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522
GIANTS.
Whether Thorsholt, TJiosholt, the name of a place in Oldenburg-,
is connected with j?urs, I cannot tell. In Gothic the word
would have to be paurs, pi. Jmiirsos (or j?aiirsis, pi. ]?aiirsj6s ?
Jmiirsus, J?aursjus ? faiirsja, J?aursjans ?) ; and of these forms the
derivation is not far to seek. The Goth. ]?aursus means dry,
j?aiirsjan to thirst, J?aitrstei thirst ; J?aiirsus, fadrsis
becomes in
OHG. durri for dursi (ay airzis becomes irri for irsi), while the
noun durst (thirst) retains the s, and so does our durs (giant)
and the ON. furs by the side of the adjective Jmrr (dry). So that
paurs, purs, durs signify either fond of wine, thirsty, or drunken,
a meaning which makes a perfect pair with that we fished out of
itans, iotunn. The two words for giant express an inordinate
desire for eating and drinking, precisely what exhibits itself in
the Homeric cyclop. Herakles too is described as edax and
bibax, e.g. in Euripides s Alcestis; and the ON. giant Suttungr
(Ssem. 23. Sn. 84) apparently stands for Suptungr (Finn Magn.
p. 738), where we must presuppose a noun supt = sopi, a sup
or draught.
Now, as the Jutes, a Teutonic race, retained the name of the
former inhabitants whom they had expelled, 1 these latter being
the real lotnar or Itanos ;
so may the fursar, dursa, in their mythic
aspect [as giants] be connected with a distant race which at a
very early date had migrated into Italy. I have already hinted
(p. 25) at a possible connexion of the faursos with the Tvpo-yvoi,
Tvpprjvoi, Tusci, Etrusci : the consonant-changes are the very
thing to be expected,
and even the assimilations and the
transposition of the r are all found reproduced. Niebuhr makes
Tyrrhenians distinct from Etruscans, but in my opinion wrongly ;
as for the Ovpvos carried in the Bacchic procession, it has no claim
to be brought in at all (see Suppl.).
There is even a third mode of designating giants in which we
likewise detect a national name. Lower Germany, Westphalia
above all, uses liune in the sense of giant ; the word prevails in
all the popular traditions of the Weser region, and extends as far
as the Groningen country and R. Drenthe ; giants hills, giants
v. droost : flat di de droost sla ! may the d. smite thee in ; the Altmark : det di
de druse hal ! (fetch) and elsewhere de dros in de helle. At the same time the
tiG. druos, truos (plague, blain) is worth considering.
1 A case that often occurs ; thus the Bavarians, a Teutonic people, take their
name from the Celtic Boii. [And the present Bulgarians, a Slav race, etc.]