Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

800 TIME AND WORLD.
subserved a very similar partition of the world. The thing might
even have to do with ancient land-surveying, and answer to the
Roman cardo, intersected at right angles by the decumanus. To
the ashtree we must also concede some connexion with Asciburg
(p. 350) and the tribal progenitor Askr (p. 571-2). Another
legend of an ashtree is reserved for chap. XXXII (see Suppl.) .
Niflheimr, where Nffihoggr and other serpents (named in Sasm.
44 b . Sn. 22) have their haunt round the spring Hvergelmir, is
the dread dwelling-place of the death- goddess Hel (p. 312), Goth.
c
Halja or ( heljo/ Saem. <i 94%
heljo
49. 50. 51, is clearly
spoken of a place, not a person), it is gloomy and black, like her;
hence a Nebelheim, cold land of shadows, abode of the departed, 1
but not a place of torment or punishment as in the Christian view,
and even that was only developed gradually (p. 313). When Ul-
philas uses halja, it is always for afys (Matt. 11, 23. Luke 10, 15.
16, 23. 1 Cor. 15, 55), the infernus of the Vulg. ; whenever the
text has ryeevva, Vulg. gehenna, it remains gaiainna in Gothic
(Matt. 5, 29. 30. 10, 28),it was an idea for which the Gothic had
no word. The OHG. translator T. renders infernus by Jiella
(Matt. 11, 23), gehenna 2
by kellafiur (5, 29. 30)
or hellawizi
(-torment 10, 28), and only filium gehennae by hella sun (23,
15), where the older version qualu sunu, son of torment.
recently discovered is more exact:
When the Creed says that Christ
f nr8ar steig zi helliu* (descendit ad inferna), it never meant the
abode of souls in torment. In the Heliand 72, 4 a sick man is
said to be fiisid an helsid , near dying, equipped for his journey
to Hades, without any by-thought of pain or punishment. That
AS. poetry still remembered the original (personal) conception of
Hel, was proved on p. 314, but I will add one more passage from
Beow. 357: Helle gemundon, Meto$ ne cuiSon/ Helaru venera-
bantur, Deum verum ignorabant (pagani). So then, from the
4th cent, to the 10th, halja, Jiella was simply Hades or the deathkingdom,
the notion of torment being expressed by another word
or at any rate a compound ; and with this agrees the probability
1 A dead man is called nifl-farinn, Seem. 249*. The progenitor of the Nibelungs
was prob. Nebel (Fornald. sog. 2, 9. 11, Nasnll for Nefill) : a race of heroes doomed
to Hades and early death. Nibelunge: spirits of the death-kingdom, Lachmann
on Nib. 342.
2 From gehenna comes, we know, the Fr. gehene, gene, i.e. supplice, though in
a very mitigated sense now.