The name is absent

that is, “ Ear is a terror to every man, when fast
the flesh, the corpse beginneth to become cold and
pale to seek the earth for a consort. Joy faileth,
pleasure departeth, engagements cease.” It is clear
that Ear, spica, crista, will not explain this, and we
may believe that our forefathers contemplated the
personal intervention of some deity whose contact
was death. This may have been Tiw or Ear, espe-
cially in the battle-field, and here he would be equi-
valent to the ^,'Apηc βpoτoλoιγoc μιaιφovoc of Homer.

More than this we shall hardly succeed in
rescuing : but there yet remains a name to consider,
which may possibly have tended t'' Ltinish the more
heathen one of Tiw. Among all the expressions
which the Anglosaxons used to denote a violent
death, none is more frequent than wig fornam, or
wig gesceod, in which there is an obvious person-
ality, Wig (War) ravished away the doomed : here
no doubt war was represented as personally inter-
vening, and slaying, as in other similar cases we
find the feminines Hild, Gu¾, which are of the same
import, and the masculines Swylt, Dea¾, mors. The
abstract sense which also lay in the word wig, and
enabled it to be used without offence to Christian
ears, may have been a reason for its general adop-
tion in cases where at an earlier period Tiw would
have been preferred. Old glossaries give us the
rendering WigMars, and Hild,Bellona: it is there-
fore not at all improbable that these words were
purposely selected to express what otherwise must
have been referred to a god of perilous influence :
Wig was a more general, and therefore less dan-
gerous name than Tiw, to recal to the memory of a

people prone to apostasy. That the Iattgr survived
in the name of a weekday serves only to show that it
was too deeply grounded to be got rid of ; perhaps its
very familiarity in that particular relation rendered
it safe to retain the name of any deity, as was done
by five out of the seven days. But Christianity
was tolerant of heathen names in other than hea-
then functions, and in the genealogy of the kings
of Wessex, Wig is the father of Gewis, the epony-
mus of the race. I have already expressed my be-
lief that this name represented either Woden or
Tfw, and think it very likely that it was the latter,
inasmuch as the paganism of the Gewissas seems to
have been remarkable, beyond that of other Anglo-
saxon tribes : “ Sed Britanniam perveniens, ac pri-
mum Gewissorum gentem ingrediens, cum omnes
ibidem paganissimos inveniret,” etc.¹ “ Intrante
autem episcopo in portum Occidentalium Saxonum₅
gentem qui antiquitus Gewisse vocabantur, cum
omnes ibidem paganissimos inveniret,” etc.² The
events described are of the year 634. We find that
Tfw enters into the composition of the names of a
few plants³ ; on the other hand it is never found in
the composition of proper names, any more than
Tfr ; although now Tfrberht or Tfrwulf would seem
quite as legitimate compounds as Eadberht, Sige-
berht, Eadwulf, Sigewulf.

FREA', in Old-norse FREYR, in Old-german
FRO.—The god whom the Norse mythology cele-

¹ Beda, Hiat. Ecc. iii. 7.    ² Johann. Tj neɪn. Legend. Nova, fol. 38.

³ Thus Old-norse Tysfiola, Tjrhjalm, Tjβvi‰

2 a2

<<   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   >>

More intriguing information