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740 DAY AND NIGHT.
ir liehten blic hinz ir gelesen, Parz. 32, 24. He goes to his
bed, :
his bedchamber Dan. solen til ganger senge, DV. 1, 107.
f
solen til gik hvile, I, 170. MHG. diu sunne gerte lazen sich
zuo reste, Ernst 1326. diu sunne do ze reste gie, Ecke (Hag.)
110. nu wolte diu sunne ze reste und ouch ze gemache nider gan,
Dietr. 14 d ; so M. Opitz 2, 286 : muss doch zu ruste gehen, so
oft es abend wird, der schone himmels-schild/ OE. the sun
was gon to rest, Iwan 3612. Our gnade (favour), MHG. genade,
OHG. kinada, properly means inclining, drooping, repose
(p. 710), which accounts for the phrase diu sunne gienc ze
gndden (dat. pi.), Mor. 37 a . Wolfdietr. 1402. Even Agricola no
longer understood it quite, for he says in Sprichw. 737: it
lasted till the sun was about to go to gnaden, i.e. to set, and deny(!)
the world his gnade and light by going to rest/ Aventin . (ed
1580 p. 19 b ) would trace it back to our earliest heathenism and
a worship of the sun as queen of heaven : never might ye say
she set, but alway that she went to rost and gnaden, as the silly
simple folk doth even yet believe/ The last words alone are
worth noticing; the superstition may be of very old standing,
that it is more pious, in this as in other cases, to avoid straight
forward speech, and use an old half-intelligible euphemism. On
this point Vuk 775 has something worthy of note : you must say
smirilo se suntse (the sun is gone to rest, conquievit), and not
he answers
zadye (is gone) nor syede (sits) ; if you say zadye,
zashao pa ne izishao (gone, not come 1
out) ; if you say syede,
he tells you syeo pa ne ustao (sat down, not risen) ; but to
c
smiri se the answer is smiryd se i ti (rest thee also thou) .
2
And with this I connect the Eddie saw on the peculiar sacreduess
of the setting sun: engi skal gumna i gogn vega siffsJdnandi
systor Mana/ Ssem. 184 b , none shall fight in the face of the
late-shining sister of the Moon (see Suppl.)
Lye quotes an AS. phrase asr sun go to glade/ which he
translates f
priusquam sol vergat ad occasum, lapsum/ The
noun formed from glidan (labi) would be glad, and glidan is
1
Kopitar tells me, zashao etc. is rather an : imprecation mayst thou go in (per
haps, lose thy way) and never get out ! So syeo etc. , mayst thou sit down and
never get up !
2 Mod. Greek songs say, 6 77X105 ipcur&eve, e?/3a<nXe^e (Fauriel 1, 56. 2, 300. 432),
i.e. has reigued, reigns no more in the sky, is set and the same of the ; setting
moon (2, 176).