead, 
 
 my elder brother had breathed his last, 
 
 Healfdene's bairn : he was better than I. 
 
 Then the feud with fee I settled,® 
 
 to the Wylfings sent o'er the water-ridges 
 
 treasures olden : oaths he swore me. 
 
 Sore is my soul to say to any 
 
 of the race of men what ruth for me 
 
 1 Sc. with blood. 2 Battle, death in battle personified. 
 
 * Wayland Smith. Weland was the Germanic Vulcan, of whom more 
 under the head of Industries ; his legend is well known in all Germanic 
 poetry, and is referred to in our oldest English lyric, The Consolations 
 of the Minstrel Deor. 
 
 ^ This whole passage, stamped with primitive Germanic marks, is 
 replete with mythologic interest, though the elegiac and mournful tone 
 is specifically Anglo-Saxon. Wyrd (= that which is accomplished) is 
 Fate, a Germanic goddess; compare " To dree one's weird." 
 
 ^ Hrothgar at once shows his knowledge of royal histories and gene- 
 alogies, a great point with the Germanic chieftains. In the Hildebrand 
 Lay, old Master Hildebrand, when he unwittingly meets his son, and 
 asks the name of his opponent's father, says proudly : ** If thou namest 
 one to me, I shall know the rest; boy, in the kingdom all folk are 
 known to me! " 
 
 6 By paying the Wergild. See p. 178. 
 
112 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 in Heorot Grendel with hate hath wrought, 
 
 what sudden harryings. Hall-folk ^ here, 
 
 my warriors wane ; Wyrd hath swept them 
 
 into Grendel's terror : God is able 
 
 the deadly foe from his deeds to turn. 
 
 Full often boasted the beer-drunk earls, 
 
 over the ale-cup, armed men, 
 
 that they would bide in the beer-hall here 
 
 Grendel's onset, with edged terrors.^ 
 
 Then was the mead-hall at morning-tide 
 
 dyed with gore when daylight broke, 
 
 all of the benches blood-besprinkled, 
 
 with gore of the sword : I had guards the less, 
 
 darling clansmen, whom death had seized." 
 
 With these speeches, the king and his noble guest 
 have put themselves on the proper terms, and Hroth- 
 gar proceeds to bid a feast. 
 
 " Sit now to banquet, unbind from restraint 
 victor-heroes as heart shall prompt thee." ^ 
 There for the joined Jutish band, 
 in banquet-room was a bench assigned, 
 whither the warriors went to sit, 
 lofty-thoughted.* A thane attended, 
 who carried in hand the carven ale-cup, 
 clear mead poured out ; oft minstrel sang, 
 cheerly in Heorot ; heroes revelled, 
 warriors many, Weder and Dane. 
 
 The songs sung to harp or zither^ by such a min- 
 strel were sometimes, it is true, gnomic verses full of 
 
 1 Vassals, retainers; those who dwelt in the hall. 
 
 2 Would await him with drawn swords. 
 
 8 Evident parallel of our " Make yourselves at home." Other inter- 
 pretations in Heyne's note, 5th ed. 
 
 4 Men who thought of noble deeds ; bold-hearted, 
 s Symons, in Paul, Grdr. d. germ. Phil. II. 1. p. 7. 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 113 
 
 proverbial wisdom,^ but mostly, as befitted a warrior 
 throng, ballads of heroic or mythic acts done by 
 members or ancestors of the clan ; or else — for the 
 family stock of songs would easily grow too familiar 
 — some legend of other Germanic tribes would be 
 eagerly greeted, like the song sung by one of these 
 minstrels attached to Hrothgar's court as the men 
 are riding up to the hall, after the combat of Beowulf 
 and Grendel.^ Personal compliment would have its 
 
 1 Such are, in late guise, the gnomic verses preserved in Anglo- 
 Saxon poetry ; this proverbial poetry was very popular, and it is easy 
 to justify the ways of Tupper by the practice of our ancestors. 
 
 2 Very few words will be in place concerning the nature of Ger- 
 manic poetry. Its chief fault is lack of artistic finish; it has "more 
 matter and less art " than the poetry with which we are familiar. Its 
 development in respect of form and style was rudely checked by the 
 conversion, and never came to maturity. I have elsewhere made bold 
 to apply to this early poetry of ours those infinitely pathetic words of 
 Groethe's Mignon : — 
 
 Vor Kummer altert' ich zu friihe. 
 
 Sorrow made it old before its time. But for the facts. Of course, the 
 material is human speech, and many words used in poetry were used in 
 daily life. Substantives, not verbs, are the chief consideration. A cer- 
 tain number of words, however, constituted by their solemn and formal 
 nature an exclusively poetical vocabulary, and these joined with certain 
 artistic factors to make up our old poetry. Rhythm is the chief of 
 these factors ; tone-color, the second ; parallelism of phrase is a third. 
 Sievers has shown a far greater regularity in Germanic rhythm than 
 was suspected by older scholars. With certain subordinate regulations 
 of quantity and balance, the main law of our old poetry called for a 
 verse which fell into halves, —in each half two accented syllables. 
 These verse-accented syllables must also be word-accented; in other 
 phrase, the rhythmic accent coincided with the syntactical or logical, 
 
 — the distinguishing element of all Germanic poetry. Scherer says 
 that this desire to force home the root-syllables, the sounds which bore 
 the sense, was due to the passionately earnest character of the race. 
 To bind together the two halves of the verse, tone-color was employed, 
 
 — what we call alliteration or beginning-rhyme. The first accented 
 syllable of the second half was standard ; with the initial sound of this 
 syllable must rhyme one, and might rhyme both, of the accented syl- 
 
It *l 
 
 
 ■J 
 
 J 
 ^1 
 
 If 
 
 114 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 place. On this occasion in question, we may fancy- 
 that some deed of Beowulf, or of a member of his 
 kin, was sung amid the enthusiasm of the warriors 
 and their guests, with shouts of applause and remem- 
 bered delight of battle, with copious Sowings of the 
 ale. But Beowulf has another proof to endure. The 
 tht/le, or king's master of the revels, is not at his post 
 in vain ; and the guest is to be put to his mettle in 
 one of those flytings, or contests of wit, which seem 
 to have been so popular, especially among the Scan- 
 dinavians. Lolling at his chieftain's feet, heated with 
 liberal potations, the tht/le, Hunferth, jealous and 
 vexed, tries to jeer and scoff the guest out of coun- 
 tenance ; and so he calls across to the bench where 
 Beowulf sits : — 
 
 Hunferth spake, son of Ecglaf, 
 
 who sat at the feet of the Scyldings' lord, 
 
 unbound the battle-runes : ^ Beowulf's quest, — 
 
 haughty seafarer's, — him had galled, 
 
 for he always grudged that another man 
 
 more of fame in this middle earth 
 
 should win under heaven than he himself. — 
 
 " Art thou that Beowulf, Breca's rival, 
 
 who in swimming strove on the spacious main, 
 
 when ye in your pride must prove the sea, 
 
 and for wantonness i' the waters deep 
 
 ventured your lives ? No living man, 
 
 lables of the first half. In good verse, the two accented syllables of the 
 second half never rhymed with each other. This peculiarity of the verse 
 we have sought to retain in translation, as well as the parallelisms, in 
 which Anglo-Saxon poetry bears some resemblance to the Hebrew. 
 The use of alliteration is shown in the host of phrases like " have 
 and hold " retained by our once poetical, now prosaic laws. For list 
 in Anglo-Saxon, see Meyer, Altgerm. Poesie, p. 200 fp. 
 1 " Set loose the secrets of battle," i.e. began to quarrel. 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 nor lief nor loath, from your labor dire 
 
 could you dissuade. O'er the sea ye rowed, 
 
 ocean tides with arms ye covered, 
 
 measured the sea-streets, strove with hands, 
 
 glode o'er the waters. Winter's flood 
 
 rolled high in billows ; in realm of sea, 
 
 a sennight toiled ye : he topped thee in swimming, 
 
 had more of main ! Him at morning-tide 
 
 to Heathorseme kin the current bore, 
 
 whence he hied to his home so lief, — 
 
 beloved of his liegemen, — land of Brondings, 
 
 stronghold fair, where folk he had, 
 
 burg and treasure. His boast o'er thee 
 
 the son of Beanstan soothly wrought. 
 
 Now ween I for thee a worse adventure, — 
 
 though in rush of battle thou brave hast been, — 
 
 struggle grim, if Grendel here 
 
 thou darest to wait this one night through." 
 
 Beowulf spake, bairn of Ecgtheow. — 
 
 ** What a deal hast babbled, dear my Hunferth, 
 
 drunken with beer, of Breca now, 
 
 fabled his faring ! In faith, I say 
 
 that I have more of might at sea 
 
 than any one else, — of ocean-toil ! 
 
 We twain once said, — we were scarcely boys, — 
 
 and made a boast, — though both as yet 
 
 youthful in age, — that on ocean far 
 
 we would dare our lives : and we did it so. 
 
 A naked sword, as we swam o'er ocean, 
 
 we held in hand, hoping to guard us 
 
 against the whales. Not a whit from me 
 
 could he faster float o'er the flood awav, 
 
 more fleet on the waters : I would not leave him. 
 
 Then we together i' the waves abode 
 
 for five nights' space till the sea-flood twinn'd us, 
 
 rolling billows, rawest weather, 
 
 darkling night and northern winds 
 
 battle-grim rushed on us : rough were the waves. 
 
 The wrath of the sea-fish rose apace : 
 
 115 
 
116 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 117 
 
 h 
 
 me 'gainst monsters the mail of my body, 
 
 hard, hand-linked, lent me aid ; 
 
 on my breast was the battle-sark braided well, 
 
 fretted with gold : then grasped me hard 
 
 and haled me to bottom the hostile fiend, 
 
 grim in his gripe. 'Twas given me, though, 
 
 to pierce the monster with point of sword, 
 
 with battle-blade. Huge beast of the sea 
 
 was hent with a thrust of hand of mine. 
 
 Me thus often the murderous foes 
 
 sorely pressed : I served them well 
 
 with my darling sword, as due and right. 
 
 Not at all did their booty bring them joy, 
 
 these evil-doers, to eat me there, 
 
 seated to banquet at bottom of sea ; 
 
 but at break of day, by the brand destroyed, 
 
 on the marge of ocean up they lay 
 
 put to sleep by the sword ; and since, no more 
 
 in the foaming sea-ways sailor folk 
 
 are let in their faring. — Light from east 
 
 came God's bright beacon (the billows lessened) 
 
 so that I saw the sea-cliffs high, 
 
 windy walls : oft Wyrd preserveth 
 
 undoomed earl if he doughty be. 
 
 Sooth it befell me with sword to kill 
 
 nine of the nicors. — By night ne'er heard I 
 
 of harder struggle 'neath heaven's dome, 
 
 nor on wave of the waters wearier man. 
 
 Yet I came with life from the clutch of foes, 
 
 worn with my wandering. Waves upbore me, 
 
 flood over ocean to Finnas' land, 
 
 welling waters. No wise of thee 
 
 have I heard men tell such terror of falchions, 
 
 bitter battle. Breca never, 
 
 nor thou nor he, in the hot war-play 
 
 such daring deed had done at all, 
 
 with bloody swords (I boast not of it), 
 
 though thou the bane ^ of thy brothers wast, 
 
 1 Murderer. 
 
 the chief of thy kin, — whence curse of hell 
 
 awaits thee, good as thy wit may be ! 
 
 For I say ^ in sooth, thou son of Ecglaf, 
 
 ne'er Grendel such heap of horrors had wrought, — 
 
 monster dire, — on thy master here, 
 
 in Heorot such havoc, if heart of thine 
 
 were as battle-bold as thy boast is loud 1 
 
 But he has found, no feud will come, 
 
 no deadly raid, from Danish people, 
 
 fears no fray from the folk of Scylding. 
 
 He forces pledges, favors none 
 
 of all your race, but he revels on, 
 
 slumbers and feasts, no feud expects 
 
 among the Spear-Danes. — Straightway now 
 
 shall I the prowess and power of the Jutes 
 
 bid him in battle. — Blithe to mead 
 
 go he that listeth when light of morn 
 
 o'er sons of men on the second day, 
 
 sun robed in ether, from south shall beam ! " ^ 
 
 Blithe then grew the breaker of rings, 
 
 hoary and battle-brave ; ^ help he waited, 
 
 in Beowulf's boast, the Bright-Danes' lord. 
 
 Shepherd of Clans, heard strong resolve. — 
 
 Then was laughter of liegemen loud resounding, 
 
 words were winsome. Came Wealhtheow forth, 
 
 queen of Hrothgar heedful of courtesy, 
 
 gold-decked greeted guests in hall. 
 
 Then the high-born lady handed a cup 
 
 first to the lord of the land of Danes, 
 
 bade him be blithe at the beer-drinking, 
 
 to his clansmen gentle. In joy he took 
 
 beaker and banquet, the battle-graced king. 
 
 Through the hall then went the Helmings' lady, 
 
 on younger and older everywhere 
 
 treasure bestowed, till the time had come 
 
 1 Note how Beowulf's invective leads up through murder to the 
 climax of Germanic sins, — cowardice. 
 
 2 That is, *' the hall will be safe after to-night's combat." 
 8 King Hrothgar. 
 
f 
 
 t 
 
 I- i 
 
 118 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 when the gold-decked queen, in gracious fashion, 
 
 to Beowulf bore the beaker of mead. 
 
 She greeted the Jutes' lord, God she thanked, 
 
 in wisdom's words that her will was wrought, 
 
 at last on a hero could lean her hope, 
 
 comfort of terrors. He took the cup, 
 
 warrior bold, from Wealhtheow ; 
 
 speech then uttered the stout in battle, 
 
 Beowulf spake, bairn of Ecgtheow. — 
 
 " This was my thought, when my thanes and I 
 
 took to the ocean, entered our boat, 
 
 that I would work the will of your people 
 
 in thorough fashion or fall in death 
 
 in fiend's gripe fast. I am fain to do 
 
 deed of the doughty, or day supreme ^ 
 
 of this life of mine in the mead-hall bide ! " 
 
 Well the words to the woman seemed, 
 
 boast of the Jute ; with jewels laden, 
 
 the lady bright by her lord sat down. 
 
 Then rose as erst the revel in hall, 
 
 proud words spoken, the people glad, 
 
 shout of victors, — till suddenly 
 
 the lord of the Healfdenes listed well 
 
 to find his rest. For the fiend, he knew, 
 
 in the banquet-hall was battle prepared. 
 
 In other words, they remember that it is night-time 
 
 now, and the monster must shortly make appearance. 
 
 So the Danes leave the hall to Beowulf and his 
 
 Jutes. 
 
 . . . The band arose ; 
 eagerly greeted one the other, 
 Hrothgar to Beowulf, hail he bade him, 
 power in the wine-hall, — these words he added : 
 " To never a hero my hall I've trusted, 
 since first I could heave up hand and shield, 
 my noble hall, save now to thee. 
 
 ^ Last. 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 119 
 
 Have now and hold ^ this house so lordly, 
 have mind on thy glory, thy main declare, 
 watch for the foe. — No wish shall fail thee, 
 if thou bidest the battle with bold- won life ! " ^ 
 
 Then they go, and anon the great struggle takes 
 place ; the hall totters with the conflict between 
 Beowulf and Grendel and would have fallen, had it 
 not been so extraordinarily well built. The extract 
 we have just considered is somewhat tedious, and 
 exaggerates certain grave and obvious defects in the 
 style of Anglo-Saxon poetry; yet the quality tire- 
 some to us was welcomed by the Grermans, who had 
 a childish delight in repetition and detail; and the 
 defects are inherent with poets that have not attained 
 the self-control of the artist. This breathless hud- 
 dling style was dear to the brawny old warriors. 
 Again, where monkish learning has touched our 
 verses, it has not adorned. They are in many parts 
 tinged with Roman culture, and veneered with a thin 
 coating of the new religion ; the speech of Beowulf 
 is too parliamentary for the temper of those earliest 
 Germans; and perhaps the queen is something too 
 much of a grande dame. But making all these allow- 
 ances, we are safe in looking on this description as 
 essentially Germanic ; nor can a tolerably critical eye 
 fail to detect and leave out of account the touches of 
 a more modern brush. 
 
 The chief business of the hall was evidently such 
 as we have seen, — royal receptions and banquets, 
 
 1 The antiquity of this legal form is proved by the alliteration, as 
 well as by its solemn use in this place. 
 
 2 The passage is given in full except a few lines near the end, and 
 runs in the original from v. 402 to v. 661. 
 
120 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 121 
 
 f' it 
 j 
 
 the latter being, of course, the more constant factor. 
 In these revels, men had cup or horn to hold in the 
 hand, — " without tables ! " ^ says a plaintive German 
 commentator. We have spoken of horn and cup al- 
 ready ;2 but we must not forget the old blood-cur- 
 dling habit, which has done service for so many orators 
 and editors, of drinking from the skulls of slaugh- 
 tered enemies. This custom was primitive and Ger- 
 manic; Livy tells us the same thing of the Celts.^ 
 Nor was it necessarily the skull of an enemy ; one 
 could pay this graceful compliment to a dead friend, 
 and murmur, " Alas, poor Yorick ! " with even a nearer 
 sentiment. Grimm cites many instances.^ We know 
 that Alboin met his death because " when he had sat 
 too long one day at a banquet in Verona, with the 
 beaker before him which he once had caused to be 
 made from the skull of his father-in-law. King Cuni- 
 mund, what must he do but send wine to the queen 
 and bid her drink merrily along with her father. Let 
 no one" — adds the good Paul — "let no one call this 
 impossible ; I speak the truth in Christ, and I myself 
 have seen this beaker." ^ And in another place the 
 same writer says : " Alboin slew Cunimund, cut his 
 head off, and had a beaker made of it. This sort of 
 beaker is called skala among them; in Latin, pa- 
 tera.'' Older than history is the myth of Wayland, 
 best told in the Norse Vilkinasaga,^ Volundr, as 
 
 1 Tacitus says these were used at the Germanic meal : " Sua cuique 
 mensa." Germ. XXII. 
 
 2 Many names occur in the Germanic languages to express " drink- 
 ing-cup." See Vilmar, Deutsche Altertumer im Heliand, p. 37. 
 
 8 Hehn, 438 ; Livy, XXIII. 24. ■* G. D. S.^ 100. 
 
 5 Paul. Diac. Hist. Langob. II. 28. See also I. 27. 
 « P. E. Miiller, Sagabibliothek, II. 157. 
 
 K 
 
 his Norse name runs, treats in a fashion similar to 
 Alboin's the bones of a king's two sons. 
 
 In Beowulf little was said about the particulars of 
 the feast ; in Judith, a late epic on a Christian sub- 
 ject, a banquet is described quite in the Germanic 
 fashion, even if it is the doing of no less a person 
 than Holofernes. He orders a great feast and bids 
 to it "the eldest of his thanes," — the highest in rank 
 and service. 
 
 Then fared they thither at feast to sit, 
 
 proud to the wine, his wicked fellows, 
 
 bold mailed-warriors. Beakers tall 
 
 were borne to the benches, bowls and flagons 
 
 were filled for the floor-sitters : fey they took them, 
 
 warriors stout, though he wist no thing, 
 
 dread leader of earls. Then Olof ernes, 
 
 gold-friend of men, wa;S glad with wine, 
 
 laughed and was loud in larum and din, 
 
 so that many a mortal marked afar 
 
 how the sturdy-minded one stormed and yelled, 
 
 mead-mad and haughty ; admonished oft 
 
 the crowd of benchers to quit them well. 
 
 So the worker of evil all day long 
 
 drenched his warriors deep in wine, 
 
 stout treasure-breaker, until they swooned, 
 
 plied his thanes till prone they lay, 
 
 drenched them all as if death had seized them, 
 
 drained of life. . . . 
 
 This is Germanic through and through, — the "larum 
 and din " agreeing with accounts given us by classic 
 writers of the clamor and " wassail " cries of a Gothic 
 banquet,^ — as indeed any one may see by comparing 
 the biblical account; and it is much more strongly 
 
 1 In the fifth century the Alamanni had the fame of being the hardest 
 of German drinkers. Salvianus, quoted by Hodgkin, Italy, I. 310. 
 
122 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 and sharply outlined than the too shadowy descrip- 
 tion in BSoivulf. This cheerful defiance of all local 
 coloring is a saving virtue in the early English poets, 
 and helps us to many a trait of their own time which 
 they would have scorned to record of purpose. The 
 old Saxon poet who paraphrased the gospels describes, 
 much in the same fashion as above, the feast of 
 Herod, and also — though naturally as a far more 
 decorous affair — the banquet at Cana.^ People 
 gather in the "guest hall" of the "high house"; 
 they grow " blithe " ; while the servants " go about 
 with bowls and cups and pitchers," till "on the floor" 
 — that is, in the hall — " was fair pleasure of earls," 
 and from the benches rose delight of the people. 
 The technical term among the oldest English poets 
 to describe this bliss of revel was " dream," 2 — the 
 joy that springs from drink, and song, and laughter 
 in the warm hall, shared with one's household and 
 vassals ; then it came to mean a similar state in one's 
 sleep, which is the only meaning now attached to the 
 word. Song, noise, — that was the Anglo-Saxon 
 notion, as witness the three remarkable glosses i^ 
 " Concentus^ i. adunationes multarum vocum, efenhleo- 
 prung, vel dream. — Furor enim animi eito finitur^ vel 
 gravius est quam ira, re|>nes, woden, dream. — Armonia 
 [= Harmonid]^ dream." A " dreamer" is a musician. 
 However, the Germanic warrior could enjoy in hall 
 both the ancient and the modern dream; for, save 
 when a Grendel made the hall-night hideous, it was 
 there, stretched on his bench, or on a rude sort of 
 
 1 Heliand, 1994 fp. ; Herod's banquet, 2734 ff. (Hesme's ed.). 
 
 2 See also Vilmar, work quoted, p. 38. 
 
 8 Wright-Wiilker, 212, 36 ; 245, 7 ; 342, 39. 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 123 
 
 1 
 
 bed, that the clansman slept; and Tacitus tells us 
 that it was often well into the following day when 
 our dreamer rose,^ took his bath — hot, if possible, — 
 and went off to the duties of the morning. It might 
 be that another feast claimed his attention, some pub- 
 lic affair, as when a youth was graced with spear and 
 shield in presence of the clan, and so became a free- 
 man, a warrior, and a pillar of the state. It might be 
 a town meeting, or some other function of the citi- 
 zen ; but it was certainly no manual labor, no care of 
 farm or cattle. That was not the warrior's business. 
 He would often, says Tacitus, lie whole days before 
 the fire ; and if we ask what he was doing there when 
 not asleep, we are entitled to the suspicion that he 
 was gambling. This was his vice of vices ; the na- 
 tional propensity to gamble was not a mere pastime, 
 but a reckless, absorbing, passionate gambling, which 
 often ended not only in poverty, but in slavery. 
 When property was gone, when wife and child were 
 gone, the German staked his own liberty ; and if he 
 lost his last throw, went voluntarily into servitude, 
 even under a weaker man.^ This is an old Aryan 
 trick. Dice are actually prayed to in the Vedas ; and 
 dice remained prime favorite with Germans through- 
 out the middle ages, even among women .^ A more 
 innocent game, resembling our draughts or checkers, 
 was known to the Germans perhaps as early as the 
 fourth century ; and the materials of the game, " bone, 
 glass, amber, or earthenware," are found in Scandi- 
 navian tombs, which date from the early iron age.** 
 
 1 Germ. XXII. 2 Qerm. XXIY. 
 
 8 See also Weinhold, Deutsche Frauen,^ 1. 113. 
 ■* Montelius, work quoted, p. 113. 
 
 * 
 
124 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Of course, the Germans hunted. Caesar says it was 
 an amusement in which they took delight, a very 
 reasonable statement. What more natural than for 
 this giant to rise from his lolling by the fire, like any 
 man of muscle, sick at last of inactivity and sloth, to 
 shake his invincible locks and course the woods for 
 bear or boar or stag? Unfortunately, Tacitus and 
 the Germania tell another story, and say that Ger- 
 mans do not spend much time in the chase. Holtz- 
 mann and certain English editors, with heroic remedy, 
 simply strike out the negative, and so square Tacitus 
 with Csesar and with common sense. We know that 
 the latter mentions game as part of the German larder; 
 and since, moreover, your hunting is a war in little, 
 we have reason to think of our forefathers as mighty 
 hunters before their gods. How else shall we account 
 historically for the English squire and the game-laws ? 
 Still, we must go cautiously in these assumptions. 
 Jacob Grimm saw even in falconry an old Germanic 
 sport, and dedicates to it a chapter ^ of his Greschichte 
 der deutschen Sprache ; but Hehn's opposition to such 
 a view seems based on very solid facts.^ All the 
 refinements of the chase, he contends, are of Celtic 
 origin, whence even the Romans borrowed more than 
 one improvement. Nevertheless, we feel sure that 
 the German, though careless of terms and methods, 
 had plenty of plain, honest hunting, — wolf, bison, 
 elk, bear, and boar. Something of the old spirit must 
 assert itself in that merry scene of the Nibelungen 
 Lay, which with conscious or unconscious art finely 
 increases the horror of the tragedy that follows so 
 
 Cap. IV. 
 
 2 Work quoted, p. 305. 
 
 4 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 125 
 
 hard upon its heels.^ We hear the horn winding 
 clearly through the forest, the bay of hounds on all 
 sides, four and twenty packs yelling after the game 
 in as many directions, Siegfried laughing, joking, 
 killing whatever is met, and at last in sheer sport 
 catching a huge bear alive and binding it to his sad- 
 dle ; he carries it to camp, where he lets it loose to 
 dash through the kitchen, scare the cooks and upset 
 half the food among the ashes ; and then, as the beast 
 escapes all pursuit, and makes for the forest, we see 
 Siegfried once more in pursuit, killing it and bringing 
 it to the fires. It seems imbedded in our race and no 
 importation, even from the Celt, — this broad-hearted 
 joy in following the deer, this delight of hounds and 
 horn, which ring out so bravely in English as well as 
 German song, and which can still drive a London fop 
 into prairie or jungle that he may find " something to 
 kill." What race speaks in Shakspere's Theseus ? — 
 
 And since we have the vaward of the day, 
 
 My love shall hear the music of my hounds. 
 
 Uncouple in the western valley. . . . 
 
 . . . My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
 
 So flew'd, so sanded ; and their heads are hung 
 
 AVith ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
 
 Crook-knee'd and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls ; 
 
 Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
 
 Each under each. A cry more tuneable 
 
 Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn 
 
 In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly. . . . 
 
 It is not without full purpose that these scenes 
 and doings of such a late period have been thrown in 
 with extracts from the G-ermania and quotations from 
 
 1 XVI Aveutiure, loie Sifrit erslagen wart. 
 
126 
 
 GERMAXTC ORIGINS 
 
 Beowulf, It is probably true, or nearly true, when 
 Justus Moser calls modern peasant life in Germany 
 a fair copy of the primitive condition of the race ; but 
 we must make the important concession that parallel 
 scenes may be rendered really different by a difference 
 in the persons. Charlemagne doubtless lived in the 
 midst of discomforts that would not now be tolerated 
 by an Irish navvy ; but, aside from the absurdity of 
 comparing the persons, not a detail in the surroundings 
 of one can be fairly appealed to for a picture of the 
 surroundings of the other, unless we constantly insist 
 upon this nobler element of jDcrsonal character, and 
 the relative nature of civilization. To do tliis, there 
 is evident help in any bit of epic which preserves 
 Germanic elements in comparative purity. With such 
 caution, we may finish our consideration of the Ger- 
 manic house by bringing it into contrast with modern 
 homes. How little of our modern home was repre- 
 sented in the old German dwelling is readily seen 
 when we examine familiar names like tile^ ivall^ street^ 
 mortar^ tower, pillar, chamber, and many others.^ The 
 primitive Germanic house took different forms in 
 plan and detail, which may be studied in Henning's 
 monograph.2 This author thinks that the Saxon 
 peasant-house is developed directly from the old Ger- 
 manic dwelling ; and here we see a combined stable 
 and house, entered through a door large enough to 
 admit a wagon. Right and left of the entrance are 
 stalls for cattle and horses. Passing by these, we 
 come upon the fiet, — the living-room, — answering to 
 
 1 Hehn, p. 115. All are foreiojn derivatives. 
 
 2 See especially 29 if., 5G ff., 136 ff. The Germauic hall is described 
 153 ff. 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 127 
 
 the primitive hall, whose occupants our Anglo-Saxon 
 epic Q2i\\Qdiflet8'ittende, Here is the low hearth, altar- 
 like, by the further wall, but once in the middle of the 
 room, and centre of the house in every way. It was 
 an old custom for bride and groom, on entering their 
 new home, to march thrice around the fire.^ On one 
 side of this hearth are table and bench ; on the other, 
 a washing-place, open, with water from the outside ; and 
 immediately adjoining the stalls was a rude platform 
 on which stood the beds of the family, and where the 
 mistress of the house could sit and spin, while she 
 overlooked all the house, — man, maid, and cattle. 
 Equally interesting is the diverging plan of dwelling 
 found upon the Cimbrian peninsula near the home 
 of our own ancestors.^ In all these houses, for the 
 most ancient times, we may assume dead as well as 
 living tenants ; the German peasant was once buried 
 in the house where he was born. 
 
 Henning makes it probable that this old Germanic 
 house was not very different from that of primitive 
 Italians and Greeks. All go back to a common 
 Aryan type. The word "hall," like the thing, is 
 original ; it means that which protects or conceals. 
 " Timber," as we have seen, is Latin domus, the build- 
 ing itself. " Thatch," " door," are both original words. 
 It seems probable that the primitive Germanic dwell- 
 ing was an heirloom of Aryan days, and that the 
 simple art of building house and home was learnt 
 before the great exodus from the birthplace of that 
 
 clan of destiny. 
 
 It seems reasonable to assume that his house at 
 least was felt by the primitive German to be his own. 
 
 1 See Simrock, Mythologie, p. 600. « Henning, p. 48 ff. 
 
128 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 " Own " is a very old Germanic word — and fact.^ 
 Besides his house, what did the freeman own? In 
 the matter of land, to be sure, we have rival theories, 
 individual ownership and the communistic plan ; but 
 however that may be, the man who tilled land owned 
 it while he tilled it, and owned what he raised upon 
 it. The old German distinguished between real and 
 personal estate ; the latter consisting in weapons, 
 dress, ornaments, utensils, hunted game, cattle, slaves, 
 and even the house itself ; — for could not this be car- 
 ried about from place to place ? Of other kinds of 
 property we could find curious examples gathered 
 from old laws ; but we shall notice only the property 
 in trees of the forest. In his treatise upon Haus- 
 und Hofmarhen^ the signs or marks made on houses 
 or other property, Homeyer shows that proprietary 
 marks were put on trees, tame stags, cattle, clothes, 
 and what not. The Lex Salica, for example, pro- 
 vides that a man may mark a tree for felling, and no 
 one else is to touch it for the space of one year ; after 
 that it becomes again public property. The property 
 in bees who hived in a particular tree has been 
 already noticed. — In fine, we may be sure that our 
 ancestors were not in that delightful condition of 
 certain African tribes where nobody owns anything 
 and everybody steals what he can. 
 
 1 See K. von Amira, in Paul's Grdrs. d. germ. Phil. II. 2, 150 ff. 
 
 2 Berlin, 1870, p. 8 ff . 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 129 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 I 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 The husband a warrior, the wife housekeeper and farmer — 
 Rights of women — Germanic chastity — Woman as sibyl — Her 
 courage — Wooing and wedding — How far love was a factor— 
 Dower or price — Ceremony of marriage — Punishment for infi- 
 delity. 
 
 Let us come closer to the family life of our fore- 
 fathers. The free German was essentially a warrior, 
 and such farming as he had was in the hands of his 
 wife, who was helped by slaves and the weaker mem- 
 bers of the household. To look after the cattle and 
 the horses was work for the freeman so long as no- 
 madic habits prevailed; but he had no taste for 
 grubbing and raking and gathering of crops. To 
 steal cattle — provided the theft was open, there 
 was no disgrace in it ^ — smacked of war ; just as 
 the moss-troopers and raiders of the Scottish bor- 
 der in very late times were not by any means with- 
 out allies of gentle blood. Meanwhile, farming 
 slipped into Germanic life under feminine escort, 
 and began very modestly indeed. The primitive 
 German wife, says Lippert,^ "span wool, made 
 clothes, cared for the fowls, and — - tried her hand 
 
 1 Grimm, R. A. 634. 2 Religion d. europ. CulturvUlker, p. 36. 
 
130 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 131 
 
 I i 
 
 * 
 
 at raising barley." ^ In other respects her position 
 in the state was pitiable enough ; and Wacker- 
 nagel reminds us^ that, if we may believe Gregory 
 of Tom's, the Franks once held serious debate in 
 one of their church assemblies whether or not a 
 woman was a human being. Yet this importance 
 in the household and in the farm gave her a 
 certain responsibility, leadership, and dignity. We 
 must remember, too, what an important part the 
 German woman played in matters of divination 
 and religion ; add to the power of the wise woman, 
 like Veleda, the chastity for which Tacitus so 
 warmly praises the German wife, and we can im- 
 agine that this was no race of sheer barbarians. Sue- 
 tonius ^ lauds the insight of Augustus, who saw how 
 much stress Germans laid upon noble women as hos- 
 tages, caring little for men ; and so Rome began to 
 demand this new sort of pledge from the barbarians. 
 But we must not let sentiment run away with us ; and 
 the famous eulogy will bear a bit of investigation. 
 No part of the Crermania is so much admired as this ; 
 and it is the fashion to accept it as a sort of con- 
 spiracy before the fact with Goethe's Uwi^weihliche, 
 — in some respects, not without reason. Women, 
 even in those days, were not deprived of legal pro- 
 tection. Legal and statutory exclusion from cer- 
 tain privileges is a proof that other rights exist 
 and are guaranteed by custom; thus we find the 
 Salic Law, "oldest of Teutonic codes,"* fixing cer- 
 
 1 Barley had for the German three distinct merits : it grew quickly, 
 needed little care, and furnished an intoxicating drink. 
 
 2 Kl. Schr. I. 3. 
 
 8 See also Urzeit (Deutsche Vorzeit, I.), p. 319. 
 * It dates from the fifth century. 
 
 tain principles of female inheritance, particularly that 
 women may not inherit land. Of coui-se, as is now 
 well known, nothing is said about succession to a 
 throne. From ownership of land woman was proba- 
 bly excluded in all Germanic tribes, and this Salic 
 Law represents the general point of view.^ Where 
 we find daughters admitted to equal shares of an 
 estate with sons, as among the Visigoths, we may 
 assume foreign influence. Moreover, women were 
 not members of the state, but were under control 
 of father or brother, who punished or rewarded them 
 at pleasure. The oldest English law is full of this 
 doctrine.2 Refractory wife or daughter, where stripes 
 are unavailing, is sold or even given away. We shall 
 presently see that the Tacitean account of the punish- 
 ment meted out by German custom to an adulteress 
 agrees exactly with this view of a woman's position 
 in the state. But custom is law ; and custom had 
 very early begun to give woman a certain legal 
 standing. This process probably began in the rights 
 of inheritance ; a runic inscription of ancient Norway, 
 highly important both for its age and for its length, 
 speaks " of the male heirs " iarUnyd) and " of the 
 female heirs" Carhingano), Thus, in the absolutely 
 heathen and purely Germanic north, we have as early 
 as the year 550 a definite word, corresponding to a 
 definite fact, and recognizing the rights of female 
 inheritance.3 Traditional equity gave the daughters 
 ornaments and certain articles of furniture ; the rest 
 
 i"De terra Salica nulla portio hereditatis mulieri veniat." Lex 
 Sal. 62, 6 apud Grimm, R. A. 407. 
 
 2 Details in /?. ^. 738. 
 
 8 Stone at Tune in Norway. See Noreen's Altisldnd. itnd Altnoriv. 
 Grammatik, p. 189 f., and references there given. 
 
132 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 il* :.; 
 
 • 1^ 
 
 ' 1 1 
 
 of the property followed the male line. Not without 
 importance is the hint of Tacitus that among the Ger- 
 mans of his day traces still lingered of a primitive law 
 which gave all property to the sons, but only in the 
 female line. He says i that a sister's sons stand with 
 the uncle as high as with the father; "some even 
 think this tie of blood to be holier and closer, and 
 they have regard to it in the choice of hostages. 
 Still, the heirs are always the children, and wills are 
 unknown." Now by the old notion of maternal 
 inheritance,2 a man " would part more readily from 
 his wife's child than from his sister's child ; for in his 
 eyes there was more blood-relationship with the lat- 
 ter." 3 The Germans of Tacitus had long passed this 
 point of view, and had developed a high sense of the 
 paternal relationship ; but survivals occurred like the 
 above, and gave a certain support to the position of 
 woman. In slave-law the old rule held, —partus se- 
 quitur ventrem, the offspring belonged with the mother ; 
 but even in this respect the ancient laws show con- 
 siderable divergence. Proof of woman's position is 
 helped, as has been already remarked, by a study of 
 Germanic myths. If the ways of gods and goddesses 
 reflect earthly existence, — and we are sure they do, — 
 the worship of a Nerthus seems impossible for a com- 
 munity which gave no rights and paid no respect to 
 women. When Tacitus tells us of a tribe of Ger- 
 mans in the north "which is ruled by a woman," * we 
 may, it is true, call this a fable, like the other won- 
 
 1 Germ. XX. 
 
 2 Obviously, in communities without settled married relations, ma- 
 ternal inheritance is the only certain method. 
 
 8 Lippert, Rel. d. eur. Culturv. p. 60. 4 Germ. XLV. 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 133 
 
 ders which his artistic instinct marshalled at the end 
 of his book and on the border of the frozen world, 
 and we may ascribe it to the misunderstanding of a 
 Finnish word; but for all the* fable, there may be 
 something in the legend beyond what meets the ear 
 of the etymologist. We know that the lady of Mer- 
 cia was no fiction ; as Warton^ says, "ladies in Eng- 
 land were anciently sheriffs of counties ! " And 
 lastly, let the grave itself bear witness. Antiquaries 
 in Scandinavia refer to 1000 B.C. the body of a 
 woman found buried in a tree-coffin, with a dagger 
 by her side. Montelius, perhaps with too much cre- 
 dulity, calls this and similar finds " a remarkable inti- 
 mation of Amazons during the bronze age in the 
 north." 2 
 
 It is popularly supposed that women were lifted 
 to their present place mainly by the influence of the 
 church and of chivalry. This is in great measure 
 true. In the eighth century, — say a hundred years 
 after the conversion, — nuns in England take active 
 part in literature. They correspond with monks 
 and bishops in Germany ; and one of them, living in 
 German cloisters, writes the life of her brothers, the 
 missionaries Willibald and Winnibald.^ This Wal- 
 burga, however, is outdone by a nun of the tenth 
 century, Hrotsvith of Gandersheim, the famous medi- 
 aeval blue-stocking. She wrote legends and history 
 in Latin verse, and actually made the first attempts 
 at dramatic composition, of which we have any record. 
 
 1 History of English Poetry, II. 186. 
 
 2 Work quoted, p. 62. 
 
 * See also Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittel- 
 aher,^ p. 97. 
 
 / 
 
( 
 
 l1 
 
 if 
 
 134 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 since the downfall of classical culture.^ Now there 
 mus t have been some basis for this in the old life. 
 From the start, if we may believe Wackernagel,2 
 
 :nowledge of writing was largely in the hands of 
 women ; in Scandinavia women seem to know most 
 about the making and reading of runes. The sibyl 
 was very potent in Germany, and, as we shall pres- 
 ently see, united to her knowledge of divination and 
 mystic signs a certain majesty and sanctity that must 
 have helped her sisters in more ways than one. 
 
 Again, the care of the house and farm, onerous as 
 it might be, gave dignity to the mother and wife. 
 In higher walks of life she shares her husband's 
 state, — witness Wealhtheow in BSowulf, We find 
 the daughter of Hrothgar performing offices like 
 those of the queen ; Freawaru also goes through the 
 hall, bears the ale-cup to thirsty warriors, bestows 
 treasure and greets the guests.^ The purity of Ger- 
 man family life was eagerly held up by Tacitus as 
 a lesson for his countrymen. Caesar had already 
 praised this feature, and it became a by-word with 
 the later chroniclers. A writer of the fifth century ^ 
 says that the Germans are all chaste, except the 
 Huns and Alans, — an exception which does not 
 affect the statement. In Rome, family relations were 
 going from bad to worse; and Tacitus, eager to 
 teach his countrymen that strength in man or state 
 depends on purity, painted too bright a picture. It 
 has the pink-and-white unreality of a Dresden-china 
 group. In some respects it reminds us of Cooper's 
 
 1 Ebert, Lit. d. Mittelalters, III. 286, 314 ff., gives a full description 
 of her personality and her work. 
 
 2 Kl. Schr. 1. 14, note. a Beoiv. 2020 ff. 
 ^ Salvianus, quoted by Hodgkin, Italy, 1. 507. 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 135 
 
 eulogy of our red man, or of the far more grotesque 
 savage ideals presented by French writers at the be- 
 ginning of this century. ' 
 
 Briefly, we must not understand the chastity and 
 simplicity of Germanic life to have been coupled with 
 those qualities which in our own stage of culture are 
 sure to be found among persons who are simple and 
 chaste. This German woman, who doubtless had a 
 plenty of rough household virtues, with her vigorous 
 barn-yard brood of childi^en, passed into history as a 
 sort of Cornelia or Lucretia, ruling an ideal family, 
 where the daughters all look rosy and firm of flesh, 
 and spin, and sing ballads about Arminius, with a 
 shy, downward look when a certain brave young war- 
 rior of the next village is mentioned in domestic con- 
 versation, and where the sons hurl lances and speak 
 tumultuous truth. Romance, as in Freytag's books, 
 has helped the picture. Leafy forest, gay greenwood, 
 are very well ; but neither in Spain which coined the 
 proverb nor yet in Germany, is it "always May"; 
 and the scene shifts to those underground dwellings, 
 covered for sake of warmth with dung, where the 
 household passed its winter, — paterfamilias in that 
 "single garment," moody and idle by the fire, the 
 women weaving and spinning, and all glad of the 
 coarsest sort of food. Between the picture of romance 
 and the squalor and savagery which certain of the 
 modern school are fain to pour over every portion 
 of our forefathers' existence, lies a middle ground 
 of common sense, based neither on romantic fancies, 
 nor on the anxiety to push a theory of ethnology to 
 its last gasp, but on the facts of history and the hints 
 of early literature. 
 
 . i:| 
 
136 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Nor do we need to give up the Roman's splendid 
 and generous eulogy. We have simply to take it 
 out of the sphere of rhetoric and reduce it to prose.^ 
 In the first place, polygamy was doubtless rare ; but 
 it had no particular moral sentiment against it. 
 Precisely because it was no great crime according to 
 German ethics, there is little said of the matter at 
 all. Ariovistus had two wives. In Scandinavia, 
 unlimited concubinage was common enough ; ^ but 
 it was not a lawful polygamy, seeing that only the 
 children of the free wife had any rights in the fam- 
 ily. The habit held late. Even so pious and noble 
 a man as Charlemagne had a court — and a personal 
 record — which in this respect will not bear scrutiny. 
 Economy, not morality or sentiment, decided the mat- 
 ter. There was a total absence of sentiment in Ger- 
 manic life ; but a householder respected the capable 
 mistress of his home — because she was capable ; and he 
 accorded her a certain supremacy, because only thus 
 could she do her best work and bring about the most 
 good for the family. She had, therefore, full sway in 
 her own realm ; she could not easily brook a rival. 
 Perhaps the best modern instance of an old German's 
 point of view would be that of the second George 
 of England, " Paladin George," and his devotion to 
 his queen. She had been most emphatically "the 
 man of the house," and the king was in despair as he 
 
 1 Part of it seems sober fact. " Marriages are strict, and no phase 
 of their life is to be so highly praised. Alone almost of the barbarians, 
 they are contented with a single wife, a few excepted, who, not for the 
 sake of sensuality, but on account of their high rank, are sought several 
 times in marriage." Germ. XVIII. 
 
 2 Weinhold, A. L. 248 f. Grimm, R. A. 440. Later summaries indi- 
 cate belief in polygamy among the old Germans : see v. Amira in Paul's 
 Grdr. d. germ. Phil. II. 2, 143. 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 137 
 
 stood by her deathbed. Who does not remember his 
 pathetic declaration that he would never marry again ? 
 — "Non, j'aurai des maitresses." ^ 
 
 The sanctity of the household, and in consequence 
 the inviolable character of marriage, owed a good 
 measure of their support to the old ceremony of 
 ancestor-worship. It is not only Spencer and the 
 ethnologists who insist on the wide importance of 
 this cult ; it is nearly, if not quite a settled matter 
 in the court of scholarly opinion. Only a legitimate 
 son, reasoned the German, can or will minister to 
 his dead parents. To leave a son who should be 
 head of the house, and therefore its priest, who 
 would perform its rites according to the good old cus- 
 tom, and train up his own children to the same 
 belief and practice, was one of the foundations of 
 family life. Household gods were no fiction in those 
 days. Now with such a sanction for the family, 
 with such necessity for a head, for strict gradations 
 of birth, we can see how the iron weight of custom 
 and religious tradition, and not the feeble breath of 
 sentiment, inclined the scale in favor of German 
 women. If other reasons are needed for taking in 
 earnest the main of Tacitean eulogy, we may point 
 again to the importance attached to noble ladies as 
 hostages, — in the Waltharius legend, heroine as well 
 as hero is hostage at the court of Attila, — or to the 
 honor paid to daughters of the royal blood, as among 
 the Goths. 
 
 Again, there is the subjective side. The Germanic 
 
 1 Beowulf, 1932 ff., describes the good and the bad type of woman 
 in the persons of two queens, Hygd and Thrytho. The former is mild, 
 generous, gracious; the latter remorseless, cruel, and altogether un- 
 womanly. 
 
IP! 
 
 138 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 woman stands out in history with a certain nobility 
 and steadfastness of character. In the doubtful issues 
 of battle — it is an enemy who records it — she pre- 
 fers death to captivity. When Caracalla asked some 
 German women whom he had taken captive, whether 
 they preferred to be slaves or to be killed, they chose 
 to die ; and when in spite of this they were sold into 
 slavery, they all put themselves to death. At Aquse 
 Sextise the women died rather than go into capti\dty ; 
 and the same is told of the Cimbrian women at Ver- 
 cellse. They tried to make a bargain for their cap- 
 tivity by which they could be slaves in temples and so 
 preserve their chastity ; and when this was refused, 
 they killed their children and themselves. Paul the 
 Deacon tells an odd story how the daughters of a 
 certain Lombard duke, captives among a strange race, 
 took heroic measures to preserve their honor ; ^ we are 
 glad to learn that these courageous damsels finally 
 escaped and married, one the king of the Alamanni, 
 the other a prince of the Bavarians. 
 
 Divorces and second marriages among the Ger- 
 mans were very rare. They were so frequent at 
 Rome, however, that no barbarian custom could have 
 seemed lax by comparison. It was the honorable 
 work of the church, and that only after most des- 
 perate struggles, such as the contest between Lothar 
 II. and Pope Nicholas I., that marriage came to be 
 regarded as indissoluble. Among the Germans, in- 
 fidelity on the part of the wife met swift and ruthless 
 punishment, often death. Boniface ^ mentions hang- 
 ing, wand being whipped to death by other women. 
 
 1 IV. 37. They carried putrefying meat about their own persons, iu 
 order to disgust the ardent suitor. ^ Epist. 59. 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 139 
 
 Tacitus gives a vivid picture of the formal expulsion 
 of an adulteress from her husband's home : "- With 
 shorn hair and stripped of her clothing she is thrust 
 by her husband from his house, her relatives looking 
 on, and so is driven with blow on blow through the 
 whole village."! But all this, of course, was only 
 for women. The church has the credit of forcing 
 law and sentiment to take cognizance of the hus- 
 band's guilt as well. 
 
 As regards that famous sanctum aliquid et pro- 
 vidum,^ W may well believe that there was abundant 
 reverencelor the prophetic and sacred character of 
 woman ; but it was a reverence based on religious tra- 
 dition, and was at the farthest possible remove from 
 mediaeval or modern chivalry. We are hardly to 
 think that the German attributed superior insight 
 to woman as woman; the gods spoke through herH 
 The Veleda, whom Tacitus mentions, both in this 
 passage and in the histories, was a typical wise 
 woman, who had prophesied the defeat of the Roman 
 legions. From the words of Tacitus it seems that she 
 was finally captured and brought to Eome.^ She was 
 chosen, along with the leader Civilis, to decide a 
 
 1 Germ. XIX., prefaced by the general statement: "paucissima in 
 tam numerosa gente adulteria, quorum poena praesens et maritis per- 
 niissa." 
 
 2 Germ. VIII. Mention has been made of the services rendered 
 by women in time of battle, —of the ardor inspired in the warrior at 
 sight of his mother, wife, or daughter, and the thought of what captiv- 
 ity would bring to them. Captivity thus becomes doubly feared. For 
 the enemy to have noble women as hostages is a most eflScient restraint 
 upon the Germans. Then Tacitus adds: "Indeed, the German thinks 
 there dwells in his women something holy and prophetic; he neither 
 spurns their advice nor neglects their oracular sayings." 
 
 3 "Vidimus sub divo Vespasiano Veledam." See remarks of com- 
 mentators. 
 
r 
 
 140 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 141 
 
 weighty question of state ; but the messengers were 
 not permitted " to see Veleda face to face and speak 
 to her. Sight of her was withheld in order that the 
 reverence for her might increase. She stood upon a 
 lofty tower, and one of her relatives, like a messenger 
 of the gods, carried question and answer." ^ Costly 
 gifts were sent to her ; a trireme, for example, cap- 
 tured from the Roman fleet.^ Even the Romans 
 themselves sought to win her good graces, in order 
 to influence her countrymen. Nor were all of her 
 functions oracular and prophetic; she was made 
 umpire in civil disputes.^ 
 
 Such a position offered attractions to the ambitious 
 young woman of Germany who had a soul above 
 marriage and a talent for ecstatic shrewdness. In- 
 deed, we afterwards hear of a certain system of edu- 
 cation in these matters, and find Norwegians and 
 Swedes sending their daughters to Finland, the chosen 
 country of magic and sorcery ; * a historic basis for 
 the young woman of our own day who goes to Ger- 
 many. Nor is this so far-fetched as it may seem. 
 Runes, incantations, the cunning interpretation of 
 various carved or written symbols, formed a good 
 part of the sibyl's business ; but to write and read 
 in this way does not — under leave of Dogberry — 
 " come by nature," and we may certainly think of a 
 definite if not systematic instruction. It was doubt- 
 less such a woman's duty to etch upon the warrior's 
 sword-blade those potent rvmes of battle, or to undo 
 the harm of hostile runes. A Noi-se maiden who has 
 lost her brother offers to carve the runes on the 
 
 1 Tac. Hist. IV. 65. « Ibid. V. 22. 
 
 4 Weinhold, Deutsche Fraiien, 1. 105. 
 
 » Grimm, D.M* 334. 
 
 kevels, — pieces of wood, — if her father will make 
 the memorial verse.^ 
 
 Moreover, as Grimm remarks,^ it is women who 
 mediate between divine and human ; and Tacitus 
 reminds us that such handling of holy business leads 
 at last to godhead itself. " Veleda," he says, " a virgin 
 of the tribe of Bructeri, was respected far and wide 
 in accordance with the custom of the Germans, who 
 regard many of their women as sibyls, and, with 
 growing superstition, as goddesses." ^ In other words, 
 the sibyl did not lose her power at death ; we shall 
 see hereafter how " dead women " reveal to Scandi- 
 navian dreamers the secrets of another world, or tell 
 of a mortal's approaching death.^ Chip and cut as 
 we will from the testimony of the ancients, this rev- 
 erence for women, living or dead, stands out a stub- 
 born fact in the Germanic character. It is one of 
 those nobler elements which shine all the more 
 clearly in the dark world of their ignorance and 
 ferocity. Jewish tradition knew only the prophet, 
 the masculine angel, who carries God's will to a 
 nation or to a man ; but, as Grimm points out, with 
 the German, " men are for deeds, and women are for 
 wisdom." Our ancestors assigned the providum to 
 women ; now it is a goddess, a Valkyria, — now it is 
 a mortal maiden of the Veleda pattern, a spdkona in 
 Norse, the spae-wife of our own Scottish tradition. 
 It is such a woman who gathers up the past of Scan- 
 dinavian myth in the Vqluspa^ the prophecy of the 
 
 1 Ibid. I. 133 f . 2 x).3/.4 329. 
 
 8 •* Ea Virgo nationis Bructerae late imperitabat : vetere apud Ger- 
 manos more, quo plerasque feminarum fatidicas, et augescente siiper- 
 stitione, arbitrantur deas." Hist. IV. 61. 
 
 * Atlamdly 27. 
 
142 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 sibyl, and sings the death-song of Germanic heathen- 
 dom. On the border world of spirits and living men 
 hover the forms of supernatural women warning, 
 helping or banning. When Drusus had crossed the 
 Weser and drew near the Elbe, there met him a woman, 
 in form and habit more than mortal, who warned 
 him 1 of his approaching end ; and to another dreaded 
 invader appeared a rune-maiden, and cried "Back, 
 Attila ! " to the Hunnish king.^ Such are the Valk}-- 
 rias and the Swan-Maidens of our mythology ; and high- 
 est phase of all, we find, as in Greek and Roman tradi- 
 tion, the issues of death and life in women's hands. 
 The Norns are governed by no god, be he Odin him- 
 self ; and the vast underworld, a far older locality in 
 myth than the Vikings' heaven of Valhalla, is ruled 
 by the inexorable goddess, Hel. 
 
 Some are ready to affirm that this power of woman 
 in the other world only reflects the earlier stages of 
 actual life, — that the Valkyrias, for example, are 
 nothing more than sublimated Amazons.^ Instances 
 are not far to seek of this actual fighting on the part 
 of Germanic women. Tacitus, indeed, confines their 
 activity to exhortations, the rallying of a disheartened 
 army ; but when all this failed at Aquse Sextise, when 
 the drum-beating and the incantations were of no 
 avail, then the German women fought fiercely enough 
 around their " wagon-burg." An old story of some 
 Germanic raid into Rhsetia under the reign of Marcus 
 
 1 In Latin. Suetonius, Claudius, I. 2 DjfA 334. 
 
 8 So Holtzmanu. SchuUerus, Zur Kritik des VaW^llylauhens, Paul- 
 Braune, Beitr. XII. 221 ff., esp. p. 225, makes Valkyrja= **Kampferin." 
 Very different is Vigfusson's notion: "chosen alien-woman," i.e. con- 
 cubine of a king, C. P. B. II. 474. The old etymology was "chooser 
 of the slain." 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 143 
 
 Aurelius, says that after the fight bodies of armed 
 women were found upon the battle-field, covered with 
 wounds. Thomas Wright notes ^ that during the mid- 
 dle ages Welsh women used to go with their men in 
 hostile excursions across the English border; and for 
 Germanic women, Rochholz has collected 2 abundant 
 material bearing on this matter of physical bravery. 
 Occasionally women took their own parts in the trial 
 by combat ; at least Weinhold quotes a curious case 
 where a woman fights an accuser for her own cause.^ 
 Her weapon was a stone bound up in a veil or hood ; 
 while the man stood half buried in a hole and fought 
 with a stick ; but this is not without a strong savor 
 of burlesque. Probably the noblest figure in Scandi- 
 navian poetry is HervQr, as she stands undaunted 
 before the flaming tomb of her father and demands 
 the dead man's sword. Here is evidently the later 
 Norse ideal of high-born womanhood. 
 
 It would be pleasant to suppress the final chapter 
 of a story that begins so nobly ; but if truth be told, 
 the last state of this sanctum et providum in Ger- 
 manic women was its worst. Christianity banned 
 the old sanctities and mysteries, and the prophetic 
 maiden — "^a vlrgo'' —gYQw little by little into a 
 woman who clung to the disgraced divinities, had 
 dealings with Satan, was guilty of the lowest vices 
 and the most disgraceful motives, did nothing but 
 harm, caused storm, ruin, pestilence, and death. The 
 much-abused " Dark Ages," however, went no further 
 than bans and curses ; it Avas reserved for the dawn 
 
 1 Womankind in Western Europe, p. 5. 
 
 2 Deutscher Glaube u. Brauch, II. 289 flf. 
 8 Deutsche Frauen, I. 205. 
 
144 
 
 GERMAXIC ORIGINS 
 
 of our modern epoch to muster in a last attack all the 
 old mummeries and superstitions; and the sanctum 
 et providiim, taking lead of the rest, deluged the age 
 with that mass of cruelty, blasphemy, and obscenity 
 which we now include under the half-harmless name 
 of witchcraft. 
 
 So much for the general position of woman ; we 
 must now consider the household of which she was no 
 unimportant member. The family, the kin, and so to 
 the clan, is obvious progress of civilization, which at 
 last reaches the point where private family life works 
 to strengthen the state, and the state works to protect 
 the family and guarantee individual rights. In early 
 Germanic times the family, or rather the kin, is by 
 far the most powerful factor in public as in private 
 life. The family proper comprised the six relations 
 of father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister ; ^ a 
 wider circle began outside of this limit, and could be 
 extended at will. These outer degrees of relationship 
 were called " knees " : one man was kin to another in 
 the " third knee," " fourth knee," and so on. The 
 number seems to count, not from a common ancestor, 
 but from his children, — the point where the collater- 
 als begin ; so that the grandchildren, not the children, 
 would stand "in the first knee." From the Anglo- 
 Saxon cnSow^ "knee," was formed the word for a family 
 or clan : cnSoris. Other names were mceg^ and cpi^ 
 our " kin," whence " king " (cyning^^ or the " child of 
 the tribe." It is on the basis of kin that we study 
 Germanic institutions. A family, smaller or larger, 
 held its members united by the strongest of bonds ; 
 
 1 See further K. von Amira in Paul's Grdr, d. germ. Phil. II. 2. 137 f. 
 
 2 Scbniid, Ays. Gesetze, p. 548. 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 145 
 
 they made common front against an enemy, and kept 
 peace among themselves. The word sib means both 
 "peace" and " relationship." ^ To give this little 
 senate laws, to govern his immediate family and do 
 his duty as member of the larger family, was chief 
 business of the Germanic freeman aside from his 
 vocation of warrior and his avocation of huntsman. 
 Every member of the family was subordinate to its 
 head, not simply under his control, but at his mercy : 
 he could punish, sell, and, in primitive times, kill.2 
 We must here as before clear our minds of modern 
 sentiment, and keep in sight the rigid nature of 
 household organization. We will begin at the foun- 
 dation of the family, wedlock. 
 
 The German wife was not wooed ; she was won, — 
 and it is salutary to remember that " win " means first 
 " to fight " and then " to get by fighting." In the 
 time of Tacitus, a Germanic wife was probably bought 
 with a price — not in our sense of buying wares, how- 
 ever — in a transaction between father and bride- 
 groom, which marked a distinct advance from the 
 earlier and universal practice of stealing one's wife. 
 Of course, this earlier method of finding a helpmeet, 
 did not cease utterly and at once. For Roman affairs 
 
 1'* Gossip" has endured heavy fates. See also Old Saxon sibbia 
 (Vilmar in Altert. t^. 52); our words, kind, gentle; and Grimm, E. A, 
 288, where we are reminded that Old Norse lid meant both "help," 
 "support," and "family." 
 
 2 A little insight into this privilege and duty of a householder to 
 punish — often by death — a guilty member of his family will set in 
 clearer proportions the frequent domestic murders, as we should call 
 them, of our old plays. Setting aside some obvious cases, we should 
 thus understand the action of divers husbands and lovers, such as 
 Philaster's act of "justice " in attempting to kill Arethusa, Philaster, 
 Act IV.; Perigot's similar conduct towards Amoret, Faithful Shep- 
 herdess, Act III. ; and, of course, Othello, and the rest. 
 
146 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 147 
 
 we have the stock illustration of the Sabine women, 
 a fine concenti-ation of immemorial custom into a 
 single act; and the Roman wedding kept a mock 
 abduction as one of its features. The winning of 
 Atalanta in the race is like those more strenuous 
 proofs of muscle ^ which Gunther found necessary to 
 win Brunhild in the Nibelungen Lay ; while actual 
 survival is evident at peasant-weddings of the Conti- 
 nent, where there is often a mock fight for possession 
 of the bride, or a race between bride and bridegroom. 
 So, at Frisian weddings, a sword is borne before the 
 bride .2 Actual traces — not by any means mere sur- 
 vivals — are found in Tacitean Germany. Arminius 
 is said to have stolen his uncle's daughter and made 
 her his wife. Perhaps the so-called indemnification 
 of the daughter of a murdered man, which consisted 
 in giving to her as husband one of the murderer's 
 family, is only a later way of explaining the old sys- 
 tem of wife-robbing. In Norse mythology, when 
 the giant Thiassi is killed by a device of the gods, 
 one of these is given as husband to the daughter of 
 the victim. Severe laws were enacted against wife- 
 robbing, a proof of its popularity ; and the substitu- 
 tion of a price for armed force in marriage is a step 
 in culture analogous to the composition of a murder 
 by payment made to the victim's family instead of the 
 primitive exposure to revenge, — the wergild. In fact, 
 Waitz identifies the woman's price in marriage with 
 her wergild itself. 
 
 Admirable as this arrangement must have seemed, 
 
 1 Wrestling, hurling the stone, etc. 
 
 2 Grimm, R. A. 1G7. For exogamy in England, see Grant Allen, 
 Anylo-Saxon Britain, p. 81 f. 
 
 immense as were its advantages over the raw and 
 brutal act of older times, even this peaceful bargain 
 may well have run counter here and there to the 
 stirrings of a young Germanic heart. In an Icelandic 
 saga, Helga takes with outward assent and obedience 
 the husband whom her father gives her; but her 
 heart remains constant to her lover, Gunnlaug Snake- 
 Tongue.^ And we are led to ask the question. How 
 far was the sentiment of love a factor in the Germanic 
 marriage ? Such material as Grimm accumulates ^ by 
 way of partial answer will not serve our purpose. 
 The passages are nearly all mediaeval, and are rife 
 with the first riches of chivalry and the worship of 
 fair dames. We cannot possibly carry all that — a 
 song, for example, from the Carmina Burana — back 
 into Tacitean Germany. So that one is tempted to 
 claim for Germanic life in its full extent the remark 
 made by Grimm ^ in regard to Anglo-Saxon poetry, — 
 that nobody thought of portraying the love of woman. 
 Where men and women live in anything better than 
 savagery, some gleams of sentiment must flash out. 
 Moreover, it must be remembered that monks, who 
 wrote down our old literature, would be shy of 
 such material. The story of Walter and Hildegund 
 has all the external characteristics of a runaway 
 match, — if one were not constantly struggling with 
 the sensation that Hildegund and the treasure stolen 
 from Attila were somehow both of the same character 
 in the regard of the hero. The loves of Siegfried and 
 Kriemhilt are already touched slightly with the glitter 
 
 1 Gunnlaugssaga, ed. Mogk. ^D.M.330t; III. 113 f. 
 
 * Preface to his edition of Andreas und Elene, p. xxv : '* An dar- 
 stellung der frauenliebe hat uberhaupt auch kein andrer angelsach- 
 sischer dichter gedacht." 
 
148 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 149 
 
 of mediaeval tournaments and mediseval chivalry. On 
 the other hand, the passion of Helgi and his Valkyria 
 Sigrun — a Norse background puts the actual date in 
 some equality with far older Germanic material — is 
 not without the charm that we are wont to couple 
 with romantic love. But it is mixed with supernatural 
 traits ; it is the old union of a peerless mortal warrior 
 with an immortal maiden. Helgi fights lion-like in 
 the heart of battle ; down hastens Sigrun, as the clash 
 of spears grows shriller, hovers protecting over her 
 warrior, and cries to him in joy of his victory. But 
 his answer is not a lover's. In the second lay of 
 Helgi, however, we meet the full wind of passion. ^ 
 " Hc^gni hight a king ; his daughter was Sigrun. She 
 was Valkyria and rode air and sea. . . . Sigrun rode 
 to Helgi's ships." Then follows dialogue; then a 
 battle, after which Sigrun, promised in royal assembly 
 to a certain king, seeks Helgi, greets him and kisses 
 him under helmet ; then the hero is moved to love 
 the maiden. She says her father has promised her to 
 another man ; now she has crossed his will, and woe 
 must follow. Helgi consoles her : " Fear not Hggni's 
 rage nor the hatred of his kinsmen. Thou shalt live 
 with me, maiden, for thou art of noble birth." In the 
 storm at sea, while Helgi is faring to battle, he looks 
 aloft, and lo, nine Valkyrias riding, and Sigrun with 
 them : and the storm is laid. A battle takes place, and 
 all the kin of Sigrun are slain, save only Dagr, and he 
 made his peace. And Sigrun learns of all the slaughter 
 and weeps; but Helgi comforts her: "Weep not, 
 
 1 See Hildebrand, Edda, 163 ff. ; Simrock's Edda, translation, 150 ff. ; 
 the Edda of the Brothers Grimm, ed. Hoffory, p. 34 ff.; Vigfusson- 
 Powell, C.P.-B.I.140ff. 
 
 Sigrun, it was for thy sake. Kings cannot command 
 
 their destiny." And she ^ answers : '' Fain would I 
 
 give life to them that are dead, — but rest in thine 
 
 arms as well ! " Then comes the tragedy. Dagr 
 
 obtains Odin's spear and revenges his father, and 
 
 Helgi falls, and Dagr rides to Sigrun and tells her 
 
 what is done. First she launches her bitter curses 
 
 upon him for his falsehood and treachery ; and then 
 
 she cries : ^ " Nevermore shall I sit happy at Sevafell, 
 
 nor have joy of my life at morn or eventide ; for 
 
 nevermore shall I see the light flash on my lord's 
 
 company, nor the war-steed with its gold bit bearing 
 
 my king thither: nevermore shall I welcome the 
 
 king home. ..." Then follows a fine bit of praise 
 
 of Helgi. The hero is buried, a hill heaped over 
 
 him; but the Viking-Paradise of Valhalla claims 
 
 him, and there is a characteristic touch of description 
 
 as he enters, spying his old enemy Hunding : " Hund- 
 
 ing, do thou make ready a foot-bath and kindle a 
 
 fire for each of us (the company of the king), and 
 
 tie up the hounds and bait the horses. . . ." But in 
 
 the evening Sigrun's maiden sees Helgi and a great 
 
 retinue riding to his barrow or mound. And Helgi 
 
 says, ghost-fashion, he is permitted to return to his 
 
 barrow, but must ride the paths of air again before 
 
 the dawn. And he calls on Sigrun to come forth to 
 
 him. In vain the maid warns her, with Horatio's 
 
 arguments of harm, not to go forth. She goes, and 
 
 speaks : " I am as glad to meet thee as are the greedy 
 
 hawks of Woden when they scent the slain, their 
 
 1 With Simrock and Grimm. 
 
 2 This is the translation of C. P. B. 1. 141. A different rendering, 
 Simrock, p. 157. 
 
150 
 
 GEKMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 151 
 
 warm prey, or dew-spangled espy the brows of dawn. 
 I will kiss thee, my dead king, ere thou cast off thy 
 bloody mail-coat. Thy hair, my Helgi, is thick with 
 rime ; thy whole body is drenched with gory dew ; 
 thy hands are cold and dank. How shall I deliver 
 thee from this, my lord ? '' And Helgi answers : " It 
 is thine own doing, Sigrun from Sevafell, that Helgi 
 is drenched with deadly dew. Thou weepest cruel 
 tears, thou gold-dight sun-bright lady of the south, 
 before thou goest to sleep : every one of them falls 
 bloody, dank, cold, chilly, fraught with sobs, upon 
 my breast. . . . " ^ Then the passion of their old life 
 gets hold upon them in the very tomb, and love is 
 stronger than death. " Let us drink costly draughts," 
 cries Helgi, " though we have lost both love and land ! 
 Let no man chant wailing dirges, though he see the 
 wounds on my breast ! Now are maidens, royal 
 ladies, shut up in the barrow with us dead men." 
 Quoth Sigrun : "I have made thee a bed here, Helgi. 
 ... I shall sleep in thine arms, O king, as I should 
 if thou wert yet alive. . . ." 
 
 Aside from the fact that Bugge refers this story to a 
 Greek origin, and sees in Helgi and his Sigrun a Norse 
 version of the loves of Meleager and Atalanta,^ there 
 is too much of the Viking splendor in the whole set- 
 ting for any primitive relations. True, the awe of 
 monkhood is not upon these wild verses, — perhaps 
 our English lovers sang as boldly, and made lays fit 
 to frighten the pious scribe, — but neither is the prim- 
 itive simplicity of passion. It is a fierce, world-worn, 
 
 1 A familiar touch, known to folk-lore and legend everywhere. 
 
 2 Bugge, Studien, pp. (according to Norwegian ed.) 12 f., 166. See 
 W. Grimm, Heldensage,^ p. 355. 
 
 martial love, with a Valkyria for Juliet, and a grim 
 warrior for Romeo. It is the glitter of the viking- 
 hfe, with its dash and spoil and glimpses of foreign 
 braveries in court and city ; and not even Helgi and 
 Sigriin can give us the picture which we desire of 
 old Germanic love. 
 
 Aus alten Marchen winkt es 
 
 Hervor mit weisser Hand, 
 Da singt es und da klingt es 
 
 Von einem Zauberland, — 
 
 but the white hand beckons from a bower of romance, 
 and the enchanted country lies this side of German 
 forests. We must return to prose, and assume with 
 safety that there followed upon the custom of bride- 
 stealing the more peaceful marriage bargain, a step 
 in civilization; and that in course of time, by the 
 good offices of the church, women began to assert 
 their likes and dislikes, choice began, sentiment — 
 helped by what Dryasdusts call Mariolatry •— un- 
 folded, and only the dowry and marriage-settlement 
 remained from the old conditions. For the first 
 transition, we have a most edifying document in the 
 shape of an edict issued by King Frotho of Denmark 
 to the conquered Ruthenians,i that in view of the 
 greater stability and safety of marriages made on the 
 basis of a definite bargain, people are not to wed 
 
 1 Saxo Gramm., lib. 5, p. 48, apud J. Grimm, R. A. 422 : " m quis 
 uxorem nisi emptitiam duceret, venalia siquidem connubia plus stabi^ 
 htatis habitura censebat, tutiorem matrimonii Mem existimans, quod 
 pretio firmarenturr One can fancy Polonius, a countryman of this 
 Frotho. saying to Laertes by way of further advice on the conduct of 
 life, "When thou shalt marry, take a receipt in full from thy father- 
 in-law." '' 
 
152 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 unless they pay for the wife. These base respects of 
 thrift are still common among the peasants of Europe. 
 Tennyson's Northern Farmer probably has plenty of 
 colleagues in actual life, and Weinhold quotes a 
 peasant's saying, which is even more to the point : 
 ^' It's not man that marries maid, but field marries field, 
 —vineyard marries vineyard, — cattle marry cattle." 
 Only in old songs and legends, and rarely there, we 
 hear of the maiden choosing her husband from a num- 
 ber of suitors ;2 and in one of these few cases it is a 
 burlesque choice, a sort of rafae. Skathi, the giant- 
 daughter, may choose one of the gods for husband, 
 but is allowed to see nothing of them save their feet. 
 We are on safer ground when we find Hjordis m the 
 Volsungasaga choosing, at her father's bidding, be- 
 tween two kings, which she will marry. " Choose, 
 says the father, ^'for thou art a prudent womanr The 
 transition to an unhampered choice was naturally 
 slow. A cheerful milepost on the way is Cnut's law : * 
 " Neither woman nor maid shall be forced to marry 
 one that is disliked by her, nor shall she be sold for 
 money, unless [the bridegroom] gives something of 
 his own free will." But usually we find the notion 
 of a bargain carried out quite aside from any fancies 
 of the young woman. Another Anglo-Saxon law, 
 an old one, ordains : " If one buys a maiden, let her 
 be bought with the price, if it is a fair bargain Qgif hit 
 unfdcne ib) ; but if there is deceit, let him take her 
 home again and get back the price he paid." The 
 
 1 Deutsche Trauen? I. 319. ^ ij. a. 421, note. 
 
 8 Prose Edda, in Bragarq%ur. ^^ 
 
 4 Schmid, p. 312, No. 74 : " Nemo nubat f(£minam mvitam. 
 6 Of ^thelberht, Schmid, p. 8. 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 153 
 
 nature of this bargain seems to have been slightly 
 misunderstood by Tacitus; "the bride," he says,i 
 "brings no dower to her husband, but the husband 
 makes a gift to his wife." The price was not j^aid to 
 her ; but, at least in the oldest times, to her father or 
 natural guardian ; in later times the price was turned 
 into a gift (like the famous Morning-Gift) or settle- 
 ment for the bride herself. To sum up, and give an 
 answer to the question about love or commodity in 
 primitive Germanic marriages, it seems reasonable to 
 exclude almost totally the workings of sentiment. 
 Doubtless the ancestral German would have approved 
 most cordially the sentence of Bacon's "Essay on 
 Love": "They do best, who, if they cannot but 
 admit love, yet make it keep quarter, and sever it 
 wholly from their serious affairs and actions of life." 2 
 All this concerns the marriage of free with free. 
 If a free woman married below her rank, she came 
 into a painful position, and must lose either her 
 husband or her freedom. A curious custom of the 
 Franks ordained that if a free woman was married 
 against her will to an unfree man, she should go 
 before the king and receive from him the offer of a 
 sword or a spindle, — in this case, the signs of free- 
 man and serf. If she chose the sword, she should 
 then and there slay with it her unfree husband ; if 
 she chose the spindle, she went with him into unfree- 
 dom.3 This was a mild case ; in other laws there is 
 less symbolic machinery and swifter, sharper justice. 
 
 1 Germ. XVIII. 
 
 2 Even the marriage of Joseph to the Virgin Mary is treated by the 
 Old Saxon Heliand as a formal bargain ; he " buys " her. Cf, W. Wack- 
 ernagel, Kl. Schr. I. 55, note. 
 
 8 See Wackernagel, KL Schr. I. 5 f. and references. 
 
154 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Thus the Lombard killed a serf who ventured to 
 marry a free woman, and sold her into slavery if 
 her life was spared; West-Goths and Burgundians 
 scourged and burnt them both; while the Saxons 
 punished an unequal marriage of any sort with death 
 of man and wife.^ 
 
 Just as the husband bought his wife, so ancient 
 custom permitted him to sell her. When the Fri- 
 sians were forced by the officious severity of Olen- 
 nius to pay a tribute laid upon them by the Romans, 
 but hitherto exacted only in part, they gave "first 
 their cattle, then their land, lastly their wives and 
 children." 2 The free Saxon had the right to sell 
 wife and child ; ^ and as late as the thirteenth century 
 a German could do the same thing in time of famine 
 and want. In Scandinavia the practice was common. 
 Jacob Grimm,* explaining the Anglo-Saxon phrase 
 fcele freotuwebbe as applied to a wife, "the dear peace- 
 weaver," shows that fcele meant originally "that 
 which one may buy and sell," like German /^I'Z; then 
 "property, what is valuable"; then "dear." We 
 need not make such frantic protest of horror. The 
 Germans are fond of citing, at every possible turn, 
 the public sale of a wife in Manchester, England, in 
 1843 ; ^ while in the first decade of our century we 
 find several cases on record. One wife "brought 
 £1 4:8. and a bowl of punch"; and another fetched 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 6. 
 
 2 Ann. IV. 72. Drusus had laid a light tax upon them, — tanned ox- 
 hides for the use of the soldiers, — without specifying size or amount. 
 Olennius required skins of the bison, — terga urorum, — or an equiva- 
 lent. 
 
 8 Weinhold, D. F. II. 12. 
 
 * Andreas und Elene, note, p. 143 {El. v. 88). 
 
 6 Wackernagel, Kl. Schr. 1. 10. 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 155 
 
 twenty guineas, being " delivered in a halter to a 
 person named Houseman." i By one of the oldest 
 Anglo-Saxon laws, whoever enticed away a man's 
 wife had to buy him another.2 The thing sounds 
 very heathen ; but a well-known path of British law 
 still leads an injured husband to much the same 
 result.^ 
 
 Generally, however, a matrimonial purchase was 
 made for permanent investment. " Atli [Attila] 
 gave for Gudi-un a mass of treasure, thirty men- 
 servants and seven handmaidens." Theodoric the 
 Great gave his niece Amalaberga to Hermanafrid, 
 king of the Thuringians, and received in payment 
 from the husband a number of "silver-white horses " * 
 Occasionally we find excessively high prices quoted, 
 as much as three hundred shillings among the Sax- 
 ons, and among Alamannians and Lombards as high 
 as four hundred, — no mean price when we reflect 
 that one shilling represented the value of an ox at 
 sixteen months.^ Moreover, it was all thrift, not 
 gallantry. 
 
 We will suppose the price paid down and the bride 
 ready to be brought into her new home. Not alto- 
 gether empty-handed did she leave her father's 
 house.6 According to Tacitus, she brought even 
 weapons to her husband; but the Roman's explana- 
 
 2 ^?J?K ^.TV-^ *^' Nineteenth Century in England, II. 65 ff. 
 
 wifeff^f ' ^''?' ''' ^'^"'^' p. 4: -If a freeman seduce the 
 
 wife of a freeman, let him pay her wergild and buy another wife with 
 his own money and bring her to the husband's home " 
 
 dred Poild/'''''''^'' ^''""''' '^ ''Damages, Two Hun- 
 
 4 Wackernagel, Kl. Schr. I. 7. 
 
 T • ' ^^'^'r. T*"® "''''^^''' ^^^' S^^^« ^^^"^ «^^ to thirty oxen for a wife 
 Lippert, Cnlturgesch. II. 78. 6 a, ^. 429. 
 
156 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 1 
 i 
 
 tion is wholly fanciful. Then came the betrothal. 
 Symbolic ceremonies, we may be sure, were not 
 lacking ; but they differed for different races. The 
 bride's hair was probably bound up, and it may be 
 that keys of the house were hung, in sign of office, at 
 her girdle.i A boy walked before her, bearing a 
 sword unsheathed, a custom which Mullenhoff refers 
 to the worship of Freyr.2 The symbol of a ring, that 
 genuine wed or pledge, can be traced far back into 
 the middle ages, and was of course well known to the 
 Romans ; but it cannot be proved to be of Germanic 
 origin. Grimm suspects foreign influence.^ In the 
 north, Thor's hammer was used to consecrate the 
 bride, just as it consecrated the corpse for burial.* 
 Thrym, the giant bridegroom, eager for the nuptials, 
 cries out : — 
 
 Bear in the hammer, bride to hallow, 
 lay now MiQllnir ^ on maiden's knee, 
 hallow us twain in hands of troth ! « 
 
 In fact, this famous but frustrated ceremony is so 
 close a copy of old Scandinavian ways ^ that some 
 of the details may be given. Thor's hammer has 
 been stolen by Thrym, and cannot be had unless the 
 gods give the robber Freyja to wife. A trick is tried. 
 Thor liimself is wrapt in the bride's veil of Freyja, 
 puts on the famous Brising necklace, has a bunch of 
 keys jingling at his girdle, has jewels on his breast, 
 
 1 Wackemagel, work quoted, p. 7 f . 
 
 2i?.^.167. 8 i?. ^. 432, 178. 
 
 4 Mannhardt, a little too eagerly, insists on its phallic significance. 
 
 6 Name of Thor's hammer. 
 
 « Edda, Hildebrand, Thrymskv. 30. 3 ff. 
 
 7 So say Vigfusson and Powell, C. P. B. II. 472. 
 
 » 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 157 
 
 and a hood wrapt about his head, and, with Loki as 
 bridesmaid, fares to Giant-Land. " Up spake Thrym,^ 
 the Giant lord : ' Stand up my Giants all, and strew 
 the benches ; they are bringing me Freyja to wife.' 
 . . . Early in the evening the guests gathered, 
 and ale was served to the Giants. ... In came the 
 Giant's aged sister (mother?) begging boldly for a 
 bridal fee : ' Take the red rings off thine arm if thou 
 wouldst win my love, my love and all my heart 
 besides.' . . ." Then Thrym calk for the hammer, 
 Thor lays hold of it and slays the giants all. — Touches 
 of burlesque are not unwelcome in this description, 
 for the old-fashioned ways are evidently given with 
 great care. 
 
 This actual marriage was surely an important 
 ceremony. Waitz thinks ^ the affair was private and 
 took place before the family alone. Tacitus does 
 not commit himself; but Grimm insists that the 
 ceremony was public, and collects later evidence in 
 favor of his assertion.^ The clan and kin system 
 demand the active co-operation of relatives; and 
 Anglo-Saxon laws show traces of this, even where 
 the church has begun to regulate the whole affair."* 
 Further ceremonies we may imagine. Thus, an 
 oracle was doubtless consulted, and symbolic acts 
 of cult were accomplished with reference to those 
 divinities who presided over marriages, — Freyr and 
 Freyja, one may guess. The good old ways were duly 
 acknowledged by a mock fight, a race, or what not ; 
 and by the tears and lamenting of the bride's nearer 
 
 1 Translation, C. P. B. I. 179 f. 2 Verfassunggesch. I. 61. 
 8 R. A. 433. Tacitus simply says : ** Intersunt parentes et propinqui,'* 
 Germ. XVIII. -* Schmid, Ags. Ges. 390, 392. 
 
I 
 
 158 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 relatives, o'ercrowed, however, by loud exultation 
 from friends of the party of the first part. Songs 
 and feasting could not have failed ; rude jokes were 
 perhaps in season, and the gros rire which lingered 
 about the occasion down to comparatively modern 
 times. So much of the Germanic function seems to 
 have resembled the Roman ceremonies that we feel 
 it a thousand pities to find no chronicler of the words 
 spoken by the northern pair at their betrothal. What 
 was the German equivalent of the Roman bride's 
 simple declaration : " Si tu G-aius^ ego Graia " .^ — a 
 piece of humility, by the by, which if generally 
 known nowadays would distress honorable women 
 not a few. It must be remembered that this formal 
 engagement sufiiced for the beginning of married 
 life, and was so regarded long after Christianity had 
 been introduced in Germanic lands. The actual 
 ceremony in church took place later, and among the 
 Anglo-Saxons was not allowed at all for the marriage 
 of a widow.^ 
 
 A few particulars from later practice may be added 
 to our guesses about the earlier affair. The wooing, 
 or rather the bargain, was probably begun by father 
 or friend, who, mostly along with the wooer, went on 
 his errand with a great crowd of relatives and back- 
 ers.2 During the negotiations, our young bride- 
 groom-to-be sat silent, listened to the eloquent praise 
 of his own excellent differences, and like Messrs. 
 Dodson and Fogg under equally trying circum- 
 stances, " looked as virtuous as possible." It is well 
 
 1 R. A. 436. 
 
 2 Weinhold, D. F. I. 317, reminds us that even god Freyr sent a mes- 
 senger (see Skirnismal in the Edda) to woo for him. 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 159 
 
 known that this vicarious wooing is still practised in 
 the very highest and in the very lowest classes of 
 European society — the two sets of conservatives, 
 princes and peasants. Again, the choice of a wife 
 was not so limited as now. There were hardly any 
 forbidden degrees of relationship. Mythology at 
 least countenances even the marriage of brother and 
 sister,! and in historical times one was at liberty 
 to marry a stepmother, as witness Eadbald of Kent 
 and ^thelbald of Wessex. The deceased wife's sis- 
 ter, the brother's widow, one's own niece, — any one 
 of these was a lawful mate. Only slowly and with 
 infinite pains could the church establish its salutary 
 discipline and the doctrine of forbidden degrees. 
 
 Early marriages, say both Caesar and Tacitus,^ were 
 rare among the Germans. Rare, too, were second 
 marriages, as we are told in the G-ermania,^ As for 
 the first statement, we must remember what " early " 
 would mean in a Roman's mouth ; for he was used to 
 seeing wives of eleven or twelve years of age.* 
 Again, in our oldest German and English chronicles 
 we find records of very early nuptials. This contin- 
 ued to modern times. Lord Herbert of Cherbury 
 married at fifteen a wife of twenty-one ; in his Auto- 
 biography, all he finds worthy of comment in the 
 affair is " the disparity in years." However, Caesar 
 and Tacitus were doubtless right in their geneml 
 statement ; for it not only squares with our accounts 
 of Germanic chastity, but agrees with that doctrine 
 
 1 See Weinhold, D. F. I. 359 ff. ; Lokasenna (Edda), 144 ff. ; and for 
 details, E. Young, p. 126 ff. of the Anglo-Saxon Law Essays, by several 
 hands, Boston, 1876. 
 
 2 B. G. VI. 21 ; Germ. XX. 3 Cap. XIX. 
 * Jung, Leben itnd Sitten d. Romer, I. 84 f. 
 
160 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE 
 
 161 
 
 of political economy which makes marriages scarce 
 in proportion to the difficulty of supporting families. 
 Such difficulty was no stranger to the German. As 
 regards the second marriage, the old custom of 
 widow-sacrifice would give a grimly sufficient reason 
 for the female side. When this custom ceased, it left 
 a strong sentiment against the second marriage. The 
 widow laid her keys, emblem of household rule, upon 
 the corpse of her husband, and they went with him 
 into the grave.^ So unusual, says Wackernagel, was 
 the marriage of widows that it is used as tragical 
 
 motif. 
 
 Death was not the only means of breaking the 
 maiTiage bond; adultery — but, as was said, only on 
 the side of the wife — destroyed the pact. The con- 
 sequences of this crime have been in part defined ; 2 
 but the punishments savor of a ruthlessness which 
 must have corresponded to a great horror of the of- 
 fence. To kill her was a clear privilege of the hus- 
 band, but such a punishment as to be trodden and 
 suffocated in mud or slime was prescribed for the 
 Burgundian false one. The Frisian could hang, 
 burn, kill with sword, or even flay his adulterous 
 wife. The Anglo-Saxon punishment, already quoted, 
 is much milder and falls on the seducer, who must 
 pay the woman's ^ wergild and buy the husband 
 another wife. Perhaps the mildness is only accident 
 of omission ; for we are not told what became of the 
 guilty wife. In later tradition we get some bloody 
 and savage touches which may well preserve the 
 
 ^R.A. 176, 453 ; Wackernagel, Kl. Schr. I. 31. 2 See p. 139, above. 
 8 Some interpret it to mean the man's own wergild. But see Schmid. 
 p. 5, note. 
 
 practice of an older day. Thus, among other in- 
 stances, the tragic ballads of Old Robin of Portingale 
 and Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard agree in 
 making the injured husband inflict a cruel mutilation 
 upon the wife. In the first : — 
 
 Hee cutt the papps beside her brest, 
 
 And bade her wish her will ; 
 And he cut the eares beside her head, 
 
 And bade her wish on still. 
 
 In the second : — 
 
 He cut her paps from off her brest ; 
 
 Great pity it was to see 
 That some drops of this ladle's heart's blood 
 
 Ran trickling downe her knee. ^ 
 
 This agrees well enough with the scene in Tacitus, 
 an angry husband scourging the shorn and unclad 
 offender from his home ; and it gives us by contrast 
 better ability to appreciate the infinite despair and 
 tenderness of Othello's words : — 
 
 I that am cruel, am yet merciful ; 
 
 I would not have thee linger in thy pain. 
 
 1 Child, Ballads,2 III. 241, 245. 
 
162 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAINIILY 
 
 163 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 Hospitality and gifts — Responsibilities of the head of a family — 
 Importance of kinship — Conflicting duties — Feud — Wergild^ and 
 other substitutes for feud — Paternal power — Exposure — Educa- 
 tion of children — Names — Old age. 
 
 Established in their home, the young couple took 
 up a life rude enough to our eyes, but not without 
 its virtues and even its amenities. Hospitality was 
 instinctive in the German. To be sure, the laws and 
 customs of modern life, as they touch upon personal 
 property, are far removed from the simple notions of 
 our forefathers ; and it is not to be denied that the idea 
 of individual ownership has developed at the expense 
 of that primitive generosity. So much may be 
 granted; yet the effort to make this hospitality of 
 the Germans a proof of their absolute savagery — one 
 trait the more to support a parallel with modern Afri- 
 cans — is by no means to be allowed.^ One is inclined 
 to prefer the exaggerated praise of Tacitus.^ While 
 we may justly place much of this generosity to the 
 credit of an almost communal system of property, 
 
 1 Lippert's admirable book on Culturgeschichte goes too far iu this 
 direction. The author sees all things in Africa, after the Malebranche 
 fashion of his school. 
 
 2 Oerm. XXI. See also Caesar B. G. \l. 23. 
 
 enough of the pure virtue is left to deserve our 
 admiration. Savages do not pass laws to promote 
 the magnanimous treatment of guests; and the ordi- 
 nances quoted by Grimm must rest on a very old 
 foundation.! Thus we find a penalty imposed on the 
 householder who may refuse shelter and fireside to 
 the traveller; "shelter, and room by the fire, and 
 water," — these were not to be denied under any 
 pretext.2 Even if the guest had slain the brother of 
 his host, — no matter; he must come and go in 
 safety ; ^ and what that meant in those days is evi- 
 dent from the song of the two mill-maids who are 
 grinding King Frodi's fortune, and in their descrip- 
 tion of a universal peace can find no climax better 
 than this : a time when " no man shall harm his neigh- 
 bor . . . nor smite with whetted sword, yea, not 
 though he find his brother's slayer hound before him,''^ 
 Similar phrases recur constantly in media3val poetry 
 as type of the highest form of self-restraint and 
 noble toleration. This hospitality was limited, of 
 course, to transient guests ; foreigners who came into 
 a country without friends and kin behind them, and 
 made mien to stay, were in danger of unfreedom : a 
 year and a day they might bide, and after that it 
 was often slavery .^ But the wayfaring man who had 
 definite objects in view was welcome to this bound- 
 less hospitality. In later times we find the fixed 
 custom that a guest might tarry up to the third day ; 
 and Grimm quotes an Anglo-Saxon law: "two nights 
 a guest, the third night one of the household." ^ 
 
 1 R. A. 399 f. 2 « Tectum et focum et aquam nemo deneget." 
 
 « /?. ^. 400. *C.P. B. I. 185. 6 i?. A. 399. 
 
 * See also Schmid, Ags. Ges. p. 286. 
 
164 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 165 
 
 
 Interesting survivals of this doctrine of the three 
 days' grace occur in popular sayings and customs. 
 German doggerel, more vigorous than elegant, de- 
 clares : — 
 
 Den ersten Tag ein Gast, 
 
 den zweiten eine Last, 
 
 den dritten stinkt er f ast,^ — 
 
 which is astonishingly like Herrick : — 
 
 Two dayes y'ave larded here ; a third, yee know, 
 Makes guests and fish smell strong ; ^ — 
 
 and both are matched by a Latin effusion, ^ which is 
 perhaps the original. But Herrick puts such growl- 
 ing rudeness into the mouth "of some rough groom"; 
 and in conspicuous antithesis praises the fine old hos- 
 pitalities of his friend in words that scent good cheer 
 and spread the honest savors of an English kitchen. 
 We may draw our conclusions of heredity, and fancy 
 this knight with his " large ribbes of beef " an unmis- 
 takable descendant of Chaucer's franklin, whose 
 
 . . . table dormant in his halle alway 
 Stood redy covered al the longe day. 
 
 Further, we may think that this ruddy epicure him- 
 self, in whose house " hit snewed ... of mete and 
 drjuke," did nothing more than keep green the 
 laurels of Germanic hospitality. For let us listen to 
 Tacitus : * " Banquets and hospitality find such favor 
 
 1 Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, p. 447. 
 
 2 " A Panegerick to Sir Lewis Pemberton," in the Hesperides. 
 
 « Printed by Wright, Reliquix Antiquse, I. 91, and Domestic Man- 
 ners, etc., p. 333. 
 
 * Germ. XXI. See Caesar B. G. VI. 23, whose testimony is in the 
 
 same strain. 
 
 in no other nation. To turn anybody, no matter 
 who he may be, from one's door, is held as a crime ; 
 he is entertained according to the means of the host, 
 who provides his best. When that is gone, the host 
 becomes guide and companion to his guest, and to- 
 gether they seek the hospitality of some other board, 
 going uninvited into the first convenient house. Here 
 it is the same thing; they are received with like 
 friendliness. Neighbor and stranger are made equally 
 welcome. To the parting guest, so custom ordains, 
 is given whatever he happens to desire ; and there is 
 equal freedom for the host to ask something of him." 
 It seems a little ungracious to ascribe all this to the 
 absence of any notions about individual property or 
 the value of things. The astonishing hospitality of 
 the Icelanders, who harbored absolute strangers an 
 entire winter, who kept a table always ready for 
 chance visitors whoever they might be, and whose 
 very dogs were glad to see a guest walk in,i — this 
 is certainly a point or two above the African stand- 
 ard, in kind as well as degree. 
 
 The guest, however, had certain forms with which 
 he must comply, if he would not run the risk of be- 
 ing cut down like a thief. He must keep to the 
 highway, and blow sufficiently upon his horn, that 
 no mistakes might be made.^ " If a far-come man, or 
 a stranger, go out of the road through the forest, and 
 do not cry out nor blow his horn, he is to be held as 
 a thief." But if a man were lost, or could find no 
 house, he was at liberty to cut standing corn for his 
 horse, — one law says he may let the horse " tread 
 
 1 Weinhold, D. F. II. 195. 
 
 2 Schmid, Ags, Ges. p. 28. 
 
166 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 167 
 
 k : 
 
 into the corn with his fore-feet, and so eat," — and 
 he might hew a little wood to mend his wagon. 
 
 Of course, it must not be forgotten, that along 
 with wider hospitality went narrower protection of 
 law. What law did not require was ordained by use 
 and tradition; and we may say of the Germanic 
 treatment of guests what Tacitus remarks about one 
 of the other virtues, — that " good custom avails more 
 with this people than good laws elsewhere." ^ More- 
 over, the family took the place of the state as regards 
 responsibility for a stranger's doings. " If," runs an 
 old Anglo-Saxon law, " if a man, in his own house, 
 harbors a stranger three nights, merchant or other 
 person, who has come over the mark (boundary), and 
 feeds him with his meat, and [the stranger] then 
 does evil to any one, let the host bring the guest to 
 reckoning, or do justice for him."^ An insolent 
 guest might be promptly beaten by his host.^ 
 
 The custom of giving some present to the parting 
 guest has been mentioned in the passage from Taci- 
 tus, and forms the subject of a monograph by Jacob 
 Grimm.* Of the articles which a German — prince 
 or freeman — was wont to bestow on vassal, friend, 
 or guest, Grimm names land, which was naturally 
 the favor of chieftain or king, then food and drink, 
 valuable animals, clothes, rings, and similar objects. 
 Even in the middle ages money was little used for 
 gifts ; and we still shrink from such a present where 
 a definite object of equal value would arouse no scru- 
 ple. The simplest gift was a glass of wine or mead ; ^ 
 
 1 Germ. XIX. 2 Schmid, p. 14. « Grimm, R. A. 744. 
 
 * Ueber SchenJcen xind Gehen, Kl. Schr. IT. 173 if. 
 
 * The double meaning of German schenken, ** to pour out " and ** to 
 give," is thus explained by Grimm. 
 
 and often with the liquor, one gave the cup that held 
 It. Of animals, horses were the favorite gift, as in 
 our BSowulf, and we remember that the price of a 
 certain Germanic bride was paid in white horses. 
 An Anglo-Saxon alliterating formula was mearas and 
 madmas, " horses and treasure." Dress was often a 
 gift, as in the Nibelungen Lay, where it is coupled 
 with horses.i Golden arm-rings were the aristocratic 
 present, — witness Hildebrand's last appeal for rec- 
 oncihation with his son. Naturally, the course of 
 conquest and settlement made land the gift which 
 men prized the most ; on the border of two epochs, 
 and uniting the nomadic and the agricultural stand- 
 ard, may be mentioned the gift which Hygelac made 
 to Eofor and Wulf when they had slain his enemy, 
 " a hundred thousand of land, and twisted rings " ; 2 
 moreover, to Eofor he gave his own daughter. Gen- 
 erosity could go no farther. 
 
 These welcomes and gifts, these open doors and 
 inviting tables of the old German, are not precisely 
 in tune with that secret underground passage from 
 the house to field or wood, which was provided for 
 escape from the frequent raids and sieges of one's 
 neighbors. The German's house was not only his 
 castle, but it was very often a beleaguered castle, the 
 refuge of his clan. For he was the protector and 
 head of his house ; all its quarrels were his quarrels ; 
 and when the family, or the meanest member of it,' 
 was wronged, he was its avenger. In the same way, 
 he was responsible for wrongs done by his family ; 
 and thus all his 'relatives were bound with him in a 
 
 1 N. L. 28 : " Den vremden und den kunden gab er ross und gewant " 
 a B^ow. 2995 ff. s '- 
 
168 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 i' 
 
 common bond of responsibility. To inherit the fam- 
 ily privileges was to inherit its duties. A law of 
 Cnut is very instructive as marking the passage of 
 the Germanic mind out of the stern old logic into a 
 temper of equity. " It was once the custom," says 
 our wise king, " that the child which lay in cradle, 
 even though it had tasted meat, was deemed by cove- 
 tous men just as guilty as if it were possessed of its 
 understanding (gewittig'). But henceforth I earnestly 
 forbid this, together with many other things which 
 are loathsome to God." ^ A law of Ine had provided 
 that if a man steal with the knowledge of his family, 
 they should all go into bondage together.^ 
 
 Thus the chief burden, as well as the chief glory, 
 fell upon the head of the house. To be a father, or 
 the eldest son of a widow, or the eldest of near kin 
 in guardianship of minors, carried with the position 
 responsibilities that now seem almost incredible. 
 Such a person was executor of a code of vengeance 
 which we do not know, simply because law and the 
 administration of government have taken its place. 
 " Revenge," said Bacon, " is a kind of wild justice " ; 
 but it is more exact to say that justice is tamed and 
 ordered revenge. The law now stands in relation to 
 the murderer where once stood the head of the mur- 
 dered man's family, who has thus deputed the state 
 to perform his ancient duty.^ Despite a somewhat 
 sophomoric note, this explanation agrees with the 
 facts of the case. But it was a far intenser feeling 
 
 1 Schmid, p. 312, 76, § 2. ^ ibid. p. 24, 7, § 1. 
 
 8 Lex Angl. et Wer. VI. (and Uhland, Kl Schr. I. 218) : " Ad quem- 
 cumque hereditas terrse pervenerit, ad ilium vestis bellica, id est lorica, 
 et lUtio proximi, et solutio leudis, debet pertinere." 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 169 
 
 
 that then filled the avenger of blood, than any abstract 
 severities of our modern justice; for it knew no 
 extenuating circumstances, and did not sunder one 
 motive from another.^ It had the tremendous sanc- 
 tions of religion. By the old belief, by the cult of 
 family manes, an unappeased parent-soul hovered 
 about the very hearthstone, a perturbed spirit only to 
 be brought to rest by the grateful blood of the mur- 
 derer offered by son or kinsman. So the sense of kin 
 took just precedence of all human bonds ; and in the 
 swan-song of Germanic mythology, the Vqluspa, our 
 sibyl can find no sign of impending doom so certain 
 and disastrous as the breaking up of family ties: 
 " Brother shall fight against brother, and they shall 
 turn to murderers ; cliildren of one parent shall bring 
 shame upon their race. . . . Adultery shall flour- 
 ish." 2 
 
 In this kindly soil of the family flourished such 
 growth of sentiment as that rough life brought forth. 
 Peace, good-will, the sense of honor, loyalty to friend 
 and kinsman, brotherly affection, all were plants that 
 found in the Germanic home that congenial warmth 
 they needed for their earliest stages of growth. The 
 double notion of blood-relationship and mutual peace 
 is shown by a passage in our oldest English poem, 
 Widsi'6 : — 
 
 Hrothwulf and Hrothgar held the longest 
 open concord, uncle and nephew, 
 after they routed the race of Wicings, 
 fell'd the pride of the power of Ingeld, 
 hew'd down at Heorot the Heathobard's line.* 
 
 1 See Stubbs, Const. Hist. I. 81. 
 
 2 Hildebrand, Edda, p. 12. Metaphors of the family, C.P.B. II 473 ff 
 
 3 vv. 46-49. 
 
170 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 171 
 
 i^ 
 
 Pretty, moreover, is the old " kenning," or meta- 
 phor for "wife," — the weaver (or maker) of peace ; 
 whether with Grimm we explain it as referring to the 
 household union,i or because a marriage brought 
 together two families and tended to set aside feuds.2 
 Situations akin to that of Rodrigue and Chimene in 
 the Cid may well have burdened many Germanic 
 lives, as witness an episode of the Beowulf,^ Frea- 
 waru, daughter of the Danish Hrothgar, is married 
 to Ingeld, son of a prince who has been slain in battle 
 against Hrothgar's forces ; and the marriage is meant 
 to put aside the necessity of blood-revenge. For a 
 while Ingeld forgets his wrongs ; but an old warrior 
 of his train * spurs him to vengeance, which is all the 
 more easily suggested by the insolence of a young 
 Danish noble, attendant upon his countrywoman and 
 princess, who wears, in open sight of all, the sword 
 once wielded by King Froda, the fallen father of 
 Ingeld. Then oaths are broken, " the love of woman 
 grows cooler in Ingeld after he has felt the waves of 
 care," and blood must flow for blood. 
 
 Evidently it was a good thing to belong to some 
 large clan, and an honorable thing to be its leader. 
 Thus the power of King Hrothgar is described by the 
 poet as based upon his increasing authority over kin 
 and clan.^ 
 
 Such speed of war was sent to Hrothgar, 
 honor of battle, that all his kin 
 obeyed him gladly, till grown were the youth, 
 the crowd of clansmen. . . . 
 
 1 Andreas und Elene, p. 144 f. 
 
 2 See also such a name for a queen as frilSu-sibh folca, " peace-kin 
 of peoples," the relative who brings peace to clans. Beow. 2017. 
 
 8 2021 ff. See, for Danish parallels, Miillenhoff, Beovulf, p. 42 f. 
 4 In Saxo's story it is the fierce Starcatherus. * Bioto. 64 ff. 
 
 That is, he was head of the family, and his kin were 
 glad to acknowledge it and serve him. The youths 
 springing up in his service are partly kinsmen, partly 
 the "retainers" or comitatus^ a peculiar Germanic 
 institution which we shall presently consider. The 
 value set upon the ties of a family is shown by cer- 
 tain verses in the Old Saxon paraphrase of the gos- 
 pels, the Heliand, It is the passage of St. Matthew 
 which makes it profitable for us that one of our mem- 
 bers should perish, and not that the whole body 
 should be cast into hell. As Vilmar points out,^ the 
 German laughed at scars, and found more sport than 
 sorrow in the notion of mutilation. So the translator 
 adds in explanation a far more terrible alternative, — 
 separation from one's kin. ''Better to throw thy 
 friend far from thee, however close the sihUa, the 
 kinship, may be," than to let him lead thee into sin. 
 
 The family tie engendered the earliest notions of 
 duty, whether to the living or to the dead ; and this 
 sense of duty is the moral foundation of all Germanic 
 history. Alive, the head of the house exacted obedi- 
 ence and respect, fostered order and justice ; dead, he 
 was the object of cult, grew mightier with lapse of 
 time, and as a tribal god sanctioned wider and deeper 
 laws of society. His fireplace was the primitive coun- 
 cil chamber ; his grave was the primitive altar. Orig- 
 inally the family or clan made a definite sphere or 
 system of life ; outside of it the homeless man felt 
 indeed that chaos had come again. The heaviest 
 punishment was expulsion from the family ; 2 and 
 banishment, the crown of sorrow for a German, is 
 
 1 Work quoted, p. 67. Heliand, ed. Heyne, 1492 ff. 
 
 2 See Dahn, Bausteine, II. 79 ff., on Family and State. 
 
172 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 173 
 
 •J 
 
 ■1 
 
 i\ 
 
 a topic repeatedly touched upon in Anglo-Saxon 
 poetry .1 The wretched victim of such a fate was 
 cut off from all protection of law and order, and re- 
 nounced the benefits of civilization. Thus at the 
 other extreme of fortune from the proud head of a 
 proud and powerful clan stood the clanless man, the 
 exile, the outlaw, who had no protecting relative, no 
 strong kinsman, no " gold-friend and lord." Those 
 touching Anglo-Saxon lyrics, The Wanderer and The 
 Seafarer y mourn such a fate. 
 
 The head of the narrower family in normal circum- 
 stances was the father. The fatherhood of God ap- 
 peals with peculiar force to the German. Thus, as it 
 would seem, when the poet of BSoivulf tells of the 
 murder of Abel and of the doom of Cain, he treats the 
 punishment as an act of vengeance undertaken by 
 God for one of his human children.^ Severe enough, 
 too, seemed Cain's punishment. He was " banished 
 from his own kind," direst penalty short of death. 
 With such notions of the power and privilege of 
 fathers, the Aryan horror of parricide can be under- 
 stood. Not without interest for mediaeval sentiment 
 on this theme is an account quoted by Kemble ^ 
 from Barbazan's Fabliaux et Contes, as a parallel to 
 Solomon's famous decision. Two princes — brothers 
 
 quarrel about their inheritance. The father's corpse 
 
 is set before them, and it is announced that he who 
 shall drive his spear furthest into the body is to 
 be the heir. "The elder strikes home; but the 
 
 1 Lingering in words like our ** wretch," or German Elend (Elland). 
 
 2 B^ow. 107 ff. The use of words like geiorsec " wreaked, avenged," 
 axidfsdhtSe, " feud," as applied to the crime, surely upholds this notion. 
 
 8 Salomon and Saturn, p. 106. He thinks the source of the story is 
 Cap. XLV. of the Gesta Romanorum. 
 
 younger, detesting the impiety, prefers losing all 
 share in the inheritance to mangling the corse : he is 
 in consequence, by consent of all the barons, put in 
 possession of the principality." In an age which 
 was full of murder and sudden death, which saw no 
 crime in the open killing of a man, this horror of 
 parricide is significant enough. Such a deed struck at 
 the very heart of social order and religious sanctions. 
 To the simple mind of those days it seemed a good 
 thing to rivet this family bond by gifts. II a young 
 prince, says the poet of BSowulf will only give rich 
 gifts to his father's friends and kin, he may count in 
 his old age upon comrades glad to help him and stand 
 by him in stress of war.^ For such pains and benefits 
 of kindred were not bandied about indiscriminately ; 
 they were guarded with scrupulous care and kept at a 
 proper value. Hence, too," we find in all older dialects 
 a multiplicity of names to express relationship by 
 blood ; and richer even than Germanic, are the Sla- 
 vonic, Lithuanian, and Finnish, which, as Grimm has 
 noted,2 longest kept up the primitive ways. When 
 this genuine relationship failed, the German could 
 enter upon an artificial one. It is true that adoption, 
 as a means of increasing one's family, was hardly a 
 Germanic custom ; ^ but the so-called blood-brother- 
 hood was a special device of our ancestors, and popular 
 enough. We know it best in its Scandinavian form. 
 Two youths, often foster-brothers, cut each the palm of 
 
 1 B40W. 20 ff. 2 G, 2). 5.8 p. 92 f . 
 
 8 Dahn, Bausteine, II. 82 ff. Scherer sees a trace of adoption in 
 Beow. 868 ff. The Danes praise Be'owulf and say he would be a good 
 king ; they wish Hrothgar, says Scherer, to adopt the hero. Zeitschri/t 
 f. oesterr. Gymnas. for 1869, p. 98. See also Paul's Grdr. d. germ. Phil. 
 II. 2. 140. 
 
174 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 175 
 
 the hand and let the blood run from it into a hollow- 
 in the ground ; here their blood mingled while they 
 grasped hands and swore brotherhood for life. More 
 solemn ceremony, with intricate symbolism, consisted 
 in their taking the oath as they kneeled under strips 
 of turf .1 Thus their blood became one, they were kin, 
 and on each devolved the sacred duty of avenging the 
 other ; such an artificial relative could even claim his 
 share of the wergild. Sometimes the two held their 
 goods in .common. How vivid must have seemed to 
 the German that passage of Genesis where the blood of 
 a slain brother cries from the ground ! As usual, myth 
 has absorbed the human relation : Odin and Loki are 
 said once to have sworn brotherhood. Loki, detected 
 mischief-maker, comes unbidden to a banquet of the 
 gods, where " not one speaks a good word for him." 
 The situation is dramatic.^ 
 
 Loki. Thirsty, I, Loki, came to this hall . . .to beg the 
 Anses give me but one draught of the goodly mead. Why 
 sit ye so silent, ye moody gods, speaking no word ? . . . 
 
 Bragi. The Anses will never give thee seat or place at this 
 banquet. . . . 
 
 Loki. Dost thou remember, Odin, how we two in days of old 
 blended blood together Y Thou sworest never to taste ale imless 
 we drank together. 
 
 Odin. Get up then, Widar, and let the Wolf's father [sc. 
 Loki] sit down to the banquet, that Loki may not make mock 
 of us here in Eager's hall.^ 
 
 1 See von Amira in Paul's Grdr. d. germ. Phil. II. 2. 146 f., Grimm, 
 G. D. S.2 96 f ., and Weinhold, Altnord. Lehen, p. 287 f. The general cus- 
 tom was by no means specially Germanic, as Grimm's investigation 
 shows : examples, R. A. 192 f. 
 
 2 Translation is from the C. P. B. 1. 102. Lokasenna, 6 ff., in Hilde- 
 brand's Edda, p. 35 f. 
 
 8 Grimm {0. D. 5.2 97) reminds us of the same relation between 
 Gunnar and Sigurd. 
 
 Blood-brotherhood is a very pretty word for our 
 ears ; but in the brave old days it was no metaphor. 
 The soul was thought to abide chiefly in the warm 
 blood, as well as in the breath and the eyes. " Heart 
 and eyes " were the main thing, as can be learned 
 from many a later folk-song. We need not discuss 
 the question of survivals from an age of universal 
 cannibalism ; ^ there is no doubt that with our ances- 
 tors, as with Mephistopheles and his brethren, blood 
 was " ein ganz besondrer Saft," — though the signa- 
 ture in one's blood is only an academic fancy. The 
 old notion was to acquire the courage and spirit of 
 a slain enemy by drinking his blood ; and vague sur- 
 vivals of this are rife in Scandinavian tradition. 
 Blood is the abode and source of life. Blood brings 
 a life glow into the cheeks of the dead, and loosens 
 the tongue of Teiresias in prophetic speech, as Odys- 
 seus, in that unrivalled scene, stands by the trench 
 filled with blood, and the pale shades flock about 
 him, eager to drink. In the burning hall of Attila, 
 Hagen and the Burgundian king ward off the effects 
 of fearful heat by drinking the blood of the slain that 
 lie about them, — here merely a touch of fantastic 
 horror, quite forgetful of the original meaning. Blood 
 mixed with honey we meet in Norse myth. Kvasir 
 is the wisest of men. He is slain by the dwarfs Fialar 
 and Galar, who mix his blood with honey ; whoever 
 drinks of this becomes a poet or a seer. Eating the 
 heart is a tradition deep-rooted in Germanic mythol- 
 ogy, and later it was a characteristic of witches, who 
 fell heir to most of the earlier habits of Asgard. It 
 
 1 Cf. Lippert, Cnlturges. 1. 61 f. Religion der europ. Culturvolkerf 
 p. 48. 
 
 I 
 
176 
 
 GEKMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 is needless to insist on modern survivals in proverb 
 and tradition; "blood," we say, "will tell," or it 
 " runs thicker than water." 
 
 The ties of blood being the most sacred known to 
 the ancients, the one band of society, the beginning 
 and chief sanction of religion, it was natural that any 
 conflict of duty, any case of doubt which way the 
 claim of blood should draw one, must have formed 
 chief material for their tragedy. Known in some 
 form all over the world, this tragic motive was de- 
 veloped among our forefathers with a simple grandeur 
 which stands alone in history. Laius and (Edipus as 
 tragic victims rank no whit higher for grandeur of 
 conception than Hildebrand and Hathubrand, or 
 Ruedeger of Bechelaren in the Nibelungen Lay.^ The 
 episode of Ruedeger outweighs a hundred tragedies. 
 A vassal of the Hunnish king, he meets the Burgun- 
 dian guests as they enter Attila's dominions, receives 
 them in his own palace, and gives his daughter to 
 the youngest of the brother-kings. When the great 
 struggle in the burning hall grows almost hopeless 
 for Kriemhild, she bids Ruedeger, as her husband's 
 sworn man and vassal, to go into the hall and slay or 
 bind her own brethren, of whom young Giselher is the 
 elected son-in-law of Ruedeger. What shall he do ? 
 " God help me," he cries ; " would that I were dead ! " 
 Whatever he decides, his honor must be tainted, — 
 to war against his own kin, or to desert his chieftain 
 in his time of need ; the agony of doubt was never 
 
 1 Many other examples will occur to the student of tragedy, ancient 
 or modern, — Orestes, Hamlet, Rodrigue, and many more. The sacred 
 duty of revenging one's kindred or friends was the soul of feud, and 
 fills Aryan literature from Achilles down to Hamlet. 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 177 
 
 painted with such naked force. Heavy-hearted, he 
 obeys his lord, and goes to a brave though unwel- 
 come combat and to a welcome death. Further, 
 there is a little episode in Beowulf, — hardly an 
 episode, one may say, but a mere hint, — where 
 King Hrethel's oldest son, Herebeald, is killed by a 
 purely accidental shot from the bow of the second 
 son, Hsethcyn.i The old king pines away, not in our 
 modern grief, but because of the relentless misery of 
 irreconcilable relations with the second son, — the 
 duty, as avenger, of killing him, and the paternal 
 duty of protecting one's own offspring. For our 
 forefathers, the tragedy of this situation needed no 
 words: an allusion was enough. The famous saga 
 of the Volsungs records still another case. Siggeir 
 and Signy are man and wife ; but Siggeir has killed 
 Signy's father and all her brothers except Sigmund. 
 Signy, as a duty to her kin, does all she can to help 
 her brother accomplish his revenge against her hus- 
 band. At last the hall of Siggeir is set in flames, 
 and there is no hope for him. Then Signy, in spite 
 of all appeals from her brother, kisses him farewell 
 and goes into the burning hall to die, as befits a 
 Germanic wife, at the side of her husband. Exag- 
 gerated, unnatural, void of all sweetness and light, 
 this story is nevertheless full of a wild energy, like 
 the times that brought it forth. 
 
 This wild energy, the provocations and opportuni- 
 ties of such a life, led, of course, to ceaseless feuds. 
 Such a state of things became impossible ; a race of 
 men cannot go on forever cutting their own throats, 
 and the race itself seems to make from time to time 
 
 1 B^oiv. 2438 ff. 
 
178 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 179 
 
 1 
 
 an almost individual effort at self-preservation, re- 
 form, and progress. So came the great step of civili- 
 zation which compounded a murder by payment of a 
 definite price. Probably it began, as was only just, 
 with cases of accidental killing or maiming. This 
 wergild^ or man-price, indicates system, organization, 
 and offers sure evidence of incipient political life. It 
 was already known in the time of Tacitus ; and was 
 reckoned in terms of flocks and herds. The sum was 
 fixed according to the rank, birth, and office of the 
 person killed; and was paid to those whose duty 
 would otherwise compel them to take vengeance for 
 the deed. The wergild for women varied ; ^ now it 
 was the same as that of a man, now only half as 
 much ; but for a pregnant woman the price rose very 
 high.2 Kings generally stood quite above any such 
 provisions, except in a few Anglo-Saxon laws. But 
 let us hear what Tacitus has to say about the whole 
 matter of revenge and composition for murder. " It 
 is a duty," he says, " to take up as an inheritance the 
 feuds of one's father or relatives. And yet these 
 feuds are not proof against all settlement (nee im- 
 placahiles durant) ; even murder is compounded with 
 the payment of a definite number of cattle or other 
 animals, and the whole family receives the price. . . ." ^ 
 We can see how eagerly kings would foster this check 
 on unlimited feud ; and we are not surprised to note 
 the prominent place given to the wergild in all 
 systems of Germanic law. First of his secular laws 
 stands King Edmund's decree in regard to murder 
 
 1 Of course these are mainly mediaeval distinctions, but seem of 
 primitive origin. 
 
 2 R. A. 404 f. 8 Qerm. XXI. 
 
 and the wergild ; let the murderer, of whatever rank 
 (sy 8wd boren swd he sy), bear the vengeance that is 
 due unless he can pay the full price within twelve 
 months ; and if any of his relatives harbor or help him, 
 they, too, are liable to the act of revenge.^ Even where 
 a man has made himself hated far and wide by crimes 
 of every sort, his murder must be compounded. 
 Gregory of Tours tells this of one nicknamed Avus, 
 who after manifold sins was killed in a quarrel by a 
 servant of his adversarv. The latter, however, was 
 forced to pay proper ivergild to the sons of the dead 
 
 man.2 
 
 In course of time, fines were set not simply for 
 murder, but for every sort of wound; they were 
 assessed, much in the fashion of our modern " dam- 
 ages " for accident, in proportion to the importance 
 of the bodily loss, — eye, hand, limb, or what not. 
 The following law of -^thelberht marks progress 
 indeed : " If one man, with his fist, strikes another 
 upon the nose, [the fine is] three shillings."^ As to 
 the price itself, there is great variation in different 
 places. From a hundred "shillings" up to very 
 large sums, the price was fixed according to the rank 
 of the slain, — freeman, noble, king's thane, and so 
 on. The church had part in the system, and ecclesi- 
 astics enjoyed a high wergild. But to define these 
 values would be a task almost as useless as hopeless.* 
 
 Feud, which this system was meant to lay aside, 
 seems to have been a wide word. It included the 
 strained relations between King Hrethel and his son, 
 
 1 Schmid, Ags. Ges. p. 176. 2 Qr^g^ Xiir. VII. 13. s Schmid, p. 6. 
 * See Schmid, Ags. Ges., Glossary, under Wergild ; Grimm, R. A. 272, 
 289 ; Kemble, Saxons^ I. 269 fif. 
 
180 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 181 
 
 11 .! 
 
 li . 
 i ; 
 
 I' ! 
 
 I"' ' 
 
 t t 
 
 the murder of Abel, GrendeFs direful raids upon the 
 hall " Heort," and of course the hostility between two 
 families or clans, the private shedding of blood for 
 blood. There was utmost need to curb this ferocity 
 of the Germanic temperament. Maurer records a case 
 among the Norsemen, who kept longest and strongest 
 the old traditions, of children who would not play 
 with a companion until he had at least killed some 
 wild animal.^ The Scandinavian annals and legends 
 are full of such stories, in contrast to the records of 
 Slavonic races, who have always been averse to the 
 feud. We open the Eyilssaga^^ and find that a certain 
 man has two sons, one of whom, Egil, " is said to have 
 begun to make verses in his third year, and in his 
 seventh year killed a boy who had affronted him at a 
 game of ball." Another boy of nine could boast that 
 he had killed three men ; and Olaf Tryggvason at the 
 same age took up a feud and avenged his foster-father. 
 Instructive is the dialogue, ascribed to Egil, between 
 the earl's daughter and the boy who is her partner at 
 table.^ She despises such a youthful gallant: "Thou 
 hast never given a warm meal to the wolf (i.e. slain 
 men in battle). . . ." And the boy answers : "I have 
 walked with bloody brand and whistling spear, with 
 the wound-bird following me. . . ." Such were the 
 credentials of good society. To keep to the strict line 
 of the feud, we find Grettir coming back to Iceland, 
 after a long absence, to learn that his father is dead 
 and his brother slain. " After he had visited his 
 mother, the first errand was to his brother's baneman 
 
 1 Bekehrung d. norweg. Stamme, II. 172. 
 
 2 See P. E. MuUer, Sagabibl 1. 112. 
 
 8 C. P. B. I. 373, whence the translation. 
 
 (murderer) whom he speedilj^ killed." ^ So in Viga 
 Styr's saga, Styr boasts that he has killed thirty-three 
 men and never paid a penny of wergild. Later, he 
 meets death at the hand of a youth whose father he 
 had killed and to whom he contemptuously refused 
 the price of composition.^ Earlier accounts, and from 
 a different country, record the same deep-rooted Ger- 
 manic love of the feud, of bloodshed and revenge. 
 The Franks were so ferocious in their vengeance that 
 they even infected their Roman neighbors and sub- 
 jects.^ One story out of many may illustrate the 
 Frankish spirit. A queen, who in life had been a 
 monster of crime and oppression, lay on her death-bed. 
 Before she gave up the ghost, however, she demanded 
 companions in her death," in order that at her funeral 
 others should be wept for besides herself." She called 
 the king, and complaining that the medicine which 
 had been given her by her physicians was the cause of 
 her death, made him swear that, as soon as she died, 
 these two doctors should be slain with the sword ; 
 and it was done.^ Sometimes the tragedy shades 
 down into comedy. A Scandinavian saga tells of a 
 man who was hit on the neck by an iron pan, thrown 
 in a quarrel, and was slightly injured. Some years 
 later, wooing a certain woman for his wife, he is re- 
 jected by her relatives because he has never taken 
 vengeance on him who hurled the pan.^ 
 
 Sullenly and slowly feud yielded its rights to a 
 system of fines, — punishment would have been 
 
 1 Miiller, Sagabibl. I. 254. 2 ibid. I. 37 ff. 
 
 8 Loebell, Gregor v. Toztrs, p. 83. 
 
 * Greg. Tur. V. 35. See also Loebell, work quoted, pp. 38, 41 ff. 
 
 s Dahn, Bausteine, p. 104. 
 
182 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 183 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
 U 
 
 impossible, — ^nd did not come to an end, so far as 
 Germany was concerned, until the close of the fif- 
 teenth century .1 Where the feud would not yield to 
 the payment of a price, men turned to a quasi-process 
 of law deftly hidden in the guise of warfare. At first 
 sight, trial by battle as a legal remedy looks absurd 
 enough ; might is still right, as in the feud. We for- 
 get, however, that the old feud left no avenue open 
 for any sort of justice, and made the innocent suffer 
 in shoals for a wrong, — perhaps a right, — done by 
 one man who happened to be of their kin. Blood was 
 the test. The punishment was not only inherited, as 
 in our commandment, but collateral. Kemble ^ quotes 
 the indignant reproach of Wiglaf to the thanes who 
 have deserted their prince : every member of their 
 clan, every relative, he says, shall pay for the coward- 
 ice of these few men. For as the clan all shared in 
 the wergild^ so they were exposed to the feud : " re- 
 cipit," says Tacitus of the former, " universa domus." ^ 
 Accident, moreover, was no excuse ; a mere bit of 
 carelessness might lead to the death of a dozen inno- 
 cent relatives of the innocent cause of feud. The 
 famous myth of Balder shows this stern doctrine that 
 accident, so far as the blood-feud is concerned, must 
 be reckoned one with crime. Blind H9dhr is inno- 
 cent, in our eyes, of his brother's death ;^ but the 
 
 1 In the Diet of Worms, 1495. See Arnold, Deutsche Urzeit, p. 342. 
 But the Fehde of German nobles in the middle ages was not the same 
 thing as the older feud, the former being a sort of armed law-suit. For 
 Anglo-Saxon feud and composition, see Kemble, Saxons, I. Chap. X. 
 
 2 Saxons, 1 1. 235. Beoio. 2884 ff . 
 
 3 Germ. XXI. 
 
 * Loki puts in his hand the fatal mistletoe twig, and bids him cast it 
 in sport at Balder. 
 
 avenger, Wali, by the usual Germanic vow,^ neither 
 washes himself nor combs his hair till he has killed 
 H9dhr. Beda tells a story of an Anglo-Saxon war- 
 rior who was left for dead upon the battle-field, came 
 to life, and was captured by the enemy. Fearing 
 death if he made himself known, he said he was a 
 poor rustic; but when the "count" who held him 
 prisoner, amazed at certain miraculous circumstances, 
 asked him who he really was, and promised him his 
 life, the warrior confessed all. " Thou art worthy of 
 of death," answ^ers the king, " because all my brothers 
 and relatives fell in that battle ; ^ nevertheless, for my 
 vow's sake, I will not kill thee." 
 
 When this wide swath of injustice is considered, 
 the single case of a combatant in the trial by battle 
 seems justice itself, — though trial by battle is only a 
 circumscribed and legalized feud. Compare the Ice- 
 landic holmgang^ or duel, with the wholesale murders 
 of a feud like that described in the Nialssaga, Simi- 
 larly, the other forms of ordeal seem absurd; not, 
 however, if we regard them as the institution of men 
 who began to see that right was better than might, 
 and believed that God would defend the innocent 
 and confound the guilty. J. Grimm, in his account^ 
 of the ordeal, assumes that only the nobler phase of 
 it, trial by battle, was a frequent form of justice for 
 the freeman ; though both ordeal and duel strike their 
 
 1 So (Germ. XXXI.) among the Chatti, where the custom of letting 
 beard and hair grow till one has killed his man, is not confined to 
 special feuds, but is universal. After a great victory over the Romans, 
 Civilis "laid aside his hair," — '^barbaro voto . . , propexum. rutila- 
 tumque crinem . . . deposuit.^* Tac. Hist. IV. 61. 
 
 2 See Baedje Hist. Ecc, ed. Holder, IV. 22. '* Quia omnes fratres et 
 cognati mei in ilia sunt pugna interemti." ^ ^. ^, 908-937. 
 
 ;'l 
 
184 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 roots deep into our heathen antiquity. Divination and 
 lots were also regarded as an ordeal, and expressed the 
 will of the gods. 
 
 Trial by battle was known by the Germans of 
 Tacitus, and was regarded as an appeal to higher 
 powers. He mentions ^ the strange custom of decid- 
 ing the event of battle by a duel fought between 
 some captive of the enemy and a representative of 
 the home army ; the result of this duel was accepted 
 as an infallible sign of the greater issue. Champions, 
 too, might fight for their respective armies, — like 
 the Horatii and Curiatii. The Norse duel, mostly to 
 decide a personal quarrel, was fought on a holm, or 
 island, and hence called holmgdngr. The sagas tell 
 of many a holmgang ; that of Gunnlaug Snake-Tongue 
 and Hrafn, which resulted in the death of both, 
 caused the Icelanders to abolish such duels as judi- 
 cial process. An early case of combat for a lady's 
 honor is mentioned by Paul the Deacon.^ Queen 
 Gundiperga is accused of infidelity to her husband. 
 One of her own slaves, named Carellus, receives 
 permission from the king to defend the honor of 
 Gundiperga against her accuser. The duel takes 
 place before all the people, and the queen is vindi- 
 cated. 
 
 Such were the slow steps of rationalism as it won 
 inch by inch the territory of barbarous instinct and 
 superstitions. But the old customs died hard. No- 
 bler souls long looked on all these compromises and 
 compositions as degrading, and held blood to be far 
 better than gold. "I will not carry my son in my 
 purse ! " says an old Norseman as he spurns the prof- 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 185 
 
 1 Germ. X. 
 
 2 IV. 47. 
 
 fered satisfaction. In the Niahsaga, old Nial is told 
 that he too, as well as his wife, may leave the burn- 
 ing house where his sons have been surrounded by 
 their enemies. " No," he answers, " I am an old man, 
 unable to avenge my sons; and I will not live in 
 disgrace." 
 
 As a feud involved the family, it is clear that 
 something besides mere pride swelled the breast of 
 a father who counted his row of stalwart sons : it was 
 an assurance of present and future weal.i No feud 
 could be lightly undertaken against a powerful and 
 numerous family. Probably the average Germanic 
 brood was no smaller than in barren Iceland; and 
 there we read of such people as Hrut Herjolfson and 
 his two wives, who had sixteen boys and ten girls. 
 " When, in his old age, at the summer assembly of 
 the people, he appeared surrounded by fourteen 
 sturdy sons, he was the subject of numerous congrat- 
 ulations," 2 — and no wonder. To lose one of these 
 stalwart sons was a very serious thing for the Ger- 
 manic father. 
 
 Over wife and child, and every member of his 
 family, bond or free, the German had, in theory, an 
 absolute control. But religion and custom, what 
 Tacitus calls the honi mores^ set up certain restric- 
 tions which gradually hardened from tradition into 
 law. To sell wife and child was a last resort of the 
 Frisians.3 The Anglo-Saxon laws, and even the 
 church, recognized a sort of right which parents had 
 to sell their children into servitude, but endeavored 
 
 i"Quauto maior affinium numerus, tanto gratiosior senectus," 
 Germ. XX. 
 
 2 Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, 259. « Tac. Ann. IV. 72. 
 
 \ 
 
186 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 to curb the practice.^ To slay outright an able- 
 bodied member of one's household may have been 
 lawful, but, except in the case of punishment or 
 defence, was doubtless rarely exercised. There 
 would be a wholesome fear of the anger that the 
 spirit of such a slain relative would feel towards the 
 murderer and his kin. At last, individual freedom 
 of every sort yielded to the waxing authority of the 
 king, and his laws limited the power of husband and 
 father ; the state took up the old territory of kin and 
 clan. All, however, was done by slow approaches. 
 
 According to old Jutland laws, a man was per- 
 mitted to strike wife and child, provided he did it 
 with a staff or a rod, and broke no bones.^ Grimm 
 reminds us of Siegfried's theory and practice : — 
 
 So women should be managed, said Siegfried, man of main, 
 That from pert and haughty sayings they ever should refrain ; 
 
 and afterwards his wife bears testimony, as follows : — 
 
 Much have I rued my error, said Kriemhild furthermore, 
 Since for its sake my husband has beaten me full sore.^ 
 
 Corporal chastisement, even of adult members of the 
 household, was extremely common, lingered through 
 the middle ages, and under the head of " Wife- 
 Beating" is still a favorite topic with them that 
 make or read the newspaper. " As late as the seven- 
 teenth century in France," says Kemble,^ " it appears 
 that it was usual to flog the valets, pages, and maids 
 in noble houses." Mention is made of " a riot which 
 arose in Paris from a woman's being whipped to death 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 187 
 
 i 
 
 1 Kemble, Saxons, 1. 199. 
 3iV.L.805, 837. 
 
 2 R, A. 450. 
 
 4 Saxons, 1. 209. 
 
 by her mistress in August, 1651." Queen Elizabeth, 
 we know, was wont to beat her maids of honor black 
 and blue. Of course, the Germanic wife did not 
 venture, any more than her children, to lift a hand 
 against her husband. In Iceland, however, women 
 achieved a remarkable degree of independence, and 
 Weinhold gives an instance where a wife, openly 
 declaring that her husband had dared to whip her, 
 thereupon dissolved the partnership and left him, 
 taking all her fortune with her.i On the part of the 
 wife, direct and heavy insult aimed at her husband, 
 
 — acute symptoms, we may say, of the common scold, 
 
 — conspiracy against his life, and, above all, adultery, 
 were just occasion for her immediate death ; only the 
 husband was obliged to kill her openly, and to an- 
 nounce his act immediately to his neighbors. It was 
 mainly the efforts of the church which, little by little, 
 secured to the wife rights of person, if not of prop- 
 erty, nearly equal to those of her husband. 
 
 In general, it is safe to say that able-bodied persons 
 were seldom killed through the exercise of paternal 
 power. But there is no doubt whatever in regard 
 to the custom of exposure,^ applied to the very 
 old and the very young. Life was hard in those 
 days, and daily bread was often uncertain; strong 
 hands must pay for well-fed bodies. The weak and 
 sickly and old were more than superfluous; they 
 were a burden. Remorseless logic pointed to a 
 speedy relief. Particularly infants, whether by rea- 
 son of some deformity, or, as in the case of girls, 
 because they were not wanted in the family, — little 
 
 1 Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, p. 250. 
 
 2 " Exposition," Gibbon calls it. 
 
188 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Florence Dombeys, — were killed or exposed or, in 
 milder act, sold into slavery. Even the mere fact 
 that a new-born child was a girl often sealed its fate ; 
 male offspring counted so much more in the struggle 
 for existence. Mild survival of this is the traditional 
 law at Nestenbach, that the father of a new-born boy 
 has the right to two wagon-loads of wood from the 
 common forest, but only one load if the baby is a 
 girl.i Legend and poetry often veiled the old and 
 barbarous and cruelly practical custom, as in the 
 case where some dream or warning causes the parents 
 to expose the new-born infant, and so avert a calam- 
 ity which it is fated to bring upon the race. The 
 poetry of all nations is full of this. A rich Icelander, 
 Thorstein, just before the birth of his child, dreams 
 that he rears in his house a beautiful swan. Two 
 eagles come and fight fiercely for the swan, and at 
 last fall, both of them, dead to the ground, and the 
 swan sits sorrowful and mourns. Then came yet 
 another bird, and with him Thorstein's swan flew 
 away. A Norwegian skipper interprets Thoretein's 
 dream in the obvious fashion ; and when the latter 
 rides off to the assembly of the people, he tells his 
 wife that if she gives birth to a girl, it is not to be 
 reared, but exposed. The wife contrives that her 
 little daughter shall find a home with one of lier 
 relatives; and Thorstein's caution proves, as usual, 
 only a vain struggle against fate. His dream is ful- 
 filled; for Hrafn and Gunnlaug, the eagles of the 
 dream, fell in that holmgang already mentioned.^ 
 Thorstein, though a rich man and able to rear a 
 dozen children, excited by his action no more sur- 
 
 1 R. A. 403. 
 
 2 Gunnlaugssaga Ormstungu, ed. Mogk. 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 189 
 
 prise than that which modern folk feel over some 
 unusual piece of economy on the part of a wealthy 
 neighbor.! 
 
 When a Germanic child was born,^ it lay on the 
 floor (ham er d golfi, " the bairn is on the floor," that 
 is, "is born") until the father decided whether it 
 should be acknowledged as a member of his family, 
 or whether it should be exposed. In the fii-st case, 
 he lifted it up, or caused some one else ^ to lift it up ; 
 it was sprinkled with water, had a bit of honey 
 smeared on its lips, and so became a human child, a 
 member of the family and clan, no longer — save in 
 such exceptional cases as a general famine — liable 
 to exposure. This act of lifting up is synonymous 
 with fatherhood itself; and Saxo Grammaticus, 
 speaking of a certain man's child, does not say 
 "whom he had begotten," but "whom he had taken 
 ^P/' — quern sustulerat. Deformed children were 
 not taken up, but promptly exposed, — in oldest times 
 killed, — in the feeling that such lives were not worth 
 living, quite aside from the burden entailed upon 
 those who would support them. This exposing was 
 the business of the father, although, as Grimm points 
 out,* the legends soften down the barbarity of the act 
 by attributing it to those who have no direct author- 
 
 1 It is needless to remind the reader, save in merest allusion, how 
 universal was this custom of exposure among all the nations of old. 
 Romulus and Remus, (Edipus, stories of the East, the flotsam and jetsam 
 of literature drifting down the centuries and still claiming our tears in 
 the sympathetic verse of Chaucer, — a book would be needed to name 
 them all. 
 
 2 R. A. 455. 
 
 8 The nurse ; hence, says Wackernagel Kl. Schr. I. 12, the German 
 
 Hehamme. Kluge, Etym. Diet., s.v. C/. Danish 2orc?emoder, "eartb- 
 mother." • 4 ^^ j. 45^;, 
 
 
V 
 
 190 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 ity, like that family scapegoat, the stepmother. 
 Girls, as we saw, were often unwelcome guests ; and 
 a curious superstition was often fatal to twins, for 
 these, men fabled, could not both be legitimate chil- 
 dren. This superstition forms a basis for the mediae- 
 val legend of Octavian} The exposure itself took 
 place mostly under a tree or in a rude boat that was 
 given to the waves.^ There seems to have been a 
 vague notion that if the gods had any destiny in 
 store for the infant, they might see to its safety for 
 themselves; or else, the child passed for a sort of 
 sacrifice. The feelings of the child were not con- 
 sidered at all. Grimm quotes a passage from Gu- 
 drun, where children are forbidden to cry and weep 
 aloud, on penalty of being drowned. It is a rough 
 shock to sentiment when we think that this old and 
 hopeless piece of barbarism lies at the foundation of 
 our most exquisite myths, — Lohengrin the swan- 
 knight, Arthur the forest-foundling, and that mystic 
 Scild Avho in the prelude of our national epic, Beoivulf, 
 drifts in his boat, a child of destiny, to the shores of 
 a kingless land. 
 
 The right to expose a child ceased in ordinary 
 cases if food of any sort, especially milk or honey,^ 
 had passed its lips. There is a legend of the mother 
 of St. Liudger, which shows the old Frisian custom.* 
 She was to have been drowned immediately after her 
 birth, because she was "only a girl." A neighbor 
 woman, coming by and taking pity on the infant, put 
 
 1 There are English versions, one from the fourteenth century. 
 
 2 R. A. 459. 8 R, A. 457. 
 
 * Her name was Liafburg. The story is told in the Vita Liudgeri, 
 quoted at some length by Richthofen, Friesische Eechtsgeschichte, 
 II. 40G f . 
 
 (f 
 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 191 
 
 some honey on the child's mouth. The honey was 
 promptly swallowed, and in accordance with custom 
 the baby was allowed to live. Tests were often prac- 
 tised in the case of boys to see whether there was 
 promise of a vigorous life. Thus even for the water 
 baptism, if we may so style it, Holtzmann ^ takes the 
 very practical view that it was really a trial of hardi- 
 ness. If the boy stood the shock of immersion, he 
 had a strong constitution. The old Vikings thrust 
 a spear toward the child as it lay on the floor, and if 
 the little fist clutched at the weapon, good : the child 
 should live and be a man of his hands. The same 
 motif has crept into a legend of the Lombards, and 
 is told in all seriousness by Paul the Deacon, in his 
 history of that race.^ Once upon a time, he tells us, 
 a woman threw her seven little children into a pond, 
 to let them drown there. It chanced that King 
 Agelmund rode by the pond, and seeing to his aston- 
 ishment the wretched infants, he stopped his horse 
 and reached out towards them with his spear ; one of 
 them grasped it. Agelmund, moved with pity and 
 wonder, said the child would one day be a powerful 
 man, ordered him taken from the pond, had him care- 
 fully nursed and educated, and called him Lamissio.^ 
 When Agelmund died, Lamissio was made king of 
 the Lombards. Somewhat different was the test of 
 hardiness where a poor freedman died and left several 
 children. They were put together in a pit — this is 
 not precisely comfortable reading — and were suffered 
 to starve one by one to death : he who held out long- 
 
 1 Germ. Alterth. p. 212. 2 j, 15^ 
 
 8 From the word lama, a pond, explains Paul. It is our word loam^ 
 slime. 
 
192 
 
 I * 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 est was taken up in extremis and allowed to live on 
 the score of his tough constitution.^ 
 
 The cruel custom of exposure yielded but slowly 
 to the pressure of civilization and the teachings of 
 the church. As helpful as anj^thing was the instinct 
 of maternal pity and devotion and love, which 
 counted more and more as the position of women 
 was improved. Grimm ^ quotes from a Danish 
 ballad, where a mother puts her baby in a chest, 
 lays with it consecrated salt and candles, and goes to 
 the water-side. 
 
 Thither she goes along the strand 
 And pushes the chest so far from land, 
 Casts the chest so far from shore : 
 " To Christ the Mighty I give thee o'er ; 
 To the mighty Christ I surrender thee, 
 For thou hast no longer a mother in me." 
 
 Imperial laws took the merciful side. The Emperor 
 Valentinian issued an edict against what Gibbon 
 calls the "exposition of new-born infants." ^ But 
 nothing clings to life like an old and once universal 
 custom. When the popular assembly of Iceland 
 resolved to accept the Christian faith, the outvoted 
 minority submitted to be baptized on condition that 
 they might keep the right to expose their children, 
 as well as the privilege of eating horse-flesh. Evi- 
 dently the ceremony of naming a child, a sort of 
 baptism, had much importance in the heathen ritual ; 
 witness the sullen comment of Clovis, the Frank, 
 when his child died within a week after its baptism 
 
 1/?. J[.461. ^R. A. 457, ^59. 
 
 8 Decline and Fall, Chap. XXV. 
 
 
 
 \'¥ 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 193 
 
 by Christian rites : " Had it been consecrated (^dic- 
 tatus) in the name of my gods, it would have lived ; 
 but nov/ because it was baptized in the name of 
 your god, it could not live at all." ^ 
 
 Elaborate was the ceremony of naming a Germanic 
 infant; and with the naming went a gift. The 
 young Norse hero wanders silent and nameless till 
 he meets the Valkyria Svava, in the forest, and she 
 hails him and calls him Helgi. Then Helgi answers : 
 "What gift wilt thou give me with this name of 
 Helgi ? " Whereupon she tells him how he can find 
 a wonderful sword.^ Simrock says^ that a present 
 was demanded even when one in after life received 
 a nickname. Woden unwittingly gives a sort of 
 nickname to a tribe of men (" Langobardi "), — it 
 is a Hera-like trick of his wife, Frea, — and so is 
 forced to give them, along with the name, victory 
 over their enemies. Another gift came by right to 
 the Scandinavian child when it cut its first tooth ; 
 and this custom also, thinks Jacob Grimm, rests 
 upon old Germanic tradition. 
 
 The name itself was not so distinct and individual 
 an affair as it is now ; for the main thing then was to 
 attach the new-born child to his proper clan and make 
 him a member of that organization which meant so 
 infinitely much for our ancestors. This name, which 
 bound its owner to his family, was chosen with 
 especial care. It will be remembered that the habit 
 of fastening a general name on the descendants of 
 one man, and then giving each individual a distin- 
 
 1 Greg. Tur. II. 29, 31. 
 
 2 Hildebrand, Edda, Helgakv, 11 6-8. Grimm, G. D. S:^ 108. 
 8 Mythol. p. 595. 
 
 -j_.. 
 
194 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 guishing " Christian " name, was unknown to the 
 Germans, and indeed begins to be a settled custom 
 only with the twelfth century.^ Not additions to 
 the family name, but variations of it, made the Ger- 
 manic rule. Hildebrand names his son Hathubrand, 
 — that is one sort of variation. Somewhat different 
 are the cases where " the mother was called Ada, the 
 daughter Oda (Uota) ; the mother Adalhilt, the 
 daughter Uodalhilt ; the mother Baba, the daughter 
 Buoba." Still another variation meets us in a rhyme 
 like Haukr and Gaukr.2 We have already seen 
 the first of these systems of name-giving in the 
 Taeitean divisions of the Germanic race, — the 
 tribes Ingsevones, Istsevones, Irminones (for Her- 
 minones), descended from three brothers; in the 
 gods ( W) Odin, Wili, We ; and one could add a long 
 list, — Thusnelda and Thumelicus, Vannius and 
 Vangio,^ and so on. Patronymic names in -ing are 
 of course very common in Anglo-Saxon. By their 
 aid, and with the ending -hdm or -tun we trace back 
 many an English town to the head of a single 
 family.* For the deeper question about these names, 
 their meaning and purpose, Scherer^ has made the 
 following general statement. The names that the 
 primitive German gave to his boy or girl " were for 
 the most part like the names of Catholic saints, 
 who are given to the children as patrons and pro- 
 tectors ; these German names betokened patterns of 
 life, ideals, which must be followed and imitated." 
 Often the name was a compound of two members; 
 
 1 Weinhold, D. F. 96. 2 ibid. 97. 
 
 8 See for longer lists, Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, p. 266 ff. 
 
 * See Kemble's valuable lists. Saxons, I. 459 fif. 6 G. D. L. 10 f. 
 
 f 
 
 '' 
 
 ^r, 
 
 it' 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 195 
 
 and as in Aryan times, one of these members was 
 often used alone as a pet or household name. Favor- 
 ite compounds were such as Gerhard^ the spear-bold 
 man,i or Gertrude (^Ger-dru^)^ "the spear-strong," 
 applied to one of Woden's battle-maidens.^ " In 
 general," says Scherer, " the names of men in the 
 Germanic period expressed the qualities which make 
 for success in the great battle of life, — wisdom, 
 strength, courage, readiness with weapons, power, 
 leadership, passionate and determined purpose. All 
 pointed to struggle or conquest." Among the names 
 of women, however, Scherer sees two sharply sun- 
 dered groups. One set of names had as basis the 
 qualities of peaceful life, love, faithfulness, good 
 cheer, beauty, grace, reminding us of nymph and 
 dryad, of the light mist upon lake or meadow. The 
 other group had names of battle and warfare, like 
 Briinhild, " she who fights in armor." Whether the 
 brilliant historian is right in assigning the respective 
 origins of these groups to two distinct periods, one 
 of which cherished peace as its ideal, the other de- 
 lighting in war and bloodshed alone, is a question 
 still open to debate. There can be no doubt, how- 
 ever, that at the time now under consideration the 
 warlike principle prevailed in overwhelming degree. 
 " She sat at home and span" was the coveted epitaph 
 of the Roman matron ; but the mother or wife of 
 German warriors went with them to battle and once, 
 perhaps, bore shield and weapon at their side. 
 
 Mythology, too, as Miillenhoff points out, played 
 
 »» 
 
 1 The Danes in B^owidf call themselves Gdrdene, " Spear-Danes.' 
 
 2 For details, see reference above, and also Weinhold, Deutsche 
 Frauen, p. 11 ff. 
 
 * 
 
196 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 its part in Germanic names ; ^ and not inactive was 
 the influence of heroic legend. Just as the patriot of 
 some decades ago named his son after one of the rev- 
 olutionary heroes, so a Germanic lad might receive 
 the name of a Siegfried, a Gunther, a Welant.^ 
 
 The early life of the Germanic child was passed in 
 the narrow range of his paternal household ; rich and 
 poor alike grew up together, unclad and dirty, an 
 ideal childhood.^ So lived the son of the freeman 
 until the time when, in presence of the popular as- 
 sembly, after judgment had been passed upon his fit- 
 ness, he took spear and shield and became a member 
 of the state. A somewhat romantic tale of Paul the 
 Deacon, about Alboin (the .^Ifwine of our own 
 poem, Widsid) and his youthful bravery, asserts that 
 Alboin, while yet a prince, in battle with the Gepidse, 
 killed their king's son in single combat. The war- 
 riors of Alboin thereupon begged his father, the king, 
 that he would admit the youthful hero to the royal 
 table. "No," answered the king; "you know our 
 custom that a king's son may not sit at meat with his 
 father till he has received gifts of arms from some 
 other king." ^ This gift of arms, whether so intricate 
 a ceremony as here, or the everyday occurrence of a 
 German community, was the all-important moment of 
 the freeman's life. For arms were the sign of his 
 freedom. " They go about no business," declares 
 Tacitus of his Germans, "either public or private, 
 
 1 Zur Runenlehre, p. 44 ff. 
 
 2 Symons in Paul's Grdr. d. germ. Phil. II. 1. 1, p. 10. 
 8 *'Nudi ac sordidi," Tac. Germ. XX. 
 
 4 Paul. Diac. I. 23. What follows (24) is a strained account of Ger- 
 manic hospitality. Young Alboin goes as guest to the king whose son 
 he has slain, and asks the latter *s arms as gift. 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 197 
 
 > 
 
 unless armed. But no one is allowed to take arms to 
 himself until the state (civitas) is satisfied that he 
 knows how to use them. Then in the public assem- 
 bly, either one of the princes, or the father, or a rela- 
 tive, adorns him with shield and spear. That is with 
 them the toga and the first honor of youth; until 
 this occasion he is reckoned of the household, but not 
 of the state." ^ Later law and custom ordain that at 
 seven years of age a boy is taken from the control 
 of the women and begins his education among men. 
 At eight, with many tribes, he had a wergild* To 
 prove his fitness, says tradition, an apple and a bit of 
 money were placed before him : if he grasped at the 
 apple, he was not worth reckoning ; if at the money, 
 he was worth half the wergild of a man.^ At ten 
 year's an Anglo-Saxon youth seems, under two codes 
 of law, to have become free of his guardian,^ so far as 
 the latter's hold on the former's property was con- 
 cerned ; and among the West-Goths a youth of ten, 
 if he fell sick, could dispose of his estate.^ Other 
 Anglo-Saxon laws fix twelve years for such responsi- 
 bilities; and this is legal age in other places. At 
 fifteen, others were thought ready to bear weapons, 
 — an age which agrees better with our notions of 
 fitness; and eighteen, and even twenty-one, have 
 judicial sanction. 
 
 From such a time till old age reduced his strength, 
 the freeman was active member of the state, bore 
 arms, took part in council, had the duties of fighting 
 and the privileges of idleness, and was thus distin- 
 guished from the unfree. In education, says Tacitus, 
 
 1 Tac. Germ. XIII. 
 
 8 Ibid. 413. Schmid, p. 12. 
 
 2 R. A. 411. 
 4 R. A. 414. 
 
/ 
 
 198 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 199 
 
 there was no distinction. A playmate in boyhood 
 could be the slave of riper years. Weinhold thinks 
 that boys were often sent to other households for 
 purposes of general education, — mostly to a rela- 
 tive;^ but this is only a guess. Certainly there 
 was nothing in the nature of our modern schooling 
 with book and pen ; a robust contempt for this busi- 
 ness of monks and women held strong throughout 
 the middle ages, and was doubtless based on a gen- 
 uine old Germanic sentiment, — latent, of course, 
 in the absence of an alphabet. But it was otherwise 
 with the education of muscle, agility, courage. Look, 
 for example, at the accomplishments of our Jarl in the 
 Rigsmdl? Gymnastics of some sort our forefathers 
 undoubtedly practised ; witness their sword-dance. 
 This was education and sport, task and theatre, com- 
 bined.^ The young men of free rank carried out the 
 dance and had charge of it; they were clad as in 
 battle, naked to the waist, with sword, or framea^ 
 in the hand. Then they leaped or threw themselves 
 about, among or under the quivering, flashing swords. 
 Miillenhoff assumes ^ that this was done to a musical 
 accompaniment ; " from the start, Germans knew fife, 
 horn, and probably a sort of drum." Something of 
 the same sort, though performed in full armor, was 
 the Pyrrhic dance of the Greeks, in which all motions 
 and postures of combat were imitated, and the whole 
 
 1 Deutsche Frauen, 1. 105. 
 
 2 See above, p. 62. Wackernagel {Kl. Schr. 1. 14) refers to Seneca 
 Epist. 37. 
 
 8 Tac. Germ. XXIV. It is the subject of an admirable monograph 
 by Miillenhoff, printed in the Festgahen fur G. Homey er^ Berlin, 1871, 
 p. Ill ff. 
 
 4 A sort of spear, the national weapon. See below, p. 250. 
 
 5 p. 117. 
 
 affair was made into a training-school for actual war- 
 fare. There was a similar Italian dance. Our Ger- 
 manic tongue made little difference between " play " 
 or "dance," and "fight"; both were expressed by the 
 word Me, of which our discredited " lark " or " larking " 
 is lineal descendant. Among the many " kennings " 
 for " battle," derivations of this Idc are beloved meta- 
 phors: "sword-lark," " warriors'-lark," "shield-lark"; 
 or else the compound is with plega, " play " : " spear- 
 play," "sword-play," "linden-play" (so, of the shield), 
 and many more. 
 
 Such an education might well lead up to a vigor- 
 ous manhood and, by our reckoning, to a green old 
 age. But the second childhood of a German had 
 all the risks of his first ; exposure was as common a 
 fate for the graybeard as for the infant. " Old age," 
 cries Lear bitterly enough, "is unnecessary"; but 
 the ancients came to this conclusion without any 
 such cruel tuition as his. "The young tree," says 
 the hero of a legend told by Saxo Grammaticus, 
 "is to be nourished; the old tree should be hewn 
 down";^ and the phrase is characteristic. For not 
 as a gentle messenger, an " angel," not as the softly 
 approaching genius with inverted torch, beckoning 
 the soul, or " standing pensively, his hand lifted to 
 his cheek," did death come to the German ; ^ it 
 charged full upon him, a relentless warrior. The 
 Germanic conception of death was neither the comely 
 youth, twin-brother of sleep and son of night, as 
 the Greeks represented him,^ nor yet the repulsive 
 
 1 Arbor alenda recens ; vetus excidenda. 2 Grimm, D. M. 700. 
 
 8 Lessing, Wie die Alten den Tod gehildet, Berlin, 1769, p. 5 f. Death 
 carved to resemble an Amor, see p. 10 f . 
 
200 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 skeleton of our mediaeval traditions ; ^ death, mostly 
 personified by the Germans as " Battle," or the like, 
 seized each man and bore him away. "If Hild 
 (Battle) shall take me," says Beowulf, thinking of 
 his possible death. Germanic life was all struggle, 
 stress, battle ; and death was only the hardest out of 
 many buffets. All races, says Victor Hehn, in a 
 certain stage of the development of reflection come 
 to the notion that death is no great evil ; ^ and he 
 quotes the famous story told by Herodotus about a 
 Thracian tribe who wept when a man was born and 
 rejoiced at the death which set him free from reach 
 of human ills. Probably we pity those gray-haired 
 victims of exposure more than they pitied themselves ; 
 and they could have echoed in all simplicity, so far 
 as old age was concerned, the words of the Preacher 
 who praised the dead that were already dead more 
 than the living which were yet alive.^ We must be 
 careful, however, not to slip any poetry into the other 
 side of the account. The German did not philos- 
 ophize very much; the stolid fashion of a peasant, 
 face to face with death, gives us a better hint. It 
 was not a sentiment that old and tired should die ; it 
 was a custom. Still, a rough sentiment often moulds 
 our habit, and those weary veterans of life may well 
 have said with the Greek poet that old age is intoler- 
 able and hated even by the gods ; while they were 
 not modern enough to join Lear in his magnificent 
 appeal for sympathy : " O heavens, if you do love old 
 men^ . . > if yourselves are old^ . . . send down and 
 take my part ! " 
 
 1 J. E. Wessely {Die Gestalt des Todes und des TeufeU in der dar- 
 stellenden Kunst, Leipzig, 1876) gives abundant details. 
 
 2 Work quoted, p. 438. * Ecdesiastes, IV. 2. 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 201 
 
 > 
 
 k 
 
 i 
 
 \ 
 
 The prime and best of life, so reckoned the ancients, 
 lay for men in the period from twenty to fifty, and 
 for women from fifteen to forty, — of course, a rough 
 average. These particular figures apply to the West- 
 Goths,^ but would doubtless hit the Germanic notion 
 as a whole. Sign of one's abiding manhood was the 
 power to mount and back a horse, swing sword, and 
 walk without staff or other help.^ Three-score-and- 
 ten is the biblical limit of strength ; but as among 
 the Romans, sixty years were enough to bow the 
 Germanic frame. 
 
 Now while these years of strength endured, it was 
 good for the German to live ; he had no doubts about 
 that. Life was sweet to him who had all powers 
 of mind and body, and a fair share of good fortune. 
 The primitive and irresistible logic of it is charmingly 
 expressed in one of Chaucer's happiest bits of humor, 
 where Arcite is thrown from his horse and mortally 
 hurt just after the tournament in which he has won 
 his peerless bride : — 
 
 ** Why woldestow3 be deed," thise wommeii crye, 
 ^^And haddest gold ynowgh, and Emelye f '* 
 
 But when the senses were dulled, strength waning, 
 disease and pain getting upper hand, there came to 
 the German, not our modern weariness of life, which 
 is often found in very strapping young gentlemen, 
 but a willingness to leave the useless abode, to pass 
 into the next world, to try one's chances in that region 
 
 1 R. A. 416. 
 
 2 Ibid. The German laws required that one could walk in the com- 
 mon highway " ungehabt und ungestabt." R. A. 96. Later, a woman's 
 test of general ability was her power to walk to church. 
 
 8 '• Wouldst thou." See Cant. Tales {KnighVs Tale), v. 2836 f. 
 
202 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 of spirits whose existence no one seriously doubted. 
 
 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter of 
 
 Germanic life from one of the older Scandinavians : ^ 
 
 "I have slain this Tusk-gnasher, first of the fourth 
 
 ten (ix, he is the thirty-first I have slain). ... I 
 
 have cut down thirty-five men as quarry for the 
 
 black-feathered raven. I have got me a name for 
 
 mansla3dng. May the fiends take me when I am no 
 
 longer able to wield my sword ! Let men bear me 
 
 into my barrow then ; the sooner the better." Another 
 
 sings of old age : " I grope in blindness round the 
 
 fire. There is a cloud on my eyes. This is the ill 
 
 that sits upon the white fields of my brows. My gait 
 
 is tottering. . . . The forest of my head is falling; 
 
 desire has failed me, and my hearing is dried up."^ 
 
 Such a life had no redeeming features ; it was no 
 
 hard matter to leave it. Moreover, we know the 
 
 Germanic wish to die in some violent way, not to 
 
 pine and dwindle into one's grave, — a wish that 
 
 flames out in the wild " Death Song " of Faust, and 
 
 hails him happiest who dies in the midst of victory 
 
 or love : — 
 
 O selig Der, dem er im Siegesglanze 
 
 Die blut'gen Lorbeern um die Schlafe windet, 
 
 Den er nach rasch durchrastem Tanze, 
 
 In eines Madchens Armen findet ! 
 
 Warriors in Scandinavia gashed themselves with 
 Odin's spear, and so avoided that dreaded " death in 
 the straw." ^ The Gautrehssaga tells of a lofty rock 
 
 1 It is of the heathen period. Translation from Vigfusson and 
 PoweU's C. P. B. II. 70. 2 C. P. B. II. 73. 
 
 8 Of course, a common barbaric trait. See Ammian. Marc. 31, II. 22, 
 for the sentiment of the Alans ; those who lived to old age, or died of 
 sickness, were treated with contempt. 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 203 
 
 whence those who were weary of life were wont to 
 cast themselves down; a case is mentioned where 
 father and mother, led by their children to the cliff, 
 leaped "glad and joyful to Odin." i On the other 
 hand, there was plenty of involuntary faring to Odin, 
 — or to the mistress of the cheerless world. Says Ari 
 the Icelander: " There was a great winter of famine 
 in Iceland in the heathen days, at the time that King 
 Harold Grayfell fell, when Earl Hakon took the rule 
 in Norway. It was the worst of famines in Iceland. 
 Men ate ravens and foxes, and much that was not 
 meet for food was eaten, and some slew old folks and 
 paupers, hurling them over the cliffs into the sea. ... "2 
 It is related that a formal motion was made and carried 
 in the Icelandic assembly, that on account of the 
 famine and cold, all the old, the sick, and the infirm 
 should be abandoned to starvation.^ The ancient 
 Prussians and Lithuanians killed their useless old 
 people without scruple; while worn-out servants, 
 sickly children, beggars not " sturdy," and such per- 
 sons, shared a similar fate. Certain tribes of the 
 Gothic race killed their old and sick, — this in the 
 sixth century.4 Beda, in telling about the conver- 
 sion of Sussex, mentions the poverty of the place, 
 and the ignorance and superstition of the inhabitants, 
 who in time of famine would flock to the shore of the 
 sea, and, forty or fifty iogetYi^vJunctis miser e manihus, 
 leap into the waves.^ Survivals abound. Grimm 
 
 1 /?. J. 486. 2 Vigf usson-Powell, C. P. B. II. 35. ^R A 487 
 
 ^ Grimm, Kl Schr. II. 241 ; Procop. d. bell. Goth. II. 14. It 'is worth 
 
 noting that " though relatives kindled the funeral-pile, a stranger was 
 
 employed to give the death-wound." 
 
 s Ba^d. Hist. Ecc. Gent. Angl. IV. 13. The custom is well established 
 
 for the ancient Hindus, as well as for a host of modern barbarians • it 
 
 was doubtless a general Aryan habit. ' 
 
204 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 quotes an old English tradition of " the holy mawle, 
 which they fancy hung behind the church door, which, 
 when the father was seaventie, the son might fetch to 
 knock the father in the head as effete and of no more 
 use." Long after the " mawle " ceased to be used, 
 the tradition remained.^ In poetry and legend we 
 find the same sort of survival. A single example, 
 perhaps a little strained and rhetorical, may be taken 
 from the German WunderhornP' A boy carries part 
 of an old horse-blanket to his aged grandfather, who 
 is kept in abject misery, shivering and starving in an 
 outhouse. "Why the blanket?" asks the father, 
 meeting the boy. Then the boy answers : — 
 
 I take the half, he said, ♦ 
 
 Unto thy father's bed. 
 
 The other half I keep 
 For thee, when thou shalt lie 
 Where now thy aged father 
 Is thrust away to die. 
 
 Against this treatment of the aged seems to stand 
 in sharpest contradiction the well-known reverence 
 for gray hairs and the wisdom that they brought, the 
 piety and veneration for old age, which we find in 
 all the writers of antiquity. Not only Nestor of the 
 Homeric poems, but the sentiment lying behind words 
 like presbyter^ or the Anglo-Saxon ealdormonn^.oT our 
 epic phrase /r^c? ayid god^ a sort of hendiadys express- 
 ing the fortitude and experience of mature years, — 
 these are good witnesses. But there is no great con- 
 tradiction. The latter sentiment applied originally 
 
 1 Grimm, Kl. Schr. VII. 175, quoting W. J. Thorns in a work edited 
 for the Camden Society, 1839. 2 /)^g vierte Gebot. 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 205 
 
 to a healthy, vigorous old age, the wisdom of saga- 
 cious counsel still fortified by a sound body. What- 
 ever, on the other hand, bore the visible mark of 
 death, the palsied frame, the sightless face, was ab- 
 horrent and unclean ; and this was what the heathen 
 hastened to put out of sight. As the feeling of 
 respect for old age in and for itself gained ground, 
 the early prejudice grew weaker ; in this. Sir Henry 
 Maine 1 sees one of the chief signs of advancing 
 civilization. 
 
 1 Early Law and Custom, p. 23. 
 
 I 
 
206 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 Household industries — The smith — Commerce — Exports — 
 Amber — Myths relating to commerce and seafaring — Ships — 
 Love of the sea — Money and bargains. 
 
 Asking the free-born primitive German what trades 
 he had, we feel sure that if he could " speak back," 
 it would be with a choice array of primitive German 
 abuse. He was a soldier, he. His women and his 
 slaves carried on nearly all of his industries. Among 
 these, weaving would take a prominent place; for 
 the Germans had known the art and practised it long 
 before they came in contact with the south.i That 
 " white cloth " of divination, mentioned in the G-er- 
 mania, upon which the priest cast the kevils and read 
 the runes— -if runes they were — was doubtless of 
 home manufacture. Their linen they exported, and 
 it fetched a good price; while the dresses of Ger- 
 man women were preferably of the same material.2 
 "Linen as popular garb," says Hehn, "is of northern 
 (i,e. not Roman or oriental) origin.'' ^ in the Scan- 
 
 1 Evidence of the making of woollen cloth is found in graves of 
 the early bronze period in Scandinavia ; and towards the close (several 
 hundred years before our era) of that age, linen makes its appearance. 
 Kalund in Paul's Grdrs. II. 2. 210. 
 
 2 Tac. Germ. XVII. a Work quoted, p. 149. 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 207 
 
 dinavian lands, linen served in the place of money. 
 Of industries which are somewhat allied to weaving* 
 and supply the family needs, we may mention soap- 
 making, another old Germanic art. Leather tanned 
 with the aid of bark gave shoes; while the sinews 
 of cattle and the fibre of the linden tree furnished 
 cords and ropes. All this was household work, and 
 so remained far into the middle ages. That reproach 
 still clings to the trades of the tailor and the shoe- 
 maker, and is due to the old association with 
 labor done only by women or slaves. Earthenware 
 must have been made,i and came under the same 
 category. 
 
 But there was a craft well worthy of the freeman 
 and one that lay close to the heart of Germanic life, 
 — the craft of the smith, a noble art, held high by 
 all warrior races. " Smith," of course, is the same as 
 Latin faher ; and we remember that in the Rigsmdl, 
 one of the sons of Karl, the freeman, is named Smith, 
 the artisan. " Smith " is the masculine pendant to 
 wehhe, the woman who weaves, later wehster. Just 
 as in Anglo-Saxon, a wife, by the kenning already 
 quoted, was called weaver-of-peace, so the word 
 "smith" was used to form compounds in the sense 
 of " one who causes or makes." Thus we have ''lore- 
 smith " (Idrsmi^^ for learned men, "laughter-smith" 
 for him who makes laughter or fun, and " war-smith" 
 (wigsmiiS) for the warrior.2 This general meaning of 
 faher or artisan was slightly broadened in Scandina- 
 vian, and narrowed in Anglo-Saxon. In Old Norse, 
 as Grimm reminds us,^ it meant not so much " work- 
 
 1 Tac. Oerm. V. 
 8 D. M. 453. 
 
 2 Bode, Kenningar i. d. ags. Dicht. p. 48. 
 
208 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 man," as one skilled in the arts generally, particularly 
 the master-builder. In Anglo-Saxon it refers to the 
 worker in metals, while the still common " wright " 
 (wyrhtd) was he who wrought in wood of all sorts, 
 ship or wagon or house. ^ 
 
 Like Vulcan of old, the Germanic smith found his 
 way into mythology and cult. In England we know 
 him as Wayland the Smith ; ^ and our oldest English 
 lyric, the song of the minstrel Deor, introduces him 
 in its first verse. His legend or myth was a great 
 Germanic favorite ; in the north it is elaborated into 
 one of the most striking poems,^ and allusions to it 
 are frequent even in the scanty wreckage from the 
 literature of our forefathers. Various accounts made 
 W^land grandson of a king and a mermaid, and son 
 of a giant, — by no means a born thrall ; and his 
 deeds are deeds of a god. The legends of Weland 
 seem to have begun in Low German territory ; and 
 when both Beowulf and Waldere, in our early epic, 
 call their swords " Wayland's work," we know that 
 this is praise indeed.* A later version of the Sieg- 
 fried legend makes that splendid hero, the Germanic 
 Achilles, learn the art of a smith.^ 
 
 Manifold, even in that simple life, were the prod- 
 ucts of this craft. Tools, to begin with, must be 
 
 1 In Wright- Wiilker, Glossaries, Col. 272, the heading "Incipit de 
 metallis " covers smi'S = faber, smi^-^e = officina ; while in Col. 112 there 
 is a list of Wrights. However, " Latomus " is stanwyrhta. 
 
 2 His cave is pointed out in Berkshire. Scott's treatment of Way- 
 land in Kenilworth is hardly fair, though that other smith, Henry Gow 
 in The Fair Maid of Perth, has a more heroic role. 
 
 8 Charmingly told in the translation of the Grimms (Berlin, 1815, 
 1885), or in Vigfusson-Powell, C. P. B. 1. 169. 
 
 -^ Wiilker-Grein, Bibl. d. ags. Poesie; Beow, 455; Waldere, A. 2. 
 See B. Symons in Paul's Grdr. II. 1. 60 f. 
 
 fi Wackernagel, Kl, Schr. I. 47. 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 209 
 
 made ; and with these tools were fashioned the rough 
 instruments of farming life, the houses and their 
 scant furniture, the wagon — such as that of the god- 
 dess Nerthus, — and above all the ornaments, the 
 drinking-horns, and the weapons.^ Of course with 
 the passage from age of bronze to age of iron, the 
 smith's art increased in its variety if not in its im- 
 portance, and with iron, brass, silver, lead, and glass 
 came into consideration.^ Probably, as is so often the 
 case with conquering tribes, the Germans learned the 
 finer shades of this craft from captives of a more civil- 
 ized but less warlike race. The Celts are the most 
 obvious teachers of manual training for the Germans, 
 though Roman examples must be reckoned with. 
 Warriors often made their own weapons ; ^ and as in 
 modern days, some leader doubtless saw from time to 
 time the chance to improve his warriors' weapons, 
 and so introduced reforms. A recent African in- 
 stance may be quoted; the chieftain of a certain 
 tribe made a considerable change in the character 
 and use of his people's favorite arm, and in conse- 
 quence subjugated a number of neighbor tribes who 
 depended on the older weapon. The forging of 
 iron weapons became general for Germany in the 
 times of the wandering ; but tradition and fair evi- 
 dence* would seem to make the beginnings of the 
 industry far older than contact with Rome. Nomadic 
 tribes have often been good weapon-smiths. In later 
 times, the Vandals and the Lombards had high repu- 
 
 1 Wackernagel, Kl. Schr. I. 44 f. 2 Montelius, work quoted, p. 89. 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 172. 
 
 ■* Tac. Germ. VI. : " Even iron is not abundant (he has mentioned 
 the scarcity of gold and silver) , as may be gathered from the character 
 of their weapons. Few use swords. ..." 
 
I 
 
 210 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 211 
 
 tations in this art. A Vandal king elevated to the 
 rank of noble a smith who had especially distin- 
 guished himself.! The sharp spear-heads of the men 
 who fought so bravely against Drusus and Germani- 
 cus, and put Roman military skill to all its shifts, 
 must have made plenty of work for the weapon- 
 smith. The sword is the darling weapon of Ger- 
 manic song, though it was seldom seen in the hands 
 of the ordinary warrior. It is not the early national 
 weapon, like the short lance ; but what a wealth of 
 affection is showered upon it by the later heroic 
 poetry! It is called "the work of giants," "Way- 
 land's work," "the heirloom"; runes were cut upon 
 it; it had will and passion; mystery was about it. 
 It had its pedigree of owners ; its fate seemed almost 
 human. What, then, as time went on, and Germanic 
 life came to be all warfare, — what of its maker? 
 Was he not as well paid and as highly held as the 
 Armstrongs or the Krupps of to-day ? 
 
 Ornaments being so dear to the primitive German, 
 the goldsmith was counted among the "noble " crafts- 
 men. Of great interest to us is the so-called golden 
 horn of Gallehus (Denmark), filched, alas, long ago 
 from the Copenhagen museum, but represented there 
 by an accurate copy in gilded silver. It dates from 
 the fifth century ; and the runic inscription upon it 
 shows linguistic forms (in early Norse) older than 
 the Gothic. This inscription, the mark of the Ger- 
 manic smith, runs as follows: "I Hl%estr, son of 
 Holte (or simply, of Holt), made the horn." 2 Sev- 
 
 1 Wackernagel, A7. Schr. I. 47. 
 
 2 It is a Germanic verse, and reads: " Ek hlewagastir holtingar 
 Lorna tawido." It is in the older runic letters. 
 
 eral other products of the goldsmith's industry have 
 been found in Denmark with inscriptions of the same 
 date as that of the golden horn. They surely justify 
 our assumption that even the early Germans not 
 only stole ornaments, but made them. The skill of 
 Weland in making the most artistic ornaments, such 
 as are detailed in his story, leads us to the same 
 inference.^ 
 
 Passing to the general esteem in which our early 
 Germans held the smith, we find that when such a 
 trade was plied by an unfree person, his wergild rose 
 very high, the goldsmith's highest of all.2 In Anglo- 
 Saxon laws the king's smith is mentioned as an im- 
 portant person.3 When a gesithcund man, that is, 
 one of the great persons of the kingdom, moves his 
 residence, the laws of Ine allow him to take with him 
 his reeves (gerSfan, — socios suds'), his smith, and his 
 child's nurse.* We hear in another place of a special 
 punishment for injury done to the hand "of the 
 harper, the goldsmith, and the embroideress." ^ 
 
 Trade, which has so often opened new countries to 
 the civilized world, found early its way into Ger- 
 many. True, the account of Caesar shows little of 
 what we now call commerce ; traders, he says, are 
 
 1 The splendid arms of the Cimbrians in Italy, and especially the 
 brazen bull which they carried about with them (Plutarch's Afarn/s), 
 are hardly in point. There had been too many opportunities for plun- 
 der and trade during their long migrations. But those ** images of wild 
 animals taken from the sacred groves," which Tacitus mentions (Hist. 
 IV. 22), are better evidence. 
 
 2 Cf. T. Wright, Celt, Roman, and Saxon, p. 486, with references. 
 
 3 Schmid, Ges. p. 2. ■* Schmid, p. 50. 
 
 s Lex Anglor. et Werinor. tit. V. 20 ; see Thorpe's Lappenberg, Anglo- 
 Saxon Kings, 1. 120, Bohn's ed. "Music and the smith's craft," says 
 Wackernagel, Kl. Schr. I. 49, with reference to Jubal and Tubal Cain, 
 " are the oldest industries." 
 
212 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 admitted among the Germans, but it is mainly that 
 the spoils of war may be disposed of rather than for 
 any lust after imported articles. Especially is the 
 importing of wine forbidden, because the Germans 
 think they are made too soft and effeminate by 
 its use.i Moreover, the products of the spinning- 
 wheel soon found their way into a profitable market. 
 On the whole, however, such commerce as the Ger- 
 man knew must have been of a fitful and fragmentary 
 kind. Holtzmann says roundly that a band of rob- 
 bers has no trade. Again, we know that the German 
 hated cities ; and these are of course the result and 
 prop of trade, the local fixing of a market. Still, 
 traders went about among the German tribes; and 
 Baumstark reminds us ^ of the Germanic hospitality 
 as likely to cover even these isolated merchants. 
 They were probably half-breeds or freedmen. No 
 freeborn German, we may conclude, ever stooped to 
 trade ; he fought for his living, although there was 
 much incidental plunder. Tacitus tells us that when 
 no war was near at hand, the adventurous young 
 man took up distant and doubtful quarrels and found 
 fight where he could, — a sort of speculation a fonds 
 perdus. Even the plunder of these ceaseless wars 
 made a merchant desirable, and a sense of advantage 
 prompted the German to accord certain rights to a 
 foreign trader.^ Wine, — when not forbidden, as by 
 
 1 Cces. B. G. IV. 2. This is said of the Suevians. The Ubii, another 
 German tribe, who lived close to the Rhine, admitted traders freely. 
 IV. 3. Roman traders among the Germans are mentioned, e.g. Tac. 
 Hist. IV. 15. 
 
 2 Germ. p. 300. 
 
 8 In later times, of course, the king protected merchants. See 
 Alfred's laws, p. 34; " Einleitung," LXIV., and below, p. 288. 
 
 i 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 213 
 
 •1 
 
 I 
 
 1^ 
 
 Caesar's Suevi, — ornaments of that flashy charac- 
 ter, doubtless, which have always attracted primitive 
 races, and such matters, were coveted property ; and 
 it was occasionally good to procure them without 
 fatiguing preliminaries with the legions. Baumstark 
 breaks a lance, in his usual impetuous fashion, for 
 the native German trader, apart from the warriors ; 
 and insists that such home merchants bought of the 
 Roman and sold to their remoter countrymen. Taci- 
 tus expressly tells us that the interior tribes carry on 
 commerce by barter ;i while the others use Roman 
 money. We may feel sure that there was consider- 
 able trade in salt, the oldest commodity traded from 
 tribe to tribe .^ 
 
 Germanic exports were slaves, amber, skins, woven 
 stuffs, chiefly linen, soap, goose-feathers, and proba- 
 bly many other articles which had become essential 
 to Roman luxury. The imports were not of a very 
 solid character, for each Germanic household pro- 
 vided its own necessities ; in early times iron and its 
 finished products, chiefly weapons, may have made 
 an exception, but a law of the empire wisely forbade 
 the exporting of iron in any shape from Rome into 
 Germany. With no cities to collect and divide labor, 
 the German did considerable part of his own do- 
 mestic trading at the religious festivals, when scat- 
 tered members of a clan or confederation of tribes 
 came together to worship a common deity. The fair 
 or Messe of to-day represents the old combination of 
 cult and trade, though the latter element alone sur- 
 vives. 
 
 1 *• Permutatione mercium utantur." Germ. V. See Baumstark, 
 p. 197. 
 
 2 See Hehn's monograph, quoted above (Das Salz). 
 
214 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 For the trade with Rome, carried on by that class 
 of half-breeds and nondescripts always found on the 
 border between civilized and uncivilized lands, we 
 may safely assume amber as the oldest and most im- 
 portant staple.i The export of amber led to the first 
 communications recorded between the shores of the 
 Baltic and the civilized world about the Mediterra- 
 nean ; 2 Greeks, Syrians, and Egyptians knew its use. 
 To the Romans amber was first known as a product 
 of the Baltic coast about the time that Drusus made 
 his great cam.paign, a few years before the beginning 
 of our era ; ^ and it soon became a very popular arti- 
 cle in the Roman market. Used by rich and poor,* it 
 was employed not only for charms and amulets, but 
 was recommended by physicians as a potent remedy 
 for disease. Indeed, cheap or "imitation" jewelry 
 was made of it, and it furnished a good counterfeit 
 of certain precious stones, like the topaz. In the 
 time of Nero a Roman knight went to the source of 
 supply, and brought back enough to cover the nets 
 which surrounded the circus, — an enormous freight, 
 with one piece weighing thirteen pounds alone.^ 
 
 The Germans themselves were not blind to the 
 merits of their chief export. Graves of scattered 
 races dotted about the continent, often far from the 
 bit of territory which produced the whole supply, 
 testify to the love of our forefathers for ornaments 
 and charms of amber. Tacitus, it is true, says that 
 the people who gather what in their own tongue they 
 
 1 Wackeraagel, Kl. Schr. 1. 72. a See above, p. 11. 
 
 8 Miillenhoff, Deutsche Alter thumskiinde, II. 31. 
 
 < Dahn, Bausteine, I. 20 f. 
 
 « Plin. Nat. Hist. XXXVII. 11, 2, quoted by Wackernagel, I. 76. 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 215 
 
 call glesurriy a word evidently connected with " glass," 
 do not use it, but export it in the raw state.^ This, 
 however, does not exclude the use of it by neighbor- 
 ing Germanic tribes. Valuable as this export seemed, 
 there was one article which the Romans sent in ex- 
 change to Germany, a shrewd bargain for the north, 
 and worth a wilderness of amber, — the alphabet. The 
 so-called runic alphabet, about which theories of the 
 wildest possible nature have been advocated, is now 
 generally admitted to have been introduced among 
 German tribes about the end of the second century 
 after Christ, and is simply the Roman system of let- 
 ters, modified by the needs of cutting in stone or 
 wood, and by the inevitable variation of imperfect 
 and distant copies.^ 
 
 The Germans further exported an unsightly, but 
 tough little breed of horses, not, of course, the wild 
 race referred to above as a part of Germanic food, but 
 such as were trained to the saddle, — that is to say, 
 to military work ; " for nothing is held so shameful 
 and effeminate among them as to use the saddle." ^ 
 Moreover, a few articles were exported for the 
 Roman table; such were the beets and turnips of 
 which Tiberius was so fond.^ 
 
 All this trading, or nearly all of it, was naturally 
 overland ; for from time immemorial there had been 
 a trade-route from the Baltic to the south. Of traf- 
 
 1 Germ. XLV. For the old paths of commerce from Germany to the 
 south, see Wackernagel, Kl. Schr. I. 75 f. 
 
 2 See p. 468, below ; and the standard work of L. F. A. Wimmer, Die 
 Rtmenschrift, German trans, by Holthausen, 1887; also Sievers in 
 Paul's Grdrs. I. 238 flf . 
 
 8 Caesar B. G. IV. 2. 
 
 * Plin. Nat. Hist. XIX. 28, and Wackernagel, Kl, Schr. 1. 62. 
 
216 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 fic by water there is not so clear a record,^ but it 
 reaches back into the realm of myth; and as the 
 smith's art should properly begin with a Germanic 
 Vulcan, so we look for our earliest seafarers to the 
 myths of Sc^af, of Wade, and of Hilde. Leaving 
 aside for the present all myth for myth's sake, we may 
 point to the venerable form of Sc^af as representative 
 of the seafaring instinct in our oldest ancestors, the 
 people who lived along the German Ocean, and on 
 both sides of the Cimbrian peninsula.^ Connected 
 with this purely mythical and shadowy but enticing 
 figure are the clearer-outlined forms of Scandinavian 
 Freyr and that earlier Nerthus, goddess of plenty, 
 whom Tacitus has drawn for us. Peace and plenty 
 go with trade ; and we are sure enough that Freyr 
 was the merchant-sailor's god, and gave him favoring 
 winds. Of Ing, the founder of our Ingsevonic race, 
 we have vague hints of a seafaring proclivity ; and 
 the famous swimming-match of Beowulf and Breca, 
 translated above,^ is thought by Miillenhoff to be a 
 myth of the northward progress of culture and trade 
 in the figure of the cult-hero or god making his way 
 through the frozen and unfriendly seas. But these 
 are no new things; the tradition of them reaches 
 back into a dim antiquity. Likewise of primitive Ger- 
 manic origin, thinks Symons,* is the widespread myth 
 or legend of Hilde, full of the plunge of ocean bil- 
 lows; it found special welcome and cultivation in 
 the Netherlands,^ and is the basis of the beautiful 
 German epic Kudrun, Again, Wade,^ that is " the 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 78 ff. 2 See above, p. 49. 8 p. 114. 
 
 4 In Paul's Grdr. II. 1. 51 ff. 
 
 6 There is allusion to one of its characters in our oldest English 
 lyric, Deor. ^ Symons, as above, pp. 11, 55. 
 
 U 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 217 
 
 wader," originally doubtless a sea-monster of some 
 sort, is the father of our smith Wayland, and is 
 mentioned, along with his boat, by Chaucer.^ So 
 thoroughly are all these myths and legends mingled 
 with the sights and sounds of ocean, that we are jus- 
 tified in thinking of the Ingaevones as a race of sea- 
 farers from the most primitive times. One strong 
 proof of this seafaring instinct is found in the burial 
 of Germans in ship-like tombs, or in real boats, and in 
 the universal belief in a spirit-land whither souls are 
 ferried in some ghostly ship.2 
 
 Let us now turn from myth to history. As usual, 
 the exaggeration of the former is offset by a most 
 melancholy depreciation in the latter. Pliny and 
 Tacitus tell us of the awkward canoes and the hol- 
 lowed tree-trunks used along the northern coast of 
 Germany .3 There is a dash of the picturesque in the 
 following story of an eye-witness, the historian Vel- 
 lejus Paterculus, who served with Tiberius in the 
 German campaigns. The Roman army was en- 
 camped upon the Elbe in the very heart of Germany. 
 On one side rose the camp of Rome ; the opposite bank 
 glittered with hostile arms, until the imperial ships 
 
 1 Cant. Tales, v. 9299, in the Merchant's Tale : " Wades hoot (hoat)." 
 Miillenhoflf in IlaupVs Zst. VI. 67 fiP. comments on this and other men- 
 tion of Wade. 
 
 2 See below, p. 326. 
 
 8 Holding, we must remember, thirty men or more apiece, and 
 making head against the fleet of Rome. Germans also used captured 
 Roman ships. Back, moreover, of all Roman influences, we find in the 
 rock-pictures of the Scandinavian bronze-age, representations of boats, 
 high in bow and stern, and meant for rowing. In the early iron age 
 boats were built of admirable lines, and calculated for some thirty 
 oars; we should prefer to trust a Northman's judgment of good boats 
 rather than the opinion even of Admiral Pliny. See Kalund in Paul's 
 Grdr, II. 2. 210 f . 
 
218 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 arrived. About this time an elderly German of fine 
 appearance and, to judge from his arms, of high rank, 
 took boat — a trough-like affair of hollowed wood — 
 and rowed to the middle of the river, asking that he 
 might be permitted to land and gaze upon the Caesar 
 in all his state. Then follows a wealth of compli- 
 ment for Tiberius; but as Vellejus was himself 
 present, and as the scene must have been near the 
 mouth of the Elbe, we may without great danger 
 behold in the curious barbarian one of our own fore- 
 fathers, or a near relative of them, and accept the 
 picture as one among the very few authentic ancestral 
 portraits from that time of which we can boast owner- 
 ship.i From such a boat to the exquisite lines of the 
 Viking ship now preserved at Christiania, and said to 
 be over a thousand years old, is no leap of a decade or 
 so. Still, we may be sure that these Germans of the 
 coast knew in their way as much about boats as the 
 Romans did ; and their rough canoes may have been 
 seaworthy enough. The Chauci actually used them 
 on plundering expeditions to the coasts of Gaul. In 
 the third century our Saxons ^ suddenly appear as 
 accomplished sailors, and their swift keels measure the 
 ways of ocean in all directions, — witness the Saxon 
 shore of Britain, and the long line of fortified points to 
 guard the colony against a tireless foe. These Saxons 
 are said to have learned the art of shipbuilding by 
 the treachery of Carausius.^ Hehn, too, insists that it 
 was only when they hjid borrowed from neighboring 
 
 1 Veil. II. 107. 
 
 2 Also tribes from the Baltic, like the Heruli. Mullenhoflf, Beovulf, 
 p. 19. 
 
 8 Lappenberg says he was of Germanic extraction. Anglo-Saxon 
 Ki7igs,^ I. 67. 
 
 II 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 219 
 
 people the idea and use of sails that the Saxons were 
 
 able to play their pirate parts; but not quite so 
 
 rapidly are sailors made. In the G-ermania,'^ Tacitus 
 
 describes the Norsemen as ignorant of sails ; their boats 
 
 are two-prowed, and are not arranged with permanent 
 
 rows of oars. But as oars still remained a prominent 
 
 feature of the Viking ships, so we are fain to think that 
 
 even the sailless craft of our Saxon forefathers were 
 
 at home on the high sea itself, and dared many a bit 
 
 of piracy with nothing but stout hands to propel as 
 
 well as man the boat. As time passes, these Saxons 
 
 achieve a great reputation for their skill and ferocity 
 
 upon the water. Sidonius Apollinaris describes them 
 
 in a letter, as well as in one of his poems ; 2 they are 
 
 perfectly at home upon the stormy sea, and govern 
 
 their boats in a fashion evidently puzzling to the 
 poet.3 
 
 The booty won by these raids can hardly be called 
 merchandise, but it made occasion, and even need, of 
 later traffic. We know that the Scandinavian trade 
 with Ireland began in and even before the Viking 
 period ; the influence of Irish art is plainly seen in 
 Norse ornamental work.^ Even the Viking raids, 
 that organized system of plunder pure and simple 
 which attained its height about the tenth century, 
 opened, like the crusades, a way for commerce. And 
 let us particularly remember that this Viking instinct * 
 lay in the race ; its great success came with its great 
 opportunity. The beginnings of it, however, are to 
 be sought in those rudest possible forerunners of 
 
 \ ^I^rV. 2 Both extracts in Zeuss, p. 490. 
 
 8 " Hostis est omni hoste truculentior. Improvisus aggreditur, pra- 
 visus elabitur. ... Si sequatur, intereepit; si fugiat. eyadit." 
 ^ Montelius, work quoted, p. 136. 
 
220 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 1 
 
 modern Red Rovers, — the wretched boats burnt or 
 otherwise hollowed from a tree-trunk, in which the 
 indomitable Chauci faced a Roman fleet (whether 
 these naked desperadoes were any more prcedones, — 
 it is Pliny's word, — than the imperial visitors them- 
 selves, is not at all certain), or the lintres, the light 
 canoes assigned to the same neighborhood by 
 Tacitus.^ 
 
 Trade, as may be seen, ran fairly abreast of all this 
 plundering, even on the unsatisfactory footing of 
 stolen goods.2 There were profits large enough to 
 tempt the daring trader; and does not commerce 
 nearly always begin with its wares in one hand 
 and a sword in the other? It must have been a nice 
 art in those old days to tell a pirate from a peaceful 
 trader or visitor ; and the duty of the •" strand ward " 
 at Hrothgar's chief harbor could have been no sine- 
 cure. Striking is the picture of this coast-guard who 
 rides along the headlands to watch the stretch of sea, 
 and spying the boat of Bdowulf, gallops down to 
 meet him at the strand, shakes the long spear, and 
 asks what has brought him and his vassals hither, 
 peace or war : — 
 
 What are ye, then, of armed meu, 
 mailed folk, who the foaming keel 
 have urged thus over the ocean ways, 
 over water-ridges the ringed prow ? ^ 
 
 With the art of oar and sail went the knowledge 
 of the pilot. Such a person guides Beowulf and his 
 
 1 Ann. XI. 18. 
 
 2 When in B^ow. 57, certain treasures are called of feorwegum, 
 "fetched from far," are we to infer a peaceful Importation or mere 
 plunder ? » B€ow. 237 ff . 
 
 jg!; i j«i «' 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 221 
 
 \ 
 
 men upon their journey over the sea, and is called a 
 lagucrceftig mon^ " one who knows the waters." With 
 the opening of history we find our forefathers pos- 
 sessed by a passion for voyage and ocean-adventure ; 
 it fills their descendants of to-day; and we reason- 
 ably infer it in those older ancestors of whom history 
 is silent, and whose deeds waver doubtfully in the 
 mist of legend and tradition. Die Nordsee ist eine 
 Mordsee; its first Germanic victim, "long-headed 
 blond " or what not, has had no lack of followers.^ 
 
 Lastly, we turn to those figures in which Germanic 
 poetry has expressed its love of the sea, of ship and 
 storm and life upon the waves. As we read the early 
 pages of Grein's collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry, 
 how the monotony is broken when once the fiery 
 singer of " Exodus " fairly comes in sight of the Red 
 Sea ; and what wealth of image and trope to describe 
 the triumph of that " hoary warrior," ocean, over the 
 hosts of Pharaoh ! No more sympathetic picture has 
 been drawn by an Anglo-Saxon poet than where the 
 wanderer 2 in exile falls asleep at his oar and dreams 
 again of his dead lord and the old hall and revelry 
 and joy and gifts, — then wakes to look once more 
 upon the waste of ocean, snow and hail falling all 
 around him, and sea-birds dipping in the spray : — 
 
 Him seems at soul that he sees his master, 
 clips him and kisses and lays on his knee 
 head and hand (as erewhile he used 
 in days that are gone), of the gift-throne fain. 
 
 1 Wackernagel {Kl, Schr. 185) remarks that practically all technical 
 terms used by sailors are of Germanic origin, and that marine activity, 
 even when shown by Celtic races, is due to Germanic beginnings. 
 
 2 Poem of same name, Grein-Wulker, Bibl. I. 285, 37 ff. 
 
222 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Then once more wakens the weary outlaw, 
 sees before him fallow waves, 
 plunge of sea-birds, spreading plumage, 
 hoarfrost and snow with hail commingled. . . . 
 
 So fares the man fated " to stir with hands the rime- 
 cold sea." Yet another picture of the same sort 
 greets us in the Seafarer. ^ These are descriptions ; 
 let us look a moment at the poetical figures themselves, 
 the kennings for sea, ship, and sailor. For " sea " 
 Bode counts twenty " literal " terms in Anglo-Saxon, 
 and could add more. Of figurative terms we have 
 such kennings as : the home of the whale, the realm 
 of monsters, the sea-fowl's bath, the pathway of the 
 whalcj the swan-road, the sail-street, the beaker of 
 the waves, the realm of billows, the water-fortress, 
 the wave-roll, the salt-stream, — and that difficult 
 word, gdrsecg. The frozen sea is called " waves' fet- 
 ters." For "ship" we have the wave-stallion (we 
 still say a ship rides at anchor), sea-horse, sea-swim- 
 mer, wave-walker, surf-wood, the tarred board, the 
 wave house, the curved prow, the ringed prow (on 
 account of the ornaments of the bow). A sailor is 
 called sea-rider, or guest of the waves, in addition to 
 a number of literal terms.^ These are Anglo-Saxon, 
 but the life of the Scandinavian Vikings developed 
 such simpler kennings into an ingenuity and obscurity 
 which belong more to puzzles than to ordinary verse. ^ 
 Commerce nowadays implies an exchangeable 
 medium and interest on capital. The latter, says 
 Tacitus, was unknown to our Germans ; and out of 
 
 1 Wulker-Grein, I. 290 flP. 
 
 2 See Bode's dissertation on Kenningar in d. Ar/s. Dichtitng, 1886. 
 « Examples in Vigf usson-Powell, C. P. B. II. 457 ff. 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 223 
 
 this fact he makes great trumpetings for their virtue. 
 The currency, he says, was in terms of flocks and 
 herds ; ^ and we infer that a definite kind of animal — 
 in Scandinavia it was the milch-cow — made a unit 
 of value .^ Three one-year calves are there worth one 
 cow, while a seven-year bull is worth two cows, and 
 a stallion from four to ten years old equals one cow. 
 "Three times eighty " pounds of sheep's wool were also 
 worth one cow. So ran Scandinavian computation, 
 though cloth or linen was often reckoned as standard 
 of value. Milk and cheese have here and there 
 passed for money.^ The Anglo-Saxon values of 
 flocks are set forth in the laws ; ^ as "a sheep with its 
 lamb is worth one shilling until fourteen days after 
 Easter," or " the horn of an ox is worth ten pennies 
 (jpceningd).^'* In the seventh century, horses were 
 used as standard of value, and fines levied in corre- 
 sponding terms.^ But actual money in the shape of 
 Roman coins was known even among the Germans of 
 Tacitus. Probably to prevent the use of counterfeit 
 coin in their trade,^ Germans, as Tacitus narrates, 
 preferred old Roman coins of the Republic, many of 
 which had serrated edges and could not be clipped ; 
 silver, moreover, they preferred to gold. All this 
 is evidence of bargain and sale, as well as mere ex- 
 change. Among the more important commercial 
 transactions, we may safely reckon the sale of real 
 estate, a species of trade which, in whatever form and 
 
 1 Germ. XXI. 2 Von Amira in Paul's Grdr, II. 2, 154. 
 
 * Rochholz, Deutscher Glaube und Branch, 1. 12. 
 ^ Schmid, p. 48, §§ 55, 58, 59. 
 
 6 Otto I. " condemnavit Everhardum centum talentis aestimatione 
 equorum." R. A. 686 f. 
 
 6 Wackernagel, Kl. Schr. I. 64 ; Germ. V. 
 
M 
 
 224 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 TRADE AND COMMERCE 
 
 225 
 
 frequency, must have been familiar to the ancient Ger- 
 mans. This we may fairly infer from the symbolism 
 in later transactions of the sort. A stick or branch 
 from the growing timber, a piece of the actual turf 
 or sod, a blade of grass, were handed in presence of 
 witnesses to the new possessor.^ The cleverness and 
 presence of mind of William the Conqueror are 
 nowhere better seen than in the jest with which he 
 rose from his fall on touching English ground, with a 
 handful of earth as symbol that he took possession of 
 the realm. This appealed to the men whose Scandi- 
 navian blood still flowed in comparative purity. 
 
 Of regular Germanic professions there can be even 
 less record than of trade. The healing art was largely 
 bound up with religious rites, as the charms and 
 incantations testify ; ^ but there was the beginning of 
 a science in the selection of herbs and simples. The 
 confusion of both methods may be seen in such a 
 collection as the Rev. Mr. Cockayne's Leechdoms, 
 Wortcunning^ and Stareraft of Early England.^ 
 Women had much to do with these things ; and the 
 sibyl was no doubt invoked for aid in case of disease 
 or hurt. It is curious enough that painful attacks of 
 gout or rheumatism were attributed to the arrows of 
 the " hags," the mighty women who course the sky, 
 and send their shafts at the unwary mortal.* This for 
 the matter of ordinary medicine ; but so far as surgery 
 was concerned, Weinhold^ is of opinion that an age of 
 constant warfare and battles would attain considerable 
 
 skill in the treatment of wounds, the art of amputa- 
 tion, and kindred matters. As for other professions, 
 the schoolmaster was emphatically " abroad," and the 
 lawyer was chieftain or priest.^ 
 
 1 For the monopoly of legal lore by the Indian priests, see Sir H. 
 Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 46. 
 
 1 R. A. 112 ff. 2 See below, p. 423. 
 
 » Master of the Rolls Series, London, 1864-1866. 
 ■* See below, p. .372. The Germans still call such a twinge Hexen- 
 schuss. 5 Altnord. Leben, 387. 
 
 ••' • 
 
226 
 
 gekma:nic origins 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 227 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 Military service of two kinds — War the chief business of 
 Germanic life — Courage — Types of the warrior — Cowardice — 
 Germanic weapons — Armor — Cavalry — Importance of the in- 
 fantry — Tactics of the army — The onset — Second kind of 
 military service — The comitatus — Its meaning in Germanic life 
 and history — Age at which the German took up arms. 
 
 Unquestioned and absolute lord of his household, 
 the free German had well-defined duties towards the 
 state. These duties were military and civil ; and, as 
 we may well imagine, the military were of chief im- 
 portance. In Anglo-Saxon times, both varieties are 
 represented by the three obligations laid upon every 
 free citizen (thane) : to repair the burg or fortified 
 place, to mend the bridges, and to serve in the militia.^ 
 Military service, obligatory upon every Germanic cit- 
 izen, called him in time of need to take his place in 
 the general army, which was simply "the folk in 
 arms." ^ A second sort of military service was volun- 
 tary ; the free man fought abroad under foreign 
 princes or wherever war could be found. But service 
 in the main army was a very frequent matter, calling 
 for and developing the supreme Germanic virtue, — 
 
 1 See, among other cases, Schmid, p. 224 (iEthelr. V. 2G). 
 
 2 Waitz, I. 402. 
 
 a virtue that was born in the freeman, and made 
 strong in him by every possible device of example 
 and training. In fact, the whole education of a 
 Germanic youth was a lesson de contem7ienda morte.^ 
 Now Rome was a military state and was founded 
 upon the idea of a folk in arms ; but the despemte 
 courage of the German warrior made an almost 
 uncanny impression upon the legions. As for the 
 Germans, they had no false modesty about their 
 merits. During the reign of Nero, certain Frisian 
 ambassadors came to Rome and in the course of their 
 entertainment were brought into the theatre. Here 
 they quietly and uninvited took the seats of honor, 
 remarking that no people in the world surpassed the 
 Germans in courage. As we have repeatedly noticed, 
 they always went about armed, no matter how peace- 
 ful their business of the moment ;2 and a man unarmed 
 was no better than a slave. They took their weapons 
 to bed with them, as we may read in the account of 
 Beowulf's watch in the hall on the night when he 
 expects a visit from the monster Grendel.^ There 
 are some very curious regulations in the Anglo-Saxon 
 laws with regard to the degree of blame and the fine 
 attaching to a man who carries his spear so carelessly 
 over his shoulder as to injure other people ; ^ and 
 we may see the earliest advances of law over license 
 in the edicts against drawing a weapon in the hall 
 
 1 Miillenhoff's fine summary may be quoted: "Etenim majoribus 
 nostris fortitude non mode summa sed prope divina virtus ac sola 
 pugna esse videbatur, qua simul et omnis viri virtus et suprema om- 
 nium fatalis vis cemeretur." De antiq. Germ, poesi, p. 12. 
 
 2 Germ. XIII. J. Grimm, K. A. 287. 
 
 8 See also Lehman, in the Germania, Vol. XXI. p. 494. 
 4 Schmid, p. 90, § 36. 
 
228 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 or presence of the king.^ Spear and shield are an 
 easy metonymy for warrior, and warrior is synonymous 
 with man ; hence the legal phrase of " spear-side " for 
 the male line of descent, in contrast to the " spindle " 
 of the female side. We still hear occasionally this 
 phrase of "relatives on the spindle side" used for 
 maternal kin. King Alfred's will speaks of the 
 spere-healfe and the spinl-healfe? 
 
 When the German was not fighting, he loved to 
 feast in his hall and hear good songs and tales of 
 war. " To hear of battle and conquest was the Ger- 
 man's delight; "3 and long after his conversion to 
 Christianity, it is the deeds of valor which most 
 attract him in the Bible and the legends of the 
 church. The poet of the Heliand, with his evident 
 partiality for " valorous Earl Peter," and the revel 
 of battle-metaphors which describe the attack upon 
 Malchus, shows what he would do if only the quiet 
 gospel narrative afforded him an opportunity. Com- 
 ing back to the Anglo-Saxons, we find the subject of 
 Judith offering unusual attractions to one of our old 
 but nameless poets ; the resolute widow smiting off 
 the head of drunken Holofernes, the ensuing fight, 
 the rout of the heathen, are all close to the Germanic 
 heart, and it responds in a fiery piece of epic, per- 
 haps our finest fragment of the oldest period. From 
 their scraps and shards of poetry alone we could 
 
 1 Alfred's Laws, Schmid, p. 74. 
 
 2 Quoted from Thorpe's Diplomatorium, p. 491, in Wright's Woman- 
 kind in Western Europe, p. 59. "Das nechste blut vom schwert [here 
 takiog place of spear] geboren erbet, und da kein schwert vorhanden, 
 erbet die spille." R. A. 163, 171. 
 
 8 Grimm, Andreas und Elene, XXIV.; Ten Brink, Geschichte d, 
 engl. Lit, p. 66 f . 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 229 
 
 tell why Tacitus calls the Germans "a race that 
 thirsts for dangers." ^ The passion began with in- 
 fancy. Tacitus, speaking of the Tencteri, a Low 
 German tribe which excelled in horsemanship, says : 
 " Not greater among the Chatti is the renown of the 
 foot-soldier than the fame of the horseman among 
 the Tencteri. So the ancestors established it, and 
 so the offspring imitate. It makes the sport of 
 children, the rivalry of youth, the habit of age."^ 
 What Tacitus means by sport of children is evidently 
 their early skill in sitting and managing a horse; 
 but a certain commentator looks deeper. Evidently, 
 he says, the Tencterian children begin their chival- 
 rous career "on wooden rocking-horses."^ Caesar, 
 too, bears testimony to this training of the German 
 youth. "All their life is spent in hunting and in 
 military exercise." * Seneca speaks of their " tender 
 children," who early learn to " brandish the spear." ^ 
 A host of later Roman witnesses could be called, 
 when the almost generous admiration of great cap- 
 tains like Csesar, and statesmen like Tacitus, changes 
 into the tone of fear. When Salvianus speaks of the 
 Saxons as "ferocious [efferi]," we have a whole com- 
 mentary on the changed attitude of Rome towards 
 Germany. True, there is no lack of justification for 
 the phrase. Whenever we wish to see any Germanic 
 trait in its most exaggerated form, we look to Scan- 
 
 1 " Gentes periculorum avidas." Hist. V. 19. 
 
 2 Germ. XXXII. 
 
 8 We quite agree with Schweizer-Sidler that this view is *^fast 
 lacherlich." 
 
 * B. O. VI. 21. 
 
 6 Epist. 36. 7. Other references of the kind will be found in Miil- 
 lenboff's article on the Sword-Dance, cited above, p. 112. 
 
230 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 231 
 
 dinavia. Of course, the " Bearsarks,'' the Berserker^^ 
 are the stock illustration of the old Norse ferocity 
 and lust for battle ; yet according to Vigfusson and 
 Powell,^ this matter of the Bearsark rage and frenzy 
 has been vastly exaggerated. " Bearsarks were really 
 chosen champions;'' and they doubtless made great 
 clamor when they went into the fight, with " their war- 
 whoop, and the rattling of sword and spear against 
 shield," which only agrees with the Tacitean account 
 of the noise made by a German line of battle at the 
 first wild onset. Bearsark, gays our authority, means 
 simply the fur coat of the nobler henchmen. We 
 may remember that the Germans of Tacitus wore 
 skins. That these men were gentle, is not asserted ; 
 but they were not crazy. The Germanic tempera- 
 ment was savage, uncertain, and gloomy; pent up 
 in the narrow Norwegian valleys, ^ increased by 
 seclusion and intermarriage, these characteristics 
 took an acute form. Even in recent times, the 
 Norwegian's knife flashed out on very slight provo- 
 cation. Battle would naturally fan their fury to its 
 height; but it was all in the way of natural, not 
 artificial ferocity. The Bearsarks were not pro- 
 fessional lunatics. 
 
 The prime quality of barbaric courage is a fine 
 contempt for death. Of this we shall have more to 
 say under the head of Germanic belief in immortal- 
 ity ; here we may consider it as it affects the war- 
 rior. High over all suspicion of rhetoric rises the 
 
 1 Maurer, Bekehrung der Norweg. Stamme, II. 408, makes it thus, 
 and refers the name to the same idea as that of werewolves. Others 
 insist on baresarks, because they went into fight without armor. 
 
 2 C. P. B, I. 425, 530. s ibid. p. 426. 
 
 death-cry of Ragnar Lodbrok, as he lies in the pit 
 full of serpents : — 
 
 Lapsed is Hfe's hour; laughing I die.i 
 
 It was the Germanic virtue to take death with this 
 "frolic welcome." The Atla-Kvi^a or Old Lay of 
 Atli (Attila) gives us an excellent illustration, drawn 
 in sharper lines than the corresponding scene of the 
 Nibelungen Lay. The translation is by Vigfusson 
 and Powell: 2 — 
 
 " They asked the brave king of the Goths ^ if he 
 would buy his life with gold. [Then said Gunnar,] 
 'Hogni's bleeding heart must be laid in my hand, 
 carved with the keen-cutting knife out of the breast 
 of the good knight.' They carved the heart of 
 Hialli (the thrall) from out his breast and laid it 
 bleeding on a charger and bore it to Gunnar. 
 
 " Then spake Gunnar, king of men : ' Here I have 
 the heart of Hialli the coward, unlike to the heart 
 of Hogni the brave. It quakes greatly as it lies on 
 the charger, but it quaked twice as much when it 
 lay in his breast.' 
 
 " Hogni laughed when they cut out the quick heart 
 of that crested hero, he had little thought of Avhim- 
 pering. They laid it bleeding on the charger, and 
 bore it before Gunnar. 
 
 " Then spake Gunnar. . . . ' Here have I the heart 
 of Hogni the brave, unlike the heart of Hialli the 
 coward. It quakes very little as it lies on the charger, 
 but it quaked far less when it lay in his breast.' 
 
 1 "Lifs ero liSnar stundir, laejandi skal-ek deyja." See C. P B II 
 341 flf. Grimm, G. D. S. 89 f. 
 
 '^ I. 48 1. 8 Gunnar. 
 
232 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 "... The band of warriors put the king alive into 
 the pit that was crawling with serpents. But Gun- 
 nar, alone there, in his wrath smote the harp with 
 his hands ; the strings rang out." 
 
 When the German could no longer " drink delight 
 of battle with his peers " in that " game of swords," 
 as his most popular kenning termed the battle, he 
 found nothing left to live for, and was fain to die. 
 So died by their own hand those noble Sigambri, 
 " men of mark " in their clan, whom, though ambas- 
 sadors, Augustus treacherously disarmed and dis- 
 tributed among various cities: "out of very shame 
 they put themselves to death." ^ 
 
 Indeed, wherever we look, — at the boys who learn 
 to back a steed and send spears home to the mark, at 
 the warlike names of man or woman, at the actual 
 combat, and if, perhaps, we include the fight which 
 late Scandinavian myths insist shall end the world, 
 — everywhere the evidence presses upon us that our 
 ancestors were " fond o' fechtin' " to a degree rarely 
 met with in history. The very metre of their poetry is 
 the clash of battle, and knows scarcely any other note. 
 This passioji of bravery, not uncommon in barbarians 
 of a mounting race, was further strengthened in the 
 German by his belief in another world. The belief 
 itself we shall consider later, but its fruits we may 
 briefly notice in this place. In the Pharsalia of Lu- 
 can,2 the connection of Germanic courage with Ger- 
 manic faith is strongly asserted; and the native records 
 themselves are full of the same testimony. The song 
 of Ragnar Lodbrok, from which a quotation was just 
 made, contains a passage which shows how bravery 
 
 1 Dio Cass. 55. VL, and Deutsche Vorzeit, p. 304. « I. 458 ff. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 233 
 
 and faith went hand in hand. " The fearless man," 
 says Ragnar, "does not quail before death. I shall 
 not come into Withri's [Woden's] hall with a word of 
 fearT Not, we can almost sa}^ not as a tired actor 
 going off the scenes did a German die; but rather 
 as the actor, fresh from his rehearsal, waiting for the 
 word that sends him on the stage before an audience 
 of warrioi-s and kings. What better entrance than 
 in the thick of fight, with a song of defiance and a 
 laugh? This passion of ferocity, tutored by cen- 
 turies, results at last in the calmer and nobler but 
 still cheerful courage of Harry the Fifth at Agin- 
 court, or of his father's antagonist in the lists at 
 Coventry : — 
 
 As gentle and as jocund as to jest 
 
 Go I to fight : truth hath a quiet breast. 
 
 Sometimes the consolations of death are based 
 entirely on the bravery which has dared it, on the 
 source of it, and on what we may call its artistic 
 setting and merit. Fine are the dying words of 
 Wolfhart in the Nibelungen Lay.^ He and the 
 youngest of the Burgundian kings have given each 
 other mortal wounds. 
 
 And if my kin be minded to weep that I am dead, 
 Go tell the best and dearest that this is what I said : 
 They must not wail and mourn me, there is no reason why; 
 A king's right hand hath slain me, a lordly death I die. 
 
 This has a fine ring, and lacks not for a late echo 
 in the words of Hotspur before Shrewsbury field : — 
 
 An if we live, we live to tread on kings ; 
 
 If die, brave death when princes die with us.^ 
 
 1 N, L. 2239. 
 
 2 /. Hen. IV. V. 2. 
 
I 
 
 234 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 But we are overwhelmed with material of this sort ; 
 take, for example, that highly dramatic scene of 
 the Nibelungen Lay,i where Dancwart cuts his way 
 through the Huns, and bursting into the banquet 
 hall, where sit Etzel and Kriemhild with their royal 
 guests, cries out to his brother Hagen that all the 
 Burgundian retainers have been massacred in their 
 quarters ; and grim Hagen asks : — 
 
 " But who has done it, then ? " 
 " That has fair Master Bloedel and with him all his men ! 
 Yet dearly has he paid us, let this at least be said. 
 For with these hands of mine, I've stricken ofE his head." 
 
 ** That is no weeping matter," made answer Hagen bold ; 
 
 " If only of a warrior such story may be told, 
 
 That hero's hand hath slain him in free and open fight : — 
 
 For such a death fair women should make their mourning light." 
 
 The thought lapses from this grave old setting into 
 the lighter frame of a modern commonplace ; we find 
 it, for example, in Herrick, who if a "pagan," as 
 critics will call him, was as English a pagan as ever 
 loved beef and ale. 
 
 To conquer'd men some comfort 'tis to fall 
 By th' hand of him who is the generall.^ 
 
 On the other side of the picture, we find terrible 
 disgrace in the death of a hero or warrior by the 
 hand of woman. This is the very climax of tragedy 
 in our Nibelungen Lay. All are slain save the arch- 
 murderer, Hagen, and the arch-avenger, Kriemhild, 
 the too faithful vassal and the too faithful wife. 
 Kriemhild takes her dead husband's sword and kills 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 235 
 
 with it the murderer, who is bound and helpless 
 before her ; in some ways, we are ready to concede, a 
 just retribution. But the sentiment of Kriemhild's 
 own living husband and ally in vengeance cannot 
 applaud the act. 
 
 " Alas," bewailed the monarch, "Alas, and now is slain, 
 All at a woman's hands, the best and noblest thane 
 That ever led in battle and ever lifted spear ! 
 And though he was my foeman, his fall shall cost me dear." 
 
 Out spake old Hildebrand : " No comfort shall she know 
 Because she dared to slay him ! " 
 
 And the gray-headed warrior springs to the woman 
 and kills her, and no one holds him back or blames 
 him for his deed. 
 
 But this sense of fitness and unfitness, the consola- 
 tions of an honorable death and the horrors of slaugh- 
 ter at unworthy hands, are less intense than the 
 religious and fatalistic sanctions. It is instructive, so 
 far as fatalism is concerned in the matter, to see how 
 the opposite notion of individual freedom, personal 
 responsibility, that tendency to trust in one's man- 
 hood and in nothing else, keeps alternating in Ger- 
 manic hearts with the sense of an inevitable, inexorable 
 fate. The Germanic creed is undoubtedly expressed 
 by King Gemot ; ^ — 
 
 Da sterbent wan die veigen, — 
 Only the doomed ones die, — 
 
 which is nothing more than Hamlet's, " If it be now, 
 'tis not to come ; if it be not to come, it will be now 
 . . . the readiness is all." 2 But the impetuous sense 
 
 1 Avent. XXXIII. 
 
 1 «< 
 
 Some Comfort in Calamity.' 
 
 1 JVT. L. 149. 
 
 2 Ham. V. 2. 
 
 I 
 
(I 
 
 236 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 of individual manhood, the anticipation (if we must 
 find a modern instance) of Fletcher's nobler astrology, 
 — "man is his own star," — rebelled against this 
 helpless note of acquiescence, and tacked a fiery 
 rider to the wonted phrase. Fate, says Beowulf, as 
 he tells of his battle with the sea-monsters,^ fate often 
 saves a man if he have plenty of courage. 
 
 Oft Wyrd preserveth 
 undoomed earl, — if he doughty be. 
 
 The same idea and the same phrase, with very slight 
 change, passed into the Christian poetry of our ances- 
 tors, and have since become a commonplace. In 
 the Anglo-Saxon Andreas we read:^ — 
 
 Therefore sooth will I say to you ; — 
 never leaveth the living God 
 earl to his doom, if he doughty he. 
 
 " Wyrd," the fate-goddess, has been changed to suit 
 the new faith; but the essentials of the old epic 
 phrase are there. In one passage of the Beowulf we 
 have a characteristic^ blending of the two religions. 
 Grendel the monster would have devoured many more 
 warriors of the Danish court, — 
 
 Had not wisest God their AVyrd averted, 
 and the man's bold mood, — 
 
 that is, had not Beowulf slain the demon.^ We may 
 
 1 B^oio. 572. Fsdge is the same word as veigen above, like Scotch fey. 
 
 2 459 ff . 
 
 8 Characteristic, because the Bdoioiilf is a heathen epic put together 
 by a Christian monk. 
 
 * B^ow. 1057 f. The idea is of course evident enough ; the original 
 sentiment, however, is not a commonplace, but an ethical theory, a 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 237 
 
 add one example from Scandinavian poetry. In the 
 Skirnismdl^ where Skirnir is to ride to giant-land and 
 win for the god Freyr that maiden Gerthr, whose 
 fair white arms "shed a light through all the sky and 
 sea," Freyr gives to the messenger both steed and 
 sword : " a horse will I give thee that shall bear thee 
 through the murky waver-flame,^ and a sword which 
 will brandish itself and fight^ if he is brave that holds 
 it''^ This rises quite above the commonplace, even 
 of the old epic ; a sword of self-respect evidently, 
 that will not move to its miraculous calling, if it be 
 held in ignoble hands. What were thought to be 
 noble hands in such a case would be easy to prove 
 from even random selections of Germanic poetry^ 
 Let us take a single example. It is that fine old 
 Saxon ballad of the Fight at Maldon where " Alder- 
 man ■' Byrhtnoth, with a hastily gathered array of 
 the local militia, opposes a party of Danish pirates. 
 These offer him peace in return for tribute, a bargain 
 too often struck in the degenerate days of ^thel- 
 red. But the Saxon answer has a ring ancestral 
 at once and prophetic of the later English hardihood. 
 
 part of the most intimate Germanic life. It is always instructive to see 
 these epic forms and phrases passing into burlesque, which loves to 
 catch popular sentiment. Thus our fine old personal equation of the 
 providence of Wyrd finds echo in Chaucer's Sire Thopas. That gallant 
 knight is hard put to it in combat with a giant. Sir Olifaunt by name : — 
 
 Sir Thopas drough on-bak ful faste; 
 This gcaunt at him stoones caste 
 
 Out of a fell staf slynge; 
 But faire eschapeth child Thopas, 
 And al it was thurgh Goddis gras^ 
 
 And thurgh his faire herynge. 
 
 1 The girdle of fire about the maiden's hall. 
 
 2 tSkirnismdl, 9, in Hildebrand's Edda, p. 54. 
 
238 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Byrhtnoth spake, his shield uplifting, 
 
 waving light spear, with words replied, 
 
 angry and resolute, answered back : — 
 
 " Hear'st thou, seaman, what say this folk ? 
 
 They will pay you tribute in trusty spears, 
 
 venoni'd darts and dear-held swords, 
 
 war-gear that steads you the worse in battle ! 
 
 Herald of pirates, hear our answer ! 
 
 Say to thy people no pleasant message : — 
 
 Here stands, not unhonor'd, an earl with his band, 
 
 who is fain to defend these fields ye see, 
 
 -^thelred's land, my lord and master, 
 
 the folk and the ground. . 
 
 '» 1 
 
 The fight begins, and Byrhtnoth struggles gallantly, 
 but he is sorely pressed by the foeman and at last 
 wounded with a spear. He — 
 
 pushed with his shield that the shaft broke off, 
 
 and burst the spear that back it sprang ; 
 
 fierce grew the thane, and he thrust his lance 
 
 in the wicing proud who had wounded him. 
 
 Sage was the chieftain, sent his lance 
 
 through the pirate's neck with knowing hand, 
 
 till he reached the heart of the heathen foe. 
 
 Straightway a second spear he drove 
 
 that the corselet burst ; the breast was wounded 
 
 through ringe'd mail, in the midst of the heart 
 
 stood the poisoned edge : the earl was blither, 
 
 the bold one laughed, and his Lord he thanked 
 
 for this good day's work that God had sent him . , .2 
 
 Then he is himself killed, but dies fighting to the 
 last, shouting courage to his men, and with a song 
 of proud thanksgiving on his lips : — 
 
 I praise and thank thee. Prince of nations, 
 for all my delights while I lived on earth, — 
 
 1 Maldon, 42 ff. 
 
 2 136£f. 
 
 iii<r' ir ti»r^,.mm 
 
 f 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 239 
 
 ^i^ 
 
 J 
 
 and expires with a prayer for his soul's welfare. So 
 fought and so died a true Saxon, true to the spirit 
 of his ancestors who nearly a thousand years before 
 had defied the legions. For Byrhtnoth, with his 
 splendid achievement, stands just midway between 
 our time and the times of Caesar and Tacitus. 
 
 If such was the Germanic estimate of courage, it is 
 easy to guess what would be for them the vice of 
 vices and the crime of crimes. Disgrace was stamped 
 indelibly upon the man who left his shield behind him 
 in the battle. He was shut out from tribal worship, 
 entered no fane, took part in no council, and — if this 
 is not the flourish of Tacitean rhetoric i— often ended 
 his infamy by a self-inflicted and ignominious death. 
 Direct cowardice, desertion, and similar crimes found 
 no mercy whatever.2 Such offenders, where treachery 
 was suspected, were promptly hanged ; while the mere 
 coward and the fugitive, like the doer of nameless 
 crimes, were sunk wretchedly in a swamp with a 
 wicker-hurdle pressed over them, the punishment of 
 women : — 
 
 Cowards who were in sloughs interred alive ; 
 And round them still the wattled hurdles hung 
 Wherewith they stamped them down, and trod them deep, 
 To hide their shameful memory from men.s 
 
 Crimes, says Tacitus, should be punished openly:' 
 but scandals stifled in darkness and silence. Both 
 of these modes of execution survived in the middle 
 ages. 
 
 We have mentioned hanging as in some degree a 
 soldier's death. To hang a convicted man to the 
 
 1 Genn. VI. 2 Germ. XII. a Matthew Arnold, Balder Dead. 
 
/ / 
 
 240 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 nearest good tree was the sentence of the Westpha- 
 lian Vehmgericht} Our old friend of the ballad, 
 Johnie Armstrong, with many others of the "most 
 noble thieves," — that is, marauders of the Scottish 
 marches, — were all, by the king's command, " hanged 
 upon growing trees." ^ These were gentlemen born. 
 The punishment of the gallows was widely used by 
 our earliest ancestors, and finds a varied expression 
 in the older literature, — chiefly in Scandinavian 
 poetry.^ It was by no means so ignoble an exit from 
 life as it is now, and indicated no absolute disgrace 
 like the vile indignities of the hurdle and the swamp. 
 The gallows did not mutilate a body, and its victim 
 had moreover a fine chance to join the Wild Hunts- 
 man as he swept by, and so to storm the heights of 
 heaven and Valhalla.^ Nay, Odin himself, as he 
 tells us in the Hdvamdl^ ''hung nine nights on the 
 windy tree," that is upon the gallows ; ^ and whether 
 or not this be a Norse version of the Crucifixion, the 
 honorable association remains. Oddly enough, some 
 distorted mediaeval legend proclaimed that Croesus of 
 old ended his days in this fashion, as had been fore- 
 told him in a dream ; and in defence of popular faith 
 in visions he is cited by the hero of the Nonne Prestes 
 Tale in Chaucer . ^ — 
 
 Lo Croesus, which that was of Lydes king, 
 Mette "^ he nought that he sat upon a tre, 
 Which signified he schuld hanged be ? 
 
 1 See a popular but accurate account in Vehmgerichte und Hexen- 
 processe, by Dr. Oskar Wachter, in the " Collection Spemann." 
 
 2 See Child's Ballads,2 VI. 365. 
 
 8 Grimm, R. A. 682 ff. 
 
 ' 
 
 t 
 
 THE WARllIOR 
 
 241 
 
 * Rochholz, Deutscher Glauhe und Branch, I. 273. 
 
 6 Bugge, Studier, 292. 6 y. 318 ff. ? " Dreamed." 
 
 Since hanging had these associations, ingenuity was 
 quickened to put some disgrace into the fact ; and a 
 fashion often employed was the device of hanging 
 wolves or dogs along with the culprit, who was also 
 placed head downwards, — one of the numerous com- 
 pliments wliich mediaBval law paid to the Jews.^ Even 
 under the more ignoble circumstances, hanging was 
 a pengjlty reserved for males; women were burnt, 
 drowned, or stoned to death. "Den dieb soil man 
 henken und die hur ertranken." 2 Later it was the 
 prerogative of nobles to be beheaded, while common 
 men were hanged ; but the poet of Beowulf seems to 
 indicate that if the old king, Hrethel, had punished 
 Hsethcyn in the way of blood-feud for the innocent 
 murder of the elder brother Herebeald, it would have 
 been by the gallows. The monarch cannot bring him- 
 self to it : — 
 
 Grievous it is for the gray-hair*d man 
 to bide the sight that his son must ride » 
 young on the gallows.* 
 
 We may conclude that a gallows-destiny, while not 
 yearned for, and far less noble than death by sword 
 or spear, did not acquire its peculiar disgrace until 
 the middle ages. In the time of Tacitus, men 
 who, certainly at some bodily risk, deserted their 
 own cause and betrayed it to the enemy,^ were 
 hanged to trees — probably, says Grimm, dead and 
 leafless trees. The victims were thus a sacrifice to 
 
 1 R. A. 685. 2 Ibid. 687. s " Ride " is the technical term. 
 
 * B^otv. 2444. In the Sacred Grove at Upsala in Sweden, says Adam 
 of Bremen, could be seen many corpses of men and beasts hung upon 
 the trees. & " Proditores et transfugas." 
 
/ 
 
 1 
 
 u 
 
 242 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 tribal gods. But no god cared for the coward who 
 fled in sheer physical terror, nor for the worker of 
 abominations in ordinary life: these were stamped 
 and buried out of sight, in -slime and mud.i 
 
 It is evident that cowardice was the unpardonable 
 Germanic sin, and courage the cardinal virtue of a 
 Germanic warrior. Let us now glance at these war- 
 riors in their array. The make-up of the army was 
 not very intricate; discipline, system, the strategic 
 conduct of a campaign, were hardly known at all. 
 An Arminius, trained as he was to Roman discipline, 
 might for a while animate the army with single plan 
 and spirit; but he could not organize his troops 
 for permanent work nor establish a regular system. 
 Leadership consisted not so much in direction and 
 organization as in example of valor. The individual 
 warrior was the one supreme element, his personal 
 strength and his courage; and he was, moreover, 
 decidedly better than his weapons. These were poor 
 enough. With some allowance for the purpose of 
 the speech, the description given by Germanicus in 
 his address to the legions 2 furnishes our best idea 
 of the German soldier and his arms. " Not only the 
 open field," said Germanicus, "was a good battle- 
 ground for the Roman soldier, but also, if one acted 
 in a rational way, the forests and thickets. For the 
 huge shields and the long spears of the barbarians 
 could not be managed among the tree-trunks and low 
 bushes so easily as the javelin, the sword, and close- 
 fitting coverings. The main thing for the Romans 
 was to rain their sword-strokes upon the faces of the 
 
 1 Kemble, in his Salomon and Saturn, p. 89, gives some further illus- 
 trative passages. 2 xac. Ann. II. 14. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 243 
 
 enemy ; the Germans had neither armor nor helmet ; 
 not even their shields were made of iron or leather, 
 but were simply a sort of plaited willow-work with thin 
 painted boards. The foremost line of battle might be 
 fairly well supplied with spears ; tlie rest had darts, 
 short, or else with points hardened in the fire." ^ This 
 is not a very good showing for the Germanic ai'senal ; 
 but we must not forget the occasion. Moreover, we 
 have the testimony of the graves and other finds. 
 If the bronze age is reckoned from about 1500 to 
 500 B.C., we must count bronze swords, of which 
 Denmark's soil has surrendered such numerous and 
 exquisite specimens, among the possible acquisitions 
 of a sturdy German warrior.^ Perhaps such are the 
 enta geweorc, the work of giants, of which we hear so 
 often ; and there is good reason to think that these 
 are meant when, in Saxon or Scandinavian poetry, 
 reference is made to the "fallow" sword.^ True, 
 Germanicus does not mention the sword in his list of 
 the barbarian arms; and we may well infer that it 
 was not the universal weapon. Metals were rare in 
 Germany ; and iron, though familiar, does not seem 
 to have been mined and worked.* Swords were, 
 nevertheless, known and valued by the Germans ; and 
 nothing is so often mentioned in their traditions. On 
 the column of Marcus Aurelius the Germans are rep- 
 resented with short, crooked swords ; and swords are 
 
 1 The account of Cimbrian arms given by Plutarch speaks of swords, 
 armor, and so on, but they are evidently booty taken from the enemy. 
 What forges were there in the German forests to turn out such work ? 
 
 2 See Montelius, passim. 
 
 8 See Vigfusson-Powell in C. P. B. 11. 481. 
 
 * Germ. VI. : " Ne ferrum qiddem superest " ; that is, not even iron 
 abounds. But in the early days it was imported. 
 
244 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 245 
 
 mentioned among the Germanic tribes which, notably 
 under Ariovistus, made front against Ceesar. A 
 sword was undoubtedly expensive and highly valued ; 
 for as late as the sixth century, among the Franks, 
 sword and scabbard are reckoned at the worth of 
 seven cows, while shield and lance together only 
 equal two cows.^ The antiquity of the sword as Ger- 
 manic weapon can be inferred from another consider- 
 ation — the name of the Saxons, which is supposed to 
 be derived from the short sword or seahs (our oldest 
 English form of the word) carried by warriors of 
 that race.2 To be sure, the name of Saxons is not 
 known to Strabo, Pliny, or Tacitus, and is first men- 
 tioned by Ptolemy in the middle of the second cen- 
 tury as belonging to a small tribe on the Cimbrian 
 peninsula. For all that, however, the name is far 
 older than the mention of it, and was doubtless 
 applied to themselves by all the minor tribes along the 
 Elbe and the Weser. By the fourth century, Saxons 
 and Franks are the chief Germanic races. Saxnot is 
 one of the abjured divinities in the famous renuncia- 
 tion; and in the genealogy of the kings of Essex, 
 Saxn^at is the son of Woden. Saxons, then, must 
 mean "the men with short swords," and Saxn^at 
 "the sword-companion." Grimm quotes the well- 
 known account of Nennius,^ where Hengist tells his 
 men: "When I cry out to you and say 'en Saxones, 
 nimith eure Saxas,' * seize your knives and rush upon 
 
 1 Arnold, Deutsche Urzeit, p. 279. 
 
 2 Zeuss and Grimm uphold, Kemble opposes, the etymology. See 
 Kemble's Saxons, I. 41; Grimm, G. Z>.6'.424; Mullenhoff inHanpVs 
 ZtsU, Anzeiger, VII. (1881) p. 213. According to Mullenhoff, sax is 
 neuter, and means an instrument for cutting. 
 
 « Hist. Brit. Cap. 46. * That is, " Saxons, take your swords." 
 
 the foe." Continental Saxons of a later date were 
 wont to bring their knives when they came to court, 
 and thrust them in the ground as they declared them- 
 selves guilty or innocent of a given charge ; ^ and 
 this, Jacob Grimm thinks, is a survival of the Ger- 
 manic habit of going armed to all popular assemblies. 
 Other names that may be connected with the sword 
 are the Cherusci,^ the clan of Arminius, and the tribe 
 which our Widsith calls the "Swordsmen"; for per- 
 sonal names a good example is the father of Beowulf, 
 Ecgtheow, — that is, " Sword-servant." 
 
 Short swords of this pattern were carried by the 
 Rugii, as Tacitus especially notes.^ But the Cim- 
 brians in Italy had longer swords ; and the description 
 of their weapons by Plutarch points, as was hinted 
 above, at a long career of plunder on the part of 
 these invaders who had made their way through 
 Gaul, and had met repeatedly troops of good equip- 
 ment. Plutarch describes their cavalry as furnished 
 with "breastplates of iron and white glittering 
 shields ; and for their offensive arms every one had 
 two darts, and when they came hand to hand, they 
 used Jarge and heavy swords." ^ Kemble ^ speaks 
 of the "long, heavy Celtic or German sword," as 
 contrasted with the short weapon of the Roman. 
 These long swords were often two-edged, — and are 
 found in German graves.^ In the Waltharius Lay, 
 the hero carries two swords, one short and with 
 single edge, on his right side, the other long and 
 
 1 R. A. 772. 2 Grimm, G. D. S. 426. s Germ. XLIV. 
 
 * Plutarch, Marius, Dryden-Clough translation. 
 6 Horse Ferales, p. 63. 
 
 * Holtzmann, Germanische Alterthumerf 141 f. 
 
246 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 double-edged, on his left. It is often assumed that all 
 these swords were of iron ; but Grimm in his list of 
 weapon-names ^ says under seax " urspriinglich wohl 
 eine steinwaffe," and Baumstark^ reminds us not 
 only of the stone swords found along the Baltic, but 
 also of the great number of swords made from bronze. 
 Swords found in those German graves which are 
 known to belong to the period of tribal movement 
 are mostly of iron ; by that time the iron sword and 
 (among the Franks of the sixth century) the battle- 
 axe were chief weapons of the German foot-soldier. 
 When Tacitus says that " few Germans use swords," ^ 
 ^ he is stating for the first century what still held true, 
 to a large degree, in the ninth or tenth. In Cnut's 
 time shield and spear, bow and arrow, were weapons 
 for the rank and file; and a sword is in our own 
 day mark of the officer as distinguished from the 
 common soldier. Anglo-Saxon law made a " ceorl " 
 "si«cund," that is, raised his rank, when he had 
 helmet, coat-of-mail, and gilded sword, no matter 
 whether he owned land or not.* The importance of 
 the sword is proved not only by the traditions and 
 • survivals to which we have alluded, but by th* num- 
 ber of names for it in literal statement;^ by the 
 poetical names or kennings for it, like the Norse gun- 
 nlogi, or battle-flame, and the corresponding Anglo- 
 Saxon headolSoma ; ^ by the personifications of it and 
 name-giving, like Nsegling and Hrunting, where we 
 note the humanizing force of the suffix ; and finally 
 
 1 Deutsche Grammatik, III. 440. 2 Germ. p. 308 f. « Germ. VI. 
 * Cf. Schmid, Einl. LXVI., and Lehmann, Waff en im B^ow. "Ger- 
 mania," 31. 486 ff. 5 Grimm, Grammatik ^ III. 440, gives a list. 
 
 ® See Bode, Kenningar, p. 55 f. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 247 
 
 by the actual woi-ship of it. How our forefathers 
 would have felt the force of the dialogue in the fine 
 Danish ballad Hcevnersvcerdet,^ where the hero takes 
 counsel with his sword, or where by naming its name 
 he restrains its thirst for blood ! ^ Sometimes we 
 find a sort of pact or league between warrior and 
 sword, and when both keep the promise there is great 
 glory won. So of the hero and his good brand in 
 BSowulf:^ — 
 
 Neither melted his courage, nor his kinsman's bequest 
 weakened in warfare. . . . 
 
 When a sword is about to kill some one, it gives 
 forth a noise ; * in the Anglo-Saxon Finnshurg frag- 
 ment, besides the usual battle-omens of screaming 
 birds, the coat-of-mail " yells " or clangs, the war- 
 wood (spear) dins, and "shield answers shaft." ^ 
 When Beowulf is going to seek and slay the monster 
 mother of Grendel in her own ocean fastness, he 
 borrows a sword; its name, the poet tells us, is 
 Hrunting, and it is the noblest of ancient treasures, 
 an heirloom ; its edg^ is iron, stained with poison- 
 drops and hardened with blood of battle ; in fight it 
 never yet had played false to the man who brandished 
 it, whenever he dared the ways of warfare, the meet- 
 ing-pla:ce of foes ; this was not the first time that it 
 was fated to do brave deeds. Noting, now, this seem- 
 ing independence and individuality, we are not sur- 
 prised at the expression which the poet uses when 
 
 1 Grundtvig, Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, I. 350, stanzas 16 ff., 35. 
 
 2 See also Child. Ballads,2 I. 96. » 2628 f. 
 
 * Maurer, Bekehrung d. norweg. Stamme, II. 123. ^ Finns. 5 ff. 
 
 i1 
 
246 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 double-edged, on his left. It is often assumed that all 
 these swords were of iron ; but Grimm in his list of 
 weapon-names ^ says under seax " urspriinglich wohl 
 eine steinwaffe," and Baumstark^ reminds us not 
 only of the stone swords found along the Baltic, but 
 also of the great number of swords made from bronze. 
 Swords found in those German graves which are 
 known to belong to the period of tribal movement 
 are mostly of iron ; by that time the iron sword and 
 (among the Franks of the sixth century) the battle- 
 axe were chief weapons of the German foot-soldier. 
 When Tacitus says that " few Germans use swords," ^ 
 ^ he is stating for the first century what still held true, 
 to a large degree, in the ninth or tenth. In Cnut's 
 time shield and spear, bow and arrow, were weapons 
 for the rank and file; and a sword is in our own 
 day mark of the officer as distinguished from the 
 common soldier. Anglo-Saxon law made a " ceorl " 
 "sit$cund," that is, raised his rank, when he had 
 helmet, coat-of-mail, and gilded sword, no matter 
 whether he owned land or not.* The importance of 
 the sword is proved not only by the traditions and 
 • survivals to which we have alluded, but by thainum- 
 ber of names for it in literal statement;^ by the 
 poetical names or kennings for it, like the Norse ^un- 
 nlogi^ or battle-flame, and the corresponding Anglo- 
 Saxon headolSoma ; ^ by the personifications of it and 
 name-giving, like Nsegling and Hrunting, where we 
 note the humanizing force of the suffix ; and finally 
 
 1 Deutsche Grammatik, III. 440. 2 Qerm. p. 308 f. » Germ. VI. 
 * Cf. Schmid, Einl LXVI., and I^hmann, Waffen im B^ow. "Ger- 
 mania," 31. 486 ff. 5 Grimm, Grammatik, III. 440, gives a list. 
 
 6 See Bode, Kenningar, p. 65 f. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 247 
 
 by the actual woi-ship of it. How our forefathers 
 would have felt the force of the dialogue in the fine 
 Danish ballad Hcevnersvcerdet,^ where the hero takes 
 counsel with his sword, or where by naming its name 
 he restrains its thirst for blood! 2 Sometimes we 
 find a sort of pact or league between warrior and 
 sword, and when both keep the promise there is great 
 glory won. So of the hero and his good brand in 
 Beowulf:^ — 
 
 Neither melted his courage, nor his kinsman's bequest 
 weakened in warfare. . . . 
 
 When a sword is about to kill some one, it gives 
 forth a noise ; * in the Anglo-Saxon Finnshurg frag- 
 ment, besides the usual battle-omens of screaming 
 birds, the coat-of-mail "yells" or clangs, the war- 
 wood (spear) dins, and "shield answers shaft." ^ 
 When Beowulf is going to seek and slay the monster 
 mother of Grendel in her own ocean fastness, he 
 borrows a sword; its name, the poet tells us, is 
 Hrunting, and it is the noblest of ancient treasures, 
 an heirloom; its edge is iron, stained with poison- 
 drops and hardened with blood of battle ; in fight it 
 never yet had played false to the man who brandished 
 it, whenever he dared the ways of warfare, the meet- 
 ing-pld:ce of foes ; this was not the first time that it 
 was fated to do brave deeds. Noting, now, this seem- 
 ing independence and individuality, we are not sur- 
 prised at the expression which the poet uses when 
 
 1 Grundtvig, Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, I. 350, stanzas 16 ff., 35. 
 
 2 See also Child, Ballads,2 I. 96. a 2628 f. 
 
 ^ Maurer, Bekehrung d. norweg. Stdmme, II. 123. 8 Finns. 5 ff. 
 
248 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 he records a failure in the fight with the monster. 
 Beowulf then found — 
 
 that the Light-of-Battle was loath to bite, — 
 
 and so it failed to work his will upon the foe. As for 
 the speaking of swords, their word and wish, we are 
 reminded of Wordsworth's personification ; for, as Mr. 
 E. B. Tylor has somewhere remarked, Wordsworth's 
 power in this respect almost seems to revive the force 
 of old mythology : — 
 
 Armor rusting in his Halls 
 
 On the blood of Clifford calls ; 
 
 " Quell the Scot," exclaims the Lance ; 
 
 " Bear me to the heart of France," — 
 
 Is the longing of the Shield.^ 
 
 Swords are full of supernatural traits, and often 
 give out a magic light ; one " conquering blade," an 
 " old sword of giants," sheds such radiance, — 
 
 Even as from skies above shines and glitters 
 heaven's candle, . . .2 
 
 and thus illuminates the uncanny hall of the monsters 
 with a light that reaches from the depths to the sur- 
 face of the sea.3 A host of legends, gathered in 
 recent times, but rooted in our oldest heathen super- 
 stitions, tell of charmed weapons which are now car- 
 ried by the living, and now buried with the dead, but 
 are always endowed with miraculous power, often 
 gleaming far off through the night. 
 
 His sword well burnisht, shineth yet, 
 And over the barrow beam the hilts.* 
 
 1 Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle. 
 
 2 Beow. 1558 ff. " Heaven's candle " is, of course, the sun. 
 
 8 See Heyne's Halle Heorot, p. 46, note *. ^ See p. 312, below. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 249 
 
 To swear by one's sword — coming to the last cate- 
 gory — was common down to modern times, not sim- 
 ply as some commentators on Hamlet assert, because 
 the hilt formed a cross, but for traditional reasons. 
 Indeed, we have evidence that the sword was wor- 
 shipped. The princes of the Quadi, making submis- 
 sion A.D. 358 to an imperial army, draw their swords, 
 " which they worship as deities," and swear to keep 
 faith. So writes Ammianus Marcellinus ; ^ and in 
 another place, after an elaborate description of the 
 Alani, a Scythian tribe, he says that their only notion 
 of religious ceremonies is to thrust a sword into the 
 ground and worship it " as Mars," — this, of course, 
 simply an inter pretatio Homana? 
 
 It was the fashion to write runes on the sword. 
 Often, as on the spearhead of Kovel described by 
 Wimmer,^ the owner's name was graven upon the 
 blade. The spearhead in question is probably from 
 the fourth century,* and bears the Gothic name 
 Tilari'^s^ or "bold rider." But incantations and spells, 
 taking the place of our modern mottoes, were fre- 
 quently carved; and these mysterious runes could 
 be of good or of evil omen. When Freyr's zealous 
 henchman is wooing Gerthr for his master, and the 
 maiden refuses his gold, he begins to threaten her: 
 " Look on this blade, maid, slender, marked with char- 
 acters, that I hold in my hand ; I will hew off thy 
 head. . . ." ^ Then he goes on to praise the terrible 
 potency of the weapon, due in part to the mysterious 
 working of the runes. In like manner, a sword could 
 
 1 Bk. 17, Chap. XII. 2 Bk. 31, Chap. II. 
 
 8 Die Runenschrift, p. 57. * Ibid. p. 71. 
 
 6 Vigfusson-Powell's transl. in C. P. B. 1. 114. 
 
 
^ 1 
 
 ;! 
 
 250 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 be made useless by incantations, and Saxo tells of a 
 certain Gunholm, who was wont to dull and lame 
 (obtundere) the hostile blade by his runic charms 
 (^carminihus). In Salomon and jSaturn^ wq are told 
 that evil spirits 
 
 write on his weapon woe-marks an heap, 
 baleful bookstaves ; 2 the bills they bewitch, 
 the pride of the sword. 
 
 Against this evil, one's remedy consisted in singing a 
 pater-noster as one drew the sword out of its scabbard, 
 and the blade was then fit to do its work. Of course 
 this pater-noster takes the place of some ancient and 
 heathen " backward mutter of dissevering power." 
 
 Scarcity of iron made a relative scarcity not only 
 of swords, but also of the longer lances, those " huge 
 spears" mentioned several times by Tacitus. The 
 common weapons of a German warrior were the fra- 
 mea for attack and the shield for defence; in the 
 public assemblies assent was shown by clashing these 
 weapons together. Concerning the nature of the fra- 
 mea, much has been said ; and a close investigation by 
 Miillenhoff,^ based mainly on philological data, con- 
 cludes that although later Christian literature uses 
 framea for sword {gladius),^ nevertheless we are to 
 hold to Tacitus, who distinctly says it is a small 
 lance or spear Qiasta) with short and scanty iron. 
 
 1 Ed. Kemble, p. 144 f. 2 Buchstaben, letters. 8 Sword, blade. 
 
 * In his far too sharp and contemptuous review of Lindenschmidt's 
 Handhuch d. detitschen Alter thumskunde, "Haunt's Ztst." Anzeiffer 
 VII. 209-229. ^ ' 
 
 s Mullenhoff notes that Juvenal uses framea for the lance of Mars, 
 and Gellius names frames^ as missiles. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 251 
 
 As for the word, it must be Germanic ; in Miillen- 
 hoff 's opinion it is a derivative of /ram, and means 
 " toward the front," -— a projectile for close quarters 
 or long range, precisely as Tacitus describes it. Jahns 
 thinks that the so-called " celts " of stone or bronze, 
 found so plentifully in ethnological museums, were 
 fastened on a straight shaft and so formed the fra- 
 meay In later times, and with the greater abundance 
 of iron, the better wrought ger, Anglo-Saxon gdr, or 
 spear, took the place of the missile, which thence- 
 forth disappears from history. This change increased 
 the efficiency of Germanic soldiers, precisely as in the 
 case of the African chief mentioned above,^ who con- 
 verted the missile lance into a long, stout spear meant 
 for thrusting alone. 
 
 The shields of German soldiers were not elaborate. 
 Otherwise they had little armor, if we except certain 
 leather or possibly iron helmets used by eastern 
 tribes.3 Holtzmann is rash when he says they went 
 without armor, not only because they had no iron, 
 but "because they loved defiance and gladly sought 
 scars," — an argument that appeals, perhaps, to a 
 German student, but hardly covere the ground. The 
 huge shield left them in a measure independent of 
 other armor ; and indeed we find them scarcely clad 
 at all, fighting naked to the waist, like the older 
 Gauls. We are told that the German cohorts in the 
 army of Vitellius fought " with bodies naked, after 
 the fashion of their country." In this guise appear 
 the barbarian figures on Trajan's column ; and Cgesar 
 so describes the warriors of Ariovistus.* Paul the 
 
 1 See Schultz, in Paul's Grdr. II. 2. 201. 
 « Baumstark, Germ. p. 328. 
 
 2 See p. 209. 
 
 ^ Cass. Dio, 38. 45. 
 
252 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Deacon testifies of the Heruli, that they fought naked 
 save for a cloth about the loins. Who does not 
 remember that picture in Plutarch's Marius, where 
 the barbarians in sheer defiance let the snow fall upon 
 their naked bodies, and setting themselves on their 
 broad shields go sliding down the Alps? These 
 immense shields covered a great portion of the body ; 
 Waitz says, all of it.^ They were flat, made of wood 
 or wicker-work, had often a metal boss, and were fre- 
 quently colored. Like "ash" as name for spear, 
 "linden" or the like is often used for shield, — the 
 material for the weapon itself. Naturally, such 
 shields cost but little, and were subject to very rough 
 usage in battle. At the end of the fragmentary Hilde- 
 brand Lay, we read of flying splinters from the rapid 
 sword-strokes of the combatants ; and elsewhere we 
 are told of a shieldbearer who in the heat of battle 
 reaches a fresh shield to his warrior. With regard to 
 the color, white shields, as in the case of Hildebrand 
 and Hathubrand, as well of the Cimbrians in Italy, 
 are often mentioned. The shields of the Harii ^ were 
 black ; those of the old Frisians were brown or 
 white ; the Saxons preferred red. For the Franks in 
 the fifth century, Sidonius Apollinaris describes the 
 shields as snow-white in the circle, tawny in the 
 boss.^ Holtzmann thinks these colors were a rude 
 heraldry, a means of distinguishing tribe from tribe, 
 and even clans and families. Perhaps a symbol 
 of some sort was painted on the shields. The Cim- 
 brians wore forms of animals on their helmets, like 
 
 1 Verfassungsges. 1. 44. ^ Germ. XLIII. 
 
 8 ** Lux in orbibus nivea, fulva in umbonibus." See Weinhold, 
 Altnord. Leben, 207. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 253 
 
 the carven boar of Anglo-Saxon times ; ^ and we hear 
 in other places of the "emblems" of the Germanic 
 
 shield. 
 
 How useful the shield was — and became — can be 
 seen from the " board-wall " (hordwealV) or wall of 
 shields 2 which Anglo-Saxon warriors made, and 
 which would have held the field at Senlac if Harold's 
 orders had been carried out,^ and his men had kept 
 their ranks. So in the ballad of Maldon we have 
 allusion to this shield-wall ; and the poem gives us a 
 spirited picture of the doughty " Alderman " arranging 
 the line of battle and exhorting his warriors to play 
 their parts like men. In The Battle of Brunan- 
 hurh,^ another ballad of Anglo-Saxon heroism, we 
 hear the cry of delight that warriors have hewn 
 their way through this shield-wall ; for " cleaving the 
 shield-hedge " was as much as routing the enemy. 
 
 Armor, except of the rudest kind, was introduced 
 among Germanic tribes during the great migration. 
 In BSowulf there is frequent mention of the coat- 
 of-mail and the " ring-net," — the latter a corselet 
 woven out of small rings, — as well as of the boar- 
 guarded helmet. We remember, too,^ that Beowulf 
 expressed solicitude about his noblest war-weed, 
 warding the breast, and desired that in the event of 
 his death, this " work of Wayland" should be sent 
 
 home. 
 
 Other weapons were doubtless familiar to the Ger- 
 
 1 Seen also on Scandinavian helmets. See Montelius, work quoted, 
 p. 162. For painted shields among the old Norsemen, see Weinhold, 
 Altnord. Leben, p. 428. 
 
 2 Also called the shield-hedge, bordhaga. 
 
 8 See Mr. Freeman's fine description, Norman Conquest, III.2 408 flf. 
 4 V. 5 f. ^ See p. Ill, above. 
 
 / 
 
\ '<» W 
 
 "IMmpi 
 
 A 
 
 / 
 
 ! ;i 
 
 b 
 
 254 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 man. The hammer, weapon of old Thor, must have 
 had its warlike as well as peaceful functions ; ^ the 
 battle-axe, which made the later Franks such a 
 dreaded foe, found some use among their ancestors. The 
 silence of Tacitus in regard to these weapons, just as 
 with the bow and arrow, is not proof that the Germans 
 did not have them ; indeed, bows and arrows are 
 mentioned by the Grermania^ as in use among the 
 Finns. Gothic archers were afterwards in high 
 repute; bows are mentioned at Maldon; at Senlac, 
 among the English, bows and arrows were ex- 
 ceptional.^ 
 
 Infantry, if we may use so technical a term, was 
 the favorite Germanic array of battle ; but cavalry 
 was also known, and in the earliest times. Csesar 
 testifies to the tactics of the German horsemen. In 
 the Commentaries we are told that before a general 
 engagement, the cavalry of Ariovistus made constant 
 attacks upon the Roman encampment, after this 
 fashion: Six thousand horsemen were accompanied 
 by as many warriors on foot, picked men, who formed 
 a support and rallying-point whenever the cavalry 
 retreated. When it was necessary to dash swiftly 
 forward in long attack, or fall back rapidly to the 
 rear, the foot-soldiers kept pace with the cavalry, 
 holding often to the manes of the horses.* In another 
 place, speaking of the Suevians, Caesar mentions the 
 poor breed but toughness and exact training of the 
 horses, which, when the rider dismounted to fight on 
 foot, were sure to stand on the same spot till needed. 
 
 1 Grimm, D. MA p. 151 ; i?. ^. p. 64 ; Schultz, in Paul's Grdr. II. 2. 
 
 201. 
 
 2 Cap. XLVI. 
 
 3 Norman Conquest, III. 472. 
 
 * B. G. I. 48. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 255 
 
 Moreover, it was deemed disgraceful to use the 
 saddle.^ Tacitus tells about horses and men much 
 the same story as Csesar gives us, though the great 
 general is far more clear and definite.^ Some tribes 
 must have leaned more to cavalry combats, — we 
 may instance the Tencteri and the Batavians ; but 
 in general, and this is the statement of Tacitus, the 
 chief reliance of the German was upon his foot- 
 soldiers, a taste that prevailed down to the middle 
 ages. It is curious to find English warriors, in the 
 time of King ^thelred, riding up to the fight at 
 Maldon, dismounting, and driving their horses off 
 the field : — 
 
 he 8 bade each soldier forsake his horse, 
 
 drive it afar, and fare along, 
 
 have mind on his hands and a manful battle ! * 
 
 At the same fight, another warrior — 
 
 let from his hands his hawk so lief 
 
 fly to the forest, and fight-ward strode.^ 
 
 So, at Senlac, every man in the Saxon army fought 
 on foot : — 
 
 Omnes descendunt et equos post terga relmqtrint.^ 
 
 Ammianus Marcellinus gives us a much older instance, 
 with an exquisite reason. The Alamannian infantry, 
 
 1 IV. 2. 
 
 2 Germ. VI. This mode of fighting with horse and foot mixed together 
 is not peculiar to the Germans. For other examples see Hehn, work 
 quoted, 45-47. It is to be noted that German auxiliaries serving in the 
 Roman army are at first mostly mounted men, and once Caesar actually 
 took horses from Roman soldiers and gave the mount to Germans. 
 
 3 Byrhtnoth. * Maldon, 2 ff . 6 Ibid. 7 f . 
 c Freeman, Norman Conquest, III. 472. 
 
 /, 
 
// 
 
 I 
 
 256 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 about to begin battle, make a great outcry because 
 the princes do not descend from their steeds ; for if 
 the battle were lost, these gentry might ride off and 
 leave their humbler brethren in the lurch.^ 
 
 Regarding the army as a whole, we find that it 
 moved to attack — a supremely important moment ^ — 
 in the shape of a wedge; the Frankish historian, 
 Richer, says that as late as the ninth century this 
 wedge-shaped column was still the order of battle 
 among his countrymen. Strange, moreover, is the 
 statement of Saxo Grammaticus that Odin^ taught 
 Hadingus to form his army in such fashion that two 
 should stand in the first row, four in the second, 
 eight in the third, and so on; while on the side 
 should stand (a foreign touch?) the archers and 
 slingers. This formation Scandinavians called the 
 hoar's head. The same thing and the same name 
 appear in the laws of Manu, and were not unknown 
 to the Greeks. Scherer hence concludes an Indo- 
 European origin.* Holtzmann, relying on another 
 place in Tacitus, where we are told that the Germans 
 fought in loose order, and were arranged by families, 
 essays the parlous etymology that euneus (wedge) is 
 
 1 Amm. Mar. XVI. 12. 34. 
 
 2 Religious rites, revel, and feasting often marked the whole night 
 before a battle {Ann. I. 65 ; II. 12 ; Hist. IV. 14 ; V. 15) ; after favorable 
 auguries, and with high pomp and ceremony, the tribe went into the 
 fight. Says Miillenhoff in his essay de antiq. Ger. poesi, p. 13, " Nulla 
 enim erat major neque sanctior apud Germanos pompa, quam ubi ordi- 
 nata acie uni versus populus ad proelium ibat." 
 
 8 MullenhofE shows that this is important for Odin worship. He was 
 held as "auctor aciei corniculatse et ordinandi agminis disciplinse 
 omnisque denique bellicae artis ac scientiae traditor {i.e. magister) ac 
 repertor et animi bellici creator moderatorque sapientissimus esse cred- 
 ebatur." Miillenhoff, de Chor. p. 15. 
 
 4 HaupVs Zeit., Anzeiger, IV. 97. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 257 
 
 Roman misunderstanding of kuni^ "kin," family or 
 tribe. Probably the Germans dashed into battle as 
 a wild, surging mass (yagis incur sihus)^^ but with 
 coherence and order according to families, and with 
 the general shape of a wedge. A few men of valor 
 in the van, the vast mob of ordinary warriors would 
 naturally spread out behind the leaders. 
 
 Leaders we call them, for generals, in our sense of 
 the word, hardly existed; though there was doubt- 
 less a rude system by which a number of officers were 
 graded up to a supreme commander. Tacitus tells 
 us 2 that the duty of such a leader was to set example 
 rather than to issue commands. We may assume that 
 high rank was helpful to his authority, and that elec- 
 tion was necessary. Such an election of a general is 
 mentioned by Tacitus,^ who says that the Cannine- 
 fates, a Low German tribe, chose for their leader a 
 man named Brinno, who was thereupon raised upon 
 a shield, after the ancestral custom, and so rocked 
 about (yihratus) upon the shoulders of those who car- 
 ried him. It is probable that this sort of leader was 
 elected for a considerable period,* that he carried spe- 
 cial weapons and adornments, and that he had, in 
 common with the method of his election,^ much of 
 the authority of a king. Like a king he received 
 gifts .^ We are at some loss to set forth the true 
 functions of a German leader, especially of the first 
 in command. We may gather from Tacitus that he 
 did not plan campaigns or direct tactics after the 
 Roman fashion ; and yet Ariovistus, and particularly 
 Arminius, were not mere barbarian champions. They 
 
 1 Tac. Ann. II. 15. 
 * Waitz, I. 271. 
 
 2 Germ. VII. 
 6 R. A. 234. 
 
 8 Hist. IV. 15. 
 
 6 Ibid. 245 ff. Germ. XV. 
 
 
258 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 259 
 
 certainly planned and calculated and directed large 
 movements of their respective forces. In regard to the 
 subordinate leaders there is no difficulty ; they were 
 leadei^ in the literal sense, and set examples of prow- 
 ess to their men. Indeed, the king or supreme chief- 
 tain himself had to show this quality, just as long 
 afterwards William the Conqueror was foremost war- 
 rior of his army ; and Hagen tells us what Germans 
 expected of their monarch : i — 
 
 * Twere fitting, spake out Hagen, for such a folk's delight 2 
 As chief and lord to battle the foremost in the fight, — 
 Right so as these my masters » have here united stood. 
 And hewn thro' helm and harness till swords were bathed in 
 blood. 
 
 It argues a lower state of military science, or else 
 a great jealousy of aristocratic privileges, that in some 
 parts of Germany the leaders were chosen by lot. 
 This is mentioned by Beda as customary among the 
 Saxons,^ and is found elsewhere, as among the 
 Goths. However, the uniformity of tactics lessened 
 the need of a general ; for the main system of battle 
 was to attack the foe with tumultuous energy, bear- 
 ing down all opposition by sheer force of valor and 
 strength. Like our modern opening batteiy, as sign 
 of battle begun, so in Germanic warfare a spear 
 hurled over the enemy gave signal for attack.^ Plu- 
 
 1 N. L. 2074. 
 
 2 "Kenning " for king ; literally, *' comfort of the people." 
 
 * The three Burgundian kings. 
 
 * Hist. Ecc. V. 10. When the Germans served as Roman auxiliaries, 
 they were allowed to have their own officers. 
 
 5 The hostile army was thus dedicated as sacrifice to the gods. In 
 the Voluspa Odin hurls a spear into the host, and so arises ''the first 
 
 war. 
 
 tarch, in his account of the Cimbrian attack, says 
 that the Germanic infantry came upon the Romans 
 like a tossed and roaring ocean. As they rushed 
 into the fray, the warriors were wont to raise a wild 
 chant, probably ending in a mere din of thunderous 
 volume, for they used the shields to make echo and 
 increase the volume of sound, holding them close to 
 the mouth ; ^ while women and children, near to the 
 line of battle, lifted up a great noise of wailing, which 
 was meant to remind the warrior of his stake in the 
 combat and so to spur him to utmost achievement,^ 
 — a rough anticipation of Tennyson's picture : — 
 
 A moment while the trumpets blow 
 He sees his brood about thy knee, 
 
 The next like fire he meets the foe 
 
 And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 
 
 These songs, thinks Miillenhoff, which warriors sang 
 as they rushed into battle — who does not remember 
 Senlac and the brawny minstrel of the Chanson de 
 Roland? — ended in " hoarse and strident sounds . . . 
 where, one may conjecture, the r and the u particu- 
 larly prevailed." 5 Early in the historical period — 
 perhaps before — musical instruments were in use; 
 drum, horn, and trumpet.* A fair idea of such a 
 Germanic onslaught, with accompanying battle-cry 
 and song, is given by Ammianus ^ when he describes 
 
 1 Germ. III. 
 
 2 Ibid. VII. and Mullenhoff, de antiq. Germ.poesi, p. 11 : "Liberique 
 a tergo positi ululatum sustulerunt ; viri autem cantum." See also his 
 references, Ann. IV. 47 and Hist. II. 22. 
 
 8 Mullenhoff, de antiq. Germ, poesi, p. 20: "Stridores sonosque 
 raucos . . . inter quos r et w praevaluisse conjici licet." 
 
 * A. Schultz in Paul's Grdr. II. 2. 201. 
 
 * XVI. 12. 43. Bohn's translation is used. 
 
 V i 
 
 3sssatte«£r:. 
 
 ■P*»' 
 
260 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 261 
 
 \\ 
 
 \ 
 
 the fight at Strasburg, in the year 357 of our era. 
 Certain of the combatants, " frightening even by their 
 gestures, shouted their battle-cry, and the uproar 
 through the heat of the conflict, rising up from a 
 gentle murmur and becoming gradually louder and 
 louder, grew fierce as that of waves dashing against 
 the rocks." Such was the Germanic onset. 
 
 Tactics of actual combat, so far as any are men- 
 tioned, seem to have been of a trivial nature, — 
 like the feigned retreat. Hehn makes the admi- 
 rable comment that German war-tactics were bor- 
 rowed from those of hunting. The German fought 
 men as he fought wild beasts, " by cunning, ambush, 
 and surprise." ^ 
 
 To the terror of this wild attack the Romans 
 opposed discipline and system. German success 
 depended on an overwhelming onset and rush ; 
 checked, flung back on itself, the " wedge " became 
 a helpless and irregular mass, without order or direc- 
 tion, unable to cope with organized assault. It was 
 Marius who saw this, and placed reserves behind his 
 line of battle. 
 
 We have considered the first and more important 
 branch of military service, obligatory upon every 
 citizen. The second was voluntary. Aside from 
 enlistment in the Roman army, — a custom which 
 indeed took larger and larger proportions as time 
 went on, but was regarded by the nobler Germanic 
 sentiment as treason, — the young men were wont to 
 enter the retinue of some powerful native chieftain. 
 Caesar *^ gives us our earliest information on the sub- 
 ject. Raids for plunder, he says, are not regarded as 
 
 1 Hehn, p. 16. 
 
 2 B. G. VI. 23. 
 
 wrong, but as a useful occasion to give practice and 
 discipline to the younger warriors. If a prince ^ in 
 the popular assembly offers himself as leader and 
 calls on those who will follow him, all who approve 
 the affair and the man rise, and amid the shouts of 
 the multitude signify their assent. If then any one 
 of these volunteers refuses to go, he is held as traitor 
 and deserter. So far Caesar. Very probably such 
 raids as these passed into permanent expeditions ; 
 and we know that such an enlistment in the prince's 
 service was frequently for life. Volunteers of this 
 sort combined the attributes of a mediaeval free-lance 
 and a Swiss guardsman. It is the difference between 
 these two types that may guide us in comparing the 
 account of Caesar with the description which Tacitus 
 gives of the comitatus or retinue ; the comitatus^ as 
 we shall presently see, has a fii^mer basis and a better 
 organization than the earlier system of volunteering. 
 The comitatus was evidently one of the great moral 
 factors in Germanic life and achievement. Inter- 
 woven with the sense and pride of kindred, and pat- 
 terned after the family compact itself, the system 
 fostered a definite obligation and inspired mutual 
 devotion of prince and warrior. Here, perhaps, is the 
 key to Germanic success and the secret of Germanic 
 supremacy. In war, indeed, of whatever kind the 
 Germanic virtue of courage came to the front ; but 
 in the comitatus courage was no more prominent than 
 fidelity, loyalty, and truth. The sense of duty, the 
 sense of standing and enduring for a principle, has 
 
 1 Who was this prince ? Waitz, I. 246 f ., says it was not any given 
 noble, but one of the principes elected by the people ; while Arnold 
 holds a very different view. See the latter's Deutsche Urzeit, 336-357. 
 
 mtm^ 
 
 
t-?s-« 
 
 262 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 \ 
 
 always been the mainspring of Germanic success ; i 
 and here the sense of duty went hand in hand with 
 affection and gratitude. Where the relation was en- 
 tered into for life, all these elements were invested 
 with supreme ethical importance. Tacitus tells us 2 
 that young men of the best blood attach themselves 
 to a leader and serve in his train. They struggle for 
 the nearest place to the chieftain; and he in turn 
 strives to keep the most numerous and effective reti- 
 nue. It is his pride to be surrounded by such a band, 
 his honor in peace and his defence in war. In this 
 way his name and influence are carried beyond his 
 own country, and bring him return in renown and 
 gifts; sometimes his reputation alone is enough to 
 put down a war. In actual battle, the chieftain must 
 not be surpassed in prowess, and the followers must 
 not fail to emulate him. Shame without end befalls 
 the man who deserts the chieftain, and his retainers 
 must stand by him in his captivity and even in his 
 death. After the battle of Strasburg, where Julian 
 defeated the Alamanni, a German chief surrenders 
 himself to the Romans, whereupon " his companions, 
 two hundred in number, and his three most intimate 
 friends, thinking it would be a crime in them to sur- 
 vive their king, or not to die for him if occasion re- 
 quired, gave themselves up also as prisoners." 3 i^ 
 short, as Tacitus says, the chieftain fights for victory, 
 the followers fight for the chieftain.* 
 
 For our own early history, both the epic BSowulf 
 
 1 On the Continent this Pflichttreue has become collective and mo- 
 narchical; with Anglo-Saxons it is individual, as in the case of liuie 
 Tom Brown half frozen on the roof of the stagecoach, with his - con- 
 sciousness of sient endurance, so dear to every Englishman, -of 
 standmg out against something and not giving in." 2 G^rm XIII 
 
 8 Amm. Marc. XVI. 12. 60, trans, of Yonge. 4 Germ ' XIV * 
 
 ! 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 263 
 
 and the spirited ballad of Maldon are very helpful in 
 showing how strong a hold this system kept on na- 
 tional life long after the days of Tacitus. In BSowulf 
 we see both of those phases to which we have just 
 referred. In the first part of the epic, Beowulf, a 
 kinsman and " battle-thane " of Hygelac, lives at the 
 latter's court. He hears of the troubles heaped upon 
 the head of a neighbor king, Hrothgar the Dane; 
 and, in nobler mood than that of the booty-seeking 
 chieftains chronicled by Caesar, chooses fourteen com- 
 panions and sete off to free the monarch from his foe. 
 Here is a comitatus, but it is for a specified time, an 
 enlistment, as we used to say, for the war ; whereas 
 the Danish retainers who were destroyed by Grendel 
 are the permanent followers and dependents of their 
 king. Says Hrothgar : — 
 
 Sore is my soul to say to any 
 
 of the race of men what ruth for me 
 
 in Heorot Grendel hath hatefully wrought, 
 
 what sudden harries. My hall-folk here, 
 
 my warriors, wane : Wyrd hath swept them 
 
 into Grendel's terrors. . . .1 
 
 To lose this comitatus is evidently the direst of ills ; 
 to increase it and strengthen it is the supreme good. 
 Thus, in his happier days — 
 
 such speed of war was sent to Hrothgar, 
 honor of battle, that all his kin 
 obeyed him gladly : so grew the youthy 
 a crowd of clansmen,^ — 
 
 that is, his success and honor drew young men to his 
 side, and swelled his comitatus to stately proportions. 
 And so Hrothgar determines to build a splendid hall, 
 
 1 B^ow. 473 fif. 2 Ibid. 64 fif. 
 
264 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 265 
 
 the " Heorot " described above, where he may divide 
 his treasure with these warriors and give them feast 
 and revel. 
 
 Generosity and the foremost place in valor are the 
 duty of the prince; absolute fidelity and devotion 
 mark the clansman. " Once in battle, it is a disgrace 
 for the prince to yield to any one in bravery, a dis- 
 grace for the clansman not to match the valor of his 
 chief. Shame and utter ruin of all reputation are his 
 who leaves a battle-field alive after his prince has 
 fallen." So runs the eloquent tribute of Tacitus;^ 
 and it is instructive to see how faithfully our early 
 poetry bears out his testimony. We may take an 
 example of the minor sort of fidelity, an incident in 
 BSoivulf^ not without its homely pathos. The hero 
 has gone deep into the waters to fight against the 
 mother of Grendel in her ocean fastness. On the 
 bank sit his vassals, with the clansmen of Hrothgar ; 
 but when, after weary hours, blood begins to rise to 
 the surface of the water and stain all the floods, men 
 fear the worst for Beowulf; and the Danes, giving 
 up all hope, leave the place. But the clansmen of 
 Beowulf still hold their mournful watch upon the 
 shore, and when at last their chief returns triumph- 
 ant, he finds them where he left them, hopeless but 
 constant. On the other hand, the paternal solicitude 
 of Beowulf for his retainers in case he should not sur- 
 vive his perilous undertaking causes him to remind 
 King Hrothgar of a former promise : — 
 
 thou wouldst be to me, 
 should I fall in battle, in father's stead. 
 Be thou stay and strength to my stout companions, 
 my warrior-friends, if war should take me ! ^ 
 
 1 Oerm. XIV. 2 B^ow, 1479 flf. 
 
 i 
 
 A still better note sounds in the final scene of our 
 epic. Beowulf goes out to fight the dragon, and, 
 scorning to use an army,^ he takes with him only a 
 few of his best retainers, — eleven picked men.^ But 
 at sight of the monster, belching flame and poison, 
 the clansmen beat an inglorious retreat and leave 
 their master to his fate, — all but one. Wiglaf, 
 ashamed of the cowardly flight, sees from his covert 
 how the old hero bears the stress of battle against 
 overwhelming odds, and thinking of all the gifts and 
 bounties his lord has heaped upon him, a nobler pas- 
 sion seizes him. He thinks of his own boastings in 
 hall : 3 _ 
 
 I mind me the time when mead we took, 
 and loyal vow to our lord we made, 
 in the banquet-hall to the breaker-of-rings, 
 that we would reward him for warlike gear, 
 if ever the hour of evil came . . .* 
 
 and he urges the others to go to the help of 
 Beowulf : — 
 
 Better for me this body of mine 
 
 should fall with my chief in clutch of flame. 
 
 Shame it were our shields to bear 
 
 back to our land, unless the rather 
 
 we fell the foe and defend our chief tain. ^ 
 
 Alone he springs through smoke and flame to the 
 side of his prince, speaks to him a few words of 
 cheer, and then fights manfully against the dragon. 
 When all is over, and Bdowulf lies dead along with 
 
 1 Ibid. 2345 ff., 2401. a 2638 f. 
 
 * For these boastings in hall, see some later instances in Child's 
 Ballads,2 II. 277. 
 
 * 2633 ff. 5 2651 ff. 
 
266 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 267 
 
 the foe, the ten come where Wiglaf, sprinkling 
 water on the face of his lord, is vainly endeavoring to 
 win him back to life. Out breaks the young hero's 
 reproach, which closes with this prophecy of denun- 
 ciation : — 
 
 Gift of treasure and girding of sword, 
 
 delight of home, and life's support, 
 
 to all your kin shall hereafter fail. 
 
 Right of land shall be lost to all 
 
 of the men of your clan when chieftains hear 
 
 from far-off homes of the flight ye made, 
 
 deed inglorious ! Death is better 
 
 for every clansman than coward life.^ 
 
 It is a dull pulse, to be sure, that does not beat the 
 quicker for these words ; but in Maldon the tone is 
 even more intimate and direct. What passionate 
 scorn is poured out upon the heads of those cowardly 
 thanes who flee from the battle-ground and leave 
 their lord dead among his enemies ! Maldon^ with 
 this superb energy of patriotism, waited in vain for 
 a rival until the Agincourt of Drayton; while mod- 
 em poetry has essayed the note only to end in a sad, 
 unreal chatter, saving always that passage in which 
 Sir Walter's big heart throbbed to the fates of 
 Flodden Field, — Scott himself no unworthy son of 
 the old clansmen who put fidelity to one's chieftain 
 at the head of all virtues, and his verses no unworthy 
 echo of the early song: — 
 
 The English shafts in volleys hailed. 
 In headlong charge their horse assailed. 
 Front, flank, and rear, the squadrons sweep 
 To break the Scottish circle deep 
 That fought about their king. 
 
 1 Beow, 2884 ff. 
 
 i 
 
 But yet, though thick the shafts as snow, 
 Though charging knights like whirlwinds go. 
 Though billmen ply the ghastly blow. 
 
 Unbroken was the ring; 
 The stubborn spearmen still made good 
 Their dark impenetrable wood. 
 Each stepping where his comrade stood 
 
 The instant that he fell. 
 No thought was there of dastard flight ; 
 Linked in the serried phalanx tight, 
 Groom fought like noble, squire like knight. 
 
 As fearlessly and well. 
 
 Fidelity to chieftain and king redeems and raises 
 Hagen of the Nibelungen Lay from a mere assassin 
 at the outset to a splendid hero at the end. The 
 character of Ruedeger in the same lay shows us a 
 situation as acute as any Greek tragedy can produce. 
 Not even Orestes, with filial duty dragging him in 
 opposite directions, is so completely tragical a figure 
 as this Germanic warrior halting in agony between 
 disobedience to his lord and battle with his guests 
 and son-in-law ; it is instructive to note that in this 
 struggle between kin-duty and vassal-duty, the latter 
 conquers. Finally, we may mark that when mission- 
 aries came into the Germanic lands to preach Christ 
 and his twelve apostles, nothing appealed more ac- 
 tively to the native than the resemblance of this bond 
 between master and disciple to his own system of 
 chieftain and clansmen. Christ died for his beloved, 
 and they endured martyrdom for him. What simpler 
 theology ? 
 
 Of the various names for the clansmen, the Latin 
 comes seems to have been the outcome and survivor. 
 When Tacitus talks of the " clients " of Segestes, it 
 
268 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 is by a very evident interpretatio Romana. Oomes^ 
 perhaps from cum and eo^ would thus correspond 
 exactly to Anglo-Saxon gesilS — one who goes with 
 you on a journey. More vivid are the other words 
 of our old speech, eaxlgestealla, " shoulder-comrade," 
 or he whose place is at the shoulder of his lord ; and 
 heor^genSat, "hearth-comrade." Another word, often 
 used in Anglo-Saxon law, is "^egen or " thane," with 
 the prevailing notion of service, — such service as 
 a freeman might, without loss of dignity, render to a 
 powerful nobleman or prince.^ 
 
 Mediaeval survivals and new creations are often 
 inextricably entangled, and it is not safe to trace the 
 simple comitatus of German forests amid the varying 
 phases of the feudal system. Confining ourselves to 
 the earlier compact, we may assume it to have been 
 sometimes temporary, but often permanent. We need 
 not idealize it too highly ; the arrangement was ob- 
 viously good for both parties to the bargain, and 
 there were substantial presents, swords, horses, jewels, 
 land, for the ambitious clansman to keep before his 
 
 eyes.2 
 
 The age at which a warrior, whether in the militia 
 or in the comitatus^ began his career differed, it would 
 seem, for different Germanic tribes. Holtzmann * col- 
 lects the evidence, which fixes twenty years among 
 
 1 See Schmid, Ags. Ges. Glossary, s.v. and the well-known anec- 
 dote of Lilla, the dearest thane of Edwin, king of Northumbria; an 
 assassin aims his dagger at the king ; the thane leaps before his master 
 and receives the blow. 
 
 2 See Grimm in his already quoted essay on Schenken iind Geben; 
 Vilmar, Altert. im Heliand, p. 51 ; and for general subject ot comitatus 
 among the Norsemen, Vigfusson-Powell, II. 477 f. 
 
 8 Germ. Alter, p. 196. 
 
 THE WARRIOR 
 
 269 
 
 the West>-Goths, eighteen for the Lombards, and — 
 if one can believe it — twelve for the Anglo-Saxons 
 and Franks. For later times and customs, we have 
 a vivid picture of the military coming of age given 
 us in the Nibelungen Lay, where the festival is 
 described which Siegfried's parents give in his honor 
 for such an occasion ; but here the old simplicity has 
 been succeeded by a number of feudal and chivalric 
 elements. 
 
270 
 
 GEKMANIC OKIGINS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 The king originally a creation of the race — His authority and 
 duties — Inheritance and election — Ideals — The queen — Nobles 
 by birth and by office — The Germanic freeman — The freedman 
 and the slave — The aUen. 
 
 At the head of the family we found, of course, the 
 father; and at the head of the state we naturally look 
 for the king. The word " king " means the child or 
 son of the tribe, its representative or even creation ; ^ 
 man of race, man of rank. Gradually the king ceases 
 to be regarded as a creation of his race ; his ancestry 
 is pushed back to the gods, and his right is quite 
 above all sanctions of popular choice or approval. 
 The early Germanic king was still a creation of his 
 race; true, as Tacitus tells us, he was chosen on 
 account of his noble birth, — but he was chosen. A 
 number of Germanic tribes can be named which have 
 no king in their earliest historical period ; such were 
 
 1 "He who belongs to the race," explains Waitz, Verfassungsgesch. 
 I. 326; and so interpret Curtius and Soberer. Arnold seems to take 
 the same view : Deutsche Urzeit, p. 333. Grimm, R. A. 230, will not 
 derive king from kin. For details of Germanic kingship, see Rosen- 
 stein, Ube^ das altgermanische Konigthiim in the Zschst. f. Vol- 
 kerpsych. und Sprachw. VII. 113-188; and Dahn, Die KOnige der 
 Germanen. 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 271 
 
 Marcomanni, Franks, Lombards, and Anglo-S axons. ^ 
 The great movement of tribes which begins German 
 national history, lays the foundation of saga and epic, 
 and crystallizes a mass of myths into a system, was 
 also the chief factor in the development of early Ger- 
 manic royalty. A constant struggle demands con- 
 stant leadership ; and the republican elements of our 
 old constitution disappeared rapidly in the presence 
 of perennial warfare. Out of a mass of small democ- 
 racies or elective monarchies, arose at last the great 
 nations of the Franks, the Bavarians, the Alaman- 
 nians. The popular assembly became impossible, 
 except in compact England, which built up a repre- 
 sentative system.2 Monarchy of some sort, it is true, 
 was probably inherent in the earliest Germanic con- 
 stitution ; but it sat lightly on the state, and in the 
 time of Tacitus there seems to be a distinction in the 
 Roman mind between the German tribes that had 
 kings and those that had none.^ The kings who, 
 according to Tacitus, were chosen on account of their 
 nobility of birth, and the leaders (^duces) who were 
 chosen for their valor, were alike of the best blood of 
 the race. Where a single monarch did not reign, 
 princes or chieftains {principes) of the foremost 
 
 1 Von Amira in Paul's Grdr. d. germ. Phil. II. 2. 126. Tac. Germ. 
 
 2 Rosenstein, work quoted, p. 163. 
 
 8 Waitz, Verfass. I. 295. Gregory of Tours speaks (II. 9) of long- 
 haired kings {reges crinitos) chosen from the noblest families; and 
 Beda, in a famous passage {Hist. Eccl. V. 10), about the continental 
 Saxons, says that "they have no king, but several lords that rule their 
 nation; and when any war happens, they cast lots indifferently, and 
 on whomsoever the lot falls, him they follow and obey during the war; 
 but as soon as the war is ended, all these lords are again equal in 
 power." — Transl. of Giles. 
 
272 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 clans made up a sort of oligarchy ; and we hear of a 
 king with associated or inferior kings ruling over one 
 people.^ In time of war, out of several such chief- 
 tains (^principes) might be chosen a leader (dux)^ as 
 in the case of Arminius. Indeed, the Germans seem 
 to have been fond of two leaders even in war ; Waitz 
 cites the case of Hrothgar and Hrothulf.^ Moreover, 
 we must note that Tacitus uses the expression " take " 
 or "choose":^ "they* take to themselves" kings or 
 leaders, as the case may be. Jacob Grimm describes 
 this elective monarchy as one where inheritance was 
 modified by the necessity of confirmation, and election 
 was modified by restriction of choice to the royal 
 family.^ Thus the Cherusci sent to Rome for a 
 person of kingly lineage who happened to be the sole 
 survivor of his race ; for the nobility, says Tacitus, 
 were destroyed by civil strife.^ The Anglo-Saxon 
 genealogies, mounting always to demi-gods and gods, 
 show the stress laid upon kingly descent ; though we 
 must in this case allow for the abnormal conditions of 
 ceaseless raids, and a considerable concentration and 
 increase in royal authority. 
 
 The newly elected king was lifted upon a shield 
 and thrice borne about the assembly. He made as 
 soon as possible a formal progress through his domin- 
 
 1 A passage in Beowulf (vv. 2152 ff.) tells us that after the hero's 
 liberal presents to King Hygelac and his queen, the monarch presented 
 his kinsman Be'owulf with a splendid sword, and also gave him ♦• seven 
 thousand, a house (home) and ruler-seat (i.e. dominion, royal power)." 
 The " seven thousand " may refer to money or (Kluge, P. B.Beit, IX. 
 191) to land. See also Waitz, Verfass. p. 330. 
 
 2 Waitz, Verfass. 202. J5^or«. 1191. ^ Sximunt. 
 4 The popular assembly. 5 /?. ^. 231. 
 
 « Ann. XI. IG: *• amissis per interna bella nobilibus, et uno reliquo 
 stirpis regiae." 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 273 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
 ions, that he might be seen and known of all his folk. 
 His external tokens of royalty were originally meagre, 
 and the flowing locks he shared with all freemen. 
 Crown and such insignia are later matters imitated 
 from the Romans ; but a military standard of some 
 sort was doubtless borne before the German king. 
 In peace his functions must have been judicial, and 
 often sacred or priestly ; though this was not always 
 the case. In historic times the priestly function 
 was a royal duty for Scandinavia, but not for Bur- 
 gundian and other German monarclis. Many a race 
 made a god of its departed ruler ; particularly when 
 he had won wide lands or brought new culture and 
 social order into his dominions, deification was likely 
 to follow his death.^ But in war was the chief 
 strength of a Germanic king ; to his personal conduct 
 of a campaign was due success or failure, and as he 
 was to keep peace within his own borders, so he was 
 expected to spread desolation or conquest beyond 
 them. Failure was fatal. As he had been elected, 
 so he could be deposed. The centre of ancient Ger- 
 manic states was the popular assembly ; and a king 
 was its creature, to be deposed if he were not equal 
 to his task, but doubtless to hold authority amid com- 
 parative awe and silence so long as he was successful. 
 In times of peace he had no authority whatever to 
 issue decrees, make laws, or initiate any sort of legis- 
 ^lation; he was executor of popular law and popular 
 will. Progress in kingly power is marked by the 
 oath of fidelity; and with the anarchy of war and 
 conquest, kings must have acquired, little by little, 
 
 1 See also von Amira in Paul's Grdr. II. 2. 126, 135. 
 
274 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 that sense of proprietorship and absolute right which 
 distinguished mediaeval royalty. The church lent 
 her authority to make personal and individual that 
 doctrine of divine right which before had been dis- 
 tributed over a whole family, and the elective king- 
 ship of old Germanic days was lost beyond recovery 
 for feudal Europe. One land alone held fast, if not to 
 the old form, at least to the old principle ; and it was 
 England which by incessant struggles on the soil of 
 two continents sustained, despite all reactions, the 
 genius of Germanic freedom side by side with the 
 derived reverence for law and discipline. The con- 
 stitutional history of England properly treats these 
 matters; suffice for our purpose a single sentence 
 from the close of the introduction to Alfred's laws 
 for his people : " Now I, Alfred, king of the West- 
 Saxons, have showed these to all my Witan, and they 
 have told me that it liked them all that everything 
 should be kept." The Witan, as everybody knows, 
 were the legal councillors or advisers of the king, 
 and in a measure representatives of the people ; thus 
 we need assume no great change, except in circum- 
 stances, from the Germanic king and the Germanic 
 assembly. 
 
 Of this Germanic king, prince, or leader, we have 
 many descriptions in praise and in blame. At the 
 opening of BSowulf we are told what was for those 
 days a good king : — 
 
 He waxed under welkin in worth and honor 
 till the folk around him, far and near, 
 across the whale-road ^ hearken'd to him, 
 tribute gave him : good, — such king.2 
 
 1 Sea. 
 
 2 Beow. 8 ff. 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 275 
 
 The secret of prosperity — so, at least, the singers 
 have all said — lay in liberality to the royal re- 
 tainers ; and so our BSowulf goes on with its ideal 
 picture : — 
 
 Thus becomes it a youth to quit him well 
 
 to his father's friends with fee and gift, 
 
 that to aid him aged in after days 
 
 come willing clansmen, should war draw near him, 
 
 to help their prince. . . . ^ 
 
 The free-handed monarch is praised by Widsith in 
 our oldest English poem : — 
 
 Likewise with ^Ifwine in Italy was I : 
 of all mankind I ken, he cherished 
 heart most ungrudging in gift of rings, 
 sheeny treasure, the son of Eadwine.^ 
 
 The ideal king at home was the "ring-breaker," 
 who sat upon his "gift-seat" or throne, and dealt 
 out treasure from an inexhaustible store, while 
 tribute flowed in from countless subject tribes, and 
 hostility was paralyzed by the memory of his former 
 deeds. To this conception belong those epithets 
 for royalty which emphasize the bond between the 
 ruler and his folk, those "kennings" which call 
 him, if a Hrothgar, " friend of the Scyldings," wine 
 Scyldinga, or "refuge for earls," eorla hleo ; and 
 which often combine the virtues of friendship and 
 generosity, as in " gold-friend of men," goldwine gu- 
 mena^ a kenning which occurs in Beowulf's petition 
 to Hrothgar that the latter may remember his prom- 
 ise and be a father to his guest : — 
 
 ... of what we two spake, 
 gold-friend of men, be mindful now.s 
 
 1 B^ow. 20 ff. 
 
 2 WidsW, 70 ff. 
 
 8 Beow. 1474 ff. 
 
v 
 
 -^^m-^tim . * i» <■ ' iw ■ 
 
 276 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Other kennings ^ of this peaceful connotation are : 
 treasure-lord, treasure-herdsman (guardian), gold- 
 giver, hoard-ward, wish-giver, ward (guardian par 
 excellence^, folk's- ward, warriors' ward, folk's-herds- 
 man, helmet, people's protector, caretaker of folk, 
 friend (^par excellence^, lord-friend, folk's owner, lord 
 of men, judge, lord and judge, first in the land. Of a 
 warlike origin are : helmet of armies, leader of squad- 
 rons, leader of the people, fii"st in deeds, " the first 
 spear (^frumgdr),^^ first in battle, battle-ward of men, 
 army-leader.2 It is from names like these, most of 
 them old poetic forms, like the Homeric epithet, that 
 we may best make up our conception of the Germanic 
 king. 
 
 The queen was naturally a prominent figure ; but 
 the kennings for her are rare. " Weaver of peace " 
 is of coui*se applied to her ; but " lady," hloefdige, if 
 like " lord " it comes from the notion of loaf-sharing, 
 is a wider term. That women now and then exer- 
 cised royal functions, we learn not only from the 
 famous Lady of the Mercians, but from the older 
 case of the Gothic queen Amalasuntha. Offices of 
 gracious hospitality we have already noticed in the 
 queen of Hrothgar;^ nor, as representative woman 
 of the race, could she have failed to enjoy a rich 
 measure of that reverence which the Germans paid 
 to her sex. 
 
 Besides the king and the leaders of the people, we 
 must allow for an order of nobles, men whose birth 
 
 1 1 draw liberally upon Wilhelm Bode s Die Kenningar in der Ags. 
 Dichtung, Darmstadt und Leipzig, 1886. 
 
 2 Similar ScandiDavian kennings in Vigfusson-Powell, C. P. B. II. 
 479 f. 8 Above, pp. 117, 134. 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 277 
 
 and alliance with princely houses raised them above 
 the rank of ordinary freemen. The name of this 
 noble quality is preserved in the German Adel, and 
 in the Anglo-Saxon ce^eling, with the general notion 
 of " race," " descent." The ivergild was based chiefly 
 on birth and rank ; although age, sex, office, and con- 
 nection with the king were also criteria.^ The honor 
 of birth was not the honor of office, but was rather 
 an inherent, one might say passive, distinction. If 
 there were duties as well as privileges connected 
 with it, the former doubtless lay in priestly and judi- 
 cial responsibilities. By old custom, the head of a 
 house was its priest as well as judge and ruler. No- 
 bility, we may assume, entitled men to a prominent 
 place in war ; ^ and in time of peace, forms and cere- 
 monies of the state religion would call for officials 
 from the families to whom tradition gave divine or 
 high heroic origin. Indeed, the theory that priest- 
 hood was an avocation and not a regular caste or call- 
 ing is strengthened by the remarkably small part it 
 played in opposition to Christianity; it is Coifi, the 
 Northumbrian priest, who leads in the attack upon 
 the altar of his gods.^ 
 
 The Germanic nobles were thus the oldest and 
 most venerable families. We hear of them in Tacitus, 
 who pays them an enemy's generous tribute in an ac- 
 count of battles among the Batavians.^ Whereas in 
 
 1 Waitz, Ver/ass. 1. 105 f . The Angli and Werini had for the noble ar 
 wergild thrice as great as for the ordinary freeman. 
 
 2 Waitz, p. 280. 
 
 8 Waitz, ibid. See also Beda, Hist. Ecc. II. 13: "Cumque a . . . 
 pontifice [sc. Coifi] sacrorum suorum quajreret [sc. the Christian bishop], 
 quis aras et fana idolorum cum septis, quibus erant circumdata, primus 
 profanare deberet; ille respondit : Ego. ..." * Ann. II. 11. 
 
278 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 historical Anglo-Saxon, the word ceheling always means 
 a member of the royal house,^ in older times, notably 
 in our epic BSowulf, as also in many proper names 
 familiar to all of us, it had a wider signification, and 
 meant a man of noble blood, a man of "descent." 
 Again, even before Danish influences made our old 
 word eorl denote a special title of nobility like the 
 Scandinavian jarl (Hakon Jarl),^ there must have 
 dwelt a certain odor of eminence in the term, as op- 
 posed to ceorl, " man " of any sort. Nobles were of 
 better clay than common freemen ; and the founder 
 of their race being deified, his home worship, at first 
 the regular manes-cult, would pass into symbolic 
 rites and then into poetical traditions. To men of 
 this stamp the minstrel sang about the deeds of their 
 forebears, divine now, and now heroic. " We have 
 heard," begins the singer of BSowulf, "how in days of 
 yore the aethelings did valiant deeds." Similarly, the 
 nobles of the middle ages found chief delight in a lay 
 which celebrated their ancestors : and such legendary 
 songs were as indispensable to a genuine noble as the 
 family pictures to the gentleman of to-day, and often 
 as open to suspicion. 
 
 In course of time, and by reason of the ceaseless 
 wars of the wandering, this old nobility of the 
 Germanic clans died out ; its place was taken by the 
 comitatus and the ofiicial nobility springing up about 
 powerful kings, until the new order became, in its 
 •turn, hereditary. Of the great English officials, chief 
 place belongs to the so-called " alderman," who was 
 representative of the king for a given shire or other 
 
 1 Schmid, Ags. Ges. p. 527 ; cf. also Stubbs, Const. Hist. I. 151. 
 
 2 Cf. von Amira in Paul's Grdr. d. germ. Phil. II. 2. 113 f. 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 279 
 
 division of land. Such an alderman is the high- 
 hearted Byrhtnoth; ^ he collects and leads the royal 
 troops against all enemies of the king, maintains 
 order in his district, and occasionally presides at 
 court. The alderman seems to have been a creature 
 of the king, but with consent of the witan.^ Later, 
 the Danish " earl " took the Saxon ealdorman's place 
 and privileges; but the word had acquired a general 
 connotation of superior rank.^ "He came to tlie 
 town-reeve, who was his alderman," quotes Schmid 
 from Beda; and we find a curious passage in the 
 Leechdoms (Herbarium), w^here mention is made of 
 Achilles ]>e ealdornian^ Other examples of this do- 
 mestic rendering of foreign rank may be found in 
 an Anglo-Saxon homily, where Christ is called an 
 (B^eling, Moses a heretoga or leader, the saints ^egnas, 
 thanes or warriors, and the Jews in Egypt, — for- 
 eigners, of course, — Wealhas, " Welsh." ^ 
 
 Ownership of land was ultimately the test of 
 gentry ; but it could not have made so prominent a 
 part of the Germanic noble's credentials.^ Still, such 
 traditions best flourish on the soil which produced 
 them, and the connection of tracts of land with a 
 given noble family must have been an early factor in 
 
 1 See p. 237. 2 Schmid, Ags. Ges. 560. 
 
 8 It was probably unknown to continental Saxons, though used by 
 the Frisians. Cf. Waitz, p. 215. 
 
 ^Cockayne, Leechdoms, etc., I. 308. The ** satraps" (satrai^se) or 
 governors, whom Beda (see above, p. 271) mentions among the Old 
 Saxons, are rendered by ealdorman in Alfred's translation. See 
 Stubbs, I. 42. 
 
 ^ Another classification of ranks, found in the homilies, is 1) oratores 
 (clergy) ; 2) bellatores (warriors) ; 3) lahoratores. 
 
 6 Historians disagree. Cf. Waitz, 1. 167 f., and Stubbs, Const. Hist, 
 1. 155. 
 
280 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 the pomp and pride of nobility. The amount of land 
 held by a person determined in Anglc-Saxon law 
 the amount of his wergild. Blood was the origin 
 of rank; it meant more than property, and far more 
 than any station or command. Certainly, for the 
 earliest times at least, we must not think that office 
 and nobility were convertible terms.^ 
 
 The unit of Germanic public life was the freeman, 
 the son of a free father and a free mother. True, old 
 and vague traditions made the mother alone respon- 
 sible, and, based on that original maternal system to 
 which reference has been made above, founded the 
 maxim of "free mother, free child"; but a later 
 custom caused the offspring of free and unfree to 
 "follow the worse hand," whether maternal or pa- 
 ternal.2 Further, the freeman might be created from 
 an unfree man by course of legal ceremony, or as in 
 older times, by adoption. If our old word "earl" 
 rightfully convey, even before the Danish influence, 
 an echo of nobility, it is no fault of the ancient 
 German freeman that the name " churl " stares at us 
 moderns with such a stupid and ungracious air. 
 This is a commentary on the havoc wrought by wars 
 and conquests upon the old Germanic constitution. 
 The freeman of the Norse Rigsmdl is named " Karl " ; 
 and an old Holstein form of administering the oath, 
 to freemen of course, reads : " Step up, ye Kerls, 
 ..." 3 Grimm finds the name not only in Carloman, 
 but in the word for king (kral), used by Slavs and 
 Lithuanians, and derived from the founder of the 
 
 1 Waitz, p. 243. Loebell, Gregory v. Tours, pp. 87, 392 ff. 
 
 2 Scandinavian law gave benefit of the "better hand." See von 
 Amira in Paul's Grdr. II. 2. 112. 8 b. A. 166. 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 281 
 
 German empire.^ So the Anglo-Saxon form ceorl 
 seems to have meant " man " ; that is, of course, the 
 normal man, the freeman. Significant is the dignity 
 of the word in our Beoivulf, When the hero is 
 planning his eri*and of mercy to help King Hrothgar, 
 "wise men" praise his purpose and encourage him, — 
 sfiotere ceorlas? The word is applied to the warriors 
 and courtiers of the Danish king; and twice, with 
 the epithet " old," it is used of royalty itself.^ This 
 is for the heroic age : in the laws ceorl drops to the 
 two meanings "husband" (among animals we find 
 carl as a prefix indicating the male of a given species) 
 and " countryman " or " peasant." * In one old law, 
 however, it is used in the ancient sense of " freeman." 
 A more descriptive name is preserved in an account of 
 the heathen Saxons (continental) written by Hucbald 
 in the tenth century,^ who in turn partially quotes 
 Nithard, the grandson of Charles the Great, whose 
 material was close at hand. It is noted that the 
 Saxons had no kings, but were divided into three 
 classes, called in their own tongue edlingi^ frilingi^ 
 lassi. The friling is our freeman. 
 
 The freeman (capillatus) was distinguished by his 
 long, flowing hair, and by his arms, the so-called folk- 
 weapons.^ The Salic Law ordains severe penalties 
 against any one who shall cut or shave the hair from 
 a puer crinitus without the consent of the latter's 
 parents ; and on the other hand, for people to let a 
 slave's hair grow long was criminal offence. The 
 freeman had the right of waging private feud, so far 
 
 1 Ibid. 282. 2 B^ow. 202, 416. 
 
 8 B4ow. 1591, 2444, 2972. 4 Schmid, Ags. Ges. p. 643 f. 
 
 6 Life of St. Lebuin. See Stubbs, I. 42 ff. 6 R. A. 283 ff. 
 
282 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 as the increasing severity of legislation did not bar 
 his way. He was member of his village and district 
 assemblies, as of the larger council of his tribe; 
 among people like the Saxons this meant self-govern- 
 ment. As long as the freeman was mainstay of the 
 state, Germanic freedom kept its vigor; with his 
 decline, we pass into the tyrannies of feudal Europe, 
 where nobility and serfdom, spreading out their bor- 
 ders, left scant space between them for the honest 
 friling. 
 
 We need here delay no longer with the freeman, 
 for it is about his life that all our task revolves, and 
 whatever has been said without explicit limitation, 
 belongs to his account. We turn, therefore, to that 
 class which, being neither bond nor free, offers con- 
 siderable trouble to the exact student of our constitu- 
 tional history. Manumission from slavery gave rise 
 to the so-called freedmen. These, if w^e may venture 
 a broad assertion, seem to have been without the 
 tasks of slavery or the privileges of citizenship. 
 Among Anglo-Saxons, a lance and a sword, emblems 
 of the freeman's rank, were handed in symbolical 
 ceremony to the person thus released ; but he did not 
 thereby become peer of the freeman, and even his 
 descendants remained in a class by themselves, be- 
 tween the freeman and the slave.^ Such a subordi- 
 nate rank, moreover, was doubtless held by men who 
 submitted in a body to some conquering tribe and 
 were allowed to keep land and liberty ; their seeming 
 freedom was a concession, not a right. On the same 
 
 1 The wergild followed the shades of unfreedom down to the actual 
 slave, who had none at all. See also von Amira in Paul's Grdr. II. 2. 
 
 list 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 283 
 
 footing were foreigners, whom our ancestors every- 
 where called " Welshmen." The specific name for 
 this class of freedmen among Low Germans was in 
 Latin form litus^ in Frisian let^ and in our own Kent- 
 ish dialect, Icet} 
 
 There must have been a wide range of privileges 
 among this class, scanty enough in some instances 
 and little better than a slave's "seven hundred and 
 twenty loaves of bread a year," but running up to 
 very solid benefits. The freeman who for bread and 
 clothes, or, in those old times, for a gambling debt, 
 went into voluntary subjection to another man would 
 be in any event better treated than the outright 
 slave .2 The church, working as a rule on lines of 
 humanity, interfered in many ways to help the bond- 
 man and make his lot more tolerable. Private agree- 
 ment between superior and inferior would further 
 complicate the once simple conditions and create new . 
 degrees of servitude,^ with a general drift towards 
 fixed limits of work for corresponding wages. As 
 the Germanic freeman ceased to be the most promi- 
 nent factor of national life, the freedman, especially 
 when a creature of the king or of some high official, 
 became more and more important and could rise, like 
 the Roman freedman, to exalted office. The old 
 noble, the old freeman, had seen their day; kings 
 and the tools of kings began their long career. 
 
 From this stage of the freedman let us look back 
 
 1 Found in a single law of ^Ethelberht, which fixes a laet's wergild, 
 Schmid, p. 4. 
 
 2 Tacitus, with a touch of rhetoric, says that shame compelled the 
 winner to send the loser into a distant place, as he could ill rejoice in 
 such a gain. Germ. XXIV. s i?. ^. 335^ 337, 
 
284 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 at his predecessor in the days of Tacitus.^ " The 
 freedmen (Jiherti),'' he tells us, "stand but little 
 above the slaves ; they are seldom of any consequence 
 in the house, and never in the state, if we except 
 those races which are under the rule of kings,^ for 
 there the freedmen are superior to noble and freeborn 
 alike. With the other races, however, the low stand- 
 ing of the freedmen is a proof of liberty." The 
 freedman, in this sense, is probably of common Ger- 
 manic origin ; at least he is found in historical times 
 among all Germanic races save the Gothic and Scan- 
 dinavian.3 
 
 Lowest of all was the slave, a chattel, with no 
 "man-worth" at all, no wergild. The murder of a 
 slave was paid for as one now pays for damages in- 
 flicted on a neighbor's horses or cattle. Yet we may 
 be sure that slaves were no worse off in barbarian 
 Germany than in civilized Rome, where the punish- 
 ments inflicted on that wretched class were elabor- 
 ately cruel. German slaves had no such artistic and 
 systematic ill-treatment ; they might be killed in a sud- 
 den fury of the master, but escaped the harder persecu- 
 tion of joyless years. ^ It is remotely possible — though 
 this flight needs all the wings of romantic fondness 
 — that a love of freedom, the intense passion for ab- 
 solute liberty ©f the individual, may have held back 
 many a freeborn German from subjecting his slaves 
 
 1 Germ. XXIV. By liherti Tacitus probably means those who have 
 acquired freedom in whatever way, hardly a regular class of the 
 community. 
 
 2 "Gentibus quae regnantur." » Waitz, 1. 154. 
 
 * Auglo-Saxon ordinances of the church fixed a penance for the 
 man who slew his serf without judicial authority. Kemble, Saxons, 
 1.209. 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 285 
 
 to scourge and torture.^ Again, the Germanic slave 
 had some solid privileges which were denied to his 
 Roman brother. The slave lived in his own house, 
 and paid his owner a stated rent in corn or cattle or 
 woven garments ; ^ and there is a note of domesticity 
 in the Roman's statement that a German serf has his 
 own household gods, and rules over his own fireside, 
 — 8U08 penates regit. Then follows the remark that 
 a German seldom beats his slaves, or puts them, in 
 chains; a sudden tempest of anger will make him 
 kill his serf, but slow punishment he ignores. The 
 simple conditions of German life required no army 
 of slaves, no elaborate divisions of labor, as at Rome. 
 Where it was possible, Germans sold their slaves to 
 more civilized masters, as the Goths sold their own 
 conquered kinsmen. These northern giants were 
 sought as slaves in Rome ; and we all know Beda's 
 account of Gregory and the fair-haired Anglian 
 youths in the Roman slave-market. Slavery, one 
 may say, was only an accident, an external thing, 
 in the Germanic state ; the freeman was the state, 
 and a widely ramified system of slavery would have 
 sapped the foundations of that barbaric strength. 
 Splendid is the tribute which Tacitus pays to this 
 Germanic prowess and this Germanic freedom.^ "Not 
 Samnites nor Carthaginians, not Spain nor Gaul, not 
 even the Parthians, have given us sharper warnings. 
 For mightier than the Parthian throne is the freedom 
 of the Germans." 
 
 1 Anglo-Saxon slaves were cruelly treated. See Wright, Domestic 
 Manners and Sentiments, p. 56 f. 
 
 2 Tac. Germ. XXV. Later duties of the slave, c/. Grimm, R.A. 350 fif. 
 8 Germ, XXXVII. 
 
286 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 The chief origin of slavery must be looked for, as 
 Grimm remarks, in the captivity of a conquered 
 tribe. The whole race of Germans may have sub- 
 dued an indigenous population at the settlement of 
 the country; those "blond long-heads," as Huxley 
 calls them, may have conquered ''brunet broad- 
 heads " or what not, and so have laid the foundations 
 of their slave system ; but this can be neither proved 
 nor disproved. ^ In historical times, the more capa- 
 ble and intelligent prisoners of war were used or sold 
 as slaves, after a definite number had been sacrificed 
 to the gods. Years after the victory of Arminius 
 over Varus and the legions, Romans taken at the 
 battle were found serving as slaves among their Ger- 
 man captors. Children of such captives would natu- 
 rally form a class of serfs ; and even in cases where 
 one of them married a freeborn person, the offspring, 
 as we have seen above, would in most cases count as 
 slaves. 2 Indeed, to marry an unfree person often led 
 to slavery. Again, we may add to these causes of 
 serfdom the too common cases where hunorer and 
 destitution forced a man to give up his freedom. 
 Kemble quotes a case where an Anglo-Saxon lady in 
 her will frees all those who had been forced into slav- 
 ery through poverty and hunger — "all who in the 
 evil days had bent their heads for food."^ Hopeless 
 debt made many a slave ; and the descent from free- 
 dom into thraldom was facile enough. The church 
 and the laws, while they enjoin forbearance and 
 
 1 See also Waitz, 1. 158. 2 j?. ^. 324. 
 
 8 Saxons, I. 196. For other causes cf. B. A. 330 f. For legendary 
 accounts of the origin of slavery, see, of course, Rigamdl and references 
 of Elze, Englische Philologie, p. 212. 
 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 287 
 
 mercy as far as possible, make no question of the fact 
 itself. A law of -^thelred, repeated by Cnut, runs 
 as follows in Cnut's version: "And we command 
 that one shall not all too easily sell Christian men 
 out of the country, certainly not send them among 
 the heathen ; but let it be seen to that the souls 
 which Christ has redeemed with his own life be not 
 brought to destruction." ^ 
 
 The sign of the slave was his close-cut hair, and, 
 often, the marks of mutilation in his face, " A slit 
 nose is the mark of a thrall," says Scandinavian law.^ 
 Slaves were maimed or lamed for the sake of secur- 
 ity, though this precaution must have been sporadic 
 among the Germans ; the capture of a whole army, 
 for instance, may have made necessary something of 
 the sort. We may be sure that no sentiment would 
 have forbidden it. The slave had no family name. 
 He wore short, scanty garments, with dull colors and 
 rough material. He bore no weapons ; had no right 
 to go away from his master's land; and naturally 
 took no part in the popular assembly, whether to vote 
 as a citizen, or to prosecute as an accuser in process 
 of the rude civil law. He could marry only with the 
 consent of his lord, and in that case even was obliged 
 to pay a marriage-tax. It is perhaps well to note 
 that recent investigation has exploded several vener- 
 able legal fictions about the Germanic slave ; for ex- 
 ample, that bit of historical horse-play, the theory of 
 a jus primce noctis,^ 
 
 1 Schmid, pp. 2T2, 228. In the earlier law there is a proviso, " unless 
 the person have duly forfeited his liberty." 2 ^. ^, 339, 
 
 8 See Kemble's account of Anglo-Saxon slaves, Saxons, Chap. VIIL, 
 and especially p. 214. 
 
288 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 289 
 
 A peculiar position was that of the stranger or 
 visitor in a Germanic community. He is called " the 
 far-comer," or simply " comer," " stranger," " he who 
 has come over the mark " ; one name for him, "guest," 
 is the same word as Latin hostis^ which so easily passed 
 from " stranger " into " enemy." German elender and 
 English " wretch " have acquired their present mean- 
 ing from the connotation of the older words which 
 meant nothing more than an " outlandish " man, an 
 exile. Originally such a stranger had no legal pro- 
 tection whatever; he was dependent on individual 
 hospitality,^ and otherwise was subject to maltreat- 
 ment and eventual slavery. In some cases the old 
 laws enjoin hospitality as a part of private if not pub- 
 lic morals ; and the binding law of three nights' en- 
 tertainment we have already noticed.^ It is a proof 
 of the artistic design of Tacitus that he sets the hos- 
 pitality of the old Germans so sharply and immedi- 
 ately in contrast with their family feuds. 
 
 Little by little, as commerce increased, and the 
 stranger was oftener seen in Germanic lands, stability 
 and development of trade made it necessary to pro- 
 tect him. This right, or duty, fell upon the king ; 
 royal protection was extended to the foreigner and 
 laws were passed in his favor. The king was thus 
 the guardian of all wayfaring men from other lands ; 
 he was their mundhora^ and therefore had a right to 
 their estates, later to a part of their personal prop- 
 erty. With the settled international life of mediaeval 
 Europe, the stranger becomes in every nation a per- 
 manent object of legal protection. 
 
 1 R. A. 396 ff. Schmid, Ges. d. Ags. s.v. ♦♦ Fremde," p. 582. 
 a Above, p. 163. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 Gifts, not taxes — Organization of government — Elements of 
 monarchy and of democracy — Popular councils and assemblies — 
 The town-meeting — Legal system — The function of priests in 
 civil administration — Punishments for crime — Forms of law — 
 Ordeal and trial by battle. 
 
 In Germany and certain other European states, 
 where every sound man must learn to use weapons 
 and fight at need for his fatherland, military duty 
 would perhaps stand first in a list of the good citizen's 
 obligations to his country. But we may be very sure 
 that the second duty would be to pay one's taxes. 
 This the early German did not do,^ but instead he 
 made presents to his chieftain, sending him goodly 
 gifts in corn or cattle. We know how long the excel- 
 lent memory of monarchs treasured up this custom ; 
 Queen Elizabeth, we are told, took care that what 
 she received on a New Year's day should always 
 largely exceed her own benefactions.^ Yet these gifts 
 of the early German were presents pure and simple, 
 no taxes, no prerogative of the prince. Even of 
 booty and plunder in war the king might take no 
 more than his share as a warrior, and the division 
 
 1 Oerm, XV. 
 
 2 Brand, Antiquities, *' New Year's Day." 
 
290 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 291 
 
 was not one of choice : all was left to the lots. It is 
 on the margin between the old dispensation and the 
 new rule of kings that we meet that famous vase of 
 Soissons. A bishop asks the mighty leader of the 
 Franks for a vase of extraordinary beauty which had 
 been taken with other plunder from the church. The 
 king promises it to the bishop if it fall to the royal 
 lot — no very near chance ; however, he goes to his 
 warriors and begs the vase as a favor to royalty, not 
 at all as a right. The warriors assent ; but one man, 
 striking the vase with his battle-axe, cries out, ''Claim 
 nothing but thy lot!" The king takes no steps 
 against this gross defiance, but contents himself with 
 sending the vase to the bishop; until, at the next 
 great assembly of the nation, and before the whole 
 army, he fells the objector to the earth, crying, 
 "That for thy blow upon the vase at Soissons!" 
 No one dared a word or act of protest.^ 
 
 Conquered land was at first shared in this fashion ; 2 
 but later, as among the Anglo-Saxons, the king took 
 a special part for himself. The old maxim, how- 
 ever, held the freeman exempt from all taxation: 
 frei mann, it said, frei gut? What was not exacted 
 by direct law came, nevertheless, to be demanded 
 by custom as well as by the growing importance of 
 the king. In addition to yearly gifts, there was 
 imposed upon freemen the necessity to entertain 
 and harbor the sovereign with his retinue, to aid 
 him in war, and to contribute horses and wagons 
 for the royal need. Little by little, custom hard- 
 ened into law and recognized the definite nature 
 of taxes ; among the earliest of these direct burdens 
 
 1 Gregor. Tur. II. 27. 
 
 2 /?. ^. 246 f. 
 
 8 Ibid. 297. 
 
 on land, Grimm counts the church tithes.^ Nor was 
 this taxation, even in its milder form, altogether 
 without the consent of the taxpayer. He was repre- 
 sented, or else took a direct part, in the councils of 
 his nation. Every freeman was member of this 
 General Court.^ Whether these popular assemblies 
 counted for more or for less than the royal authority, 
 is a perplexing question, and historians have had no 
 difficulty in seeing now a monarchy and now a re- 
 public in the old Germanic communities. We do not 
 know how far judicial and executive organization had 
 made progress, nor how many elements of the modern 
 state were present. Probably, when Tacitus wrote, 
 there was a fairly organized government, — if such a 
 name may be applied to a community so loosely 
 united, — since it often took three days for the popu- 
 lar assembly to come together at the season of new 
 or full moon, and it is reasonable to suppose with 
 Holtzmann that this could not have been the case 
 with members of a single canton. Wider groups 
 indicate firmer organization ; ^ probably we are not 
 far out of the way when we assume that the early 
 Germanic state inclined to democracy in peace and to 
 a monarchy in war. The continental Saxon village 
 had a sort of governor who ruled over his own dis- 
 trict while peace was maintained: when war broke 
 out, these governors, or, as Beda calls them, satraps, 
 
 1 R. A, 300. 
 
 2 For the later decline of the Germanic freeman, especially the Anglo- 
 Saxon, see Stubhs, earlier pages; and also Green, Short History, p. 90. 
 
 8 See Stubbs, Const. Hist. I. 26 flf.; Waitz, Verfassungsgesch. I. 
 201 ff.; and such works as Seebohm's Village Communities; G. L. 
 Gomme's Primitive Folk Moots ; and the valuable studies of Professor 
 E. A. Freeman in books and essays. 
 
292 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 293 
 
 chose by lot one of their own number for the supreme 
 command, which lasted until the close of hostilities. ^ 
 
 Popular government was clearly recognized even 
 by the later kings, who went through the form of 
 appealing to the great council for sanction of the 
 royal deeds. In BSowulf we read of the Danish 
 king sitting with his council in anxious deliberation 
 how they may resist the attacks of Grendel.^ Alfred 
 tells us that he drew up his code of laws with the 
 advice of his Witan:^ Among the Saxons and Fri- 
 sians, where Roman influence was never strong, and 
 where we may find the origin of our own institutions, 
 " local self-government " seems to have been the rule 
 whenever the nation was at peace. The northwest- 
 ern districts of Germany have always shown more 
 or less republican spirit; though an irresistible cur- 
 rent swept them — with what difficulty, Charlemagne 
 could tell — into the grasp of monarchy. This 
 change and concentration of government is very 
 marked. Dahn notes that at the great battle in 357, 
 Alamannians had twelve so-called "- kings," evidently 
 mere local leaders ; whereas in the fight against the 
 Franks in 496 there was only one king of the 
 Alamannians. 
 
 In the time of Tacitus, general government rested 
 in the assembly or moot (Anglo-Saxon, gemdt) of 
 larger and smaller districts. The exact nature of 
 these districts — canton, hundred, mark, community, 
 what not — has been the subject of much discussion ; 
 but it seems clear enough that representative bodies 
 carried on such government, local or general, as ex- 
 
 1 See the whole passage, Beda, Hist. Ecc. V. 10, and above, p. 271. 
 
 2 Beow. 171 f. 8 Schmid, p. 68. 
 
 isted outside of the conduct of war. The folk-moot 
 was the central fact of public life and public inter- 
 ests ; ^ and the Campus Martins of the Carlovingians, 
 the shire-moot, the town-meeting, are continued and 
 different forms of the same old institution. The priv- 
 ilege of belonging to this primitive body was rated 
 high; the right of attendance was withdrawn from 
 no freemen whatever save only those who had been 
 guilty of the crime of crimes and had left their 
 shields upon the field of battle .^ The meetings of the 
 tribes were held at full or new moon ; ^ but for the 
 larger assemblies, where a whole race convened, 
 two meetings in the year were probably sufficient, 
 and naturally coincided with the times of the great 
 heathen feasts.^ Daytime — "holy is the day" — 
 was the legal limit of session. The summons for an 
 extraordinary assembly may have been, as in later 
 times, a stick, an arrow, or the like ; perhaps even a 
 hammer for the court.^ The place of meeting was 
 under the open sky, high and prominent ; and was at 
 or near some place sacred to the gods — mountain, 
 meadow, fountain, tree. Even the high-road was a 
 favorite place. Local assemblies in England and 
 elsewhere were held by preference under sacred and 
 memorial trees, of which the chief are linden, oak, 
 and ash.^ 
 
 1 Waitz, I. 338. ^ Prsecipuum flagitium ; Tac. Germ. VI. 
 
 8 The Anglo-Saxon hundred met monthly. Schmid, p. 595, under 
 gemdt. 
 
 * Lippert thinks the origin of the general council was the nomadic 
 spring meeting of tribes before the herds were driven out to pasture. 
 Christentwn, Volksbrauch u. Volksglaube, p. 583 ff. 
 
 6 Waitz, I. 345 ; Kemble, Saxons, 1. 55. 
 
 6 G. L. Gomme, Primitive Folk Moots, 
 
294 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 What was done at these assemblies? Naturally, 
 business varied with the size and character of the 
 gathering. Tacitus tells us of an embassy sent by 
 one German tribe to another, and received in full 
 assembly, where proposals were considered regarding 
 a combined and systematic opposition to Roman 
 rule.i Further, we are told in the Germania that 
 important matters were discussed by the people, 
 minor affairs by the chieftains; and as in modern 
 times, so then, we may be sure that influential men 
 knew how to guide the sentiment of the meeting. 
 Executive or presiding officers were few and of 
 vague functions; there was little need for such 
 men when individual freedom was so great and the 
 execution of law so limited. Of ancient origin, we 
 may assume, was the town-reeve,^ for he is men- 
 tioned among the old Saxons as the viilieus,^ which is 
 the same as Alfred's tUngerefa. He was probably 
 elected by the smaller community, and presided over 
 its councils : over the larger assembly presided a high 
 official — prince or even king. 
 
 The assembly was under the protection of the tri- 
 bal gods, and was opened by a command of silence 
 from the priests, who thus imposed conditions of 
 peace upon the gathering. At the beginning of the 
 Old Norse Voluspa, " The Sibyl's Prophecy," we find 
 this solemn call for silence on the part of all peace- 
 loving mortals : " Be silent, all men, high and low." 
 Moreover, the priests, as executives of divine com- 
 mand, had power to punish such as might defy their 
 authority, and through their persons insult the maj- 
 esty of the patron gods. The session thus opened, 
 
 1 Hist. IV. 64. 
 
 2 Waitz, 1. 136. 
 
 3 Beda, Hist. Ecc. V. 10. 
 
 li 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 295 
 
 distinguished men of the tribe are heard in behalf of 
 whatever proposition is before the meeting. If the 
 people approve a man's speech or recommendation, 
 they clash their weapons lustily together ; if they dis- 
 approve and dissent, there is an ominous murmur.^ 
 
 Religious ceremonies were doubtless abundant at 
 such a meeting. The custom of casting lots, de- 
 scribed by Tacitus,^ is under the charge of the state- 
 priest " if it is upon a public occasion." An example 
 of the use of such lots in deciding a public question 
 is quoted by Waitz ^ from the Vita Anskarii. A 
 king of Sweden consults the gods by lots to see 
 whether or not he shall allow Anskar to bring for- 
 ward his plea for Christianity. The judgment is 
 favorable, and the king submits to his people the 
 question of a new religion. Many other ceremonies 
 of divination and enchantment even were doubtless 
 common at such an assembly, but are more properly 
 considered under the head of religious rites. 
 
 Aside from religion and diplomacy, the business of 
 these meetings must have partaken largely of a legal 
 character.^ With the exception of small villages, 
 every district made a court out of its general assem- 
 bly ; ^ and it is Grimm's opinion ^ that the whole assem- 
 bly of freemen heard and judged such causes as came 
 before them, — questions of public interest, transfer 
 of land, settlement of personal disputes over property, 
 the enfranchisement of slaves, the award of wergild, 
 the ceremony of a free youth's admittance to the privi- 
 
 1 Tac. Ger. XI. 2 ibid. X. 8 j. 350. 
 
 * Sir H. Maine says that the court of the Hundred is the oldest of the 
 organized Germanic courts. Early Law and Custom, p. 169. 
 6 Waitz, I. 339. 6 r, a. 745. 
 
 i 
 
296 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 297 
 
 leges of citizenship, and similar affairs. Something 
 of this same sort was the Icelandic Thing, An officer 
 presided over the Germanic court, a sort of judge, 
 whose token of office was a staff, mostly white in 
 color,! and who often sat upon a conspicuous seat 
 hewn out of stone. Some curious old laws enforce 
 upon a popular judge that he shall sit with one leg 
 over the other ; and other laws, not so curious, insist 
 that he shall keep himself clear of drunkenness. In 
 such courts of the historical period, the judge faced 
 the east ; on his right was the plaintiff*, and on his 
 left the defendant, who thus had to take the north, a 
 quarter of bad omen.^ True, these are late customs, 
 but their roots not improbably strike well into the 
 most ancient judicial practice. Doubtless, too, many 
 old ceremonies were retained by the famous Vehni" 
 gericlit of Westphalia, to which we have already 
 referred, — that Vigilance Committee in the grand 
 style which served as almost the only curb upon a 
 lawless age; which, like its prototype, the old Ger- 
 manic assembly, held court under free sky, had 
 no secret chambers, no tortures, and executed its 
 decrees with unerring certainty by hanging the con- 
 victed offender to the nearest living tree.^ Nor are 
 the collections of Germanic law so very recent in 
 date. The earliest codes were probably poetical 
 (alliterative) in character so as to be more readily 
 retained by the memory. The Goths had their 
 system of laws ; but the earliest Germanic code pre- 
 served to us is the Salic Law, about which so much 
 
 1 B, A. 761. 2 R, A. 808. 
 
 3 For a salutary rebuke of the nonsense written about Vehmgerichte, 
 see Dr. Wachter's little book already cited, p. 63 f. 
 
 misunderstanding has been spread abroad: it dates 
 from the fifth century. 
 
 Although Tacitus is authority for the statement 
 that priests were charged with the execution of de- 
 crees, as well as with ordinary punishments, a recent 
 writer is very decided in his assertion that common 
 law as administered by these courts was a matter of 
 tradition and the direct affair of each voting and 
 deliberating freeman. Much of the sacredness at- 
 taching to law, he says, has been the result of Chris- 
 tianity and was foreign to our heathen system. Nor 
 was there, he adds, any hieratic monopoly of law ; it 
 was not kept, recorded, and interpreted by priests.^ 
 Nevertheless, we know on the authority of Tacitus 
 that the priests were its executors. A pretty Frisian 
 legend records the sacred sanction of law. King 
 Karl orders twelve men to be chosen from Frisian 
 land in order that they may determine what is law in 
 Frisia. Unable to do as he bids, these twelve men 
 beg a respite, but after a week are still in doubt. 
 Then Karl declares them doomed to death, but allows 
 them to be set in a boat without sail or oar, and ex- 
 posed to the sea. They beg God for help and ask 
 him to send a thirteenth man to them (as Christ was 
 to the disciples) to teach them what they need to 
 know. Suddenly this thirteenth one is sitting among 
 them. He rows them to land with a bit of wood, 
 strikes the ground and causes a spring of water to 
 gush forth, and proceeds to teach them all the law. 
 This, thinks Richthofen, points to the old heathen 
 customs, when a priest set forth the law.^ Similar 
 
 1 Von Amira in Paul's Grdr. II. 2. 41. 
 
 2 Richthofen, Friesische Rechtsgeschichte, II. 456, 459, 488. 
 
298 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 299 
 
 tl 
 
 I 
 
 conclusions may be drawn in regard to Iceland. 
 This Asega, Judex, Sapiens, — by all these names 
 the Frisian interpreter of law is called, — seems to 
 have a genuine heathen pedigree ; he was the local 
 magistrate of old.^ 
 
 Cases of public punishment are given by Tacitus 
 and have been mentioned here under the head of 
 cowardice in war.^ The offender could be declared 
 an outlaw, " vogelfreir as in the case when a murderer 
 refused to give satisfaction of any sort. Moreover, 
 there remain in modern collections traces of older 
 laws which prescribe frightful forms of death ; these 
 horrors are nevertheless traditional and do not seem 
 to have been enforced in historical times.^ But 
 certain modes of execution, terrible enough, may be 
 followed far back in Germanic records; such were 
 death on the wheel, decapitation, stoning, trampling 
 to death by wild horses, burial alive, flinging from a 
 rock, drowning, burning, exposure to wild animals, 
 and, for coast-dwellers, sending to sea in a leaking 
 boat. In the north, a barbarous custom called " carv- 
 ing the eagle " — that is, on the back of the victim — 
 finds frequent mention. Milder punishments were 
 known, and records of the early middle ages tell of 
 cutting off a victim's hair, which thus deprived him 
 of his external sign of freedom ; whipping, — a pen- 
 
 1 Richthofen, Friesische Rechtsgeschichte, 482. 2 Qerm. XII. 
 
 ^ R. A. 682. Enforced, however, were the elaborate punishments for 
 him who profaned a temple of the gods. In Frisian law such a criminal 
 " ducitur ad mare, et in sabulo, quod accessus maris operire solet, fin- 
 duntur aures ejus et castratur, et immolatur diis quorum templa vio- 
 lavit." Richthofen, Fries. Rechtsges. II. 507. Compare Tempest, 1. 1 : — 
 
 would thou raightst lie drowning, 
 The washing of ten tides. 
 
 alty reserved for slaves; flaying; cutting off hand 
 and foot, nose, ears, or lips; blinding; cutting out 
 the tongue ; breaking out the teeth ; branding, and 
 other less violent forms, down to a mere reproof 
 by the proper authorities.^ The Anglo-Saxon laws 
 are very explicit in the definition and gradation 
 of crimes ; but while many penalties of mutilation 
 occur, most of the punishments are in terms of 
 money paid as fine and tvergild. Adjustment of the 
 wergild must have taken up much of the time in 
 these assembly-courts. Fines were assessed — about 
 collection we cannot feel so sure — upon criminals of 
 every grade ; and great complication arose from the 
 difference made in the amount according to the rank 
 of the injured party. Even verbal injuries and attacks 
 upon honor or reputation were punished by fine, and 
 this in some of the early Anglo-Saxon codes ; to call 
 a man a perjurer, for example, or to heap abuse upon 
 him in the house of another, is punished by a fine of 
 one shilling to the owner of the house, six shillings to 
 the insulted person, and twelve shillings to the king.^ 
 Should royalty be even remotely concerned, the fine 
 is increased. " If the king drink at a man's house 
 and any one shall commit wrong there, this one is to 
 pay double fine." — " If a freeman steal from the king, 
 let him pay ninefold." ^ This is, of course, no crite- 
 rion for primitive relations ; but we are distinctly told 
 by Tacitus that the Germans of his day had a system 
 of fines which were assessed in terms of cattle.* For 
 less serious offences than those for which death was 
 imposed, he says, there is a scale of punishments 
 
 1 For details, R. A. 680 ff. 
 
 3 Laws of JEthelberht, Schmid, p. 2. 
 
 2 Schmid, p. 12, § 11. 
 * Germ. XII. 
 
300 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 graded according to the crime, with fines in horses or 
 cattle ; a part of these fines is paid to the king or to 
 the community, a part to the injured person or his 
 relatives. Thus we see a state of affairs distinctly 
 analogous to the system of Anglo-Saxon codes. It 
 is an Aryan tendency to distinguish carefully between 
 crime and crime and to shade the punishment in heav- 
 ier or lighter fashion. Even among the Franks, Salic 
 law interposes to protect woman from insult, and lays 
 fines upon the man who may take liberties with her 
 person : according as he grasps her forearm or upper 
 arm or touches her breast, he pays 1200, 1400, and 
 1800 denarii, and if he knocks off her head-dress, the 
 fine is fifteen solidi,^ Moreover, apart from the fine 
 or " damages," which make restitution to the sufferer, 
 there was something like our modern fine, the wite of 
 Anglo-Saxon law, which had to be paid to the state.^ 
 The freeman, the citizen, was the person who 
 made the laws and for whose sake they existed ; but 
 there was a class of people outside the protection of 
 law. Such were abandoned criminals in the first 
 instance, and then those people who followed any 
 despised occupation, the professional fighter or cham- 
 pion, wandering minstrels and mountebanks, beg- 
 gars, tramps ; later, illegitimate children ; and latest 
 (towards the end of the middle ages), the hangman.^ 
 Allusion has been made already to the shy advances 
 undertaken by law upon the domain of feud and pri- 
 
 1 Lex. Sal. c. 75. The late Thomas Wright quotes this and more in 
 his Womankind in Western Europe, p. 38. 
 
 2 The relative amount of respect paid to law by the different Ger- 
 manic tribes is not easy to fix. For general lawlessness the Franks 
 must claim precedence. See Von Loebell, Gregor v. Tours, pp. 35-57. 
 
 « Von Amira in Paul's Grdr. II. 2. 123. 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 301 
 
 vate warfare. Among such advances we must count 
 the duel and trial by battle ; these were in all probabil- 
 ity carried on before the full assembly of the people. 
 Tacitus tells us of a case where combat between two 
 champions — a captive from one army, a soldier from 
 the other — was thought to foreshadow the event of 
 war, a sort of divination.^ Oaths, too, must have been 
 taken, along with an appeal to heaven, when the com- 
 bat was of a judicial nature. In Scandinavia, the 
 accused as well as the accuser grasped the holy ring 
 stained with sacrificial blood, and made oath ; while 
 a late survival caused the same persons to swear 
 upon the boar's head. 
 
 Another ceremony which was probably carried out 
 before one of these general assemblies was the ordeal .^ 
 Jacob Grimm thinks that the ordeal, wliich concerns 
 itself with past or present, just as the oracle is busied 
 with the future, was of remote heathen origin;^ and 
 Mr. E. B. Tylor approves Jamieson's derivation of 
 our phrase " to haul over the coals " from the time- 
 honored rite of passing through the fire.* The grave 
 injustice of the ordeal, falling heavily upon accused 
 persons, who were dependent on a miracle for the 
 establishment of their innocence, has led Grimm to 
 the conclusion that the early middle ages seldom 
 applied this test in the case of freemen. A freeman 
 took oath of innocence ; while the slave and the 
 dependent were driven to the terrors of the ordeal. 
 Precisely so, in later days, it was the witches, mostly 
 
 1 Oerm. X. 
 
 2 See Dahn, BausteinCf II. 1-75, " Studien zur Geschichte der ger- 
 man. Gottesurtheile." 
 
 8 R. A. 909. 4 Primitive Culture, I. 85. 
 
302 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND LAW 
 
 303 
 
 w 
 
 
 from the poorest classes of the population, who were 
 compelled to undergo the ordeal by water or by 
 fire. In the old heathen times, however, it must 
 have been prescribed for all classes of society. A 
 queen herself submits to it in what has been called 
 "the best and earliest description of a heathen 
 ordeal." It is Gudrun purging herself from the 
 charge of adultery. In sight of the court, — " seven 
 hundred men came into the hall to see the king's 
 wife deal with the cauldron," — she dips her hand 
 to the bottom of the boiling water, and unhurt takes 
 out the stones. Then the accuser is forced to undergo 
 the trial, and is badly scalded.^ The ordeal was so 
 strongly founded upon popular approval that the 
 church was forced to recognize it along with many 
 another suspicious ceremony .^ 
 
 Of the different kinds of ordeal, we may note the 
 thrusting of one's hand directly into the fire, walking 
 through the flames, seizing a red-hot iron with naked 
 hand; fetching with bared arm a stone or ring from 
 the bottom of a kettle filled with boiling water ; being 
 flung into pond or river, with the condition that float- 
 ing means guilt and sinking innocence, — an alterna- 
 tive mocked in certain verses of Hudihras; and pass- 
 ing before the corpse of a murdered man, with the 
 expectation that the body will begin to bleed at the 
 approach of the murderer, — as in the Nibelungen 
 
 1 Vigfusson-Powell, C. P. B. I. 322 f., 561. 
 
 2 A Frisian legend makes the " good " King Karl and the heathen 
 King Redbad enter upon an ordeal to decide ownership of Frisian terri- 
 tory : who can longer remain still shall conquer. Twelve hours long 
 they stand motionless. Then Karl drops his glove; Redbad picks it up, 
 and loses, as Karl exclaims, " Thou art my * man '! " See Richthofen, 
 Fries. Eechtsges. II. 418. 
 
 II 
 
 Lay, where Siegfried lies upon the bier, and the kings, 
 and Hagen his murderer, enter the church : — 
 
 And all denied the murder ; but Kriemhilt cried in teen, — 
 " Whoso would prove him guiltless may let it now be seen. 
 In presence of the people let him approach the bier, 
 And stand before the murdered man, and truth shall then be 
 clear." 
 
 That is a mickle wonder, whene'er before the dead 
 (Ye see it yet full often) the murderer is led. 
 Again the wounds gin bleeding : and so it happened here. 
 The guilt of Hagen on this wise right plainly did appear. 
 
 The w^ounds they fell a-bleeding, as they had done before. , . J 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon laws show the ordeal purely as 
 an appeal to God's judgment, and prescribe various 
 religious preparations in addition to the judicial pro- 
 cedure.2 The most remarkable of these Old English 
 ordeals was the so-called corsnced, where a piece of 
 bread or cheese — later it was the consecrated bread 
 of the church — was swallowed by the accused, with 
 the idea that a guilty person must choke in the 
 attempt. It was noted whether the swallower trembled 
 and turned pale in his attempt ; and a prayer was 
 often put up that if he was guilty, his throat and 
 digestive organs might fail to perforin their office.^ 
 
 The foregoing tests require but one person : the 
 trial by battle brought both parties into action. 
 
 1 N. L. 984. See also R. A. 930 f. Familiar, too, is the scene in 
 Shakspere's Richard III., I. 2, where King Henry's corpse bleeds at 
 the approach of his murderer. 
 
 2 Schmid, s.v. orddl, and references, especially pp. 144 and 416 ff. 
 For the Greek use of this ceremony, see the well-known passage of the 
 Antigone, 264 ff. 
 
 8 " Fac eum, domine, in visceribus angustari, ejus guttur conclude," 
 etc. 
 
804 
 
 fi 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 305 
 
 Grimm records a form of duel where physical en- 
 durance decided the cause. In heathen times this 
 was probably a test to see which of two persons 
 could longer sustain the hands and arms aloft. In 
 Christian practice, this was changed to the custom of 
 standing with uplifted hands by a cross, the judicium 
 crucis. We have noted above Karl's contest with 
 Redbad, where the test was to stand motionless as 
 long as possible. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 The weapon-death — Burning and burial — The former a primi- 
 tive Germanic habit — The mound or barrow — Its position — What 
 was burnt or buried with the dead — Sacrifice of the living — Ship- 
 burials —The land of souls — Germanic horror of the grave — The 
 elegiac mood in our poetry — Games and feasts at the funeral — 
 Ceremonies at the burial of Attila and of Beowulf. 
 
 Death, we have already seen, came to the Ger- 
 man upon the battle-field, in the feud, and at sea ; but 
 nowhere so dreaded as where it found him in his bed, 
 — the "straw-death," as he called it. Men who die 
 thus inglorious are doomed to tread wet and chill and 
 dusky ways to the land of Hel. Old warriors of the 
 Viking age, when caught by illness, gashed them- 
 selves with Odin's spear, and so bought " Valhalla " 
 with their blood.^ Of the various paths to death, old 
 age had the worst adjectives. A passage in BSowuJf 
 preserves some of the primitive sentiment, though the 
 note of sermonizing has slipped in and given a modern 
 tone to the whole : — 
 
 1 The earlier belief gave all dead to Hel, and later to Thor. Odin 
 is the Viking god. See Schullerus in P. B. Beit. XH. 246, and Petersen, 
 Om Nordboernes Gudedyrkehe og Gudetro i Hedenold, p. 90 ff. For 
 another notion, which worked against mutilated bodies, see Tyler, 
 Primitive Culture, II. 87. 
 
it« 
 
 306 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 307 
 
 M 
 
 Soon shall it be 
 that sword or sickness will steal thy power, 
 or fang of the fire, or flood's o'erwhelming, 
 gripe of the falchion, or flight of spear, 
 or odious age ; or the eyes' clear beam 
 wax dull and darken. ^ 
 
 A famous passage of the poetic Edda 2 mentions the 
 different deaths which men may die. " I counsel thee 
 ninthly," says Sigrdrifa to Sigurd, "that thou give 
 the dead man burial no matter where thou shalt find 
 him, be he sick-dead, or sea-dead or weapon-dead, . . ." 
 The sea-death came often enough to these northern 
 pirates, and was by no means without honor. But it 
 is the weapon-dead who fare straightway to Odin; 
 unwasted by sickness, in the full strength of man- 
 hood, they leap mailed and armed into the new life. 
 This feeling about the compensations of a warrior's 
 death is still abroad, and is not yet a mere sentiment. 
 The Horatian maxim was certainly more than senti- 
 ment, — it was Roman faith and Roman pride ; and 
 there is even for us something full-blooded about 
 those adjectives didce et decorum. The warrior in 
 Germanic times had the stateliest funeral ; his arms, 
 and often his wife and slaves, gave him fitting escort 
 to the other world. A violent death of almost any 
 kind was the only aristocratic way to leave life in 
 Scandinavia. Suicide was honorable when under- 
 taken from motives which men then deemed proper, 
 and is a matter of frequent occurrence in Old Norse 
 annals. 
 
 As regards the funeral rites of the German, we are 
 
 1 B^ow. 1763 ff. 
 
 2 Sigrdrifumdl, 33, ed. Hildebrand. 
 
 not without fairly copious sources of information.^ 
 Burial and burning of the corpse alternate in history, 
 and are conditioned by the circumstances of a given 
 tribe. " The soberest nations," says Sir Thomas 
 Browne in his Hydriotaphia, " have rested in two 
 ways, of simple inhumation and burning," while he 
 asserts that " carnal interment . . . was of the elder 
 date." It is curious, by the way, to compare the 
 fantastic reasons given by Sir Thomas for these prac- 
 tices, with the poetical explanation of the German 
 scholar and romanticist, Jacob Grimm. " Some being 
 of the opinion of Thales, that water was the original 
 of all things, thought it most equal to submit unto 
 the principle of putrefaction, and conclude in a moist 
 relentment. Others conceived it most natural to end 
 in fire, as due unto the master principle in the com- 
 position . . . and therefore heaped up large piles, more 
 actively to waft them toward that element. . . ." 
 Grimm, too, regards burial as the primitive custom, 
 and gives it a poetic motive, — the body sinks to the 
 mother of all things, earth ; whereas by fire the soul 
 soars in flame to the father, to Jupiter .^ Burning, he 
 therefore concludes, shows a higher stage of culture ; 
 and he connects with this custom the formation of a 
 belief in the end of the world through fire. On the 
 other hand, burial would often be a necessity, — after 
 a battle, or in a country destitute of wood. Where 
 the two customs existed side by side, burning was for 
 
 1 The best summary is J. Grimm, iiher das Verbrennen der Leichen, 
 an admirable paper, read before the Berlin Academy in 1849. Kl. Schr, 
 II. 211 ff. 
 
 2 Work quoted, p. 214 f. One involuntarily recalls Goethe's sympa- 
 thetic ballad, Der Gott und die Bajadere, with its fine ending; and 
 Grimm quotes the conclusion of the same poet's Braut von Corinth, 
 

 308 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 309 
 
 ii^ 
 
 III 
 
 the rich and burial for the poor. A nomadic folk 
 tends to burn, an agricultural folk to bury. The 
 stone age probably buried,^ thinks Grimm, the bronze 
 age burnt, while the age of iron returned to burial. In 
 broader generalization, the heathen races have mostly 
 preferred to burn their dead, while Christians incline 
 to burial. The importance of some sort of funeral 
 rites was conceded by primitive man ; only the 
 roughest tribes have left the bodies of their dead to 
 dogs and birds of prey, — a fearful fate reserved for 
 conquered warriors, and familiar in the Iliad and in 
 our Anglo-Saxon poetry. The old Persians, how- 
 ever, treated their dead in this way, and some Mon- 
 golians still keep up the practice ; but for these latter 
 there are explanations in the theories of soul-cult, 
 advanced by modern anthropology. One thing is 
 quite certain : our Germanic ancestors burned their 
 dead.2 
 
 To Tacitus, the Germanic funeral ceremonies 
 seemed simple in the extreme. But there was 
 probably more meant and more carried out than met 
 his ear; and we must remember the extraordinary 
 pomp and circumstance of funerals at Rome. Caesar 
 testifies^ that Gallic funerals were very sumptuous ; but 
 the only peculiar custom which Tacitus finds worthy 
 of notice in Germanic rites is the use of certain kinds 
 of wood for the funeral-pile of illustrious men. No 
 costly coverings, he says, are used, no spices ; but the 
 
 1 Certainly did, says Montelius, Civilization of Sweden in Ancient 
 Times, trans. Woods, p. 35. 
 
 2 Swedish graves of the early iron age show both burnt and unburnt 
 bodies. In the boat-burials bodies were now burnt, now unburnt. Mon- 
 telius, pp. 122-139. 
 
 * B. G. VI. 19, " funera . . . magnifica et sumptuosa." 
 
 arms, and often the horse, of the warrior are given 
 with him to the flames. The grave is then marked 
 by a mound of turf.^ While the funeral was less 
 splendid than those sung in some of our early epics, 
 — as in BSoioulf^ — there is no doubt that it was of 
 the highest importance ; for in another place,^ Tacitus 
 tells us that even amid the most desperate battles Ger- 
 mans were wont to carry away (to the rear) the bodies 
 of their dead. That the Germans burnt their dead was 
 natural enough for people shut in among such cre- 
 mating races as the Gauls, Romans, Greeks, Thracians, 
 Lithuanians, and Slavonic tribes.^ Christianity cleaves 
 to burial, not only because Christ's stay in the sep- 
 ulchre hallowed it, but from Old Testament pre- 
 cedents. In the third century burning of the dead 
 had ceased in Rome, and in the fourth century it was 
 there spoken of as a matter of antiquity. Charle- 
 magne, in an edict for the Saxons, made burning of 
 corpses a capital offence, and Boniface worked against 
 it, as against the eating of horse-flesh, — pagan prac- 
 tices both.* Certain names of places in England 
 preserve traces of the old custom ; such are Adeshdm^ 
 in Kent, — now Adisham, — where Ad certainly 
 means funeral pile ; and Bcelesbeorh in Gloucester- 
 shire.^ Kemble quotes the Orvar Oddr Saga, where 
 the hero gives direction for his funeral. Men are to 
 make a stone trough and take it to the wood : " There, 
 
 1 Tac. Germ. XXVII. The rest is rhetoric. 2 ibid. VI. 
 
 8 J. Grimm, work quoted, p. 241. 
 
 ^"Jubemus," says Charlemagne, "ut corpora Christianorum Sax- 
 onorum ad cimeteria ecclesise deferantur, et non ad tumulos Paga- 
 norum." 
 
 6 Given by Kemble in his HorsB Ferales, p. 119 f. in an essay on 
 •' Burial and Cremation." 
 
310 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 311 
 
 when I am dead, I am to lie in fii-e and bum up 
 entirely." Oddr, we must remember, was a convert 
 to Christianity. For a long time converts used a 
 certain amount of fire in funeral rites, as if insuring 
 themselves the advantages of both systems. More- 
 over, when the custom of burial had superseded the 
 heathen funeral pile, choice and nature of the grave- 
 mound remained for a long time under control of 
 private persons. Not, thinks Kemble,^ till the clergy 
 saw decided power and profit involved in the super- 
 intendence of funeral ceremonies — say about the end 
 of the ninth century — were regular churchyards 
 established in England. The Anglo-Saxon loved to 
 be buried in a chosen place — by a stream, or on some 
 headland that looked out far over the ocean .2 Grimm, 
 in another interesting paper,^ notes the antiquity of 
 such choice of burial-sites. In days when corpses were 
 burned, the ashes were committed to a huge mound 
 or barrow, sometimes by the great military highway, 
 or by the ford of the river, if inland, or else on the 
 shore of the sea. Greek, Roman, and Saxon examples 
 show a common trait. In the Odyssey, we have a 
 description of the burial of Achilles.'* " So thou wert 
 burned in the garments of the gods, and in much 
 unguents and in sweet honey, and many heroes of the 
 Achaeans moved mail-clad around the pyre where thou 
 wast burning^ both foot-men and horse, and great was 
 the noise that arose. But when the flame of Hephses- 
 tus had utterly abolished thee, lo, in the morning we 
 
 1 Work quoted, p. 109. 
 
 2 For these lofty burial sites in Scandinavia, see Weinhold, AUnord. 
 Lehen, p. 498, note, and Montelius, p. 85. » KL Schr. VII. 406 ff. 
 
 * Bk. 24 ; the translation is that of Butcher and Lang. 
 
 gathered together thy white bones, Achilles, and be- 
 stowed them in unmixed wine and in unguents. Thy 
 mother gave a twy-handled golden urn. . . . Therein 
 lie thy white bones. . . . Then over them did we 
 pile a great and goodly tomb, . . . high on a jutting 
 headland over wide Hellespont^ that it might be far 
 seen from off the sea by men that now are and by 
 those that shall be hereafter." In the same way 
 Elpenor asks Odysseus to burn him with his armor, 
 and " pile him a barrow on the shore of the gray sea 
 . . . that even men unborn may hear his story " ; and 
 ^neas buries the ashes of his friend Misenus in a 
 huge mound ^ on a headland of the sea. Such burial- 
 sites are often mentioned in the Norwegian, Swedish, 
 and Icelandic sagas. Grimm finds " hohe Poesie " in 
 the account of Yngwar's burial-place. " The Baltic 
 sings a joyous wave-song to lull the Swedish hero ; 
 the sleeper in the hill hears the billows breaking 
 near him, and their murmur cheei-s his loneliness." 
 Burial in such conspicuous places is easily proved for 
 Anglo-Saxon times. Taking first the antiquary's 
 evidence, we may note the " fiWQ Saxon barrow," " on 
 a bold conical hill overlooking Folkestone in Kent."^ 
 Further, " the hill of Osengal, overlooking Pegwell 
 Bay near Ramsgate, and furnishing a magnificent 
 view of the Channel, ... is perforated like a honey- 
 comb with the graves of an immense Saxon cemetery." ^ 
 Finally, we have the testimony of our old epos. Says 
 the dying Beowulf to his young kinsman Wiglaf : * — 
 
 1 " Ingenti mole." See Odyssey, XI. 66 ff., Verg. ^n. VI. 232, and 
 Grimm, work quoted. 
 
 2 T. Wright, Celt, Romaii, and Saxon, p. 469. 
 
 8 Ibid. 470. 4 2802 ff, 
 
312 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Bid the battle-famed build me a mound, 
 bright after bale ^ on a brow of the coast ; 
 this as a token to tribes of mine 
 on Whale-Headland high shall tower, 
 by ocean-wanderers ever called 
 Beowulf's Barrow, when back from far 
 they drive their keels o'er the dusky sea. 
 
 Kemble remarks ^ that the inland tumuli or bar- 
 rows are often used in old chartei-s as the boundaries 
 of Anglo-Saxon estates. These ancient documents 
 either couple with the mention of the mound the 
 adjective " heathen," or else give a name of the per- 
 son who lies in the tomb, and probably, as Kemble 
 argues, was a Christian. Ordinarily, we have either 
 simply " the heathen barrow," or else " Hoce's bar- 
 row"; but in a charter of the year 976, we read: 
 " Thence to the heathen ' burial ' (tomb) ; thence 
 westward to the boundary where jElfstdn lies in 
 heathen barrow." This, Kemble takes to signify the 
 burial of a Christian in the midst of old heathen 
 graves. Poetry easily laid hold of these places, and 
 gave them that needful touch of the mystic and un- 
 canny. In a remarkable passage of Salomon and 
 Saturn? there is something of the later romantic 
 shudder, as well as a good movement of the verse : — 
 
 His sword well-burnisht shineth yet, 
 and over the harrow beam the hilts.* 
 
 The study of primitive culture leads us to the 
 conclusion that burials, whether of the body or of 
 
 1 I.e. after the funeral pile is burnt. « Work quoted, p. 110. 
 
 8 Kemble's ed. p. 156. See p. 248, above. 
 
 4 Of course souls often appear over their graves in the shape of 
 flame. So Angantyr and his brothers in the Hervararsaga. See Mogk, 
 in Paul's Grdr. 1. 1012. 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 313 
 
 the ashes left from the funeral-pile, began in or near 
 the home itself. Survivals and traditions point this 
 way, even if we neglect the study of savage customs. 
 Thus Alboin was buried in Italy under the steps of a 
 palace, and with him were his arms and ornaments.^ 
 Primitive races have buried their dead under the 
 threshold, with a general feeling that the spirit will 
 protect its former home. Here, however, we note a 
 curious conflict between two ideas, — the desire to 
 keep a spirit near one's home and so enjoy the benefits 
 of its protection, and the fear of evil influences pro- 
 ceeding from such hovering souls. A half-way dual- 
 ism prompts us to call for aid upon the shades of our 
 fathers, and yet at other times to conjure into peace 
 the perturbed spirit, and bid it cease to haunt us. 
 Men placed for these spirits the little offering of 
 meat or wine ; and even yet a prevalent superstition 
 forbids tlie carrying out of a corpse through door or 
 window: there must be a hole cut for it thi^ough the 
 wall, or it must at least take some unwonted way of 
 egress.2 It was once common with German peasants 
 to bury the dead man in the house where he had 
 lived; 3 it is still custom in many places to open doors 
 and windows of the sick-room where one has just died, 
 — let the soul fly off and rid the survivors of an un- 
 welcome presence. The tomb reare ■" ,er a grave is 
 itself originally nothing more nor IcbS than a house, 
 and the home of the dead was like the home of the 
 
 1 Paul. Diac. II. 28. 
 
 2 Weinhold's (Altnord. Leben, p. 476) facts are true, but his theory is 
 false. Not because the corpse is '' unclean " is this exit chosen; it is 
 to keep the spirit from finding its way back. 
 
 8 Henning, das deittsche Haus (Quellen und Forschungen, No. 47) 
 p. 37. 
 
314 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 315 
 
 living. The Egyptians carried this idea to its most 
 elaborate conclusion. So arose the temple, say some, 
 in Greece ; it was the house built over the grave of a 
 hero. Lippert even asserts that the whole doctrine 
 of an under- world originated with graves, the sub- 
 terranean homes of the dead.^ Trees were planted 
 about such a grave, and the sacred grove grew up 
 about the resting-place of powerful ancestors, or of 
 the deified founder of the race itself. Such groves 
 are mentioned in Bugge's text of the Harbardslid^:^ 
 " When didst thou learn these things ? " asks Thor ; 
 and Harbard (= Odin) answers : " From the old folk 
 I took them, the people who live in the woods." 
 Graves were sometimes used as treasure houses 
 which the ancestral spirit could guard ; or else they 
 served as a meeting-place,^ and the folk met there 
 for councils, courts, and the like. Kemble* says that 
 Cwichelmes Hlgew, one of the most commanding 
 barrows in England, was in the eleventh century seat 
 of the shire-court. Tradition, moreover, told of former 
 pagan rites at Enta Hl^w and Scuccan Hl&w, the 
 Giants' Barrow and the Devil's Barrow. There were 
 no regular council-halls for Germanic chieftains until 
 the time of Charlemagne ; but a bit of enclosed land, 
 the shade of a tree, an ancient sepulchre, were favorite 
 places. In the same way, this notion of the grave 
 acted upon its own inner arrangement; for a tomb 
 was found in Bavaria with five skeletons "seated 
 
 1 Religion der europdischen Culturstdmme, p. 10. 
 
 2 Hildebrand has haugum instead of skdgum, and thus reads: "the 
 people who live in the mounds or graves of home." 
 
 8 Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, p. 499. ♦ 
 
 * Horse Ferales, p. 116. We noted the love of Germans for high or 
 conspicuous sites for their courts and councils. 
 
 about a vessel, by the side of which lay two long iron 
 knives." ^ 
 
 There can be no doubt that the heathen Anglo- 
 Saxons first burnt, and then buried, their dead. 
 Grimm collects the evidence of our old poetry, and 
 the results of antiquarian research only confirm us 
 in our belief. That the thanes of Beowulf are or- 
 dered to bring from far the " balewood," supports the 
 statement of Tacitus, that distinguished men were 
 burnt on a funeral-pile made of certain kinds of 
 wood. Moreover, we have an epic formula in Anglo- 
 Saxon used as a variant or " kenning," for the simple 
 notion of dying. Instead of " dies " a man " chooses 
 the funeral-pile," — seeks it, goes to it.^ Two such 
 burnings are described in BSowulf — that of the hero, 
 and that of Hnsef the Dane. 
 
 We learn from these descriptions how familiar and 
 necessary seemed to the Anglo-Saxons the burning of 
 their dead. We see how the funeral-pile was hung 
 with weapons and shields ; and how when the mound 
 had been raised, it was surrounded with a wall, and 
 furnished like a mortal's own house, with rings and 
 treasure and whatsoever gladdens the heart of men 
 as they sit secure in their hall. Ornaments, weapons, 
 horse, slave, spouse, — all these were needed by the 
 warrior in his life, and a simple logic concluded his 
 need of them in what was literally the other world. 
 All this is strange to modern notions, or at best exists 
 in shadowy survival. Till late in the middle ages 
 a knight's best steed was killed when its owner died ; 
 nowadays, we lead the favorite war-horse in the fune- 
 
 1 Lippert, Rel. d. eur. Cult. p. 148. 
 
 2 Cf. B^oio. 2818, ♦* »r he ba;l cure." 
 
316 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 317 
 
 li 
 
 ral procession. In some places of Germany, only a 
 few years ago, the custom prevailed of putting comb, 
 razor, and soap, into a man's coffin.^ Suggestive is 
 the lingering habit of giving the dead man a pair of 
 stout shoes; for the way that led to the land of 
 spirits might well be rough. In Scandinavia, it was 
 the custom for a near relative to fasten these shoes 
 firmly to the feet of the corpse.^ Often a staff was 
 added; and in the great majority of cases food and 
 drink were provided, ghostly viaticum^ found in count- 
 less graves. Corn, fruit, and the like are favorites ; 
 and Kemble ^ mentions the Saxon fondness for hazel- 
 nuts. In modern Sweden, they give the dead man his 
 tobacco-pipe, pen-knife, and a flask of brandy ; ^ while 
 even in ancient Sweden it was considered proper to 
 give him draughts and dice to beguile the weariness 
 of his journey.^ But kings, and men of might must 
 not be left to walk ; and the horse plays a great part 
 in legends which have to do with graves. Such is the 
 Danish Helhest Says Thiele : ^ "In the old times, 
 they used to bury in every churchyard, before any hu- 
 man body was interred, a living horse.'' This horse, 
 which, of course, haunts the place as a terror to evil- 
 doers, is often headless, or three-legged, or what not ; 
 now it is white, now black. In Germany the Schim- 
 mel or white horse plays a similar rSle ; and he is 
 
 1 Kuhn and Schwartz, Nordd. Sagen, p. 435. Visitors to the famous 
 Museum of Northern Antiquities in Copenhagen remember the pathetic 
 sight of that body from the moor, so well preserved, and the little 
 wooden comb withal. But it is a fine head of hair, and deserves the 
 
 vanity. 
 
 2 Weinhold, A. L. 494. « Horse Ferales, p. 69. 
 
 * Weinhold, A. L. p. 493. 5 Montelius, p. 122, in earlier iron age. 
 « Danmarks Folkesagn, II. 293. 
 
 known even in far Arabia. In another tale,^ Thiele 
 mentions the belief that great store of treasure can 
 be raised from a grave where a " gold-horse," or " a 
 gold-prince on horseback^'' lies buried. Some workmen 
 once saw a grave open — it was known to contain a 
 mass of treasure — " and a large man on horseback, 
 with glittering buttons in his coat, rode out of the 
 portal of the mound." The prosaic theory of Lippert, 
 that most of the dragon stories are due to the old 
 habit of burying treasure with the dead, and to the 
 natural desire to frighten off plunderers, is, to be 
 sure, wholly inadequate as a solution of the di^agon- 
 and-treasure problem, but has none the less its proba- 
 ble features. The legends of buried treasure, of 
 ghosts who must " walk," because they have up- 
 hoarded in their life " extorted treasure in the womb 
 of earth," have surely some relation to these old bur- 
 ials. It seems fair to suppose that the angry spirit- 
 tenant of the mound might well have his share, 
 though not the sole proprietorship, in the manu- 
 facture of dragon-myths. There is no doubt that 
 graves were often rifled ; we can see how the Viking 
 ship at Christiania has been broken and plundered. 
 Often, too, the grave was opened by a member of the 
 family, or even by the state, and a loan or contribu- 
 tion was forced from the dead capitalist. Kemble, 
 in the interesting work above quoted, speaking of 
 the barrows often named as boundary-marks in the 
 old charters, points out an interesting phrase : " t6 
 })am brocenan beorge," to the broken barrow. Another 
 is, " westward of the barrow that has been dug into." 
 Horse and treasure do not exhaust the possibilities, 
 
 1 I. 348. 
 
318 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 and sometimes a chariot was added, that the spirit 
 might make his way to Valhalla in still greater state. 
 Grimm 1 instances the burial of King Harald, after 
 the great battle of Bravalla.2 Conquered and slain 
 in battle, he was sumptuously buried by the vic- 
 torious King Hring. Harald's body was washed, 
 clad in armor, laid upon the chariot of King Hring, 
 and so driven into the mound. The horse was killed, 
 and the conqueror laid beside it his own saddle, and 
 cried to the dead king: "Now thou canst ride to 
 Valhalla, or drive there, as thou wilt ! " Before the 
 mound was closed, all the warriors threw in rings 
 and costly weapons. Another account of the same 
 occurrence says that the body was first burned, and 
 this would be the oldest version ; but even when the 
 burning of the corpse was forgotten, men clung to 
 the accessories of horse and chariot. Besides horses, 
 we often hear of the burning or slaying of dogs and 
 falcons. Le roi 8* amuse. 
 
 Above all other possessions which must go with 
 the dead warrior, stood his weapons, and of his wea- 
 pons, the sword. We see nothing out of the way 
 when a general or a military monarch is buried with 
 sword at his side. Thus armed, the French soldier 
 in Heine's well-known poem was fain to lie in his 
 grave and wait till his emperor came back again. 
 The legends and sagas show us how stubbornly the 
 dead hand of a German warrior was clasped about 
 his sword. Thiele ^ gives the Danish legend of King 
 Hiarne who was buried on an island with his thirty 
 thanes about him. By accident his sword was dug 
 up, and a man named Niels 0stergaard carried it 
 
 1 Work quoted, p. 271. 2 About 790 a.d. 8 Work quoted, I. 13. 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 819 
 
 home. But from that time Niels had no luck, and 
 all went wrong in his house. At last he carried back 
 the sword, and buried it ; and since then no one has 
 disturbed King Hiarne 's tomb. Still more demonstra- 
 tion was made by the robbed sword of the great 
 Holger Danske, which took twelve horses to drag it 
 away, and in the house where it was laid caused such 
 terrible commotion and shaking of walls, that people 
 were fain to haul back the sword to its place ; and 
 this time it needed only two horses.^ There are 
 many similar legends. It is needless to dwell on the 
 survivals of this custom of giving precious possessions 
 along with the dead. Instead of burying or burning 
 treasure, the Chinese burn paper which represents 
 it. Among the Western nations we have the penny 
 put in the mouth of a dead man. Modern instances 
 would not be far to seek, though entirely confined to 
 ornament. 
 
 The darker side of this picture is familiar enough. 
 Not only tool or ornament or weapon, — the living 
 went down with the dead. This sharing of a husband's 
 or a master's death might be voluntary or involuntary. 
 Often the wife esteemed it her privilege as well as 
 her duty to die upon the funeral-pile of her lord ; and 
 in the famous legend which impressed so strongly the 
 imagination of our Germanic race and gave it its one 
 great epos, when Brynhild's jealousy has slain Sigurd, 
 her love for him prompts her to share his grave. The 
 story of her fate is told in the verse of the SigwrSark- 
 vi^a^^ and in the prose of the VoUung saga.^ The 
 
 1 Thiele, I. 20. a Edda, ed. Hildebrand, p. 234 f. 
 
 * Chap. 31. A translation of the poetical version, with attempted 
 restoration of the missing words, will be found in Vigfusson and Pow- 
 ell's Corpus, I. 302 f. 
 
320 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 321 
 
 
 latter is given here because free from the gaps of the 
 older version : " Now I beg thee, Gunnar, one thing, 
 and it is the last I shall beg of thee," — it is Bryn- 
 hild who addresses her husband. "Make a great 
 funeral-pyre for all of us upon the mound, for me 
 and Sigurd and all that are slain along with him. 
 Cover it with human blood, and burn me there by 
 the side of the Hunnish king ; and on his other side 
 my men, — two at his head, two at his feet, and two 
 hawks. . . . The doors ^ shall not fall upon his heels 
 where I follow him ; and our retinue is no sorry one 
 when five handmaidens and eight serving-men, whom 
 my father gave me, follow him, and they too are 
 burnt who are slain along with Sigurd. . . . Now 
 was Sigurd's corse cared for in the ancient fashion, 
 and a huge funeral-pile was built. And when that 
 towered so high that it could be seen from far, they 
 laid upon it the bodies of Sigurd and his three-year- 
 old son, whom Brynhild had caused to be slain, and 
 also the corpse of Gothorm, who had murdered Sigurd. 
 And when the flames were hot, went forth Brynhild. 
 She said to her handmaidens they might take her 
 gold, and she died, and she was burnt there along 
 with Sigurd, and so her life was done." Less pas- 
 sionate, but full of quiet devotion, are the words of 
 the wife of old Nial : " Young I was married to Nial, 
 and I have promised him that one fate should take us 
 both." She refuses to leave the burning house, and 
 dies with her husband. Wherever we turn in an- 
 cient history, examples of this custom press upon us. 
 The modern school of criticism is not inclined to lean 
 on poetry or sentiment in its explanations of these 
 
 ^ Of Hel's domain. 
 
 sombre rites ; and even a philologist like Hehn finds 
 Grimm's treatment far too romantic.^ Through these 
 rifts in the fabric of our old culture we catch glimpses 
 of the sheer brutality and indifference to human life 
 which marked the earliest stages of primitive religious 
 systems. Hehn collects a mass of examples. We 
 remember that Achilles offered to the shade of Pa- 
 troclus not only horses and dogs, but twelve young 
 Trojans whom he had captured for the purpose ; and 
 on his own grave, in after days, Polyxena was burned. 
 In some countries the wife was expected to hang her- 
 self at the grave of her husband. Most cruel, per- 
 haps, was the Scythian custom.^ When the king 
 dies, one of his wives is strangled and bui'ied with 
 him, likewise a number of servants and horses. On 
 the anniversary of his death, fifty slaves, whom he 
 had chosen for the purpose, and fifty choice horses 
 are treated in the same manner. The burial of Alaric 
 the Goth is familiar to readei-s of Gibbon. Boniface, 
 in a letter to the king of Mercia, about T45 A.D., 
 describes the custom among the Wends : the wife is 
 buried with her husband. As regards the sacrificial 
 side of this custom, we shall have more to say in the 
 consideration of Germanic religion. 
 
 Whatever is sanctioned by religion and dateless 
 custom comes to be regarded as a virtue, and finds 
 willing devotees. Possibly some of the more impor- 
 tant ceremonies and duties of modern life will one day 
 be counted in the list of painful superstitions ; but, 
 however that may be, the voluntary death of a wife 
 at her husband's funeral was reckoned among the 
 conspicuous virtues of the Germanic woman. Hakon 
 
 1 Hehn, work quoted, p. 440. 2 Hehn ; and Herodotus, 4. 71 f. 
 
322 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 323 
 
 Jarl was refused in his old age by Gunnhild because 
 she would in all probability have early occasion to 
 die with him. Nor was the tie of husband and wife 
 the only one which called for such a sacrifice. Sons, 
 as in the case of Sigurd, or brothers, were chosen as 
 the victims ; and the bonds of friendship and love 
 were often hallowed by a sense of similar obligation. 
 Cases can be found where two men agree that should 
 either die, the other will straightway follow. True 
 lovers, in countless tales and ballads of a later time, 
 die at the selfsame moment ; instead of the old min- 
 gling ashes, they are buried side by side, and two 
 rose trees spring through the tui'f and twine lovingly 
 together. 
 
 On the general subject of burial, there is little to 
 say. To cover the corpse, even of one's bitterest foe, 
 was a custom in Iceland whose breach might lead to 
 banishment.^ No pious Scandinavian passed a corpse 
 without tossing a bit of turf or a stone upon it by 
 way of covering ; and since this corresponds so closely 
 to the well-known classical traditions, it seems reason- 
 able to infer for the whole Germanic race a general 
 sense of the immense importance of funeral-rites. 
 We have no reason to suppose that women and chil- 
 dren were refused the ceremonies which are told of 
 kings and warriors and peasants. Cases of the fune- 
 ral-rites of women are on record ; and skeletons of 
 children have been found in circumstances that abun- 
 dantly justify the conclusion.^ 
 
 Full of a weird interest are the ship-burials of our 
 sea-loving ancestors. Let us first hear how the white 
 god Balder was burnt Viking-wise upon his ship. 
 
 1 Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, p. 474. 
 
 Ibid. p. 482. 
 
 " Then the ^sir took Balder's corpse and bore it to 
 the sea. The name of Balder's ship was Hringhorni; 
 it was the greatest of all ships. The gods were fain 
 to push it from shore and make thereon Balder's 
 balefire, but the ship would not move. Then they 
 sent to Jotunheim after the giantess who is called 
 Hyrrokin ; when she came, she rode a wolf and had a 
 snake for its bridle ; when she leaped from the steed, 
 Odin called up four Berserkers and bade them hold 
 it, but they could do this only by felling it to the 
 ground. Then Hyrrokin stept to the bow of the 
 boat, and with her first thrust she pushed it so 
 that fire flashed from the rollers and all lands 
 trembled. That made Thor angry, and he grasped 
 his hammer and would have shattered her head, had 
 not all the gods asked peace for her. Then Balder's 
 corpse was borne out to the ship, and when his wife, 
 Nanna, daughter of Nep, saw that, she burst for grief 
 and died. Then she was carried to the funeral-pile, 
 and it was kindled. Thor came up and consecrated 
 it with his hammer, and before his feet ran a dwarf 
 called Litr, and Thor lifted his foot and thrust the 
 dwarf into the fire, where he was burned. . . . Odin 
 laid upon the pile a ring. . . . Balder's horse and 
 all the trappings were likewise laid upon the pile. 
 . . ." ^ Relics of such naval sepulchres have been 
 discovered; such is the famous Viking ship, now in 
 the possession of the university of Christiania, and 
 recently dug up from its resting-place of a thousand 
 years. 
 
 Famous is the so-called " Passing of Scyld " ; ^ we 
 find, however, no mention of burning the corpse, and 
 
 1 Glyfaginning, XLIX., Prose Edda, ed. WilkeD, p. 75 f. 2 B^ow. 26 ff. 
 
324 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 -I 
 
 it 
 
 a too hasty inference of Sarrazin^ makes this fact 
 prove that an Anglo-Saxon editor or translator of the 
 Scandinavian original (such is Sarrazin's nigh im- 
 possible theory) allowed his own ideas of burial to 
 predominate in the description. 
 
 Forth he fared at the fateful moment, 
 
 Scyld the Grim into God's protection. 
 
 Then they bore him over to ocean's billow, 
 
 clansmen trusty — he charg'd them thus 
 
 while he wielded words, winsome Scylding.^ 
 
 In the roadstead rock'd the ring-prow'd vessel, — 
 
 the loved leader had long possess'd it, — ^ 
 
 ready and gleaming, a royal ship : 
 
 there laid they down their darling lord, 
 
 in the boat's wide bosom the breaker of rings, 
 
 by the mast the mighty one. Many a treasure 
 
 fetch'd from far was freighted with him. 
 
 Ne'er have I known ship nobler deck'd 
 
 with weapons of war and weeds of battle, 
 
 with blade and breastplate. On its bosom lay 
 
 heap'd-up hoard that hence should go 
 
 far o'er the flood with him floating away. 
 
 No less they gave him lordly gifts, 
 
 ample treasure, than erstwhile those 
 
 who in former time forth had sent him 
 
 sole o'er the sea, a suckling child. 
 
 High o'er his head they hoist the standard, 
 
 a golden banner ; let billows take him, 
 
 gave him to ocean : grave was their spirit, 
 
 mournful their mood. For men are powerless 
 
 to say in sooth, sons of the hall, 
 
 heroes under heaven, who harbor'd that freight ! 
 
 This charming myth is found in many places, the 
 story of infants who come mysteriously floating to 
 
 1 Beowulf-Stndien, p. 39. 2 u Friend of the Scyld ings." 
 
 3 With Bugge P. B. Beit. 12. 80, reading 31 in parenthesis after 32. 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 325 
 
 the shore in a boat with gorgeous trappings, evidently 
 a gift of heaven to the kingless realm. There they 
 rule wisely and well, win lands, fame, vassals, and 
 at last, dying, order their funeral in the same boat 
 that bore them to their adopted country. Of kindred 
 spirit are the Celtic mytlis about King Arthur, and 
 those Germanic legends which have found their most 
 popular type in the story of Lohengrin.^ Romance is 
 less obvious in the custom of South-Sea Islanders, 
 who put their dead into old disabled boats, and so 
 send them off to sea; and not only the dead, but 
 those also who are mortally sick.^ In the Niahsaga^^ 
 old Flosi is weary of life, takes a bad boat, and sails 
 on his last voyage : " Folk said liis boat was wretched, 
 but Flosi said it was good enough for one who was 
 old and ' fey.' He took in cargo, and put to sea ; but 
 nothing has ever been heard of the ship since then." 
 In the old English ballad of Edivard we have such an 
 allusion : * — 
 
 " What death dost thou desire to die, 
 Son Davie, son Davie?" 
 
 " I'll set my foot in a bottomless ship, 
 Mother lady, mother lady ; 
 I'll set my foot in a bottomless ship, 
 And ye'll never see mair o' me." 
 
 Ship-burial seems in most places to have been a pre- 
 rogative of kings and princes and heroes of great 
 fame. Saxo tells us that King Frotho^ made the law 
 
 1 References, D. M. 693. 2 Lippert, Seelencxdt, pp. 6, 13. « C. 160. 
 < Child, Ballads 2 I. 169. See also ballad Lizie Wan, A, stanza ii. 
 Vol. II. 448. 
 
 6 Saxo, Miiller, 234 ; Grimm, Kl. Schr. II. 272; Holtzmann, Deutsche 
 Myth. p. 123. 
 
*v 
 
 326 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 327 
 
 that a chief (satrapd) shall be burned with one ship ; 
 but for ordinary persons, ten shall be burned with 
 each ship. Such a vessel — an cetheling's harge^ the 
 poet of BSowulf calls it — filled with treasure and 
 wrapt in flames, drifting slowly out to sea, watched 
 by a great throng upon the shore, must have made a 
 royal funeral indeed. This custom of ship-burial 
 continued in the case of kings and heroes after it 
 had become usual for the masses to be buried in 
 mounds or common gi-aves. A curious combination, 
 or else survival, was the custom best known in 
 Scandinavia, of burying people first in actual ships, 
 then in coffins made to represent a ship, and lastly in 
 an ordinary grave with stones piled about it in the 
 shape of a ship.^ "Doubtless," says Grimm, "men 
 were buried in a boat so that when in the under- 
 world they came to bodies of water they might have 
 their boat at hand." For just as burial in the earth 
 brought about belief in that shadowy land, the 
 " under-world," so perhaps these old boat-burials made 
 men think of a spirit-world oversea. As with the 
 Greek, Germanic superstition made this an island; 
 and even Hel's mansion is surrounded by water. 
 The classical Charon is not without his relatives in 
 our own Germanic legend. To a fisherman at Speier 
 on the Rhine came one night a person dressed like a 
 monk and asked to be ferried over the stream ; this 
 done, the fisherman returned and found five othei*s 
 waiting for him.^ The legend is incomplete ; but its 
 origin and tendency are evident enough. Many old 
 skeletons have been found in Germany with a coin of 
 
 1 Grimm, work quoted, p. 274 ; D. M. 692. 
 
 2 Grimm, DeuUche Sagen, No. 276 ; c/. also D. MA 694. 
 
 some sort still remaining in the mouth.i Moreover, 
 just as the mysterious western ocean held for Greek 
 superstition those Fortunate Islands, the mystic 
 Atlantis, the Gardens of the Hesperides, the abode 
 of the blessed dead, — so there lay for Germanic 
 belief a world of souls in the waters toward the set- 
 ting sun. Procopius 2 relates a legend of the island 
 "Brittia," whither the souls of the dead were fer- 
 ried from the mainland ; on the shores of the latter 
 dwelt fishermen and others who were free of all 
 taxes and similar burdens of state, on condition that 
 they held themselves ready to row the dead across. 
 "Before midnight they hear a knocking at their 
 doors, and then the voice of an invisible person who 
 calls them to their work. Immediately they get up, 
 and, following a certain undefined impulse, go to the 
 shore. There they find boats ready for the journey, 
 but quite empty, — not their ovm boats, moreover, 
 but foreign vessels. They go into these boats and 
 take the oars, whereupon they notice that such a 
 crowd of passengers is on board that the craft sinks 
 to the level of the deck, but no one is to be seen. In 
 an hour they reach Britain, whereas with their own 
 boats they can scarcely row the same distance in a 
 night and a day. Then the boats are emptied, and 
 they row back : the vessels are so light that only the 
 keel is on the water." Meanwhile no one whatever 
 has been seen, although a voice is heard calling out 
 the name of each person who arrives; women are 
 not named directly, but are called by the name of 
 those to whom they have belonged in life. Kemble 
 queries whether this silent land may not be the place 
 
 1 Grimm, D. MA III. 248. 
 
 2 De bello Goth. IV. 20. 
 
 " II 
 
328 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 329 
 
 ; }!! 
 
 about which is asked a question in the Salomon and 
 
 Saturn : — 
 
 Tell me of the land 
 
 where none of the folk with foot can walk.^ 
 
 Brittia, of course, is England, whither our earli- 
 est ancestoi-s, destitute of sails, could scarcely come 
 save by accident or great stress of need. Hence 
 the mystery and the myths. Mannhardt tells of the 
 widespread belief that souls of children are fetched 
 from " Engelland " ; the name was applied to Britain, 
 but taken to mean "the place where angels live." 
 Wackernagel quotes an old story which calls Britain 
 " Seelenland," soul-land.^ We have another descrip- 
 tion of this ghostly ferry given by Claudian, who 
 wrote early in the fifth century. On the Gallic shore, 
 he says, the same place where Odysseus poured his 
 libation and spoke with the shades, " there may be 
 heard weeping and lamentation and the low rustle of 
 flying souls; and folk who dwell there see pallid 
 phantoms, and watch the shapes of dead men pass 
 by. . . ." 
 
 Est locus, extremum qua pandit Gallia littus, 
 oceani prsetentus aquis, ubi fertur Ulixes 
 sanguine libato populum movisse silentem. 
 illic umbrarum tenui stridore volantum 
 flebilis auditur questus. Simulacra coloni 
 pallida, defunctasque vident migrare figuras.^ 
 
 But these infinite projections of the old boat-burial 
 concern rather the realm of myth and of religious 
 
 1 Sal. and Sat. p. 177, note. 
 
 2 See Mannhardt, Germ. Mythen, p. 326 f., 370, 405. Procopius seems 
 to mean that the souls are taken to an island near " Brittia," — Ireland, 
 says Wackernagel. See HaupVs Ztst. VII. 191. 
 
 8 Claudian in Riijinum, I. 123 ff. 
 
 belief. Actual burial was for the great majority of 
 our race connected with inland places, and where 
 water played a part it was the water of sacred wells 
 and streams. Legends tell of streams or fountains 
 that spring from old heathen tombs, and there are 
 magical properties in the water. Thus the Danish 
 tradition of a certain mound " in which, in old times, 
 men say there was a heathen burial-place. Near the 
 foot of it wells out a spring, about which there is a 
 prophecy of the sibyl, that it shall one day save 
 (the neighboring town) from great danger." ^ Church- 
 yards inherited all this wealth of heathen shudders 
 and superstition ; and the folk-lore of every nation is 
 filled with these tales. Our Saxon temperament 
 seems especially inclined to a certain solemn enjoy- 
 ment of funereal matters. How much has not the 
 subject contributed to make Gray's Megi/ in a 
 Country Churchyard the most widely read English 
 poem ! The Poema Morale, a middle-English didac- 
 tic piece in the septenarius or ballad metre, was 
 enormously popular : it is full of the sepulchre. Even 
 our most imaginative poetry takes a strange energy 
 from the contemplation of death; let Beaumont's 
 fine verses " On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey " 
 bear witness : — 
 
 Here be sands, ignoble things, 
 Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings. 
 
 Add the emphatic testimony of Jacob Grimm : 2 
 " No race, to my knowledge, was ever more strongly 
 impressed by the horror of the dark and narrow grave 
 
 1 Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagn, II. 35. 
 
 2 Verbrennen d. Leichen, Kl. Schr. II. 308. 
 
330 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 than were the old Saxons and Frisians when they 
 turned from burning to burying." Miillenhoff ^ says 
 that "the Frisian legends, especially those of the 
 islands, show a certain melancholy " ; and all of their 
 witch stories and superstitions were more terrible 
 and demonic than those of the mainland. Long- 
 fellow rendered into English some Anglo-Saxon 
 verses which he called The Grave ; and made special 
 mention'^ of the '' Debate between the Soul and the 
 Body," of which he translated a few lines.^ Persons 
 familiar with our old poetry — such as that fine frag- 
 ment called The Euin, or The Wanderer, — will 
 recall a dozen elegiac passages all more or less 
 based on the contemplation of death and decay. The 
 somewhat obscure passage in BSowulf, which seems 
 to describe a sort of self-burial, is in point.* An old 
 man, the last of his race, fashions or finds a burial- 
 place in a cave among the rocks, and carries into it 
 all the treasure which once delighted his kinsmen. 
 Then he chants his farewell to the splendors of 
 life : — 
 
 Now hold thou, earth, since heroes may not, 
 warriors' riches ! once from thee 
 earls have delved them : now death hath seized, 
 bale and terror, ray trusty people, 
 laid down life have my liegemen all. 
 * None have I left to lift my sword, 
 or to cleanse the cup of carven gold, 
 costly beaker : clansmen are vanished. 
 
 1 Introduction to Sagen . . . von Schleswig-Holstein, etc. p. liii. 
 
 2 In his Poets and Poetry of Europe. 
 
 3 Wiilker, Grundriss d. ags. Lit. p. 74. 
 
 * See Bugge in P. B. Beit. 12. 370. B^ow. 2233 fE. 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 331 
 
 I 
 
 ■ 
 
 I 
 
 Helmet glittering, golden-fretted, 
 
 must part with its trappings : polishers sleep 
 
 who were wont to brighten the battle-mask. 
 
 And the battle-raiment which bode in war 
 
 over bicker of shields the bite of weapons, 
 
 since the clan's death, crumbles : nor corselet's ring 
 
 shall fare afar with the famed hero, 
 
 at the side of the warrior : winsome harp, 
 
 glee-wood is dumb, nor darts good hawk 
 
 swift through the hall, nor the speedy horse 
 
 stamps in the burg-steads : bitter death 
 
 the flower of the race hath reft away. 
 
 So the last of his clan. This elegiac mood has been 
 attributed by a German critic,^ not to the tendency 
 of the race itself, but rather to the softening influ- 
 ences of Christianity. This seems to be a surface- 
 criticism ; melancholy of some sort is inherent in the 
 Germanic temperament, and a sheer ferocity of the 
 Viking or even Berserker type is not enough to offset 
 the countless examples of the elegiac and pathetic 
 in our oldest literature. Thus the "dying with a 
 laugh" of Scandinavian heroes is not necessarily 
 opposed to a melancholy habit of mind. There are 
 laughs and laughs. 
 
 The funeral-ceremony was accompanied by games, 
 feasting, and sacrifices ; and these might well be con- 
 tinued for some time. The act of taking formal posses- 
 sion of one's patrimony was probably connected with 
 these rites; and Sir Henry Maine ^ speaks of that 
 " close relation between succession to property after 
 death and the performance of some sort of sacrificial 
 rites in honor of the deceased." At the Scandina- 
 
 1 Heiuzel, Uber den Stil. d. altc/erm. Poesie, Strasburg, 1875. 
 
 2 Earhj Law and Custom, p. 78. Cf. also his Ancient Law, p. 191. 
 
332 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 333 
 
 
 I * 
 
 I' 
 
 vian funeral-feast, the heir sat on a bench near the 
 high-seat 1 until the Bragi-beaker was brought to him. 
 Then he rose, drank, made certain vows, and there- 
 upon took his father's seat, by this act entering on his 
 inheritance and becoming head of his family. Games 
 at the funeral are of very ancient record ; their funda- 
 mental purpose was a common amusement for the 
 spirit of the dead man and his living kinsmen, since 
 he was thought to eat, drink, and make merry with 
 the survivors. Feats of horsemanship are favorite 
 forms of this merry-making. A sailor, Wulfstan, 
 told King Alfred of some odd customs which the 
 Esthonians of his time observed at funerals. They 
 feast a long time in the dead man's home, burn his 
 body finally, and then carry all his property from the 
 house and arrange it in several heaps along a consider- 
 able distance, the largest heap being farthest from 
 the house. Then all the men ride as swiftly as pos- 
 sible towards the different heaps ; the fastest rider 
 naturally gets the largest amount. This must have 
 added terrors to death for all the kinsfolk, and cer- 
 tainly rendered superfluous any ceremonies of enter- 
 ing on the inheritance. 2 We hear of games at the 
 grave of Attila, and Jordanes describes them briefly.^ 
 In the midst of the plain and under silken tents they 
 placed Attila's body, and celebrated certain remark- 
 able games (spectaculum). The best horsemen chosen 
 from the entire race of the Huns rode, after the 
 fashion of the circus, about the place where he lay in 
 
 1 Cf, above, p. 106. 
 
 2 Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, inserted in Alfred's Orosius. 
 
 * "Pauca de multis dicere." See Jord. de orig. act. Getarum, ed. 
 Holder, c. 49. 
 
 state, and glorified his deeds in a funeral-song, some- 
 what like the following: "Attila, mighty king of 
 Huns, son of Mundzuccas, lord of the bravest races, 
 who hath ruled alone with power unheard before 
 the realms of Scythia and Germany, and with taking 
 of states and cities hath terrified both the empires ! 
 Then lest everything should fall a prey to the enemy, 
 was he moved by prayer to accept a yearly tribute. 
 When finally he had happily done all these things, it 
 was not the wound of a foe, not the treachery of a 
 kinsman, but joyful in the joy of his people, and with- 
 out a pang, that he fell in death. Who, then, could 
 call that a decease,^ which no one thinks of aveng- 
 ing?" 
 
 Compare with this the account of Beowulf's 
 funeral : — ^ 
 
 Then the bairn of Wihstan bade command, 
 the man of battles, many a warrior, 
 many a hero, hither to bring 
 from far the pyre-wood, people-shielders. 
 Now fire of the pile shall fret and swallow 
 
 — as wan flame waxes — the warrior's king, 
 who often breasted the iron-shower, 
 
 when storm of darts from the string impelled, 
 shot o'er the shield-wall ; — shaft was firm, 
 feather-fretted flew with the barb. 
 
 »«*♦** 
 Then the wounden gold on wain was laden 
 
 — 'twere ill to count it ! — and th' setheling borne, 
 hoary hero to Hrones-Ness.* 
 
 Folk of the Jutes then fashion'd there 
 
 on the earth a pyre imperishable 
 
 hung with harness and helms of battle, 
 
 with breastplates bright, as he begged them once. 
 
 1 Exitum. 
 
 2 3110 fp. 
 
 8 Hron = whale. 
 
334 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 In the midst they laid their mighty chieftain, 
 warriors wailing their winsome lord. 
 Then on the mountain a mighty pyre 
 the warriors wakened : ^ the wood-smoke rose 
 swart o'er the red glow, roaring flame, 
 mingled with moaning (the wind was whist ^) 
 till the heat had broken the house of bones, 
 melt in its bosom. Mourning-hearted 
 they moaned the sorrow, a master's death. 
 Likewise the widow, a woful song. . . .* 
 
 Then the Weder people wrought anon • 
 
 on the cliff a barrow broad and high, 
 
 by ocean farers easily seen, 
 
 and within the tide of ten days built 
 
 the bold-one's beacon, by burnt-out pyre^^ 
 
 and wrought them a w^all, as worthiest seemed 
 
 to wisest men who weighed the matter. 
 
 Then they put in the barrow bracelets and rings, 
 
 all the treasure taken before 
 
 out of the hoard by the hero-band. 
 
 They left earl's riches for earth to hold, 
 
 the gold in ground, where again it lies 
 
 useless to men as ever it was. 
 
 Then round the barrow brave men rode, 
 
 sons of sethelings, twelve in all, 
 
 would moan their misery, mourn the king, 
 
 say their sorrow, and speak in laud, 
 
 praise his prowess, his powerful doing, 
 
 worthily laud him, as well beseemeth 
 
 men to praise their master-friend, 
 
 heartily love, when hence he goeth 
 
 from life of the body forlorn away. 
 
 1 A favorite trope in A.-S. ; here= " kindle," " fan into flame." 
 
 2 Another reading: — 
 
 roaring played, 
 mingled with weeping of winds, the flame. 
 
 8 The text is very difficult here, on account of defects iu the Ms. 
 * Bugge. Others read " bronda betost." 
 
 THE FUNERAL 335 
 
 So mourn'd their master the men of Jutland, 
 fall of the hero his hearth-companions, 
 counted him of the kings of earth, 
 of men the mildest and most beloved, 
 to his kin the kindest, keenest for praise ! 
 
 No one can fail to see the likeness between this 
 burial of Beowulf and the ceremonies at the funeral 
 of Attila. 
 
 The whole logic of the primitive funeral was based 
 on a supposition that the spirit sundered from the 
 body lived after death. The grave is a house, — 
 eor^Ms, " Immortality," if we may use such an ex- 
 pression, was assumed without question and lies 
 fossil-like in ancient speech. Phrases like "faring 
 to another light," found plentifully in Anglo-Saxon 
 and Old Norse, are of heathen origin, and must not 
 be referred to theology of later times. ^ Gudrun 
 says she is fain to go to another light ;^ and in 
 BSowulf^ one "gave up the joyous life of men, he 
 chose God's light." The phrase is here lightly 
 touched with the new theology, but is of far older 
 origin. Even the HSliand clings to ancient expres- 
 sion and the simpler form: sdkian lioht dtar^ to 
 seek the other light. Other kennings for death are 
 significant, as " to go " — from world, body, house, 
 hall, " to go " forth or hence, " to seek the jo3dess 
 place," " to part soul and body." Of a certain prince 
 we are told, " his father had gone elsewhere." Death 
 is called " the journey," " the miserable journey," or 
 "the parting of the soul." Sometimes the body is 
 
 1 For lists, see Bode, Kenning ar ; and Vilmar, Altert. im Heliand, 
 p. 20, note 2. 
 
 2 Fara i lids annat. Atlamdl, 84. 8. 
 
•I 
 
 336 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 regarded as a garment which man doffs at death.^ The 
 summons to depart comes "at the hour of fate"; then 
 it was that old Scyld fared forth. The Viking heroes 
 of Scandinavia expected the fixed moment of Odin's 
 choosing ; and the word " fey," still known in Scot- 
 land, was once the commonest of Germanic words. 
 " There die," says a character in the Nibelungen 
 Lay, " only the doomed ones," — ez sterhent wan die 
 veigen, "Danger (a pit, abyss) is everywhere for 
 the doomed one," is a Norse parallel.^ This com- 
 bination of the sense of fatalism with implicit belief 
 in a future life leads, we all know, to the highest 
 conditions of bravery and contempt for death ; and, 
 indeed, it takes us quite away from the realm of 
 daily Germanic custom. Across the border-land of 
 the funeral, we come into the wide domain of religion. 
 
 1 Here we may compare the swan-raiment of wise women and the 
 belief in werewolves. See Mannhardt, Germ. Mythen, p. 692. 
 
 2 Allt er feigs fora^, Fafnismdl, 11. 6. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 337 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 I 
 
 ! . 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 Germanic religion in general — Cult and creed — Heathen 
 scepticism — Agreement of old and new faiths — Cult of ancestors, 
 and superstitions about the dead — Survivals — All Souls — Swiss 
 customs — Heathen rites made Christian — The patron- saint and 
 the fylgja. 
 
 Religion in general has two sides, the cult and the 
 creed. Primarily, the cult is a series of ceremonial 
 acts, rather than a system of what we should call 
 worship; and the creed is not so much a logical 
 statement of belief as a record or tradition, which, 
 nowhere definitely set down, finds expression in a 
 number of more or less coherent tales about super- 
 natural persons and supernatural experiences. Or, 
 we may put the dualism in a different fashion. Re- 
 ligion rests upon ethics and emotion. In its primi- 
 tive stages the ethical phase is entirely occupied by 
 a sense of duty to demonic powers, — a slavish sense 
 of duty as to a master who must be obeyed in fear 
 and trembling ; and the emotion is wholly a sense of 
 wonder at inexplicable facts and processes, mainly 
 of the physical universe, which spur the fancy to ex- 
 press the superhuman in terms of the human, and in 
 the shape which we call a myth. That is, myths are 
 
338 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 339 
 
 I 
 
 a series of compromises between the tendency to pro- 
 ject personality into all operations of nature, and the 
 tendency to seek such a cause for these operations as 
 shall be wholly free from observed human impotence. 
 The history of cult and ceremonial religion traces the 
 development of an ethical sense, from physical offer- 
 ing and sacrifice through symbolical rites up to the 
 notion of duty to one's fellows as the outcome of 
 duty to one's God. The history of religious emotion, 
 on the other hand, is for all early stages a part of the 
 history of poetry,^ and must chronicle the attempts 
 of the human mind to set in order and realize its 
 sense of wonder at the supernatural. The realization 
 of this sense of wonder is expressed in the myth, 
 and a series of myths may foster a primitive creed.^ 
 From both of these great religious factors, the cere- 
 mony and the myth, constantly there slips and es- 
 capes the living faith which gives them being. But, 
 notwithstanding this loss of vitality, myth and rite 
 remain firm, and form a part of traditional religion. 
 Long after the living sense for a myth, or the tangi- 
 ble belief in a divinity, has lapsed from people's mind, 
 the cult and creed survive, and men go through form 
 after form, careless of the reason, but tenacious of 
 the ancient rite. It is evident, however, that the 
 work of destruction or indifference is far more swift 
 with creed than with ceremony. Creed is a garment 
 which one may hold more or less dear, but not re- 
 fuse to discard ; cult is the habitual round of one's 
 
 1 Quellen u. Forschungen, No. 51, Mullenhoff's preface to Mann- 
 hardt's MythoL Forsch. p. viii. f. 
 
 2 Rationalistic elements enter very early into the making of myths, 
 as where a story is told to explain what has hitherto passed as inex- 
 plicable. 
 
 life which one easily identifies with life itself. It 
 follows, therefore, that in an early stage of the de- 
 cline of a great religious system we should find the 
 creed uncertain and easily uprooted, the cult still 
 vigorous and tenacious of its place. 
 
 Precisely in such a condition we find the hea- 
 thenism of the Germanic race at the time of its 
 early contact with Rome and Christianity ; and pre- 
 cisely for these causes we can understand the ease 
 with which Christian doctrines, allied with the new 
 culture and the new lore which so dazzled our fore- 
 fathers, battered down what ought to have been stub- 
 born barriers of inherited Germanic belief. With 
 admirable discretion, the early missionaries made 
 their main assault on the belief, and left the custom 
 and ceremony to be undermined by slow siege, or 
 driven away by strategy. ^ Pope Gregory laid down 
 this admirable system in his advice to certain preach- 
 ers of the new faith in heathen England ; and urged 
 in all possible cases a toleration of old rites or else a 
 gentle wresting of them into Christian uses.^ If the 
 heathen have been sacrificing oxen to their idols and 
 holding feasts, let the oxen still be slaughtered, the 
 
 1 This policy was not always adopted. The missionaries who, in the 
 eighth century, sought to convert the Frisians and Saxons, were ex- 
 tremely violent in their methods, and began their work by abrupt 
 attack upon the dearest heathen sanctities. See von Richthofen, Frie- 
 sische Rechtsgesch. II. 411 flp. He contrasts all this with the mild 
 conversion of Iceland. 
 
 '- Beda, Hist. Ecc. I. 30 (ed. Holder). This chapter is of great im- 
 portance for the subject. See specially the passage : ". . . fana idolorum 
 destrui . . . minime debeant; sed ipsa, quae in eis sunt, idola destruantur ; 
 aqua benedicta fiat, in eisdem fanis aspergatur, altaria construentur, 
 reliquiae ponantur." As a result, the new church bore in many cases 
 close resemblance to the heathen temple. For Scandinavia, see Henry 
 Petersen, Om Kordboernes Gudcdyrkelse og Gudetro i Hedenold, p. 32. 
 
340 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 1 ! 
 
 feasts still be held, nee diaholo . . . sed ad laudem del, 
 " Concentrate your attack," said, in effect, the wise 
 pope, "upon the false gods^ and the false belief: 
 deal tenderly with immemorial customs. Destroy 
 the idols, but spare the altars and the temple." 
 Precisely in this strain, Remigius laid his famous 
 command upon the just converted king of the 
 Franks : " Adore what thou hast burnt ! Burn what 
 thou hast adored ! " 
 
 The attack upon heathen divinities was made yet 
 easier by a certain spirit of doubt which had begun 
 to affect the Germanic mind itself. Thoughtful souls 
 were reaching after something better than the worn- 
 out tales of a rude mythology, and daring souls had 
 flung all faith aside. Our best view of a race on this 
 border between an old and a new religion is in Scan- 
 dinavia. Many a hard-headed Norseman mocked at 
 the old-wives' tales of the Edda, and snapped his 
 huge Viking fingers at an Odin or a Thor. At 
 Throndhjem in the days of Hakon Jarl, Svend, a 
 worshipper of Thor, pleaded with his son Finn, who 
 had insulted the ancestral god. Thor, urged Svend, 
 had crushed the rocks and fared through the moun- 
 tains ; Odin gave victory. " It is no great matter," 
 answered Finn, " to break up stones or to conquer by 
 witchcraft. He is the mighty god who has first of 
 all created hill and sky and sea."^ The Icelander 
 
 1 The debate between Frankish Clovis and his Christian wife hinges 
 on the true or false nature of the heathen gods (where the tirade 
 against Jupiter and the others is, of course, mere monkish invention). 
 And very significant is the king's remark about the Christian deity : 
 " He is not even of our race of gods! " See Greg. Tur. II. 20, and Rett- 
 berg, Kirchenf/eschichte Deutschlands, I. 273. 
 
 2 P. E. Miilier, Sagahibliothek, III. 322. 
 
 '»--m?f*^M 
 
 II 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 341 
 
 Thorkell, as his end drew near, commended his soul 
 "to him that created the sun." ^ Men turned in 
 disgust from the rout of weak or knavish gods. In 
 the saga of Hrolf Kraki, we are told that King Hrolf 
 and his men honored no gods, but trusted in their 
 own might.2 "Not Odin," cries another, "but chance 
 rules over the life of man." "I am an old man," 
 urged Ketil; "see how long I have lived, and yet 
 I have never honored Odin." Down at Byzantium, 
 a sturdy heathen Icelander was asked by the Greek 
 emperor in whom, then, he believed. " In myself," 
 was the reply. Hrafnkel says, " I hold it folly to be- 
 lieve in gods." Among Anglo-Saxons, the very min- 
 isters of the old faith stood ready to welcome the 
 new. We all know Beda's two stories, one of Coifi, 
 the high-priest, who rode spear in hand to shatter the 
 temple of his own gods ; the other, of that old North- 
 umbrian counsellor who told his king that since life 
 was but as a bird's flight through their own warm and 
 lighted hall, in from the darkness and out into the 
 darkness, — since their own faith had nothing to say 
 of that outer dark, let them welcome the new faith 
 which could. Energy of fresh and high belief over- 
 whelmed half-hearted followers of custom. When 
 Christian and heathen were contending in Iceland 
 what religion the whole nation should adopt, the 
 heathens proposed to sacrifice eight men to the gods. 
 The Christians answered by calling on the same num- 
 ber of men to take the vows of a pure life, — a pro- 
 posal accepted at once by the adherents of the new 
 
 1 W. Muller, Geschichte u. System d. altdeutschen Religion (hence- 
 forth System), p. 100. 
 
 2 See Dahn, Bausteine, 1. 133-136, where many examples are given. 
 
 t I 
 
 !( 
 
 ii. 
 
 ;| 
 
ftii ia iiiu i tt 
 
 342 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 tt 
 
 faith, while on the heathen side no volunteers what- 
 ever could be found.i 
 
 Christian dogma had an easy victory. It was a 
 compact and logical system elaborated by the subtlest 
 intellects of the time, and it swept the loose array 
 of myths and traditions from the field. But the old 
 rites, the old ceremonies, and even the shadowy forms 
 of old gods and goddesses, so far as they had been 
 connected with cult, lived on. The rout of spirits 
 and demons, with a slight change by way of adapta- 
 tion to the new creed, were undisturbed, and held 
 their old places in fireside tradition and fireside cult. 
 On certain homely occasions even the great divinities 
 of heathendom could be invoked. Says J. Grimm: 2 
 "People who held in strictness all the Christian 
 creed and were ready to persecute and damn the 
 doubter about trinitarian dogmas or the sinner who 
 broke a fast, had no scruples in time of bodily dis- 
 ease, even if only a finger was hurt, to recite incan- 
 tations in which the old gods were called upon for 
 help." Even in the seventeenth century, a Scandi- 
 navian toothache was best banned by a direct appeal, 
 and even a sort of sacrifice, to Thor. Moreover, 
 there were many instances where men endeavored to 
 serve at once the old gods and the new faith ; such 
 was the case with ^thelbert of Kent, who allowed 
 images of heathen deities to stand by the Christian 
 altars.3 In Frankish Germany, during the eighth 
 century, we hear of priests who sacrifice to Wuotan 
 (Woden), attend the heathen feasts, and yet profess 
 
 1 Vigfasson-Powell, C. P. B. 1. 140, and references. 
 
 2 Ueher Marcellus Burdigalensis, Kl. Schr. II. 115. 
 8 Grimm, D. M.* III. 7. 
 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 343 
 
 themselves Christians and administer the rite of bap- 
 tism.i Again, the new religion had yet another ally 
 in addition to the waning belief of heathendom. 
 There were articles of faith in the old creed which 
 substantially agreed with important tenets of the 
 new.2 The church assured and defined that vague 
 but insistent belief in personal immortality which is 
 common to half-civilized men the world over ; it em- 
 phasized the sense of horror, felt as strongly by the 
 barbarian as by Milton,^ at the thought of a human 
 soul going out like a candle-flame in the dark. The 
 soldiers of Ariovistus fought with such desperate 
 courage, explained the Roman historian, because they 
 knew death to be a mere transition to another life. 
 This, of course, is no Germanic peculiarity. The 
 Celtic druids held so strongly to the notion of immor- 
 tality that they actually contracted debts which were 
 to be paid in the next world.* Often at a Celtic ban- 
 quet, when the mirth grew dull, some accommodating 
 young warrior would kill himself in novel or artistic 
 fashion to divert the guests ; it was only a step into 
 another group, where with old comrades he could 
 wait — in those days, not very long — for the rest of 
 
 1 See Rettberg, I. 326. 
 
 2 Rettberg, I. 247 f., remarks that ethical tendencies of our heathen- 
 dom, the high value set on chastity and certain forms of justice, would 
 wdcome analogous tendencies, more sharply outlined, of the new re- 
 
 ^ Paradise Lost, II. 146: 
 
 To be no more : aad cure; for who would lose, 
 Though full of pain, this intellectual being. 
 Those thoughts that wander through eternity, 
 To perish rather, swallowed up and lost 
 In the wide womb of uncreated night. 
 Devoid of sense and motion ? 
 
 ^ CaBsar B. G. VI. 14, and Holtzmauu, Deutsche My thai. p. 196. 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
 i 
 
 <t 
 
mimm' ^''''iVnm '-j^ . 
 
 344 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 the company. These same Celts sold themselves to 
 be killed, for a sum of money, or even for a few 
 casks of wine.i This is crude fatalism ; and we must 
 admit that the church vigorously opposed such a 
 phase of the belief in immortality: our own English 
 jElfric, for example, is eloquent against it. But the 
 more general notion of immortality was fixed in the 
 heathen mind; the new religion individualized, en- 
 nobled, and confirmed the faith. To put it briefly, 
 Christianity forbade that a man's future should be 
 merged, after the heathen fashion, in the future of 
 his family or clan ; it treated him as an individual 
 and mediated directly between him and God. This 
 personal religion began by slow degrees to take its 
 place in the midst of collective and ceremonial relig- 
 ion ; and thus arose that great modern fact which 
 we call sentiment. Contrast the ceremonial worship 
 of a heathen clan with the personal sentiment of a 
 mediseval hymn! Contrast the chorus, the feast, 
 the wide pagan publicity of worehip (and the church 
 took care to preserve a plenty of this element) with 
 the direct and piercing individualism of the monk 
 who in his solitary fervor poured out such words as 
 
 these : — 
 
 O Deus, ego amo te ! . . . 
 
 Tu, tu, mi Jesu, totum iiie 
 
 Amplexus es iu cruce, 
 
 Tulisti . . . 
 
 Innumeros dolores, 
 
 Sudores et angores, 
 
 Et mortem et hsec propter me, 
 
 Ah ! pro me peccatore 1 
 
 State and family religion, with the head of state 
 
 1 See Mommsen, Rome, Dickson's transl. p. 277. 
 
 I 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 345 
 
 or family as priest, yielded ground to the personal 
 expression of awe, of reverence, of love ; the mere 
 sense of conduct, modern writers would say, be- 
 came the sense of conduct touched by emotion. 
 From our notion of primitive religion, and especially 
 of Germanic heathendom, we must take pains to 
 clear away this element of emotion which we are 
 so apt to regard as the chief part of religion itself. 
 Where to seek the beginnings of sentiment as a 
 factor in domestic, social, or religious life, is a diffi- 
 cult problem; but recent writers agree that it is 
 foreign to primitive races, and even that it is a result, 
 not a cause of culture. Certainly the church did 
 much to spread it over rough mediaeval life ; every- 
 where we find her ritual toucliing ancient custom 
 with this new grace of emotion. The old perfunc- 
 tory service to the dead, the journey to a burial-place, 
 and the food or treasure heaped upon an ancestor's 
 grave, became a memorial service and a wreath of 
 flowers; the act, once all in all, became a symbol, 
 for modern worship places or professes to place 
 more weight on the spirit than on the act. "The 
 kingdom of God is within you." It is therefore 
 necessary to put aside our modern notion of wor- 
 ship when we come to examine the religion of 
 the early Germans. We have seen that a certain 
 scepticism about the tales of their mythology, a cer- 
 tain familiarity with prominent parts of the new 
 doctrine, made them comparatively docile converts 
 to a new faith ; but what we most need to consider 
 is the nature of their actual cult, the observance of 
 their practical religion, as compared with the pomp 
 and ritual of Rome. How much of this pomp was 
 
 t 
 
• "mtai0 ' 
 
 if! 
 
 346 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 1 
 
 forced upon the church in place of the earlier sim- 
 plicity of apostolic times, is an open question. Not 
 only the ceremonies incident to a state religion 
 brought about the change ; the barbaric races, soon 
 to be the great props of the church, were incapable 
 of any worship which scorned external helps and 
 which needed only the fervor of the heart. Hence 
 the accommodation to heathen custom, the feasts, the 
 saints'-days ; hence all the external attractions, and 
 the subsequent enlisting of every art from music to 
 
 the drama. 
 
 It is evident from the foregoing considerations 
 that the one religious element which entered into the 
 life of our forefathers was the round of ceremonies 
 and observances, the cult. Myths belong elsewhere, 
 and are a part of Germanic literature, of Germanic 
 poetry. In these pages we are concerned with the 
 cult, and shall appeal to mythology only so far as it 
 throws light upon the history of Germanic ceremony 
 and superstition. 
 
 A form of worship found in all low grades of cul- 
 ture, and existing everywhere in more or less obvious 
 survival, is the worship of the dead.^ A favorite with 
 writers on anthropology, this territory has been here- 
 tofore greatly neglected by the mythologists. At 
 present, however, it is getting more and more atten- 
 tion, and must be recognized as one of the most 
 important divisions in the study of religious develop- 
 
 1 For the sources of our information about Germanic worship, see 
 Grimm, D. M.,^ Vorrede, Bd. II., especially pp. x. if. ; and E. Mogk in 
 Paul's Grdr. d. germ. Phil. I. 984 ff. See the same work, 998 ff., for 
 the special subject of this chapter, and references. 
 
 MpHMtoWQW 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 347 
 
 ment.^ We may in the main accept for Germanic 
 people generally the statement of Vigfusson and 
 Powell, with regard to Scandinavian antiquity, that 
 " the habitual and household worship of ancestors " 
 was " the main cult of the older religion." ^ 
 
 This worship of the dead we shall assume as a defi- 
 nite fact in primitive culture, and shall make little 
 inquiry in regard to its origin.^ The dead were 
 thought to lead as spirits an existence which closely 
 resembled actual life ; as head of a family, the dead 
 man exacted tribute from his surviving children and 
 grandchildren ; they continued to obey his supposed 
 demands, and perhaps ascribed petty but mysterious 
 ailments to his anger at neglected duty. At least, 
 we have the well-known modern instance of an African 
 chief who suddenly took leave of his white guest, say- 
 ing that since his head ached violently, he knew that 
 his dead father was scolding him, and he must hasten 
 to offer something to the angry spirit. A regular cult 
 
 1 E. H. Meyer formally incorporates it in his system of mjrthology 
 (Indogermanische 3hjthen, I. 188.3; II. 1887). Holtzmann recognized 
 it, cautiously enough, saying that a material part of the old heathen 
 religion was worship and service of ancestors. Perhaps, he adds, "it 
 was harder for the church to suppress this sort of worship than the 
 worship of the gods" (Deutsche Myth. p. 202). He had leaned to the 
 same opinion in his Germanische Alterthumer. Vigfusson and Powell 
 assert the fondness of Scandinavians for this manes-cult, and cite the 
 testimony of Jordanes for its popularity among the Goths; ancestors 
 of the royal Gothic house were Anses, — "not men, but demigods," — 
 who were worshipped by their descendants. J. Grimm himself collects 
 abundant material in regard to the sur\ivals and traditions of such 
 worsliip. See especially Chap. XXXI. of the Mythology. 
 
 2 C. P. B. I. 413. 
 
 « Ample material in Spencor, Sociology ; Tylor, Primitive Culture 
 aud Early History of Mankind; Lippert, Culturgeschichte, etc. For 
 an opposing theory, see the introduction (by J. S. Stuart-Glennie, M.A.) 
 to Lucy M. Garnett's The WQ)nen of Turkey and Their Folk-Lore : 
 The Christian Women, London and New York, 1890. 
 
■tfifiMa 
 
 348 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 11 
 
 of the dead is one of the stubbornest facts of human 
 history, and in the refined form of "Spiritualism" 
 counts thousands and thousands of votaries to-day. 
 In its grosser manifestations, it was contrary to the 
 teachings of Christianity, and hence our best informa- 
 tion in regard to a Germanic spirit-cult is to be found 
 in the various edicts and regulations of the early 
 church. The canons of Eadgar ^ forbid swearing or 
 bewitching % means of the dead ; licwigelung is evi- 
 dently the same as necromancy ; and proof that this 
 ban was needed may be found in an old interpretation 
 of dreams, — taken, of course, from the Latin, but 
 current and approved in Anglo-Saxon popular lore, — 
 which tells us that it is a token of good fortune to 
 talk with the dead.^ " If [one] dreams that he kisses 
 a dead man, that is good and long life." ^ That the 
 neighborhood of sepulchres hallowed a place and made 
 it likely to prosper, was a widespread belief. An 
 Anglo-Saxon charm or incantation, one of several for 
 the use of women in pregnancy, opens with the follow- 
 ing directions : " The woman who cannot bring forth 
 her child should go to a dead man's grave (hirgenne'), 
 and step thrice over the grave and speak then these 
 words. . . ." And further on in the same charm 
 (v. 15), we have the efficacy of the " barrow " or sepul- 
 chre more directly attested.* So, too, there seems to 
 have been at Anglo-Saxon funerals more or less 
 heathen ceremony which pointed directly to the wor- 
 
 1 Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes, p. 397. 
 2'«Mid deadum spellian [sprecan] gestrion hit getacna«." Cock- 
 ayne, LeechdomSy III. 202 ; twice on the page. 
 8 Ibid. III. 174, 208. 
 * Wulker-Grein, Bihl. d. Ags. PoesiCr I. 326 f . 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 349 
 
 ship of the dead. JElfric tells ^ the priests of his time 
 not to go to funerals unless invited, a praiseworthy 
 but commonplace piece of advice; then, however, 
 adds that if they do go, they are to forbid ''the 
 heathen songs of the laity (loewedra) and their loud 
 laughter," and not to eat nor drink where the corpse 
 is lying ; this he commands in order that good church- 
 men shall not imitate heathen ways. Further,^ the 
 Indiculm Superstitionum et Paganiarum^ referring to 
 the continental Saxons and dating from the year 743, 
 speaks first of all de sacrilegio ad sepidchra mortuorum 
 and de sacrilegio super defunctos^ id est^ " dadsisas," — 
 of sacrilege at the graves of the dead, and of sacrilege 
 over dead persons ; that is, dadsisas. This last word 
 is explained by Grimm ^ as a " song of lament for the 
 dead " ; and that it was not a mere funeral-song as 
 we understand the phrase, but rather belonged with 
 offerings and sacrificial rites to the dead, is made 
 probable by the urgent opposition of the church. In 
 the Anglo-Saxon Confessional of Ecgberht it is pro- 
 vided that "whosoever in the place where a man lies 
 dead shall burn corn for the good of living persons 
 and in his house,* shall fast five winters." The corn 
 was burnt for the benefit of the dead man, who would 
 for this reason look with favor upon the survivors. 
 Again and again the church forbids these offerings 
 and songs and other ceremonies in connection with 
 
 1 Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes, p. 448. Most of the older 
 literature on this subject was collected by Bouterwek in the introduc- 
 tion to his Csedmon. 
 
 2 See D. MA III. 403 ft. ; also p. 406 f., extract from Burchard of 
 Worms, 10. 10 ; 10. 34 ; etc. 8 Grimm, D. MA I. 1027. 
 
 * As Bouterwek {Csedmon, p. Ixxxvii.) notes, the Latin text reads 
 "pro sanitate ^'^ventium et domus.^^ 
 
igs Sn- ' iaeg 
 
 If • 
 
 I ■ 
 
 I- -j 
 
 350 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 the dead;^ and there can be no doubt that it was 
 a matter of worship rather than of ordinary grief. 
 The Anglo-Saxon barrow-song or lyke-song^ was 
 no mere threnody. People prayed by night, stand- 
 ing at the ancient places of burial ; originally the 
 prayers were to the dead, but, no doubt, in course 
 of time were directed to gods or demigods of 
 tradition, for whom the grave-stone served as an 
 altar. 
 
 Popular faith had little to do with abstractions; 
 and when the dead were addressed in prayer, they 
 were thought to be personally involved in a palpable 
 and questionable shape. Hence the many spells or 
 incantations to raise the dead and bid them open 
 mysteries of the present or the future. Hence the 
 Old Norse valgaldr, a charm or incantation meant to 
 awaken the sleeper from his heavy death-slumber ; in 
 particular, it is a spell by which Odin forces the 
 sibyl to rise from her grave and foretell the fate of 
 Balder.3 " On Woden rode . . . till he came to the 
 lofty hall of Hell, then Woden rode to its eastern 
 gate where he knew the sibyl's barrow stood. He 
 fell to chanting the mighty spells that move the dead 
 (yalgaldr)^ till she rose all unwilling and her corpse 
 spake." Schullerus* cites a similar case in Saxo 
 Grammaticus, where Hadingus wishes to ascertain 
 particulars of his own fate, and compels a dead man 
 to give the required information; bits of wood are 
 
 1 Christian priests took part in them, to the great scandal of the 
 church. Rettberg, I. 32G. 
 
 2 Bi/rgensang ; Ucsanfj. See also D. M.* I. 1027 f. 
 
 8 VeqtamskvitSa, called by Vigfusson and Powell Balder's Doom, 
 C. P. B. 1. 182. The translation, used here, always gives the English 
 form of the names, as Woden for Odin. * P.-B. Beit. XII. 236, note. 
 
 
 i i»- » rtiia)ii iti -| i »i»if" 
 
 I fl 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 351 
 
 laid under his tongue, a device which reminds us 
 somewhat of the miracle told in Chaucer's Prioresses 
 Tale, and the corpse thereupon begins to speak. Of 
 course, dira carmina, runes and incantations, are wiit- 
 ten on these fragments. In another Old Norse poem,^ 
 the disguised Odin says that he learned his sharp 
 words from the old people who live "m the home- 
 graves,'' ^ Everywhere in the old Scandinavian life 
 we find traces of this direct worship of the dead; 
 sacrifices were made to them in order to insure good 
 crops, and the ceremony was conducted by the head of 
 the family among the ancestral graves.^ Authr was 
 a rich woman who had embraced the new faith ; but 
 when she was dead and buried in a certain mountain, 
 her descendants, who kept their heathendom, made 
 an altar there and brought sacrifice, and believed that 
 all of Authr's kin would gather after death within this 
 mountain.^ It is easy, as many scholars have pointed 
 out, to see the connection between this worship of 
 ancestml dead near the cave or hill in which they are 
 buried, and the countless myths and legends which 
 tell of a prince or chieftain who " sleeps " in a moun- 
 tain, and will one day ride forth to conquest.^ The 
 sacrificial feast at an ancestral grave lingered long in 
 survival. In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,^ 
 we are told that certain craftsmen had so prospered 
 in the world that they were fit to be aldermen ; and 
 
 1 HarbarSslj. 44. 
 
 * Reading haugxim with Hildebrand and the English editors, instead 
 of skogum= forests, as others have it. 
 
 8 C. P. B. I. 413 ff. 4 Landndma IsL S. I. 
 
 5 Mogk's protest (Paul's Grdr. p. 1005) against the custom of re- 
 garding all these legends as so many Woden myths, is surely well 
 founded. 6 y. 375 ff. 
 
 \ 
 
352 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 to this dignity their wives would surely make no 
 objection, for — 
 
 It is ful fair to ben yclept Madame, 
 
 And gon to vigilies al byfore, 
 
 And have a mantel riallyche ibore. . . . 
 
 Precedence, a matter of old tradition evidently, 
 obtained at the vigilies, that is, the meetings of the 
 parishioners " in their church-houses or church-yards, 
 where they were wont to have a drinking-fit for the 
 time," and where " they used to end many quarrels 
 between neighbor and neighbor." In 1638, " one of 
 the Suffolk articles of inquiry was: 'Have any 
 Playes, Feasts, Banquets, Suppers, Church Ales, 
 Drinkings, Temporal Courts or Leets, Lay Juries, 
 Musters, Exercise of Dancing, Stoole hall. Foot hall, or 
 the like, or any other profane usage been suffered to 
 be kept in your Church, Chappell or Church Yard ? ' " ^ 
 It is easy to see the connection with ancient rites. 
 Dancing in gmveyards gave frequent scandal in 
 England; and we shall presently see the same sur- 
 vival in the rites of burial. 
 
 Recurring to the actual worship of the dead, we 
 find testimony in Beda,^ who, speaking of the several 
 months, says that February, called solmonath, is the 
 " month of cakes,"' which at this time were offered by 
 the heathen to their gods ; ^ whereupon Holtzmann 
 remarks that for "gods" we should probably read 
 "spirits" — manihus^ These offerings were made 
 
 1 Brand, ** Churchyards." 2 De temp. rat. c. 15. 
 
 « " Solmonath did potest mensis placentarum quas in eo dis suis 
 offerebant." See also Grimm, G. D. S. p. 77, who approves Beda's ety- 
 mology. 
 
 * D. M. (Holtzmann) p. 202. " Die G«)tter sind die Vorfahren." 
 
 < 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 353 
 
 at the graves, which then as now were marked by 
 stones; church edicts keep forbidding laymen to 
 make sacrifice "at stones." Kristnisaga tells of a 
 bishop who sang Christian spells over a stone where 
 the " family spirit " was thought to dwell ; at last 
 the piety of the prelate had its reward, and the stone 
 burst asunder.^ 
 
 The dead were supposed to abide either in the 
 immediate tomb or else in that vast realm which is 
 only the infinite projection of the tomb, the so-called 
 underworld or domain of hell. So that the inmate, 
 when conjured to appear, may make immediate ap- 
 pearance, or else come as from a long journey. When 
 Odin's strong charm conjures up the sibyl, she com- 
 plains : " What mortal is it . . . that hath put me 
 to this weary journey ? I have been snowed on with 
 the snow, I have been beaten with the rain, I have 
 been drenched with the dew, long have I been dead."^ 
 Similarly, Helgi's appearance is described by Sigrun, 
 when she meets him at the barrow. We are justified 
 in assuming with Schullerus that the grave is in the 
 closest connection with Hel's cold and dreary domin- 
 ions.^ Mostly, however, the dead are conceived to be 
 close at hand, resting in the narrow cell or invisibly 
 haunting the scenes of their active life.^ Significant 
 perhaps in this regard is the saying of Tacitus about 
 Germanic sepulchres,^ that no monuments are raised 
 above them because such would be too heavy for the 
 departed ; ^ it may be, however, only a piece of Tacitean 
 
 1 C. P. B. I. 416. 
 
 ^ C. P. B.l. 182, translation of Vigfusson and Powell. 
 8 Ziir Kritik d. Valhollglaxihens, P.-B. Beit. XII. 238. 
 ■* Material for Scandinavian belief, C P. B. I. 415 f. 
 s Oerm. XXVII. 6 ut gravem defunetis. 
 
 A 
 
 , ««. ,«<«s.»»,.. •«-_ -..^...^ 
 
354 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 ! 
 
 I 
 
 rhetoric, with chief application to the pomp of Roman 
 burial. Certainly the dead were thought to continue 
 their existence in the tomb, and hence we find the 
 earliest barrow built in the shape of a house, where 
 the body or even the ashes of the old freeman could 
 still find a home. The Viking who lived on the sea 
 was fain to have a ship-tomb. If we may believe 
 many writers on sociology, the temple of worship is 
 merely a development of the house built over the 
 dead, where the altar represents the sepulchre itself. 
 The custom of carrying food to graves and of eating 
 near them, is a survival of the greater banquets and 
 sacrificial ceremonies at the tomb, where the dead and 
 the living were supposed to share the feast. Drink- 
 ing with the dead became drinking to the dead ; hence 
 the Roman libation and our modern silent toast, 
 known in olden times as the Minne Drink. "At the 
 burial of a [Scandinavian] king, a beaker was pre- 
 sented which was called Bragafull ; every one present 
 arose, made a solemn vow and emptied it. . . . This 
 custom was not given up at the conversion, but one 
 drank the minne of Christ or of Mary or of one of 
 the saints."^ Minne is "loving memory." The erfi or 
 wake in Old Norse times was a most important affair, 
 and we read of guests to the number of fourteen hun- 
 dred ; while in England the arval or arvil was kept up 
 until comparatively modern times, with such outlay 
 for food and drink that " it cost less to portion off a 
 daughter than to bury a dead wife." ^ Jordanes tells 
 of the endless feasting and drinking of the Huns at 
 the burial of Attila, a ceremony which was called 
 
 1 Grimm, D. M.* 48 f. See also Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 96, and 
 references. 2 Brand, "Funeral Entertainpjents." 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 355 
 
 strava.^ Moreover, the games which were celebrated 
 at the funeral of an important personage seemed to 
 have been meant in the earliest times as an affair in 
 which the dead man took actual part. For some rea- 
 son these feasts and games were specially forbidden 
 by clerical authorities ; but an easy compensation 
 was offered in a custom which amounted to little less 
 than actual worship of the dead, — the saints'-days 
 celebrated by the church. " All Souls " is a signifi- 
 cant name. A general feast, which we may take to 
 have been in honor of the dead, was held by the 
 ancient Germans, and is mentioned by Widukind, 
 abbot of the monastery at Corvey on the Weser, who 
 about 980 wrote a history of the (continental) Saxons. 
 " Thereupon ^ for three days they held their feast of 
 victory, shared the booty, paid the wonted military 
 honors to their slain companions, and praised unmeas- 
 uredly the courage of their general. . . . Now all 
 this happened, as runs the tradition of our forefathers, 
 on the first of October, and these heathen festivals 
 have been changed by the consecration of pious men, 
 into fasting and prayer and offerings for all departed 
 Christian souls." ^ There can be no doubt that Widu- 
 kind's story deals with no isolated event, but with an 
 immemorial Germanic rite. 
 
 This time-honored and doubtless precious ceremony 
 of Germanic heathendom the church accepted with 
 but slight modification. It was called the feast of 
 All Souls, and was placed, not far from its old date, 
 on the second day of November; autumn is the 
 
 1 Jordan. XLIX. 
 
 2 After a great victory over the Thuringians in the sixth century. 
 
 8 Widukind (in Geschichtschreiber d. deutsch. Vorzeit) I. 12. Cf. 
 also W. Miiller, System, p. 74. 
 
 i ■: 
 
tt 
 
 ii 
 
 356 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 proper season for any memento mori, and with the 
 equinoctial storms, the fall of leaf, the frost, the roar 
 of winds when Woden and his train of spirits sweep 
 the sky, man easily blends the universal picture of 
 decay and the remembrance of parted souls.^ The 
 meaning of this All-Souls festival lingered long among 
 the peasants of modern Europe, and does not lack 
 analogy in older systems. Grimm 2 sees connection 
 between this feast, when people visit graveyards 
 and lay garlands on the tomb, and the three festal 
 days in Roman custom, when the underworld was 
 thought to open and the spirits to revisit upper air. 
 On the night of the second of November, the Estho- 
 nians set out food for the spirits ; and near Dorpat, 
 souls of the departed are then received in the bath- 
 room and, one after the other, bathed. That the 
 church has so purged away the grosser elements of 
 this festival and made it a memorial service, does 
 infinite credit to those who brought about the change ; 
 and it reflects little honor on the Protestants to have 
 abolished it.^ 
 
 Such univei-sal worship of the dead reflected the 
 private and particular custom. Every hearthstone 
 was an altar, and the father of the family was its 
 priest. Wherever settled abodes were known, this 
 altar was hallowed, and in many cases the fire burned 
 there without intermission throughout the year. Here 
 lingered the ancestral spirits, protecting and helpful ; 
 and here the head of the family offered to them food 
 and drink, asked their help, cast lots, and sang the 
 
 1 See Pfannenschmidt, Erntefeste, p. 128, 165. 2 7). 3f.4 751^ note 1. 
 3 It has been restored in the reformed church of Prussia and Saxony. 
 Pfannenschmidt, Ernte/este, p. 168. 
 
 I 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 357 
 
 incantation. The great memorial feasts of the people 
 which Widukind describes were matched by the 
 private feasts of the different families. The funeral 
 itself was only the first of a series of feasts; the 
 dead man took his place among the ancestral spirits, 
 and the survivors shared with him and his new asso- 
 ciates the food, the drink, the song, and the dance. 
 In the eighth century, popes were forced to forbid 
 the too outspoken heathen character of a popular 
 funeral, the " profana sacrilegia mortuoruin." ^ We 
 have seen ^Ifric's advice to the priests of England 
 that they should not frequent funerals of this sort. 
 But the church was far too wise to undertake any 
 sweeping measure. The old rites were forbidden so 
 far as the grosser heathen characteristics of them 
 were concerned, or were changed, when it was prac- 
 ticable, into petty ceremonies, or, finally, were per- 
 mitted to endure in a lingering and for the most part 
 dwindling survival. For English customs, the col- 
 lection of Brand ^ gives ample material ; and the 
 survivals of southern Germany and Switzerland have 
 been carefully studied by Rochholz.^ Whoever, in 
 Switzerland, has the duty of watching with a corpse, 
 must have unlimited supply of brandy and wine. 
 Prodigality and reckless expenditure prevail among 
 this otherwise economical and thrifty race so soon as 
 a funeral is concerned ; they believe that any mean- 
 ness displayed at this time on the part of the heirs 
 will rob the dead man of his rest in the grave. It is 
 
 1 Cf. Pfannenschmidt, Ernte/este, p. 166; the pope is Gregory III. in 
 739. 
 
 2 Antiquities, ** Watching with the Dead." 
 
 8 Deiitscher Glaube u. Branch im Spiegel d. heidnischen Vorzeit, I. 
 194ff.,299ff. 
 
 ' ■/] 
 
356 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 proper season for any memento mori, and with the 
 equinoctial storms, the fall of leaf, the frost, the roar 
 of winds when Woden and his train of spirits sweep 
 the sky, man easily blends the universal picture of 
 decay and the remembrance of parted souls.^ The 
 meaning of this All-Souls festival lingered long among 
 the peasants of modern Europe, and does not lack 
 analogy in older systems. Grimm ^ sees connection 
 between this feast, when people visit graveyards 
 and lay garlands on the tomb, and the three festal 
 days in Roman custom, when the underworld was 
 thought to open and the spirits to revisit upper air. 
 On the night of the second of November, the Estho- 
 nians set out food for the spirits ; and near Dorpat, 
 souls of the departed are then received in the bath- 
 room and, one after the other, bathed. That the 
 church has so purged away the grosser elements of 
 this festival and made it a memorial service, does 
 infinite credit to those who brought about the change ; 
 and it reflects little honor on the Protestants to have 
 abolished it.^ 
 
 Such universal worship of the dead reflected the 
 private and particular custom. Every hearthstone 
 was an altar, and the father of the family was its 
 priest. Wherever settled abodes were known, this 
 altar was hallowed, and in many cases the fire burned 
 there without intermission throughout the year. Here 
 lingered the ancestral spirits, protecting and helpful ; 
 and here the head of the family offered to them food 
 and drink, asked their help, cast lots, and sang the 
 
 1 See Pfannenschmidt, Erntefeste, p. 128, 165. 2 £>. MM61, note 1. 
 3 It has been restored in the reformed church of Prussia and Saxony. 
 Pfannenschmidt, Erntefeste, p. 168. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 357 
 
 incantation. The great memorial feasts of the people 
 which Widukind describes were matched by the 
 private feasts of the different families. The funeral 
 itself was only the first of a series of feasts; the 
 dead man took his place among the ancestral spirits, 
 and the survivors shared with him and his new asso- 
 ciates the food, the drink, the song, and the dance. 
 In the eighth century, popes were forced to forbid 
 the too outspoken heathen character of a popular 
 funeral, the "profana sacrilegia mortuorum." ^ We 
 have seen ^Ifric's advice to the priests of England 
 that they should not frequent funerals of this sort. 
 But the church was far too wise to undertake any 
 sweeping measure. The old rites were forbidden so 
 far as the grosser heathen characteristics of them 
 were concerned, or were changed, when it was prac- 
 ticable, into petty ceremonies, or, finally, were per- 
 mitted to endure in a lingering and for the most part 
 dwindling survival. For English customs, the col- 
 lection of Brand ^ gives ample material ; and the 
 survivals of southern Germany and Switzerland have 
 been carefully studied by Rochholz.^ Whoever, in 
 Switzerland, has the duty of watching with a corpse, 
 must have unlimited supply of brandy and wine. 
 Prodigality and reckless expenditure prevail among 
 this otherwise economical and thrifty race so soon as 
 a funeral is concerned ; they believe that any mean- 
 ness displayed at this time on the part of the heirs 
 will rob the dead m*an of his rest in the grave. It is 
 
 C/. Pfannenschmidt, Erntefeste, p. 166; the pope is Gregory III. in 
 
 739. 
 
 2 Antiquities, ** Watching with the Dead." 
 
 8 Deiitscher Glaube u. Branch im Spiegel d. heidnischen Vorzeit, I. 
 194 if., 299 ff. 
 
358 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 359 
 
 not hard to summon a host of parallel cases, from the 
 funeral of an Irish Romanist to-day, back to the pecu- 
 liar ceremonies among the Finnish tribes described 
 to King Alfred by the sailor Wulfstan. During one 
 of these peasant funerals in Switzerland the bake- 
 oven in the house of death must not become cold for 
 the space of three days between decease and burial ; 
 bread and cheese are free to all comers. Food of 
 this sort, thinks the peasant, gives far more strength 
 than does one's daily bread: an ounce goes as far 
 now as two pounds eaten at another time ! ^ A per- 
 son known as the Leidfrau or mourning-woman is 
 charged with the main ceremonies ; and cases ^ are 
 on record where a part of her duty was to offer bread, 
 salt, and wine to the spirits of the house, the ancestral 
 souls. Before the coffin is closed — we are still with 
 Rochholz's Swiss peasants — each member of the 
 family grasps in farewell the hand of the deceased. 
 During the actual bearing of the body to its last 
 resting-place, bread and wine are distributed. The 
 burial over, — and the corpse of the Christian peasant 
 like that of his heathen ancestor must be buried fac- 
 ing east, — there are thirty days of mourning; the 
 third, the seventh, and the thirtieth of these are cele- 
 brated by certain rites in the church. Every morn- 
 ing, however, the Leidfrau goes to mass ; says thirty 
 pater-nosters at the grave on the first, and one less 
 each day during the month ; and has numerous other 
 duties to perform, in return for which she has pre- 
 scribed allowance of food and di-ink, a new garment, 
 and, above all, place at the funeral-feasts. These, as 
 Rochholz says, make the chief article of the Swiss 
 
 1 Rochholz, p. 1<>5. 
 
 2 As late as 18(50 in Servia. 
 
 peasant's luxury in life. Peasants of to-day still think 
 the more they eat and drink at a funeral, " the better 
 it is for the dead." Church and state have been trying 
 for a thousand years to reduce the size and cost of 
 these banquets ; and here we see again the ethical 
 character of Christianity face to face with the merely 
 ceremonial nature of heathendom. The church could 
 not brook singing, revel, and actual dancing at this 
 solemn ceremony, and held up the duty of genuine 
 sorrow for the dead. Repeated decrees insisted on 
 the " diabolical " character, " contrary to human na- 
 ture," of such customs ; and forbade as far as possible 
 the rude revelry and noise. Such remains of the old 
 habit as were tolerated by the authorities became in 
 due time the theme of attack by reforming opponents 
 of the church ; and as late as our own century there 
 are cases of actual dancing in honor of the dead, 
 preceded of course by a sort of memorial service, in 
 mourning garb, within the church.^ Add to these 
 grosser survivals the minor superstitions of peasants 
 everywhere in Europe, the bit of food flung into 
 the fire, thrown out of the window, or set upon 
 the roof "for the poor spirits," the lore of house- 
 goblins, and the little observances of the same 
 sort practised by the laborer in the field, — all 
 these things point to the once univei-sal cult of the 
 dead.2 
 
 Where survival seemed dangerous, and where 
 actual uprooting was unwise, the church turned a 
 heathen ceremony into a special Christian rite. The 
 
 1 Rochholz, p. 317. 
 
 2 For feasts with the dead, see further Tylor, Primitive Culture, 
 Chaps. XL, XII., and particularly Vol. II. 30 ff. 
 
 ' ai 
 
360 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 offerings to the dead^ were converted into gifts for 
 the parish poor; and we even find the two objects 
 recognized for the same act. Thus Rochholz quotes 
 from the Confessions of St. Augustine an account 
 of the practice of eating and drinking among the 
 graves, and giving a share to the poor, — a custom 
 of certain Christians in which the pious mother of 
 the saint had shared. But in more modern times the 
 feeding of the poor has excluded older rites. Poor 
 and sick folk took the place of the dead; and the 
 gifts of corn and wine were often fixed for certain 
 days, especially when the benefaction assumed the 
 form of a legacy or a gift of the dead man's heirs. 
 As regards the original purpose of offerings to the 
 spirit, it is needless to point out how closely the prac- 
 tice of buying masses for the dead would fit ancestral 
 notions. Tylor^ quotes the invective of a Manichsean 
 who charges the Christians with keeping the heathen 
 ceremonial under a new name: "Their sacrifices 
 indeed ye have turned into love-feasts, their idols 
 into martyrs, whom with like vows ye worship ; ye 
 appease the shades of the dead with wine and meals, ye 
 celebrate the Gentiles' solemn days with them. . . ."^ 
 Thus the church, true to its general theory that sorrow 
 of a practical character should take the place of mere 
 revel and a crass notion of the dead man's participation, 
 instituted the solemn ceremony of masses for the dead, 
 an infinite gain over older and ruder rites. With 
 
 1 An allusion to this among other races is found in Tohit, iv. 17. 
 " Pour out thy bread on the burial of the just, but give nothing to the 
 wicked." 
 
 2 P. C. II. 34 f . Cf. also Hampson, Medii JEvi Kalendarium, 53 f. 
 
 3 Tylor (p. 35) gives a number of survivals, coming down to modern 
 times. 
 
 I' 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 361 
 
 the steady growth of the doctrines concerning purga- 
 tory, masses for the dead assumed an overwhelming 
 importance. Moreover, the church encouraged the 
 worship of patron-saints, and in this way kept up a 
 venerable institution of heathendom. For the patron- 
 saint seems to be legitimate successor of the " guard- 
 ian angel," the " genius," and that attendant spirit in 
 which the old Germans believed. Germanic belief gave 
 to every man a protecting spirit or follower ; we find 
 the best information on the matter in Scandinavian 
 records.^ In the later development of Norse mythol- 
 ogy, the Valkyrias seem often to take this part ; they 
 follow and protect a chosen hero, and at his death 
 conduct him to Valhalla. In the legends of later 
 Europe, many a wood-fay, white lady, or fairy, 
 may still become in this way the protecting spirit 
 of some hero and share his mortal love. We have seen 
 Svava waiting on her Helgi, and Sigrun protecting 
 Helgi Hundingsbani ; Sigrdrifa, who is really Bryn- 
 hild, loves Sigurd.^ But men believed in a more pro- 
 saic spirit, — a far older belief than this offspring of 
 the Viking age, — the fi/lgj a, an invisible guardian, 
 only to be seen when one was nigh unto death. We 
 remember how Drusus, just before his fatal accident, 
 saw a sort of fylgja ; it was in the shape of a bar- 
 barian woman, gigantic in form, who told him he 
 dare go no further. So Alexander Severus saw a 
 similar figure that prophesied misfortune ; and even 
 Attila was confronted by a rune-maiden who warned 
 him thrice : " Back, Attila ! " In the Niahmga? a 
 heathen Icelander is converted under the condition 
 
 1 Survivals collected by Rochholz, I. 92-130. 2 Grimm, D. M.^ 361. 
 8 C. 101. 
 
 i, 
 
362 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 363 
 
 that he may have the Archangel Michael for his 
 
 " following angel," /t/?^ya ew^i7^ ; and Grimm ^ notes 
 
 that Michael was the Christian receiver of souls. To 
 
 see this following-spirit meant death ; sometimes one 
 
 saw it in shape of beast or bird. Bjarki saw his as a 
 
 bear; raven, and later, swan, perform a similar office.^ 
 
 An English name for this fylgja is the fetch^ familiar 
 
 enough in popular superstition ; while its highest type 
 
 is the conception of a general " following-spirit," fate 
 
 itself, to which our ancestors gave the name of 
 
 Wyrd^ — 
 
 The wirdes that we clepen destanye, 
 
 as Chaucer^ puts it. This conception of overmastering 
 and irrevocable fate makes dark background in our 
 oldest epic, existing side by side with Christian influ- 
 ences. " Wyrd wove me this," says the Anglo-Saxon ; 
 and approaching death is stated in similar terms: 
 "thy Wyrd stands near thee." The weird sisters 
 survive in Macbeth, and are to be considered more 
 particularly in another chapter. "I thought I saw 
 dead women, poorly clad, come in here to-night ; 
 they wished to choose thee, ..." says one who will 
 prophesy to Gunnar his approaching death.* 
 
 The "familiar spirit" is not far off from this 
 
 fylgja; and both of course belong to spirit-cult. 
 
 Moreover, very old expressions of our language show 
 
 this notion of a spirit not under our absolute control 
 
 — its precise relation to the ego was hardly matter of 
 
 1 D. M. 730. The festivals of St. Michael, says Hampson, are obvi- 
 ously purposed *' to give countenance to the worship of angels." Medii 
 JEvi Kalendarium, II. 140. They are also connected with the doctrine 
 of tutelar spirits. See Brand, Antiquities, under ** Michaelmas." 
 
 2 D. MA III. 266. 3 Legende Goode Women, *• Ypermystre." 
 * Atlamdl in C. P. B. I. 335, V. and P.'s translation. 
 
 Germanic speculation — abiding within us and mov- 
 ing us without our wish or will. "It ran into his 
 mind" is our "occur"; but what was the "it"? Men 
 believed that during dream or trance, the soul in 
 visible shape, — a mouse or a snake, for example, — 
 could desert the body ; and they seem also to have 
 believed that something not oneself spoke within 
 one's own bosom. When a man begins to talk, he 
 " unlocks the word-hoard " ; when he will be silent, 
 he bolts and bars his breast. Instead of " he spake," 
 the poet of Beowulf says : " the point of the word 
 brake through the breast-hoard"; and in another 
 place, " he let the word fare out." ^ Indeed, it was 
 no metaphor for our Germans when they said that 
 the spirit of his ancestors spake from the breast of 
 the son. On this inner voice, however, we must not 
 lay too much emphasis ; for the fylgja was mostly 
 conceived as outside of one, a comrade and follower. 
 The conception could widen from an individual's 
 fy^gj^ to the good genius of family, clan, or race. In 
 the church, St. Michael took these old functions upon 
 himself ; and Michaelmas is set apart, as Bourne sug- 
 gests, for the election of municipal officers, "the civil 
 guardians of the peace of men, perhaps . . . because 
 the feast of angels naturally enough brings to our 
 minds the old opinion of tutelar spirits, who have, or 
 are thought to have, the particular charge of certain 
 bodies of men or districts of country, as also that 
 every man has his guardian angel who attends him 
 from the cradle to the grave." ^ 
 
 In many other ways the church perpetuated certain 
 forms of this cult of the dead. Conspicuous martyrs, 
 
 1 B^oic. 2792. See Bode, Kenningar, p. 43. 2 Brand, '* Michaelmas." 
 
 '^tmtm^ 
 
364 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 prelates, and others were canonized and practically 
 worshipped, so that the strongly rooted custom might 
 bear its fruit on consecrated ground of clerical cere- 
 monies. We may sum up the whole matter in the 
 words of Mr. E. B. Tylor : " It is plain that in our 
 time the dead still receive worship from far the 
 larger half of mankind, and it may have been much 
 the same ever since the remote periods of primitive 
 culture in which the religion of the manes probably 
 took its rise." ^ Where we are not concerned with 
 actual worship, as soon as we leave creed and cere- 
 mony and take up superstition, then we enter the 
 great realm of ghosts; here the old beliefs have 
 found their haven of refuge. The dead still visit 
 the glimpses of the moon, rise to demand blood for 
 their own murder, come to warn or protect or scare, 
 — what not: and all these faded superstitions have 
 their roots in the ancient manes-cult. Precisely the 
 same origin must be assigned to the famous night- 
 mare'^ and all its relatives. The "mare," a word 
 which Kuhn connected with Latin mori, is evidently 
 in its original form a spirit, a dead person, who tram- 
 ples or rides its victim to death. Thence the con- 
 ception passes into that of a living person who 
 has assumed this shape; and so through all the 
 grades of superstitious belief. Similar origin must 
 be assigned to the wereivolf, a person "clad" in a 
 wolf,3 and evidently another offspring of the belief 
 in spirits. But these various manifestations belong 
 rather to Germanic mythology than to our present 
 subject. 
 
 1 Primitive Culture^ 11. 123. 2 Mogk in Paul's Grdr. p. 1013. 
 
 3 Kogel's etymology in Mogk's article, p. 1017, note. 
 
 «ni 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD 
 
 365 
 
 The place where one meets the spirits, can summon 
 them and appease them, is by preference the burial 
 place; but they are also fond of crossways. The 
 time is, of course, night ; and chiefly in the season of 
 Christmas and New Year, when the nights are long- 
 est. A host of superstitions and popular observances 
 connected with this time of the year have their roots 
 in the primitive customs of manes-worship. On St. 
 Thomas's day, December 21st, in an English village 
 it was till lately the custom to deposit five shillings 
 in a hole in a certain tombstone in the churchyard ; 
 this done, the lord of the manor could take no tithe 
 of hay that year.^ 
 
 1 Hampson, Medii ^vi Kalendarium, I. 83. 
 
 ( 
 
 ^ 
 
TT—i mim^tm^mmm 
 
 ; J 
 
 
 
 
 866 
 
 GERMAXIC ORIGIXS 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE AVORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 Dualism in worship — Spirits of the natural world — House-spirits 
 — Spirits of the air -The Mighty Women - Charms - The Wild 
 Hunt -Spirits of the earth - Wood-spirits - Tree-worship - 
 Water-spirits and well- worship - The Swan-maidens -Giants - 
 Worship of the elements - Water, air, and fire - Mother Earth - 
 Sun, moon, and stars -Day, night, and the seasons. 
 
 It is not our province to discuss problems of my- 
 thology, but a question must be asked in regard to the 
 objects of Germanic worship. We have learned that 
 the primitive German worshipped his ancestral spirits. 
 Starting with this fact, many writers on anthropology 
 endeavor to develop the whole system of Germanic 
 deities from ancestor-worship alone. This we cannot 
 admit. One often hears a remark quoted from Im- 
 manuel Kant to the effect that two things filled him 
 with wonder and awe, — the starry heavens above 
 him and the sense of moral responsibility within him. 
 Now for primitive man we may assume an analogous 
 dualism, corresponding of course to the undeveloped 
 condition of his intellect. The world of dreams and 
 of consciousness gave him the conception of spirits 
 and the impulse to worship them. On the other 
 hand, from the start he must have felt a not-himself 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 367 
 
 — a not'like-hwiself — in the nature that surrounded 
 him. We assume this dualism from the outset: a 
 cult of ancestral spirits, which chiefly haunted the 
 tomb and the underworld; and a cult of natural 
 forces dimly felt to be instinct with life and volition. 
 In other words, primitive man did not delay his wor- 
 ship of natural forces until remote ancestors had 
 become in some way identified with these forces. 
 Storms might gather in the neighborhood of moun- 
 tain graves, and might be attributed to ancestors, for 
 wind and air belong to the spirits ; but the bolt of 
 lightning had no analogy in any human act and was 
 surely never regarded as the work of an ancestor. 
 There must have been a gigantic storm-god from the 
 beginning of human thought ; for if there was intel- 
 lect enough to infer ancestral acts, there was fancy 
 enough to imagine a superhuman power.^ 
 
 Between the worship of ancestors, known and 
 acknowledged as such, and the cult of great divinities 
 like Woden, lay a border-land which is not to be 
 rashly annexed to either kingdom. We prefer to 
 treat this worship independently ; it dealt with spirits 
 of the stream, the cave, the air, and the forest. 
 Doubtless much of this worship once belonged to 
 ancestors, but it soon ceased to be regarded as such. 
 Spirits were supposed to haunt the secret places of 
 nature, and were in many cases thought to be souls 
 of departed men ; but from the start man must have 
 felt that the water or the cloud or the cave had a 
 population not entirely dependent on emigration from 
 
 1 This is counter not only to the anthropological view, but also to 
 the system of the philologist, E. H. Meyer, who assumes {Indogerm. 
 Mythen, I. 87. 210 f.) that the Pandemonium came first and out of it 
 grew the Pantheon. 
 
 \. 
 
1 
 
 368 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 the living world of men; he must have recognized 
 at the outset a natura naturans. Ancestral spirits 
 would belong to a general locality, and would have 
 at heart the interests of family, clan, or race. Thus 
 we find a curious law in Iceland about the precaution 
 to be observed by shipmasters whose boats rode at 
 anchor in the harbors. If these boats had figure- 
 heads, — dragon, snake, or what not, — the prow 
 was to be turned away from the shore so that the 
 land-spirits should not be terrified.^ These are un- 
 doubtedly the kindly spirits of the race, guardians 
 and protectors of their old home. But spirits assigned 
 to some particular element have not this intimate and 
 ancestral quality ; and it was these latter spirits which 
 became in our Christian era the object of bans and 
 curses. 
 
 From haunted spring and dale, 
 
 Edged with poplar pale, 
 
 The parting genius was with sighing sent. 
 
 To " lay " spirits was business of the priest ; the sign 
 of- the cross reminded them of a lost empire and sent 
 them in confusion to yet remoter haunts. Thence, 
 however, they can still be invoked, as Wagner reminds 
 Faust, by the presumptuous and reckless man who 
 does not shrink from dealings with them. To ban 
 spirits and to invoke them are arts not so widely sun- 
 dered as might be supposed ; and the old spirit-cult 
 lent itself readily to the new ceremonies of the 
 church. The carpenter in Chaucer's Miller's Tale, 
 avails himself of such a form when he wishes to cure 
 the clerk of his pretended trance : — 
 
 1 Maurer, Bek, d. norweg. Stamme, II. 231 ; Landndma, IV. 7. 
 
 \\ 
 
 I 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 " Awake and thynk on Cristes passioun. 
 
 I crowche ^ the from elves and from wightes." 
 
 Therwith the night-spel seyde he anon rightes, 
 
 On the four halves of the hous about«. 
 
 And on the threisshfold of the dore withoute. 
 
 " Lord Jhesu Crist, and seynte Benedight, 
 
 Blesse this hous from every wikkede wight. 
 
 Fro nyghtes mare werye the with Pater-noster ; 
 
 Wher wonestow now, seynte Petres soster?" 
 
 369 
 
 This passage ^ Tyrwhitt suspects " to be an interpo- 
 lation"; but a good old English charm it is most 
 undoubtedly, whether Chaucer's insertion or not. 
 
 One class of spirits to be noticed at the outset have 
 nothing to do with natural forces, and evidently be- 
 long entirely to the ancestral division. These are 
 the house-spirits. Robin Goodfellow is a well-known 
 English representative of the class. They dwell in 
 cellar, garret, stall, corncrib, and closet; they are 
 mostly invisible, but often appear as little men in 
 grotesque raiment, pointed hat, and boots. Another 
 sort of home-spirits remain invisible, and it is to 
 avoid pinching or hurting these that one is admon- 
 ished not to slam doors, throw knives about, and so 
 forth. The cult of these spirits exists to this day in 
 some shape. Food is given to them, and in reward 
 they do all sorts of household work;^ our literature 
 abounds in references to their ministrations. 
 
 With spirits of the air^ we enter upon a field 
 where the mystery of natural forces is joined to the 
 
 1 Make the sign of the cross. 
 
 2 Miller's Tale, 291 ff., Aldine edition of Chaucer, II. 107. 
 8 D. 3f .4 422 f . 
 
 * St. Augustine divides "in deos, .homines, daemones. . . . Nam 
 deorum sedes in caelo, hominum in terra, in sere dseraonum." C D. 
 YIII. 14, quoted D. M.* III. 122. 
 
 n 
 
370 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 371 
 
 worship of the dead. The air is of course full of 
 spirits, for the very name of ''spirit" shows this 
 affinity; and we must try to sunder two elements 
 in the cult of these mysterious beings. The old cus- 
 tom of " feeding the wind " at the approach of a storm 
 is a case in point. The rising wind is connected with 
 ancestral spirits ; we know that when, for example, 
 a man is hanged, or meets an equally violent death, 
 there always arises a sudden gust of wind. The 
 food, therefore, is partly meant for these unfortunate 
 spirits, who seem to murmur ominously in the rising 
 gale. But besides the souls, there is something 
 superhuman in the storm itself, an indefinite animat- 
 ing presence which the worshipper desires to propiti- 
 ate: and hence a part of the offering goes to this 
 mysterious power. Thus the beings who haunt the 
 air are doubtless to be referred in part to the wor- 
 ship of ancestors ; but with them is connected the 
 mystery of the element itself. As the spirits retire 
 further and further from their ghostly character, they 
 acquire more and more of the terrible and the over- 
 whelming. 
 
 Let us take, first of all, the dis of Scandinavian 
 superstition, a word which Grimm connects with the 
 Anglo-Saxon ides (woman), and which is found as 
 final syllable in many Norse names. The guardian 
 angel is often a dis; or the word may stretch far 
 enough to include the notion of a ''goddess." We 
 read of a temple of the disir in Scandinavian worship, 
 of sacrifice to them (jdisahUf)^ and of a scald or poet 
 who sang in their honor.^ "One harvest," — we 
 note the season of year, — " there was made a great 
 
 1 Cleasby-Vigfusson, Icelandic Diet. s.v. 
 
 sacrifice to the woman-spirits (disahUt) at King Alf's, 
 and Alfhild performed the sacrifice . . . and in the 
 night, as she was reddening the high-place, Starkad 
 carried her away.^ " These woman-spirits are some- 
 times friendly, sometimes hostile, and on the whole 
 seem to be the sublimated wise-woman whom the 
 German reverenced in life for her prophetic and 
 sacred nature, a "magnified and non-natural" Veleda 
 of the unseen world. Such disir are said to have 
 made away with mortals,^ and it is good to propi- 
 tiate them with the disahUt, They are distinctly 
 connected with graves and spirits of the dead, as 
 Grimm points out from the use of such a phrase as 
 hl6ta kumla disii\ " to sacrifice to the women of the 
 tombs." As active in human affairs, they journey 
 about doing help or harm ; but unlike their elder 
 sister, the implacable Wyrd, these mighty women 
 may be pacified or cajoled with a gift. It seems 
 to be a very old notion that mystic and supernat- 
 ural women attend the birth of children and have 
 abiding influence on the destiny of those who are 
 born under their auspices. They are to be treated 
 liberally, — the uninvited fairy of our story-books as 
 a warning ! Since all unseen ills come from unseen 
 persons, as even death in battle by a visible weapon 
 must be referred to a mysterious personality, — "if 
 War shall take me off," says Beowulf in no abstract, 
 modern way, — so the old German felt an impulse to 
 propitiate or baffle the powers that did him secret 
 harm. Anglo-Saxon literature contains some striking 
 survivals of this cult of the mighty women. In the 
 strange mixture of pedantry and superstition known 
 
 I Herv, Saga, apud C. P. B. I. 405. 
 
 2 D. M.^ 333. 
 
372 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 as Salomon and Saturn} our Hebrew monarch de- 
 scribes the nature of Wyrd or fate, and gives some 
 features which undoubtedly belonged to all the race 
 of disir. As befits a fallen deity, Wyrd has in Salo- 
 mon's description pronounced diabolical traits ; — 
 
 Wyrd is wrathful, she rushes upon us, 
 
 she waketh weeping, with woe she loads us, 
 
 she shoots the spirit, a spear she bears. 
 
 The last line, a sort of prolepsis for " she carries a 
 spear and hurls it at the spirit," is especially inter- 
 esting to us on account of an Anglo-Saxon charm 
 against rheumatism or a sudden " stitch " in the side. 
 Hovering and mysterious woman-spirits, invisible 
 often, and horsed upon sightless couriers of the air, 
 send little spears or javelins at the unwary mortal, 
 just as in nobler office the Valkyrias, concealed by 
 the swan-raiment, flew above the clash of battle 
 and protected a favorite warrior. With the advent 
 of Christianity they all came into equal disrepute ; 
 witness a suggestive gloss of the eighth century, — 
 ''''Eurynis^ walcyrge. Unmenides, hsehtisse." That 
 is, the Furies, by interpretatio Saxonica^ are Valkyrias ; 
 and the Eumenides are hcegtessan^ or witches. Now 
 the charm against rheumatism distinctly names the 
 hcegtessan as authors of the trouble in question, and 
 is here given in full translation : ^ — 
 
 "Against sudden-stitch [take] feverfew, and red 
 nettle which grows through the house, and dock 
 (" waybroad ") : boil in butter [and say] : — 
 
 1 Ed. J. M. Kemble. 
 
 2 Original in Wiilker-Grein, Bihl. d. ags. Poesie, I. 317 ; Cockayne, 
 Leechdoms, III. 62 ff. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 373 
 
 Loud were they, loud, o'er the law ^ as they rode, 
 wrathful they were as they rode o'er the land : 
 shield thee now, that thou mayst 'scape from the danger. 
 Out, little spear, if in here thou be ! 
 
 I stood under linden, 'neath light shield, 
 
 where the Mighty Women their main ^ prepared, 
 
 when they sent their screaming spears abroad. 
 
 I will send in answer another spear, 
 
 flying arrow forth against them. 
 
 Out, little spear, if it in here be 1 
 
 Sat smith, forged little knife, 
 [angriest of iron, wondrous strong] .* 
 Out, little spear, if it in here be ! 
 
 Six smiths sat, war-spears wrought. 
 Out, spear ! be not in, spear ! 
 
 If herewithin be aught of iron, 
 
 work of witches,* it shall melt ! 
 
 Wert thou shot in the fell, or wert shot in the flesh, 
 
 or wert shot in the blood, [or wert shot in the bone] ^ 
 
 or wert shot in the limb : be thy life never harmed ! ^ 
 
 1 "Hill": Scottish *Maw." 
 
 2 Strength. 
 
 3 Rieger's emendation. The original has simply "iserna wund 
 swiSe." Sweet reads this as "wounded with iron"; i.e. beaten with 
 an iron hammer. 
 
 * Htec/tessan. See above. Our " hag " is the same word, probably 
 from " hedge," as these baneful women may lurk behind hedges and 
 copses. Compare for the English use of the word Herrick's spirited 
 poem "The Hag." 
 
 The hag is astride, 
 
 This night for to ride, 
 Tiie devile and shee together. 
 
 Through thick and through thin, 
 
 Now out and now in, 
 Though ne'er so foule be the weather. 
 
 6 Verse so completed by J. Grimm. 
 6 " Teased " ; i.e. plucked, tormented. 
 
 lit 
 
' Jl 
 
 I i 
 
 374 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Were it shot of the gods,i or shot of the elves,^ 
 or were't shot of the hag, — I will help thee now. 
 This to heal shot of gods : this to heal shot of elves : 
 this to heal shot of hag : now I will help thee. 
 
 Flee to the mountain-head ! * 
 Whole be thou ! help thee God ! 
 
 I'ake then the knife, throw it into water. 
 
 The mythological importance of this charm is very 
 evident. Its use in Anglo-Saxon times, with the 
 faint touch of orthodoxy added to the last verse, 
 
 1 Esa, The same root is preserved in the first syllable of Oswald, 
 etc. The word occurring here is of great value, and shows the genuine 
 heathendom of the charm. 6s, the singular, is the name of one of the 
 runes, and has the general meaning "god." 
 
 2 Etymology is here important. The word '* self " is familiar enough 
 in itself and as first syllable of proper names like Alfred. Another 
 form is "oaf": see Shakspere's "ouphes" in Merry Wives, IV. 4. 
 For the facts, we have the interesting word "elf-arrow," applied in 
 Scotland to certain stones, such as pieces of flint; also "elfbolt." 
 These are believed to be actual missiles, such as our charm describes. 
 Sick cattle in Norway are said to be "seliskudt," elf-shot. This term 
 is also Scottish; see Grimm, D. MA 381. Brand says that in England 
 as well as in Scotland those relics of the stone age — arrow-heads of 
 flint — are popularly called elf-shots, and even the ignis-fatuus was 
 called elf -fire. Cattle suffer from them, and, as Brand reminds us, 
 Collins says in his Ode : — 
 
 Then every herd by sad experience knows 
 
 How wing'd with Fate, their elf-shot arrows fly, 
 
 When the sick ewe her guramer food foregoes, 
 Or etretch'd on earth the heart-emit heifers lie. 
 
 Several diseases were named after elves : — water-elf disease, ell-hic- 
 cough, and so on. Cockayne, Leechdoms, I. xlvii. 
 
 8 This is Sweet's reading, in Anglo-Saxon Reader,® p. 123, and the 
 simplest. Grimm reads "Flee to the mountains [she that sent the 
 bolt] . Be thou whole in head! " In the above translation " flee " must 
 refer to the little spear which caused the trouble ; a sequel to the com- 
 mand "Out!" is the command "Flee!" We might of course read 
 "fl^o«" and refer to the Mighty Women. See Wiilker, Grundr. d. 
 ags. Lit. p. 350. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 375 
 
 points to an older ceremonial and a more exalted 
 station. When its temple was ruined, this rite 
 sought shelter in the cottage, nor was it confined 
 to England; for references to these evil-working 
 hags are found in Scandinavian literature. In 
 the Hdvamdl Woden tells us the tenth item of 
 his wisdom: "If I see hedge-riders dancing in 
 the air, I prevail so that they go astray and can- 
 not find their own skins and their own haunts."^ 
 They are elsewhere called " night-ridei-s " and "mirk- 
 riders " ; one of them is seen to ride a wolf at 
 twilight.^ 
 
 While these fashions of the mighty women bring us 
 close to modern witchcraft, we may also look at them 
 in their more warlike functions. Those stern old 
 German women whom we saw among the Cimbrians 
 and Teutons in Italy, or who, according to Tacitus, 
 were wont in their own borders to rally a wavering 
 line of battle, are only mortal models for the invisi- 
 ble beings who hover over a battle-field, help their 
 favorites, and hinder the enemy. Such are the super- 
 natural women mentioned in an old German spell, 
 found by Waitz in a manuscript of the cathedral library 
 at Merseburg, and presented with comment and trans- 
 lation by Jacob Grimm to the Berlin Academy of 
 Sciences.3 The handwriting is of the early tenth 
 century. As usual with charms and spells, — for ex- 
 ample, the Anglo-Saxon spell just given, — we have 
 an epic opening, three verses of description, and then 
 the application, or spell proper, in the fourth line. 
 
 1 C. P. B. I. 27. 2 n,id. I. 95, 146. 
 
 8 1842. See Grimm's Kl. Schr. II. 1 flf. 
 
374 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Were it shot of the gods,^ or shot of the elves, ^ 
 or were't shot of the hag, — I will help thee now. 
 This to heal shot of gods : this to heal shot of elves : 
 this to heal shot of hag : now I will help thee. 
 
 Flee to the mountain-head ! ' 
 Whole be thou I help thee God ! 
 
 T'ake then the knife ^ throw it into water. 
 
 The mythological importance of this charm is very 
 evident. Its use in Anglo-Saxon times, with the 
 faint touch of orthodoxy added to the last verse, 
 
 1 Esa. The same root is preserved in the first syllable of Oswald, 
 etc. The word occurring here is of great value, and shows the genuine 
 heathendom of the charm. Os, the singular, is the name of one of the 
 runes, and has the general meaning " god." 
 
 2 Etymology is here important. The word " self " is familiar enough 
 in itself and as first syllable of proper names like Alfred. Another 
 form is "oaf": see Shakspere's "ouphes" in Merrrj WiveSy IV. 4. 
 For the facts, we have the interesting Avord '* elf -arrow," applied in 
 Scotland to certain stones, such as pieces of flint; also "elf bolt." 
 These are believed to be actual missiles, such as our charm describes. 
 Sick cattle in Norway are said to be "aeliskudt," elf-shot. This term 
 is also Scottish; see Grimm, D. M.* 381. Brand says that in England 
 as well as in Scotland those relics of the stone age — arrow-heads of 
 flint — are popularly called elf-shots, and even the ignis-fatuus was 
 called elf -fire. Cattle suffer from them, and, as Brand reminds us, 
 Collins says in his Ode : — 
 
 Then every herd hy sad experience knows 
 How wing'd with Fate, their elf-shot arrows fly, 
 
 When the sick ewe her summer food foregoes, 
 Or stretch'd on earth the heart-smit heifers lie. 
 
 Several diseases were named after elves : — water-elf disease, elf-hic- 
 cough, and so on. Cockayne, Leechdoms, I. xlvii. 
 
 * This is Sweet's reading, in Anglo-Saxon Reader, « p. 123, and the 
 simplest. Grimm reads "Flee to the mountains [she that sent the 
 bolt] . Be thou whole in head! " In the above translation " flee " must 
 refer to the little spear which caused the trouble ; a sequel to the com- 
 mand **Out!" is the command "Flee!" We might of course read 
 "fl^o^" and refer to the Mighty Women. See Wiilker, Grundr. d. 
 ays. Lit. p. 350. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 375 
 
 points to an older ceremonial and a more exalted 
 Station. When its temple was ruined, this rite 
 sought shelter in the cottage, nor was it confined 
 to England; for references to these evil-working 
 hags are found in Scandinavian literature. In 
 the Hdvamdl Woden tells us the tenth item of 
 his wisdom; "If I see hedge-riders dancing in 
 the air, I prevail so that they go astray and can- 
 not find their own skins and their own haunts."^ 
 They are elsewhere called " night-ridens " and "mirk- 
 riders"; one of them is seen to ride a wolf at 
 twilight.2 
 
 While these fashions of the mighty women bring us 
 close to modern witchcraft, we may also look at them 
 in their more warlike functions. Those stern old 
 German women whom we saw among the Cimbrians 
 and Teutons in Italy, or who, according to Tacitus, 
 were wont in their own borders to rally a wavering 
 line of battle, are only mortal models for the invisi- 
 ble beings who hover over a battle-field, help their 
 favorites, and hinder the enemy. Such are the super- 
 natural women mentioned in an old German spell, 
 found by Waitz in a manuscript of the cathedral library 
 at Merseburg, and presented with comment and trans- 
 lation by Jacob Grimm to the Berlin Academy of 
 Sciences.3 The handwriting is of the early tenth 
 century. As usual with charms and spells, — for ex- 
 ample, the Anglo-Saxon spell just given, — we have 
 an epic opening, three verses of description, and then 
 the application, or spell proper, in the fourth line. 
 
 1 C. p. B. I. 27. 2 Ibid. I. 95, 146. 
 
 8 1842. See Grimm's Kl. Schr. II. 1 ff . 
 
376 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 "Once sat Women, sat hither and thither. 
 Some bound bonds : some hindered the host : i 
 some unfastened the fetters.^ 
 * Spring from fetters : fly from the foe ! ' " » 
 
 Not SO grandly supernatural as these shadowy god- 
 desses of battle are the '' balewise women " against 
 whom the Scandinavian warrior was warned. " The 
 sons of men need an eye of foresight wherever the 
 fray rages, for balewise* women often stand near the 
 way, blunting swords and mind." This blunting of 
 weapons by witchcraft was common enough in old 
 Germanic times. Certain runes on the blade could 
 do it, and such a weapon was for serif en; a work 
 attributed in Salomon and Saturn to the agency 
 of the devil. "On the [doomed man's] weapon 
 the devil writeth a mass of fatal signs, baleful 
 letters ; he ' f orscribeth ' the blade, the glory of the 
 
 sword." ^ 
 
 In this place may be mentioned the agency ot 
 "witches" in raising storms. This has become in 
 later times a function of witchcraft and a prerogative 
 of Laplanders ; but in the old days it was an affair of 
 greater dignity, and belonged doubtless to these same 
 supernatural women of the night, as well as to the 
 god of storm and wind himself. Spells were uttered 
 
 1 Those who bind bonds are helping the victors, and make fetters for 
 the prisoners; those who hinder the host are actively embarrassing the 
 
 ^""Txhat is, the fetters of those warriors of the favored army who had 
 been captured. Thus the first group of women ^'« jVl^^'^V^^^^Tr 
 ite army, the second at the line of battle, the third behmd the hostile 
 
 army. (Scherer.) , . ^ ^ 
 
 8 This is what the women say to the prisoners, and is the efficacious 
 
 word in any similar situation. ^ c i«o f 
 
 4 Horrible, detestable, devilish. ^ S. and S. 162 f . 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 377 
 
 against hailstorms ; ^ strange beings were appealed to 
 for protection, and in course of time these became 
 Christian saints. 
 
 Lastly, we come to the thinly disguised worship of 
 ancestral spirits, which we find in the customs and 
 myths connected with the so-called "wild hunt." 
 Woden, the god of wind and storm, is their leader ; 
 but the hunt itself, the rout of spirits that howl along 
 the wintry sky, are undoubtedly the souls of the dead. 
 The myth is universal in Germanic traditions,^ and 
 abounds in all collections of legendary and popular 
 lore; but the characteristic features of a hunt, the 
 bark of dog and crack of whip, have all been added 
 to what was originally a mere clamor of passing souls. 
 A definite cult is hardly to be discovered ; the subject 
 lies wholly in the province of myth and legend. We 
 may note, however, the custom of feeding the wind, to 
 which we have made reference above. In Carinthia, 
 about the time of Christmas, this custom is very gen- 
 erally observed.3 " In Swabia, Tyrol, and the Upper 
 Palatinate, when the storm rages, they will fling a 
 spoonful or a handful of meal in the face of the gale, 
 with this formula in the la^t-named district, 'Da Wind,' 
 hast du Mehl fur dein Kind, aber aufhoren musst 
 du ! ' " * It was not simply the spirits who were to be 
 appeased ; the shadowy dread itself, the storm-god, 
 was an object of cult as early — we are persuaded — 
 as the ancestral souls themselves. 
 
 ^D.M* 529; III. 493, 499 f.. 
 
 .jy^^^^^^^' ^''" ^'^P^^'i^^i^ 0/ Gervas. Tilb. 173 flf. See also D. M* 
 765 ff. ; Mogk in Paul's Grdr. 1002 f. 
 
 ^Mythen aus Karnthen, by Pogatschnigg in Pfeiffer's Germania, 
 11. 75. 
 
 ' Tylor, P. C. II. 269, 407, from Wuttke, Volksabergl. p. 86. 
 
378 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 In passing from the cult of these spirits of the air, 
 and taking up the scanty remains of such ceremonies 
 as may have been meant for spirits of the earth, we 
 are reminded how difficult it is to show the necessary 
 relation between modern superstitions and an ancient 
 worship. In the majority of cases we must content 
 ourselves with a probability. Creatures of the under- 
 world, who live in cave or hillside, are particularly 
 plentiful in Norse traditions ; they belong mainly to 
 the province of mythology, but here and there we 
 have a glimpse of systematic worship and ceremo- 
 nies. Burial would naturally bring the lore of elves 
 and dwarfs of the hillside into close connection with 
 the traditions of the family dead. The KormaJcssaga'^ 
 testifies to Scandinavian worship of these dwarfs and 
 elves. A bull was killed, its blood was sprinkled 
 on the hill of the elves^ and with its flesh a sacrificial 
 feast was made in their honor. Here we are evi- 
 dently not far from the funeral-mound, and the offer- 
 ings set out upon ancestral graves. Grimm notes 
 that in the Netherlands people call such hills as hap- 
 pen to contain burial-urns alfenhergen. Graves were 
 marked by stones, and we hear a great deal in decrees 
 of the church concerning worship at sacred stones ; ^ 
 offerings were brought to these places long after the 
 notion of direct ancestor-worship had faded away. 
 Often there was an enclosure, as well as a stone. 
 Anglo-Saxon laws provided a penalty for any one 
 who should deliberately lay out such an enclosure — 
 for purposes of the cult — "about stone or tree or 
 well."^ The Scandinavians sacrificed at home to 
 
 1 See D.M.^ 370. 
 
 2 For stones as sacred in themselves, see Pfannenschmid, Erntefeste, 
 p. 21 ff. 3 Schmid, p. 368 (" Northumbrian Priest Law "). 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 379 
 
 these creatures. " The surly housewife," says a Norse 
 poet, "that turned me away like a wolf, said that 
 they were holding a Sacrifice to the Elves within her 
 homestead." ^ This household cult of the elves was, 
 of course, frowned upon by the church; hence the 
 antipathy felt by all the elvish race for church-bells, 
 holy-water, and similar belongings of a woi-ship which 
 was stamping out their own cult.^ The elves of 
 modern folk-lore invariably lament the good old 
 times ; people, they wail, have now begun " to count 
 the loaves in the oven," "to make marks on the 
 loaf," and what not. Of Elfland, the elf-queen, and 
 all the myths of faery, we find ample account; as 
 to the cult itself, we must be content with a general 
 conclusion gathered from the host of more or less 
 evident survivals. The "good people," whether 
 elves of " mount " or " dune," are ready to help men 
 in return for the trifling but necessary payment; 
 their best work is that of the forge, the loom, or the 
 oven. Weapons they will make of the best ; in all 
 sorts of household labor, such as spinning and weav- 
 ing, they excel ; and it is notorious that their bread 
 and cake are unsurpassed. Moreover, they know 
 and impart the secrets of medicinal herbs and stones 
 of virtue. In return they often demand the aid of 
 human beings, and particularly in three cases.^ Elf- 
 women in travail desire the aid of a mortal nurse ; 
 when elf-men divide treasure, or fall into dispute,' 
 they often call in a wise mortal to assist them ; and 
 they often borrow a room in some man's dwelling 
 where they may hold an elfin wedding-feast. In all 
 these cases they give rich compensation to the mortal 
 
 1 C. p. B. II. 131, 
 
 2 D. J/.4 380, 401. 
 
 8 Ibid. 378. 
 
!tl 
 
 380 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 381 
 
 »l 
 
 in question, but instances of their mischievous and 
 harmful nature are plentiful enough. In all proba- 
 bility these traditions arose with the spread of Chris- 
 tianity and the consequent discredit thrown upon 
 elvish ways. Evil of their sending fell upon men and 
 cattle ; the elf-shot, as we have just seen, was justly 
 dreaded ; and spells and charms which once perhaps 
 invoked their aid were turned against them, and in- 
 tended to put them under ban. Analogous with the 
 mass of mediaeval stories which tell how men cheated 
 the devil out of a bargain for soul or service, are the 
 legends of troll or dwarf defrauded in similar fashion. 
 The favorite bargain was for " heart and eyes " of a 
 mortal if he failed to keep his pact ; but if the mortal 
 could call the troll by name, the obligation was 
 forthwith cancelled. Such is the legend which 
 Whittier has put into verse in his " Kallundborg 
 Church." The oldest race of elves, however, were 
 surely friends of man; in evidence, we may call 
 upon those fossil-like witnesses of a vanished wor- 
 ship, the names of places and persons. The wide- 
 spread cult of elves has left its trace in local com- 
 pounds like JElfest'dn ^ or the more familiar personal 
 names of Mlfred, Mlfgifu ("elf-gift"), and the like. 
 Mingled Germanic and Celtic traditions meet us in 
 the story of Arthur's mystic birth, as told by Eng- 
 lish Layamon. Elves take him at his birth, sing 
 charms over him, and give him many blessings ; for 
 one of his battles an elf-smith makes him a noble 
 coat of mail .2 
 
 1 Leo, Rectitud. Singnl. Person, p. 5. 
 
 2 Layamon's Brut, ed. Madden, II. 384, 463, and Ten Brink, Eng. 
 
 Lit, p. 238. 
 
 The dwarf-cult is not entirely a matter of ancestor- 
 worship. In some cases a conquered race, often in- 
 ferior in size to the conquerors, has been thrust into 
 remote and desert regions, into the hills and wilds, 
 and has thus passed into tradition as a race of dwarfs. 
 Such a race is naturally feeble and despised in any 
 comparisons of outright valor; but in a sort of re- 
 venge, the reputation of witchcraft and secret power 
 of doing harm attaches to them and makes them 
 feared. Hence the reputation of the Lapps, whom 
 the Scandinavian Aryans conquered.^ 
 
 It was an evident piece of reasoning for the ancient 
 world to connect the mysteries of vegetation with 
 the benefactions of those spirits who housed below 
 the earth. A mass of material has been collected 
 by Wilhelm Mannhardt illustrating the ceremonies 
 observed by European peasants in connection with 
 seed-time and harvest.^ These customs are mainly 
 indicative of older ceremonies which had in view 
 a helpful spirit, to whom offering was made, and 
 a harmful demonic being which is still exorcised 
 in varying fashion. Myths may be guessed behind 
 many a modern legend, and find parallel in the 
 records of Greek and Roman mjrthology. We shall 
 presently find occasion to trace certain Germanic 
 rites in their relation to the goddess of fertility 
 and vegetation, as well as to the spirits which were 
 more directly identified with the kindly elements 
 themselves. 
 
 1 Tylor, p. C. I. 386. 
 
 2 Mannliardt, Die Korndasmonen ; Antike Wald- u. Feldkulte, Bd. 
 II.; Roggenwolf u. Roggenhund ; and Mythologische Forschungen, a 
 posthumous book, being No. 51 of the Quellen w. Forschungen. 
 

 382 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 383 
 
 Spirits haunted the Germanic forest, and the mys- 
 terious whisper of its foliage was their evident mur- 
 mur and message to the man who could rede it.^ 
 
 Feld hath eyen, and the wood hath eres, 
 
 says Chaucer ; but to older men the wood had also a 
 tongue. Germans were children of the woods, and 
 sacred trees abounded in their tradition. As Grimm 
 pointed out,2 and as everybody now repeats, even the 
 Gothic cathedral has imitated in its plan the climbing 
 and arching branches of a German forest ; while the 
 endless variety of detail easily suggests the labyrinth 
 of twig and foliage. In speaking of the spirits of 
 this forest, we feel sure that emigration from the 
 human world is not to account for all of them or for 
 their entire nature ; something of the mystery and 
 personified activity of the forest itself was in them 
 from the beginning. The doctrine ^ that trees were 
 simply habitation of the gods, —that is to say, a sort 
 of fetish, — is one extreme; the other is Grimm's 
 belief that it was the actual tree which our fore- 
 fathers worshipped.* 
 
 We have to do at present not with the sacred grove 
 and the forest sanctuary, which are to be considered 
 in connection with the heathen temple, but rather 
 with the spirits of the wood. In an Anglo-Saxon 
 glossary of the tenth or the eleventh century,^ " Dry- 
 ades" has the gloss tvuduelfen^ wood-elves, while 
 
 1 Again we are indebted to Mannhardt for an excellent collection of 
 material in his Baumkultus, the first volume of the Antike Wald- w. 
 Feldkiilte. 
 
 2 D. MA 56. 8 Held, for example, by Lippert. -* D. M. 60. 
 5 Wright-Wulker, A.-S. and O.-E. Vocabularies, col. 189. 
 
 " Hamadryades " are wylde elfen^ and " Castalides " 
 cldnelfen, dune or hill elves. " Satyrii vel Fauni " 
 are glossed as unfmle men^ unclean men ; but, as 
 Wright remarks, this is probably transposed from 
 another place, and the gloss should be wuduwasan ; 
 indeed, woodivose is given as the definition of Satyrs 
 in a dictionary of the year 1608. Very interesting 
 is the gloss ^ for Echo, wudumcer^ wood-mare, the 
 being which answers folk out of the wood and has 
 the same deceptive nature as its more violent rela- 
 tive, the nightmare. In all these names and glosses 
 we see a certain similarity between classical and 
 mediaeval wood-lore ; in fact, we must be on our 
 guard when learned men of the middle ages cata- 
 logue contemporary heathen practices. A just de- 
 cision is often difficult. Thus in the list taken by 
 Grimm ^ from Burchard of Worms, mention is made 
 of certain "agrestes feminae quas silvaticaa vocant,"^ 
 women of the wood who appear and vanish and oft 
 times accept a mortal lover. Here classical parent- 
 age seems an easy inference; yet we must bear in 
 mind what a store of similar notions inform later 
 and even modern folk-lore. From our oldest myths 
 down to these peasant stories of to-day, the wood is 
 peopled with mystic beings, mainly women. Classi- 
 fication of these belongs of course elsewhere ; * here 
 it is our task to trace their cult. Not very much 
 importance may be put upon the " weird lady of the 
 woods " whom Grimm mentions ^ as named in a poem 
 — he gives no title — in Percy's Beltques, It is 
 " The Birth of St. George," where the weird lady 
 
 1 W.-W. col. 391. 
 4 Ibid. 357 ff. 
 
 2 D. MA III. 404 ff . 
 6 Ibid. 337. 
 
 8 Ibid. 409. 
 
384 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 from her cave, which is described as a most uncanny- 
 place, prophesies the future of Lord Albert's unborn 
 child ; she is sought for advice, is able to foretell the 
 future, and is in touch with a deal of supernatural 
 machinery. Like the water-women, the ladies of the 
 wood have the old sibyl nature ; and Grimm reminds 
 us that Veleda herself dwelt amid the forest. So we 
 approach ancestor-worship, and are made to think of 
 the " women of the tomb " ; indeed, one reading of a 
 passage already quoted,^ makes disguised Odin learn 
 his wisdom from the " old people who live in the 
 forests^'' where other texts read " graves." Related, 
 in like manner, to ancestor-worship is the household 
 cult of a spirit who dwells in some tree near the 
 family dwelling and feels a peculiar interest in the 
 welfare of the race. By Swedish folk-lore, one must 
 not only abstain from cutting or breaking the tree 
 itself, — on penalty of the spirit's departure, and with 
 him all luck of the house, — but also there must be 
 no hacking or spinning on a Thursday evening, for 
 this is offensive to the dweller in the tree.^ 
 
 Definite worship of trees is still to be found in sur- 
 vival, and was distinctly forbidden in decrees of the 
 church. It is one of the points of " heathenship," 
 as defined in the laws of King Cnut : " Heathenship 
 is where one worships idols, that is, where one wor- 
 ships heathen gods and sun or moon, fire or flood, 
 water-wells or stones, or any sort of tree,^^^ The 
 Anglo-Saxon homilies repeatedly condemn the prac- 
 tice of people " who are so foolish " as to bring offer- 
 
 1 Above, p. 351. 
 
 2 D. M.* 421. The " family-tree " has with us another meaning, but 
 the metaphor is suggestive. See D. M.* III. 187. ^ Schmid, p. 272. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 385 
 
 ings to a mere stone, a well, a tree. Wells, stones, 
 and trees were holy places ; water-spirits, earth-spirits, 
 and tree-spirits had prescribed and traditional rites 
 which the church found hard to destroy. In the list 
 quoted by Grimm, from Burchard, we find specific 
 mention of these practices, — bringing votive offer- 
 ings to tree or fount or stone, bringing a candle 
 thither, or any such gift, " as if there were a divinity 
 (numen^ there which could do good or harm." 
 Again, bishops and their assistants are to make every 
 exertion that ''such trees as are consecrated to demons 
 and worshipped by the people, to such an extent that 
 no one dares to cut off branch or twig, should be 
 hewn down and burned." Mention is further made 
 of auguries and the casting of lots, which are under- 
 taken under the shade of a sacred tree.^ A modern 
 instance of offerings made at or to a tree is quoted 
 by Mr. Tylor,^ from a Scandinavian authority, who 
 says that to this day on outlying Swedish farms is 
 observed the sacrificial rite of pouring milk and beer 
 over the roots of trees. Tylor collects ample evi- 
 dence of similar tree-cult among savage tribes.^ 
 Mannhardt has a volume devoted to the Germanic 
 phases of the subject. Anglo-Saxon leanings towards 
 utility are plain enough, along with traces of absolute 
 worship, in the custom of " youling " trees which are 
 to bear fruit and so benefit the worshipper directly ; 
 the tree is often whipped, or, again, has cider, beer, 
 or the like, poured upon its roots. 
 
 The sacred character of trees is shown by their use 
 in the naming of places such as LindentUn,, ThorntUn^ 
 
 1 D. MA III. 404, 406. 2 p. c. II. 228. 
 
 8 II. 215, 221 if. See his references. 
 
386 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 and many similar names.^ Moreover, sacred trees 
 were used as boundary marks for an estate, as is 
 proved by our old charters and legal documents. A 
 given tree, hung with trophies offered to god or 
 spirit, would be known long after the heathen abomi- 
 nations had been removed ; marks and carvings were 
 often allowed to remain upon it. Thus Kemble^ 
 thinks that the earnes hSam in Kent, mentioned in an 
 old document, was probably ••' a tree marked with the 
 figure of an eagle." A full description of heathen 
 rites practised at such a tree is quoted by Grimm 
 from the life of St. Barbatus (602-683),3 with the 
 somewhat damaging remark that " it may be accu- 
 rate." The Lombards had been baptized, but still 
 held to heathenish customs; and not far from the 
 walls of Beneventum, they were in the habit of wor- 
 shipping a "sacrilegious" tree, in which was hung 
 the hide of a beast. The men rode a race under the 
 tree, during which they hurled spears through the 
 hide ; and this had to be done backwards, making 
 the affair a feat of strength and dexterity. The 
 piece of skin thus cut out was eaten as an especial 
 part of the rite. Here, moreover, persons were 
 wont to fulfil vows, and the whole place was held 
 sacred. We are elsewhere distinctly told that the 
 Lombards worshipped a " blood-tree " or " sacred 
 tree." * 
 
 1 Leo, Rectitud. Singid. Person, p. 14. 
 
 2 Saxons in England, 1. 480 (appendix). 
 
 3 2). M.* 641. A good sur\'ival of tree-worship is the case of the 
 Stock am Eisen in Vienna, into which every apprentice, before setting 
 out on his Wanderjahre, drove a nail for luck. "For luck" is gen- 
 erally what is left of the older notion of divine aid. See Fergusson, 
 Tree and Serpent Worship, p. 21. ■* D. 3/.* tJ3. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 387 
 
 First of trees in point of sacred character stood the 
 oak. We remember, of course, Glasgerion's oath, 
 " by oak and ash and thorn," where, in original rites, 
 the sacred tree in question was touched by him who 
 swore.^ The village May-pole must be no more than 
 mentioned, and even the great world-tree, Yggdra- 
 sill, may be left to controversy with a general feeling 
 that between heathendom and Christianity, neither 
 one can be claimed for its origin to the exclusion of 
 the other ; ^ in any event, we see a support for the 
 supreme importance of tree-cult. Whether we be 
 justified or not in assuming a Germanic " world-tree," 
 there is no doubt of the old Germanic association 
 of trees with the source of existence. About the 
 guardian-tree Swedish women twine their arms in 
 order to insure easy delivery in the pangs of child- 
 birth ; ^ and we remember how in our English ballads 
 women in like time of need "set their backs against 
 an oak." Other trees are noted as affording help in 
 like circumstances. Eating the fruit of certain trees 
 may make women pregnant ; and when May Margret 
 pulls the nuts in Hind Etin's wood, plainly a sacred 
 region, and so comes into his power, we may perhaps 
 assume a kindred tradition based upon older cult.* 
 Indeed, in many a tale, the babies are fetched directly 
 from or out of this or that tree ; ^ and we hear of chil- 
 dren being drawn through a split sapling in order to 
 cure them of a deformity or a disease. It is in close 
 connection with the use of trees as a place of offering 
 and sacrifice that courts were so often held beneath a 
 
 1 Child, Ballads,2 III. 137 ; Grimm, R. A. 896 f. 
 
 2 Bugge, Studier, pp. 393-529. « Ibid. 512. 
 * Child, Ballad8,2 II. 360 ff . 
 
 5 Bugge, Studier, 514. Common belief in Frisia and Holland. 
 
388 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 389 
 
 tree ; ^ justice was originally divine in every sense. 
 It is significant that in one of these courts " the oath 
 was taken with a stick of holly held in the hand." 2 
 Down to modern times, certain traditional trees are 
 held in awe, and the rudest village hind will not 
 break or mar them.^ 
 
 Our best account of such a sacred tree in the old 
 heathen days is the well-known story of Boniface 
 and the " oak of Jove." It is told in Willibald's life 
 of the saint.* He had come to the land of the Hes- 
 sians, and many of these accepted the laying-on of 
 hands ; " but others, whose minds were not yet 
 strengthened (nondum animo confortati)^ refused to 
 accept the truths of the pure faith ; some, moreover, 
 made in secret their offerings and sacrifice, . . . 
 others openly ; some publicly, some privately, carried 
 on auspices and divinations, magic and incantations ; 
 others again auspices and auguries and divers sacri- 
 ficial rites ; but others, of saner mind, who had re- 
 nounced all heathen worship, did none of these 
 things. With help and counsel of these latter, 
 [Boniface] undertook, with the servants of God 
 standing about him, to cut down an immense oak- 
 tree, which was called by its old heathen name, the 
 Jupiter Oak (^robur Jovis)^^ in a place known as 
 Gaesmere.^ When, resolute of mind, he had begun 
 to fell the tree, the great crowd of heathen who had 
 come up cursed him as an enemy of their gods ; but 
 
 1 i?. ^. 794 ff. Gomme, Prim. Folk-Moots, passim. 2 iijid. 145. 
 
 8 See some verses in Gromme's book, p. 257, about Langley Bush in 
 Staffordshire. 
 
 * Geschichtschreiber d. deutschen Vorzeit, " Willibald," p. 27 f . V 
 
 s Interpretatio Romana ; probably Jovis = Thor, Thunor. 
 ^ Geismar on the Edder. 
 
 nevertheless, when he had cut the tree only a little, 
 the huge mass of the oak, moved by a divine blast 
 from above, fell with shattered top ; and as if by com- 
 mand of a higher power, burst asunder into four parts, 
 and four equal fragments of huge bulk lay revealed 
 without any effort of the brothers who stood round 
 about." With the wood of this oak, Boniface built a 
 church. 
 
 Spirits of the water are plentiful in Germanic my- 
 thology, and had a special cult which survived into 
 modern superstition. Plutarch, in his " Caesar," has an 
 interesting and valuable passage which not only shows 
 us the prophetic functions of the German woman, 
 but gives us positive evidence of Germanic religious 
 ceremonies in their primitive form. When Caesar sud- 
 denly appeared with his soldiers before the army of 
 Ariovistus, the barbarian host was in consternation. 
 " They were still more discouraged by the prophecies 
 of their holy women, who foretell the future by observ- 
 ing the eddies of rivers, and taking signs from the wind- 
 ings and noise of streams, and who now warned them 
 not to engage before the next new moon appeared." ^ 
 J. Grimm explains the divination from an eddy or 
 whirlpool by the theory that such movements were 
 caused by the spirits who dwelt in the water.^ Be- 
 sides this official divination, from the murmur and 
 windings of the watercourses, there was direct wor- 
 ship of the spirits who haunted spring and fountain. 
 True, we are told that it was worship at the foun- 
 tain, at the stream ; and many modern writers insist 
 that these were simply hallowed places meet for the 
 worship of the dead. But fountains, like trees, with 
 
 1 Clough's Plutarch, IV. 276 [Boston ed. of 1859] . « D. M.* 492. 
 
390 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 891 
 
 all the mystery of rippling living watei-s, or the life- 
 like murmur of foliage, were very different places 
 from the dull stone above a grave ; and much of the 
 worship must have been directed to the informing 
 and potent spirit of the place, to a personality which 
 neither stood out from its haunt as a distinct ances- 
 tral soul, nor yet merged entirely in the element ; it 
 was an animating presence, holding border-ground be- 
 tween individuality and a vaguely felt natural power. 
 Water-worship is almost univereal, found in every 
 place and time, from the river-god of classical lore 
 down to the sacred well of the superstitious Euro- 
 pean peasant.! Woi-ship at springs and wells, as we 
 have seen, is repeatedly forbidden in the canons ; 
 Anglo-Saxon decrees forbid the bringing of candle or 
 offering to these once sacred places, and prayers and 
 vigils at the fountain are likewise put under ban.^ 
 The same holds good of all Germanic races. For the 
 Scandinavians we have testimony of Ari. " Thorstan 
 Rednebb was a great sacrificer; he worshipped the 
 waterfall ... and used to have all the leavings 
 taken to the waterfall ; he was a great prophet.^' ^ So 
 Gregory of Tours tells about offerings and sacrifices 
 made by the people to a certain lake;* cheese was 
 one of the offerings, and this reminds us of the 
 "Cheesewell" of our own traditions, which had its 
 name from the same custom. Belief in the curative 
 property of certain holy wells is common enough 
 down to the present time ; a heathen well of repute 
 easily turned Christian with the country, took a saint 
 as patron, and went on curing and blessing as before. 
 
 1 Tylor, p. C. U. 213 f . 
 
 « C. p. B. I. 421, quoted from Landn. V. 5. 
 
 2 D. M.^ 484 n. 
 4 D. M* 496. 
 
 Tales of such are abundant ; one well in England is 
 celebrated by Roger of Hoveden as making the blind 
 see, the deaf hear, the dumb talk, and the lame receive 
 power of limb. A woman far gone in dropsy went to 
 this well by advice of an abbot, drank, and vomited 
 two huge black toads, which changed into immense 
 dogs of the same color and then into asses. They 
 were driven off, and the woman recovered her health.^ 
 Strip away the monkish wrappings, and we have the 
 virtue of a good old heathen well. The dualism which 
 was partly original and partly owing to the discredit 
 of heathen worship, shows us another sort of cult in 
 this domain ; for evil and malicious spirits haunted 
 the water, and worked endless mischief among the 
 sons of men. Now magic, a very old affair, could be 
 put into operation against these evil powers, or else 
 they might be propitiated by a sacrifice of some sort. 
 Cases of the latter method we shall presently con- 
 sider; the former is illustrated by the custom of 
 throwing metallic objects, preferably of iron or steel, 
 into the well or the stream, and thus binding or para- 
 lyzing the power of the water-spirit. Iron and steel 
 were supposed to limit spiritual agencies ; and here, 
 says Liebrecht, is the real explanation of our maxim 
 that lovei-s or friends should not make mutual pres- 
 ents of knife or scissors or anything of the sort.2 
 Cornish folk, says Tylor, drop pins and nails into 
 their holy wells.^ All manner of curious customs 
 were associated with the search for cure or blessing 
 at these holy wells, and some are collected by Brand.* 
 
 1 Liebrecht, Otia Imperialia of Gerv. Tilh. p. 103 
 
 2 Otia Imp. p. 101. 8 p. c. II. 214. 
 
 < Antiquities, " Customs and Superstitions concerning Wells and 
 Fountains. *\ 
 
392 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Divination was practised, as where people dropped 
 pebbles into the water, or provoked the rising of 
 bubbles, and interpreted the signs according to a 
 traditional code. More direct was the usage at the 
 " wishing-well," where the supplicant threw into the 
 water a piece of gold and then made his prayer. 
 Fountains were known to foretell plague or famine, 
 or, in less sweeping fashion, the approach of a tem- 
 pest. Wells were decorated with flowers; in one 
 English village, on a certain day, the clergyman and 
 choristers were wont " to pray and sing psalms at the 
 
 wells." 
 
 The notion of " healing springs " is, of course, no 
 vulgar superstition. From oldest times the virtues 
 of certain waters must have been known ; and with 
 our Germanic forefathers the salt-springs had prece- 
 dence, and were brought into close connection with 
 the cult. The famous passage of Tacitus,^ which 
 tells how two Germanic tribes struggled for such a 
 dear possession, also informs us that these Germans 
 believed the place itself to be of unusual sanctity, 
 and thought the salt was produced by the direct and 
 gracious intervention of the divinities. When water 
 was thrown upon burning logs, the rude method em- 
 ployed to make the salt, that precious substance was 
 produced by divine agency from these opposing ele- 
 ments of fire and water. 
 
 The purifying functions of water bring it into con- 
 nection with a great variety of ceremonies. Lustra- 
 tion is found in all directions.^ Sacred rivers meet 
 us in every land, and every village has its haunted 
 brook or spring. The rain itself is holy, and when it 
 
 1 Ann. XIII. 57. ^ Tylor, P. C. II. 429 fP. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 393 
 
 falls into an open grave, it is a sign that the soul of 
 the dead is already among the blessed ; i it is God's 
 benediction. " In olden time," begins the first Helgi- 
 Lay, "in olden time when eagles were calling on 
 high, and holi/ streams poured down from the heights 
 of heaven. . . ." In stress of drought men sought 
 by magic to bring down the rain, and the church con- 
 demns those "qui mergunt imagines in aquam pro 
 pluvia obtinenda."2 Holy-water itself is a conces- 
 sion of the church to the old well and fountain wor- 
 ship; but whether, as many have claimed, baptism 
 and the use of water in sprinkling and purifying 
 were known to heathen custom, is a disputed point. 
 Mention is made of them in Old Norse annals ; but 
 while Miillenhoff defends their heathen origin, Mau- 
 rer thinks they were imitated from the rites of the 
 church, and has secured for his theory the emphatic 
 approval of Bugge.^ But even if the rite of sprin- 
 kling was taken from the church, a custom of dipping 
 or otherwise bathing new-born children in running 
 water, which prevailed among the ancient Germans, 
 was surely more than a mere " bath," and had ritual 
 significance. Moreover, when we find this saying of 
 Odin's : " If I pour water upon the young thane, he 
 falls not, though he go to battle ; he sinks not under 
 the sword," 4 even if we admit the influence of bap- 
 
 1 Wolf, Beitrdge, I. 216. • 
 
 2 Wolf, Beitr. I. 237. Grimm gives several other ceremonies prac- 
 tised by European peasants for the same purpose. D. M.* 493 ff 
 
 i«^^x."'^f ^T^""' ^^'^''* ^'^ TTasserioeiTie d. rjerm. Ileidenthumes, 
 1880; MuUenhoff in the " Anzeiger " of Hmipt's Zst., Bd. VII. ; Bugge 
 iitudier, 371 flf . A comprehensive review of the general subject is Pfan- 
 nenschmid, Das Weihwasser im heidnischen u. christlichen Cultus 
 Hanover, 1869. 4 Bugge, p. 376 f . 
 
394 
 
 GERMAIsnC ORIGINS 
 
 tismal rites, we must suppose something in the old 
 heathen ceremonial to which this act bore some re- 
 semblance. Running water seems to have had spe- 
 cial virtue. We may work backwards from Tam o' 
 Shanter and his Meg to the leechdoms of Anglo- 
 Saxon folk-lore, surely full of heathen reminiscence, 
 where we find as cure for erysipelas on man or horse, 
 a charm, to be sung over the man's head or in the 
 horse's left ear, in running water, and with the head 
 against the stream.^ In Norway and Sweden, land 
 of cataracts, the virtues of running water would nat- 
 urally find ample recognition. The spirit who haunts 
 the waterfall is helpful or harmful, and can be cajoled 
 into imparting valuable knowledge, or else must be 
 propitiated by sacrifice to avert the consequences of 
 his ill-favor. He has power to teach men music and 
 magic, and Henrik Ibsen's poem, SpiUemcend, will 
 occur to lovers of modern Scandinavian literature. 
 We have already heard from Ari of a man who was 
 careful to sacrifice to the cataract. This was for 
 general prosperity ; but particularly the art of music 
 is best learned from such a master. To learn to play 
 the harp, says Swedish folk-lore, offer a black lamb 
 to the spirit of the waterfall ; while in Norway, the 
 Fossegrim teaches one to play the fiddle. He grasps 
 the learner's right hand and sways it about so long 
 .that blood starts from every finger-tip ; after that, 
 one can play so that the very trees will dance. Finer 
 yet is the touch of blended old and new belief in the 
 folk's tradition that Nix would gladly purchase im- 
 
 1 Cockayne, III. 70. For "wens at the heart" there is a similar 
 charm, III. 75. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 395 
 
 mortality and salvation by thus teaching the Christian 
 how to play the violin.^ 
 
 Loveliest of all water-spirits, and brought into 
 manifold touch with old and later cult, are the swan- 
 maidens. One of the finest passages of the Nibelun- 
 gen Lay is where Hagen surprises these wise women 
 of the flood, and forces tliem to uncover the secrets 
 of the future. Here it is not the mortal watching 
 from the bank who foretells things to come as he 
 watches the ripples of the stream ; it is the creatures 
 of the flood itself. 
 
 Both up and down the river he sought the ferryman ; 2 
 He heard the plash of water : to listen he began. 
 *Twas wise-women who caused it ; all in a fountain fair 
 They made them fain to dally and cool and bathe them there. 
 
 When Hagen had espied them, he stole in silence near, 
 And when they marked his coming, right mickle was their fear: 
 That they outran, escaped him, them seemed a mighty jov. 
 The hero took their garments, nor made them more annoy. 
 
 Spake one of the mere-women, — Hadburg was her name, — 
 " Here will we tell you, Hagen, O noble knight of fame, ' 
 If you now, gallant swordsman, our raiment but restore. 
 Your journey into Hunland, and all that waits you more." 
 
 Like birds they swept and hovered before him on the flood, 
 Wherefore him seemed their toisdom must mickle be and good. 
 
 She said : " To Etzel's kingdom ye do right well to fare ; 
 Be witness my assurance of all I now declare : 
 To no realm ever heroes have better ta'en their way. 
 To such a noble welcome ! — Believe me what I say!" 
 
 1 D. M* 408 ; Matthew Arnold's poem Neckan. Deadly water-spirits 
 are plentiful, but the catalogue belongs to mythology. The Nicer is 
 Anglo-Saxon ancestor of •* Nick." 
 
 2 To convey the Burguudians over the river. 
 
396 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 in 
 
 i II 
 
 Her words were good to Hagen and made his spirit glad. 
 He gave them back their raiment. No sooner were they clad 
 In all their magic garments, they made him understand 
 In truth the fate that waited his ride to Etzel's land. 
 
 It was the second mere-wife, Sigelind, who spake : 
 
 *♦ O son of Aldriane, Hagen, my warning take ! 
 
 'Twas yearning for the raiment my sister's falsehood made ; 
 
 And if thou goest to Hunland, Lord Hagen, thou'rt betrayed ! " i 
 
 Hereupon they tell him the true fate of the expedi- 
 tion. An army of similar water-spirits with prophetic 
 powers could be marshalled from oldest times down 
 to Scott's " White Lady " in the Monastery. 
 
 Whatever may be said of these mild types of 
 water-cult, there is no doubt in regard to the worship 
 of spirits which rule over flood and tempest. Our 
 own ancestors who dwelt by the North Sea, and their 
 neighbors the Danes, knew this cult. Sometimes the 
 evil spirit was propitiated with a sacrifice ; sometimes 
 a god of light and cheer was appealed to and made 
 to conquer the demon. Such is the fate of Grendel 
 in our BSoivulf; and it is significant that an English 
 local name, G-rendlesmere, has preserved a distinct 
 piece of testimony to the spirit and his cult.^ Folk- 
 lore tells many a tale to illustrate the other method. 
 A legend of the Danish coast runs as follows : ^ On 
 the west coast of Jylland it is said that the sea will 
 have his yearly sacrifice in return for not breaking in 
 upon the countiy ; and that therefore in the old times 
 people had a custom of exposing every year a little 
 child in a barrel, since otherwise, oftener than not, 
 
 1 N. L. 1473 ff. 
 
 2 Document of iEthelstan's time (031) in Cod. Dip. II. 72. 
 
 3 Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagn, II. 3. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 397 
 
 there followed great ruin and destruction.^ A milder 
 rite was the yearly bath of the women of Cologne on 
 the eve of St. John, by which they sought to avoid 
 evil and bad luck for the coming year ; it seems to 
 have been a real Rhine-cult, and aroused great interest 
 in the poet Petrarch, who saw it in the year 1330 and 
 described it in a letter to a friend.^ Finally, we come 
 to the victim seized by the nix, or anticipated by 
 sacrifice of some beast; 'folk-lore is full of these 
 tragedies, and the legends about the water-spirits fill 
 volumes. Nix is mostly cruel and vindictive. Often 
 he appears as a black horse or a bull, climbing from 
 stream or lake to carrv off his victim ; what is no 
 longer given he must take. Here, too, belong the 
 rites at the opening of a bridge, — a live cock built 
 into the wall in lieu of the victim, and so shading 
 back into human sacrifice. The bather seized by 
 cramp or caught in an eddy of the stream, believes 
 that he is pulled down by a demon of the flood. 
 To-day we have a dozen superstitions about bather's 
 cramp ; one wears an amulet, or even goes through 
 some absurd performance to ward off the danger.^ 
 
 Dwarfs have been mentioned ; we must not forget 
 the giants. While these are mostly represented as 
 foes of man and hated by the gods, the nimble and 
 keen-witted divinities of a new order of things, while 
 they are held up to ridicule as a heavy race, dull as 
 the stones of their native mountains, none the less 
 we may discover probable traces * of a cult directed 
 to these same stupidities. Offerings to giants occur 
 
 1 See also " Odense Aamand's Offer," II. 17. 2 j). M.* 489. 
 
 « Details in Tylor, P. C. II. 209 ff. 
 
 * ** Kaum Spuren," says, however, J. Grimm, D. M.* 4G1. 
 
398 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 in legend and superstition. Like Milton's "lubbar 
 fiend," such a being will plough and thresh and do 
 other services for men, in order " to earn his cream- 
 bowl duly set." In the Kormakssaga occurs the 
 word hldtrisi, " giant to whom one makes sacrifice " ; 
 but Vigfusson in his Dictionary defines it "an en- 
 chanted champion," with a mark of doubt. Stones 
 smeared with butter may have been, as Grimm re- 
 marks, a compliment to the giants. Worship at 
 the huge stone tombs, believed to be the sepulchres 
 of a giant race, must have been in a manner worship 
 of the giant-spirits which haunted the place. The 
 old homilies explain the heathen gods as "giants," 
 and " men who were very mighty." ^ Certain gods 
 are called directly giants, — " Mercury the giant." 
 
 Such ceremonies as we have hitherto described 
 were of an intimate and personal character, and 
 limited to a narrow round of domestic life ; but we 
 must now broaden our view, and, first of all, in 
 addition to the cult of spirits who dwelt in the dif- 
 ferent elements, and at bidding would take human 
 form and appear to the mortal who knew the way to 
 summon them, we must admit a direct worship of 
 the elements themselves. It was a vague personality 
 which seemed in the storm-wind to prostrate the 
 giant oak and hew a path through the forest, but it 
 was a personality none the less. Human power could 
 never compass such destruction, and the ancestral 
 spirits were out of the question ; with the evidence of 
 earliest language, and a careful study of modern 
 savage reasoning, we come to the assurance that our 
 remote forefathers must have worshipped from the 
 
 1 Kemble, Salomon and Saturn, p. 120 ff. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 399 
 
 outset the animated forces of nature. These were 
 spoken of as persons, and in most cases were regular 
 divinities, —a heaven-god, a thunder-god, a wind-god. 
 Before, however, we approach the cult of these 
 deities, we must trace the more direct worship of the 
 elements. 
 
 Caesar says ^ of the Germans that they have no gods 
 save those whom their perceptions reveal to them and 
 by whose agency they have material profit, such as 
 Sun, Moon, and Fire: "Solem et Vulcanum et Lu- 
 nam." Caesar was undoubtedly wrong 2 in his limi- 
 tation ; but his positive testimony is of value. He 
 shows a tendency of the Germans to worship deities 
 which were intimately connected with powers of 
 nature, as well as the Germanic veneration for these 
 powers in and for themselves. Let us take for the 
 first an element which Caesar does not name, — water. 
 We have already seen how fain our ancestors were 
 to worship at wells and springs, and how wide was 
 the power of healing which they attributed to the 
 agency of any sacred fountain. But the element 
 Itself was held in highest veneration, and this is par- 
 ticularly manifest in the old leechdoms. " Let the 
 woman," runs an Anglo-Saxon specimen,^ " who can- 
 not bring forth [or feed, nourish?] her child, take in 
 her hand milk from a cow of one color, and then sup 
 It witli her mouth, and then go to running water and 
 dip up with the same hand a mouthful of the water 
 and swallow it: then let her speak these words. . . ." 
 How to get the water is more important than its 
 source : — at midnight or before dawn, in absolute 
 
 ^ B.G. Vh21. ^D.M 85 
 
 3 Wiilker-Grein, Bibl I. 327 ; Cockayne, III. 69. 
 
400 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 silence, with one's hand scooping up the water against 
 or with the stream and turning towards the east, tak- 
 ing the water from three separate brooks, and what 
 not.i Celtic water-worship was pronounced; in a 
 certain well a broken sword is made whole, and " the 
 spring that turneth wood to stoue," mentioned by the 
 king to Laertes in Hamlet^ had doubtless something 
 more than chemical traditions.^ 
 
 Fire in many ways resembles water ; ^ it is full of 
 motion, capricious, serviceable, destructive. Tylor 
 divides fire-cult into two varieties, — worship of the 
 actual flame before the devotee, and worship of any 
 fire as manifestation of the fire-god.* While the 
 orient is the peculiar home of this cult, we find ample 
 evidence of it among the races of Europe ; Slavonic 
 tribes are perhaps most prominent. The fire upon 
 the hearth is of course the centre of all domestic 
 ceremony of the sort ; brides on entering their new 
 home were once led about the hearth, then central 
 in the hall ; and nowadays an Esthonian bride throws 
 money into the flames, or else a live offering, such 
 as a chicken.^ A devouring and greedy monster, 
 fire is appeased by such gifts and does not fall upon 
 house or barn. Worship of fire is forbidden in the 
 Anglo-Saxon laws and decrees. Cnut's definition of 
 heathendom included the cult of " sun and moon, fire 
 and flood-water," but Grimm can find little else to 
 testify to a regular cult of fire among the Germans. 
 Probably it was a prevailing sentiment rather than 
 a special cult. There is a certain gratitude for the 
 
 1 Leechdoms, passim. 2 2>. M. 487. 
 
 * Etymology helps us with our English burn and German Bronnen. 
 
 ♦ P. 0. II. 277 ff . 6 Ibid. II. 285 ; D. M. 501. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 401 
 
 benefits of fire, natural to inhabitants of a cold coun- 
 try, as where the Edda, in different mood from Pin- 
 dar's, says that fire is the best thing for mortals;^ 
 while in the cosmogony of the Scandinavian myths 
 the same element plays a great part in the bringing 
 forth of life. The assumption that primitive Ger- 
 manic faith looked forward to a great fire which 
 should end the world, — that from Muspellsheim came 
 the creative warmth, and thence also shall come the 
 element of universal destruction, — is not now held by 
 all mythologists. It is disputed by Bugge,^ who refers 
 to Christian influences this whole notion of the end of 
 the world ; and he is joined by other authorities.^ 
 
 The survivals mostly show us fire as object of wor- 
 ship on account of its purifying and healing proper- 
 ties, — a desperate but potent cure. In the Mark of 
 Brandenburg we find traces of what was doubtless, 
 in old times, a far more terrible rite. Until lately, 
 peasants of that neighborhood were wont to meet 
 sickness in swine by driving them through a fire, 
 made under the most careful conditions, by the fric- 
 tion of a rope, or similar device. In other places, and 
 under the same circumstances, a similar sacred fire is 
 prepared ; all other fires in the village being mean- 
 while extinguished, and swine, cattle, poultry even, 
 are driven through the healing flame.* We could 
 collect a number of similar survivals in which fire 
 plays this purifying and healing part.^ It is sig- 
 
 1 D, M. 500. 2 Studier, p. 419 f. 
 
 8 Meyer, Vdluspa, p. 182, says that this Norse and sporadically Ger- 
 man doctrine of the world's end " has not been proved to be primitive 
 German belief." -* 7). 3/. 503 f. 
 
 6 The smoke of these fires is beneficent. If it passed over and 
 through the branches of fruit trees, it ensured a heavy crop. 
 
402 
 
 il 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 403 
 
 nificant — one thinks of the Roman custom — that in 
 many of these village rites only persons of a pure 
 life are allowed to take a leading part; and the 
 favorite fashion of kindling the so-called neid-fire,^ 
 by the rubbing of sticks, could be matched by similar 
 restrictions in rites of other races. A double sanctity 
 must have informed the ceremony when the "neid- 
 fire " was used to heat water, which one proceeded to 
 sprinkle over cattle afflicted with the murrain.^ Fire 
 played a great part in the midsummer festivals of the 
 heathen ; and held through later times, as at Easter, 
 or at St. John's day, when great fires were lighted 
 on the mountains and hilltops, and the whole coun- 
 try-side seemed to be ablaze. Around these fires 
 the people danced and sported, jumped over and 
 through the flames, and thus kept up in traditional 
 forms of merry-making the old severities of their 
 forefathers' cult. A rude sort of divination was 
 practised with this aid. Wheels bound with straw, 
 and so set on fire, were rolled down the hillside, into 
 the river below ; if the fire held till it touched the 
 water, a good vintage was foretold that year.^ Else- 
 where the wheel takes away all ill-luck from the 
 people of the village.^ We hear of all manner of 
 fires at this season ; " made of bones," one sort, — the 
 modern bon-fire, according to a half-parlous etymol- 
 ogy ; 5 fire of " clean wood " ; fire of wood and bones 
 
 1 This form is Scotch. The German form is much older. It is men- 
 tioned in 742, and forbidden as a heathen rite,— "iUos sacrilegos 
 ignes." The Indiculus speaks, "de igne fricato de ligno, id est, nod- 
 fyr." D. M. 502. See Mannhardt, Baumk. p. 518 ff. 
 
 2 D. M. 507. 8 Ibid. 514 ff. 
 ^ Brand, Antiquities, "Summer Solstice." 
 
 5 Skeat, Diet., and Brand as quoted above. 
 
 mixed. Mention is made in an obscure poem quoted 
 by Brand, but charged with classical allusions, of the 
 habit of ''casting mylk to the Bonefyre." Farmers 
 were wont to go around their cornfields with burn- 
 ing torches ; ^ and in every way a superfluity of heat 
 and light seems to have been in order. At the 
 opposite season of the year, the winter solstice, we 
 find fire in the same popularity, — witness the Yule 
 Log and its train of ceremonies. It is hard, however, 
 in this case to disentangle the ceremonial from the 
 practical uses of fire. Michaelmas, too, had its fires ; 
 then, as in midsummer, blazed the torch, and the 
 straw-covered wheel rolled down the hillside with a 
 crowd of torch-bearers rushing after it; by the brook, 
 the goal of the wild chase, peasant-girls waited for 
 the runners, and gave them cakes and wine, as pro- 
 logue to the dance. Many of these rites survived, 
 even into our century, and are beyond all reasonable 
 doubt relics of heathen ceremony .2 A little later 
 than Michaelmas, on St. Martin's day, fires blazed in 
 even more persistent fashion; torches were borne 
 about, fields and orchards were visited, and in many 
 places, baskets of grain or fruit were cast directly 
 into the flames, — an evident sacrifice.^ 
 
 In short, not to multiply examples of this sort, 
 still less, to lose ourselves in speculations about 
 symbols, it is evident that fire survives in all these 
 ceremonies partly as a once universal means of wor- 
 ship offered to various powers, and partly as an ele- 
 
 thlX^'^^^'T^ ^'^^l^. *^' ^^'^^"^ ^^'^^^ ^^ ^'' '^^^'^'^ «^« i« called 
 Wt P r ' l^. P^a^nenschmid {Erntefeste, pp. 67. 384; Mann- 
 hardt Banmk, p. 500) concludes that the rite was meant to defend 
 crops from the ravages of hail. 
 
 2 Pfannenschmid, Erntefeste, pp. 117, 491. 8 ibid. 210 If. 
 
/ 
 
 404 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 405 
 
 ment which found its own cult among people who 
 wished its beneficence and feared its dangers,— 
 recognizing it doubtless as the most important factor 
 ever added to the progress of civilization. But even 
 in fire-woi-ship we cannot fail to find the trace of 
 manes-cult. The soul was fancied as flame, and about 
 the dead man's barrow hovered an uncanny fire. As 
 usual, the popular belief is perverted into superstition 
 of wiser ages, and only the evil and grosser souls 
 suffer this fiery imprisonment. Such are the dismal 
 lights of the churchyard. 
 
 Direct cult of the wind is not illogical ; for the 
 storm has its terrors to be averted, and milder breezes 
 bring clouds and fertilizing rain. Feeding the wind 
 IS a rite which we have already noticed; Tylor 
 quotes a charm from New Zealand, where, however, 
 the element seems to be personified.^ The air, like 
 water and fire, is a purifying agent; but it is' hard 
 to tell what logic of ceremony survives in the odd 
 notion of a Danish huntsman that to obtain charmed 
 bullets and sure aim (frit sJcud) he must let the 
 wind of a Thursday morning blow into his gun- 
 barrel. Thiele says it means a pact with the Wild 
 Huntsman, who is ruler of the air.2 Superstition has 
 much to say about witches who can raise the wind, 
 cause storms, and the like. This is black magic ; but 
 more legitimate are the ceremonies, once part of a 
 cult, now mostly broken and silly remnants, which 
 avert the harmful agency of storm and flood and 
 hail. These ceremonies were either public or pri- 
 vate, and, judging by the survivals,^ of the most 
 
 I f • ?• "• ^'^^' * Thiele, Dcmmarks Folkesagn, II. 112. 
 
 A list of these, too long to quote, in Pfannenschmid. Ernte/este, 
 
 p. oio I. 
 
 varied character. Direct testimony of our heathen 
 ancestors' doings in this particular cult is given by 
 a decree of Charlemagne against the custom of " bap- 
 tizing " bells to act as prevention of the hail, or of 
 writing upon cards and attaching the latter to poles 
 set up in the fields. The "runes " were undoubtedly 
 forbidden because of their heathenish nature ; for we 
 read of a case where a bishop took a piece of wax 
 from the grave of a saint, fastened it to one of the 
 highest trees, and so drove away the hailstorms that 
 had before laid waste his fields.^ 
 
 As to the earth, the " mother " of so many myths, 
 we shall have difficulty in separating any direct cult 
 from the worship of an earth-goddess. A long 
 charm of Anglo-Saxon origin 2 contains amid a mass 
 of clerical superstition a few fragments of older 
 heathenism. It runs as follows: "Here is the 
 remedy how thou canst remedy thy fields if they 
 will not bear well, or if any improper thing is done 
 thereupon in the way of magic, or of bewitching by 
 drugs. Take thou by night, before daybreak, four 
 pieces of turf on the four sides of the land, and note 
 how they previously stood. Take then oil and 
 honey and barm and milk of all cattle that may be 
 on the land, and part of every kind of tree that may 
 grow on the land except hard trees,^ and part of 
 every known herb except burdock * alone, and put 
 holy water thereon, and drop thrice on the place of 
 
 1 References in Pfann. Erntef. p. 57 ff. 
 
 2 MS. Cott. Calig. A. of the British Museum. Printed in Grein- 
 Wulker, BihL I. 312 flf . ; D. M* 1033 ; Rieger, Lesebuch, p. 143 f . ; Cock- 
 ayne's Leechdoms, I. 398 ff. Cf. also Wulker, Grdr. d. aas. Lit 
 p. 347 flf. 
 
 « Oak and beech. Grimm, D. M. 1035 ; /?. A. 506. 
 * Cockayne says " buckbeau " with (?). 
 
406 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 I 
 
 l> 
 
 the pieces of turf, and say then these words : ' Cre^- 
 cite^ wax, et multiplieamini^ and multiply, et replete^ 
 and fill, terram, this earth. In nomine patris et filii 
 et spiritus saneti sint^ benedicti,^ And Pater Foster 
 as often as the other. And then take the turves to 
 church, and let the mass-priest sing four masses 
 over the turves and let the green part be turned 
 towards the altar, and afterwards, before sunset, take 
 back the turves thither where they were. And have 
 wrought of live tree four signs ^ of Christ and write, 
 on each end, Matthew and Mark, Luke and John. 
 Lay the sign of Christ on the bottom of the pit and 
 then say : Crux Mattheus^ crux Marcus^ crux Lucas, 
 crux sanctus Johannes, Take then the turves and 
 set them there above, and say then nine times these 
 words : Crescite and as often Pater Noster, and turn 
 thee then eastward, and bow nine times humbly and 
 say these words : — 
 
 " Eastward I stand, I ask for my welfare, 
 ask I the Mighty Lord, ask I the Mickle God, 
 ask I the holy Heavenly Warder, — 
 Earth I ask and Up-Heaven ^ 
 and the sooth Sancta Maria 
 and heaven's might and high palace,^ 
 that I this charm by the Chieftain's ^ gift, 
 may open with * teeth in earnest mind, 
 waken these fruits for our worldly use, 
 till these fields with firm belief, 
 make splendid this turf, — as spake the prophet, 
 that he speeds on earth who alms divideth, 
 weU and willingly by will of God. 
 
 1 Sitis? WiUker. « Crosses. « Cf. O. H. G. ufhimil. 
 
 * Reced = house, but in Epinal Gloss (Sweet's 0. E. Texts, p. 83) , 
 rtecedlic= palatina, ** palatial." ^ Drythten, *' leader " = God. 
 
 « Or " from " ; as much as ** speak," like the Homeric figure. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 407 
 
 "Turn thee then thrice, with the course of the sun, 
 stretch thee then at full length, and say these 
 litanies, and then say Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, to 
 the end. Sing then Benedicite with outstretched 
 arms, and Magnificat and Pater Noster thrice, and 
 commit it to the praise and glory of Christ and 
 Sancta Maria, and the Holy Rood and the profit of 
 him who owns thy land and all those that are placed 
 under him. When all this is done, then let un- 
 known seed be taken from beggars, and let there be 
 given to these twice as much as one takes from them, 
 and gather together all the ploughing utensils ; then 
 bore in the plowtree and [place in the hole] incense 
 and fennel and hallowed soap and hallowed salt. 
 Take then the seed, set it in the body of the plow, and 
 say : — 
 
 " Erce, Erce, Erce, earth's mother,* 
 
 grant thee the Almighty, Master Eternal, 
 
 acres waxing and waving in bloom, 
 
 big with increase, brave to see, 
 
 store of stalks, standing corn,^ 
 
 broad-leaved barley's bountiful fruit, 
 
 eke the white of the wheat in plenty, 
 
 and likewise all the earth's abundance. 
 
 Grant to him, God eternal, 
 
 and his holy saints which in heaven be, 
 
 that his earth be defended from every foe, 
 
 be safe from every ill and drug 
 
 thrown by magic athwart the land ! 
 
 Now bid I the Wielder, this world who made, 
 
 no woman so word-strong,8 no man be so mighty, 
 
 to turn away these words here said I 
 
 1 Cockayne makes eor\>an a locative. 
 
 2 A desperate translation of a difficult line. Readings differ, and 
 the text is corrupt. 
 
 8 We notice throughout the charm that chief fear is of women and 
 also chief hope of aid from women, -'« mother of earth," or "mother 
 earth," as the case may be. 
 
-«H. lit ■* 
 
 408 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 " Then drive the plow and make the first furrow. 
 Say then : — 
 
 " Hail to thee, Earth, all men's mother, 
 be thou growing in God's protection, 
 filled with food for feeding of men ! 
 
 "Take then meal of every kind and bake a loaf, ' as 
 big as will lie within his two hands,' ^ and knead it 
 with milk and with holy-water, and lay it under the 
 first furrow. Say then : — 
 
 « Full field of food for folk of men, 
 brightly blooming, blessed be thou, 
 in the name of the holy one, heaven's maker, 
 and earth's also, whereon we live ; 
 God, world-maker, grant growing gifts, 
 that all our corn may come to our use ! 
 
 Say then thrice Orescite in nomine patris^ sint bene- 
 dicti. Amen and Fater Noster thrice." ^ 
 
 The value of this charm is evident; for all the 
 expenditure of clerical forms of benediction, there is 
 plenty of the old heathen rite left in full view. Who 
 "Erce" may be is question for the mythologists ; ^ 
 but her title as " mother of earth " (or mother earth?) 
 gives us sufficient standing-ground in the matter of 
 cult.* As Grimm remarks, earth itself was " holy," 
 and by simple logic any familiar spot of earth had its 
 sacred character. Whoso abode long time away from 
 his land, kissed the earth by way of greeting on his 
 return ; while Brutus, in the legend, took the wider 
 
 1 Cockayne. 2 For a few kindred rites, see Grimm, D. M. 1035 f. 
 « For which consult the passages noted by Wiilker in his Grimdriss, 
 p. 349. ■* Myths exist in plenty. See Tylor, P. C. I. 326 f . 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 409 
 
 view of his relation. ^ To die was, according to Scan- 
 dinavian phrase, "falling to mother earth." Turf cut 
 with its grass fresh upon it plays an important part 
 in the charni just given ; and it is perhaps not too fan- 
 ciful to see in the ceremony of entering upon blood- 
 brotherhood,2 an assumption of common maternity on 
 the part of the earth in which the two streams of 
 blood flow together. Creeping under the raised sod 
 was also part of various rites ; ^ and oaths were made, 
 as by holy trees, so also by turf and grass. 
 
 Partly in honor of the gods and goddesses of fer- 
 tility, partly in honor of the sacred earth herself, were 
 the manifold processions and ceremonies in field and 
 garden. In the tenth century we find a German 
 abbess establishing certain ceremonies which are to 
 take the place of the former "heathen processions 
 about the fields." * This was at Whitsuntide ; there 
 was to be watching through the night, a solemn pro- 
 cession at morning, and relics were to be borne about 
 the fields. From these substitutions we can in some 
 measure divine the heathen rites. Offerings and feast 
 were in a manner continued, and survive to this day 
 in some parts of Germany as a general feeding of the 
 poor of the parish, often in the churchyard itself. In 
 other places we hear of games and sport, which are 
 forbidden by the synods ;5 but in countless villages of 
 the Continent, as well as in England, the chief ele- 
 ments of these solemn processions have been retained. 
 
 1 D. M. 534 f. 2 Above, p. 173. 
 
 \Le' ^' ^^^ ^' ^^^^^ sy"il>olic uses of turf are given in the same 
 
 ^ In m. See Pfaunenschmid, Erntefeste, p. 50 ff., 84 ff. Much 
 material is, of course, collected by Mannhardt, Feldkulte. 
 ° Ibid. 53. 
 
 ill 
 
 i 
 

 410 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 liiiii 
 
 In the classical cosmogonies, Tellus must have 
 her Uranus, and a heaven-god is familiar enough in 
 mythology ; but the cult ^ of overarching sky seems 
 to have left few traces in our popular customs. The 
 conception is too indefinite ; but no such vagueness 
 has hindered the worship of sun, moon, and stars. 
 For the cult and adoration of sun and moon by 
 heathen Germany, Caesar gives explicit evidence; 
 and from many other writers, as well as plentiful sur- 
 vival, we know what extraordinary efforts were made 
 to help one of these heavenly bodies when it came 
 into eclipse. The notion was common to Roman and 
 barbarian. " Vince Luna ! " was the cry, and all man- 
 ner of noise was made to drive away the monster who 
 was thought to be on the point of devouring its vic- 
 tim.2 The heading of the twenty-first chapter of the 
 Indiculus^ to which we have so often alluded and 
 whose loss as a whole is to be so heartily deplored, 
 runs : " De lunse defectione, quod dicunt Vincelunay 
 The cult of clamor and terror lasted in distorted fash- 
 ions into the seventeenth century, where cases are on 
 record for England as well as Germany .^ 
 
 Direct worship of sun and moon is found among 
 barbarous tribes of the present day, and to a candid 
 judgment must seem to have been one of the most 
 certain and clearly primitive inferences of the human 
 mind. As J. Grimm hints,* people with any begin- 
 nings of agriculture, and especially those living in 
 cold or temperate climates, would have a definite cult 
 
 1 Myths, however, seem plentiful. See Tylor, P. C. I. 322 ff. 
 
 2 The well-known classical reference is Juvenal, VI. 442. See also 
 Tacitus, Ann. I. 28. f' 
 
 3 Tylor, P. C. I. 333 f . * G. D. S.^ 61. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 411 
 
 of the sun. The univei-sal doctrine that sunrise is 
 fatal to evil spirits of every sort,^ is itself ample evi- 
 dence of this cult. Tylor has plentiful material for 
 the ceremonies of savage tribes.^ Corresponding to 
 his account of the Samoyed woman who bowed morn- 
 ing and evening to the sun, we have the interesting 
 fact that in the Upper Palatinate people doff the hat 
 at sunrise.3 The same thing is done in honor of the 
 moon ; while the peasant of that region is fain to ask 
 the sun to come and take away the " seventy-seven 
 fevers " with which he is afflicted. So, in Lucian's 
 time, the peasant kissed his hand "as an act of wor- 
 ship to the rising sun."* In a note to his Volkslieder,^ 
 Uhland gives some versus which show in quaint con- 
 fusion a mingling of Christian and heathen ideas, 
 with definite survival of element-worship : 
 
 God bless thee, moon and sun, 
 
 And likewise leaf and grass. . . . 
 
 ***** 
 
 When he came to the hilltop, 
 
 He looked wide around : 
 
 " God bless thee, sun and moon, 
 
 And all my loving friends 1 " 
 
 Naturally, many of the festal fires which we have 
 noticed, perhaps those of Eastertide, belong to the 
 cult of the sun. Tylor reminds us that Aurelian in- 
 stituted about the time of our Christmas a pa^an 
 festival for "the birthday of the unconquered sun."^ 
 
 tJu^.^^'T *'^'^'''''^ '^ * *'^" ^" ^^°t ^'^ ««^i«en by a ray of the 
 rismg sun, he IS turned to stone. See ^^mma7, 35. ^^ «^ ^he 
 
 ^ Tylor P 7 U 2qfi I '^""^'' Aber.lauh. p. 12. 
 
 of onentatLn S./t^'"'VTI?^ ^^ '""■""^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ '^^ ^^^^^^ 
 "1 uneniation. bee Tylor, P. C. II. 296, 421 ff. 
 
412 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 li 
 
 As to the midsummer festival, which occurs at the 
 summer solstice and was called by the Germans 
 '^ sonnewende^'' we may safely connect the fires and 
 wheels with some phase of sun-cult. The further 
 north we go, the more obvious this relation ; and we 
 are told how after their long night the inhabitants of 
 " Thule " climbed the peaks to catch the first glimpse 
 of the sun, and then fell to celebrating their most 
 sacred festival.^ 
 
 Cult of the moon is familiar in magic and witch- 
 craft. Potent is the time of eclipse, and our Shaks- 
 perian almanac advises us that then is the season to 
 get in our slips of yew; leave root of hemlock for 
 a moonless night. Manifold superstitions about the 
 moon go back to heathen rites, and against some of 
 these the church made successful front. " No Chris- 
 tian man," says Beda in one of his treatises,^ " shall 
 do anything of witchery by the moon." This is the 
 rationalism of the new order ; but presently inherited 
 superstition peeps through, for he tells us he has no 
 doubt whatever that trees which be hewn at full 
 moon are harder against worm-eating and longer last- 
 ing than they which are hewn at the new moon.^ 
 Indeed, the moon is more important in superstition 
 than the sun ; it waxes and wanes, and in its setting 
 of night offers the desirable elements of mystery. It 
 is the most ancient timepiece, and we have seen that 
 
 1 D. M. 601. 
 
 2 De Temporihus, Anglo-Saxon trans, said to be by .^Ifric, Cock- 
 ayne, Leechdoms, III. 232 ff. 
 
 8 Ibid. 266, 268. A later superstition demanded that trees should be 
 hewn down in the wane of the moon. D. M. 596. Cockayne gives a 
 leechdom which is to be taken " when the moon is on the wane." 
 Leechdoms I. 98, 100 (for loss of appetite and for lunacy) . 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 413 
 
 Germanic popular government appointed its assem- 
 blies at the full moon,i and waited with awe upon 
 the omens of its change .^ Peace, of course, to the 
 countless superstitions; but we may note that the 
 Esthonian greets a new moon with the words : " Hail, 
 moon ! Mayst thou grow old, and may I grow young ! " ^ 
 It is an interesting parallel when Congo folk say: "So 
 may I renew my life as thou art renewed!"* 
 
 The stars are too numerous and too distant for 
 much worship ; superstitions like that of the peasant 
 who says a prayer when he spies a falling star, may 
 have some precedent in ceremonial worship, and so 
 may the advice to any wife, that if she wishes the 
 hawks to keep away from her chickens, she must 
 " greet the stars " when she goes to bed.^ 
 
 Prayers to day and night — palpable conceptions, 
 however indefinite and vast — are recorded in Ger- 
 manic tradition, although it is myth rather than cult 
 which has claimed these provinces. Day is sacred, 
 holy ; oaths are made by it ; ^ and the same is true of 
 night. In the Edda they are both invoked : — 
 
 Hail, O Day ! 
 Hail, Day's sons ! 
 Hail, Night and Sister ! 
 With gracious eyes gaze on us, 
 Give us victory ! ^ 
 
 A later bit from the German, — 
 
 God greet thee, holy Sunday ; 
 I see thee ride this way 1 
 
 1 Tac. Germ. II. 2 Caesar and Plutarch, as quoted above. 
 
 8 D. M. 595, note. 4 p. c. II. 300. 
 
 ^D.M. III. ; Aberglaube, 595, 112. 
 6 D. M. 614 f. 7 sigrdr. 3. 
 
414 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 " 
 
 if 
 
 is a personification, and seems perilously near a mere 
 poetic figure, though quoted from a form of blessing ; ^ 
 indeed, it is but ill-paying trouble to collect these 
 doubtful relics. The worship of day is not a very 
 evident inference ; leather some more concrete, com- 
 pact and direct object would have been chosen, — 
 like the sun. 
 
 In the same way we find traces of season-cult, 
 especially of spring and summer. The chief trace of 
 this cult, faint enough, is the personification of the 
 season in question, on which we must be careful not 
 to lay overmuch stress. That " May stands at the 
 door" is evidence of poetry and myth; so is Shak- 
 spere's jubilant tribute, 
 
 — jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops ; 
 
 or, in soberer vein, — 
 
 The morn, in russet mantle clad, 
 
 Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill. 2 
 
 This personification is common with the seasons, as 
 in the old English lays to spring : — 
 
 Sumer is icumen in, — 
 or the less famous, — 
 
 Lenten is come with loue to toune.^ 
 
 1 D. M. 616. 
 
 2 Another pendant is Milton's exquisite picture : — 
 
 Gray -hooded Even, 
 Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed. 
 
 8 Printed in Morris and Skeat's Specimens of Early English, II. 48. 
 It dates from the thirteenth century. The same phrase is used in the 
 Menologium or Anglo-Saxon Calendar, where heathen forms occur 
 throughout ; e.g. \>ses \>e lencten on tun geliden hsefde, werum to wicum. 
 "Since spring (*Lent') had come to town, to the dwellings of men." 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 
 
 415 
 
 This phrase, that spring or any one of the months, 
 is " come to town " that is, " come to the country," 
 occurs constantly in our old literature; and it is 
 matched by an expression in BSowulf^ where "year" 
 is used for " spring " : — 
 
 . . . Winter locked floods 
 
 in icy fetters, till fared another 
 
 year to the house. ... 1 
 
 On the other hand, the approach of winter is expressed 
 with great power in an often-quoted Frisian law : " Si 
 ilia tenebrosa nebula et frigidissima hiems in hortos et 
 in sepes descendity ^ Winter — a cruel warrior, giant, 
 or monster ; summer or spring — a jocund youth : 
 between these must be strife, and here indeed we find 
 some rites which are doubly interesting since they 
 point backward to Germanic worship and forward to 
 Germanic drama.^ A ballad printed by Uhland* gives 
 the dialogue of such a contest as peasants would per- 
 form it, each figure clad in the proper symbolic cos- 
 tume ; while J. Grimm collects a number of parallel 
 survivals. A heading of the Indiculus ^ may refer to 
 this as a heathen custom which the church abolished 
 as worship and tolerated as amusement. The strife 
 of winter and summer was presented in old England, 
 and the merriment of May Day, with its pole and 
 boughs and dancings, seems to have some connection 
 with the old cult of summer and spring.^ 
 
 "Town," as in the case of Chaucer's "persone of a town,'* is not our 
 word, but a parish, a district, as it is still used in New England for 
 "township." 
 
 1 B^ow. 1134. The alliteration is probably old, " gear in geardas.*^ 
 
 2 See D. M. 635. s'ibid. 654. 
 * Volkslieder, I. 23. See also the notes. 6 Cap. 27. 
 
 « D. M. 649. Grimm sums up the four fashions of celebrating this 
 festival which still survive in Europe. See also 657. 
 
 i 
 
416 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 Germanic gods and goddesses — Evidence of their cult — The 
 days of the week — Woden — Thunor — Tins — Nerthus, and the 
 Ingsevonic group — Other deities. 
 
 The rise and progress of a Germanic family, from 
 mere communal life in the bounds of a narrow canton 
 to the power of a dynasty and the range of a king- 
 dom, were accompanied, we may well believe, by a 
 corresponding development of the ancestral spirits. 
 Where once the shade of the dead man walked pro- 
 tecting and helpful about the limits of his old home, 
 there must now rule a gigantic spirit, fettered to no 
 single habitation, but throned high in air or dwelling 
 in remote and inaccessible places. Meanwhile the 
 ancestral idea became blurred ; the god was vaguely 
 known as progenitor of the race. 
 
 Parallel with this process ran a sharpening and 
 clarifying of the notions about natural forces. Curi- 
 osity, advancing further upon the outer world, reduced 
 its conclusions to a system and made far more dis- 
 tinct the personality which had been so vague to the 
 earlier inquirer. Definite biographies, one may say, 
 were published about the elemental gods, and formed 
 along with heroic legend the staple of primitive 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 417 
 
 poetry. What adjustments were made between 
 ancestral and elemental worship it is difficult to say, 
 though it is clear that the latter would be more 
 public, the former more of a household and peculiar 
 duty. We must content ourselves with an outline 
 of the worship paid in late heathen days to the gods 
 of Germanic tradition. 
 
 Monotheism, as we understand it, was unknown 
 to the Germans ; but they had the usual tendency 
 towards Henotheism, the worship of one favorite god. 
 Such in early Scandinavia seems to have been the 
 position of Thor. Forms like ''^ got unde mir willeko- 
 men^^^ do not show any monotheistic spirit; they 
 may refer to the household deity, the Lar. Certainly 
 they do not express our modern notion of God. As 
 for the All-Father of Scandinavian mythology, we 
 may even exclude the very probable Christian influ- 
 ence, and still find ample explanation in the phrases 
 of ancestor-worship. Ancestor-worship, however, had 
 little or nothing to do with the actual Germanic gods, 
 who haunted no barrows, were cabined, cribbed, con- 
 fined in no hut or village, but 
 
 As broad and general as the casing air, 
 
 housed in the far-off regions of the north. So ran 
 popular belief ; and northward, with outstretched 
 hands, our forefathers turned, when they engaged in 
 ceremonial worship. With the introduction of Chris- 
 tianity, the east became cardinal point of prayer, and 
 the north, as we might expect, was banned as unlucky 
 
 1 D. M. 13. 
 
418 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 and a place of devils.^ Who were, then, the dwellers 
 of that cold Germanic Olympus ? 
 
 Some definite evidence on this point seems to meet 
 us in the names given to our days of the week.2 
 The Germans were still of heathen faith when they 
 took the names of these days from Rome and trans- 
 lated them into terms of their own mythology. The 
 week of seven days is naturally given by the changes 
 of the moon, its so-called " quarters " ; but we seem 
 to have traces ^ of a week made up of five days only. 
 Of the individual days, Sunday and Monday are 
 obvious translations. But Tuesday, dies Martts, is 
 credibly traced to the Germanic god Tins. Wednes- 
 day, dies Mercurii, has the stamp of Woden plain to 
 see ; and old Thor, our Saxon Thunor, is as evident 
 in the name of Thursday,* dies Jovis. Frige dceg is 
 good Anglo-Saxon for the dies Veneris.^ Saturday is 
 Anglo-Saxon Sceteres dceg, but also Sceternes dceg, evi- 
 dent translation of dies Saturni, The other form is 
 not so easy to explain. Scetere means a seducer ; and 
 there may have been a deity with that by-name, — 
 Loki, the Scandinavian, has been desperately sug- 
 
 1 R. A. 808 ; G. D. S. 681. In the Haverford College Studies, No. 1, 
 On the Symbolic Use of Black and White," I have collected some mate- 
 rial on this subject. It is very significant that an Anglo-Saxon charm 
 agamst wens conjures the evil into the north and to the mountains 
 {Haupt's Z. xxxi. 45 ff., printed by Professor Zupitza); and a Finnish 
 charm sends the pestilence to the same place. In old judicial forms this 
 dishke of the north is evident: criminals were hanged on a northward 
 tree. In the Frere's Tale of Chaucer the fiend (in disguise) tells that 
 he lives '*in the north contre." Much more could be quoted to the 
 same effect. 
 
 2 The general question is discussed, D. M. 101 ff. See also C. P. B 
 I. 427 f. For Frisia see Richthofen, Fries. Rechtsges. II. 431 f. 
 
 I ^^^^- * Old Frisian Thunresdei. 
 
 Confusion of Frigg and Freyja meets us in Norse tradition. B. M. 
 251. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 419 
 
 gested, with a shy look at Danish Lordag as corrup- 
 tion from the name of the god, — though this seems 
 unlikely. Kemble suggests settere, "one who ar- 
 ranges or orders"; but the analogy with Saturn is 
 after all so near as to save us much guessing. 
 
 Evidence of cult lies, further, in those names of 
 places which have their origin in the name of a god. 
 For example, the strongest presumption in favor of a 
 god Saetere would spring from such cases as the men- 
 tion of Sceteres hyrig in an Anglo-Saxon document 
 under date of the year 1062 ;i and in Scandinavia 
 the popularity of Thor and his worship is abundantly 
 proved by similar means. Petersen 2 shows that the 
 sturdy old god entirely distances all the other Scandi- 
 navian deities, and even in Normandy and the Danish 
 parts of England, the name of Thor has left its mark. 
 As with places, so with persons ; and here again, so far 
 as Scandinavia is concerned, we find Thor overwhelm- 
 ingly the favorite,^ though Odin and Freyr are not 
 neglected. It was customary there for a man to give 
 his son to the service of the god, and to name the 
 former from the latter. We have, in fact, two sorts 
 of names derived in this fashion among Scandinavians 
 of the heathen period. In the first instance any name 
 might be combined with the name of deity in general, 
 such as the Norse Ass or Go^. "Thus King Raum 
 gave his son Brand to the gods,* and thereupon called 
 him Godbrand." ^ Or, on the other hand, the parent 
 
 1 Kemble, Cod. Dip. IV. 457. There is a plant sattorla'Se, " the com- 
 mon crowfoot." 
 
 2 Om Nordhoernes Gndedyrkelse og Gudetro i Hedenold, p. 46 f. 
 8 Ibid. 41, and also Vigfusson, Icelandic Diet. s.v. pdrr. 
 
 * Probably a substitution-survival of the hideous old rite of actual 
 sacrifice of one's children. 5 Petersen, p. 39 f. 
 
420 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 ii 
 
 chose the name and service of some special god ; and 
 here again we find old Thor by far the most honored 
 among all Scandinavian deities. Such a name was 
 Thorgrim. 
 
 The chief god of the Germans when the Roman 
 came in contact with them, seems to have been Woden.^ 
 This is the English form of the name, although some 
 of our early homilies, evidently under Danish in- 
 fluence, call him Othon or Othin. The meaning 
 of the name is not certain ; some connect it with the 
 Old English " wood," — " enraged," " furious ; " ^ some 
 with the notion of " wandering," with evident appli- 
 cation to the Scandinavian myths which tell about 
 Odin's travels and disguises ; and others, again, see 
 in the name a reflection of the god's intellectual 
 qualities.^ Certain, however, is the fact that Woden 
 is the wind-god, the deity of heaven in the literal 
 sense, the prince of the powers of the air, although 
 he is not the original ruler of Germanic deities ; he 
 has taken the place of an older heaven -god. Tins, and 
 seems to have got the latter's wife in the bargain. 
 This, however, is matter for mythology ; let us turn 
 to the cult. 
 
 In the first place, it is of great significance that 
 we find this god in the genealogy of Anglo-Saxon 
 kings ; he is ancestor of the monarchs of Kent, Essex, 
 East Anglia, Mercia, Deira, Bernicia, Wessex, and the 
 
 1 The old Grerman form is Wuotan, or among the Saxons, Wodan ; 
 the Scandinavian form was O^inn, now commonly called Odin ; and in 
 oldest English men said Woden. The use of Odin in these pages indi- 
 cates allusion to the Scandinavian god. 
 
 2 " Wodan, id est furor." Adam of Bremen. 
 
 8 D. M. 109. There has been considerable discussion in the journals 
 about this etymological problem. Lippert actually suggests Woden =* 
 wood, timber, — " the one in the Grove I " Culturgeschichtet p. 463. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 421 
 
 Lindesfaran.^ Beda speaks of Hengest and Hoi-sa 
 as descendants of Woden. ^ Names of places in Eng- 
 land and elsewhere bear the same testimony,^ and not 
 only places, but animals and plants as well. The 
 annalists are apt to take Woden as a king who after- 
 wards was deified : " Woden," says one, " whom the 
 Angles worship as chief god, and from whom they de- 
 rive their origin, was a mortal man, and king of the 
 Saxons, and father of many races."* The explana- 
 tion of this supremacy of Woden in the later heathen 
 times lies in his double attribute of intellectual skill ^ 
 — he is said to have "invented " runes — and love of 
 war. Hence the fitness of his place as begetter of 
 kings, and hence the later tendency to exalt him 
 above all the gods. The constant warfare of these 
 times made Othinus armipotens^ easily the central 
 figure. Here, too, he seems to have taken the place 
 of Tins, the older " Mars." To Odin the Scandi- 
 navians ascribed the invention of their mode of attack 
 in battle, the wedge-shaped column, really of far 
 greater antiquity than Germanic warriors ever knew, 
 and known to these Norsemen as the Boar's Head. 
 Moreover, Odin was father of war itself; when he 
 threw his spear, battle was born in the world.^ The 
 
 1 D. M. III. 377. 
 
 ^ Hist. Ecc. I. 15. "Erant autem filii Victgilsi, cuius pater Vitta, 
 cuius pater Vecta, cuius pater Voden, de cuius stirpe multarum prouin- 
 ciarum regium genus originem ducit." 
 
 8 D. M. 126 f., 131 f. ; Grimm, Kl. Schr. II. 58 ff. Names of places 
 compounded with names of this god are comparatively rare in Scandi- 
 navia, where Thor is overwhelmingly the favorite. See Petersen, p. 43 f . 
 
 * Vita S. Kejitigerni, quoted by Holtzmann, Germ. Alt. p. 251. 
 
 s In Roman interpretation he is called Mercurius ; and in Sal. and 
 Sat. the question " Wlio invented letters? " is answered, " Mercury the 
 Giant." See also D. M. 120. 
 
 6 So Saxo calls him. 7 V<iluspa, ed. Hildebrand, 28. 
 
 \i 
 
t^.^ •o^^mmmm 
 
 422 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 I ! ' 
 
 spear was his peculiar weapon, and was still the chief 
 arm of Germanic soldiers in the time of Tacitus. 
 Scandinavian cult, in spite of Viking fashions which 
 set so mightily toward the god of wisdom and war- 
 fare, clung grimly to old Thor ; but it bowed enough 
 to new ways to change several of its great festivals 
 and in them to honor Odin, giver of victory, as well 
 as Thor, the protector of house and home. Such a 
 feast in honor of Odin was held about the beginning 
 of summer, when the campaign opened, and ways 
 whether of land or of sea, became easy of passage.^ 
 We may suppose this habit to have been Germanic 
 as well as Scandinavian. Paul the Deacon's famous 
 story shows two rival tribes asking "Wodan" for 
 victory. Of course each army promised sacrifice — 
 its slain enemies — in return for such a gift ; and we 
 find in the Norse sagas this or that hero hurling his 
 spear over the heads of the hostile band, and crying : 
 " Odin have you all ! " The wolf is Woden's beast, 
 and the raven is his bird; the latter is also a sign of 
 victory, not at all the thing of evil it became in later 
 times. Even as a commonplace of diction the raven 
 has joyous meaning, as in the lines of BSowulf: — 
 
 Till the swarthy raven splendors of heaven, 
 blithe-heart, boded.^ 
 
 Another feature of his cult which connects Odin 
 or Woden with the new Germanic period, is the fact 
 that he was looked upon as a protector of the mer- 
 chant and sailor ; ^ he aided the bargaining of the 
 former, and to the latter he gave a favorable wind.* 
 
 1 Petersen, p. 88. 2 igoi f . » See material in Muller's System, p. 187. 
 4 Grimm's god " Wish " is now generally rejected. It was a person- 
 ification in mediseval poetry. 
 
 THE AVORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 423 
 
 Moreover, since he was the god that sent forth pesti- 
 lence and disease, heathen logic inferred that he could 
 best rescue from these ills ; as the Scandinavian cried, 
 in moments of sudden danger, "Help me, Odin!" 
 so in the time of sickness. Luckily we have a 
 genuine relic of the old Woden cult, an incantation 
 preserved in widely sundered dialects, and of un- 
 doubted Germanic origin. It is the companion charm 
 to that which invoked the Valkyrias,^ and was found 
 with it in the library at IMerseburg : 2 — 
 
 Phol and Wodan fared to the holt : 
 
 then Balder's foal's foot was wrenched. 
 
 Then Sinthgunt » besang it and Sunna her sister ; 
 
 then Fria besang it and VoUa her sister : 
 
 then Wodan besang it, who well knew how, 
 
 the wrenching of bone, the wrenching of blood,^ 
 
 the wrenching of limb : 
 
 bone to bone, blood to blood, 
 
 limb to limb, as if they were limed ! ^ 
 
 Even if we admit Bugge's theories, and let Phol 
 mean the apostle Paul, and Balder mean " the Lord," 
 we have nevertheless plenty of heathendom left. 
 Woden is undoubtedly central figure ; and whatever 
 elements have been introduced from Christian sources, 
 they have been obviously substituted for the older 
 heathen fashion.^ What makes this charm of su- 
 preme importance is the great number of varia- 
 tions found in the different Germanic countries. 
 It appears in Norway and Sweden, in Scotland, in 
 
 I S^® a^ove, p. 376. 2 MS. of the tenth century. 
 
 Sinhtgunt, says Bugge, Studier, p. 207. * I.e. of veins. Bugge. 
 5 Glued together. 
 
 « Bugge suggests "Frija and Wodan," p. 307 of the German trans 
 of the Studier. 
 
-1 1 11" 
 
 424 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 Flanders, and elsewhere.^ As Scherer says, Woden is 
 " supreme physician," — and here is need of the best. 
 Still another charm, this time from the Anglo- 
 Saxon, shows us Woden as final appeal in a some- 
 what similar emergency. In the charm of Nine 
 Worts to be used against poisons,^ we have a list of 
 the virtuous herbs, with one or two probable heathen 
 references. Then follows : — 
 
 These nine are opposed to poisons nine. 
 Sneaking came snake, tore asunder a man. 
 Then took Woden nine Wonder-Twigs : 
 he smote the Nadder,^ in nine [pieces] it flew. . . . 
 
 Thus Woden, in this place, performs an act of sor- 
 cery; and the twigs are in direct accord with the 
 Germanic method of casting lots described by Taci- 
 tus.* These charms are of great interest. Less 
 important, however, though not without bearing on 
 our subject, are the many customs of peasant-life 
 which seem to point back to an older worship of 
 Woden. In some of the German cornfields it was 
 the habit at harvest-time to leave a heap of corn " for 
 Woden's horse." A writer living in Rostock in 
 1593 describes the custom of Mecklenburg at rye- 
 harvest, when they gave grain to the god, with the 
 rhyme: — 
 
 Wode, give thy horse fodder. 
 Now thistle and thorn. 
 Next year, better corn ! ^ 
 
 1 See D. M. 1030 ff. ; Bugge, Studier (Germ, trans.), 301 ff. ; Roch- 
 holz, Deutscher Glaube, I. 281. 
 
 2 Wulker-Grein, Bihliothek, I. 320 ff . ; Cockayne, III. 30 ff. 
 
 8 Adder. * Germ. X. See below, p. 467. 
 
 &D. M. 128 f. Grimm gives a number of parallel cases. See also 
 Mannhardt's Feldculte ; Pfannenschmidt, p. 107 ff. 
 
 ^4MiV 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 425 
 
 Trees were sacred to him, and in his grove offerings 
 were made of captives, criminals, or even beasts. 
 His worship was widespread and deeply rooted ; when 
 the heathen, by a specified oath, renounced their old 
 faith and joined the church, they were compelled to 
 name Woden as one of the devils and monsters.^* In 
 Scandinavia he seems to have received, in Viking 
 days, supreme honors ; but, as we shall presently see, 
 Thor was the real god of the Northmen. Still, in 
 the famous temple at Upsala in Sweden, described by 
 Adam of Bremen, Odin was represented by an image 
 " like to Mai-s," — that is to say, fully armed.2 He it 
 was who received the soul of the warrior in the new- 
 fashioned heaven of Viking Scandinavia, Valhalla; 
 and to him the men of war every where — and war 
 was everywhere — put up their prayers and in stress 
 of battle offered service, child, or proper life. By 
 the Literpretatio Romana he was called Mercury. 
 
 To Thunor, as the Anglo-Saxon called him, the 
 Thor of the Scandinavian peasant, there must have 
 belonged a widespread Germanic cult. Especially 
 was this the case among the Norsemen, where, as 
 Petersen's book shows beyond doubt, Thor "the 
 land-god" was worshipped above all other deities. 
 He was called Jupiter by the Romans, and that not 
 solely, we may imagine, on account of his thunder- 
 bolts. It is probable, however, that in the aermania? 
 
 ^^ 1 Renunciation used under Boniface by Saxons and Thuringians • 
 Ec forsacho allum diaboles wercum and wordum, Thunaer ende Wo- 
 den ende Saxnote ende allum them unholdum the hira genotas sint." 
 I forsake all devil's works and words, and Thuner and Woden and 
 baxnot and all the monsters who are their companions." 
 2 " Wodanem armatum sculpunt." Adam Br. IV. 26. 
 ^ Cap. IX. See also Zeuss, die Deutschen, p. 25. 
 
426 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 427 
 
 Tacitus calls him Hercules ; for Mullenhoff reminds 
 us that with the Romans Hercules was not only a 
 hero, but also a god. Additional testimony to Thor's 
 or Thunor's importance is the fact that the arch-fiend 
 of Christian times, the devil himself, takes the place 
 of the old thunder-god.i In Scandinavia men made 
 most solemn oaths in calling upon Thor, and they 
 celebrated his feast at the sacred time of Yule.^ As 
 god of the home and all that belongs to it, he was 
 worshipped first and foremost of the deities ; and we 
 may be sure that the rough satire of the Harbards 
 Lay, where Odin boasts of his own amorous and 
 warlike feats, mocks Thor for his homely ways, and 
 generally plays the miles gloriosus, was not meant for 
 the eai-s of peasants. They prayed to him for a mild 
 winter, an early spring, and generous crops ; his first 
 thunderings heralded return of warmth and vegeta- 
 tion.3 As late as the eighteenth century a Scandi- 
 navian woman was known to pray regularly to Thor ;^ 
 and the Anglo-Saxon homilies bear witness to the 
 stubbornness of Thunor's cult on English soil. 
 
 Thor's thunder, audible sign that he and his ham- 
 mer were fighting ice-giants and obstinate spirits of 
 the northern hills, was regarded as more a benefit 
 than a terror. It symbolized fertility ; and we find 
 several plants named after the thunder.^ The wood 
 of a tree which had been struck by lightning was 
 good for many purposes, and toothpicks made of it 
 
 1 D. M. 151, and Chap. XXXIII. throughout. See also Roskoff, Ge- 
 schichte des Teufels. In favorable matters he is represented hy Ehas. 
 
 2 Pfttersen n. 63. 
 
 8 Unowned or lordless land was given to Thor. Grimm, Kl. Schr, 
 
 II. 56 ff . 
 
 4 Holtzmann's D. M. 67. ^ i>- ^^' 1^2 i. 
 
 are still thought to cure the toothache.^ Any man 
 who was smitten by the bolt was regarded as particu- 
 larly happy in his taking-off.^ Of trees, the oak was 
 dedicated to the thunder-god, — a bold and not igno- 
 ble piece of religious invention. His day was Thurs- 
 day, still in every regard a lucky day ; in Scandinavia 
 the traditional day for a wedding, and of good right, 
 if we consider that it was Thor's hammer which 
 " hallowed " every bride.3 The public assembly was 
 held in most Scandinavian districts on the Thursday; 
 and we must remember the hammer-cast which marked 
 out the borders of a judicial court, as well as the fact 
 that Thor was the patron and god of such an assem- 
 bly. Most significant is the vast number of Scandi- 
 navian names which are compounded with the name 
 of Thor ; places — where we may compare the Ger- 
 man Donnersberg— and people abound in proof of 
 this favorite patron; while but few can be found 
 which bear the stamp of other gods or goddesses.* 
 Indeed, some of the names are directly associated 
 with the processes of cult; Thorkell, for example, 
 from Thorketill, and probably Thurston from Thor's 
 stone.s Not only these names ; the kennings which 
 express the god himself, are full of significance for 
 his worship.^ 
 
 Almost alone of Scandinavian gods, Thor found last- 
 ing representation in a rude picture carved on stock 
 and stone,' even on ships,^ — " a long-bearded face. 
 
 1 Wuttke, Aherglauhen, p. 93. 
 * Petersen, p. 70 f . 
 ^ D. M. 155 ff. 
 
 7 Petersen, p. 33 f . 
 
 8 Ibid. 84. It is probable he was once god of battles. 
 
 2 D. M. 145. 
 
 ^ Petersen, p, 41 f . 
 
 « C. P. B. II. ^A t. 
 
 ^ 
 
. ■ ■ i iwun ■» 
 
 428 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 with the hammer hung beneath " ; ^ while his actual 
 image was adorned with gold and silver, and set up 
 in the holy places. Runes, moreover, add their testi- 
 mony to the universal nature of Thor's cult in Scan- 
 dinavia.2 Even the vanity of our Germanic ancestors 
 took a religious bent, or more correctly went hand in 
 hand with superstition, inasmuch as their ornaments 
 were often made in the shape of Thor's famous ham- 
 mer. Some of these ornaments are of striking 
 beauty ,3 and were meant to hang as charms or amulets 
 about the neck ; for to Thor men prayed in times of 
 sudden danger, as well as in sickness and want.* He 
 was chief guardian of the home ; and on the posts of 
 the high-seat, where sat the master of the Norse 
 household, was carved the face of Thor. Viking 
 belief assigned the souls of dead warriors to Odin, 
 while "Thor has the thralls "; — yet not as god of 
 the thralls did he take them, but rather because the 
 servants were part and parcel of the household.^ 
 
 The god whose old Germanic and Gothic name 
 must have been Tius, Old High German Zio, Scandi- 
 navian Tyr, but in English was known as Tiw, was 
 once worshipped as the heaven-god, but seems to have 
 been the war-god as well. A gloss of the Epinal 
 MS,, which goes back to the seventh century, a most 
 venerable witness, makes Tiig the same as M'ars.^ 
 
 1 C. p. B. II. 464. 2 Petersen, p. 51 ff. ^ Ibid. p. 75. 
 
 4 Ibid. 56; and Adam of Bremen says of the Thor image at Upsala: 
 " Si pestis et famis imminet Thor ydolo lybatur." 
 
 6 Ibid. 62. A mass of information about Thor may be found not 
 only in Petersen's work, but in the brilliant piece of investigation by 
 Uhland, Der Mijthus von Thor. AVhile the bulk of the book is taken 
 up with theories about the " meanings " of myths, there is much sohd 
 material. « The y in this form shows it to be of Mercian origm. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 429 
 
 As with the other gods, places were named after 
 him;i and songs of battle were chanted in his honor .2 
 It is supposed that he was the deity worshipped in 
 the grove of the Semnones ^ with such strenuous rites. 
 Tacitus tells us that human sacrifices were offered to 
 Mercury and Mars, — that is, to Woden and to Tius; 
 and similar offerings to a war-god are related by 
 the historian Procopius.^ The sword-dance described 
 above ^ was doubtless in honor of this god, and Grimm 
 connects with him the worship of swords recorded by 
 old historians.6 At the time of Tacitus and in the 
 neighborhood of central and northern Germany, Tius 
 seems to have held the place taken in later times by 
 Woden. His day, Tuesday, has a few superstitions 
 connected with it which point to older cult; for 
 instance, it must be on the Tuesday that the plant is 
 gathered which warriors use for crown." 
 
 In Scandinavian cult we find not only a Tyr, but 
 a god who is really a "hypostasis" of Tyr or Tius, — 
 Heimdall, "the world-glad." Rams were sacrificed 
 to him. Another hypostasis of Tius, and more inter- 
 esting to us, is Saxndat or Saxn6t, " the sword-com- 
 panion " or brother in arms,^ who figures alx)ve as 
 one of the gods to be abjured in the Old German 
 renunciation, and is undoubtedly Tius under another 
 name.^ Saxneat plays an important part in the 
 
 1 D. M. 164 ff. 2 Ibid. 171. 
 
 8 See below, p. 441, and Tac. Germ. XXXIX. ; Ann. IV. 64. 
 
 * Gesch. d. d. Vorzeit, Procop. p. 124. 5 Above, p. 108. 
 
 6 D. M. 169; Simrock, Mythol. 272 f. 7 Grimm, G. D. 8.^ 88. 
 
 8 Zeuss, p. 25 ; W. Miiller, System, p. 22G f. 
 
 » These names indicate various phases of warfare, as Miillenhoff 
 notes in his important paper in Schmidt's Zeitschrift f. Geschichte, 
 Vol. VIII. 
 
430 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 431 
 
 Anglo-Saxon genealogies, — for example in the royal 
 ancestry of Wessex. 
 
 Two inscriptions which Scherer laid in 1884 before 
 the Berlin Academy, would seem to show that Tins 
 even acted as guardian and god of the popular legal 
 assembly. He appears as ''Mars Thingsus," thing 
 being the Germanic term, still used in Scandinavian 
 tongues, for a legislative body. The inscriptions 
 were found in 1883 on two large votive altars near 
 the old Hadrian's wall in Great Britain, at a place 
 called Housesteads; they show that the altars were 
 erected by a division of Frisian cavalry serving as 
 part of the imperial army under Alexander Severus 
 (222-235), and for some special aid or favor were 
 dedicated to Germanic deities, — Mars Thingsus and 
 the so-called ^Zama^a^, Bede and Fimmilene, — as 
 well as to the Roman imperial family. F. Kauffmann^ 
 asserts that Mars Thingsus, while undoubtedly Tins, 
 is not addressed as a god of popular assemblies, but 
 as the patron deity of that battalion or division ; for 
 the Germanic army was arranged by clans, and the 
 name of a tribal assembly could be transferred to a 
 military brigade. However that may be, here is Tins 
 worshipped by very near relatives of our own ances- 
 tors, whether or not as god of the popular gathering. 
 We may remember that these meetings were under 
 the special protection of a god, and hence were always 
 controlled by the priests, who alone had power to 
 command silence and to punish offenders.^ 
 
 Another god is called in Scandinavian myths 
 Freyr. He is interesting to us as the probable god 
 whose worship was most popular among our coast- 
 
 1 p. B. Beitrafje, XIV. 200 ff. 
 
 2 Tac. Germ. XI. 
 
 dwelling ancestors by the German Ocean. In the 
 opinion of certain scholars, Freyr and Beowulf, the 
 hero of our old epic, are one and the same god, and 
 with Scandinavian Freyja and Niorthr represented a 
 brother and a sister who were worshipped by the 
 Inggevonic race as far back as the time of Tacitus. 
 The female was then known, in Roman translitera- 
 tion, as Nerthus,! and her cult is described by the 
 historian. In this worship were bound together 
 Reudigni, Aviones, Anglii, Varini, Eudoses,^ Suar- 
 dones, Nuithones, — all of them tribes which lived in 
 Schleswig, Holstein, and about Elbe mouth. Ner- 
 thus, explains Tacitus,^ is Mother Earth, and these 
 people " believe that she enters into human affairs, 
 and travels about among the people. In an island of 
 the ocean there is a sacred grove, and in it a holy 
 chariot covered with a cloth. Only the priest is 
 allowed to touch it. He knows when the goddess is 
 present in her consecrated place, and in all reverence 
 accompanies her as she is drawn about by cows. 
 These are joyful times and places which the goddess 
 honors with her presence, and her visit makes holiday. 
 People begin no war, do not take up arms, all weap- 
 ons are put away; peace and quiet only are then 
 known and welcome, until the priest leads back to 
 her holy place the goddess, now wearied of mortal 
 fellowship. Then the wagon, the covering-cloths, 
 and, — if one cares to believe it, — the divinity her- 
 self, are washed in a hidden lake. These services are 
 performed by slaves whom the same lake presently 
 
 1 She is not mentioned in the Edda. 
 
 2 Supposed to be the ancestors of our Jutes. See also Miiller in 
 P. B. Beitrdge, VII. 605 f. s Germ. XL. 
 
p 
 
 432 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 433 
 
 swallows up. Hence spring the secret terror and the 
 sacred ignorance about something which is seen by 
 those alone who are doomed to immediate death." 
 This is the oldest detailed account of Germanic wor- 
 ship, and its subject is a goddess of peace and plenty, 
 who makes for the promotion of agriculture, trade, 
 and the arts of civilization. In Scandinavia, centu>. 
 ries later, we find a god Niorthr who loves the water, 
 and especially the swan's song, and is worshipped by 
 seafaring folk as the protector of traders and trades. 
 The fact that our old Germanic goddess was wor- 
 shipped in a season of general peace points to mer- 
 cantile opportunities ; and the meeting of the related 
 tribes under such a sanction was doubtless the occa- 
 sion of barter and tmde, — like the Easter or Michael- 
 mas messe of mediaeval Germany. That trade was an 
 object of these meetings is proved by the account of 
 the Suiones in Tacitus,^ by the religious gatherings 
 at Upsala in Sweden described by the later historian, 
 and by the story of places like Lethra in Denmark, 
 and Throndhjem in Norway, where trade and cult 
 went together hand in hand. Hence the gods of 
 traffic, agriculture, peace. The cult of Nerthus, says 
 Miillenhoff,2 arose in commerce with foreign sailoi-s 
 and tradesmen, and naturally was full of associations 
 with the sea. A few vague allusions and survivals, 
 such as the ship drawn by German weavers in the 
 neighborhood of Cologne, or the mention of a ship 
 in connection with the worship of " Isis " — the Inter- 
 pretatio Eomana again — may help to strengthen our 
 notion of this old cult.^ 
 
 1 Germ. XLIV. « Haupt Z. iV. F. XL 11 f. 
 
 8 D. M. 214 ff. ; Germ. IX. ; Simrock, Mythol. p. 369 f. 
 
 The name of Nejthus, which suggests a Celtic 
 word meaning "strength," is evidently to be con- 
 nected with the later Scandinavian Niorthr, who in 
 the Edda is father of Freyr: they were originally one 
 and the same person. Corresponding to Freyr and 
 Freyja in the Norse system, scholars have assumed 
 a Niorthr and Nerthus, the same pair under other 
 names. In Sweden, Freyr was a very prominent 
 god, and his image stood beside the images of Thor 
 and Odin. Freyr, like the older Nerthus, had a 
 chariot which was drawn about the countryside every 
 spring, while the glad people worshipped and made 
 holiday. In the chariot was a young and beautiful 
 priestess, answering to the priest who went about 
 with the wagon of Nerthus.^ Here, too, was a time 
 of peace ; and Freyr was asked to give rain and sun- 
 shine, fertile soil, and a prosperous year.^ He pre- 
 sided over marriages ; and Adam of Bremen speaks 
 of his image as a god of fecundity. The boar was 
 sacred to him, and was not only sacrificed to him, 
 but is said to have drawn his wagon ; while even in 
 recent times, Swedish folk were wont to bake cakes 
 in the shape of a boar, remnant of the old Freyr- 
 offering.3 Curiously enough, in the account of the 
 ^stii, whom he evidently takes to be Germanic,* 
 Tacitus says they worship a Mater Deum and wear 
 figures of the boar.^ These were probably made not 
 of metal, but of wood, or of an even softer material. 
 As the military spirit waxed with conquest, the peace- 
 
 1 D. M. 208. 2 Ibid. 176. 
 
 * Ibid. 41. 4 MuUenhoflP, D. A. II. 29. 
 
 6 The wagon is a conspicuous thing in the cult of the Phrygian 
 magna deum mater. Lucret. de rer. nat. II. 597 ff.,«and D. M. 211. 
 
434 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 435 
 
 II ii 
 
 ful emblem served as warlike decoration; Anglo- 
 Saxon warriors wore the boar upon their helmets; 
 and the boar's head, on which Scandinavian warriors 
 took oath, is known in the Christmas feasts of Eng- 
 land. Oxen, too, we find used for this sacrificial 
 purpose, and hear of them occasionally under the 
 poetical name of Freyr.^ Horses, too, were sacrificed 
 to this god ; and in Sweden on solemn occasions the 
 slave, the captive, or even the citizen, was offered as 
 a last resort. 
 
 Petersen gives a few Scandinavian proper names, 
 which were compounded with the name of Freyr.^ 
 This, itself, means simply "prince," "lord," "master," 
 and is familiar to us in its feminine form, as the Ger- 
 man "Frau." Freyr and Freyja are simply "the 
 lord " and " the lady " ; they could appear under dif- 
 ferent names, as in Anglo-Saxon the god Ing, men- 
 tioned by a poem known as the "Rune Lay," and 
 evidently the ancestral god of the Ingsevonic race, is 
 undoubtedly none other than Freyr.^ Significant in 
 this reference of the Rune Lay is the mention of Ing's 
 chariot, which, as Miillenhoff remarks, is assigned only 
 to the highest gods : — 
 
 Ing was erst with Eastern Danes 
 
 seen on earth, but eastward since 
 
 o'er the wave he went ; his wain ran after. 
 
 Thus did Hardin gs the hero call. 
 
 Ing is further mentioned in our Anglo-Saxon gene- 
 alogies ; ^ and in BSowulf we have the frSa Ingwina^ 
 "lord of the Ingwine." Beowulf himself, as has 
 been said above, is assumed by many as another 
 
 1 D, M. 176, 179. For other survivals of the cult, see D. M. III. 7G f. 
 
 2 Gud. p. 42 f . 8 Bugge, Studier, p. 2. ■* D. M. III. 384 f- 
 
 phase of the same deity .^ There is no doubt that 
 the cult of this divinity or group of divinities, cen- 
 tred near the North Sea, and attested from earliest 
 times, is for us the most interesting fragment in all 
 Germanic mythology; it is an authentic, even if 
 blurred and rapid glimpse, at the religion of our 
 own fore fathers .2 
 
 Let us now look for a moment at the Scandinavian 
 Freyja, the later reffl^sentative of Nerthus. Unfor- 
 tunately, she has been confused with Frigg (this is 
 the Norse form, as is also Freyja), the wife of Odin. 
 Thus in Anglo-Saxon genealogies, we have " Frea " 
 set down as Woden's wife, whereas the proper name 
 in Anglo-Saxon would be Fricg.^ In all Norse cult, 
 Freyja is abundantly worshipped, and in close rela- 
 tion to the cult of Freyr. She gave men fertility, 
 peace, and happy wedlock. Boar and ox were sacri- 
 ficed to her ; * she has, like Nerthus, the chariot of 
 highest divinity. Connection with ancestor-worship 
 is found in the widespread belief that a woman fared 
 directly to her after death; in Christian times, the 
 legend ran that souls spent their first night after 
 death with her successor, St. Gertrude, the second 
 with the archangels, but on the third went as their 
 doom directed.^ The cat was sacred to her ; a happy 
 recognition of her manifold connection with household 
 blessings, and not, perhaps, without influence on the 
 later belief about witches.^ As Grimm remarks, when 
 
 1 See the preface to Mannhardt's Mythol. Forschungen, in Q. F., LI. 
 p. xi. 
 
 2 Have we a phase of the Terra Mater in that mention of Erce, and 
 the folde,Jira modor, of the Anglo-Saxon charm? 
 
 8 D. M. 250. * For oxen, see C. P. B. I. 228 ; Hyndlul. v. 36 f . 
 
 6 D. M. 60. 6 Ibid. 254. 
 
436 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 a bride goes to marriage in fair weather, folk say that 
 she " has fed the cat well." Lovers prayed to Freyja, 
 and for the purposes of cult, as well as by the tradi- 
 tions of mythology, she is in every way Germanic 
 goddess of love. 
 
 Probably Freyja and Frigg, Fr^a and Fricg, were 
 originally one and the same goddess; and further- 
 more, Bugge 1 may be right in ascribing many of the 
 tales about Freyja, to the stories heard by Vikings, 
 and less truculent travellers, about the classical 
 Venus. As Lady of the Gods, however, Fricg, the 
 wife of Woden, must go back to an older consort of 
 the older god, — Tins, we may conjecture. Remains 
 of the cult of Fricg are collected by Grimm.^ As 
 wife of Odin, she was worshipped in Scandinavia, 
 and like Freyja — one may almost say as Freyja — 
 she presided over marriages, and was called upon for 
 help by barren women. J. M. Kemble has found 
 relics of Fricg cult in England ; and they have been 
 noted in Lower Saxony .^ Perhaps the local name 
 Freckenhorst is derived from her worship. 
 
 Near the mouth of the Scheldt were discovered, in 
 1647, numerous altai-s and other stones containing 
 inscriptions to one Nehalennia; and similar inscrip- 
 tions have since been found at Deutz on the Rhine. 
 The goddess is represented " in costume like a Roman 
 matron " ; a dog is often near her, as well as baskets 
 of fruit. Sometimes she appears with Neptune, and 
 has her foot upon the bow of a ship. Kauffmann 
 sees in her a goddess of sailors, explains the name 
 Nehalennia itself as ultimately based on the Ger- 
 manic word for "ship," and, as others have done. 
 
 1 Studier, p. 10. 
 
 2 D. M. 252 f . 
 
 8 Ibid. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 437 
 
 brings her cult into connection with the account given 
 by Tacitus of the Germanic worship of Isis. As Isis, 
 this Germanic goddess was worshipped by the for- 
 eigners who thronged the border regions, or came 
 hither in the Roman ships ; for Tacitus speaks of the 
 Frisian waters as thickly navigated by such craft. 
 So far Kauffmann. Grimm thought the name was 
 Celtic and connected with the word for " spinning." ^ 
 Another cult is mentioned by Tacitus, — that of the 
 goddess Tanfana. While the deities mentioned above 
 belonged to the circle of Ingsevonic religion, this god- 
 dess seems to have been best known to the Istsevones ; 
 and since it was among these tribes that the worship 
 of Woden began and grew into such stately propor- 
 tion, scholars have conjectured that Tanfana was his 
 companion. Let us hear Tacitus.2 The legions 
 made a night attack upon the Mai-si, who were 
 encamped not far from the modern Dortmund, hold- 
 ing festival, " lying upon their beds or about the tables, 
 care-free, not even with their sentinels posted . . . 
 there was no fear of battle, and yet no peace, unless 
 it were the languid and disordered peace of drunk- 
 ards. ... A space of fifty miles [the Ceesar] lays 
 waste with sword and flame. Not sex, not age, were 
 spared, things public nor things sacred (prof ana simul 
 ac sacra); even the temple which is most famous 
 among those races, which they call the temple of 
 Tanfana, — all was levelled with the ground." An in- 
 scription has also been discovered, — Tanfanoe sacrum ; 
 but its genuineness is denied.^ Another deity casually 
 
 1 T). MA 347, 40i ; Simrock, D. M. 373, 576 ; Kauffmann in P. fi. Beit. 
 XIV. 210 ff. 
 
 2^nn. 1.50 f. It is the year 14 A. D. « D. 3f. 64, note2. 
 
438 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GODS 
 
 mentioned by Tacitus, and of probable Germanic 
 belongings and Celtic origin, is Baduhenna ; ^ and an 
 inscription to a goddess Hludana has been connected 
 with the Scandinavian Hlothyn, — a connection 
 stoutly denied by Sophus Bugge.^ 
 
 We are concerned here not with myth but with 
 actual worship, and cannot delay over names like that 
 of Balder. Even if Balder was a real Germanic god, 
 we have no traces of his cult, save in the charm given 
 above — where Bugge contends that Balder is simply a 
 title, "the lord,"^ — and in the names of a few places. 
 He had a son, Forseti, " foresitter," president of a 
 court, the ideal judge ; and Grimm connects this son 
 with the Frisian god Fosite.^ Of this god's cult some 
 account has been preserved. Liudger, a Christian 
 missionary preaching the gospel among his heathen 
 brethren, sailed to the island Helgoland (holy isle),^ 
 on the borders of the Danish and Frisian folk, called 
 after the name of the god Fosetesland (a nomine dei 
 falsi Fosete Foseteslant est appellata). Another holy 
 man, Willibrord, visited this island ; and we are told 
 that it was entirely dedicated to the service of the god. 
 A well or spring was sacred to him, from which none 
 durst drink save in utter silence. Temples — what- 
 ever we are to understand by the term — were erected 
 in his honor ; treasure was gathered there ; and flocks 
 and herds grazed about the place, not to be touched 
 
 1 Ann. IV. 73. » Studier, p. 574. 
 
 8 On the other hand, J. Grimm thinks Phol a familiar form of Balder. 
 2). M. III. 80. * Fana Fosetis. See D. M. 190, III. 80. 
 
 6 Moller, Altengl Volksep. p. 91, note, thinks that Helgoland was the 
 sacred isle of the Saxons south of the Eider, and not to be identified 
 with the holy isle of the North Anglians, described by Tacitus, Ger- 
 mania, XL. 40. 
 
 439 
 
 by mortal. It was believed that death or madness 
 would fall upon the wretch who desecrated any of 
 these things ; moreover, the king was wont to punish 
 such offenders in the direst fashion (atrocissima morte). 
 Willibrord baptized three persons in the well, and his 
 men killed some of the sacred animals; hence lots 
 were cast by the outraged heathen to see if the Chris- 
 tians should die. One man was thus marked for ven- 
 geance, but favoring lots allowed the saint and his 
 other companions to go free. When Liudger came, 
 he destroyed temples, groves, and whatever savored 
 of the heathen cult. The name, Fosetesland, was 
 of course consigned to silence ; but " Helgoland " pre- 
 serves the memory of ancient sanctity. Adam of 
 Bremen says the place was especially venerated by 
 sailors and pirates, ''whence it takes the name Heilig- 
 land." As late as the eleventh century, superstition 
 maintained its old terrors ; and it was believed that 
 if any one committed robbery on the island, even in 
 regard to the meanest object, he would suffer ship- 
 wreck or a violent death. To the hermits who were 
 settled about the place, pirates brought a tenth part 
 of their gains. There is no doubt that this island was 
 a chief sanctuary of our heathendom, and Richthofen 
 IS inclined to see in Fosite the "president" of the 
 gods, Woden himself, i 
 
 d'U ff " i-'ilr^, on Friesische Rechtsgeschichte, II. 399 ff., 424 f ., 431 f ., 
 4^ ff., Richthofen has collected the material used above, -the lives o 
 the two saints, the account of Adam, etc. 
 
440 
 
 GERMANIC OKIGmS 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 Places of worship — Temples — Images and columns — Priest 
 and priestess — Prayer, offering and sacrifice — Survivals — Divi- 
 nation and auguries — Runes. 
 
 Where did the Germans worship ? According to 
 Tacitus,^ who indulges here in a bit of rhetoric, they 
 think it unbecoming the greatness of the gods to shut 
 them in with walls or to image them in human shapes. 
 This delicate reasoning never occurred to a German; 
 but it is evident that, as a fact, he had no temples 
 such as the Romans had, no statues of the classical 
 sort, and, of course, nothing of that art which lent 
 itself so readily to the purposes of sacred decoration. 
 But places of worship he must have had ; and these, 
 as we are told in a somewhat obscure passage of the 
 Grermania?' were groves. Islands seem to have been 
 favorite places for the purposes of a cult ; and, as we 
 have just seen, all of Helgoland was given up to 
 such a use. Still, groves were the best-loved temples. 
 The house of gods, like the house of men, could be 
 built about a tree ; and we cannot altogether reject 
 the romantic reason, added by Jacob Grimm, that 
 something oracular and divine attracted the early 
 
 1 Germ. IX. 
 
 2 Ibid. *' Lucos et nemora. 
 
 >> 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 441 
 
 worshipper in the swaying of branches and the low 
 murmur of the leaves. We may suspect from the 
 exquisite tortures which tradition assigned to him 
 who injured a tree, that it was once a question of 
 divine as well as human property, — like the Jupiter- 
 Oak which Boniface cut down. Mention is made 
 repeatedly of these sacred groves among the Germans 
 Such was the grove of the Semnones, described as 
 follows by Tacitus.1 « At a specified time, represen- 
 tatives of all the clans of this race assemble in a 
 forest which is sanctified by ancestral auguries and 
 immemorial fear, formally offer up a human sacrifice, 
 and celebrate their awful and barbaric rites. A pecul- 
 iar reverence attaches to this grove. No one enters 
 it unless bound with fettei^, in order to show his own 
 humble case and the power of the divinity ; and if he 
 chances to fall, he is not allowed to rise and stand 
 up; prone as he is, he must roll along the ground. 
 Ihe whole superstition implies that in this grove is 
 the origin of the race, here lives the deity who rules 
 them all, while all the rest are but subject and tribu- 
 taij. Mention is also made of a ,ilva Herculi mora, 
 and of a lucu, Baduhennce? The grove of Nerthus is 
 another example ; and even the "temple " at Upsala, 
 described by Adam of Bremen, seems to have been 
 originally a grove. Moreover, we know that there 
 were places of sacrifice in these primitive temples - 
 harharc, ar^ is what Tacitus calls them.a The simple 
 torest fashion, however, seems hardly to have required 
 
 tl rV?, '° '*" early simplicity Germanic worship 
 was doubtless content to hang the victim, or parts of 
 It, directly upon the sacred tree itself. Around this 
 
 'Gem. XXXIX. «Tac.^„„.n.l2,III.73. » See ^„„. I. 61. 
 
442 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 sacred tree, with its fresh hung offering, marched or 
 danced the worshippers, singing as they moved, and 
 dedicating their gift to the local deity .^ MuUenhoff 
 refers to a dialogue of Gregory the Great, where the 
 heathens are described as running in this fashion 
 about a goat sacrified " to the devil," with dedication 
 of song and dance. ^ 
 
 It is not improbable that this place of worship was 
 at the same time a place of burial, and in many cases 
 may have been fixed originally by the tomb of a 
 powerful ancestor, the founder of the race. Scattered 
 branches of such a race would naturally unite at 
 stated times about this centre of sacred tradition. 
 Trees are planted at the place of burial, or a grove 
 is chosen at the outset. " Each grove," says Tacitus, 
 "is named after the god to whom it is sacred"; and 
 it is not unreasonable to apply this to ancestral as 
 well as to elemental worship. Such a tomb as is 
 described at the end of BSowulf may well have 
 been a typical place of worship for Ingaevonic 
 tribes;^ and the mingling of human legend with 
 myth pure and simple — for Beowulf is as much 
 god as hero — agrees in all probability with the 
 confusion of two forms of worship. Lippert would 
 refer to a similar origin the mediaeval association 
 
 1 " Germani ea, quae diis offerebant, non cremebant neque aras neque 
 altaria more graeco ac romano habebant, sed capita abscissa et exuvias 
 victimarum similiter et homines diis dicatos, sacris arboribus suspen- 
 debant ; his quoque ferro caedere et scrobibus, aqua ac coeno mergere 
 solebant." MUllenhoff, de antiq. German, poesi, pp. 11, 12. 
 
 2 Ibid. Salt springs were also sacred places, for, as we saw above 
 <p. 69), the god was thought to help the process of salt-making. Ann. 
 XIII. 57, and Amm. Marc. XXVIII. 5. 
 
 8 Interesting is the Anglo-Saxon word cumhol, which Cook (Mod. 
 Lang. Notes, 1888) shows to mean mainly a cairn. 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 443 
 
 of sanctified bones and other relics with the church 
 itself.i 
 
 Very early in its development, this Germanic place 
 of worship would have a formal enclosure, made by 
 ditch or wall or hedge; and of course the inmost 
 part of the primitive "temple" would need all 
 possible privacy — secretum illud, as Tacitus calls it.2 
 Progress from such an enclosure to walls and formal 
 building would be a matter partly of development, 
 partly of influence from the pagan world. We should 
 like to know how the English "fane" appeared which 
 High-Priest Coifi helped to demolish. Beda ^ speaks 
 of the aras et fana idolorum cum septis^ quibus erant 
 circumdata, and says that Coifi, lance in hand, went 
 up to the idols. This would indicate buildings and 
 images. 
 
 Jacob Grimm insisted upon the existence of temples 
 of elaborate fashion, and cited that " templum . . . 
 Tanfanae " which the Romans razed to the ground. 
 Moreover, he called attention to the Frisian law of 
 later times, which imposed penalties for the violation 
 of a temple.* In Scandinavia, at least for the later 
 period, we must allow temples in the modern sense. 
 The Norwegian emigrants who went to Iceland took 
 with them materials of their old heathen temples, as 
 
 1 Rel. d. eur. CulUirvolker, p. 169. 
 
 2 Germ. IX. Arminiiis speaks of the gods who dwelt within these 
 pejietralia as unseen by the people, and seen only by the priests. Ann. 
 ^^- 1"; . » Hist. Ecc. II. 13. 
 
 "Qui fanum effregit . . . immolatur diis quorum templa violavit." 
 feee also Holtzmann, Germ. Alt. 176. The Germans seem to have 
 nought that "death or madness" would fall upon the profaner; when 
 tne god did not punish, his priest or king took the task. See the ac- 
 count of the sacred place on Helgoland, p. 438, and Richthofen, Fries, 
 liecht. p. 401. 
 
444 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 445 
 
 well as earth from under the altars. In the Eyrhyg- 
 giasaga we are told of a definite case,^ where it is the 
 caretaker of a temple sacred to Thor, who emigrates. 
 When he rebuilds in Iceland, whither he had carried 
 ."most of the woodwork," the new structure is "a 
 great house, with doors in the side walls and near one 
 end. Inside were the pillars for the high-seats, and 
 in them nails called the gods' nails." It is evidently 
 an exact imitation of the old temple in Norway. 
 This heathen temple of Scandinavia seems to have 
 been a rectangular building, rounded at one end, after 
 the manner of an apse or choir in certain Christian 
 churches, and running from west to east.^ Besides 
 this, there occurs a round temple, which may have 
 been the more primitive form.^ The material was 
 doubtless timber. Decoration and metal work were 
 matter of imitation and opportunities ; the lavish use 
 of gold, which makes Adam of Bremen speak of the 
 temple at Upsala as totum ex auro paratum, is not 
 a characteristic of early Germanic fanes. Neverthe- 
 less, we hear of great treasure found in the temples 
 of the heathen Frisians.* In the primitive grove, 
 with rough enclosure, there was doubtless ornament, 
 but of a more barbarous fashion, — emblems and 
 mystic signs, approaching the fetishistic order. In 
 the " apse " were set up the images, such as there 
 
 1 p. E. Miiller, Sagabibliothek, I. 190 f . ; Maurer Bek. d. Norw. St. 
 II. 190, note. 
 
 2 This explains the advice of Pope Gregory to use the English temples 
 as Christian places of worship. See Petersen, p. 20, from whom much 
 of this summary is borrowed. 
 
 8 Petersen, p. 23. Dimensions of the other kind of temple are noted ; 
 in one case, 120 by 60 feet. 
 
 4 Richthofen, II. 379. ** Magnum thesaurum quem in delubris iuve- 
 nerant." 
 
 were ; and before them was a sort of altar covered 
 with iron, whereupon burned a fire that durst not be 
 extinguished, — " the sacred fire." ^ Here lay the ring, 
 dipped by the priest in sacrificial blood, and upon 
 which all oaths were sworn ; but when the chieftain 
 presided at popular meetings, he wore this ring upon 
 his hand.2 On this altar, moreover, stood the vessel 
 which held the blood of sacrifice. No one was allowed 
 to carry arms within the temple. 
 
 We have spoken of images set up in the " apse " of 
 this later Scandinavian temple. What were they? 
 Evidently in Scandinavia these were direct portrayals 
 of the gods, as is clearly proved by the account so 
 often quoted from Adam of Bremen. For older 
 stages of our culture, we must observe great caution ; 
 and if we find mention of images, we must ascer- 
 tain definitely wliat we are to understand. In the 
 Q-ermania^^ a sanctuary of "Castor and Pollux," so 
 called, is said to have no images, nulla simulacra; 
 but the Germans, as Tacitus elsewhere informs us, 
 were wont to bear into the battle signa deorum^ — 
 effigies et signa. What are effigies et signa? The 
 school of anthropologists who lately have been pick- 
 ing our poor Germanic myths to mere shreds and 
 tatters, tell us in their interpretatio Africana that the 
 emblems in question were nothing more than fetishes, 
 — old weapons with the head of a beast.* Better is 
 the theory of Miillenhoff,^ though after all the differ- 
 
 1 Petersen, p. 24. 2 Maurer, Bek. d. Norw. St. II. 190. 
 
 « Cap. XLIII. 4 Rel. d. eur. Cult. 121. 
 
 6 De antiq. German, poesi, p. 13. Holtzmann refers to the later use 
 of animals in coats of arms. See also Tac. Hist. IV. 22, for the effigies. 
 Miillenhoff's words are: "signa . . . arma et instrumenta, quae a 
 m3^hologis nostris attributa dicuntur, e.g. lancea Mercurii (Wodani) 
 
 i 
 
 ha 
 
446 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 ence is nominal, that the signa were sundry signs or 
 attributes of the gods, as the lance of Woden or 
 Thor's hammer ; while the effigies were figures of ani- 
 mals, like Woden's wolf or the goat of Thor. We 
 hear of a bull among the Cimbrians, and of a snake 
 among the Lombards, used for such a signum. The 
 moment when line of battle was formed and the 
 attack was begun, counted among the most sacred 
 occasions possible in Germanic life ; and these signa 
 doubtless meant for the soldier the presence and aid 
 of the deity invoked. They were borne into battle 
 by the priests, and doubtless had been adored and 
 consecrated during the night in their sacred grove, 
 amid rites of the cult and that indispensable banquet 
 "per noctem" which always preceded a Germanic 
 fight.^ We must also bear in mind another sort of 
 images, which could have analogy with these " signs," 
 — the posts of the high-seats, carved with the image of 
 a god or his symbol. After a great victory over their 
 rivals, the Saxons ^ set up a column with an "effigy" 
 of one of their gods. Much has been disputed about 
 this triumphal affair ; but it seems to have been not 
 so much an image as a huge pillar with rude carvings 
 of a head and the usual symbols. Another and later 
 account is more explicit. In 772 Charlemagne waged 
 war against the Saxons, who were stubborn to des- 
 peration in their heathen faith ; and he destroyed a 
 
 malleus Herculis (Tonantis, Thunaris), gladius Martis (TLvi), phallus 
 Liberi . . . sed effigies secundum ipsum Tacitum (Hist. IV. 22) ima- 
 gines erant f erarum quae symbolice deos ipsos indicabant ut anguis . . . 
 et lupus Mercurium, ursus et caper Tonantem. ..." 
 
 1 Mullenhoff, work quoted, p. 13; Tac. Ann. I. 65, II. 12; Hist. IV. 
 
 14. 
 
 2 In 530 A.D. The account is given by Widukind of Corvey, I. 12. 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 447 
 
 sacred place of theirs which contained an Irminsul^ a 
 column standing in the midst of a sacred grove, and 
 held by all the neighboring tribes in boundless vene- 
 ration. This Irminsul is called now the " fane," now 
 the " idol '' ; we shall hardly err in explaining it as a 
 column more or less carved. The annals speak of 
 masses of treasure which Charles carried away from 
 this "temple," a trait which Grimm thinks quite 
 legendary, the flourish of a chronicler, but which 
 Richthofen defends as historical.^ It seems reason- 
 ably sure that, whatever the nature of this Irminsul^ 
 the heathen Frisians — they were our nearest conti- 
 nental relatives — had regular idols or images. The 
 missionaries speak with horror of a heathendom which 
 can seek help from stones and from deaf and dumb 
 images, " a lapidihus , . , et a simulacris mutis et sur- 
 dis;'' and Richthofen's defence of this and other 
 testimony seems to be valid.^ 
 
 In Iceland and the Norse realm generally we find 
 regular images of the gods. Adam of Bremen dis- 
 tinctly testifies to the three images at Upsala in 
 Sweden, — Odin, Thor, and Freyr (Fricco); Odin 
 as a warrior in mail, Thor, with sceptre, holding the 
 middle place as greatest god, Freyr with the custom- 
 ary phallic symbols of fecundity and peace. Direct 
 testimony about similar images in various parts of 
 Scandinavia is collected by Petersen.^ Maurer says 
 that little images of the gods were carried, amulet fash- 
 ion, in the pocket of the pious Norsemen.^ Figure- 
 
 1 Grimm, D. M.* 95 if. Richthofen, p. 381 ff. 
 
 2 Ibid. 421 ff., 448 f. No image of Foseti is mentioned in the account 
 of Helgoland. 
 
 8 Work quoted, p. 33 ff. 4 Bek. d. Norw. St. II. 231. 
 
448 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 heads of the Norse ship are probably to be refeiTed 
 to a similar origin. We hear, moreover, of prayer 
 where the Norseman bowed before his images, or 
 even threw himself on the floor of the fane ; he 
 did not look at the images, but held his hands 
 before his eyes "in order to shut out the blinding 
 glare of deity." 
 
 Priests were a Germanic institution known in all 
 the tribes ;i but it is better not to lay too much 
 stress upon a priesthood. Caesar, denying a priest- 
 hood, really concedes German priests ; ^ the Cimbrians 
 in Italy had priestesses ; and Tacitus goes so far as to 
 define priestly duties among the tribes of which he 
 writes.^ In public life the German priest played a 
 leading part, and, aside from times of war, seems to 
 have had more civil power than even the head of 
 the state; indeed, Scherer thinks^ that Munch and 
 Maurer were right, against Waitz, in attributing 
 priestly power to the chieftains. This assumption, 
 as we shall see, derives its strongest support from the 
 practice of Scandinavia ; though there is an extreme 
 case of priestly authority mentioned by Ammianus in 
 his account of the Burgundians. The king, he says, 
 may be deposed, if fortune desert the tribe in its 
 campaigns or in its crops ; but the priest (sinistus) 
 may not be deposed.^ If we are only willing to waive 
 the question of identity and not to consider too curi- 
 
 1 W. Miiller, System, p. 82. 
 
 2 VI. 21. His denial is based on comparison with an elaborate system 
 like that of the Druids. Grimm, D. M. 73. 
 
 * Minister deorum is his term for priest. ^ Anzeiger H. Z. IV. 100. 
 
 * " Nam sacerdos apud Burgiindios omnium maximus vocatur Sin- 
 istus et est perpetuus, obuoxius discrimiuibus uullis ut reges." Am. 
 Mar. 28, 5, 14. 
 
 i 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 449 
 
 ously the personality of the priest, we may find a 
 clear and definite summary of his functions in the 
 account of Tacitus, who tells us that a public priest 
 casts the lots; accompanies the progress of a god- 
 dess; has charge of the sacred things — effigfies et 
 signa ; is present at the great assemblies of the peo- 
 ple, commanding silence and invoking divine protec- 
 tion ; and, when sentence has been pronounced upon 
 criminals, is entrusted with execution of the sentence.^ 
 In heathen Scandinavia it is a positive principle that 
 all details of worship are closely connected with the 
 administration of affairs in general, and testify to 
 a union of church and state .2 The king is high 
 priest ; and where a " jarl " acts as viceroy, he per- 
 forms the king's duty at sacrifice and banquet. In 
 Iceland, the judicial districts were each under control 
 of an officer who was at once judge and priest ; and 
 Maurer seems to assume that this custom was com- 
 mon to all Germanic races.^ The place of justice, of 
 oath and trial and lawsuit, was the place of prayer 
 and sacrifice. It was also, in all probability, a place 
 of trade, as is proved by the history of many a holy 
 resort which develops into a centre of trade, the 
 capital city of the land. Trade and justice demand 
 peace ; and peace was only possible under the awful 
 sanctions of a present god. 
 
 Little information reaches us in regard to the dress 
 and habits of a Germanic priest. Beda says that 
 Anglo-Saxon priests bore no weapons and rode upon 
 mares, which as late as Chaucer's time was deemed 
 a disreputable mount.* It is probable that the official 
 
 1 Qerm. X., XL, XL., etc. 
 « Belc. a. None. St. IL 210. 
 
 2 Petersen, p. 1 fif. 
 *D.M.75; R.A.mS. 
 
 I\ 
 
 H 
 
450 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 \\ 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 robe of a priest was white,i and we hear of Gothic 
 priests "with hats," in distinction to the ordinary 
 freemen with flowing locks. Striking is the costume 
 of the Cimbrian sibyls, — gray-haired women dressed 
 in white, with red over-garment and metallic girdle, 
 but bare of foot. They cut the throats of the cap- 
 tives, and let the blood flow into a brazen kettle, — 
 evidently priestly functions ; while the wise-woman, 
 of whom much has already been said,^ was doubtless 
 held in reverence little inferior to that felt towards 
 the priests themselves. 
 
 Conjecture and uncertainty surround our efforts 
 to discover the details of private or public rite con- 
 ducted by these priests, and we must content our- 
 selves with what we know of their ceremony as a 
 whole. To us, perhaps, the simplest form of worship 
 is adoration ; but already in this " adoration " we have 
 the notion of prayer and of the movement of the lips. 
 Prayer, a crude desire for good to the person who is 
 praying, may be attributed in some form to primitive 
 races ; but it is not the initial act of religious ceremony. . 
 Grimm distinguishes three periods of worship; the 
 first knew only sacrifice, the second combined sacrifice 
 and prayer, the third had prayer alone.^ But Tylor, 
 who remarks that even the rude charm is really a 
 prayer, seems to reject this classification ; ^ and we 
 may allow some form of prayer in the rudest cult. 
 Prayer was undoubtedly a matter of bended knee, 
 crossed hands, and uplifted eye. Tacitus tells us 
 
 1 D. M. m. 39. 
 
 2 Above, p. 141. See also Caesar B. G. I. 50. 
 
 8 J. Grimm, iiber das Gebet, Kl. Schr. II. 460. 
 ^ P. C. II. 364, 373 f. 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 451 
 
 that the priest who cast lots glanced towards heaven 
 as he took up the kevils ; ^ while from other sources 
 and survivals it has been surmised that the German 
 looked in supplication towards the north as the home 
 of his gods. As to the words or form, it is signif- 
 icant that Old Germanic poetry, while it contains 
 plenty of greeting and invocation, does not preserve 
 us a single prayer ; and it is supposed by Meyer that 
 this omission is made purposely .^ 
 
 But the simplest form of worship is not a definite 
 prayer, as we understand the word — a desire for good 
 expressed to a power capable of granting what we 
 wish. The primitive act is prostration as if before an 
 earthly king, the sign of surrender and absolute sub- 
 mission.3 To fling one's self on the ground, or to bow 
 neck or head, expresses the elementary act of relig- 
 ion. But after submission comes tribute, and indeed 
 this is the main fact which proved submission, just as 
 prostration symbolized it. Tribute to a heavenly 
 power, whether conceived as ancestor or as personal 
 power of nature, took a form which we call sacrifice. 
 Of this presently. 
 
 Solemn chant and hymn, with dance, are among 
 the earliest symbolic acts of worship. Scherer in his 
 Poetik is at considerable pains to show why men 
 should have hit upon these expressions of emotion, 
 and sees erotic excitement as one of the leading 
 causes.^ Devil-dancers and medicine-men testify to 
 
 a ^^^^' ^' ^ ^' ^' ^®y®^' Altgerm. Poesie, p. 389. 
 
 « We have many of these symbolic motions in the submission of 
 mediaeval vassals to their masters. Pretty is the passage in the Anglo- 
 Saxon Wanderer, when the exile dreams he is once more laying his 
 head between his master's hands, and on his knee, and is " clipped " 
 and kissed. 4 Poetik, Berlin, 1888. 
 
 I 
 
452 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 il 
 
 the connection of dancing with religious excitement ; 
 and we may imagine that the pleasure of muscular 
 exertion, analogous to the delights of feast and revel, 
 was once thought to be shared by the spirits and the 
 gods themselves. Dancing was a common occurrence 
 in the rites of field and harvest. About the last load 
 of grain, or the figure set up in the yard, the peasants 
 form a ring and dance.i Dancing on and by the an- 
 cestral graves has been mentioned already ,2 and the 
 village dance-place, undoubtedly a survival of the 
 older place of sacrifice, is in some places still con- 
 secrated with great pomp and ceremony .3 Even the 
 Christian church took over from heathendom this 
 custom of dancing as a part of religious ceremony, 
 and it would seem that the councils were forced to 
 take measures against the abuse ; ^ so firmly was the 
 practice fixed in popular tradition, that we hear of 
 nuns dancing in a church — this in the eighth and 
 ninth centuries — and of repeated rebukes from the 
 clergy.5 The word Idc means in Anglo-Saxon both 
 a religious ceremony and a game or play, a dance 
 or " leaping " ; the second syllable of " wedlock " is 
 the same word, and points to a religious ceremony. 
 Altogether, we may be sure of the great importance of 
 dancing in the ceremonies of our heathen forefathers. 
 Undoubtedly, however, sacrifice was the central 
 fact, and Grimm remarks that many of the words 
 used for prayer go back to the notion of an offering.^ 
 Symbolic acts such as the already-mentioned prostra- 
 tion in the grove of the Semnones, are, of course, 
 
 1 Pfannenschmidt, pp. 38, 99. 2 ibid. 166. 8 n,id. 286 f. 
 
 * Probably in the Council of 742, held under Boniface. 
 
 6 Pfannenschmidt, p. 489 f. 6 Ueber das Gebet, Kl. Schr. II. 461. 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 453 
 
 ancient enough; and we know that in Scandinavia 
 men bowed before the images on ordinary occasions, 
 but in formal prayer threw themselves down and 
 prayed in the dust. Still, all this was only an out- 
 ward flourish of the sacrifice. Religion was cere- 
 monial and a bargain ; the gods were not thought to 
 give blessings pour les beaux yeux of their worshippers. 
 We have all grades of importance in the nature of 
 the offering, from a simple gift of milk or flesh or 
 grain carried out to a grave, or set in the corner of 
 the house, up to the sacrifice of human beings. The 
 German word for offering, and that for sacrifice, have 
 disappeared : both expressions are now of Latin ori- 
 gin.i We may suppose that there were several words 
 corresponding to the several kinds of offering, since 
 we know that there was, in the first place, food 
 given directly to the spirits of the dead, and that 
 there was food or drink set out for the spirits 
 connected with one of the elements. Out of this 
 simple notion may grow an elaborate cult, such as 
 the one found on the island of Rugen and described 
 —perhaps seen 2— by Saxo Grammaticus. The rites 
 are Slavonic, but are probably not very different from 
 the Germanic fashion. On the northernmost cliff 
 of the island, with three sides of rock falling sheer to 
 the sea, the fourth side an artificial barrier, lay the 
 sanctuary. It was a wooden temple with double en- 
 closure. Within was an enormous image which had 
 four heads and was invested with a sword. In its 
 right hand it held a horn made of different metals, 
 
 A^J^^^T^lf'''' ""' ^^''' ^'^^ ^^''^^' «^^ Skeat. 5.r., and Sweet in 
 •^ngiia,, ill. 156. 
 
 2 Lippert, Relig. d. eur. Cult. p. 92 ; Saxo, XIV. H. 319. 
 
454 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 455 
 
 which the priest annually filled with wine, wherein 
 he read the prosperity of the coming year. The cult 
 was very simple. After harvest of each year, all 
 people of the island came together at this temple, 
 sacrificed certain animals, and celebrated a great 
 feast. Before this, however, the priest was expected 
 to sweep out the precincts of the temple with a sacred 
 broom, taking care not to breathe while within, but 
 running outside as often as he was forced to draw fresh 
 breath. On the day of the feast, the horn of wine is 
 examined, and emptied at the feet of the image ; new 
 wine is then poured into the vessel, while the priest 
 drinks to the god. A great cake is laid upon the 
 altar, which must vanish before another year. Prayei^ 
 are made for a good crop, and then the priest dis- 
 misses the people to their feast. All this is merely 
 an expansion of the primitive and simple rites of 
 element and spirit cult. 
 
 The libation is a detached ceremony of these early 
 rites, with evident origin in the worship of the dead. 
 The early missionaries speak of a drink-offering (dia- 
 holi in amorem vinum hibere) which they met in 
 heathen ceremonies ; in simplest form it is the minne- 
 drink to a dead relative and so ranging up to the 
 Odin^s minne itself. An interesting passage in the 
 life of St. Columbanus by Jonas Bobbiensis, early 
 in the seventh century, tells of a group of Suevi 
 gathered about an immense vessel full of beer, with 
 which they were about to sacrifice Qitare) to their 
 god Mercury, whom they called Wodan. The vessel 
 was probably an "offering kettle," and the rites were 
 unmixed with severer features, — merely a libation.^ 
 
 1 Grimm, i). 3f.46,51. 
 
 The saint blew (literally) the cask to pieces. Of 
 course, all this holy fervor did not drive the drink- 
 offering into absolute disuse; there came the usual 
 substitution of saints for heathen gods in the matter 
 of libation, the drinking of St. John's or St. Ger- 
 trude's minne in a Christian church, as well as the 
 survival in social customs, the loving-cup and the 
 toast. 
 
 Mention is frequently made of milk, honey, fruit, 
 even flowers, as offering in family worship. Yet it is 
 probable that most of these offerings are compro- 
 mises ; they represent ancient rites of a far sterner 
 character, and the blood of a victim slain upon the 
 tomb. Heathen Germans of the early historical 
 period had a few of these compromises, concessions 
 to advancing culture ; the Indiculus forbids, among 
 other things, the baking of cake and bread in form of 
 some animal — doubtless the beast ordinarily sacri- 
 ficed to the god in question. In a Norse saga we 
 find this mentioned as a part of formal worship : men 
 " baked images of the gods ; " i and there are many 
 survivals known to students of folk-lore as well as to 
 the youthful purchaser of a gingerbread horse. Other 
 compromises for ancient sacrifices are the usages of 
 field and harvest to which we have frequently 
 referred. Reapers leave a few stalks of grain stand- 
 ing in the field and still declare that it is for Wode 
 or some other disguised deity of old ; while the 
 Holstem peasant will not pick the last half-dozen 
 apples from his tree.^ 
 
 The sacrifice of animals themselves may have been 
 at one time a compromise for more horrid rites, but 
 
 1 Frithio/s. and D. M. 51. a />. jf, 47, 
 
 I 
 
456 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 457 
 
 this is to consider too curiously for our purposes. In 
 animal sacrifice, blood plays its great part ; for it has 
 always been matter of popular belief that the gods 
 hold with Mephistopheles : — 
 
 Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft ; 
 
 and the shade of an ancestor, the spirits of the dead, 
 are thought to love nothing so much as the warm, 
 red sap of life. Blood was the original savor and 
 charm of sacrifice, the most grateful part of the 
 offering. 
 
 The sacrifice of animals was conducted with de- 
 liberate pomp. Horns of the victim were gilded, 
 and garlands were hung about its neck and " silken 
 flanks." It was led thrice about the altar or else about 
 the whole assembly; and was killed by the altar- 
 stone amid song and dance of the worshippers, who 
 were themselves decked out in festal array. The 
 blood was caught in vessels or in a pit, and with this 
 blood priests smeared sacred trees, altar and walls 
 of the holy place, and sprinkled the assembled multi- 
 tude. Entrails, heart, liver, lungs, were devoted to 
 the gods ; the rest was devoured by the people.^ The 
 cost of such a sacrifice was defrayed out of public 
 funds, and was a state affair. Fire played its part, 
 as usual, in ceremonial as well as practical purpose ; 
 and we may fancy that natural desire would prompt 
 the association of a liberal drink-offering. 
 
 Sacrifice differed according to its purpose and 
 occasion. It might be a matter of joy, revel, and 
 feasting, or it might be the sterner rite to expiate a 
 sin or avert some pestilence ; in the former case, deity 
 
 A Pf annenschmid, p. 38 f . 
 
 would be an honored guest, but in the latter, the 
 god would appear as an angry and exacting master. 
 The latter would be extraordinary; the former a 
 matter of regular recurrence, like the festal dates of 
 Midsummer, Easter, and Yule, or the more frequent 
 celebration of full or new moon. Feasts of this sort 
 are to the present day bound up with religion ; we 
 hold them in our houses, and leave the church to 
 provide for more purely devotional ceremonies.^ 
 
 The favorite animal for sacrifice seems to have 
 been the horse, though ox, boar, and ram, were often 
 used; 2 and the cock must have played a brave part.3 
 Color was of great importance, and the male sex was 
 alone accepted. White horses, white cattle, were 
 special favorites ; and a host of cases could be cited 
 where folk-lore has preserved this prejudice for the 
 white.4 On the other hand, black animals — without 
 speck of other color — were also chosen for sacrifice, 
 and in witchcraft, residuary legatee of much old 
 sacrifice-lore, black cats, cocks, and so on, are particu- 
 larly popular. But the horse was prime favorite for 
 sacrifice.^ In the famous passage of Tacitus ^ which 
 describes a battle between two German tribes for the 
 possession of a salt-spring, we are told that the victors 
 "had dedicated their opponents to Mars and Mercury ; 7 
 and in accordance with this vow, horses, men, all that 
 
 1 The councils forbade '* convivia in ecclesia preparare." See Pfan- 
 nenschmid, p. 311. 
 
 2 D M. 40 ff. 8 Hehn. 271 f . See, too, a host of legends. 
 *K c ^Y^,.«^^°^i^ed this peculiarity at some length in a paper "On 
 the Symbolic Use of the Colors White and Black in Germanic Tradi- 
 tion^ Haver/ord College Studies, I. Philadelphia, 1889. See also Sim- 
 rock, Mythol. 610 f . 
 
 « See above, p. 40. 6 Ann. XIII. 57. 
 
 All prisoners were to be sacrificed to Tius and Woden. 
 
458 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 the conquered possessed, were given to destruction." 
 Here we have a sacrifice in the grand style ; while 
 "horses and men" has the true nomadic ring. A 
 valued article of food, the horse must be a gracious 
 offering to the gods, and was held as sacred among 
 the Germans as it had been among the inhabitants of 
 ancient Persia. Its use for sacrifice and for divina- 
 tions continued down to modern times, witness two 
 striking survivals, — one from Denmark, and one 
 from Switzerland. In Thiele's Folk-Tales of Den- 
 mark,i we are told of a peasant who has a changeling 
 foisted upon him, and cannot tell his own baby from 
 the intruder. He takes a wild colt, and lays before 
 it on the ground the two children in question. Look- 
 ing at one child, the horse is fain to stroke it and 
 remains very quiet; looking at the other, it rages 
 and tries to trample the changeling to death. This 
 is exactly in line with the statement of Tacitus ^ that 
 the horse was used for divination, and that particular 
 attention was paid to his neighings ; while yet an- 
 other parallel to the Danish anecdote is a ceremony 
 of Slavonic worship practised on the island of Riigen 
 nearly a thousand years ago, in which white horses 
 sacred to the god Svantohvit were used as oracles 
 after the following fashion. Before the temple was 
 laid a triple row of lances, and it was noted whether 
 the sacred horse first crossed the line with his left 
 or his right foot.^ The second survival comes from 
 Switzerland.* In 1815, a peasant girl had St. Vitus' 
 dance and, despite all ordinary remedies, failed to im- 
 
 1 Danmarks Folkesagn, II. 276. 2 Qerm. X. 
 8 See Lippert, Rel. d. eiir. Cult. p. 99. 
 * H. Runge in Zst.f. Mythol. IV. 5. 
 
 i i 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 459 
 
 prove under treatment. At last, the parents took a 
 horse, burned a quantity of straw which was fastened 
 to its neck, and then buried the horse alive in a deep 
 pit along with a number of household implements. 
 This was expected to cure the girl, no matter how 
 desperate her case ; it was a last appeal. A more 
 agreeable form of this cult, however, was the sacri- 
 ficial banquet, a highly popular festivity; as result 
 the eatmg of horse-flesh was sign of heathendom! 
 and remains taboo down to the present. Heathen 
 Swedes were called "horse-eaters" by their con 
 %^rted brethren.! Heads of horees and other sacrifi- 
 cial beasts, often the hides as well, were hung on 
 trees as an offering to the gods.^ 
 
 But it was not only horses that figured in the Tac- 
 itean account ; men were included, as they were in 
 all highly important sacrificial rites. Here, indeed 
 we enter the chamber of horrors in ethnology • for 
 human sacrifice, to quote the words of Victor Hehn 
 
 "peers uncannily from the dark past of every Arvan 
 race. 3 ^ „ff^^ ^j^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^ ^ y^ 
 
 outcome of the doctrine of sacrifice ; but the anthro- 
 pologists tell us that the custom opens the door upon 
 a passage which leads back to cannibalism itself. 
 Originally a simple matter of give and take, sacrifice 
 became later an act of propitiation or thanksgiving, 
 with some faint ethical notions, perverted enough, 
 shimmering about it. The Germans appear in historv 
 with sufficiently marked love of human sacrifice - 
 witness the Cimbrians in Italy, the wholesale sacrifices 
 among warring German tribes, and the direct testi- 
 
 if I 
 
 I 
 
460 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 mony of Tacitus, who gives us specific cases and a 
 general summary. Of these instances, besides some 
 already given, we may note the visit of German icus 
 to the battle-field where Varus had been routed with 
 his legions.^ "There lay broken weapons, limbs of 
 horses; on tree-trunks hung the heads. In neigh- 
 boring groves were the barbarian altars whereon they 
 had sacrificed the tribunes and centurions of the first 
 rank ; " while prisoners who had escaped the fate of 
 that terrible day point out to Germanicus how many 
 gallows were set up for the prisoners, and how many 
 pits had been prepared. These pits were probably 
 places in which the captives were buried alive. In 
 the Crermania,^ Tacitus makes some general state- 
 ments, and tells us that on " certain occasions " ^ 
 human victims are offered to " Mercury," while 
 "Mars" and "Hercules" must content themselves 
 with animals ; and in the passage quoted above, he 
 speaks with some abhorrence of the bloody * and 
 barbarous rites of the grove of the Semnones. A 
 chain of evidence reaches from Tacitus down to the 
 borders of the middle ages. In the fifth century, a 
 king of the Goths, attacking Italy, vows, if he shall 
 be favored with victory, to offer the conquered Chris- 
 tians to his god. Jordanis, in his history of the 
 Goths,^ after saying that the race was so famous, men 
 actually believed the god Mars to have been born 
 among them, narrates concerning the worship of this 
 deity that prisoners of war were sacrificed to him " in 
 the belief that one who disposes the fortune of war 
 ought to be propitiated by human blood." Moreover, 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 461 
 
 1 Ann. I. 61. 2 ix., XXXIX. 
 
 * " cresoqiie publiee liomine." 
 
 8 Certis diebns. 
 6 Cap. V. 
 
 to this " Mars " men promised a part of the booty, 
 and captured weapons were hung upon trees in his 
 honor. Procopius says that the Franks, in the year 
 539, after they had crossed the Po in their invasion 
 of Italy, slew the women and children of the Goths 
 and hurled their bodies into the river as first offer- 
 ings of the war. " For," says Procopius, in pious and 
 patriotic horror, "though these barbarians have be- 
 come Christians, they still keep up many of their 
 heathen customs, such as human sacrifice and other 
 horrible offerings. . . ." ^ The Saxons, says the 
 Roman writer Sidonius Apollinaris,^ when they were 
 about to leave the coast of Gaul and sail for home, 
 sacrificed the tenth part of their captives, — with tor- 
 ture; and this is confirmed by later accounts. We 
 have already noted a law of the heathen Frisians that 
 whoso broke into a fane or sacred place should be 
 sacrificed to the gods whose temples (templa) he had 
 violated.^ Dietmar of Merseburg relates that every 
 ninth year the Danes celebrated a great festival at 
 Lethra, their chief city, early in January, and sacri- 
 ficed ninety-nine men and as many horses, — the 
 "equi, viri," of Tacitus once more. Adam of Bremen 
 tells of the sacrifice of men made at Upsala in Sweden, 
 and of the corpses hung up in the sacred grove.'* 
 
 However, on occasion, "the dearest" could mean 
 more than any of these things. In times of great dis- 
 tress, private or general, in sickness, danger, famine, 
 pestilence, the alarm might rise to a point where no 
 alien sacrifice could measure the height of calamity, 
 
 1 Procop. d. bell. Goth. II. 25. 2 yill. 6. 
 
 8 Lex Fris. add. sap. tit. 12. Other cases, Richthofen, II. 454 f. 
 
 * D. M. 39 ft. ; Adam Br. IV. 27. 
 
 U 
 
462 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 463 
 
 and some " dearest " thing of family or race must be 
 offered to the god. Dearest of the dearest was the 
 king. In olden times the sacrifice of the first-born 
 seems to have been more or less common ; and sur- 
 vivals meet us in Scandinavian legend, where the old 
 ferocity lingered longest. Kings offer their sons. A 
 certain monarch, in order to secure length of days, 
 sacrifices one after another his nine sons to Odin.i 
 In a time of famine, the Swedes sacrificed oxen the 
 first year, without relief ; then they took men ; but 
 the third year bringing no help, they offered up their 
 king, D5maldi. In the Eervararsaga ^ we are told thq 
 following story of the brave but evil-minded Heid- 
 rek: "In a year of famine, the wise men, after they 
 had made a sacrifice, said that the noblest child in 
 the land would have to be offered. Heidrek prom- 
 ised to give his son on condition that every alternate 
 man in the whole population should swear obedience 
 to him ; but with this great army he attacked King 
 Harek and offered him and his men to Odin." To 
 be sure, this was niddingsvcerJc, clear treason; but 
 the gods were apparently satisfied. P. E. Miiller, 
 mentioning the story that King Hakon offered up 
 his son, refers to a number of similar cases.^ We 
 have elsewhere occasion to note the custom of sacri- 
 fice at funerals,* — slave, subject, wife, and friend. 
 
 The usual human sacrifice, however, was of cap- 
 tives, criminals, or slaves. The slaves who are em- 
 
 1 See also Ynglingatal, in C. P. B. I. 247; Tylor, P. C. II. 403. 
 
 2 P. E. MuUer, Sagabibliothek, II. 559 f . « Sagabibliothek, III. 93. 
 * See p. 319 f . The sacrifice of Odin " himself to himself " is usually 
 
 put under this head ; but, in spite of a writer in P. B. Beitr. Vol. XV., 
 I think the arguments of Bugge convincing to the extent of regarding 
 this episode as an imitation of the Christian account of the crucifixion. 
 
 
 ployed about the grove of Nerthus, Tacitus reminds 
 us, are drowned in the lake ; and the Roman's reason 
 of secrecy is quite fanciful. It was probably an 
 ordinary sacrifice. In the same way, when Alaric 
 died and was buried in the Italian river-bed, such 
 slaves as did the work were killed.^ The execution 
 of a criminal was originally a sacrifice to the god 
 whose peculiar cult had been offended by the crime 
 in question. Boundaries, as we have seen, were 
 sacred places ; and thither criminals were brought for 
 execution.2 
 
 Everywhere survivals meet us based on the notion 
 that a human life must be sacrificed at the beginning 
 of any important piece of work. We have seen what 
 the Franks, converted as they were, thought neces- 
 sary before they crossed the Po in their invasion of 
 Italy. The Vikings of Scandinavia, when they 
 launched a new ship, would bind a victim to the 
 "rollers" on which the vessel slipped into the sea, and 
 thus redden the keel with sacrificial blood.^ That 
 the doctrine of souls and manes-cult generally played 
 its part in many of these rites, is quite beyond ques- 
 tion. Lippert relates ^ the story of a king of Siam 
 who had built a new gate. He chose three men, set 
 before them a sumptuous meal, gave them peculiar 
 instructions about their ghostly watch by the gate, 
 and forthwith had them beheaded and walled into 
 the new structure.^ A modern shudder is all very 
 
 1 Jordan. 29; and Hehn, p. 443. 
 
 Cllw'vw*"'" ^''"'"-'•<"'' C- P- B. I. «0, ref. II. 349. See word in 
 l^leasby-Vigfusson Lex. < O K K p 457 
 
 secon^dlir T^'T'^' '^^^"^^ ^- ^- '• ^^ '• *>"»' note 1. I quote the 
 second ed., London, 1873. 
 
464 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 
 well ; but in 1843 when a new bridge was to be built 
 at Halle, the good folk vainly insisted that a child 
 ought to be walled into it in order to insure good 
 luck.^ Legends are told of children who were thus 
 sacrificed; and we hear of music to drown their 
 cries, and caresses to soothe them in their last 
 moments, that their angry spirits might not harbor 
 spite against the survivors. 
 
 The horror of these things shades away, under 
 Christian influence, into many a harmless supersti- 
 tion ; 2 a lamb is built into the altar of a Danish 
 church, a chicken is forced to run first over a new 
 bridge and is then killed, and even in our own day 
 it is best to send cat or dog into one's new house, 
 before a member of the family enter. A gingerbread 
 horse, eaten at a given time, replaces the sacrifice ; 
 and even the harmless bottle of champagne broken 
 over the bow of a new-launched ship is not without 
 relation to that victim once bound to the rollers of 
 a Viking launch. 
 
 Some account of the details of human sacrifice is 
 preserved to us from Scandinavian heathendom. Ari, 
 born in 1067, was as near to the old Scandinavian 
 rites as Beda was to the Anglo-Saxon,^ — about 
 seventy years from the arrival of the first Christian 
 missionary. The altar, he tells us, was of stone, and 
 had to be kept red and gleaming with sacrificial 
 blood. "There is still to be seen the doom-ring 
 wherein men were doomed to sacrifice. Inside the 
 ring stands Thor's stone whereon those men who 
 
 1 D. M. 956. 2 Ibid. 956 ff. ; Simrock, Mythol. 508. 
 
 8 This remark, and the quotation, are taken from C. P. B. I. 403. 
 See also Petersen, 26 ff . 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 465 
 
 were kept for the sacrifice had their backs broken, 
 and the blood is still to be seen in the stone." The 
 blood was caught in kettles, and in old times may 
 have been mixed with the beer or other drink of the 
 assembly ; sometimes it was baked in bread or cakes. 
 The " kettles " were also used for boiling the flesh 
 of cattle and similar offerings ; and Grimm mentions 
 the witches' kettle of later times. A homely super- 
 stition makes such a witches' kettle out of that re- 
 flection of a fire or a light which one sees through 
 the window : — 
 
 Under the tree, 
 When fire out doors burns merrily, 
 There the witches are making tea.^ 
 
 Finally, — putting aside the hideous hints of can- 
 nibalism which ethnology thrusts upon us, — we must 
 assume that the modern banquet, dinner, collation, 
 whatever savor of food or drink is deemed indispen- 
 sable for the beginning of any scheme, the welcome 
 or despatching of any great personage, the celebra- 
 tion of any event, — all go back to the sacrificial feast. 
 A fair measure of " heathendom " lurks in everybody, 
 — not to speak of certain other instincts familiar to 
 the savage mind. 
 
 Such were the gifts and fees which immortals had 
 of man ; in return they were expected to give him 
 not only present help, but counsel and warning for 
 the future, and this in oracular answer to his query. 
 Much has been said already, in an incidental fashion, 
 of the heathen ways of divination and auguries; a 
 few words must be added, in this place, with regard 
 
 1 Whittier, Snowbound. 
 
 i\ 
 
466 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 467 
 
 ^1 
 1^ 
 
 to the distinctly religious ceremony. Casting lots 
 was an appeal to the gods, and was carried into the 
 daily round of life, being as applicable to the merest 
 domestic details as to the greater problems. As re- 
 gards the latter, tradition tells us that our forefathers 
 in their German home cast lots to see what part of 
 the crowded population should emigrate to Britain. 
 Says one of them : — 
 
 In our fatherland 
 
 are curious customs. 
 
 Every fifteen years 
 
 is the folk assembled, . . . 
 
 and lots are thrown then. 
 
 On whom they fall 
 
 he shall fare from the land. 
 
 Five shall linger ; 
 
 the sixth shall leave, 
 
 out from his kin 
 
 to a land he kens not.i 
 
 Further back in the history of our race, we meet an 
 authentic instance of the ceremony, preserved by the 
 pen of Caesar. While Ariovistus and his army lay in 
 camp, Caesar sent to him certain envoys, C. Valerius 
 Procillus and M. Mettius, to learn his intentions. 
 But as they entered the camp of the German leader, 
 he called out before all his host, and asked what 
 the strangers had in view, — if they were come to 
 spy ? Scarcely had they begun to answer, when he 
 ordered them to be flung in chains. After this, Csesar 
 offered battle daily, but Ariovistus would not respond 
 except by skirmishes. Asking certain German pris- 
 oners the cause of this delay, Caesar was told that the 
 
 1 Layamon's Brut, Ms. Cot. Cal. 13, 654 fif. 
 
 women had declared, as result of the lots and divina- 
 tion, that if Ariovistus hoped for victory he must not 
 give battle before the new moon. Caesar forced a bat- 
 tle, and won it. The envoy Procillus, whom the Ger- 
 mans were carrying away in their flight, broke from 
 his captors, and meeting Caesar, told of a perilous 
 sojourn in the barbarian camp. Thrice the lots had 
 been cast in his presence to determine whether he 
 should be put to death by fire, or kept until another 
 occasion ; and each time the lots were in his favor.i 
 It is important to note that here, as among the Cim- 
 brians, women — matresfamilias — determine and an- 
 nounce the decree of fate. 
 
 Most valuable is the information given us by Tac- 
 itus in regard to the process itself. Blocks are cut 
 from the wood of a fruit-bearing tree, — one may 
 think of the beech,^ — marked with certain signs 
 (notce), and scattered at random on a white ^ cloth ; 
 then they are picked up — that is, three of them, one' 
 by one — by the state-priest or by the father of the 
 family, according as the ceremony is public or private, 
 and the marks are interpreted. This interpretation 
 gives a favorable or unfavorable answer to the ques- 
 tion.* Tacitus goes on to say that the noise and 
 flight of birds are used here for divination as in other 
 
 1 Caes. B. G, I. 47-54. The same story is told of S. Willehad, who 
 preached to the heathen Frisians in the eighth century. Lots were 
 cast to decide whether he was to be punished by death or to be set free. 
 On Heligoland, S. WiUebrord had a like experience. Richthofen, Fries, 
 Rechts(jesch. II. 375, 401. 
 
 2 The traditional etymology of *' book " from " beech " has been 
 called m question. See Sievers in Paul's Grdr. I. 241. 
 
 ^ The color is to be noted. 
 
 ^^J^erm. C. 10. Similar rites, partly Christianized, abound in the 
 middle ages. See Richthofen, Fries. Rechtsges. II. 451. 
 
468 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 countries ; but peculiar to Germany is the custom of 
 divining by means of horses, which are kept at public 
 cost in the groves, and must be of snow-white color 
 as well as spared from all ordinary work. When 
 they draw the sacred chariot, either the king or the 
 prince, along with the priest, accompanies them and 
 marks the manner of their neighings. As yet another 
 means of divination, the duel is mentioned which 
 serves as a sign of the outcome of battle.^ 
 
 Returning to the bits of wood and the white cloth, 
 we ask whether these mysterious marks (notce) were, 
 as scholars have assumed, the runes of which we hear 
 and see so much in later times. Wimmer, in his 
 great work on runes,^ has shown that we have to deal 
 with an imported alphabet, based on the Latin of the 
 empire, and introduced into Germany about the end 
 of the second century of our era. This would ex- 
 clude the time of which Tacitus is writing. But it 
 is quite possible that certain signs were in vogue 
 among the Germans, imported from Roman or other 
 neighbors and used purely for these purposes of divina- 
 tion ; possible, too, that certain originally Germanic 
 signs, rude pictures, or what not, which were called 
 runes, were afterwards discarded for the wonderful 
 Roman symbols. Indeed, as Sievers says,^ it is quite 
 possible that the Roman alphabet was used in this 
 hieratic fashion as early as the time of Tacitus. 
 Roman coins were familiar enough ; and it is signifi- 
 cant that " rune *' means the same as " mystery." 
 
 The runes were cut — " written " — in the wood, 
 
 1 See above, p. 184. 
 
 2 The German edition, 1887, contains the author's latest corrections. 
 8 Paul's Grdr. I. 239. 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 
 
 469 
 
 and in the first instance have a magic signification. 
 We are told that the Alans used twigs which they 
 marked with incantations ; ^ and ample evidence is 
 forthcoming for Germanic tribes, especially in Scan- 
 dinavia. Mullenhoff ^ explained the process of divi- 
 nation by the fact that these runes were symbols of 
 initial sounds, and it was the business of the priest 
 to make out of his runes an alliterating verse which 
 gave answer to the question of the hour. An Anglo- 
 Saxon gloss translates sortilegus by tanUyta? where 
 tan is, of course, the " twig " of wood which Tacitus 
 describes. But as the use of runes increased, they 
 were carved on objects with the idea of an enduring 
 magic, as upon the sword which should thus make 
 the wound it gave a mortal one ; or in different pur- 
 pose, another inscription on a hostile sword would 
 cause it to lose all virtue of destruction.^ 
 
 These magic processes were forbidden by the church, 
 and, coming thus under ban, laid the foundations 
 of witchcraft and the black art generally. Enchanted 
 cup and potion played a great part. It is significant 
 that when ^Ifric translates portions of the Bible into 
 his native tongue, he omits that verse in the story of 
 Joseph which points to divination on the part of the 
 hero.^ Sometimes, however, the church allowed a 
 harmless substitution, as when a leechdom directs the 
 peasant how to cure his cattle. " Take two four-edged 
 
 1 Amm. Marc. 31, 2. 
 
 2 In Zur Runenlehre, Halle, 1852, by himself and R. v. Liliencron. 
 8 Wright-Wulker, Col. 189. 
 
 See C. P. B. II. 704. For women as workers of runes, see Wacker- 
 nagel-Martin, Ges. deutsch. Lit. 1. 14 and notes. For the whole subject, 
 see Odin's Magic Lay, and Norse literature passim. 
 ^ Genesis, xliv. 4. 
 
 : 
 
Ff 
 
 
 i 
 li 
 
 i. 
 
 \f 
 
 470 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 sticks " — evidently the old rite — " and write on either 
 stick, on each edge, the paternoster to the end. . . . " i 
 Saints' names, as was shown by the charm for barren 
 fields, were used for a similar purpose. Parallel to 
 the course from coaxing processes into modern magic, 
 runs the path by which the old hostile incantation 
 was developed into the dreaded " curse " of mediaeval 
 superstition. A curse which is meant to cut off the 
 sufferer from all joys and privileges of life is pre- 
 served in Norse poetry, where the maiden Gerthr, 
 beloved of Freyr, at first rejects his embassy of love, 
 and is threatened with dire calamities ; if she will not 
 send the wished reply, then may so-and-so happen. 
 Frightened at the sweep of this Ernulphian terror, 
 the maid relents.^ It would be of infinite value to 
 the historian if he could win back the popular litera- 
 ture of England in the time of conversion and the 
 early days of the church. It is recorded of Dunstan 
 that " he loved the vain songs of ancient heathendom, 
 the trifling legends, the funeral chants"; and it is 
 said that he was accused of "sorcery." What we 
 call "sorcery," the charming of person, of weapon, 
 of place, the spell which brought ruin to all that 
 touched the accursed object, — like the famous gold 
 of the Nibelungs, — all this must have lain heavily 
 on Germanic life. In what race has not the same 
 period of development found itself clogged with this 
 weight of superstition ? 
 
 The chant, or singing, which lingers in these 
 names of charm and incantation, is certainly a relic 
 of the old choral ceremony about a heathen altar. 
 Poetry begins as handmaid of religion, and the 
 
 Cockayne, I. 387. 
 
 2 Skirnismdly 25 fif. 
 
 FORM AND CEREMONY 471 
 
 rhythmic element lives yet in our commonest sur- 
 vivals,-as when children determine who shall be 
 the mysterious " It " of a game. So the son^ or 
 even the murmur of sorcery ; so the " backward mut- 
 ter of dissevering power " to undo the operation of 
 magic Itself. If we could only trace aright histori- 
 cal connections, we should find everywhere about 
 us, imbedded in custom or tradition, the shards of 
 our broken heathendom. Of these, the saddest to 
 study are those that come under the head of witch- 
 craft, -a subject that lies quite aside from our pres- 
 ent purposes. ^ 
 
472 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE HIGHER MOOD 
 
 473 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE HIGHER MOOD 
 
 Public and private standard of morals — Ideals of the race — 
 ^Esthetics — Germanic faith — Notions about a future life — Con- 
 clusion. 
 
 Conduct is of prime importance in any modern 
 notion of religion, — that is to say, the conduct of 
 each individual. Early religion looks to the conduct 
 of a tribe or race in its relation to ancestral spirits or 
 protecting gods ; grave and altar must be served after 
 the established form. So, too, the family must, as 
 a family, observe the rites of traditional cult. Stand- 
 ards of conduct for persons would therefore take this 
 collective and formal character, and the ideal virtues 
 of our forefathers must have followed the same broad 
 way. 
 
 To be sure, this statement will not go unchal- 
 lenged. Professor Robertson Smith, in his book on 
 Early Semitic Religion^ assumes not the family, but 
 the kin as social unit, and says that the earliest 
 kin-bond was maternal. Hence was developed the 
 origin of personal ethics ; while, on the other hand, 
 religion itself " arose out of a perception of the rela- 
 
 1 Unfortunately, only a summary can be used here, taken from The 
 Spectator for October 11, 1890. 
 
 tions of the community to its environment animate 
 and inanimate " ; nor was it originally "a trembling 
 worship of dismal and malevolent deities," but rather 
 was addressed to friendly gods. 
 
 However all this may be, a study of Germanic tradi- 
 tions and literature will show us that such scheme of 
 ethics as our ancestors possessed was what we have 
 supposed would naturally result from a state founded 
 on the family basis. Of this foundation we have abun- 
 dant evidence ; and the ethical system is in full har- 
 mony with the constitution of the state. The heroic 
 legends of Germany will help us in this respect; for 
 here shine in a setting of poetry the ideals of the race 
 Itself. Poetry gives us just the necessary mixture of 
 imagination working in lines laid down by the devel- 
 opment of the race, and facts which are taken from 
 the records of its best moments. Hence the ideal 
 virtues in the ideal figures of the song. Such is the 
 view of Uhland in his valuable researches ; i and with 
 this purpose we examine the records. As most con- 
 spicuous among the private virtues we find gener- 
 osity, hospitality,^ and chastity. Chastity is emi- 
 nently an individual virtue ; but a moment's reflec- 
 tion will show that it is absolutely bound up with 
 the prosperity of such a family life as Tacitus 
 describes to us. As the standing reproach of a man 
 IS cowardice, so we find that when women are reviled, 
 like the goddesses in the Lokasenna, it is for unchas- 
 tity. The actual evidence for the virtue of Germanic 
 
 2 f^-f ^^'•- I; 211 ff. may be found a succinct statement of his views. 
 
 accoimtrTf .r^ri'^^5 combined with sense of national honor, see the 
 
 of C ni ^'^^' ""^^ '"^'^'"^ *^ S^^« "P * ^««t at the command 
 
 Of Justmian, and so went to certain ruin. See also Dahn, Urgeschichte 
 d. germ, und rom, Volker, I. 39. ^rgescmcnte 
 
 ri 
 
474 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 women is strong, and has been discussed above ; for 
 manly purity, as well as the innocent frankness which 
 governed the relations of younger men and women, 
 Caesar gives some valuable testimony. Along with 
 this must go the fact that indecency has almost 
 no footing whatever in Germanic literature of the 
 heathen type.^ When obscenities occur, they are put 
 in the mouth of giants, uncouth, raw, and despicable 
 creatures. Some of this freedom from indecency, in- 
 deed, may go to the credit of monkish scribes ; but 
 not all of it. A stern purity, native and rough, is 
 the note of old Germanic song. 
 
 Softness of temper was not a Germanic virtue. 
 Beowulf is extraordinarily mild and patient, as befits 
 a hero-god of such sunny origins ; but much nearer 
 to the Germanic heart was Thor, " impiger, iracun- 
 dus, inexorabilis, acer," with those knuckles whiten- 
 ing as he grasps the hammer in rage, — a touch that 
 mightily pleased Carlyle. We therefore exclude pa- 
 tience from our eulogy, but all the more strenuously 
 may we insist upon Germanic loyalty and faithful- 
 ness. Germanic family-life, as Uhland remarks,^ had 
 two periods. First is the settled or partly settled life 
 described by Tacitus ; the group of buildings by and 
 for themselves, isolated, the abode of a single family 
 or minor clan. Second is the artificial family of the 
 period of conquest, the chieftain and his followers 
 forming a new relation. In both cases, however, loy- 
 alty is the cardinal virtue. We have seen above how 
 stern were the demands upon this loyalty in the case 
 of blood-relationship, and how equally binding was 
 
 1 See Literaturblatt f. germ, und rom, Phil., February, 1891, sp. 47. 
 a KL Schr. I. 214 ff . 
 
 THE HIGHER MOOD 
 
 475 
 
 the obligation when leader and vassal took the place 
 of kin and kin.i Loyalty is the key-note of Germanic 
 life and Germanic virtue ; but it is a collective rather 
 than an individual characteristic, and expresses itself 
 in literature not by sharply drawn men and women, 
 but by types. Not only do we miss the devotion of 
 mediaeval chivalry and the tenderness of modern love, 
 but even the charms of friendship find no room in 
 hearts filled with the obligations of the warrior and 
 the clansman ; Germanic traditions tell us no tale of 
 Orestes and Pylades. So, too, with the other graces 
 of life. The remorseless strain and struggle of that 
 time left little or no leisure, even if they had found 
 the desire, for one to cultivate the sense of beauty 
 or any other of those feelings which we comprehend 
 under the modern name of aesthetics. Crude forms 
 of art, like the paint upon a house or the woven lines 
 of an arm-ring, incipient adornment of person or of 
 weapon, — these the German knew ; but the sense of 
 quiet beauty was foreign to his mind. In his poetry, 
 in those kennings which gave him almost his only 
 chance for description, we get a few glimpses at the 
 nature which surrounded him ; but it is the dash of 
 waves, the hiss of hail and snow upon a wintry ocean, 
 howl of wind and storm, sweep of huge bird of prey 
 hovering " dewy-feathered " in the air and eager for 
 carrion, — battle-pieces, we must call them, but no 
 still-hfe at all. Save in one timid and perhaps inter- 
 polated picture of a sunny landscape, the quiet which 
 reigns in the Germanic description of nature is a 
 quiet of desolation. Such is the powerful passage in 
 
 1 " Die Treue, der Grundtrieb des germanischeu Lebens." Uhland. 
 p. 221. ' 
 
476 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 which Hrothgar describes to Beowulf the haunt of 
 
 Grendel,^ — 
 
 a dismal land, 
 wolf-haunted cliffs and windy headlands, 
 fen-ways fearful, where flows the stream 
 from mountains gliding 'neath gloom of the rocks, 
 underground flood. Not far is it hence, 
 by measure of miles, tliat the mere expands, 
 and o'er it the frost-bound forest hanging, 
 sturdily rooted, o'ershadows the wave. 
 In the dark of night is a dread to see, 
 fire on the waters : no wight so brave 
 of the sons of men who will search that flood I 
 Nay, though the heath-pacer, harried by dogs, 
 the horned stag, this holt should seek, 
 by hounds far driven, — his dear life here, 
 on the brink he yields ere he braves the plunge 
 in those dismal waters ! 
 
 Moreover, the placid beauty of harvest seems to 
 have been as unfamiliar as the fruits which it is 
 meant to bring; "they know," says Tacitus, "as 
 little of the name as of the bounties of Autumn." 
 Vernon Lee, in her Uuphorion,^ points out that this 
 ignoring of autumnal beauty continued through the 
 middle ages, despite their extravagant and ceaseless 
 laud of spring: "Of autumn ... of the standing 
 corn, the ripening fruit of summer, . . . the middle 
 ages seem to know nothing." But we must return 
 to our study of Germanic ethics. 
 
 As we approach modern times, the primitive 
 ideals, while not removed, are changed. The heroic 
 stature is lost, and we begin to meet maxims of 
 prudence, bits of shrewd advice, canny standards of 
 
 1 B^oio. 1357 ff. 
 
 2 I. 119. 
 
 THE HIGHER MOOD 
 
 477 
 
 action where the right is the practical. Even impul- 
 sive Scandinavia shows tliis. Maurer, in his well- 
 known work,^ gives a summary of Norse ethics in the 
 heathen age. He finds on the one hand prudence, 
 shrewdness, every-day wisdom ; on the other, a sense 
 of duty and the necessity of following this line irre- 
 spective of consequences. Maxims of life begin to 
 meet us, even in this period, of a character surpris- 
 ingly like the philosophical wisdom of the middle 
 ages, with its passion for the golden mean. Pru- 
 dence is extolled with the fervor of a Juvenal. 
 Keep the " mean " ; avoid gluttony and drunkenness 
 (a parlous reference) ; trust not in riches ; do not talk 
 with fools ; never confide in women ; ^ and above all, 
 remember that nothing can turn aside the weapon of 
 fate. Vengeance is a religion, and human suffering 
 excites little pity; it was treachery that called for 
 actual disgrace and blame. Cruelty was not so bad 
 if it were only open ; although the fearful scenes at 
 the court of Ermanric, so famous in our old heroic 
 legends, seem to have roused a shudder in all Ger- 
 manic bosoms. The little poem about D^or, our old- 
 est English lyric, speaks of Ermanric's "wolfish" 
 disposition. The sneak, the secret foe, is detestable ; 
 and hidden treachery is crime of crimes. Steal if 
 you can and must; but steal openly. Generosity 
 and hospitality are, of course, cardinal virtues. Most 
 important of all, we must note that these various 
 virtues stand in almost no connection with the re- 
 
 1 Bek. d. Norw. St. II. 148 ff. Gnomic poetry was very popular in 
 Germanic literature, and is evidently based on old traditions. Several 
 poems of the sort are to be found in Norse and Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 '^ Havamdl, 83-89. Mostly, as Meyer remarks (Altgerm. Poesie, 
 p. 44), the Gnomic poetry describes rather than commands. 
 
478 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE HIGHER MOOD 
 
 479 
 
 ligion of the day, which was a matter of ceremony 
 and ritual.^ 
 
 What has been said of Norse ethics will largely 
 apply to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. As time goes 
 on, our laws betray the increase of that sense for 
 practical things and that thrifty independence which 
 have clung to the Englishman everywhere. To mend 
 bridges and roads, to pay taxes, to fight in the 
 militia, to be allowed to rule unimpeded over his 
 private affairs, — this standard of duty develops 
 itself early in English history. For the more per- 
 sonal side of ethics, it is under Christian influences 
 that we get our first full view of the Englishman; 
 nevertheless, if the tender shoot is to be judged by 
 the sturdy tree, the story of such a man as King 
 Alfred is enough to shed back a flood of light and 
 praise upon the earliest growth of English char- 
 acter. 
 
 Aside from ethics proper, there was a decided vein 
 of philosophy in the old Germanic temperament. 
 The German loved to moralize, to point out the 
 ways of fate, to summarize existence ; after his rude 
 fashion he made epigrams, and these strung to- 
 gether in poetical form^ were doubtless a favorite 
 department of his literature. Such a recitation, 
 by some graver minstrel, took the place of a later 
 court-sermon. 
 
 When restraint of human passion, or extraordinary 
 effort of human will, is to be obtained, ethics must 
 
 1 Maurer, II. 188. 
 
 2 With crHical reserve we may consider in this light the so-called 
 " Sermon " of Hrothgar in Beowulf, as well as the poems on ** Man's 
 Fate," ** Man's Gifts," and the like, to be found in Grein's Bibliothek 
 d. Af/s. Poesie. 
 
 lean more or less upon religious sanctions; and on 
 the border-land of cult and myth we find the province 
 of belief in some adjustment of human history, even 
 in some scheme of reward or punishment, expected 
 in a life to come. Much of this belongs to the doc- 
 trine of the soul-land, elsewhere treated.^ It is our 
 place to look at the wider conception of a continued 
 responsibility for acts of this life. The notion of 
 future punishment is nowhere sharply defined; 2 
 gloom and desolation are recognized by our fore- 
 fathers as characteristic of HePs kingdom, but it is 
 no place of torture. Dietrich, indeed, insisted on 
 the Scandinavian water-hell, and based his belief on 
 these lines of the sibyFs prophecy where she sees 
 "a hall ... by the corpse-strand," where poison- 
 drops fall through the roof and the walls are made 
 of serpents' backs; and where she sees, "wading 
 through raging streams treacherous men and murder- 
 ous," and the wolf tearing men asunder. But there 
 are strong reasons against accepting this conclusion. 
 For a general objection, it may be urged that dualism 
 is foreign to the spirit of Germanic heathendom ; and 
 that evil powei-s, as Jacob Grimm remarks, are not 
 classified and set in order against the powers of good. 
 For a specific reason, we may call in question the 
 originality of the quotation just made from the 
 Voluspa. Bugge is by no means alone in his attack, 
 and a defence by Mullenhoff, the strongest of his 
 
 ^ See p. 326 f. 
 
 2 Maurer denies it altogether for Scandinavian heathendom. Bek. d. 
 JVorw. St. II. 74. That "general Germanic belief" in the end of the 
 world by fire, the Muspelli, is now asserted by Bugge to have been 
 imported along with other scraps of the new faith. For the older view, 
 see Mullenhoff, Deutsche Alterthumskunde, V. I. GG f. 
 
480 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 faith, has failed to convince the best critics that in 
 the Voluspa we are dealing with untainted Germanic 
 heathendom. E. H. Meyer in his book on this sub- 
 ject,^ has come to conclusions as fatal as those of 
 Bugge. So we are forced to reject this part of the 
 sibyl's prophecy from our notion of Germanic faith. 
 The make-up of the picture, and the conception of 
 misery as united with darkness, wet, and cold, are 
 undoubtedly genuine; but the moral assumption is 
 not so. 
 
 It is true, however, that our ancestors, like their 
 Aryan kinsmen the world over, believed in an under- 
 world.2 The literal caves of the dead were extended 
 into a figurative kingdom of the dead, the realm of 
 Hel, the " concealing " goddess. Dark, cheerless, cold, 
 this was no place of torture.^ She herself is relentless, 
 and gives up no soul that once enters her domain ; 
 but punishments — and the Germanic mind would 
 have been quick enough to heap them in fullest 
 measure, had they belonged to the conception of the 
 place — are nowhere to be found. So, too, with 
 rewards. Under the stress of Viking life, with its 
 ceaseless brawls and revel, its courage and danger, 
 grew up a belief which has been sung and told into 
 a system, and now stands in most people's eyes as 
 the corner-stone of old Norse faith, — the belief in 
 that Valhalla whither Odin's maidens led the slain, 
 where fight and feast alternated in an agreeable per- 
 spective down the future, and whither no thrall or 
 man of peace might win. In point of fact, much of 
 
 1 Vdluspa, Berlin, 1888. 
 
 2 Schullerus, Zur Kritik d. ValhoUglaubens, P. B. Beitr. XII. 268. 
 « D. M. 667. 
 
 THE HIGHER MOOD 
 
 481 
 
 this amiable belief is of foreign, or at least of very 
 late origin.! xhe oldest lays of the Edda know 
 nothing about it ; the old sagas know nothing about 
 it.2 It is a strange medley, like the life that gave it 
 currency, and was fashioned into its present shape in 
 the ninth or tenth century. The wandering seamen 
 and warriors brought back scraps of foreign lore, 
 incongruous and wonderful bits of legend; as they 
 told their tales, huge temples or churches which 
 they had actually seen, blended in memory with 
 half-understood teachings of the new religion, and 
 all was set in the Norse framework, Norse verse, 
 and Norse manner. One writer goes so far as to 
 say that the Valhalla, a golden hall with count- 
 less doors and stately outline, is a loan from the 
 Revelation of St. John, — is the New Jerusalem 
 in Scandinavian disguise.^ One suggestion, how- 
 ever, made long ago by Wilhelm Miiller,* deserves 
 respectful mention. He regards Valhalla as the type 
 of a palace where earthly kings of that period were 
 wont to dwell, surrounded by their retainers. In 
 thij new Valhalla would be a "magnified and non- 
 natural " Germanic hall, embellished by the dazzled 
 and confused fancy, the half-comprehended world- 
 lore, of the Viking age. 
 
 But let us go back to our primitive German. 
 What faith had he about a hereafter ? Vaguely, — 
 as indeed all his philosophy lacked sharp defini- 
 tions, — the German believed in a future world of 
 
 1 Schullerus and H. Petersen, work quoted, p. 98 f . 
 
 2 Schullerus, p. 241. 
 
 « Schullerus, p. 267. He assumes oral tradition, not book-lore, as 
 source of the borrowing. * System, p. 394, 
 
482 
 
 GERMANIC ORIGINS 
 
 THE HIGHER MOOD 
 
 483 
 
 spirits.^ Of his own doing in that world he had very 
 dim notions ; his care during life was to soothe and 
 coax his future fellow-citizens who had gone before 
 him. Without talent or taste for introspection, he 
 nevertheless began in the earliest moments of awak- 
 ening thought to muse about the issues of life and 
 death. In his rough, blundering way, he doubtless 
 did what De Quincey in a memorable passage de- 
 clares all men must do who think at all about these 
 things, — he must have held "some tranquillizing 
 belief as to the future balances and the hieroglyphic 
 meanings of human suffering." That is all we can 
 say. 
 
 In speaking of Germanic belief, we have already 
 crossed that border which separates the real from the 
 ideal. But further we may not follow our ancestors 
 into the ideal world which every active and aspiring 
 race has fashioned, — the world of poetry and legend 
 and myth. Such a subject demands a volume for 
 itself, and needs to be studied with more than ordi- 
 nary care. So far as explanation and interpretation 
 are concerned, it is easy to make the shattered relics 
 of Germanic myth tell almost any tale we may desire 
 to hear. Inexorable criticism and thorough philo- 
 logical knowledge of this material, joined with the 
 insight, imagination, and wide comparative glances 
 of a master of literary history, are indispensable for 
 the man who at this late hour is fain to tread in the 
 path marked out by Jacob Grimm and almost untrod- 
 den since his day. Myth-mongers there have been 
 in plenty, — men with "interpretations," who will 
 
 1 There iff no doubt of this. See Miillenhoff, Deutsche Alterth. V. 
 1.69. 
 
 tell us that Norse Idun was grass, or hay, or a star, 
 or poetry; but men who sought the heart of Ger- 
 manic myth itself have not appeared, — save one. 
 Irascible, arrogant, Miillenhoff nevertheless redeemed 
 his many faults by dint of labor, strength, and a 
 rugged loyalty to his own ideals. He was of the old 
 breed of scholars; he loved poetry as well as para- 
 digms; and no keener or more loving glance than 
 his ever sought to pierce the mist of our Germanic 
 origins. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adultery, 131, 138 f., 160 f., 169, 184, 
 Africans, 162, 209, ^7. 
 Age, 199 f., 204 f . 
 
 Agriculture, 39 flf., 46 ff., 72. 129 
 410. 
 
 Alamannians, 19, 271, 292. 
 
 Alaric, 7, 321, 463. 
 
 Alboin, 7, 120, 196. 
 
 Alderman, 278 f. 
 
 Alfred, 44, 274, 478. 
 
 Alliteration, 3, 24, 113, 194, 468. 
 
 All-Souls, 6, 356. 
 
 Altar, 441. 
 
 Amazons, 133, 142 f . 
 
 Amber, 11, 18, 84, 214. 
 
 Ancestor-Worship, 137, 169, 171 
 201, 313, 346 ff., 366, 368, 370,' 
 384, 404, 416, 420. 
 
 Angles, 20, 25, 29. 
 
 Ariovistus, 14, 466. 
 
 Arminius, 10, 286. 
 
 Armor, 253. 
 
 Arthur, 190, 325, 380. 
 
 Arval, 354. 
 
 Aryans, 31 ff., 61, 127. 
 
 Assembly, 273, 291 ff., 430. 
 
 Attack, see Tactics. 
 
 Attila, 26, 142, 332 f., 351, 361. 
 
 Baduhenna, 438, 441. 
 
 Balder, 63, 323, 423, 438. 
 
 Banishment, 171 f . 
 
 Barbarism, 46, 80. 
 
 Barrow, 310 f., 317, 348. 
 
 BastarnaB, 12. 
 
 Batavians, 27, 265. 
 
 Bathing, 59, 77 f., 123, 356, 393, 397. 
 
 Bavarians, 19, 271. 
 
 I Beauty, 65 f., 476. 
 Beda, 71, 104, 352. 
 I Beer, 71 f ,, 93, 103, 115, 454. 
 Bees, 43 f. 
 Belgium, 17. 
 Berserker, 230. 
 Blonde, 61 f. 
 Blood, 175, 456. 
 
 Blood-brotherhood, 173 40P 
 Boar, 433. ' " 
 
 Boar's head, 256. 
 
 Boat, see Ship. 
 
 Boniface, 38, 40, 388. 
 
 Booty, 219. 
 
 Boundaries, 54 f., 312, 386, 463. 
 Bower, 96, 99, 102. 
 Bride, see Wife. 
 Brittia, 327. 
 
 Bronze Age, 34, 48, 84, 209, 243. 
 
 308. 
 Burg, 99, 102 f . 
 Burgundians, 19. 
 Burial, 307 ff., 322 f. 
 Burning, 307 ff., 316. 
 Butter, 71. 
 Byrhtnoth, 237 f., 253. 
 
 Caste, 62. 
 Cat, 33, 435. 
 Cattle, 41 f., 207, 223. 
 Cavalry, 254 f . 
 
 Celt, 2 f ., 61, 72, 120, 124, 209, 343 £. 
 Ceorl, 246, 280. 
 Chant, 451, 470. 
 Character, 16, 472 ff. 
 Charlemagne, 28, 83, 126, 136. 
 Charms, 45 f., 350, 369, 373, 376. 
 394, 399, 405 ff., 423, 450, 470. 
 
 485 
 
486 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chastisement, see Punishments. 
 Chastity, 134 f., 159, 473 f. 
 Chatti, 22, 29, 87, 91. 
 Chauci, 22, 27 f., 218, 220. 
 Cheese well, 70, 390. 
 Cherusci, 29, 245, 272. 
 Christianity, 8 if., 17, 20, 133, 283, 
 
 309, 331, 342 f . 
 Christian-Latin Literature, 9 f. 
 Cimbrians, 13, 78, 245, 448. 
 Cities, 90 f . 
 Citizen, 226. 
 Climate, 36, 56 f. 
 Clothing, 78 ff., 449 f. 
 Clouds, 42. 
 Coifi, 443. 
 Cold, 36, 56, 66, 93. 
 Color, 467, 475. 
 Columbanus, 73. 
 Comitatus, 261 ff., 278, 474. 
 Commerce, 11 f., 211 ff., 288, 432, 
 
 449. 
 Complexion, 63 f . 
 Consciousness, 11. 
 Conversion, 17, 19, 342. 
 CorsnsBd, 70, 303. 
 Courage, 58, 138, 227 ff. 
 Cowardice, 239 f . 
 Creed, 336 ff . 
 Cult, 25, 42, 69, 73, 137, 171, 213, 
 
 249, 278, 295, 336 ff., 346, 409, 450, 
 
 477 f. 
 Culture, 32, 34, 205. 
 Culture-hero, 49. 
 Cup, 120. 
 Curse, 470. 
 Cymry, 13. 
 
 Dance, 198, 359, 429, 451 f . 
 
 Danes, 1, 20, 25, 27. 
 
 Day, 293, 413. 
 
 Dead, see Ancestor-Worship. 
 
 Death, 199 ff., 230 f., 305, 329. 
 
 Decoration, 97, 105, 474. 
 
 Democracy, 271, 273, 291 f. 
 
 Deor, 52 f . 
 
 Dice, 123. 
 
 Dis, 370. 
 
 Divination, see Charms and Lots. 
 
 Divorce, 138. 
 
 Dog, 33, 71. 
 
 Dower, 156 f . 
 
 Dream, 122. 
 
 Drinking, 74 ff., 117, 120 f. 
 
 Drusus, 15, 361. 
 
 Dualism, 479. 
 
 Dunstan, 470. 
 
 Earl, 62, 278. 
 
 Earth, 405 ff., 408 f. 
 
 Eclipse, 410. 
 
 Education, 197 f., 227. 
 
 Elves, 37, 374, 378 ff., 382. 
 
 Emotion, 336. 
 
 Engelland, 328. 
 
 Erce, 408. 
 
 Ermanric, 477. 
 
 Ethics, 136, 336, 359, 472 f., 477. 
 
 Exogamy, 145 f. 
 
 Exports, 213 ff . 
 
 Exposure, 187 ff., 325. 
 
 Eyes, 58. 
 
 Falconry, 124. 
 
 Family, 162 ff., 472, passim. 
 
 Fatalism, 235. 
 
 Father, 168 ff., 172, 185 ff. 
 
 Feasts, 66 f., 112 f., 121 ff., 357. 
 
 Ferocity, 180, 230. 
 
 Fetch, 362. 
 
 Feud, 111, 179 ff. 
 
 Finns, 31, 140. 
 
 Fire, 96, 400, 456. 
 
 Flet, 126 f . 
 
 Flyting, 76, 114. 
 
 Folk-Moot, 38, 273, 291 ff., 361. 
 
 Food, 66 ff. 
 
 Forests, 35, 37, 382. 
 
 Fosete, 438 f. 
 
 Founders, 1. 
 
 Fowls, 43. 
 
 Framea, 250 f. 
 
 Franks, 16, 19, 29, 130, 181, 244, 
 
 264, 271, 290, 300, 461. 
 Freedman, 282 f. 
 Freedom, 28, 285. 
 Freeman, 153, 280 f., 301. 
 Freyja, 89, 431, 435. 
 Freyr, 19, 66, 156. 216, 419, 430 ff., 
 
 447. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 487 
 
 Friendship,! 475. 
 Frigg, 435 f . 
 
 Frisians, 19, 25, 27, 68, 185, 297, 330. 
 
 415, 461. 
 Fruits, 51, 67. 
 Funeral, 306 ff., 329 f., 358 f. 
 
 GambUng, 123. 
 
 Games, 123, 198, 331 f., 429. 
 
 Geography, 20 f., 25 f., 30. 
 
 Germania, 20 ff., passim. 
 
 Germanic, 2 ff., 5, passim. 
 Germanicus, 15, 242, 460. 
 Germans, 12, 22 f., 30, 57, 65, pas- 
 sim. 
 Gerthr, 66, 470. 
 Giants, 243, 397, 474. 
 Gifts, 165 ff., 173, 193. 
 Gilpcwide, 76. 
 Gods, 342, 374, 416 ff. 
 Gold, 84 ff., 105, 444. 
 Goldsmith, 210 f . 
 Goths, 19, 64, 131, 197, 201, 203, 296, 
 
 Graves, 107, 149, 313 f., 348, 353, 
 442. 
 
 Gudrun, 55, 302. 
 Guests, 165 f . 
 Gunnar, 231. 
 
 ^e7m„rf, 41, 89, 171, 228, p(M«,m. 
 Wenotheism, 417. 
 
 Heraldry, 252. 
 
 Hercules, 426, 441. 
 
 Herminones, 24. 
 
 Hermunduri, 29. 
 
 Heroic Legend, 5. 10, 20, 278, 473. 
 Heruli, 83. 
 Hessians, 19. 
 
 High-Seat, 106 f., 428. 
 Hilde, 216. 
 
 Hildebrand Lay, 9, 87. 
 
 Hilleviones, 24. 
 
 Hludana, 438. 
 
 Holmgang, 55, 183. 
 
 Honey, 43 f., 175, 190, 455. 
 
 Horse, 40 f., 167, 192, 215, 229, 264. 
 309, 316, 323, 457 f., 468. 
 
 Hospitality, 161 ff., 212, 473. 
 Hostages, 130, 137. 
 House, 92 ff., 313. 
 House-Spirit, 369. 
 Hrotsvith, 133. 
 Humor, 2. 
 Hunting, 124 f . 
 
 Hag, 373 f . 
 
 Hail, 405. 
 
 Hair, 59 ff., 183, 281. 
 
 Hall, 96, 103 ff., 481. 
 
 Hammer, 166, 254. 
 
 Hanging, 239 f . 
 
 Healing, 224, 423. 
 
 •* Heathenship," 384, 400. 
 Heimdall, 62, 429. 
 Hel, 142, 305, 326, 353. 
 Helgi and Sigrun, 148 ff., 361. 
 Helgoland, 438 f. 
 
 I 
 
 Iceland, 187 f., 192, 203, 296, 298. 
 322,341,447. ' 
 
 Ideals, 473. 
 
 Images, 427, 444 f., 447, 455. 
 
 Immortality, 335, 343, 481. 
 
 Imports, 213. 
 
 Incantation, see Charm. 
 
 Indigenous Races, 31, 286. 
 
 Individualism, 344. 
 
 Ing, 25, 216, 434. 
 
 IngaBvones, 24 f., 27 ff., 217, 434. 
 442. . » , 
 
 Inheritance, 131 f. 
 Ireland, 219. 
 Irminsul, 447. 
 Iron, 213, 391. 
 
 to influence h,m knd thf i«l ^ T^' T^° ^""^ P'^^^^ ^f clawical models 
 
 upon which al G'rimm ^Lf f?r T-^^- ""'^'"''^ ^^ '^^ blood-brotherhood. 
 
488 INDEX 
 
 Iron Age, 34, 209, 308. 
 IstsBvones, 24, 437. 
 
 Jarl, 62, 278. 
 
 Jester, 107. 
 
 Jutes, 20, 25, 29, 186. 
 
 Kennings, 221, 246, 275, 315, 335 f., 
 
 475. 
 Kin, 144 ff., 170 f., 173, 351. 
 King, 99, 258, 270 ff., 292, 299, 462. 
 "Knee," 144. 
 
 Lamissio, 191. 
 
 Land, 51 f., 223 f. 
 
 Language, 2. 
 
 Law, 168, 296, 300, 387 f. 
 
 Leaders, 257, 262. 
 
 Leek, 68. 
 
 Libation, 454. 
 
 Lightning, 97. 
 
 LimeSy 15. 
 
 Linen, 78, 206. 
 
 Literature, 4 f., 8 f., 482. 
 
 Lohengrin, 49, 190. 
 
 Lokasenna, 76, 97. j 
 
 Loki, 76, 174, 418. 
 
 Lombards, 19, 26, 60, 191, 193, 271, 
 
 386. 
 Lots, 295, 385, 424, 451, 465. 
 Love, 65, 147 f., 153. 
 Loyalty, 261, 264, 475. 
 
 Magic, 140, 391 f., 404, 469. 
 Marcomanni, 94, 271. 
 Mark, see Boundary. 
 Marks, 128. 
 
 Marriage, 151 ff., 159 f., 287. 
 Marsi, 77. 
 Masses, 360. 
 
 Maternal Inheritance, 132. 
 Mead, 44, 72. 
 Medway, 72. 
 Melancholy, 36, 330. 
 Metals, 86 ff . 
 Michael, St., 362 f. 
 Minstrel, 52, 112. 
 Monarchy, 271 f., 291. 
 Money, 166, 223. 
 Monotheism, 417. 
 
 Moon, 33, 410, 412. 
 Morning-Gift, 153. 
 Music, 259, 3&4. 
 Mutilation, 171, 287, 298. 
 Myth, 26, 48 f., 62, 159, 195, 216, 
 325, 337 f., 346, 482. 
 
 Names, 23, 00, 193 ff., 380, 385, 396, 
 
 419, 421, 427, 429, 434. 
 Nature, 36, 366 ff., 399 f., 475 f. 
 Necromancy, 348, 350 f . 
 Nehalennia, 436 f . 
 Nerthus. 42, 132, 431. 
 Nialssaga, 97. 
 Night, 34, 413. 
 Nightmare, 364, 383. 
 Niorthr, 431. 
 Nobles, 277 f . 
 Nomad, 39 ff., 67. 
 Norns, 142. 
 North, 417. 
 
 Oak, 38, 387 f., 427. 
 Oath, 301. 
 Obscenity, 474. 
 Odin, see Woden. 
 Offering, see Sacrifice. 
 Ordeal, 183 f., 301 f. 
 Ornaments, 84 ff., 97, 428. 
 Outlaw, 298, 300. 
 
 Ownership of land, 60 f ., 128, 223 f ., 
 279. 
 
 Painted Houses, 97, 106. 
 
 Parricide, 172. 
 
 Pastures, 40. 
 
 Patron Saint, 361 f . 
 
 Paved Roads, 98. 
 
 Peace, 431, 449. 
 
 Perspective, 10, 125 f. 
 
 Petersen, 419. 
 
 Philosophy, 477, 478. 
 
 Phoenicians, 12. 
 
 Poetry, 2, 5, 8, 36, 101, 112 f., 119., 
 
 475, 482. 
 Poisons, 68, 424. 
 Polygamy, 136. 
 Prayer, 450. 
 
 Priests, 273, 277, 294, 448 ff. 
 Prime of Life, 201. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 489 
 
 Professions, 224 f . 
 Property, 128. 
 Prose, 3, 99. 
 Prostration, 441, 451 f. 
 Punishments, 186 f., 239, 298, 479. 
 Pytheas of Marseilles, 12, 67, 72. 
 
 Quadi, 94. 
 
 Queen, 117, 276 f. ' 
 
 Rain, 392. 
 Red Hair, 64. 
 
 Relationship, Degrees of, 144 f. 
 Religion, see Cult, 336 ff., 477 f. 
 Rhyme, 3, 113. 
 Rings, 88 f., 318, 445. 
 Rock Pictures, 48. 
 Rome, 7 ff., 15. 
 
 Ruedeger, Episode of, 176, 267. 
 Rugen, 453f.,458. 
 Runes, 134, 140, 206, 215, 249, 376, 
 405, 421, 468. 
 
 Sacrifice, 321, 452 ff., 455 f., 464 f. 
 Salic Law, 128, 130 f., 281, 296, 300. 
 Salt, 33, 69, 213, 392. 
 Saxnot (Saxne'at), 244, 429. 
 Saxons, 19, 25 f., 28, (i8, 219, 244, 
 
 258, 330, 355, 461. 
 Saxon Shore, 26. 
 Sce'af, 48 f., 216. 
 Scepticism, 8, 340 f. 
 Scyld, 48 f., 190, 323 f. 
 Sea, 36, 221 f., 396. 
 Seafaring, 216 ff., 422. 
 Seasons, 414, 476. 
 Semnones, 429, 441, 460. 
 Sentiment, 65, 153, 169, 345, 320. 
 Shields, 251 f . 
 
 Ship, 7, 217, 222, 325, 368, 432, 448, 
 
 463. 
 Ship-Burial, 217, 322, 326. 
 Sibyl, 139 f., 350, 371, 450. 
 Siegfried, 19, 125, 147, 303. 
 Sigambri, 232. 
 Skull as Cup, 120. 
 Sky-Worship, 410. 
 
 Slave, 62, 213, 283 ff., 428. 
 Smith, 62, 207 f. 
 Soap, 69. 
 
 Soissons, Vase of, 290. 
 Songs, 6, 25, 112 f., 269, 451. 
 Sources, 5. 
 Spinning, 82 f . 
 
 Spirit, 326 ff., 479, 481 f. 
 Spiritualism, 348. 
 Stars, 413. 
 Stature, 57. 
 Stone Age, 34, 48, 308. 
 Stone Buildings, 91, 95. 
 Strand-Ward, 103, 220. 
 Stranger, 288. 
 Suevi, 29, 464. 
 Suicide, 203, 232, 306. 
 Sun- Worship, 399, 410. 
 Swamp, 35 f . 
 Swan-Maidens, 395. 
 Swine, 40. 
 Sword, 210, 243 ff. 
 Sword-Dance, 198, 429. 
 
 Tactics, 242, 256, 258, 260, 421, 446. 
 
 Tanfana, 437, 443. 
 
 Tapestries, 107 f. 
 
 Taxes, 289. 
 
 Temper, 37 f., 58, 74, 119, 474. 
 
 Temples, 440 ff. 
 
 Teutons, 13. 
 
 Thor, 55, 62, 68, 166 f., 314, 323, 
 
 342, 419, 425 ff., 447, 464, 474. 
 Thunder, 426, 
 Thuringians, 19, 29. 
 Tin, 11. 
 
 Tius, 420f.,428ff. 
 Tomb, 107, 133, 313, 354. 
 Trade, see Commerce. 
 Traders, 213. 
 Treasure, 100, 107, 317. 
 Trees, 37 ff., 240 f., 293, 382 ff., 
 
 386 ff., 426, 440, 442. 
 Trial by Battle, 143, 182, 184, 301. 
 Type of German, 17 f. 
 
 Underground Houses, 92 f., 167. 
 Underworld, 36 f., 480. 
 Upsala, Temple at, 425, 441, 445, 
 447. 
 
 Valhalla, 149, 305, 480 f . 
 Valkyria, 141, 148, 361, 372. 
 
490 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Vandals, 19. 
 
 Varus, Defeat of, 286, 460. 
 
 Vehmgerichte, 240, 296. 
 
 Veleda, 139 f., 384. 
 
 Vigils, 352. 
 
 Viking, 219, 305, 354, 425, 463. 
 
 Virtues, 169 f., 473 ff. 
 
 Wake, 357 f . 
 
 Wandering, 5, 11, 26. 
 
 Warrior, 52, 81, 129, 226 ff., 242 ff., 
 
 306. 
 Water-Hell, 37, 479. 
 Water-Spirits, 394 f. 
 Water-Worship, 389 f., 397, 399 f. 
 Wayland, 53, 111, 120 f., 208. 
 Weapons, 196, 209, 227 f., 242 ff., 
 
 318 f., 379, 422. 
 Weaving, 82 f., 108, 206. 
 Wedding, 145 ff., 151 ff., 156 ff., 435. 
 Week, Days of, 418 f . 
 
 Wells, 78, 389 ff . 
 
 Welsh, 23, 279, 283. 
 
 Werewolf, 364. 
 
 Wergild, 146, 174, 178 f., 197, 211, 
 
 280, 284, 299. 
 Widow, 160. 
 Wife, 45, 117, 134, 146 f., 154, 170, 
 
 186, 319 f., 400. 
 Wind, 367, 377, 398, 404. 
 Wine, 72 f., 103, 212. 
 Winter, 36, 415, 475. 
 Witchcraft, 144, 373, 376 f., 468. 
 Woden, 48, 74, 240, 256, 314, 342, 
 
 350, 356, 377, 384, 419 ff., 447, 454. 
 Woman, 66, 117, 130 ff., 137, 300, 
 
 370. 
 Wooden Houses, 92. 
 Wool, 33, 79. 
 Wyrd, 111, 236, 362, 371 f . 
 
 Yggdrasill, 387. 
 
 /^ 
 
 Typography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston. 
 Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston. 
 
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