Chapter 21

Tacitus (Germ. 9, 10), after saying 'lucos ac nemora consecrant,' adds: 'Proprium gentis, equorum quoque praesagia ac monitus experiri. Publice aluntur, iisdem nemoribus ac lucis, candidi et nullo mortali opere contacti, quos pressos sacro curru sacerdos ac rex vel princeps civitatis comitantur, hinnitusque ac fremitus observant. Nec ulli auspicio major fides, non solum apud plebem, sed apud proceres, apud sacerdotes: se enim ministros deorum, illos conscios putant;' these sacred beasts are in the secrets of the gods, and can reveal their counsels. And in christian times the Indiculus pagan. cap. xiii. speaks 'de auguriis equorum,' without describing them further. A horse's neigh is an omen of good (Sup. I, 239). (25) To warriors victory was foretokened by their chargers' neighing (OHG. hueiôn, MHG. weien, M. Neth. neien, ON. hneggja, Swed. gnägga), and defeat by their withholding the cheerful spirit-stirring strain: see an instance in the Flem. rhyming chron., ed. Kausler 7152. We know how the Persians chose a king by the neighing of his horse, Herod. 3, 84. In the Norwegian tale Grimsborken (Asb. and Moe, no. 38) a foal is suckled by twelve mares, and gets to talk sensibly (see Suppl.).

And as Mîmi's head retained its wisdom after it was cut off (379), heathendom seems to have practised all sorts of magic by cutting off horse's heads and sticking them up. In a nursery-tale (no. 89) the trusty Falada's head is nailed up over the gate, and carries on converse with the king's daughter. This cutting off and setting up of horse's heads has been mentioned at p. 47-8 as an ancient German custom. Pliny 19, 10 (58) notices, as a remedy for caterpillars: 'si palo imponantur in hortis ossa capitis ex equino genere.' In Scandinavia they stuck a horse's head on a pole, and turned the gaping jaws, propped open with a stick, in the direction whence the man they had a spite against, and wished to harm, was sure to come. (26) This was called a neidstange (spite-stake). Saxo Gram. p. 75: Immolati diis equi abscissum caput conto excipiens, subjectis stipitibus distentos faucium rictus operuit, sperans se primos Erici conatus atrocis spectaculi formidine frustraturum. Arbitrabatur enim ineptas barbarorum mentes oblatae cervicis terriculamento cessuras; et jam Ericus obvium illis iter agebat. Qui prospecto eminus capite, obscoenitatis apparatum intelligens, silere socios cautiusque se gerere jubet, nec quemquam temere præcipitare sermonem, ne incauto effamine ullum maleficiis instruerent locum, adjiciens, si sermone opus incideret, verba se pro omnibus habiturum. Jamque medius illos amnis secreverat, cum magi, ut Ericum pontis aditu deturbarent, contum quo equi caput refixerant fluvio citimum locant. Ille nihilominus pontem intrepide aggressus, 'in latorem' inquit 'gestaminis sui fortuna recidat, nos melior consequatur eventus. Male maleficis cedat, infaustae molis gerulum onus obruat, nobis potiora tribuant omina sospitatem!' Nec secus quam optabatur evenit: continuo namque excussa cervice ruens ferentem stipes oppressit.---Egilssaga p. 389: Egill tôk î hönd ser heslis staung (hazel rod), ok geck â bergsnaus nockura, þâ er vissi til lands inn. þâ tôk hann hross-höfuð ok setti up â staungina. siðan veitti hann formâla ok mælti sva: 'her set ek upp niðstaung, ok sný ek þessu nîði â hönd Eirîkr konûngi ok Gunnhilda drôttnîngu.' hann sneri hross-höfðinu inn â land.---At other times they carved a man's head out of wood, and fastened it to a stake which was inserted in the breast of a slaughtered horse. (27) Vatnsd. saga, p. 142: Iökull skar karls höfut â sûlu endann, ok risti â rûnar med öllum þeim formâla sem fyrr var sagdr, sîðan drap Iökull mer eina (killed a mare), ok opnuðu hana hia briostinu, fœrðu â sûluna, ok lêtu horfa þeim â Borg (see Suppl.). It is well worth noticing, that to this very day the peasants' houses in a part of Lower Saxony (Lüneburg, Holstein, Mecklenburg) have horses' heads carved on the gables: they look upon it merely as an ornament to the woodwork of the roof, but the custom may reach far back, and have to do with the heathen belief in outward-pointing heads keeping mischief away from houses. (28) The Jahrb. of the Meckl. verein 2, 118 says, these horses' heads are nailed transversely on each gable-end (kühlende) of the roof, a reminiscence of the sacred horses of the ancients. Heinr. Schreiber (Taschenb. f. 1840, p. 240 seq.) has likewise noticed these horses rushing at each other on gables of the older houses in Romanic Rhætia (not Germ. Switz., but Tyrol; see Zingerle's Sitten p. 55); he is decidedly over hasty in pronouncing them a Celtic symbol, for if we were to say that the custom in L. Saxony was a legacy from the earlier Celtic inhabitants, criticism would lose all firm footing. To me this custom, as well as horse-worship altogether, seems to belong equally to Celts, Teutons and Slavs; what particular branches of these races were most addicted to it, will by degrees unfold itself to future research (see Suppl.). Prætorius (Weltbeschr. 2, 162-3) relates, that the Non-German people (Wends) used to keep off or extirpate cattle-plagues by fixing round their stables the heads of mad horses and cows on hedge-stakes; also that if at night their horses were ridden to exhaustion by the night-hag or leeton, they put a horse's head among the fodder in the crib, and this would curb the spirit's power over the beast. Very likely the superstitious burying of a dead head in the stable (I, 815) means that of a horse, (29) conf. Chap. XXXVIII., Nightmare. In Holland they hang a horse's head over pigstyes (Westendorp p. 518), in Mecklenburg it is placed under a sick man's pillow (Jahrb. 2, 128). We saw the horse's head thrown into the Midsummer fire with a view to magical effects (p. 618). (30)

Prætorius's account is enough to show that Slavs agreed with Germans in the matter of horse-worship. But older and weightier witnesses are not wanting. Dietmar of Merseburg (6, 17. p. 812) reports of the Luitizers, i.e. Wilzes: 'Terram cum tremore infodiunt, quo sortibus emissis [imm. ?] rorum certitudinem dubiarum perquirant. Quibus finitis, cespite viridi eas operientes, equum, qui maximus inter alios habetur et ut sacer ab his veneratur, super fixas in terram duorum cuspides hastilium inter se transmissorum supplici obsequio ducunt, et praemissis sortibus quibis id explicavere prius, per hunc quasi divinum denuo augurantur; et si in duabus his rebus par omen apparet, factis completur; sin autem, a tristibus populis hoc prorsus omittitur.' ---The Vita beati Ottonis episcopi bambergensis, composed by an unknown contemporary (Canisius iii, 2, 70), relates more fully of the Pomeranians, whom Otto converted A.D. 1124: 'Habebant caballum mirae magnitudinis, et pinguem, nigri coloris, et acrem valde. Iste toto anni tempore vacabat, tantaeque fuit sanctitatis ut nullum dignaretur sessorem; habuitque unum de quatuor sacerdotibus templorum custodem diligentissimum. Quando ergo itinere terrestri contra hostes aut praedatum ire cogitabant, eventum rei hoc modo solebant praediscere. Hastae novem disponebantur humo, spatio unius cubiti ab invicem separatae. Strato ergo caballo atque frenato, sacerdos, ad quem pertinebat custodia illius, tentum frenato, sacerdos, ad quem pertinebat custodia illius, tentum freno per jacentes hastas transversum ducebat ter, atque reducebat. Quod si pedibus inoffensis hastisque indisturbatis equus transibat, signum habuere prosperitatis, et securi pergebant; sin autem, quiescebant.'---Here the holy steed is led across nine spears lying a cubit apart from one another, in Dietmar's older narrative over the points of two crossed spears; of course the Luitizers may have had a different method from the Pomeranians. Saxo Gram. p. 321 gives yet a third account of the matter respecting the Slavs of Rügen: 'Praeterea peculiarem albi coloris equum titulo possidebat (numen), cujus jubae aut caudae pilos convellere nefarium ducebatur. Hunc soli sacerdoti pascendi insidendique jus erat, ne divini animalis usus quo frequentior hoc vilior haberetur. In hoc equo, opinione Rugiae, Svantovitus (id simulacro vocabulum erat) adversus sacrorum suorum hostes bella gerere credebatur. Cujus rei praecipuum argumentum exstabat, quod is nocturno tempore stabulo insistens adeo plerumque mane sudore ac luto respersus videbatur, (31) tanquam ab exercitatione veniendo magnorum itinerum spacia percurrisset. Auspicia quoque per eundem equum hujusmodi sumebantur. Cum bellum adversum aliquam provinciam suscipi placuisset, ante fanum triplix hastarum ordo ministrorum opera disponi solebat, in quorum quolibet binae e traverso junctae conversis in terram cuspidibus figebantur, aequali spaciorum magnitudine ordines disparante. Ad quos equus ductandae expeditionis tempore, solenni precatione praemissa, a sacerdote e vestibulo cum loramentis productus, si propositos ordines ante dextro quam laevo pede transcenderet, faustum gerendi belli omen accipiebatur. Sin laevum vel semel dextro praetulisset, petendae provinciae propositum mutabatur.'---This description is still more extant: the sacred horse, here attributed to the diety himself who bestrides him by night, is led three times over two spears planted crosswise, that is, over six spears, and must, for the omen to be favourable, pass each row with his right foot foremost; if at even one row he has lifted the left before the right, misfortune is threatened. The colour ascribed to the steed is white as in Tacitus, not black as in the biographer of Otto.

The Chronica Augustensis ad. an. 1068 (in Freher 1, 349) says, that Bp. Burcard of Halberstadt (the Buko still known in our children's game) took away their sacred horse from the Lutizers, and rode home to Saxony on it himself: 'Burcardus Halberstatensis episcopus Luiticiorum provinciam ingressus incendit, vastavit, avectoque equo quem pro deo in Rheda (32) colebant, super eum sedens in Saxoniam rediit.'

May we then adopt the hypothesis, that Dietmar and the Augsburg chronicler mean the sacred horse of Radigast at Rhetra, and Saxo and the author of the Vita Ottonis that of Sviatovit at Arkona? Each of these gods (33) had horses hallowed to him, and others may have had the same. And so in Germany too, horses may have been dedicated to several dieties, and divination performed with them under similar forms; especially to the gods Frouwo (p. 656) and Wuotan (p. 154-5-6).

Some accounts of the reverence paid to sacred horses in Ditmarsen have a doubtful look. The Rieswold or Riesumwold on the confines of N. and S. Ditmarsen is said to have been a holy wood, in which human sacrifices were offered, and white horses consecrated to gods were maintained. (34) This is simply an unauthorized appropriation of the statement in Tacitus to a particular locality. There is more of local colour in what Bolten 1, 262 repeats after the suspicious Carsten, that at Windbergen there stood a grove set apart to Hesus (!), which is still called Hese or Heseholt. (35) In the grove two white horses, a young and an old, were fed for the god, no one was allowed to mount them, and good or bad auguries were gathered from their neighing and leaping. Some talk of ten or even twenty horses. A priest of the god stuck staves in the ground, led the bridled steed along, and by certain processes made it leap slowly over the staves. Joh. Aldolfi, i.e. Neocorus, who is cited in support, says nothing at all about it. The immunity from mounting is another point of agreement with those Slav horses.



ENDNOTES:

25. What the breath of a swine has polluted, is set right again by that of the horse (Sup. I, 820. K. 92); the horse is a clean animal. It helps a woman in labour, for a horse to feed out of her apron (Sup. I, 337). [Back]

26. Wolves' heads were in like manner held open with hazel rods and hung up Isengr. 645-7-8. Reinardus 3, 293. 312. Reinhart, introd. p. lxix. [Back]

27. Conf. Sup. I, 838, planting the willow in the dead foal's mouth. [Back]

28. Pretty much as they turned the eagle's head on the house, and thought thereby to shift the wind (p. 633-4). The heathen practice of fastening up animals' heads explains many very old names of places in Germ. and France, as Berhaupten, Tierhaupten, Roshaupten, Schm. 2, 223. Ad locum qui nuncupatur caput caballinum, Pertz 2, 278. Ad locum qui vocatur caput equi (Vita S. Magni, in Canisius's Lect. ant. 1, 667), with the addition in Goldast (Scr. rer. Alem. i. 2, 198): 'et idcirco vocatus est ille locus caput equi, quia omnes venatores reliquerant ibi suos caballos, et pedestres ibant ad venendum.' Obviously a false later interpretation; in fact this life of St. Magnus (Magnoald, Mangold) has a good many interpolations, conf. Mabillon's Acta Bened. sec. 2, p. 505. [Back]

29. Conf. Fornald. sög. 2, 168. 300, what is said of Faxi's hross-haus. [Back]

30. Why should the monks in the abbey have a caput caballinum? Reinhardus 3, 2032. 2153. Does the expression spun out of a dead horse's head' in Burcard, Waldis 4, 2, mean enchanted? [Back]

31. As the horse ridden by the night-spirit is covered with dust and sweat the next morning (see p. 287 and Suppl.). [Back]

32. Not 'in rheda' (Wedekind's Notes 1, 173). Rhetra, a chief place of Slav heathenism, placed by Adam of Bremen in the land of the Retharii, where stands the temple of Redigost; Dietmar gives the Lutiz town in the 'grau Riedera' itself the name of Riedegost. [Back]

33. Sviatovit or Svantevit has been confounded with St. Vitus, sanctus Vitus (conf. Acta sanctor. 15 Jun. p. 1018); but we cannot possibly make the god Svantevit originate in Vitus. [Back]

34. Falk's Collection of treatises, 5, 103. Tondern, 1828. [Back]

35. This Hese-wood may however remind us of the 'silva Heisi, Hese' on the Ruhr in Westph. (Lacombl. no. 6. 17. 64. 260) and the 'silva caesia' of Tacitus. [Back]