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592 ELEMENTS.
Whirlpools and waterfalls were doubtless held in special vene
ration; they were thought to be put in motion by a superior
being, a river-sprite. The Danube whirlpool and others still
have separate legends of their own. Plutarch (in his Caesar,
cap. 19) and Clement of Alex. (Stromat. 1, 305) assure us that
the German prophetesses watched the eddies of rivers, and by
their whirl and noise explored the future. The Norse name for
such a vortex is fors, Dan. fos, and the Isl. sog. 1, 226 expressly
say, blotafti forsin (worshipped the .). The legend of the
river- sprite fossegrim was touched upon, p. 493 ; and in such a
fors dwelt the dwarf Andvari (Seem. 180. Fornald. sog. 1, 152).
But animal sacrifices seem to have been specially due to the
whirlpool (80/09), as the black lamb (or goat) to the fossegrim;
arid the passages quoted from Agathias on pp. 47, 100, about the
Alamanns offering horses to the rivers and ravines, are to the
same purpose. The Iliad 21, 131 says of the Skamander :
co Brf Sr)9a TroXet? lepevere ravpov?,
COOL>? S eV Sivrjat KaOiere
(Lo, to the river this long time many a bull have ye hallowed,
Many a whole-hoofed horse have ye dropped alive in his eddies) ;
and Pausan. viii. 7,2: TO Be ap^awv KaOiecrav e? TTJV Aeivrjv
(a water in Argolis, conn, with o7i/o9) TCO TIoa-ei^wvL ITTTTOVS ol
Apyeloi, iceKoo-jjievovs >%d\ivols. Horace, Od. 3, 13: fons
Bandusiae, non sine floribus eras donaberis haedo (see Suppl.).
It is pretty well known, that even before the introduction of
Christianity or Christian baptism,
the heathen Norsemen had a
hallowing of new-born infants by means of water; they called
this vatni ausa, sprinkling with water. Very likely the same
ceremony was practised by all other Teutons, and they may have
ascribed a peculiar virtue to the water used in it, as Christians do
to baptismal water (Superst. Swed. 116). After a christening,
the Esthonians will bribe the clerk to let them have the water,
and then splash it up against the walls, to secure honours and
dignities for the child (Superst. M, 47).
It was a practice widely prevalent to turn to strange supersti
tious uses the water of the mill-wheel caught as it glanced off the
paddles.
Old Hartlieb mentions it (Superst. H, c. 60), and vulgar
opinion approves it still (Sup. I, 471. 766). The Servians call