Chapter 13

The second address in the same AS. ritual is a call to the earth: 'hâl wes thu folde, fira môdor!' hale (whole) be thou earth, mother of men; which agrees with the expression terra mater in Tacitus.

The widely extended worship of the teeming nourishing earth would no doubt give rise to a variety of names among our forefathers, just as the service of Gaia and her daughter Rhea mixed itself up with that of Ops mater, Ceres and Cybele. (10) To me the resemblance between the cultus of Nerthus and that of the Phrygian mother of gods appears well worthy of notice. Lucretius 2, 597---641 describes the peregrination of the magna deûm mater in her lion-drawn car through the lands of the earth:

Quo nunc insigni per magnas praedita terras

horrifice fertur divinae matris imago

Ergo quom primum magnas invecta per urbeis

munificat tacita mortaleis muta salute,

aere atque argento sternunt iter omne viarum,

largifica stipe ditantes, ninguntque rosarum

floribus, umbrantes matrem comitumque catervam.

The Romans called the VI. kal. Apr. lavatio matris deûm, and kept it as a feast, Ovid. fast. 4, 337:

Est locus, in Tiberin qua lubricus influit Almo,

et nomen magno perdit ab amne minor;

illic purpurea canus cum veste sacerdos

Almonis dominam sacraque lavit aquis.

Ammian. Marcell. 23, 3 (Paris 1681, p. 355): Ad Callinicum,---ubi anti diem sextum kal. quo Romae matri deorum pompae celebrantur annales, et carpentum quo vehitur simulacrum Almonis undis ablui perhibetur. Conf. Prudentius, hymn. 10, 154:

Nudare plantas ante carpentum scio

proceres togatos matris Idaeae sacris.

Lapis nigellus evehendus essedo

muliebris oris clausus argento sedet,

quem dum ad lavacrum praeundo ducitis

pedes remotis atterentes calceis

Almonis usque pervenitis rivulum.

Exactly in the same way Nerthus, after she has travelled round the country, is bathed in the sacred lake in her waggon; and I find it noted, that the Indian Bhavani, wife of Shiva, is likewise driven round on her feast-day, and bathed in a secret lake by the Brahmans (see Suppl.) (11)

Nerthus's 'island in the ocean' has been supposed to mean Rügen, in the middle of which there is actually a lake, called the Schwarze see, or Burgsee. What is told as a legend, that there in ancient times the devil was adored, that a maiden was maintained in his service, and that when he was weary of her, she was drowned in the black lake, (12) must have arisen, gross as the perversion may be, out of the account in Tacitus, who makes the goddess, when satiated with the converse of men, disappear in the lake with her attendants. But there are no other local features to turn the scale in its favor; (13) and the Danish islands in the Baltic have at least as good a claim to have been erewhile the sacred seat of the goddess.

We have yet more names for the earth-goddess, that demand investigation: partly Old Norse, partly to be gathered from the Romans. In the Skâldskaparmâl, p. 178, she is named both Fiörgyn and Hlôðyn.

Of Fiörgyn I have treated already, p. 172; if by the side of this goddess there could stand a god Fiörgynn and a neuter common noun faírguni, if the idea of Thôr's mother at the same time passes into that of the thundergod, it exactly parallels and confirms a female Nerthus (Goth. Naírþus, gen. Naírþáus) by the side of the masculine Niörðr (Nerthus), just as Freyja goes with Freyr. If it was not wrong to infer from Perkunas a mountain-god Faírguneis, Lithuanian mythology has equally a goddes Perkunatele.

Hlôðyn is derived in the same way as Fiörgyn, so that we may safely infer a Goth. Hlôðynjar,' which is son of earth again; and Fornald. sög. 1, 469 says: î Hlôðynjar skaut. In the ON. language hlôð is a hearth, (14) the goddess's name therefore means protectress of the fireplace; and our OHG. hërd (p. 251), beside solum or terra, also denotes precisely focus, arula, fornacula, the hearth being to us the very basis of a human habitation, a paternal Lar, so to speak, corresponding to the mother earth. The Romans also worshipped a goddess of earth and of fire under the common name of Fornax, dea fornacalis. (15) But what is still more important to us, there was discovered on Low Rhenish ground a stone, first kept at Cleve and afterwards at Xanten, with the remarkable inscription: DEAE HLUDANAE SACRVM C. TIBERIVS VERVS. Hludana is neither a Roman nor a Celtic goddess, but her name answers perfectly to that of the Norse divinity, and Sk. Thorlacius has the merit of having recognised and learnedly proved the identity of the two. (16) In this inscription I see striking evidence of the oneness of Norse and German mythology. Thorlacius, not without reason, compares the name with Lhtw and Latona. Might not Hlôrriði, an epithet of Thôrr the son of Hlôðyn, be explained as Hlôðriði?




ENDNOTES:

10. Ops mater = terra mater; Ceres = Geres, quod gerit fruges, antiquis enim C quod nunc G; Varro de ling. lat., ed. O. Müller p. 25. Her Greek appelation Dhmhthr seems also to lead to gh mhthr (see Suppl.). Back

11. Gregor. Turon. de glor. conf. cap. 77 compares or confounds with the Phrygian Cybele some Gallic goddess, whose worship he describes as follows:---- 'Ferunt etiam in hac urbe (Augustoduno) simulachrum fuisse Berecynthiae, sicut sancti martyris Symphoriani passionis declarat historia. Hanc cum in carpento, pro salvatione agrorum et vinearum suarum, misero gentilitatis more deferrent, adfuit supradictus Simplicius episcopus, haud procul adspiciens cantantes atque psallentes ante hoc simulachrum, gemitumque pro stultitia plebis ad Deum emittens ait: illumina quaeso, Domine, oculos hujus populi, ut cognoscat, quia simulachrum Berecynthiae nihil est! et facto signo crucis contra protinus simulachrum in terram ruit. Ac defixa solo animalia, quae plaustrum hoc quo vehebatur trahebant, moveri non poterant. Stupet vulgus innumerum, et deam laesam omnis caterva conclamat; immolantur victimae, animalia verberantur, sed moveri non possunt. Tunc quadringenti de illa stulta multitudine viri conjuncti simul ajunt ad invicem: si virtus est ulla deitatis, erigatur sponte, jubeatque boves, qui telluri sunt stabiliti, procedere; certe si moveri nequit, nihil est deitatis in ea. Tunc accedentes, et immolantes unum de pecoribus, cum viderent deam suam nullatenus posse moveri, relicto gentilitatis errore, inquisitoque antistite loci, conversi ad unitatem ecclesiae cognoscentes veri Dei magnitudinem, sancto sunt baptismate consecrati.' Compare the Legenda aurea cap. 117, where a festum Veneris is mentioned. Back

12. Deutsche sagen. num. 132. Back

13. Of Hertha a proverb is said to be current in Pomerania: 'de Hertha gift gras, und füllt schün und fass (barn and vessel),' Hall. allg. lit. z. 1823, p. 375). But the un-Saxon rhyme of gras with fass (for fat) sufficiently betrays the workmanship. It is clumsily made up after the well-known rule of the farmer: 'Mai kühl und nass füllt scheunen und fass' (see Suppl.). Back

14. Liter. strues, ara, from hlaðan hlóð, struere, Gramm. 2, 10, num. 83. Back

15. Ovid. fast. 2, 513. Back

16. Antiq. bor. spec. 3, Hafn. 1782. Conf. Fiedler, gesch. und alt. des untern Germaniens, 1, 226. Steiner's cod. inscr. Rheni no. 632. Gotfr. Schütze, in his essay De dea Hludana, Lips. 1748, perceived the value of the stone, but could not discern the bearings of the matter. Back