Chapter 12

Whether in very early times there was also a Saxon Loko and an Alamannic Lohho, or only a Grendil and Krentil; what is of capital importance is the agreement in the myths themselves. To what was cited above, I will here add something more. Our nursery-tales have made us familiar with the incident of the hair plucked off the devil as he lay asleep in his grandmother's lap (Kinderm. 29). The corresponding Norwegian tale makes three feathers be pulled out of the dragon's tale, not while he sleeps, but after he is dead.

Loki, in punishment of his misdeeds, is put in chains, like Prometheus who brought fire to men; but he is to be released again at the end of the world. One of his children, Fenrir, (14) i.e., himself in a second birth, pursues the moon in the shape of a wolf, and threatens to swallow her. According to Sn. 12. 13, an old giantess in the forest gave birth to these giants in wolfskin girdles, the mightiest of them being Mânagarmr (lunae canis) who is to devour the moon; but in another place, while Sköll chases the sun, Hati, Hrôðvitnis sonr (Sæm. 45ª) dogs the moon. Probably there were fuller legends about them all, which were never written down; an old Scotch story is still remembered about 'the tayl of the wolfe and the warldis end' (see Suppl.). But the popular belief seems to have extended generally, and that from the earliest times, all over Germany, and beyond it. We still say, when baneful and perilous disturbances arise,' the devil is broke loose,' as in the North they used to say 'Loki er or böndum' (ch. XXIII). In the Life of Göz von Berlichingen, p. 201: 'the devil was everywhere at large'; in Detmar's chronik 1, 298: 'do was de duvel los geworden,' i.e., disorder and violence prevailed. Of any one who threatened from a safe distance, the folk in Burgundy used the ironical phrase: 'Dieu garde la lune des loups!' (15) meaning, such threats would not be fulfilled till the end of the world; in the same way the French popular song on Henry IV. expresses the far end of the future as the time when the wolf's teeth shall get at the moon: jusqu' à ce que l'on prenne la lune avec les dents. (16) Fischart in several places speaks of this 'wolf des mons,' and most fully in his Aller practik grossmutter: 'derhalben dörft ihr nicht mehr für ihn betten, dass ihn Gott vor den wölfen wölle behüten, denn sie werden ihn diss jahr nicht erhaschen' (need not pray for the moon, they won't get her this year). (17) In several places there circulate among the people rhymes about the twelve hours, the last two being thus distinguished: 'umm elfe kommen die wölfe, um zwölfe bricht das gewölbe,' at 11 come the wolves, at 12 bursts the vault, i.e., death out of the vault. Can there be an echo in this of the old belief in the appearing of the wolf or wolves at the destruction of the world and the bursting of heaven's vault? In a lighted candle, if a piece of the wick gets half detached and makes it burn away too fast, they say 'a wolf (as well as a thief) is in the candle;' this too is like the wolf devouring the sun or moon. Eclipses of sun or moon have been a terror to many heathen nations; the incipient and increasing obscuration of the luminous orb marks for them the moment when the gaping jaws of the wolf and the ultimate enlargement of Loki from his chains, who at the end of time of the Ragnarökr will war against and overcome the gods, is in striking accord with the release of the chained Prometheus, by whom Zeus is then to be overthrown. The formula, 'unz Loki verðr lausa' (= unz riufaz regin, till the gods be destroyed), answers exactly to the Greek prin an ek desmwn calasqh Promhqenj (Aesch. Prom. 176. 770. 991); the writhings of the fettered Loki make the earth to quake (Sæm. 69. Sn. 70), just as cqwn sesaleutai in the case of Prometheus (Aesch. 1081). Only the Greek Titan excites our noblest sympathy, while the Edda presents Loki as a hateful monster.

Loki was fair in form, evil in disposition; his father, a giant, was named Farbauti (boatman?), his mother Laufey (leaf-ea) and Nâl (needle; thin and insinuating, miô ok auðþreiflig, 355), all of them words easy to translate into OHG. as Farpôzo (remex), Loupouwa, Nâdala, though such names are nowhere found. He is never called Farbauta sonr, but always after his mother, Loki Laufeyjar sonr (Sæm. 67ª 72b 73ª), which had its origin in alliteration, but held its ground even in prose (Sn. 64) and in the Locke Löje, Loke Lovmand, Loke Lejemand of the later folk-songs. This Laufey (Swed. Löfö) is first of all the name of a place, which was personified, and here again there is doubtless reference to an element. By his wife Sigyn Loki had a son Nari or Narvi, and by a giantess Angrboða three children, the aforesaid Fenrir, the serpent Iörmungandr and a daughter Hel. It is worthy of notice, that he himself is also called Loptr (aërius), and one of his brothers Helblindi, which is likewise a name of Oðinn. I just throw out these names, mostly foreign to our German mythology, in the hope of enlisting for them future inquiry.

Once again we must turn our attention to a name already brought forward among the gods of the week (pp. 125-6), for which a rare concurrence of isolated facts seems almost to secure a place in our native antiquities. The High German week leaves two days, one in the middle and one at the end, not named after gods. But sambaztag for Sunday, as well as mittwoch for Wuotanstag, was a sheer innovation, which the church had achieved or gladly accepted for those two days at all events. The first six days were called after the sun, the moon, Zio, Wuotan, Donar and Fria; what god was entitled to have the naming of the seventh day? Four German deities were available for Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, but how was Saturn to be put into German? The Mid. Ages went on explaining the seventh day by the Roman god: our Kaiserchronik, which even for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days names no German gods, but only Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, expresses itself thus clumsily:

An dem sameztage sâ--------------Then on the Saturday

einez heizet rotundâ---------------Is a thing named rotunda

daz was ein hêrez betehûs---------That was a lofty temple,

der got hiez Saturnûs--------------The god was named Saturnus,

darnâch was iz aller tiuvel êre----Thereafter was it to all devils' honour.

Here the worship of Saturn is connected with the pantheon built in honour of all the gods or devils, which Boniface converted into a church of St. Mary. The Anglo-Saxons, English, Frisians, Dutch and Low Saxons have left to the 'dies Saturni' the god's very name: Sæteresday or Sæternesdæg, Saturday, Saterdei, Saterdach, Satersdag, and even the Irish have adopted dia Satuirn or Satarn; whereas the French samedi, Span. sabado, Ital, sabato, agrees with our High Germ. samstag. here is identity, not only of idea, as in the case of the other gods, but of name, and the absence of consonant-change seems to betray downright borrowing: or may the resemblence have been accidental, and a genuine German name have been modified in imitation of the foreign one? In OHG neither a Sâtarnes- nor a Sâzarnestac can be found; but in AS. sætere means insidiator (OHG. sâzari, conf. sâza, MHG. sâze insidiae, a sitting in wait, as lâga, lâga is lying in wait); and what is still more remarkable, a document of Edward the Confessor (chart. antiq. rot. M. no. 1. Kemble 4, 157) supplies us with the name of a place Sæteresbyrig, quite on a par with Wôdnesbyrig; further, the plant gallicrus, our hahnenfuss, Engl. crowfoot, was in the AS. sâtorlâðe Saturni taedium as it were (-loathing, ON, leiði [[leið - irksome]], OHG. leidi). (18) I call to mind, that even the ancient Franks spoke of Saturnus (p. 88) as a heathen god, and of Saturni dolium, though that may have referred to the mere planetary god (see Suppl.).

The last name for the 'sabbath' brings us to the ON. laugardagr [[Wash-day, i.e. - Saturday]], Swed. lögerdag, Dan. löverdag, by which in later times no doubt washing or bathing day was meant, as the equivalent þvottdagr shows; but originally Logadagr, Lokadagr may have been in use, (19) and Logi, Loki might answer to the Latin Saturnus, (20) as the idea of devil which lay in Loki was popularly transferred to the Jewish Satan and [what seemed to be the same thing] the heathen Saturn, and Locki in ON. is likewise seducer, tempter, trapper. We might even take into consideration a by-name of Oðinn in Sæm. 46ª, Saðr or perhaps Sâðr, though I prefer to take the first form as equivalent to Sannr (true) and Sanngetall. 
 



ENDNOTES:

14. Goth. Fanareis ? OHG. Fanari, Feniri ? can it be our fahnenträger, pannifer ? But the early Norse does not seem to have the word answering to the Goth. fana, OHG. fano (flag). [Has the fox holding up his tail as a standard, in the unrighteous war of beasts against birds, anything to do with this ?] Back

15. Lamonnaye, glossaire to the noei bourguignon, Dijon 1776, p. 242. Back

16. Conf. Ps. 72, 7: donec auferetur luna. Back

17. May we in this connexion think of the fable of the wolf who goes down the well to eat up the moon, which he takes for a cheese? Back

18. In the AS. are preserved various dialogues between Saturn and Solomon, similar to those between Solomon and Marculf in continental Germany, but more antique and, apart from their christian setting or dressing up, not unlike the questions and discourses carried on in the Edda between Oðinn and Vafþrûðnir, between Vîngþôrr and Alviss, between Hâr and Gângleri. Here also the name Saturn seems to make for my point, and to designate a god of Teutonic paganism. Back

19. Conf. Finn Magnusen, lex. pp. 1041-2, dagens tider p. 7. Back

20. I suppose the author had in his mind Homer's constant epithet, Kronoj agkulomhthj wily, crooked-counselled Kronos.---Trans. Back