Chapter 3

Sacrifice of Oxen (see Suppl.). The passage from Agathias (ippouj te kai boaj) proves the Alamannic custom, and that from the Olafssaga (naut ok hross) the Norse. A letter to Saint Boniface (Epist. 82, Würdtw.) speaks of ungodly priests 'qui tauros et hircos diis paganorum immolabant.' And one from Gregory the Great ad Mellitum (Epist. 10, 76 and in Beda's hist. eccl. 1, 30) affirms of the Angles: boves solent in sacrificio daemonum multos occidere. The black ox and black cow, which are not to be killed for the household (Superst. 887),---were they sacred sacrificial beasts? Val. Suplit, a free peasant on the Samland coast (Samogitia or Semigalia), sacrificed a black bull with strange ceremonies. (39) I will add a few examples from the Norse. During a famine in Sweden under king Dômaldi: þâ eflðo (instituted) Svîar blôt stôr at Uppsölum, it fyrsta haust (autumn) blôtuðu þeir yxnum; and the oxen proving insufficient, they gradually went up to higher and higher kinds; Yngl. saga, c. 18. þâ gekk hann til hofs (temple) Freyss, ok leiddi þagat uxan gamlan (an old ox), ok mælti svâ: 'Freyr, nû gef ek þer uxa þenna'; en uxanum brâ svâ við, at hann qvað við, ok fêll niðr dauðr (dealt the ox such a blow, that he gave a groan and fell down dead); Islend. sög. 2, 348. conf. Vigaglumssaga, cap. 9. At a formal duel the victor slew a bull with the same weapons that had vanquished his foe: þâ var leiddr fram grâðûngr mikill ok gamall, var þat kallat blôtnaut, þat skyldi sâ höggva er sigr hefði (then was led forth a bull mickle and old, it was called blôt-neat, that should he hew who victory had), Egilss. p. 506. conf. Kormakssaga p. 214-8.---Sacrifice of Cows, Sæm. 141. Fornm. sög. 2, 138.---The Greek ekatombh (as the name shows, 100 oxen) consisted at first of a large number of neat, but very soon of other beasts also. The Indians too had sacrifices of a hundred; Holzmann 3, 193. (40)

Boars, Pigs (see Suppl.). In the Salic Law, tit. 2, a higher composition is set on the majalis sacrivus or votivus than on any other. This seems a relic of the ancient sacrifices of the heathen Franks; else why the term sacrivus? True, there is no vast difference between 700 and 600 den. (17 and 15 sol.); but of animals so set apart for holy use there must have been a great number in heathen times, so that the price per head did not need to be high. Probably they were selected immediately after birth, and marked, and then reared with the rest till the time of sacrificing.---In Frankish and Alamannic documents there often occurs the word friscing [[freshling (?) piglet, lamb]], usually for porcellus, but sometimes for agnus, occasionally in the more limited sense of porcinus and agninus; the word may by its origin express recens natus, new-born, (41) but it now lives only in the sense of porcellus (frischling [[piglet]]). How are we to explain then that this OHG. friscing [[freshling]] in several writers translates precisely the Lat. hostia, victima, holocaustum (Notker cap. 8, ps. 15, 4. 26, 6. 33, 1. 39, 8. 41, 10. 43, 12. 22. 50, 21. 115, 17. ôsterfriscing [[Easter-sacrifice]], ps. 20, 3. lamp unkawemmit kakepan erdu friscing, i.e. lamb unblemished given to earth a sacrifice, Hymn 7, 10), except as a reminiscence of heathenism? The Jewish paschal lamb would not suggest it, for in friscing the idea of porcellus was predominant.---In the North, the expiatory boar, sônargöltr, offered to Freyr, was a periodical sacrifice; and Sweden has continued down to modern times the practice of baking loaves and cakes on Yule-eve in the shape of a boar. This golden-bristled boar has left his track in inland Germany too. According to popular belief in Thuringia, (42) whoever on Christmas eve abstains from all food till suppertime, will get sight of a young golden pig, i.e. in olden times it was brought up last at the evening banquet. A Lauterbach ordinance (weisthum) of 1589 decreed (3, 369), that unto a court holden the day of the Three-kings, therefore in Yule time, the holders of farm-steads (hübner) should furnish a clean goldferch (gold-hog) gelded while yet under milk; it was led round the benches, and no doubt slaughtered afterwards. (43) So among the Welsh, the swine offered to the gods became one destined for the King's table. It is the 'swîn ealgylden, eofor îrenheard' [[all-golden swine, iron-hard boar]] of the Anglo-Saxons, and of its exact relation to the worship of Frôho (Freyr) we have to treat more in detail by and by. The Greeks sacrificed swine to Dêmêtêr (Ceres), who as Nerthus stands very near to Niörðr, Freyr and Freyja.

Rams, Goats (see Suppl.).----As friscing [[piglet, lamb]] came to mean victima, so conversely a name for animal sacrifice, Goth. sáuðr [[(boiled) sacrifice]] = wether. This species of sacrifice was therefore not rare, though it is seldom expressly mentioned, probably as being of small value. Only the saga Hâkonar gôða cap. 16 informs us: þar var oc drepinn (killed) allskonar smali, ok svâ hross. Smali (mhla) denotes principally sheep, also more generally the small beasts of the flock as opposed to oxen and horses, and as 'alls konar (omnis generis)' is here aded, it seems to include goats. The sacrifice of he-goats (hircos) is spoken of in the above-quoted Epist. Bonif. 82. In the Swedish superstition, the water-sprite, before it will teach any one to play the harp, requires the sacrifice of a black lamb; Svenska folkv. 2, 128. Gregory the Great speaks once of she-goats being sacrificed; he says the Langobards offer to the devil, i.e., to one of their gods, caput caprae, hoc ei, per circuitum currentes, carmine nefando dedicantes; Dial. 3, 28. This head of a she-goat (or he-goat?) was reared aloft, and the people bowed before it. The hallowing of a he-goat among the ancient Prussians is well known. (Luc. David 1, 87, 98). The Slavonian god Triglav is represented with three goats' heads (Hanka's zbjrka 23). If that Langobardic 'carmen nefandum' had been preserved, we could judge more exactly of the rite than from the report of the holy father, who viewed it with hostile eyes.



ENDNOTES:

40. In many districts of Germany and France, the butchers at a set time of the year lead through the streets a fatted ox decked with flowers and ribbons, accompanied by drum and fife, and collect drink-money. In Holland they call the ox belder, and hang gilded apples on his horns, while a butcher walks in front with the axe (beil). All this seems a relic of some old sacrificial rite.  (back)

41. Ducange sub v. Eccard Fr. or. 2, 677. Dorows denkm. I. 2, 55. Lacom blet 1, 327. Graff 3, 833. Schmeller wtb. 1, 619.  (back)

42. Gutgesells beitr. zur gesch. des deutschen alterthums, Meiningen 1834, p. 138.  (back)

43. This passage from the Lauterb. ordin. I can now match by another from those of Vinkbuch in the Alamann country. It says 1, 436: the provost shall pick out in the convent a swine worth 7 schilling pfennig, and as soon as harvest begins, let it into the convent crewyard, where it must be allowed generous fare and free access to the corn; there it is left till the Thursday after St. Adolf's day, when it is slaughtered and divided, half to the farm-bailiff, half to the parish.---The price of seven shillings tallies with the seven and a half fixed by the Lauterb. ordin., and is a high one, far exceeding the ordinary value (conf. Gött. anz. 1827, pp. 336-7); it was an arrangement long continued and often employed in these ordinances, and one well suited to a best selected for sacrifice. The Lauterbach goldferch [[gold-pig]], like that of Vinkbuch, is doled out and consumed at a festive meal; the assize itself is named after it (3, 370); at Vinkbuch the heathenish name only has been forgotten or suppressed. Assuredly such assize-feasts were held in other parts of Germany too. St. Adolf was a bishop of Straszburg, his day falls on August 29 or 30 (Conr. v. Dankr. namenb. p. 117), and the assize therefore in the beginning of September. Swine are slaughtered for the household when winter sets in, in Nov. or Dec.; and as both of these by turns are called schlachtmonat [[slaughter-month]], there might linger in this also a reference to a heathen sacrifice; an AS. name for Nov. is expressly blôtmoneð [[sacrifice-month]]. The common man at his yearly slaughtering gets up a feast, and sends meat and sausages to his neighbours (conf. mäuchli, Stalder 2, 525), which may be a survival of the common sacrifice and distribution of flesh. It is remarkable that in Servia too, at the solemn burning of the badnyak, which is exactly like the yule-log (ch. XX, Fires), a whole swine is roasted, and often a sucking pig along with it; Vuk's Montenegro, pp. 103-4.  (back)