Chapter 14

The Illiad, 14, 286 seq., relates how gpnoj (sleep), sitting in the shape of a song-bird on the boughs of a fir-tree on Mt. Ida, overpowers the highest of all the gods; other passages show that the gods went to their beds every night, and partook like men of the benefit of sleep, Il. 1, 609. 2, 2. 24, 677. Still less can it be doubted of the Norse gods, that they too slept at night: Thôrr on his journeys looks out for night-lodging, Sn. 50; of Heimdall alone is it said, that he needs less sleep than a bird, Sn. 30. And from this sway of sleep over the gods follows again, what was maintained above, that of death: Death is the brother of Sleep. Besides, the gods fell a prey to diseases. Freyr was sick with love, and his great hugsôtt (mind-sickness) awakened the pity of all the gods. Oðinn, Niörðr and Freyr, according to the Yngl. saga 10. 11. 12, all sink under sicknesses (sôttdauðir). Aphrodite and Ares receive wounds, Il. 5, 330. 858; these are quickly healed [yet not without medical aid.]. A curious story tells how the Lord God, having fallen sick, descends from heaven to earth to get cured, and comes to Arras; there minstrels and merryandres receive commands to amuse him, and one manages so cleverly, that the Lord bursts out laughing and finds himself rid of his distemper. (17) This may be very ancient; for in the same way, sick daughters of kings in nurserytales are made to laugh by beggars and fiddlers, and so is the goddess Skaði in the Edda by Loki's juggling tricks, when mourning the death of her father, Sn. 82. Iambe cheered the sorrowing Demeter, and caused her, polla paraskwptousa, meidhsai gelasai te, kai ilaon qumon, Hymn. in Cer. 203 (see Suppl.).

Important above all are the similar accounts, given by Greek antiquity and by our own, of the language of the gods. Thus, passages in the Illiad and the Odyssey distinguish between the divine and human name for the same object: on briarewn kaleousi qeoi, andrej de te pantej Aigaiwn. Il. 1, 403. thn htoi andrej Batieian kikghskousin aqanatoi de te shma poluskarqmoio Murinhj. 2, 813. Calkida kikghskousi qeoi, andrej de kumindin. 14, 291. on Xanqon kaleousi qeoi, anorej de Skamandron. 20, 74 (18) mwlu de min kaleousi qeoi. Od. 10, 305.
       A whole song in the Edda is taken up with comparing the languages, not only of gods and men, but of Vanir, elves, dwarfs, giants, and subterraneans, and that not in a few proper names and rare words, but in a whole string of names for the commonest objects. At the very onset it surprises us, that whil goð and æsir are treated as synonymous, a distinction is drawn between goð and ginregin. In 13 strophes are given 78 terms in all: on examining these, it soon appears that the variety of names (six) for each thing simply comes of the richness of the Teutonic tongue, and cannot possibly be ascribed to old remnants or later borrowings from any Finnic, Celtic or Slavic languages. They are synonyms or poetic names, which are distributed among six or eight orders of beings endowed with speech, according to the exigencies of alliteration, not from their belonging to the same class, such as poetical or prose. I will illustrate this by quoting the strophe on the names for a cloud: scý heitir með mönnom, en scûrvân með goðom, kalla vindflot Vanir, ûrvân iötnar, âlfar veðrmegin; kalla î heljo hiâlm huliz.

Everything here is Teutonic, and still the resources of our language are not exhausted by a long way, to say nothing of what it may have borrowed from others. The only simple word is ský, still used in the Scandinavian dialects, and connected with skuggi umbra, AS. scuwa, scua, OHG. scuwo. The rest are all appropriate and intelligble periphrases. Scûrvân [shower-weening] pluviae expectatio, from skûr imber, Germ. schauer; ûrvân just the same, from ûr pluvia, with which compare the literal meaning of Sanskr. abhra nubes, viz. aquam gerens. (19) Vindflot is apparently navigium venti, because the winds sail through the air on clouds. Veðrmegin transposed is exactly the OHG. maganwetar turbo; and hiâlmr huliz appears elsewhere as hulizhiâlmr, OS. helith-helm, a tarn-helmet, grîma, mask, which wraps one in like a mist or cloud. Of course the Teutonic tongue could offer several other words to stand for cloud, besides those six; e.g., nifl, OHG. nebal, Lat. nebula, Gr. nefelh; Goth. milhma, Swed. moln, Dan. mulm; Sansk. mêgha, Gr. omiclh, omiclh, Slav. megla; OHG. wolchan, AS. wolcen, which is to Slav. oblako as miluk, milk, to Slav. mleko; ON. þoka [[fox, mist]] nebula, Dan. taage; M. Dut. swerk nubes, OS. gisuerc, caligo, nimbus; AS. hoðma nubes, Beow. 4911. And so it is with the other twelve objects whose names are discussed in the Alvismâl. Where simple words, like sôl and sunna, mâni and skîn, or iörd and fold, are named together, one might attempt to refer them to different dialects: the periphrases in themselves show no reason (unless mythology found one for them), why they should be assigned in particular to gods or men, giants or dwarfs. The whole poem brings before us an acceptable list of pretty synonyms, but throws no light on the primitive affinities of our language.

Plato in the Cratylus tries hard to understand that division of Greek words into divine and human. A duality of proper names like Briareos and Aigaion, reminds us of the double forms Hlêr and Oegir (p. 240), Ymir and Oergelmir, which last Sn. 6 attributes to the Hrîmþurses; Iðunn would seem by Sæm. 89ª to be an Elvish word, but we do not hear of any other names or the goddess. In the same way Xanthus and Skamander, Batieia and Myrina might be the different names of a thing in different dialects. More interesting are the double names for two birds, the calkij or kumindij (conf. Plin. 10, 10), and the aietoj and perknoj. Calkij is supposed to signify some bird of prey, a hawk or owl, which does not answer to the description opnij ligura (piping), and the myth requires a bird that in sweet and silvery tones sings one to sleep, like the nightingale. Perknoj means dark-coloured, which suits the eagle; to imagine it the bird of the thundergod Perkun, would be too daring. Poetic periphrases there are none among these Greek words.

The principal point seems to be, that the popular beliefs of Greek and Teutons agree in tracing obscure words and those departing from common usage to a distinction between divine and human speech. The Greek scholiasts suppose that the poet, holding converse with the Muses, is initiated into the language of gods, (20) and where he finds a twofold nomenclature, he ascribes the older, nobler, more euphonious (to kreitton, eufwnon, progenesteron onoma) to the gods, the later and meaner (to elatton, metagenesteron) to men. But the four or five instances in Homer are even less instructive than the more numerous ones of the Norse lay. Evidently the opinion was firmly held, that the gods, though of one and the same race with mortals, so far surpassed living men in age and dignity, that they still made use of words which had latterly died out or suffered change. As the line of a king's ancestors was traced up to a divine stock, so the language of gods was held to be of the same kind as that of men, but right feeling would assign to the former such words as had gradually disappeared among men. The Alvismâl, as we have seen, goes farther, and reserves particular words for yet other beings beside the gods; what I maintained on p. 218 about the impossibility of denying the Vanir a Teutonic origin, is confirmed by our present inquiry. ---That any other nation, beside Greeks and Teutons, believed in a separate language of gods, is unknown to me, and the agreement of these two is the more significant. When Ovid in Met. 11, 640 says: Hunc Icelon superi, mortale Phobetora vulgus nominat, this is imitated from the Greeks, as the very names show (see Suppl.). The Indians trace nothing but their alphabet (dêvanâgarî, dêva-writing), as our forefathers did the mystery of runes (p. 149), to a divine origin, and the use of the symbol may be connected with that of the sound itself; with the earliest signs, why should not the purest and oldest expressions too be attributed to gods? Homer's epea pteroenta (winged words) belong to heroes and other men as well as to gods, else we might interpret them strictly of the ease and nimbleness with which the gods wield the gift of speech.



ENDNOTES: