TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

1210 FRO.
word for a divine or earthly lord was preserved, just as that antique
sihora and sire (p. 27) lasted longest in addresses. In the Heliand
too, when the word is used in addressing, it is always in the short
ened form fro min ! 123, 13. 140, 23. fro min the ! godo 131, 6.
134, 15. 138, 1. 7. waldand fro min ! 153, 8. drohtin fro min !
15, 3 ;
but in other cases we do find the complete froJio gen. frohon
3, 24 ; frdho 119, 14, gen. frahon 122, 9, fraon 3, 24. 5, 23 ; froio
93, 1. 107, 21. Still the OS. poet uses the word seldorner than the
synonyms drohtin and herro, and he always puts a possessive with
it, never an adjective (like mari drohtin, riki drohtin, craftag drohtin,
liob herro), still less does he make compounds with it (like sigidrohtin)
: all symptoms that the word was freezing up. The AS.
fred gen. frean (for freaan, freawan) has a wider sweep, it not only
admits adjectives (frea relmihtig, Csedm. 1, 9. 10, 1), but also forms
compounds: agendfrea, Caedm. 135, 4. aldorfrea 218, 29. folcfrea
111, 7 : and even combines with dryhten : freadryhten, Crcdm. 54,
29, gen. freahdrihtnes, Beow. 1585, dat. freodryhtne 5150. But
now by the side of our OHG. fro there is found a rigid (indecl.)
frono, which, placed before or after substantives, imparts the notion
of lordly, high and holy ; out of this was gradually developed a
more flexible adj. of like meaning fron, and again an adj. fronisc
(pulcher, mundus, inclytus, arcanus), OS. fronisk, frdnisk. In
MHG. and even modern German we have a good many compounds
with vron, as also the adj. in the above sense, while frohnen,frdlmen is
to do service to one s lord, to dedicate. The Frisian dialect contri
butes &frdn, dominions, and/ran^, minister publicus.
The added
-n in all these derivatives can be explained by the Gothic frdujinon
dominari, though there was probably no Gothic fraujinisks, as
fronisc seems not to have been formed till after the contraction fro
and frono had set in.
But even the Gothic frduja does not present to us the simple j
stem, I look for it in a lost adj. fravis (like navis veKpos, Eom. 7, 2),i
the same as the OHG. fro gen. frouwes, OS. fra gen. frahes, MHG. j
vrd, and our froJi [frohlich, frolic, &c.], and signifying mitis, laetus,
blandus ; whence the same dialects derive frouwi, gaudium, frouwan,
laetum reddere, frouwida, laetitia, &c. (see Suppl.).
I do not mean to assert that a god Frauja, Frouwo, Fraho was
as distinctly worshipped by the Goths, Alamanns, Franks and
Saxons in the first centuries of our era, as Freyr was long after in