364
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book L
But there is another name under which the Anglo-
saxons may possibly have known this god, and that
is Pol or Pal.
In the year 1842 a very extraordinary and very
interesting discovery was made at Merseberg : upon
the spare leaf of a MS. there were found two me-
trical spells in the Old-german language : these
upon examination were at once recognized not only
to be heathen in their character, but even to con-
tain the names of heathen gods, perfectly free from
the ordinary process of Christianization. The one
with which we are at present concerned is in the
following words :
Phol endi Wodan
vuorun zi holza,
da wart demo Balderes volon
sin vuoz birenkit ;
thu biguolen Sinthgunt,
Sunna era suister,
thu biguolen Erda,
Volla era suister,
thu biguolen W6dan,
so he wola conda :
sosé bénrenki, sose bluotrenki,
sosé Iidirenki ;
bén zi béna,
bluot zi bluoda,
Iid zi geliden,
sose gelimida sm.
Phol and Wodan
went to the wood,
then of Balder’s colt
the foot was wrenched ;
then Sinthgunt charmed him,
and her sister Sunna,
then Frua charmed him,
and her sister Folia,
then Woden charmed him,
as he well could do :
both wrench of bone, and
wrench of blood,
and wrench of limb ;
bone to bone,
and blood to blood,
limb to limb,
as if they were glued together.
The general character of this poem is one well
known to us : there are many Anglosaxon spells of
the same description. What makes this valuable
beyond all that have ever been discovered, is the
CH. x∏∙]
HEATHENDOM. POL.
365
number of genuine heathen names that survive in
it, which in others of the same kind have been re-
placed by other sanctions ; and which teach us the
true meaning of those which have survived in the
altered form. In a paper read before the Koyal
Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Grimm identified
Phol with Baldr ɪ, and this view he has further de-
veloped in the new edition of his Mythology2. It
is confirmatory of this view that we possess the
same spell in England, without the heathendom,
and where the place of the god Baldr is occupied
by that of our Lord himself. The English version
of the spell runs thus :
The lord rade,
and the foal slade ;
He lighted
and he righted ;
set joint to joint
and bone to bone,
sinew to sinew.
Heal, in the Holy Ghost’s name3 !
It will be admitted that this is something more
than a merely curious coincidence, and that it leads
to an induction of no little value. Now it appears
to me that we have reasonable ground to believe
our version quite as ancient and quite as heathen
as the German one which still retains the hea-
then names, and that we have good right to sup-
pose that it once referred to the same god. How
“ Ueber zwei entdeckte Gedichte auβ der Zeit des deutschen Hei-
denthums. Von Jacob Grimm.” Vorgelesen in der Konigl. Akademie
der Wissenschaften, am 3 Febr. 1842, pp. 10,11.
ŋeut. Mythoi, p. 205. 3 Chalmers’s Nursery Tales.