CHAP. III. The Religion of the SAXONS in their Pagan State. Ar this happy period of the world, we cannot reflect on the idolatry of ancient times, without some astonishment at the infatuation which has so inveterately, in various regions, clouded the human mind. We feel, indeed, that it is impossible to contemplate the grand canopy of the universe; to descry the planets moving in governed order; to find comets darting from system to system in an orbit of which a space almost incalculable is the diameter; to discover constellations beyond constellations in endless multiplicity, and to have indications of the light of others whose full beam of splendour has not yet reached us; we feel it impossible to meditate on these innumerable theatres of existence, without feeling with awe, that this amazing magnificence of nature announces an Author tremendously great. But it is very difficult to conceive how the lessons of the skies should have taught that localising idolatry, which their transcendent grandeur, and almost infinite extent, seem expressly calculated to destroy. The most ancient religions of the world appear to have been pure theism, with neither idols nor temples. These essential agents in the political mechanism of idolatry were unknown to the ancient Pelasgians, from whom the Grecians chiefly sprung, and to the early Egyptians and Romans. The Jewish patriarchs had them not, and even our German ancestors, according to Tacitus, were without them. In every nation but the Jewish a more gross system of superstition was gradually established. The Deity was dethroned by the symbols which human folly selected as his representatives; the most ancient of these were the heavenly bodies, the most pardonable objects of erring adoration. But when it was found possible to make superstition a profitable craft, then departed heroes and kings were exalted into gods. Delirious fancy soon added others so profusely, that the air, the sea, the rivers, the woods, and the earth became so stocked with divinities, that it was easier, as an ancient sage remarked, to find a deity than a man. CHAP. III. CHAP. III. Some of the subjects of their adoration we find in their names for the days of the week. Of the sun and moon we can only state, that their sun was a female deity, and their moon was of the male sex3 of their Tiw, we know nothing but his name. Woden was the great ancestor from whom they deduced their genealogies. It will be hereafter shown that the calculations from the Saxon pedigrees place Woden in the third century. 4 Of the Saxon Woden, his wife Friga, and of Thunr, or Thor, we know very little, and it would not be very profitable to detail all the reveries which have been published about them. The Odin, Frigg, or Friga, and Thor, of the Northmen, were obviously the same characters; though we may hesitate to ascribe to the Saxon deities the apparatus and mythology which the Northern scalds of subsequent ages have transmitted to us from Denmark, Iceland, and Norway. Woden was the predominant idol of the Saxon adoration, but we can 2 take the Saxon names of the days of the week from the Cotton MS. Tiberius A. 3. They may be also found in the Saxon Gospels, p. 24 S. 72 M. 55 T. 48 W. 49 Th. 28 F. 52 S. As Thon means also a mountain, his name may have some connection with the ancient Eastern custom of worshipping on mountains and hills. He was called the god of thunder; hence is named Thunpe. The word Thop seems to imply the mountain deity. 3 The same peculiarity of genders prevailed in the ancient Northern language. Edda Semundi, p. 14. It is curious, that in the passage of the Arabian poet, cited by Pocock, in not. ad Carmen Tograi, p. 13., we meet with a female sun and masculine moon. The distich is, Nec nomen femininum soli dedecus, Nec masculinum lunæ gloria. So the Caribbees think the moon a man, and therefore make it masculine, and call it Noneim. Breton's Gram. Carabb. p. 20. So the Hindu Chandra, or moon, is a male deity. 2 A. R. 127. The priests of Ceres called the moon Apis, and also Taurus. Porph. de Ant. Reg. 119. Cæsar mentions, that the Germans worshipped the sun and moon, lib. vi. c. 19. In the Saxon treatise on the vernal equinox we have their peculiar genders of these bodies displayed. "When the sun goeth at evening under this earth, then is the earth's breadth between us and the sun; so that we have not her light till she rises up at the other end." Of the moon it says, "always he turns his ridge to the sun."-" The moon hath no light but of the sun, and he is of all stars the lowest.". -Cotton MS. Tib. A. iii. p. 63. 4 Perhaps hleoihop, the Saxon for oracle, may have some reference to Thop. Dleo means a shady place, or an asylum. Dleothon is literally the retirement of Thop. Dleozhop cpyde means the saying of an oracle, Dleothoprtede the place of an oracle. state no more of him but so far as we describe the Odin of the Danes and Norwegians. 5 6 The names of two of the Anglo-Saxon goddesses have been transmitted to us by Bede. He mentions RHEDA, to whom they sacrificed in March, which, from her rites, received the appellation of Rhed-monath; and EOSTRE, whose festivities were celebrated in April, which thence obtained the name of Єortne-monath. Her name is still retained to express the season of our great paschal solemnity: and thus the memory of one of the idols of our ancestors will be perpetuated as long as our language and country continue. Their name for a goddess was gydena; and as the word is applied as a proper name instead of Vesta, it is not unlikely that they had a peculiar divinity so called. The idol adored in Heiligland, one of the islands originally occupied by the Saxons, was FOSETE, who was so celebrated that the place became known by his name; it was called Foreterland. Temples were there built to him, and the country was deemed so sacred, that none dared to touch any animal which fed on it, nor to draw water from a fountain which flowed there, unless in awful silence. In the eighth century, Willebrord, a converted Anglo-Saxon, born in Nor 5 Without imitating those who have lately fancied that there never was an Odin, and that he is merely a mythological personage, the name of a deity, we may remark, that the date of Odin's appearance in the North cannot be accurately ascertained. This difficulty has arisen partly from the confusion in which, from their want of chronology, all the incidents of the North, anterior to the eighth century, are involved, and partly from the wild and discordant fictions of the scalds, who have clouded the history of Odin by their fantastic mythology. The same obscurity attends the heroes of all countries who have been deified after death, and upon whose memory the poets have taken the trouble to scatter the weeds as well as the flowers of their fancy. The human existence of Odin appears to me to be satisfactorily proved by two facts: 1st. The founders of the Anglo-Saxon Octarchy deduced their descent from Odin by genealogies in which the ancestors are distinctly mentioned up to him. These genealogies have the appearance of greater authenticity by not being the servile copies of each other; they exhibit to us different individuals in the successive stages of the ancestry of each, and they claim different children of Odin as the founders of the lines. These genealogies are also purely Anglo-Saxon. 2d, The other circumstance is, that the Northern chroniclers and scalds derive their heroes also from Odin by his different children. Snorre, in his Ynglinga Saga, gives a detailed history of Sweden regularly from him; and though the Northerns cannot be suspected of having borrowed their genealogies from the Anglo-Saxons, yet they agree in some of the children ascribed to Odin. This coincidence between the genealogies preserved in their new country of men who left the North in the fifth and sixth centuries, and the genealogies of the most celebrated heroes who acted in the North during the subsequent ages, could not have arisen if there never had been an Odin who left such children. I have already expressed my opinion, that the Anglo-Saxon genealogies lead us to the most probable date of Odin's arrival in the North. 6 Bede, de Temporum Ratione, in his works, vol. ii. p. 81. 7 See Saxon Dictionary, voc. Lydena. CHAP. III. СНАР. thumbria, who, under the auspices of his uncle Boniface, went missionary to Friesland, endeavoured to destroy the superstition, though Radbod, the fierce king of the island, devoted to a cruel death all who violated it. Willebrord, fearless of the consequences, baptized three men in the fountain, invoking the Trinity, and caused some cattle who were feeding there to be killed for the food of his companions. The surrounding pagans expected them to have been struck dead or insane. 8 That the Angles had a goddess whom they called Hertha, or mother Earth, we learn from Tacitus. He says, that in an island in the ocean there was a grove, within which was a vehicle covered with a garment, which it was permitted to the priest alone to touch. The goddess was presumed to be within it, and was carried, by cows, with great veneration. Joy, festivity, and hospitality were then universal. Wars and weapons were forgotten, and peace and quiet reigned, then only known, then only loved, until the priest returned the goddess to her temple, satiated with mortal converse. The vehicle, the garment, and the goddess herself were washed in a secret lake. Slaves ministered, who were afterwards drowned. 9 11 10 The Saxons dreaded an evil being, whom they named Faul10; some kind of female power they called an elf, who is very frequently used as a complimentary simile to their ladies. Thus Judith is said to be elf reinu, shining as an elf. They also venerated stones, groves, and fountains. 12 The continental Saxons respected the lady Hera, a fancied being, who was believed to fly about in the air in the week after their Jule, or between our Christmas and Epiphany. Abundance was thought to follow her visit. 13 We may add 6 Alcuini vita S. Willebrord in his works, p. 1438., or in Sanct. Hist. Col. vol. vi. p. 130. Charles Martel conquered Radbod, and added the island to his dominions, ibid. Saint Liudger, who died in 809, destroyed the temples of Fosete. See his life by Altfridus, who was alive in 848, in Act. Sanct. Bolland. March. tom. iii. p. 646. 9 Tacit. de Mor. German. 10 That Faul might not hurt, was part of one of their exorcisms. See Sax. Dict. voce Faul. 11 So Judith, p. 21. 12 See Meginhard. Conrad Usperg. Wilkins, 83. Linden. Gloss. 1473. 13 Gobelin Ap. Meibom. Irminsula, p. 12. We may add that Bede, in his commentary on Luke, mentions demons appearing to men as females, and to women as men, whom, he says, the Gauls call Dusii, the presumed origin of our word deuce. Hincmar, in Bib. Mag. Pat. xvi. 561. But he does not say that these demons were part of the Saxon paganism. There were two personages feared in the North, whom we may mention here, as words from their names have become familiar to ourselves; one was Ochus Bochus, a magician and demon, the other was Neccus, that Hilde, one of their terms for battle, seems to allude to a war-goddess of that name. That the Saxons had many idols appears from several authors. Gregory, in the eighth century, addressing the old Saxons, exhorts them to abandon their idols, whether of gold, silver, brass, stone, or any other kind. 14 Hama, Flinnus, Siba, and Zernebogus, or the black, malevolent, ill-omened deity, are said to have occupied part of their superstitions, but we cannot be answerable for more than their names. 15 A Saxon Venus has been also mentioned; she is exhibited as standing naked in a car, with myrtle round her head, a lighted torch in her breast, and the figure of the world in her right hand. But this description implies too much refinement in its allusions, and the authority is not decisive. 16 The account of Crodus has stronger marks of authenticity; it seems to have been preserved in the Brunswick Chronicle, from which more recent historians have taken their descriptions. The figure of Crodus was that of an old man clothed in a white tunic, with a linen girdle, with floating ends. His head was uncovered: his right hand held a vessel, full of roses and other flowers, swimming in water; his left hand supported the wheel of a car; his naked feet stood on a rough scaly fish like a perch. 17 It was raised on a pedestal. It was found on the Mount Hercinius, in the fortress of Harsbourg, which was anciently called Satur-bourg 18, or the fortified hill of Satur. Hence this was probably the idol of Satur, from whom our Saturday is named. 19 That the Saxons had the dismal custom of human sacrifices on some occasions, cannot be doubted. Tacitus mentions it a malign deity who frequented the waters. If any perished in whirlpools, or by 14 Bib. Mag. Pat. xvi. 101. 15 Fabricius, Hist. Sax. p. 62. Verstigan describes the idol Flynt as the image of death in a sheet, holding a torch, and placed on a great flint-stone. He was also represented as a man in a great cloak, with a lion on his head and shoulders, and carrying a torch. His figure was sometimes more deformed with monstrous feet. It had a crown on its head. Montf. Ant. Exp. c. 10. 16 Gyraldus says he read of this idol in the Saxon histories. Worm. Mon. p. 19. 17 Albinus, Nov. Sax. Hist. p. 70. and Fabricius, p. 61. IS Montfaucon, Ant. Exp. c. 10. He says, that at the entrance of this fortress the place was, in his time, shown where this image stood. 19 The descriptions of Prono, of the three-headed Trigla, of Porevith with five heads, and Svanto with four, of Radegast with a bull's head in his breast, and an eagle on his head, mentioned by Montfaucon from Grosser's History of Lusatia, seem to be more Oriental than Teutonic, and may have come into Germany from the latter Sarmatian tribes. CHAP. III. |