Note 379 — Chapter V · THE RELIGION OF THE FOLK

Tille, Y. and C. 71; Rhys, C. H. 419. The primitive year was thermometric, not astronomic, its critical moments, not the solstices, a knowledge of which means science, but the sensible increase and diminution of heat in spring and autumn. The solstices came through Rome. The Sermo Eligii (Grimm, iv. 1737) has ‘nullus in festivitate S. Ioannis vel quibuslibet sanctorum solemnitatibus solstitia ... exerceat,’ but Eligius was a seventh-century bishop, and this Sermo may have been interpolated in the eighth century (O. Reich, Über Audoen’s Lebensbeschreibung des heiligen Eligius (1872), cited in Rev. celtique, ix. 433). It is not clear that the un-Romanized Teuton or Kelt made a god of the sun, as distinct from the heaven-god, who of course has solar attributes and emblems. In the same Sermo Eligius says ‘nullus dominos solem aut lunam vocet, neque per eos iuret.’ But the notion of ‘domini’ may be post-Roman, and the oath is by the permanent, rather than the divine; cf. A. de Jubainville, Intr. à l’Étude de la Litt. celt. 181. It is noticeable that German names for the sun are originally feminine and for the moon masculine.