TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

CHAPTER II.
GOD.
In all Teutonic tongues the Supreme Being has always with
one consent been called by the general name God. The dialectic
varieties are : Goth, guff, A.S., O.S., 0. Fris. god, O.H.G. cot, 0.
Norse goff ; Swed. Dan. gud, M.H.G. got, M.L.G. god ; and here
there is a grammatical remark to make. Though all the dialects,
even the Norse, use the word as masculine (hence in O.H.G. the ace.
sing, cotan ; I do not know of a M.H.G. goten), yet
in Gothic and
0. Norse it lacks the nom. sing, termination (-s, -r) of a masc. noun,
and the Gothic gen. sing, is formed guffs without the connectingvowel
i, agreeing therein with the three irreg. genitives mans,
fadrs, broSrs. Now, as O.H.G. has the same three genitives irreg.,
man, fatar, pruodar, we should have expected the gen. cot to bear
them company, and I do not doubt its having existed, though I
have nowhere met with it, only with the reg. cotes, as indeed
mannes and fateres also occur. It is more likely that the sanctity
of the name had preserved the oldest form inviolate, than that fre
quent use had worn it down. 1 The same reason preserved the
O.H.G. spelling cot (Gramm. 1, 180), the M. Dut. god (1, 486), and
Moreover, God and
perhaps the Lat. vocative deus (1, 1071). 2
other names of divine beings reject every article (4, 383. 394. 404.
424. 432) ; they are too firmly established as proper nouns to
need any such distinction. The der got in MS. 2, 260a. is said of a
heathen deity.
On the radical meaning of the word God we have not yet
arrived at certainty ;
3 it is not immediately connected with the adj.
1 The drift of these remarks seems to be this : The
word, though used as a
masc., has a neut. form is this an ; archaism, pointing to a time when the
word was really neuter or a mere ; irregularity due to abtrition, the word
having always been masc. ? TRANS.
2 Saxo does not inflect Thor Uhland ; p. 198.
3 The Slav, bogh is connected with the Sanskr. bhaga felicitas, bhakta
devotus, and bhaj colere ; perhaps also with the obscure bahts in the Goth,
andbahts minister, cultor conf. ; p. 20, note on boghat, dives. Of 6e6s, deus
we shall have to speak in ch. IX.