Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

756 SUMMEB AND WINTER.
curses : sam
mir daz heilec jar I so (help) me holy year, Ls. 1,
287. Haupt s Zeitschr. 7, 104. The two following refer to the
year s commencement only : ein scelec jar gang
blessed year betide thee, Ls. 3, 111 ; and (
miiez ane komen !
dich an ! a
daz dich ein
veiges jar
a doomed (fey) year be thy dole, Ls. 1, 317.
In AS. oft ]?ast ofter com gear in geardas,* Beow. 2260 (see
Snppl.).
But even in the earliest times the year had fallen into halves,
to which AS. and ON. give the curious name of missere, misseri,
and the AS. poems seem to reckon chiefly by these. We find
1
missera worn/ store of m., Casdm. 71, 10; fela missera 180,
23. Beow. 306; hund missera/ Beow. 2996. 3536 = the 50
winters in 4413; misserum frod, missarum frod/ Casdm. 104,
30. 141, 16 (wise with age, like gearum, dasgrime, fyrndagurn
frod/ Gramm. 1, 750). In the Edda I a -
find only 212 b ein
,
misseri (per unum annum), and sams misseris (eodem anno) ;
but the Gragas has also misseri (semestrium). The etymology of
the word is not easy : one would expect to find in it the words
half (medius, dimidius) and year, Ifut the short vowel of the
penult conflicts with the ON. ar and AS. gear, and it appears
to be masc. besides (einn misseri, not eitt m.) ; the ON. misseri
(bad year, annonae caritas, neut.) is quite another thing. Again,
why should the d of the AS. midde (Goth, midja, OHG. mitti)
have passed into ss ? It must be admitted however, that in
the relation of Lat. medius to Goth, midja we already observe a
disturbance in the law of change ; misseri may have come down
and continued from so remote an antiquity that, while in appear
ance denying its kindred, it will have to own them after all, and
the miss is in the same predicament as the Gr. yu-eVo?, yLtecrcro?
compared with Sanskr. madhyas, or /3u0-<r6? =jSv66<s. No (
seri, missiri meets us in the OHG. remains, but the lost hero-
lays may have known it, as even later usages retain the reckoning
by half-years ; when the Hildebr.-lied says ih wallota sumaro
enti wintro sehstic ur lante/ it means only 60 misseri (30 sum
mers and 30 winters), which agrees with the 30 years of the
more modern folk-song; and we might even guess that the
thirteen years and seven years in Nib. 1082 and 1327, 2,
which make Chriemhild somewhat old for a beauteous bride, were
at an older stage of the epos understood of half-years. In the
mis