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DAYBREAK. TWILIGHT. 740
To the Greeks and Romans Ho>?, Aurora, was a goddess, and
she is painted in the liveliest colours. She rises from the couch
(etc \^ecov, as our sun goes to bed, p. 740)
of her husband
Tithonos, Od. 5, 1; she is the early-born (r)pi<yeveia), the rosy-
fingered (poSo8d/cTv\o<>, II. 1, 477) ; she digs her ruddy fingers
into the clouds as day does his claws, p. 743 ; she is also called
Xpva-oOpovos golden-throned, like Hera and Artemis. The Slavs,
instead of a goddess of dawn, appear to have had a god, Yutri-
bogh (see Suppl.).
There is another belief of the Slavs and Hungarians, which,
having strayed over to us, must not be passed over in silence.
In Hungary dawn is called hajnal (Esth. haggo), and the watch
men there cry to one another : hajnal vagyon szep piros, hajnal,
hajnal vagyon ! aurora est (erumpit) pulcra purpurea, aurora,
aurora est. The same word heynal, eynal is in use among the
Poles, who cry: lieynal swita ! aurora lucet (Linde 1, 623).
Now Dietmar of Merseburg tells us under the year 1017 (7, 50
p. 858) : Audivi de quodam baculo, in cujus
summitate manus
erat, unum in se ferreum tenens circulum, quod cum pastore illius
villae Silivellun (Selb.en near Merseb.), in quo (1. qua) is fuerat,
per omnes domos has singulariter ductus, in primo
introitu a
portitore suo sic salutaretur : !
vigila Hennil, vigila
sic enim
rustica vocabatur lingua, et epulantes ibi delicate de ejusdem se
tueri custodia
times,
stulti autumabamV And, coming to our own
I quote from Ad. Kuhn s Mark, sagen p. 330 : An old
forester of Seeben by Salzwedel used to say,
it was once the
custom in these parts, on a certain day of the year, to fetch a tree
out of the common-wood, and having set it up in the village, to
Can this have
dance round : it, crying Hennil, Hennil wache !
come out of Dietmar ? and can this Hennil, wake !
and
Hennil vigila! so far back as the llth cent, have arisen
through misunderstanding the Hung, vagyon (which
means (
est/
not vigilat ) ? Anyhow, the village watchman or shepherd,
who went round to all the houses, probably on a certain day of
the year, carrying the staff on which was a hand holding an iron
ring, and who called out those words, seems to have meant by
them some divine being. A Slovak song in Kollar (Zpievanky
p. 247, conf. 447)
runs thus :