Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

858 DESTINY AND ^ELL-BEING.
Destiny has principally to do with the beginning and the end
of human life. The Wurd visits the newborn and the dying,
and it is for one or the other of these events that the above-
mentioned names of destiny are mostly used by the poets ; thus
Beow. 51 speaks of
time: Hel. 103,
dying to at
gesceaphwile,
the appointed
7: tho quamun wurdegiscapu themu odagan
man, orlaghuile, that he thit licht farlet. The hour of birth too
settles much as to the course and outcome of one s life : qualem
Nascentia attulit, talis erit, and Parcae, dum aliquis nasdtur,
valent eum designare ad hoc quod volunt, Superst. A, and C
198. The infant s whole course of life shall be conformable to
what the norns or fays in their visitation have bestowed, have
shaped. l
It is a deviation from this oldest way of thinking, to put the
settlement of destiny into the hands of the gods; yet
it is a
very old one. Undoubtedly the faith of many men began early
to place the Highest God at the very head of the world s manage
ment, leaving those weird-women merely to make known his
mandates. The future lies on the lap of the gods, 0ewv eV yovvaa-i
Kelrau, and with this agrees that laying on the lap, that taking
to the bosom, which is performed by the paternal or maternal
deity (pp. 642. 839). If above the gods themselves there could
be conceived a still higher power, of the beginning and end of all
things, yet their authority and influence was regarded by men as
boundless and immeasurable, all human concerns were undoubtedly
under their control (see Suppl.).
The Gautrekssaga tells us (Fornald/ sog. 3, 32), that at mid
night Hrossharsgrani 2 awoke his foster-son Starkaftr, and carried
him in his boat to an island. There, in a wood, eleven men sat
in council ; the twelfth chair stood vacant, but Hrossharsgrani
took it, and all saluted him as OSinn. And OSinn said, the
demsters should deem the doom of Starka^r (domendr skyldi
doema orlug St.). Then spake Thorr, who was wroth with the
mother of the lad : I shape for him, that he have neither son nor
1 We still say : born in happy hour. OHG. mit heilu er giboran ward, 0.
Sal. 44. Freq. in the 0. Span. Cid : el que en buen ora nascio, el que en buen punto
nascio. From this notion of a good hour of beginning (a la bonne heure) has
sprung the Fr. word bonheur (masc.) for good hap in general. Similarly, about
receiving knighthood, the 0. Span, has el que en buen ora cinxo espada.
2 That is, Grani, Siftgrani, the bearded, a by-name of OSinn (p. 147).