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EZAN, EOTEN. 519
The oldest and most comprehensive term in Norse is idtunn,
pi. iotnar (not jotunn, jotnar) ; it is backed up by an AS. eaten,
pi. eotenas, Beow. 223 (eotena cyn, 836. eotonisc, 5953), or
eten, Lye sub v. ; OB. etin, ettin, Nares sub v. ; Scot, ettyn,
eyttyn, Jamieson sub v. ; an OS. etan,
eten can be inferred with
certainty from the name of a place in old docs., Efcanasfeld,
Etenesfeld (campus gigantis), Wigand s Archiv i. 4, 85. Moser
nos. 2. 13. 18. 19. And what is more, the word must have lived
on in later times, down to the latest, for I find the fern, eteninne
(giantess) preserved afc least in nursery-tales. Laurenberg (ed.
Lappenberg, p. 26) l has de olde eteninne/ and another Rostock
book of the beginning of the 18th century 2
die alte eteninne ;
I should like to know whence Adelung sub v. mummel gets the
fact, that in Westphalia a certain terrible female with whom they
frighten children is called etheninne ? I have no doubt it is
correct. The Saxon etan warrants us in conjecturing an OHG.
ezan, ezzan, a Goth. Uans, having for root the ON. eta, AS. etan,
OHG. ezzan, Goth, itan (edere), and for meaning edo (gen.
edonis), manducus, 7ro\v(j)dyo<;, devourer. An AS. poem in Cod.
exon. 425, 26 says :
f
ic mesan ma3g meahtelicor and efn etan
ealdum J?yrre/ I can chew and eat more mightily than an old
giant. Now the question arises, whether another word, which
wants the suffix -n, has any business here, namely the ON. iotr, 3
AS. eot, now only to be found in the compound Forniotr, Forneot
(p. 240) and the national name lotar, the Jutes ? One thing
that makes for it is the same omission of -n in the Swed. jtitte
(gigas), Dan. jette, pi. jetter; then, taking iotnar as = iotar
(Goth. itan6s = itos), we should be justified in explaining the
names Jotar, Jotland by an earlier (gigantic ?) race whom the
advancing Teutons crowded out of the peninsula. 4 In that
case we might expect an OS. et, etes, an OHG. ez, ezes, with the
1 Johann Laurenberg, a Eostock man, b. 1590, d. 1658. The first ed. of his poem
appeared 1652.
2 Ern. Joach. Westphal, De consuetudine ex sacco et libro, Eost. 1726. 8. pp.
224-5 ; the catalogue there given of old stories of women is copied in Joh. Pet.
Schmidt s Fastelabendssamlungen, Eostock (1742) 4. resp. 1752, p. 22, but here
incorrectly von der Arden Inn instead of Westphal s von der alten Eten Inne.
3 For iotr, as miolk for miolk, see Gramm. 1, 451. 482.
4 Beda 1, 15 has Juti, which the AS. version mistakenly renders Ge&tas (the ON.
Gautar), though at 4, 16 it more correctly gives Eotaland for Jutorum terra, and
the Sax. Chron. (Ingr. p. 14) has lotum for lutis, lutnacynn for lutorum gens.
VOL. II. Q