Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

CEEATION. 569
in keeping to explain the sun as a giant s eye, the mountains as
his bones, the bushes as his hair ; there are plenty of legends
still that account for particular lakes and marshes by the
gushing blood of a giant, for oddly-shaped rocks by his ribs
and marrow-bones ; and in a similar strain the waving corn was
likened to the hair of Sif or Ceres. It is at once felt to be more
artificial for sun and mountain and tree to be put into requisition
to produce the human eye and bones and hair. Yet we do speak
of eyes being sunny, and of our flesh as akin to dust, and why
may not even the heathens have felt prompted to turn that cosruogonic
view upside down ? Still more would this commend
itself to Christians, as the Bible expressly states that man was
made of earth or loam, 1 without enlarging on the formation of
the several constituent parts of the body. None of the Fathers
seem to be acquainted with the theory of the eight constituents
of the first man;
I will not venture to decide whether it was
already familiar to heathen times, and maintained itself by the
side of the Eddie doctrine, or first arose out of the collision of
this with Christian teaching, and is to be regarded as a fuller
development of the Adamic dogma. If Adam was interpreted
to mean clay, it was but taking a step farther to explain, more
precisely, that the flesh only was borrowed from earth, but
the bones from stones, and the hair from grass. It is almost
unscriptural, the way in which the MHGr. poetizer
launches out into such minutiee :
of Genesis
f Duo Got
(Fundgr. 2, 15)
zeinitzen stucchen den man zesamene wolte rucchen, duo nam er,
sosich wane, einen leim zahe (glutinous lime), da er wolte daz
daz lit zesamene solte (wished the limbs to come together),
streich des unterzuisken (smeared it between), daz si zesamene
mohten haften . (stick) denselben letten (clay)
tet er ze adaren
(made into veins), uber ieglich lit er zoch denselben leim zach,
daz si vasto chlebeten, zesamene sich habeten. uz hertem leime
(hard lime) tet er daz gebeine, uz proder erde (crumbly earth)
hiez er daz fleisk werden, uz letten deme zdhen machet er die
adare. duo er in alien zesamene gevuocte, duo bestreich er in
mit einer slote (bedaubed him with a slime), diu selbe slote wart
ze dere hute (became the skin) . duo er daz pilede (figure) erlich
1 Die leimlnenS the loamen folk, Geo. 3409, is said of men, as we say e Into,
ex meliori luto ficti.