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CHAPTER XXIII.
DAY AND NIGHT.
All the liveliest fancies of antiquity respecting day and night
are intertwined with those about the sun, moon and stars : day
and night are holy godlike beings, near akin to the gods. The
Edda makes Day the child of Night.
Norvi, a iotunn, had a daughter named Nott, black and dingy
like the stock she came of (svort oc dock sem hon atti sett til) ;*
several husbands fell to her share, first Naglfari, then Anar (Onar) 2
a dwarf, by whom she had a daughter Ior<5, who afterwards
became OSin s wife and Thorns mother. Her last husband was
of the fair race of the ases, he was called Delliagr, and to him
she bore a son Dagr, light and beautiful as his paternal ancestry.
Then All-father took Night and her son Day, set them in the sky,
and gave to each of them a horse and a car, wherewith to journey
round the earth in measured time. The steeds were named the
rimy-maned and the shiny-maned (p. 655-6).
The name Dellingr, the assimilated form of DegUngr, includes
that of the son Dagr, and as -ling if it mean anything means
descent, we must either suppose a progenitor Dagr before him,
or that the order of succession has been reversed, as it often is
in old genealogies.
For the word dags, dagr, daeg, tac I have tried to find a root
(Grarnm. 2, 44), and must adhere to my rejection of Lat. dies
as a congener, because there is no consonant-change, and the
Teutonic word develops a g, and resolves its a into o (uo); yet
conf. my Kleinere schriften 3, 11 7. 3 On the other hand, in dies
and all that is like it in other languages, there plainly appeared
1 This passage was not taken into account, p. 528 ; that Night and Helle
should be black, stands to reason, but no conclusion can be drawn from that about
giants as a body. Notice too the combination- svort ok dock, conf. p. 446. Here
giant and dwarf genealogies have evidently overlapped.
2 Conf. Haupt s Zeitschr. 3, 144.
3 [Sanskr. dah urere, ardere (Bopp s Gl. 165) does seems the root both of dies
and Goth, dags, which has exceptionally kept prim, d unchanged. MHG. tac still
retained the sense of heat : fur der heizen sunnen tac, MS. 2, 84*. SUPPL.]
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