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Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

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524 GIANTS.<br />

therefore to guess, that the sense of giant/ which we cannot<br />

detect in Him till the 13th century, must nevertheless have lain<br />

in <strong>it</strong> long before : <strong>it</strong> is by such double meaning that Hadubrant s<br />

exclamation alter Hun! first acquires significance. When<br />

Gotfried used hiune for giant, he must have known that Hiune<br />

at that time also meant a Hungarian; and as l<strong>it</strong>tle does the<br />

distinctness of the<br />

national<strong>it</strong>y rendered Hiini in OHG. glosses<br />

exclude the simultaneous existence of a mythic meaning of the<br />

word. It may have been vivider or fainter in this place or that :<br />

thus, the ON. hunar is never convertible w<strong>it</strong>h iotnar and ]?ursar.<br />

I will not touch upon the root here (conf. p. 529 note), but only<br />

remark that one Eddie name for the bear is hunn, Sn. 179. 222 a<br />

and ace. to Biorn Mn and liunbiorn = catulus ursinus (see Suppl.).<br />

One AS. term for giant is ent, pi. entas : Alfred in his Orosius<br />

p. 48 renders Hercules gigas by Ercol se ent. The poets like<br />

to use the word, where ancient buildings and works are spoken<br />

of: enta geweorc, enta rergeweorc (early work of giants), eald<br />

entegeweoro/ Beow. 3356. 5431. 5554. Cod. exon. 291, 24.<br />

476, 2. So the adj. : entischelm, Beow. 5955 ; Lipsius s glosses<br />

also give eintisc av<strong>it</strong>us, what dates from the giants days of yore.<br />

Our OHG. entisc antiquus does not agree w<strong>it</strong>h this in consonant-<br />

gradation [t should be 2] ; <strong>it</strong> may have been suggested by the<br />

Latin word, perhaps also by the notion of enti (end) ; another<br />

form is antrisc antiquus (Graff 1, 387), and I would rather asso<br />

ciate <strong>it</strong> w<strong>it</strong>h the Eddie inn aldni iotunn (grandsevns gigas), Seem.<br />

23*46 b 84M89 b . The Bavarian patois has an intensive prefix<br />

enz, enzio (Schmeller , 188), but this may have grown out of the<br />

gen. of end, ent (Schm. 1, 77) ; or may we take this ent- <strong>it</strong>self in<br />

the sense of monstrous, gigantic, and as an exception to the law<br />

)f consonant-change ? They say both enterisch (Schm. 1, 77) and<br />

enzerisch for monstrous, extraordinary. And was the Enzenlerc,<br />

MS. 2, 10 b a giant s hill ? 1 and is the same root contained in<br />

the proper names Anzo, Enzo, EnzincUnt (Fez, thes. iii. 3, 689 C<br />

Enzawip (Meichelb. 1233.<br />

1305), Enzeman (Ben. 325) ? If<br />

Hunt alluded to Wends and Slavs, we may be allowed to<br />

identify<br />

s w<strong>it</strong>h the ancient Antes; as for the Indians, whom Hone<br />

., however, spell <strong>it</strong> Emise-<br />

)

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