The name is absent

404        THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.       [book i.

the hill: bold were they, as they rode over the
land.”

Stod under Iinde

under Ieohtum scylde
ðær ða ɪnihtigan wɪf
hyra mægen ber<=eddon,
and hy gyllende
garas sendon.

“ I stood beneath my linden shield, beneath my
light shield, where the mighty women exercised
their power, and sent the yelling javelins! ” An-
other spell from a MS. in Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge, appears to name them more distinctly :

Sitte ge, sɪgewif,
sɪgað to eorðan,
næfre go wɪlde
to wuda fleogan ;
bed ge swa geɪnindige
mines godes,
swa bið manna gehwilc
metes and cbeles.

“ Sit, ye victorious women (or women of victory)
descend to earth, never fly ye wildly to the wood:
be ye as mindful of good to me, as every man is of
food and landed possession.” Grimm has remarked
Withgreatjustice¹ that the sigewif here recalls the
names of Wælcyrian, Sigrdrifa, Sigrun and Sigr-
iinn. I certainly see in Sigewif, women who give
victory ; and the allusion to the wild flight and the
wood are both essentially characteristic of the Wæl-

ɪ D. Myth. p. 402. He cites this spell, but proposes on grammati-
cal grounds to read wιlle for τvilde. If any change is necessary I should
preferfle6gen.

CH. x∏∙] HEATHENDOM. CREATION, ETC.

cyrian, whom Saxo Grammaticus calls feminae and
_nymphae sylvestres. For many examples of this
peculiar character, it is sufficient to refer to the
Deutsche Mythologie¹.

Creationand destruction.—The cos-
mogony of the Pentateuch was necessarily adopted
by the Saxon converts; yet not so entirely as to
exclude all the traditions of heathendom. In the
mythology of the Northern nations, the creation
of the world occupied an important place : its de-
tails are recorded in some of the most striking lays
of the earlier Edda; and several of them appear
unconsciously to have acted upon the minds of our
Christian poets. The genius of the Anglosaxons
does not indeed seem to have led them to the
adoption of those energetic and truly imaginative
forms of thought which the Scandinavians proba-
bly derived from the sterner natural features that
surrounded them : the rude rocks and lakes of
Norway and Sweden, the volcanoes, hot springs,
ice plains and snow-covered mountains of Iceland,
readily moulded the Northmen to a different train
of thought from that which satisfied the dwellers
in the marshlands of the Elbe and the fat plains of
Britain. But as in the main it cannot be doubted
that the heathendom of both races was the same,
so even in many modes of expression we meet with
a resemblance which can hardly be accidental.
Like almost every other people, the Northmen con-

ɪ Deut. Myth. p. 401, seq.~∖

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