Chapter 8

It must have been at an earlier stage that certain attributes and titles of the Saviour, and some Judeo-christian legends, were transferred to the heathen god, and particularly the myth of Leviathan to Iörmungandr. As Christ by his death overmastered the monster serpent (Barl. 78, 39 to 79, 14), so Thôrr overcomes the miðgarðsorm (-worm, snake that encircles the world), and similar epithets are given to both. (37) Taking into account the resemblance between the sign of the cross and that of the hammer, it need not seem surprising that the newly converted Germans should under the name of Christ still have the lord of thunder and the giver of rain present to their minds; and so a connexion with Mary the Mother of God (p. 174) could be the more easily established. The earliest troubadour (Diez p. 15. Raynouard 4, 83) actually names Christ still as the lord of thunder, Jhesus del tro.

A Neapolitan fairy-tale in the Pentamerone 5, 4 personifies thunder and lightning (truone e lampe) as a beautiful youth, brother of seven spinning virgins, and son of a wicked old mother who knows no higher oath than 'pe truone e lampe'. Without asserting any external connexion between this tradition and the German one, (38) we discover in it the same idea of a kind and beneficent, not a hostile and fiendish god of thunder.

The large beetle, which we call stag-beetle or fire-beetle, lucanus cervus, taurus (ch. XXI, beetles), is in some districts of South Germany named donnergueg, donnerguge, donnerpuppe (gueg, guegi, beetle), perhaps because he likes to live in oak trees, the tree sacred to thunder. For he also bears the name eichochs, Swed. ekoxe (oak-ox); but then again feuerschröter, fürböter (fire beeter, i.e. kindler), (39) börner or haus-brenner (-burner), which indicates his relation to thunder and lightning. It is a saying, that on his horns he carries redhot coals into a roof, and sets it alight; more definite is the belief mentioned in Aberglaube, p. xcvi, that lightning will strike a house into which this beetle is carried. In Swed. a beetle is still named horntroll (see Suppl.).

Among herbs and plants, the following are to be specially noted: the donnerbart, stonecrop or houseleek, sempervivum tectorum, which, planted on the roof, protects from the lightning's stroke: (40) barba Jovis vulgari more vocatur (Macer Floridus 741), Fr. Joubarbe (conf. Append. p. lviii);---the donnerbesen (-besom), a shaggy tangled nest-like growth on boughs, of which superstition ascribes the generation to lightning; otherwise called alpruthe;---the donnerkraut, sedum;---the donnerflug, fumaria bulbosa;---the donnerdistel, eryngium campestre;----the Dan. tordenskreppe, burdock.---The South Slavs call the iris perunik, Perun's flower, while the Lettons call our hederich (ground-ivy? hedge-mustard?) pehrkones; Perunika is also, like Iris, a woman's name. The oak above all trees was dedicated to the Thunderer (pp. 67, 72): quercus Jovi placuit, Phaedr. 3, 17; magna Jovis antiquo robore quercus, Virg. Georg. 3, 332. At Dodona stood the druj uyikomoj Dioj, Od. 14, 327. 19, 297, but at Troy the beech often named in the Illiad: fhgoj uyhlh Dioj aigiocoio, 5, 693. 7, 60. A particular kind of oak is in Servian grm, and grmik is quercetum, no doubt in close connexion with grom (tonitrus), grmiti or grmlieti (tonare). The acorn is spoken of above, p. 177.

Apparently some names of the snipe (scolopax gallinago) have to do with this subject: donnerziege (-goat), donnerstagspferd (Thursday horse), himmelsziege (capella coelestis); because he seems to bleat or whinny in the sky? But he is also the weatherbird, stormbird, rainbird, and his flight betokens an approaching thunderstorm. Dan. myrehest, Swed. horsgjök, Icel. hrossagaukr, horsegowk or cuckoo, from his neighing; the first time he is heard in the year, he prognosticates to men their fate (Biörn sub v.); evidently superstitious fancies cling to the bird. His Lettish name pehrkona kasa, pehrkona ahsis (thunder's she-goat and he-goat) agrees exactly with the German. In Lithuanian too, Mielcke 1, 294. 2, 271 gives Perkuno ozhys as heaven's goat, for which another name is tikkutis.---Kannes, pantheum p. 439, thinks the name donnerstagspferd belongs to the goat itself, not to the bird; this would be welcome, if it can be made good. Some confirmation is found in the AS. firgengæt (ibex, rupicapra, chamois), and firginbucca (capricornus), to which would correspond an OHG. virgungeiz, virgunpocch; so that in these the analogy of faírguni to Donar holds good. The wild creature that leaps over rocks would better become the god of rocks than the tame goat. In the Edda, Thôrr has he-goats yoked to his thunder-car: between these, and the weather-fowl described by turns as goats and horse (always a car-drawing beast), there might exist some half-obscured link of connexion (see Suppl.). It is significant also, that the devil, the modern representative of the thunder god, has the credit of having created goats, both he and she; and as Thôrr puts away the bones of his goats after they have been picked, that he may bring them to life again (Sn. 49. 50), (41) so the Swiss shepherds believe that the goat has something of the devil in her, she was made by him, and her feet especially smack of their origin, and are not eaten, Tobler 214. Did the German thundergod in particular have he-goats and she-goats sacrificed to him (supra, p. 52)? The Old Roman or Etruscan bidental (from bidens, lamb) signifies the place where lightning had struck and killed a man: there a lamb had to be sacrificed to Jupiter, and the man's body was not burned, but buried (Plin. 2, 54). If the Ossetes and Circassians in exactly the same way offer a goat over the body killed by lightning, and elevate the hide on a pole (supra, p. 174), it becomes the more likely by a great deal that the goat-offering of the Langobards was intended for no other than Donar. For hanging up hides was a Langobardish rite, and was practised on other occasions also, as will presently be shown. In Carinthia, cattle struck by lightning are considered sacred to God; no one, not even the poorest, dares to eat of them (Sartoris reise 2, 158).  



ENDNOTES:

37. Finn Magnusen lex. 484-5.  (back)

38. How comes the Ital. to have a trono (Neap. truono, Span. trueno) by the side of tuono? and the Provencal a trons with the same meaning? Has the R slipt in from our donar, or still better from the Goth. drunjus, sonus, Rom. 10, 18 (conf. drönen, 'cymbal's droning sound' of Dryden)? or did the Lat. thronus pass into the sense of sky and thunder? 'förchst nicht, wanns tonnert, ein tron werd vom himmel fallen?' Garg. 181. The troubadour's 'Jhesus del tro' might then simply mean lord of the firmament.  (back)

39. 'I wol don sacrifice, and fyres beete,' Chaucer. Hence beetle itself? AS. bytel.---Trans.  (back)

40. A Provencal troubadour, quoted by Raynouard sub v. barbajol, says: e daquel erba tenon pro li vilan sobra lur maiso. Beside this hauswurz (hauswurzel, Superst. 60), the hawthorn, albaspina, is a safeguard against lightning (Mém. de l' acad. celt. 2, 212), as the laurel was among the ancient Romans, or the white vine planted round a house; conf. brennessel (Superst. 336); 'palm branches laid upon coals, lighted candles, a fire made on the hearth, are good for a thunderstorm,' Braunschw. anz. 1760, p. 1392. The crossbill too is a protector (Superst. 335); because his beak forms the sign of the cross or hammer? but the nest-making redbreast or redstart appears to attract lightning (ch. XXI, redbreast; Superst. 629. 704); was he, because of his red plumage, sacred to the redbearded god? (see Suppl.).  (back)

41. The myth of the slaughtered goats brought to life again by hammer-consecration, and of the boar Sæhrîmnir (Sn. 42) being boiled and eaten every day and coming whole again every evening, seems to re-appear in more than one shape. In Wolf's Wodana, p. xxviii, the following passage on witches in Ferrara is quoted from Barthol. de Spina (d. 1546), quaestio de strigibus: Dicunt etiam, quod postquam comederunt aliquem pinguem bovem vel aliquam vegetem, vino vel arcam seu cophinum panibus evacuarunt et consumpserunt ea vorantes, domina illa percutit aurea virga quam manu gestat ea vasa vel loca, et statim ut prius plena sunt vini vel panis ac si nihil inde fuisset assumptum. Similiter congeri jubet ossa mortui bovis super corium ejus extensum, ipsumque per quatuor partes super ossa revolvens virgaque percutiens, vivum bovem reddit ut prius, ac reducendum jubet ad locum suum. The diabolical witches' meal very well matches that of the thundergod. But we are also told in legends, that the saint, after eating up a cock, reanimated it out of the bones; and so early as parson Amis, we find the belief made use of in playing-off a deception (I. 969 seq.). Folk-tales relate how a magician, after a fish had been eaten, threw the bones into water, and the fish came alive again. As with these eatable creatures, so in other tales there occurs the reanimation of persons who have been cut to pieces: in the märchen vom Machandelbom (juniper tree); in the myth of Zeus and Tantalus, where the shoulder of Pelops being devoured by Demeter (Ovid 6, 406) reminds us of the he-goat's leg bones being split for the marrow, and remaining lame after he came to life again; in the myth of Osiris and St. Adalbert (Temme p. 33); conf. DS. no. 62, and Ezekiel 37. Then in the eighth Finnish rune, Lemminkäimen's mother gathers all the limbs of his dismembered body, and makes them live again. The fastening of heads that have been chopped off to their trunks, in Waltharius 1157 (conf. p. 93) seems to imply a belief in their reanimation, and agrees with a circumstance in Norske eventyr pp. 199, 201.  (back)