TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

190 THUNAR.
mactans/ and the sacra and (
have been dealt with above, p. 121.
feriae Jovis (in Indicul. pagan.)
Letzner (hist. Caroli magni, Hildesh. 1603, cap. 18 end) relates:
The Saturday after Laetare, year by year, cometh to the little
cathedral-close of Hildesheim a farmer thereunto specially ap
pointed, and bringeth two logs of a fathom long, and therewith two
lesser logs pointed in the manner of skittles. The two greater he
planteth in the ground one against the other, and a-top of them
the skittles. Soon there come hastily together all manner of lads
and youth of the meaner sort, and with stones or staves do pelt the
skittles down from the logs ; other do set the same up again, and
the pelting beginneth a-new.. By these skittles are to be under
stood the devilish gods of the heathen, that were thrown down by
the Saxon-folk when they became Christian.
Here the names of the gods are suppressed, 1 but one of them
must have been Jupiter then, as we find it was afterwards. 2
Among
the farmer s dues at Hildesheim there occurs down to our own
times a Jupitergeld. Under this name the village of Grossen-
Algermissen had to pay 12 g. grosch. 4 pfen. yearly to the sexton
of the cathedral , an Algermissen farmer had every year to bring to
the cathedral close an eight-cornered log, a foot thick and four
feet long, hidden in a sack. The schoolboys dressed it in a cloak
and crown, and attacked the Jupiter as they then called it, by
throwing stones first from one side, then from the other, and at
last they burnt it. This popular festivity was often attended with
disorder, and was more than once interdicted, pickets were set to
carry the prohibition into effect; at length the royal treasury
remitted the Jupiter s geld. Possibly the village of Algermissen
had incurred the penalty of the due at the introduction of Christi
anity, by its attachment to the old religion. 3 Was the pelting of
1 In the Corbei chron., Hamb. 1590, cap. 18, Letzner thinks it was the god
of the Irrnensul. He refers to MS. accounts by Con. Fontanus, a Helmershaus
Benedictine of the 13th century.
2 A Hildesheim register drawn up at the end of the 14th century or
beginn. of the loth cent, says :
* De abyotter (idols), so sunnabends vor laetare
(Letzn. sonnab. wcich laet. von einem hausmann von ) Algermissen gesetzet,
davor (for which) ihm eine hofe (hufe, hide) landes gehort zur. sankmeisterie
(chantry ?), und wie seiches von dem hausmann nicht gesetzt worden, gehort
Cantori de hove landes. Hannoversche landesblatter 1833, p. 30.
3 Liintzel on farmers burdens in Hildesheim 1830, p. 205. Hannov. mag.
1833, p. 693. Protocols of 1742-3 in an article On the Stoning of Jupiter,
Hannov. landesbl., ubi supra.