TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

WODAN. 157
Vulle kruken un sangen hat hei,
upen holte wasst (grows) manigerlei :
hei is nig barn un wert nig old.
Wold, Wold, Wold!
If the ceremony be omitted, the next year will bring bad crops of
hay
and corn.
Probably, beside the libation, there was corn left standing for the
venerated being, as the fourth line gives us to understand : full
crocks and shocks hath he ; and the second strophe may have
brought in his horse. Heaven s giant knows what happens, ever
he down from heaven sees/ accords with the old belief in
Wuotan s chair (p, 135) ; the sixth line touches off the god that
ne er is born and ne er grows old almost too theosophically.
Wold, though excused by the rhyme, seems a corruption of Wod,
Wode, 1 rather than a contraction from waldand (v. supra, p. 21).
A Schaumburg man pronounced the name to me as Wauden, and
related as follows : On the lake of Steinhude, the lads from the
village of Steinhude go every autumn after harvest, to a hill named
Heidenhiigel, light a fire on it, and when it blazes high, wave their
hats and cry Wauden, Wauden ! (see Suppl.).
Such customs reveal to us the generosity of the olden time,
Man has no wish to keep all his increase to himself ;
he gratefully
leaves a portion to the gods, who will in future also protect his
crops. Avarice increased when sacrificing ceased. Ears of corn
are set apart and offered here to Wuotan, as elsewhere to kind
spirits and elves, e.g., to the brownies of Scotland (see Suppl. to
Elves, pixy-hoarding).
It was not Wuotan exclusively that bestowed fertility on the
fields ; Donar, and his mother the Earth, stood in still closer con
nexion with agriculture. We shall see that goddess put in the place
of Wuotan in exactly similar harvest-ceremonies.
In what countries the worship of the god endured the longest,
may be learnt from the names of places which are compounded
with his name, because the site was sacred to him. It is very
unlikely that they should be due to men bearing the same name as
the god, instead of to the god himself ; Wuotan, Oolnn, as a man s
1 Conf. Dutch oud, goud for old, gold ; so Woude, which approximates
the form Wode. Have we the latter in Theodericus de Wodestede ? 3
mantissa p. 433, anno 1205.
Scheldt s