Part 6 — CHAPTER II. NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

Section I.—Guth.

It is hard to class this first class of names under those of mythology, for they bear in them our own honoured word for the Deity; and though some arose when the race were worshippers of false divinities, yet under the same head are included many given in a Christian spirit.

Some philologists tell us, though they are not unanimous in the explanation, that this name is from the same source as the Sanscrit Svadáta, self-given or uncreate, and as the Zend Quadata, Persian Khoda, and our own Teuton term for Deity—the Northern Gud and Gothic Guth, whence the High German Cot and low German God. Others explain it as the creating or all-pervading. Others, again, derive it from od, possession, and in early Christian times there was a distinction between God (mas.) and the neuter god, an idol. It is equally doubtful whether this divine word be the origin of the adjective, guth, gut, cuot, gode. Whether they are only cognate, or whether they are absolutely alien, and the adjective be related to the Greek ἀγαθός—wherever they come from, the names derived from either God or good are so much alike, as to be inextricably mixed, so that they must be treated of together.

The North is the great region of these names; but they are not very easy to distinguish from the very large class beginning with gund, war, as in pronunciation, and latterly in spelling, the distinctive letters, n and u, get confounded or dropped.

It is probable, however, that among those from Gud we may place Gudhr, which was owned by one of the Valkyrier, the battle maids of northern belief, and must, with her, have meant the brave, or the goddess; Guda was known in Scandinavia; and Germany used the name, till it was translated into Bona or Bonne, and thus passed away.away.

In the northern version of the Nibelungen, the second heroine is Gudruna. The last syllable means wisdom, or counsel; it is the same as rune, the old northern writing, and alludes to the wisdom that Odin won at so dear a rate. Gudruna may then be translated divine wisdom, a name well suited to the inspired priestesses, so highly regarded by the Teutons. It was very common in the North; eighteen ladies so called appear in the Icelandic Landnama; and it 286was so universal there, that Johann and Gudruna there stand for man and woman, like our N. or M. In Norway, likewise, Gudruna is common; and, near Trondjem, is contracted into Guru; about Bergen, into Gern or Gero. High German tongues rendered it Kutrun.

The Landnama-bok, which gives all the pedigrees of the free inhabitants of Iceland for about four hundred years, namely, from the migration to the twelfth century, gives us Gudbrand, divine staff, now commonly called Gulbrand; Gudbiorg, divine protection; Gudiskalkr, God’s servant, or scholar, which is the very same as Godeskalk, the name assumed by the first Christian prince of the Wends of Mecklenburg, who was martyred by his heathen subjects, and thus rendered Gottschalk a German Christian name; in Illyrian, Gocalak; and known even in Italy as Godiscalco, just like Gildas or Theodoulos. Gudleif is feminine, Gudleifr masculine, for a divine relic; and this last coming to England with the Danes, turned into a surname as Gulleiv, then shortened into Gulley, and lengthened into Gulliver—a veritable though quaint surname for the Lemuel Gulliver whom Swift conducts through Laputa and Brobdignag, with coolness worthy of northern forefathers.

Gudleik, divine service, is, perhaps, repeated by our St. Guthlac; but both these may come from gund. Gudmund contracts into Gulmund, divine protection. Five ladies called Gudny appear, which latter termination is a common feminine form, and comes from the same word as our new. If an adjective, it would mean young and pretty; if a noun, it stands for the new moon, a very graceful name for a woman. Guni is the contraction used in the North.

Gudfinn and Gudfinna must be reminiscences of Finn, whom we shall often meet in the North. Gudrid and Gudridur mean the divine shock or passion, from the word hrid or hrith, one that is constantly to be met with as a termination in northern names, and which has sometimes been taken for the same as frid, with the aspirate instead of the f. Guri is the contraction.

Gudveig’s latter syllable would naturally connect itself with the wig, war, that is found in all the Gothic tongues; but Professor Munch translates it as liquid—divine liquor—the same meaning as Gudlaug and the masculine Gudlaugr; laug, from la, liquor, or the sea. Divine sea, would be a noble meaning for the Gulla or Gollaa to which Gudlaug is commonly reduced in Norway.

Gudvar is divine prudence or caution, the last part being our word ware; in fact, every combination of the more dignified words was used with this prefix in the North, and it was probably the Danes who introduced this commencement into England, for we do not find such in pedigrees before the great irruption in Ethelred I.’s time.

In spite of the romantic story of Earl Godwine’s rise into honour from acting as a guide to a Danish chief, it is certain that he was of an honourable family, of Danish connection, and thus he probably obtained his name, which would mean God’s beloved, and thus translate Theophilos. Few are recorded in history as bearing the 287same; but there must have been some to transmit the frequent surname of Godwin and Goodwin, the latter connected to our minds with the Goodwin Sands, which were really once the estate of the ambitious earl. Godin is the remains of the same in French. It is found at Cambrai, in 1065, belonging to the “Echanson d'Ostrevant.” The old French word godeau meant a cup, and, as Godin soon became a surname of a family which carried a cup in their arms, there might have been a double allusion to the office of the ancestor and to the sound of the name. Godine and Godinette were also in use there, but were considered as feminines to Goderic—a very old word, which, strange to say, was, at Cambrai, equivalent to fainéant, or ‘ne’er do weel,’ it must be supposed in allusion to some particularly discreditable Goderic, as everywhere else it signifies divine ruler. Our own St. Goderic was an Anglo-Saxon abbot, and the name, which means divine rule, grew so common among the English, that the Norman nobles called Henry I. and his Queen, Godric and Godiva, in derision of the lady’s English blood. Goderic does, indeed, swarm in Domesday Book, and has left the surname Goodrich.

“The woman of a thousand summers back,

Godiva, wife to that grim Earl who ruled

At Coventry,”

really existed, and was probably Godgifu, the gift of God, like Dorothea, as ive or eva was the Norman rendering of gifu. Her namesakes are in multitudes in Domesday, and, in 1070, one lived in Terouenne, a pious lady, tormented, and at last murdered, by her husband, on which account she was canonized as St. Godeleva.

The High Germans, however, made far more use of this commencement, and won for it the chief honour. The elder forms are according to the harsh old German sounds—Cotahelm, divine helmet, Cotahramn, divine raven, Cotalint, divine serpent! But the more universal spelling prevailed, as Frankish or Allemannic saints came into honour. Gotthard, bishop of Hildesheim, was one of these. His name, which may be rendered divine resolution, or, perhaps, firm through God, was also borne by Godard, abbot of Rouen, and has adhered to the great mountain-pass of the Alps, as well as to families of Godard in France, Goddard in England. In Germany it is still used as a Christian name; and in Lithuania is Gattinsch, Gedderts, or Kodders.

Gottfrid, divine peace, was abbot of St. Quentin early in the eleventh century, and named two godsons, the canonized bishop of Amiens, and the far more famous Gottfried of Lorraine, who might well, as leader of the crusading camp, bequeath his name to all the nations whose representatives fought under him, and thus we find it everywhere. In Florence it has become Giotto, to distinguish the artist who gave us Dante’s face; in Germany, cut down into Goetz, it distinguished the terrible, though simple-hearted, champion with the iron hand, then, falling into a surname, belonged to Göthe. We received our Godfrey from the conqueror of Jerusalem, but previously the Gottfried had been taken up by the French, and was much used 288by the Angevin counts in the Gallicized form of Geoffroi. In alternation with Foulques, the name continued among the Angevins till they came to the English throne; and then Jaffrez, as the Bretons called the young husband of their duchess Constance, was excited to rebellion by the Provençals as Jaffré. Geoffrey spread among the English, and the Latinizers made it into Galdfridus, which misled Camden into translating it into Glad-peace.

English. Breton. French. Italian.

Godfrey Jaffrez Godefroi Goffredo

Geoffrey Godafrey Godofredo

Jeffrey Geoffroi Giotto

Jeff Jeoffroi

Spanish. German. Polish. Lusatian.

Godofredo Gottfried Godfrid Frido

Gofredo Götz Dutch. Fridko

Gödel Govert

Besides these, Germany has Godegisel, divine pledge; Godebert and Godeberta, divine brightness; and Gottwald, divine power: repeated in Provence by Jaubert.

Germany also has a Gottleip, the same with the old Anglo-Saxon Guthlaf, meaning the leavings of God, or remains of Divinity, but which has been made in modern German into Gottlieb, or love, and contracted in Lower Lusatia into Lipo; in Dantzic, into Lipp. There are several of these modern devotional German names, such as Gottlob, the very same in meaning as belonged to the Speaker of the Rump, Praise God Barebones, but has been continued as Lopo, or Lopko, in Lusatia. In fact, the Moravians use these appellations, and thus we have the modern coinage of Gottgetreu, Gotthilf, and Gotthilfe, and even of Gottsei-mit-dir, much like the Diotisalvi of Italy, and not without parallel among the early Christians.

The Spanish Goths left behind them Guzman, once either divine might (magen), or Man of God. Guzman el Bueno was an admirable early Spaniard, who beheld his own son beheaded rather than surrender the town committed to his keeping. It became a surname, and it may be remembered how Queen Elizabeth played with that of Philip II.’s envoy, when she declared that if the king of Spain had sent her a gooseman, she had sent him a man-goose.

Another old form taken by this word was Geata, or Gautr. It was used as an epithet of Odin, and has been explained by some to mean the keeper, and be derived from geata, to keep; but it is far more likely that it is only another pronunciation of the same term for the All-pervader or Creator.

Gautr is sometimes a forefather, sometimes a son of Odin; and there is a supposed name-father, Gaut, for the Goths of Sweden, whether they are the same as the Goths of Italy and Spain or not.

289In this form, Gaut had its own brood of derivatives, chiefly in Sweden, but with a few straying into Germany; such as Gosswin, divine friend, and Gossbert, in Provençal Joubert, Gossfried, which may be the right source of Geoffrey.

The most noted of all is, however, Gotzstaf, or Gozstaf, meaning either the divine staff, or the staff of the Goths. Twice has it been endeared to the Swedes; first by Gustaf Vasa, the brave man who delivered the country from the bondage of the union of Calmar, and whose adventures in Dalecarlia, like those of Bruce in Scotland, were more endearing than even his success. Him the country calls affectionately “Gamle Kong Gosta” and no less was its love and pride in his noble descendant, Gustaf Adolf, “the Lion of the North, the bulwark of the Protestant faith,” who casts the only gleam of brightness over the dull waste of the Thirty Years' War. Thus it is no wonder that so many bear his name, Gustav, Gosta, Gjosta, that it is considered in the North as the national nickname of a Swede; and it has the feminine Gustava.

English. French. Italian. Swedish.

Gustavus Gustave Gustavo Gozstav

Gustav

Gosta

Gjosta

German. Lett. Esthonian.

Gustaf Gustavs Kustav

Gusts Kustas

Section II.—The Aasir.

Tacitus tells us that the supreme god of the Germans was called Esus or Hesus, and though some have thought he meant the Keltic Hu, it is far more likely that he had heard the word As or Æs, the favourite Teutonic term for their divinities.

The word is known in all the Teutonic languages: it is As, Aasir in the North, Os, Es in Anglo-Saxon, and Anseis or Ensi in Gothic and High German. Jornandes tells us that the Goths called their deified ancestors anses, but it is only in the North that the literature of the Pantheon of the race was so developed that we can follow it out.

The Aasir are in northern myth a family like the Olympian gods of Greece; they inhabit Valhalla, and there receive the spirits of the worthy dead, to feast and hunt with them till the general battle and final ruin of all things, when a new and perfect world shall arise.

Blended with this notion there is a grand allegory of the contention between the seasons. The Aasir, or summer gods, are always struggling with the Hrimthusir, or frost powers, and winning the victory over them.

And further, the tradition of a migration from the warmer East, 290and of the battles with the northern aborigines, is mixed up in the legends, and the Aasir are a band of heroic settlers from Asgard or Asia, who fix themselves in Europe, and become the ancestors of all the various races of Teutons.

So speak the Edda and the various sagas of the North; and though the poetry and legends of the other nations have not come down to us, their use of the names formed from as, os, ans, testifies to their regard for the term as conveying the idea of deity.

To begin with the North, where the pronunciation is the purest, the word in the singular is aas, in the plural, aasir or æsir, and the older form of these names began with the aa, though usually spelt with a single a in Norsk and Icelandic, with an e in Danish. And let it be remembered throughout, that the Northern aa is pronounced like our o.

The Low Germans change the aas into os, and in this way most of the Anglo-Saxon and continental German names commence.

Ans, the High German and Gothic form, occurs in the Frank, Lombardic, and Gothic names. Asgaut or, as the Saxons call it, Osgod, and Asgrim, are both reduplications of divinity.

Aasbjorn, divine bear, is a queer compound, and so is Aasolfr, or divine wolf; but as will be shown when we come to the beasts themselves, a certain divinity did hedge about these formidable animals in the days of name-coining in the North. The first Asolfr with whom I have met was a Christian, who, with twelve companions, was wrecked upon the shores of Iceland in the interval between its settlement and conversion. They erected buildings, resolutely refused all commerce with the heathen, and lived solely on the produce of their fishing. A church has since been built where they settled. The name has fallen into Asulf in the North, and was paralleled by Osulf in England. As to the divine bear, he had a wider fame, for Asbiorn came among the Northmen to Neustria, and was there Frenchified. An Osborn was the seneschal who was murdered in the sleeping chamber of William in the stormy days of the minority of the future conqueror; and his son, William Fitzosborn, was the chief friend and confidant of the stern victor of Hastings. Osborn figures in Domesday, and has now become a common English surname, which used to be translated house-born, before comparison with the other tongues had shown the true relations of the word. Asbera is the northern feminine.

291Esbern Snare, or the swift, the Danish noble, whose heart and eyes were to have furnished Finn’s child with amusement, was really a powerful earl at the end of the twelfth century, and his still more celebrated twin brother, Bishop Absalom, was a great statesman and warrior, and prompted Saxo Grammaticus to write his chronicle of Norway. Bishop Absalom is believed to have, like his brother, received at baptism one of the derivatives from the old gods of Denmark, namely, Aslak, the divine sport or reward, a name which in Denmark and Sweden is always called Axel, in which shape it belonged to Oxenstjerna, the beloved minister of Gustavus Adolphus, and has ever since been a favourite national name. Aslak is in the North pronounced Atlak, and sometimes taken for the original Atli in the Volsunga Saga; but this is far more probably the Tartar Attalik. We had a Bernician Aslak of the like meaning. Never were there a more noted pair of twins than these brothers, of the bear and the sport. Well might their birth be first announced to their absent father, on his return to the isle of Soro, by twin church steeples, built by the mother to greet his eyes over the sea. His name, Askar, or Ansgjerr, divine spear, was so common that sixteen appear in the Iceland roll, and the word Osgar gets confused with the Keltic Oscar, son of Ossian; nay, it may perhaps have been his proper name. A Frank Ansgar, born in Picardy about the year 800, was the apostle of Denmark, and afterwards bishop of Hamburgh and Bremen; he was canonized as Anscharius, and is popularly called in his bishopric St. Scharies, by which title the collegiate church of Bremen is called. It is curious to find the Ansbrando of ancient Lombardy reflected by the Asbrandr, divine sword, of Iceland. Lombardy had likewise Anshelm, the divine helmet, softened down into Anselmo or Antelmo, the name of that mild-natured Lombardic Archbishop of ours, whose constancy cost him so dear in his contention with the furious Rufus and politic Beauclerc. That firmness, however, together with his deep theological writings, won him the honours of sanctity, though it is only on the Continent that his name took root: England had no national love for her Anselm; and he chiefly appears in Italy, France, and Germany, where he has been cut short as Anso, endeared as Ensilo, has a feminine Ansa, and is called by the Jews Anschel.

Of other terms which, like helm, give the idea of protection, there are many; the feminine Asbjorg or Asburg, divine fort, is reflected by the Anglo-Saxon Asburgha. Asgardr, divine guard, may be most probably an allusion to the abode of the gods, Asgard, the abode to which the rainbow-arch Bifrost was the access, trod, according to the grand death song of Eirikr Blodaxe, by the spirits of the courageous dead on their way to feast in the hall of Odin. As men’s names appear the Norwegian Asgard, and Ansgard, a Winchester householder in Stephen’s time; but the Northern feminine Asgerdur is the divine maiden, in honour of the goddess Gerda. Asmundr is the northern form of a favourite name, giving the idea of protecting with the hand. It is called Ansmunt in old German, Osmund in Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French, and in this form was most popular, at first perhaps, 292from Osmond de Centeville, the brave Norman, who fled from Laon with the young Richard Sans Peur, but afterwards for the sake of a Norman Osmond, who was canonized as Bishop of Salisbury, whence this form in England and Osmont in France have continued. Aasvalldr, divine power, was in Germany Ansvalt, and has modernized as Asvald; but the Anglo-Saxon Oswald was the glory of the name in the Northumbrian monarch, “free of hand,” as even his Welsh foes called him, who has left Oswald to be an English name. Asvor and Asvora express divine prudence.

“Aslaug, dottur Sigurdur Fafnisbana,” is recorded in the Landnama-bok in sober earnest as having married Ragnar Lodbrog.

Divine legacy, or relic, appears in Asleif, the English Oslaf. The northern Aasny, with Ashildur, has always been a favourite. Osthryth, divine threatener, came out of the house of Bernicia into Mercia, where she was murdered by the Danes, and revered as St. Osyth with a priory in her honour.

Thoroughly English are likewise Osmod, divine mood or wrath; Osfrith, divine peace; Osred, divine council; Osgifu, divine gift; Oswine, divine friend, the third of the admirable but short-lived kings of Bernicia; Oswiu, who overthrew him, was probably named from a word meaning sacred, of which more in its place. Osbeorht we share with Germany, which calls it Osbert, and has the feminine Osberta. In fact, most of these names were in use there, beginning with os or ans, according to the dialect in which they were used. Ansgisel was one of the Frankish forms, that section of the race always making much use of gisel, a pledge.^[107]

Section III.—Odin, or Grîmr.

The head of the Aasir was Odin, as we have learned to call him from the North, which worshipped him long after we had forgotten our Wuotan, except in the title of his day of the week. There are various opinions as to the meaning of his name, some making it come from the word for rage in the North, odhr; in A. S., wod; and still wuth in German; and the adjective wud in Scottish. It thus may allude to Odin being the god of storm and tempest. Others take the name from O. G., watan, N., vatha, to pervade, the title of the Divinity, as being through all things. This is, in fact, the same as God.

However this may be, Odin, in the higher myths, is the All-father, standing at the head of Asgard, as Zeus does of Olympus. He governs all things, and knows all things. He obtained this mighty influence, says the Edda, by hanging for nine nights on the world-tree, Yggdrasil, without food or drink, transfixed with a spear, as a self-sacrifice. Then he looked down into the depth, and sank from the tree into it; but in the abyss beneath he drank the costly poet-mead, 293and learnt powerful songs, obtaining the Runes, the beginning of wisdom, by which he could compel to his will all nature: wind, sea, and fire, hate and love!

Coupled with this entirely divine Odin, there was the abiding notion of ancestry beginning with a god; and no one, of any nobility, was content without having Odin for his forefather. Even when Christianity dethroned Odin from his place in Heaven, he was still retained as a heroic ancestor; and somewhat grotesquely, the old chroniclers, after carrying up their kings to him, brought him down from Noah, and he became reduced to be the leader of the great migration from Asia, while the gods were made his human sons.

We do not find Odin itself forming part of any personal name; it seems to have been avoided as Zeus was in Greece, and, to a greater degree, Jupiter in Rome. But he had no less than forty-nine epithets, all of which are rehearsed in the prose Edda, and his votaries were called by one or other of these.

Finn has been spoken of already as one of these; also Gautr, as one of the forms of divinity. Grîmr is another, coming from the old Norse word grîma, a mask or helmet. Odin was called Grimr, meaning the concealed, or possibly the helmeted; and the names beginning with Grim may generally be referred to the hidden god.

Grîmhild, or in High German, Krimhild, was originally one of the Valkyrier, or choosers of the slain, who was so called, as being endowed with a helmet of terror. Hidden battle-maid, or helmeted battle-maid, would be her fittest translation. In the northern version of the Nibelungenlied, Grimhild is the witch-mother of Sigurd’s wife, Gudrun, and performs a part like that of the Oda, or Uta, in the German and Danish versions, in which the heroine herself is called Kriemhild, or Chriemhild, and does her fatal part in wreaking revenge for the murder of her husband. Grimhhildur was somewhat used in the North, but nothing was so fashionable as Grim, who occurs twenty-nine times in the Landnama-bok, and with equal frequency in Domesday; besides that one of these Danish settlers left his name to Grimsby, in Lincolnshire.

Grim has, of course, his kettle, in the North, Grimketyl, or Grimkjell; in Domesday, Grimchel; an allusion, probably, to creation, quaint as is the sound to our ears. Grimperaht, or helmeted splendour, first was turned into Grimbert, then into the common German surname of Grimmert. Grimar in the North was Grimheri in Germany. Grim was in greater favour as a prefix in the High German dialects than in the North, and chiefly in the Frankish regions.

Grimbald, helmeted prince, was a monk of St. Omer, transplanted by King Alfred to Oxford, in the hope of promoting learning, and he thus became a Saxon saint. Grimvald, helmeted ruler, was a maire du palais in the Faineant times of the Franks; and in Spanish balled el Conde Grimaltos, a knight at the court of Charlemagne, was slandered and driven away with his wife to the mountains, where the lady gives birth to a son, who was baptized Montesinos, from the place of his birth, and educated in all chivalry till he was old enough to go to Charlemagne’s court, refute the slander by the ordeal 294of battle, and restore his family to favour. Grimaldo was a name borne by the Lombard kings, and left remains in the great Grimaldi family of Genoa.

Most of our English Grims were importations, and there are few of them, though we have Grimulf in Domesday, probably a Dane.

Section IV.—Frey.

Every false religion preserves in some form or other the perception of a Divine Trinity, and the Teutonic Triad consisted of Odin, Frey, and Thor, whose images always occupied the place of honour in the temples, and who owned the three midmost days of the week.

The history of the word freyr is very curious. The root is found in pri, Skt., to love or rejoice, the Zend frî, the Greek φίλος. To be glad was also to be free; so freon or frigon means to free and to love, and thence free in all its forms (N. fri; Goth, frige; H. G. frei; L. G. freoh). Thus, again, the Germans came by froh, and we by fresh. Fro was both glad and dear; and as in Gothic frowida was joy, so is freude in modern German; and we exult in frolics and freaks. He who loved was known by the present participle, frigonds, the friend of modern English, the same in all our Teutonic tongues; and as the effect of love is peace, the term was fred or fried, our Saxon frith, which we have lost in the French-Latin word. To be free was to be noble, so the free noble was Frauja, the name by which Ulfilas always translates Κύριος, in the New Testament, by a beautiful analogy, showing, indeed, that our Lord is our Friend and our Redeemer, loving us, and setting us free.

Frauja, or free, was the lord and master, so his wife was likewise frea, both the beloved and the free woman; the northern frue, German frau, and Dutch vrowe, all, as donna had done in Italy, becoming the generic term for woman.

Out of all the derivatives of this fertile and beautiful term, there were large contributions to mythology, and a great number of names.

Freyr, lord, lover, was once a god of very high rank, lord of sun and moon, hermaphrodite, and regulating the seasons, blessing marriage, and guarding purity: and this was probably a universal idea brought from Asia.

As old notions formed into mythic tales, and the gods grew human, the wife of Odin was invented, and what could she be but the frau, the lady of Asgard, Frigga? Again, Freyr was brought down from his mysterious vagueness, and turned into a nephew of Odin, with the moon to take care of, and, moreover, was disintegrated into a brother and sister, called Freyr and Freya.

The sixth day of the week had probably originally belonged to Freyr, but Frigga got possession of it; and, in right of her presiding over love and marriage, she was considered to be Venus; and in France and Italy her day is still Vendredi and Venerdì, while we have it as Friday, the Germans as Freitag, the North as Fredag.

295Freya is also a goddess of love, and drives over every battle-field with her car drawn by cats (once, perhaps, panthers, like those of Bacchus, whom her brother is thought to resemble), and chooses half the slain, whom she marshals to their seats at the banquet of Valhalla. Her husband, Othur or Odhr, curiously repeats Odin’s name, as she does Frigga’s. She weeps continually drops of gold when he is absent, and the metal is poetically called Freya’s tears.

Her brother, Freyr, was always a chaste, dignified, beneficent personage, a sort of severe Bacchus, or grave Apollo. In the great final battle, he is to be destroyed by Surti. He is the tutelary god of Sweden, as was Odin of the Saxons.

There are hosts of names connected with these deities, or the words sprung from their source. Frith in Saxon, frey or freya in the North, fried in German, falling in France into froi, was a favourite termination generally masculine, and so probably in honour of Freyr; and though it is safe to translate it peace, it probably also meant freedom.

Old Spanish has Froila, or Fruela, among the kings of the Asturias, and this may be translated lord, and compared with the Freavine, or Frowin, free darling, now become Frewen. Franta, too, was a king of the Spanish Suevi.

Fritigern, king of the Visigoths, who first fixed himself on the Danube, bore the name afterwards Frideger (spear of peace), in Germany, a compound much resembling that borne by that Jezebel of the Meerwings, Fredegunt, or Frédégonde, as she is called by French historians. Freygerdur ofof the North, as found in the Landnama-bok, serving four men and two women, is there explained either as freedom-preserver, or peace-keeper.

But what is to be said of Fridthjof, or Frithjof, the renowned hero of the Frithjofsaga, being no better than peace-thief? Northern pirates thought no scorn of being thieves, and we shall fall on plenty more of them; but the compound is certainly startling.

Fridulf, or Fridolf, peace wolf, is nearly as bad; but it seems to have contracted into Friedel in Germany, and expanded into Fridolin, probably in imitation of Fedlim, or some such Erse name, since the saint thus recorded in the calendar is one of the many Scottish missionaries of the fifth century, who preached to the Burgundians. He is the titular patron of the Swiss canton of Glarus, whose shield bears his figure in the Benedictine dress he never wore. Thence Schiller took the name of the youth in his ballad on the strange adventure of Isabel de la Paz of Portugal, which is best known through Retzch’s illustrations. The German Friedel must be short for this, as Frider is for Fridheri, peace-warrior. In fact, Germany is the great land of this commencement, and has fostered the best known of the whole. There was indeed a Fridrikr in the Landnama-bok, and a Fredreg, or Frederic, in Domesday, but these would have been forgotten but for an old Frisian bishop, Freodhoric, who, in the time of Louis le Debonnaire, had been murdered while praying in his chapel, and being canonized, was a patron saint of the Swabian house. Friedrich with the red beard, or 296Barbarossa, a Ghibelline hero, caused Federigo to be popular among that party in Italy; and when his Neapolitan grandson’s claims to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies had been transmitted, through Manfred’s daughter, to the Aragonese monarchs, Fadrique became usual in Spain. Friedrich had grown national in Germany, and not a king of Prussia till the present has reigned without being so called, in compliment to their hero, who, while the soldiers called him Old Fritz, thought it graceful to write himself Frédéric, having with his French tastes, taken a dislike to the sound of his own name, 297even in the softened spelling of his adopted language. It was from the father of this monarch that the son of George II. was called Frederick, a name we have twice had next in succession to the crown. The Danes obtained the name from their German connections, and make it alternate on the throne with Christiern. The feminine is a late invention in Germany, very common there but barely recognized elsewhere.

English. French. Breton. Spanish.

Frederick Frédéric Fêidrik Fadrique

Fred Ferry

Portuguese. Italian. German. Dutch.

Frederico Federigo Fridrich Frederik

Federico Fritz Freerik

Frisian. Swedish. Danish. Swiss.

Frerk Fredrik Frederik Fredli

Frek Fridli

Friko

Russian. Polish. Slovak. Bohemia.

Fridrich Fryderyk Friderik Bedrich

Fryc

Lusatian. Lettish. Lithuanian. Finn.

Fidrich Sprizzis Prydas Rietu

Bedrich Prizzis Wrizzis Wrizzis Prydikis Priczus Wettrikki Wetu Wetukka

Hungarian. Greek

Fridrik Φρεσδερικος

FEMININE.

English. French. Portuguese Italian.

Frederica Frédérigue Frederica Federica

Freddie Feriga

German. Swiss. Polish. Bohemian.

Fridrike Fredrika Frydryka Bedriska

Fritze Greek.

Fritzinn Φρεδερική

Rike

Rikchen

Probably this popular Frederick has devoured all the other forms with the same commencement; for after the middle ages had fairly begun, we hardly ever hear of the German Fridrad, Fridrada, Fridhelm, Fridrun, Fridbald, Fridbert, Fridburg, Fridgard, Fridilind. Fridmund, peace protection, Fridwald, peace-power, has been preserved in Friesland as Fredewolt, Fredo, or Freddo. Fridleifr in the North has fallen into Friedlieb in Germany: it is the same as the Frithlaf whom our Saxon chroniclers bestowed on Wuotan by way of ancestor.

Our own Saxon saint, Frithswith, strong in peace, was the daughter of the Lord of Oxford, in the eighth century. She lived in a little cell at Thornbury, had various legendary adventures, which may be seen portrayed in a modern window of the cathedral at Oxford, and became the saintly patroness of the University and Cathedral, where, by the name of St. Fridiswid, she reigned over Alma Mater, till Wolsey laid hold of the church and its chapter for his own splendid foundation of Christchurch. Frethesantha Paynell was wife of Geoffrey Lutterell, about the fourteenth century; and Fridiswid is by no means uncommon in the old genealogies of Essex and the northern counties. Alban Butler gives Frewissa as the contraction; but in Ireland, according to Mr. Britton’s capital story of The Election, it is Fiddy.

From frei, free, modern Germany has taken Freimund, by which they mean Freemouth, though it ought to be free protection, Freimuth, free courage, Freidank, free thought. But the older word for free plays a far more important part in modern nomenclature, namely, Frang, the High German form of free lord.

The nation called Cherusci by Tacitus denominated themselves Frangen when they warred on northern Gaul, overspread it, and termed it for themselves Frankreich. As their primary energy decayed their dominion divided; Frankenland, under the Latinism of Franconia, became leagued with the lands of the Swabians, Allemanni, and Saxons, and thus became part of Deutschland and of the Holy Roman Empire, while Frankreich was leavened by the Gallo-Romans, who worked up through their Frank lords, and made their clipped Latin, or Langue d’oui^[108] (the tongue of aye), the national language, and yet called themselves Les Français, and the country France. And as the most enthusiastic and versatile of the European commonwealth, they so contrived to lead other nations, and impress their fashions on them, that the Eastern races regarded all Europeans as 298Franks, called their country Franghistan, and the patois spoken by them in the Levant became Lingua Franca.

Franc, or Franco, was the archbishop of Rouen who made terms with Rollo; but the name of real fame arose otherwise.

Long before the emperor Charles V. had pronounced French to be the language for men, an Italian merchant of Assisi caused his son, Giovanni, to be instructed in it as a preparation for commerce. The boy’s proficiency caused him to be called ‘il Francesco,’ the Frenchman, until the baptismal Giovanni was absolutely forgotten; and as Francesco he lived his ascetic, enthusiastic life; as Franciscus was canonized; and the mendicant order, humbly termed by him fratres minores, lesser brethren, were known as Franciscans throughout the Western Church.

Many a little Italian of either sex was christened by his soubriquet, and though one of the first feminines on record was the unhappy lady whose fall and doom Dante made famous, yet the sweet renown of the devout housewife, Santa Francesca di Roma, assisted its popularity; there was a Françoise at Cambrai even in 1300, and Cecarella is the peasant mother of a damsel in the Pentamerone.

San Francesco di Nola reformed the Franciscans into a new order, called the Minimi, or least, as the former ones were the Minores. It is to him that the spread of the name beyond the Alps is chiefly owing, for Louise of Savoy was so devoted to him, that she made him sponsor and name-father to her passionately loved son, and sewed his winding-sheet with her own hands.

The name was not absolutely new to France, for that of the grandson of the first Montfort, Duke of Brittany, had been Fransez, and so had been that of the father of the Duchess Anne, who carried her old Keltic inheritance to the crown of France; but it was her daughter’s husband, François I., the godson of the saint of Nola, who was the representative Frenchman, the type of showy and degenerate chivalry; and thus spread François and Françoise universally among the French nobility, where they held sway almost exclusively till the memories of the House of Valois had become detestable; but by that time the populace were making great use of it, and at the present time it is considered as so vulgar that a French servant in England was scandalized that a child of the family should be called Francis.

Franz von Sickingen is an instance that already Germany knew the name; but it did not take root there at once. The grandchildren of François I., intermarrying with the house of Lorraine, rendered his namesakes plentiful, both in the blood-stained younger branch of Guise, and in the dull direct stem, the continuation of the Karlingen, who at length, by the marriage with Maria Theresa, were restored to the throne of Charlemagne, in the person of him whom the classicalizing Germans termed Franciskus I. This cumbrous form is still official, but Franz is the real name in universal use in the German parts of the Austrian Empire, though the Slavonic portions generally use the other end of the word, as Zesk.

It was the same gay French monarch who sent us our forms of the name. Mary Tudor, either in gratitude for his kindness, or in 299memory of her brief queenship of France, christened her first child Frances—that Lady Frances Brandon whose royal blood was so sore a misfortune to her daughters, and who had numerous namesakes among the maidens of the Tudor court; but they do not seem to have then made the distinction of letter that now marks the feminine, and they used what is now the masculine contraction. “Frank, Frank, how long is it since thou wast married to Prannel?” was the rebuke of the Duke of Richmond to his Howard lady when he was pleased to take down her inordinate pride, by reminding her of her youthful elopement with a vintner.

The modern Fanny is apparently of the days of Anne, coming into notice with the beautiful Lady Fanny Shirley, who made it a great favourite, and almost a proverb for prettiness and simplicity, so that the wits of George II.’s time called John, Lord Hervey, ‘Lord Fanny,’ for his effeminacy. Fanny, like Frank, is often given at baptism instead of the full word; and, by an odd caprice, it has lately been adopted in both France and Germany instead of their national contractions.

The masculine came in at the same time, and burst into eminence in the Elizabethan cluster of worthies—Drake, Walsingham, Bacon; but it did not take a thorough hold of the nation, and was much left to the Roman Catholics. It was not till Frank had been restricted to men that it took hold of the popular mind, so as to become prevalent.

The original saint of Assisi made devout Spaniards use Francisco and Francisca, before the fresh honour won for the first by two early Jesuits—the Duke of Gandia, the friend and guide of Charles V., and Xavier, the self-devoted apostle of the Indies. His surname has thrown out another stock. It is in itself Moorish, coming from the Arabic Ga’afar, splendid, the same as that of our old friend, the Giaffar of the Arabian Nights, the Jaffier of old historians. Wherever Jesuits have been, there it is; Savero in Italy, Xavier in France, Xaverie in Wallachia, Xavery in Poland, Saverij in Illyria; Xaveria for the feminine in Roman Catholic Germany, marking the course of the counter-Reformation. Even Ireland deals in Saverius, or Savy, though when English sailors meet a Spanish negro called Xaver, they call him Shaver! Savary de Bohnn, whom Dugdale places under Henry I., was probably a form of Sigeheri, or Saher, which may have been absorbed by Xaver in Roman Catholic lands.

English. Erse. Breton. French.

Francis Fromsais Franse François

Frank

Spanish. Portuguese. Italian. Wallachian.

Francisco Francisco Francesco Francisk

Francilo Francisquinho Franco

Cecco

300German. Dutch. Scotch. Swedish.

Franciskus Frenz Francie Frans

Franz

Frank

Polish. Bohemian. Slovak. Lettish.

Franciszek Frantisek Francisek Spranzis

Franck Franc

Franjo

Zesk

Lithuanian. Finn. Hungarian. Greek.

Prancas Ranssu Ferencz Φραγκίσκος

Ferko

FEMININE.

English. Breton. French. Span. and Por.

Frances Franseza Françoise Francisca

Fanny Fantik Francisque

Fanchette

Fanchon

Italian. German. Dutch. Polish

Francesca Franziske Francyntje Franciszka

Cecca Franze Francina Franulka

Ceccina Sprinzchen Fransje Franusia

Ceccarella (Lower German.)

Bohemian. Slovak. Hungarian. Greek.

Frantiska Franciska Francziska Φραγκίσκη^[109]

Franika

Franja

Section V.—Thor.

The third in the Teutonic Triad is the mighty Thor, whose image stood on the other side of that of Odin, in the northern temples, whose day followed Odin’s, and who was the special deity of the Norsemen, as Wuotan was of the Saxons, and Freyr of the Swedes.

The most awful phenomenon to which, in Northern Europe, human ears are accustomed—the great electric sound from heaven, could not fail to be connected with divinity, by nature, as well as by the lingering reminiscence of the revelations, when it accompanied the Voice of the Most High.

301If the classic nations knew the mighty roll as the bolts of Zeus or Jupiter, they called it βροντή (brontè) and tonitru, names corresponding to those divinities wherewith the other Aryans connected the sound—the Perun of the Slavonians, the Taran of the Cymry, the Thunnr, Donnar, or Thor of the Teuton. The Indra of the Hindu, came from udra or eidan, water, as god of the waters of the sky, while the Teutonic title was probably an imitation of the deep rolling sound, and the god must have been called after it.

In the northern myths Thor is the eldest son of Odin, mightiest of all the Aasir, partly in right of his belt of strength, which doubles his force, and of the iron gauntlets which he wields whenever he throws his mighty hammer—Mjolner, the crusher (from the word that named Milo, also mills and meal)—which, like a boomerang, always returns to him when he has hurled it. He has a palace called Thrudheim, or Thrudvangr, the abode of courage, resting on five hundred and forty pillars, which seems like a tradition of some many-columned Indian edifice. It was he who was foremost in the fight with the powers of evil; he bound Lok, the destroyer, and banished him to Utgard, where the famous visit was made that so curiously reflects Indian and Persian myths, and has dwindled into the tricks of our Giant-killer and the German schneiderlein. He has more adventures than any other single deity in northern story, and continues champion of the gods till the final consummation, when, after having destroyed many of the enemies, he is finally stifled by the flood of poison emitted by the Midgard snake.

Thord seems to have been a contraction of the old Low German Donarad, which has vanished; but in fact Thor, though regnant in the North, was not very popular elsewhere, and almost all the names he commences are Scandinavian; though the old Spanish Goths had a king Thorismundo, Thor’s protection, the same as our Norman Tormund. They had also an Asturian bishop, Toribio, who long after was followed by a sainted namesake in Spanish South America.

Every possible change that could be rung on Thor seems to have been in use among the Northmen. The simplest masculine, Thordr, comes seventy times in the Landnama-bok, Thorer forty-seven times, after the early settler Thorer the silent, and the feminine Thora twenty-two, and she still flourishes in Iceland and Norway.

Thor had his elf, Thoralfr, his household spirit Thordis, his bear and his wolf. His bear, Thorbjorn, is fifty-one times in the Iceland roll, and was not without a she-bear, Thorbera; and the ‘Torbern,’ in Domesday, was doubtless the father of the family of Thorburn. Indeed, though Thor’s hammer was not an artistic one, he has had other artist namesakes by inheritance, namely, the Flemish Terburg, an offshoot from the northern Thorbergr, with its feminine Thorbjorg, or Thorberga, and the great Danish Thorwaldsen, the son of Thorvalldr, Thor’s power, or maybe of thunder-welder, the Thorwald of Germany, and Thorold or Turold of the Norman Conquest. Readers of Andersen may remember his story of the boy-sculptor mortified by the consequential little girl declaring that no one whose name 302ended in sen was worth speaking to. Thorwald, too, was one of the old Icelandic discoverers of America.

As to Thor’s wolf, Thorolf, it is contracted into Tolv in Norway, and thus may be the origin of that curious Danish superstition that at noon-day (twelve being tolv in Danish) Kong Tolv, a terrific and mysterious personage, drives by in his chariot, invisible except to maidens inadvertently left in solitude, when they are borne off by him to his domains for seven years, which pass like a single day.

Forty-two Thorarinns, as well as a Thorarna for a feminine, assisted to people Iceland, and of course Thor’s sword, spear, and kettle were there too; Thorbrandr six times over. The spear and kettle figure again in the story of Croyland Abbey, as told by Ingulf. Turgar, the little child who escaped the destruction, is no doubt Thorgeir, and it may be feared thus betrays a Norman invention; but Turcetyl, the good man who re-built it, was really Ethelstane’s chancellor, and no doubt took his name from some of the invading Danes, who called the Thorketyl or Thorkjell of the North, Thurkil or Trukill, of which we have some traces remaining in the name Thurkell. Thorkatla was the Icelandic feminine.

It is an evidence how greatly our population was leavened by the Danes, that though Thor names are very rare in Anglo-Saxon history, we have many among our surnames, such as Thurlow from Thorleik, Thor’s sport, Tunstall and Tunstan from Thurstan, the Danish Thorstein, the proper form of Thor’s stone, who is thus the ‘stainless Tunstall,’ whose ‘banner white’ waved in Flodden Field, just as long before Tostain the white had been the foremost knight at Hastings, and left his name to the northern peasantry to be confounded with Toussaint, the popular reading of All Saints' day, and thus to pass to the negro champion of Hayti, Toussaint L'Ouverture.

Thorgils, Thor’s pledge, also runs into Thurkil or Trokil, and cuts down to Troels; but coming to the Western Isles has there continued in the form of Torquil, and has been mixed up with the idea of the Latin torques, a neck chain. The Swedes call it Thyrgils, and the feminine is Thorgisla. It is Torchil in Domesday.

White Thors were Thorfinn and Thorfinna; Thorvid, or Thor’s wood, is in Denmark Truvid, Truid, Trudt, probably our Truefit. Besides these were used—

Thorbert, Thor’s splendour (Torbertus in Domesday).

Thorgautr, Thor the good (or Goth).

Thorgerdur, Thor’s protection (thirty-seven in Landnama-bok).

Thorgestur, Thor’s guest.

Thorgrim, Thor the helmeted.

Thorgunna, Thor’s war.

Thorhildr, Thor’s battle-maid.

Thorleif, Thor’s relic.

Thormod, Thor’s mood.

Thorhalla, Thor’s stone.

Thorlaug, Thor’s liquor.^[110]

303

Section VI.—Baldur and Hodur.

Most beautiful of all the gods was Baldur, the fair white god, mild, beautiful, and eloquent,—beloved but fore-doomed to death. His story is well known. His mother, Frigga, vainly took an oath of all created things not to be the instrument of his fate,—she omitted the mistletoe; and Lok, the destroyer, having, in the guise of a sympathetic old woman, beguiled her into betraying her omission, placed a shaft of the magic plant in the hands of the blind god, Hodr, when all the Aasir were in sport directing their harmless weapons against the breast of their favourite. Baldur was slain, and his beautiful wife, Nanna, died of grief for his loss. Even then Hela would have relented, and have given him back, provided every living thing would have wept for him; but one stern giantess among the rocks refused her tears, and Baldur remains in the realms of death, until after all his brethren shall have perished in the last great conflict, when with them he shall be revivified in the times of the restitution of all things, so remarkably promised in these ancient myths.

As to the source of his name, authorities are not agreed. Baldr is a prince in several Teutonic languages, and the royal family of the Visigoths were the Balten. Balths, bald, bold, is also a word among them; but Grimm deduces the god’s title from bjel, or baltas, the word that is the first syllable of the Slavonic Belisarius, and thus would make the Anglian Baldœg mean bright as day. It is the word that lies at the root of bellus, pretty, whose derivations are now so universal in Romanized Europe. Others turn the name over to the Bel, or Beli, of the Kelts, or the Eastern Belus; but on the whole, the derivation Baldr, a prince, is the least unsatisfactory.

The legend seems to have been unknown to the German races, or, at least, no trace of it has been found, and the names that constantly occur beginning and ending with bald or pald, are supposed merely to mean prince, and not to refer to the god. As an end it is more common than as a beginning, and it is peculiar to the Anglian races, our own Anglo-Saxons, the inhabitants of the Low Countries, and continental Saxons. The names that have become universal all emanated from one or other of these sources.

Baldric, or prince ruler, was Anglo-Saxon; but the Swedes learned it as Balderik, the Poles as Balderyk, the French as Baudri. Baldred, an English-named saint, was bishop of Glasgow; thence, too, the early French took Baldramn, prince raven, which they made Baudrand, and confused with Baldrand, prince of the house, also Baldemar, famous prince, unless this is a confusion with Waldemar.

The most general of these was, however, Baldwine, princely friend, who was very early a feudatory of the empire in Flanders, and the name continued in his family, so as to take strong hold of the population, and to spread into the adjoining lands. Baldwin was the father of William the Conqueror’s Matilda, and the one Baldwinus before the Conquest has very considerably multiplied after it, so that to us 304Baldwin has all the associations of a Norman name. Its European celebrity was owing to the two knights of Lorraine and Bourg, who reigned successively at Jerusalem after the first Crusade, and left this to be considered as the appropriate Christian name in their short-lived dynasty; and again, it was borne by the unfortunate count who was thrust into the old Byzantine throne only to be demolished by the Bulgarians, or if indeed he ever returned, to be disowned as an impostor by his daughter.

English. French. German. Dutch. Italian.

Baldwin Baudouin Balduin Boudewijn Baldovino

Baudoin Balduino

The Germans have Baldo, the French Baud, both contractions from either Baldwin or Balderich, and there are a good many surnames therefrom in England, France, and Germany.

Examples of Baldegisel, prince pledge, Baldbrecht, Baldemund, Baldeflede, Baldetrude, have also been found, but nowhere are any such forms prevalent.

Baldur’s wife, Nanna, probably comes from nanthjan, in Gothic, to be courageous. There are a few Frisians called Nanno, Nanne, Nonne; but it is very probable that this old goddess may have contributed to furnish some of the inherited names now all absorbed in Anne.

Baldur’s unfortunate murderer has, strange to say, many more namesakes. He was Nanna’s brother, blind, and of amazing strength, and is supposed to typify unheeding rashness and violence, in opposition to prudent valour. His name is in Gothic Hathus, in old German Hadu, and in Anglo-Saxon Headho, and is said to come from headho, an attack or fight, so that the right way to translate it in the compounds would be by fierce when it begins the name—war when it forms the conclusion.

It has a great many different forms. The old northern Hedinn is believed to be one, belonging first to a semi-fabulous sea-king of the mythic ages, who tried to elope with the Valkyr Hildur. From him the sea was poetically called, in the strange affected versification of the North, the road of Hedinn’s horses. There were eight Hedinns in the Landnama-bok, and the word sometimes occurred at the end of the name, as with Skarphedinn, the fierce but generous son of Njal, who dies singing to the last in the flame, with his faithful axe driven deep into the wall that the fire might not spoil its edge.

Tacitus mentions two chiefs whom he calls Catumer and Catualda, and who are supposed to be by interpretation Hadumar, or fierce fame, and Hadupald, or Haduwald, each of which would be fierce prince. Hadumar has lingered in southern France, where it has become Azimar, or Adhémar, the last, the well-known surname of the Grignan family. Hadubrand, fierce sword, is one of the heroes of the most ancient existing poem in Low German. Heddo is to be found as a name of some Frisians, contracted either from this, or 305from Hadubert, or one of the other compounds. Even ladies were named by this affix, as Haduburg, war protection; Hadulint, war serpent; Haduwig, which the old German name-writer, Luther, makes war refuge.

This last is the only usual form, owing to the saintly fame of a daughter of the Markgraf of Meranie. While one daughter, Agnes, was the victim of Philippe Auguste’s irregular marriage, the happier Haduwig married a duke of Silesia, and shared his elevation to the throne of Poland, where she evinced such piety as to be canonized; and the name she left was borne by a Polish lady in the next century, who converted her husband, the Duke of Lithuania. Thus doubly sainted, all eastern Germany delighted in it, and the French sent it to us; they calling it Hedvige; we took it as Hawoyse, and, descending into Avice, or Avis, it was at one time very common here, and is to be found in almost every old register.

English. French. German. Polish.

Havoise Hedvige Hedwig Jadviga

Hawoyse Italian. Hedda

Havoisia Edvige

Avice

Avicia

Avis

Lusatian. Esth. Lett. Hungarian.

Hada Eddo Edde Hedviga

Edo

The Spanish Goths, too, had their compounds of Hadu. The Lady Adosinda, whom Southey has placed collecting the corpses of her family in the ruins of the city destroyed by the Moors, is Haduswinth, or fierce strength; and the Portuguese Affonso is from Hadufuns. This last syllable, namely funs, means vehemence, and is, in fact, no other than our own undignified fuss; Affonso, Afonso, thus mean fierce fuss, though for more euphony, this lofty name of kings may be made into warlike impetuosity.

Section VII.—Tyr.

Tyr has few namesakes. Tyre and Thyra, in the North, are the only direct ones; but it sometimes finishes a word, as in the case of Angantyr, favourite of Tyr, the warrior who obtained the terrible sword, Tyrfing, forged by the dwarfs, which did, indeed, always give victory, but which would never go back into its scabbard till it had been fed with, at least, one human life. The dio, or thius, of the old Gothic and German names thus arose, such as Alathius, the Latinized Halltyr, and the like.

Niörd was god of the sea, almost equal in rank to Odin himself. He was a very ancient deity, known to the German nations as Nairthus, and probably, like Freyr, male and female. The goddess Nerthus, mentioned by Tacitus, has been supposed by Grimm to mean Niörd; but Hermann Luning makes it Törd, a wife of Odin, and one of the three titles of the earth: at any rate, out of this mention has been made a goddess—Hertha, who has not been without namesakes.

Many derivations have been suggested for his name. Finn Magnusson thought it might be cognate with the Greek νηρὸς (neros), wet; Grimm, that it might be connected with the North, though he declines to speak positively; and Hermann Luning deduces it from nairan, to join, because the sea joins the land together.

Niörd’s direct derivatives seem to be Nordhilda and Nordbert; the last fashionable in Germany, from a youth of imperial family, who was, at the end of the eleventh century, brought to serious thoughts by having his horse struck by lightning under him, when, like St. Paul, he cried out “What wouldst Thou have me to do?” He became a monk, and was afterwards archbishop of Magdeburg, and founder of the Præmonstratensian Order; and Norbert became known and used after he was canonized.

Niörd is used in the North; and thence too, perhaps, comes Norman, which was in use, both in France and England, at the time of the Conquest. It is puzzling to find in Domesday Book sixteen Normans possessing land in England before the Conquest, and only eight after it—one of whom, Norman d'Arcie, at least, was a Norman born. Afterwards, during the friendly thirteenth century, English nobles carried Norman to Scotland, where it was adopted in the Leslie family, and, like Nigel, became exclusively Scottish. The Highlanders called it Tormaid, which is considered to be really its Gaelic form, not an equivalent. The last Englishman I have found so called was Norman de Verdun, under Edward I.

The story of Niörd’s marriage is one of the wildest tales of later Norse mythology. Iduna, the wife of Bragi, god of poetry, kept the apples of gold which renewed the youth of the gods. However, Loki, having fallen into the clutches of the great frost giant, Thiassi, in the form of an eagle, only effected his release by promising to bring Iduna and her apples to Jotunheim. He beguiled her into a forest, under pretence that he had found finer apples than her own, and there Thiassi flew away with her. The gods began to grow old 307without their apples, and insisted that Loki should bring her back. He arrayed himself as a falcon, and, flying to Jotunheim, turned Iduna into a sparrow and flew home with her, pursued by Thiassi. The Aasir, seeing her danger, lighted a fire with chips on the walls of Asgard, which flamed up and singed Thiassi’s wings, so that he fell down among them and was slain. Afterwards, his daughter, Skadi, came to avenge his death, but was mollified by being allowed to choose a husband from the Aasir, however was only allowed the sight of the feet to select from; and thus, hoping she had taken Baldur, she obtained Niörd. Thiassi’s eyes are said to have become stars; but, as usual, the northern astronomy has been ruined by the classical, and no one knows which they are.

Bragi was followed as an Icelandic name. Its etymology is uncertain; some make it cognate with Brahma; others with braga, to shine; others with brain. Braga was poetry, and thence, from the manner of recital, noun, has formed the uncomplimentary verb, to brag, and the braggart.

Iduna, or more properly, Idhuna, Ithuna, is a myth of spring reft away by winter, who dies of the warmth of the flame of the summer gods. Her name does not seem to have been adopted in the North; but it is almost certainly the origin of Idonea, which is very common in old English pedigrees. Idonea de Camville lived under Henry III.; Idonea de Vetriponte, Vieuxpont, or Oldbridge, is cited in the curious tracts on Northern curiosities, put forth some years back in Durham, which say the name is very common; and though it might be the feminine of the Latin idoneus (fit), its absence in the Romance countries may be taken as an indication that it was a mere classicalizing of the northern goddess of the apples of youth.

The word itself is translated by Luning in the most satisfactory manner as ‘she who works incessantly,’ and by Munch, as ‘she who renovates incessantly.’ Idja is to work, unna, love, so that others make her one who loves work. The word unna, however, though derived from the verb an unna, to love, has come to mean only a woman, and as such is frequently used as a termination, as well as now and then standing alone as a female name, Unna, of whom there are three in the Landnama-bok, and several in the Saga of Burnt Njal.

Una is likewise used in both Ireland and the North; but in the former it is said to mean famine; in the North it is most probably from that word vin, win, or wine, a friend, which we shall often meet with again, and which lies most likely at the root of unna.

The word idja, to work, the first syllable of Iduna’s name, formed deisi, activity, and thence the person who ought to be active, the old German itis, and Anglo-Saxon ides, a woman, in the North, deis or dis. The idea of the active sprite was divided between womankind and certain household spirits, like the Roman genii, only feminine and possibly another name for the Nornir, as each man had his own, and they were sometimes visible as animals suiting with the character of their protégés: powerful chiefs had bears or bulls, crafty ones foxes; and even on the introduction of Christianity, faith in 308the Disir was not abandoned, though there were no more sacrifices at their Disir salen, or temples. Sometimes a family would have various disir at war with one another, some for the old faith, some for the new. While Iceland was still in suspense between heathenism and Christianity, a young chieftain one night heard three knocks at his door, and despite the warnings of a seer, went forth to see the cause. He beheld nine women in black riding from the North, and nine from the South, the disir of his family, the black for heathendom, the white for Christianity. The black ones, knowing that they must vanish from the land, seized his life as their last tribute, and wounded him so that he returned a dying man to tell his tale. Probably these disir are either the cause or the effect of those strange phantoms which, whether of doves, dogs, heads, children, or women, portend death in certain families. They may likewise account for some of the family bearings in the form of animals.

Disa is a Norwegian and Icelandic name, now nearly disused: it is also a very frequent termination, such as in Thordis, Alfdis, Freydis, &c., and it may be most fitly translated as the sprite giving the idea of the guardian protecting spirit that woman should be. In the German names it appears as the termination itis or idis, as Adelidis, one that appears at first sight like a mere Latinism.^[111]

Section VIII.—Heimdall.

The porter of Valhall is Heimdall, the son of nine sisters, who watches at the further end of the rainbow-bridge Bifrost to guard the Æsir from the giants. He sleeps more lightly than a bird, can see a hundred leagues by day or night, and can hear the grass growing in the fields, and the wool on the sheep’s backs. He bears in one hand a sword, in the other a trumpet, the sound of which resounds throughout the universe.

When the powers of evil break loose, Heimdall will rouse the gods to their last conflict by a blast of his trumpet, and in the struggle will kill and be killed by Loki.

His name is explained by heim, home, and dallr, powerful. The latter half is in Anglo-Saxon deall, in old High German tello, and in the old Norse dallr, whence Dalla is found as a name in the Landnama-bok.

Heim is in Ulfilas both a field and a village, and the Anglo-Saxons use the word dhăm for an enclosure, and hām for a village; ham in a similar manner, as is still shown in the diminutive, hamlet, for a small village, as well as in the ham that concludes many local names. At the same time, the word, slightly altered, assumed that closer, dearer, warmer sense which is expressed by the terms, heim, hiemme, hjem, hame, and home, in all the faithful-hearted Teutonic race, yet which is so little comprehended by our southern relatives, 309that they absolutely have no power of expressing such an idea as “It’s hame, and it’s hame, and it’s hame.”

Even in their heathenism “true to the kindred points of heaven and home,” the guardian of the dwelling of the brave spirits of the dead was made by the Northmen no grim Cerberus nor gloomy Charon, but the Home ruler.

And though Heimdall nowhere occurs as a name, yet the old German Heimirich is almost identical with it; though it should be observed that heim is a commencement peculiar to the Germans; we never find a name with this first syllable originating either with the Northmen or the English.

Where Heimirich first began does not appear, but it sprung into fame with the Saxon emperor called the Fowler, and his descendant won the honours of a saint, whence this became a special favourite in Germany, where it was borne by six emperors, by princes innumerable, and by so many others that the contraction Heintz had already passed to cats when Reinecke Fuchs was written.

It is from the endearment, Heinz, that, the handsome and unfortunate son of Frederick II, who, after his brief royalty in Sardinia, spent the rest of his life in a Genoese prison, was known to Italy as Enzio, and to history as Enzius.

From the Kaisers, the third Capetian king of France was christened Henri, a form always frequent there, though only four times on the throne. Its popularity culminated during the religious wars, when Henri de Valois, Henri de Bourbon, and Henri de Guise were fighting the war of the three Henris; but in spite of the French love and pride in le grand monarque, the growing devotion to St. Louis, from whom the Bourbon rights to the throne were derived, set Henri aside from being the royal name, until the birth of him whom legitimists still call Henri V.

There are but three instances of ‘Henricus,’ even after the Conquest, in Domesday; and it must have been from the reigning French monarch that William the Conqueror took Henry for his youngest son, from whom the first Plantagenet King received and transmitted it to his ungracious son, his feeble grandson, and through him to the elder House of Lancaster, then to the younger, who for three generations wore it on the throne, and for whose sake it was revived in the House of Tudor. Its right native shape is Harry; the other form is only an imitation of French spelling. It was ‘Harry of Winchester’ who cried out for help at Evesham; Harry of Bolingbroke who rode triumphant into London, and who died worn out in the Jerusalem chamber; Harry Hotspur whose spur was cold at Shrewsbury; Harry of Monmouth who was Hal in his haunts at Eastcheap, and jested with Fluellen on the eve of Agincourt; Harry of Windsor who foretold the exaltation of Harry Tudor when “Richmond was a little peevish boy,” and Harry VIII., or bluff King Hal, who lives in the popular mind as an English Blue Beard; perhaps connected in some cases with the popular soubriquet of the devil.

An early Swedish bishop bore the name, and so did a bishop of Iceland before the twelfth century; but these must have been 310foreigners, for there are no other instances in the North in early times, though the general fusion of European names brought in Hendrik, to the loss of the native Heidrick, just as Heinrich seems to have in Germany destroyed an independent Haginrich.

English. French. Spanish. Italian.

Henry Henri Enrique Enrico

Harry Henriot Arrigo

Hal Breton. Portuguese. Enzio

Halkin Hery Enrique Arriguccio

Hawkin Arrigozzo

Guccio

German. Dutch. Danish. Frisian.

Heimirich Hendrik Hendrik Enrik

Heinrich Hendricus Swedish. Polish.

Hein Heintje Henrik Henryk

Heine

Heinz

Heinecke

Henke

Henning

Bohemian. Lett. Lithuanian.

Jindrich Indrikis Endrikis

Indes Endruttis

Induls

FEMININE.

English. French. Spanish. Swedish.

Henrietta Henriette Enriqueta Henrika

Harriet Italian. Portuguese. German.

Harriot Enrichetta Henriqueta Henriette

Harty Jette

Hatty

Etta

Hetty

The founder of the Portuguese kingdom was a Henri from Burgundy; but the name did not greatly flourish in the Peninsula till Enrique of Trastamare climbed to the Castilian throne, and his namesakes, alternating with Juan, threw out the old national Alfonso and Fernando.

311On the whole this is one of the most universal of Teutonic names, and one of the most English in use, although not Anglian in origin. The feminine seems to have been invented in the sixteenth century, probably in France, for Henriet Stuart appears in the House of Stuart d'Aubigné in 1588, and there were some Henriettes to match the Henris at the court of Catherine de Medicis. England received the name from the daughter of Henri IV., Henriette Marie, whom the Prayer Book called Queen Mary, though her godchildren were always Henrietta, so Latinized by their pedigrees, though in real life they went by the queen’s French appellation, as well as English lips could frame it, so that Hawyot was formerly the universal pronunciation of Harriet, and is still occasionally used.

Heimo, or Hamo, is another old German form, becoming in French Hamon, Haymon, Aymon; and Amone in Italian. Les Quatre Filz Aymon were notable freebooters in Karling romance, and in Italy were i Quattro Figli d'Amone. Early Norman times gave us Hamo, Hamelin, and Fitzaymon; but except for an occasional Hamlyn in an old pedigree, they have disappeared.

Germany had Heimrod, Heimbert, and Heimfred; but these are not easy to disentangle from the derivatives of the word hun, which are much more in use.^[112]

Section IX.—Will.

This section has thus been headed because the Will was one of the ideas most strongly expressed in various forms in the religion of the high-spirited North.

The word to will is of all tongues; the Greek βουλή, Latin velle or volo, Gothic viljan, Keltic iouli, all show a common origin, and every Teuton language has the derivatives of will, just as the Romance have of volo.

But it is the Teuton who brings the Will into his mythology. When the creation began, the cow Audumbla licked out of the stones a man named Bur, who was the grandfather of the three primeval gods, Odin, Wili, and Vê, the All-pervading, the Will, the Holy; and it was these who together animated the first human pair. We hear no more of Vili or Hœmir, as he is also called after he thus infused feeling and will into the first man; but we meet the word will again forming valjan, to choose, velja in the North.

Thence the home where Odin welcomed his brave descendants was Valhall, the hall of the chosen; and the maidens who chose the happy who were there to dwell, were the Valkyrier, or Walcyrge, the last syllable from kjöra, or curen, to choose, the word whence an electoral prince is called in German, Kürfurst. But the passport to the hall of the chosen was a glorious death on the battle-field; and thus it was that val, vali, wali, belonged to the carnage of the fight, since slaughter did but seal the marks of the Valkyr upon the brave, whose spirits were passing over the rainbow-arch, while the comets marked the 312course of the chariot which glanced across the sky with weapons forged for their sport in battle and chase.

So the Hall of the Chosen became the Hall of Carnage, the abode of the slain; and it is remarkable that no Christian writer transfers the term to Paradise, although the epithet Schildburg, the castle of shields, is once applied to Heaven as the home of the victors. Indeed, Valhall was not eternal; the warrior there admitted had yet to fight his last fight by Odin’s side, perish with him and his sons, and share with them the renovation of the universe. So deeply interwoven in the ideas of the North was a violent death with the hope of bliss, that crags in Norway affording scope for a desperate leap, were called the vestibule of Valhall, and the preference for a death on the battle-field lingered into Christian days, so that not only did fierce Earl Siward bemoan his fate in dying of sickness, albeit he rose upon his feet to draw his last breath, but even the Chevalier Bayard mourned angrily over the fever that had nearly caused him to pass away like a sick girl in his bed.

Well then might the Valkyrier be the favoured messengers of Odin, sent forth to select the champions who should become the guests of their mighty forefather, himself called Valfreyr, or Slaughter Lord. They hovered over the camp in armour with swan wings, marked those who were to fall, and wove the web of slaughter ere the battle began. Their number varies in different sagas, and so do their names, although Hildur is always the chief. Their last appearance was when the islander of Caithness beheld the twelve weaving their grisly web in a loom of lances, the weights of men’s heads, on the eve of the Good Friday of the battle of Clontarf, between King Sigtrygg and Brian Boromhe, singing the weird song that Gray translated long before Teutonic antiquities were revived:

“Horror covers all the heath,

Clouds of carnage blot the sun:

Sisters, weave the web of death;

Sisters, cease, the work is done.”

The work done, the web was torn in sunder, and divided between the Valkyrier, who flew off, half to the North, half to the South, denoting the rending of the ancient faith.

In fact, in later sagas, the Valkyrier lose their wild mystery and divinity, and fall into mere magic maidens, sometimes with extraordinary strength, sometimes with swan wings, and, at the very last gasp of the supernatural, with goose feet, which at their next step become merely large feet. The mother of Charlemagne absolutely makes the transition from Bertha the goose-footed, to Berthe aux grands pieds.

To this source probably may be referred Wala or wise woman, the inspired priestess, also called in ancient German the Velleda. Cæsar tells us that the matrons among the Germans cast lots, and prophesied the issue of battle, and thus Wala may have been the wise or inspired woman. The great prophetic song of the fate of the Aasir is Voluspa, either the wise woman’s spae, or the inspired 313spae or prophecy; for vola or volur means inspired in ancient German (no doubt from the wala or prophetess), and by a very small transition, mad. Probably the Kelts borrowed it, for fol was inspired or mad; and Folia of Ariminium is mentioned by Horace as a magician. Our fool is thus traceable to vola, inspired, but probably through the Keltic and French medium.

Vili, though his myths have been forgotten, still stands as a great ancestor. From him in Germany, either directly or through a renewal of him as a forefather, must have been named the great race of the Billingen, the first dynasty of the continental Sachsen, who gave emperors to Germany.

Billing is the son of Wili, or Will; and so again is, in the North, Vilkin, the father of the famous smith Volundr, whose name is probably from this original root, will or mind, though its immediate source is thought to be vel, art or cunning, cognate with our own guile, and probably the participle of a lost verb, to devise. Some connect it with Vulcan, from the name and character of Volundr. He was the son of a sea maiden, and of Vidja the Vilkin; and he and his two brothers each married a Valkyr, who, at the end of a stated period, had to be absent for nine years, giving to each husband magic gifts and precious stones that dimmed when disaster was about to befall them. Volundr was the fortunate brother of the three, and was the mighty smith to whom all good weapons are ascribed. From him the early part of the Norse poem ending with the slaying of Fafner is called the Volsunga Saga, as, from his father, the Danish version is the Wilkina Saga; for the hero himself is his descendant, a Wælsing, or Vilking, and fights with his redoubted weapons. Weland again makes the impenetrable corslet of Beowulf, “the twisted breastnet which protected his life against point and edge;” he is the Wiolent, Velint, or Wieland of Germany, and Galando of Italy, the Galant of France, who forged their Joyeuse, the sword of Charlemagne, and Cortana, that of Ogier. A skilful Weland is mentioned in an old Anglo-Saxon MS. found at Exeter, and in King Alfred’s translation of Boëthius he renders the line,

“Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii jacent?”

(meaning, of course, an artificer, the sense of the name,) “Where are now the bones of the wise Weland, the goldsmith who was most famed?” A workman is still called in Iceland, Völundrinjarn, and a labyrinth is Volundrhus. This famous armourer took possession of a Druidical cromlech in the midst of the battle-grounds between the Danes and Saxons on the Berkshire downs, and there drove his shadowy trade as Wayland Smith, close to King Alfred’s own birthplace, Wantage. He was spared from oblivion by being embalmed in Kenilworth, where the only blunder is in making Lancelot Wayland the real name of the estimable mountebank, who personated the mythical smith. Though Wieland is a German surname, the coincidence of an English Wayland was too much for probability; and, in fact, Scott does not seem to have known how very ancient Wayland Smith had really been.

314Names in Wal are chiefly Northern, those in Wil mostly Saxon. Ullr, or Ull, another Northern form, has been much used in Iceland; and among the Northern isles of Scotland, where it may be remembered that Ulla Troil was the real name of Norna. Ullr was the stepson of Thor, son of Sif, and renowned as a great bow-bearer.

Wil is almost always a commencement. The Frank queen Bilichilde was, of course, Willihilda, resolute battle. Our earnest but turbulent Wilfrith, the Yorkshire bishop, hardly deserved to be called resolute peace; but as patron of Ripon, his name has continued in the North, Wilfroy being very frequent in older registers in the neighbourhood of Ripon, though of late fashion has adopted it in the form of Wilfred.

In the seventh century, we sent Germany two missionaries with this prefix, Willibrord and Willihold; also Willibald, resolute prince, went on pilgrimage with his father, St. Richard of Wessex, in 721, and finished his career as bishop of Aichstadt, leaving his name to take root in various forms.

English. French. Portuguese. Dutch. Bavarian.

Willibald Guillibaud Guilbaldo Willebald Willibald

Wibald Vilibaldo Waldl

Waltl

Native to Germany is Williburg, which has a northern fac-simile Vilbjorg, and Vilgerd, the same in meaning, resolute protection; Willrich, resolute ruler; Willehad, resolute violence; Willeram, resolute raven; Willihard, reduplicating firmness; Willigis, willing pledge, or pledge of the will; Willimar, resolute fame, making our surname Wilmer. Williheri, resolute warrior, is the source of the German Willer, the English Weller, the French Villiers and Villars, which, with their aristocratic sound, betray little of their kindred to Sam Weller.

Where the most popular of all the Wills was invented it is not easy to discover, but Germany is its most likely region, since helm is a specially Germanic termination, and the Billings favoured the commencement; besides which the pronunciation in that language leaves the words their natural meanings, Will-helm, resolute helmet, or, perhaps, helmet of resolution. The native northern name would be Vilhjalm, but this is never used, it being only imported bodily as Wilhelm into Denmark from Germany, just as our Ethelbert is superseded by Albert.

The cause of its adoption in Normandy cannot have been one of the eight saints in the Roman calendar who bear it; for not one is anterior to the son of Rollo, the second Duke of Normandy, from whom William descended to the Conqueror, and became one of the most national of English names.

English. Welsh. Breton. French.

William Guillim Guillern Guillaume

Will Guillarn Guillemot

Willie

Bill

Wilkin

Old French. Spanish. Portuguese. Italian.

Willelme Guillermo Guilhermo Guglielmo

Willeaulme Guillen

German. Dutch. Swiss. Frisian.

Wilhelm Willem Wilhelm Willo

Wilm Wim Wille

Polish. Bohemian. Lett. Greek.

Vilhelm Vilem Willums Goulielmos

Wille Bilelmos

FEMININE.

English. French. Spanish. Italian.

Wilhelmina Guillerume Guillemma Guglielma

Wilmett Guillemette Portuguese. Swedish.

Wilmot Minette Guilhermma Vilhelmine

Mina Mimi

Minella Guillette

German. Swiss. Lithuanian. Dutch.

Wilhelmine Mimmoli Myne Willemyn

Helmine Mimmeli Mynette Willempje

Mine Polish.

Minchen Minka

Minna

Old Camden’s account of it is too quaint not to be here inserted: “William, gerne. For sweeter sound drawn from WilhelmWilhelm, which is 315interpreted by Luther much defence, or defence to many; as Wiliwald, ruling many; Wildred, much reverent fear, or awful; Wilfred, much peace; Wilibert, much brightness. So the French, that cannot pronounce W, have turned it into Philli, as Philibert for Wilibert, much brightnesse. Many names wherein we have Will seem translated from the Greek names composed of πολύς; as Polydamas, Polybius, Polyxenes, &c. Helm yet remained with us, and Villi, Willi, and Billi yet with the German for many. Others term William willing defender, and so it answereth the Roman Titus, if it come from tuendo, as some learned will have it. The Italians that liked the name but could not pronounce the W, if we may believe 316Gesner, turned it into Galeazzo, retaining the sense in part for helm; but the Italians report that Galeazzo, the first viscount of Millain, was so called for the many cocks that krew lustily at his birth. This name hath been most common in England since William the Conqueror, insomuch that on a festival day in the court of King Henry II., when Sir William St. John and Sir William Fitzhamon, especial officers, had commanded that none but the name of William should dine with them in the great chamber, they were accompanied with one hundred and twenty Williams, all knights, as Robert Montensis recordeth, anno 1173.”

Camden’s authority is not Martin Luther, but one Mr. Luther Dasipodius, by whom he sets great store, and whose ‘German villi or billi, many,’ must have been the word now called viel. Verstegan’s history of William is still droller, namely, that any German who killed a Roman assumed the golden head-piece of the slain, and was thence called Gildhelm, which would of course be inconsistent with the old German form of Wilihelm. Be it observed that our surname Wilmot descends from a name to be found in German as Wilmod, resolute mood; but the feminine Wilmett, which is to be found continually in old Devon and Cornwall registers, is no doubt the same as the old French Guillemette, and it is a pity it has been discarded for the cumbrous German Wilhelmina, or the Williamina that is of no language at all.

Camden is probably right in taking Filiberto from Wiliberaht, or Wilibert, resolute splendour, though Germans refer it to viel, the same as our full, and the Greek polys. The founder of the name in the sixth century was a Frank Willibert, who founded the abbey of Jumièges, which the Normans first desolated and then restored, their Frenchified tongues bringing the patron’s name to England as Fulbert, which is still occasionally found in old families. The ninth grand master of St. John meantime bore the French form, which historians wrote as Philibert; and the old counts of Savoy alternated Filiberto with Amê, until they blossomed out into double names, as Vittore Amadeo or Filiberto Emanuele.

The Val of choice, or slaughter, is not, Professor Munch tells us, to be confounded with another Val, taken from the word waleh, or waalh, a stranger, which, as has been already said, named Wales. Our own Waltheof, being spelt in his native tongue Wealtheof, thus removes himself and an Icelandic Valtheof from being slaughter-thieves to being foreign-thieves; a change not much for the better. There were fierce Danish ancestors, however, to account for this predatory appellation lighting upon the earl, whom the Conqueror executed at Winchester, and the English revered as a saint; then from him it descended to his grandson, Waltheof de St. Lys, the stepson of St. David of Scotland, companion of the excellent prince Henry, and, finally, abbot of Melross, where he was canonized as St. Walthenius, or Walen, and thus accounts for the surname of Wathen.

Walmer is, in old German, Walahmar, and thus shows itself to be foreign fame; Walager is also foreign war, and became Valgeir in 317the North, Gaucher in France; and thence, too, by corruption, Valgard, the evil genius of the Njal Saga.

Walaraban, or Walram, seems appropriate as slaughter-raven, but is uncertain. The French made it Gauteran; and in the form of Waleran it was used in the House of Luxembourg, Counts of St. Pol; it is Galerano in Italy.

Walabert, a monk who died at Luxen, in 625, is the same as the northern Valbjart; and another Valbert, or Vaubert, as he is called in France, had a daughter Valtrud, canonized as St. Vautrude, or Vaudru. From Walamund, the French take Valmont; and Walarik, an Auvergne hermit, was Latinized as Valaricus, and Frenchified into St. Valery, a territorial surname.

The Gothic king Wallia is left in possession of the battle-field; and so are the northern Valdis and Valbiorg, both thorough Valkyr names, not yet disused. Valtrude, an early saint, must certainly be named from a slaughter-maiden. So probably was Walburh, slaughter-pledge, one of the English missionary ladies employed by St. Boniface in Mainz. She was a very popular saint, and is called Valpurgis, Vaubone, Vaubourg. Her English church is Wembury, in Devon. Part of her relics were translated from Eichstadt to Furnes, near Ostend, in 1109, on the 1st of May, when one of her festivals is kept. Then is supposed to follow the Valpurgis Nacht, the Witches' Sabbath, on the Brocken. Surely this strange connection with the saintly abbess must be due to some old observance in honour of a Valkyr Valburg. Valasquita, an old name found among the ladies of the Asturias, Navarre, and Biscay, was probably from this source.^[113]

Section X.—Hilda.

Chief among the Valkyrier was Hildur, Hild, or Hiltia, who is never wanting in any enumeration of these warlike spirits. The word, in its original sense, means battle, and has thus attached itself to the principal war-maiden; nay, it has passed from her to be a poetical term for any maiden, and is one of the very commonest terminations to feminine names throughout the Teutonic world, and is likewise often found at the beginning of men’s names, predominating perhaps in Germany.

Alone, it was only used in the North and in England, where the Deiran princess Hildur became the holy abbess Hilda of Whitby, succeeding St. Begga, and leaving a reputation for sanctity enhanced, by the sight of

“The very form of Hilda fair

Hovering upon the sunny air;”

a vision which, though Clara de Clare could not see it, is to be beheld 318under certain conditions of light, in the windows of Whitby church to the present day; as well as the ammonites, believed, as usual, to have been serpents turned to stone at the prayer of the saint. In honour of her, Hilda is still used as a name about Whitby.

The mother of Rolf Gangr, progenitress of our royalty, who vainly besought Harald Harfagre not to banish her sons from Norway, was named Hildr; and the name still survives in Scandinavia and Iceland, where the Landnama-bok shows it to have been very plentiful, seventeen ladies being recorded as bearing it. There, too, occurs Hildiridur, battle hastener, a thorough Valkyr name, but not very suitable to Fouqué’s sweet Lady Minnetröst, of the moonlight brown eyes.

Hildelildis, Battle Spirit, is an Anglo-Norman lady’s name.

The true Frank form of the aspirate was, however, exceedingly harsh, amounting to the Greek χ, and therefore, usually set down in its transitions through Latin and French as a ch. So we meet, among the Meerwings, with Childebert, who by translation is Hildebert, battle-splendour, and Childebrand, or battle-sword.

These two last names, in their Low German form of Hiltibrant and Hiltibraht, occur again in the old poem, already referred to, of Hiltibrant and Hadubrant, both meaning battle-swords, which goes through a dispute about Hadubrand’s father, and, finally, leaves them in the middle of a single combat.

Hildebrand is, as we know from old German and Danish poems, the companion and friend of Dietrich of Bern. He had, like some hero in every cycle of story, married and deserted a young wife; and after assisting his master in many adventures, and much dragon killing, and being the sole survivor of all Dietrich’s men in the great massacre of the Nibelung, he encountered, without knowing him, his young son, Alebrand. In a single combat, where both do their devoir, the old knight is wounded, the younger overthrown. Then they discover each other, by the tokens that Hildebrand had left with the mother, and

“Up rose the youthful Alebrand,

And into Bern they ride;

What bears he on his helmet?

A little cross of gold.

And what on his right hand bears he?

His dearest father old.”

So, recommended by fame, Hildebrand continued a knightly name in England and Germany for many ages, and belonged to that battle-sword of the Church, who, on his election to the papacy, was called Gregory VII., though we still continue to think of him as Pope Hildebrand; and the eccentric Dr. Wolff tells us that one of the dreams of his youth was to wear the tiara by the name of Hildebrand! In Italy, pronunciation turned it into Aldobrando, then into Aldrovando, and then Latin made Aldrovandus.

Hildegunnr, battle-maid of war, was another northern name, and is the same as the German Hildegund, which was rather a favourite. 319It is Aldegonde in the Cambrai register, and the territorial surname of St. Aldegonde is memorable in the revolt of the Low Countries. Hildegard, in honour of an abbess in the Palatinate, who died in 1004, is still a very common name among German ladies, and going to Denmark, has been corrupted into Ollegaard. It is exactly the same in meaning with the northern Hildebjorg. So again are Hildewig and Hildegar, and among the Gothic queens of Spain is found Hilduara, or battle prudence.

St. Hiltrude of Liessies, revered in Poitou and Hainault, unites two Valkyr titles—Hildur and Thrudr; for Thrûdr is generally enumerated among the Valkyr. The word once meant, in the North, fortitude, or firmness, and is possibly connected with truth; but in all the Teuton languages it signifies maiden, or virgin. Perhaps, in connection with the Valkyrer, Hildur might have been the patroness of courage, and Thrudr of fortitude; but, unfortunately, perhaps from the spells used by the women in soothsaying before a battle, Thrudr sank down from its high estate, and drude, or drut, means a witch, and in German, also, an evil spirit. Thrudvangr, or Constancy’s abode, was one of the names of Valhall. Thrud, trud, tru, is, in Scandinavia and Germany, as favourite a feminine termination as Hilda, and, no doubt, with the same meaning, though its owners would fain translate it by truth; but it cannot be brought nearer than constancy, or fortitude. Sometimes it stands alone. Drot, as it has become by pronunciation, figures in the Heimskringla; and the Danes must have brought it to England, for in Bishop-Middleham, in the county of Durham, we meet, in 1683, with Troth Bradshau, who is again Trouth, or Troath, in the old spelling. Trott also several times occurs; and we are thus led to the conclusion that the dear old Dame Trot of the nursery bears the respected name of the Valkyr of fortitude. Truth is, perhaps, the same, originally coaxed by Puritan invention.

Cyndrida, or Quendrida, as the histories call her, the wife of Offa, is suspected by Mr. Kemble to have been mixed up with her namesake, Thrudr, the Valkyr. She was said to be a Frankish princess, who came floating over the waters, having been exposed in a boat for some unknown crime. Her beauty fascinated Offa, king of Mercia; he married her, and she was the only old English queen who caused her image to be stamped on her coins. She treacherously murdered her son-in-law, and was put to death by being thrown down a well. Some part of this is history; other parts are thought to be taken from an Anglian myth of an elder fabulous Offa, whose wife was almost certainly a Valkyr, and, on her marriage, lost her supernatural strength. Cyne, or Cwen, a woman, only appears again with Cwenburh, another Saxon queen, and may have been merely an affix.

Other German masculine forms are Hildeman, or Hilman; Hildemund, or Hilmund; Hildewart—in Friesland, Hilwert; Hildefrid, or Hilfrid; Hildebold; Hilding; Hildrad, the Hildert, or Hillert, of Friesland; Hilram, the contraction of Hilda’s raven.

Gothic Spain coined, however, the most noted form of the name 320when Hildefuns, or battle vehemence, came on the Latin lips of her people to be Ildefonso, or Illefonso, as the great bishop of Toledo, of the seventh century, was called. Then, shortening into Alfonso, and again into Alonzo, the same came to the second gallant king of the Asturias, husband of Pelayo’s daughter, and became the most national of all the Peninsular names, belonging to eleven Castillian kings and nine Aragonese, and to the present king of Spain; but never passing beyond the Peninsula as a royal name, save to the Aragonese dynasty in Sicily and Naples. In England we nearly had it, for one of the sons of Edward I. and the Castillian Eleanor was so baptized; but his early death saved our lips from the necessity of framing themselves to its southern flow. Alphonse has been a favourite French name. The Portuguese Affonso, though often used as its equivalent, is Hadufuns, very similar in meaning, but rather meaning war vehemence than battle vehemence. The feminine is the Spanish Alfonsina, and the French Alphonsine.^[114]

English. German. French. Spanish. Italian.

Alphonso Alfons Alphonse Ildefonso Alfonso

Alonzo Alfonso

Alonso

Section XI.—Ve.

The third deity who, with Odin and Wili, gave life to man, was Ve, who bestowed blood and colour.

Ve is thought to be connected with the Persian word veh, pure, and to lie at the root of veihan, to consecrate, in Mæso-Gothic; weihan, in German; whence Christmas is Weihnacht, holy night.