Chapter 11

If Bældæg and Brond reveal to us that the worship of Balder had a definite form of its own even outside of Scandinavia, we may conclude from the general diffusion of all the most essential proper names entering into the main plot of the myth there, that this myth as a whole was known to all Teutons. The goddess Hel, as will be more fully shown in ch. XIII, answers to the Gothic impersonal noun halja, OHG. hella. Höðr (acc. Höð, gen. Haðar, dat. Heði), pictured as a blind god of tremendous strength (Sn. 31), who without malice discharges the fatal arrow at Baldr, is called Hotherus in Saxo, and implies a Goth. Haþus, AS. Heaðo, OHG. Hadu, OFrank. Chado, of which we have still undoubted traces in proper names and poetic compounds. OHG. Hadupraht, Hadufuns, Hadupald, Hadufrid, Hadumâr, Hadupurc, Hadulint, Haduwîc (Hedwig), &c., forms which abut close on the Catumêrus in Tacitus Hadumâr, Hadamâr). In AS. poetry are still found the terms heaðorinc (vir egregius, nobilis), Cædm. 193, 4. Beow. 737. 4927; heaðowelm (belli impetus, fervor), Cædm. 21, 14. 147, 8. Beow. 164. 5633; heaðoswât (sudor bellicus), Beow. 2919. 3211. 3334; heaðowæd (vestis bellica), Beow. 78; heaðubyrne (lorica bellica), Cod. exon. 297, 7; heaðosigel and heaðogleám (egregium jubar), Cod. exon. 486, 17 and 438, 6; heaðolâc (pugnae ludus), Beow. 1862. 3943; heaðogrim (atrocissimus), Beow. 1090. 5378; heaðosioc (pugna vulneratus), Beow. 5504; heaðosteáp (celsus), Beow. 2490. 4301. In these words, except where the meaning is merely intensified, the prevailing idea is plainly that of battle and strife, and the god or hero must have been thought of and honoured as a warrior. Therefore Haþus, Höðr, as well as Wuotan and Zio, expressed phenomena of war; and he was imagined blind, because he dealt out at random good hap and ill (p. 207).---Then, beside Höðr, we have Hermôðr interweaving himself in the thread of Balder's history; he is dispatched to Hel, to demand his beloved brother back from the underworld. In Saxo he is already forgotten; the AS. genealogy places its Heremôð among Wôden's ancestors, and names as his son either Sceldwa or the Sceáf renowned in story, whereas in the North he and Balder alike are the offspring of Oðinn; in the same way we saw (p. 219) Freyr taken for the father as well as the son of Niörðr. A later Heremôd appears in Beow. 1795. 3417, but still in kinship with the old races; he is perhaps that hero, named by the side of Sigmundr in Sæm. 113ª, to whom Oðinn lends helm and hauberk. AS. title-deeds also contain the name Kemb. 1, 232. 141; and in OHG. Herimuot, Herimaot, occurs very often (Graff 2, 699 anno 782, from MB. 7, 373. Neugart no. 179. 214. 244. 260. annis 809-22-30-34. Ried. no. 21 anno 821), but neither song nor story has a tale to tell of him (see Suppl.).

So much the more valuable are the revelations of the Merseburg discovery; not only are we fully assured now of a divine Balder in Germany, but there emerges again a long-forgotten mythus, and with it a new name unknown even to the North.

When, says the lay, Phol (Balder) and Wodan were one day riding in the forest, one foot of Balder's foal, 'demo Balderes volon,' was wretched out of joint, whereupon the heavenly habitants bestowed their best pains on setting it right again, but neither Sinngund and Sunna, nor yet Frûa and Folla could do any good, only Wodan the wizard himself could conjure and heal the limb (see Suppl.).

The whole incident is as little known to the Edda as to other Norse legends. Yet what was told in a heathen spell in Thuringia before the tenth century is still in its substance found lurking in conjuring formulas known to the country folk of Scotland and Denmark (conf. ch. XXXVIII, Dislocation), except that they apply to Jesus what the heathens believed of Balder and Wodan. It is somewhat odd, that Cato (De re rust. 160) should give, likewise for a dislocated limb, an Old Roman or perhaps Sabine form of spell, which is unintelligible to us, but in which a god is evidently invoked: Luxum si quod est, hac cantione sanum fiet. Harundinem prende tibi viridem pedes IV aut V longam, mediam diffinde, et duo homines teneant ad coxendices. Incipe cantare in alio S.F. motas vaeta daries dardaries astataries Dissunapiter! usque dum coeant. What follows is nothing to our purpose.

The horse of Balder, lamed and checked on his journey, acquired a full meaning the moment we think of him as the god of light or day, whose stoppage and detention must give rise to serious mischief on the earth. Probably the story in its context could have informed us of this; it was foreign to the purpose of the conjuring spell.

The names of the four goddesses will be discussed in their proper place; what concerns us here is, that Balder is called a second and hitherto unheard-of name, Phol. The eye for our antiquities often merely wants opening: a noticing of the unnoticed has resulted in clear footprints of such a god being brought to our hand, in several names of places.

In Bavaria there was a Pholesauwa, Pholesouwa, ten or twelve miles from Passau, which the Traditiones patavienses first mention in a document drawn up between 774 and 788 (MB. vol 28, pars 2, p. 21, no. 23), and afterwards many later ones of the same district: it is the present village of Pfalsau. Its composition with aue quite fits in with the suppostion of an old heathen worship. The gods were worshipped not only on mountains, but on 'eas' inclosed by brooks and rivers, where fertile meadow yielded pasture, and forest shade. Such was the castum nemus of Nerthus in an insula Oceani, such Fosetesland with its willows and well-springs, of which more presently. Baldrshagi (Balderi pascuum), mentioned in the Friðþiofssaga, was an enclosed sanctuary (griðastaðr), which none might damage. I find also that convents, for which time-hallowed venerable sites were preferred, were often situated in 'eas'; and of one nunnery the very word used: 'in der megde ouwe,' in the maids' ea (Diut. 1, 357). (10) The ON. mythology supplies us with several eas named after the loftiest gods: Oðinsey (Odensee) in Fünen, another Oðinsey (Onsöe) in Norway, Fornm. sög. 12, 33, and Thôrsey, 7, 234. 9, 17; Hlêssey (Lässöe) in the Kattegat, &c., &c. We do not know any OHG. Wuotanesouwa, Donarsouwa, but Pholesouwa is equally to the point.


ENDNOTES:

10. So the Old Bavarian convent of Chiemsee was called ouwa (MB. 28ª, 103 an. 890), and afterwards the monastery there 'der herren werd,' and the nunnery 'der nunnen werd'. Stat 'zo gottes ouwe' in Lisch. mekl. jb. 7, 227, from a fragment belonging to Bertholds Crane. Demantin 242.  (back)