TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

102 GODS.
common people, but withdrawn from all regulating guidance by
heathen priests, could not fail soon to become vulgarized, and to
appear as the mere dregs of an older faith, which faith we have no
right to measure by them. As we do not fail to recognise
in the
devils and witches of more modern times the higher purer fancies of
antiquity disguised, just as little ought we to feel any scruple about
tracing back the pagan practices in question to the untroubled fountainhead
of the olden time. Prohibitions and preachings kept strictly
to the practical side of the matter, and their very purpose was to put
down these last hateful remnants of the false religion. A sentence
in Cnut s AS. laws (Schmid 1, 50) shows, that fountain and tree
worship does not exclude adoration of the gods
themselves :
Hasftenscipe bi(5, J?a3t man deofolgild weorSige, }?iut is, )?a3t man
weorSige hseftene godas, and sunnan oo15e monan, fyre
oftfte fl65\va3-
ter, wyllas o<55e stanas oftSe ffiniges cynnes wudutreowa; conf.
Hornil. 1, 366. Just so it is said of Olaf the Saint, Fornm. sog. 5,
239, that he abolished the heathen sacrifices and gods : Ok
morg
onnur (many other) blotskapar skrimsl, b?e5i hamra ok horga,
skoga, vbtn ok tre ok 611 onnur blot, biefti meiri ok ininni.
But we can conceive of another reason too, why on such occa
sions the heathen gods, perhaps still unforgotten, are passed over in
silence : Christian priests avoided uttering their names or describing
their worship minutely.
It was thought advisable to include them
all under the general title of demons or devils, and utterly uproot
their influence by laying an interdict on whatever yet remained
of their worship. The Merseburg poems show how, by way of
exception, the names of certain gods were still able to transmit
themselves in formulas of conjuring.
Pictures of heathenism in its debasement and decay have no
right to be placed on a level with the report of it given by Tacitus
from five to eight centuries before, when it was yet in the fulness
of its strength. If the adoration of trees and rivers still lingering
in the habits of the people no longer bears witness to the existence
of gods, is it not loudly enough proclaimed in those imperfect and
defective sketches by a Roman stranger ? When he expressly tells
us of a deus terra editus, of heroes and descendants of the god
(plures deo ortos), of the god who rules in war (velut deo imperante),
of the names of gods (deorum nominibus) which the people
trans
ferred to sacred groves, of the priest who cannot begin a divination