TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

PALTAR. 221
exactly reminds us of frduja, fro, frea, and the ON. t$r. As bealdor
is already extinct in AS. prose, our proper name Paltar seems
likewise to have died out early ;
heathen songs in OHG. may have
known a paltar = princeps. Such Gothic forms as Baldrs, gen.
Baldris, and baldrs (princeps), may fairly be assumed. 1
This Baldrs would in strictness appear to have no connexion
with the Goth, batys (bold, audax), nor Paltar with the OHG. paid,
nor Baldr with the ON. ballr. As a rule^ the Gothic Id is represented
by OK Id and OHG. It : the Gothic 1> by OK 11 and OHG. Id. 2
But the OS. and AS. have Id in both cases, and even in Gothic, OK. and
OHG. a root will sometimes appear in both forms in the same lan
guage; 3 so that a close connexion between balj?s and Baldrs, 4
paid and
Paltar, is possible after all. On mythological grounds
it is even
probable : Balder s wife Nanna is also the bold one, from nenna to
dare ; in Gothic she would have been Nanjjo from nanjyan, in
OHG. Nandd from gi-nendan. The Baldr of the Edda may not
distinguish himself by bold deeds, but in Saxo he fights most
valiantly ; and neither of these narratives pretends to give a
complete account of his life. Perhaps the Gothic Balthae (Jornandes
5, 29) traced their origin to a divine Batys or Baldrs (see
Suppl.).
Yet even this meaning of the bold god or hero might be a
later one : the Lith. laltas and Lett, baits signify the white, the
good; and by the doctrine of consonant-change, baltas exactly
answers to the Goth. bal}?s and OHG. paid. Add to this, that the
AS. genealogies call Woden s son not Bealdor, Baldor, but Bceldceg,
Beldcg, which would lead us to expect an OHG. Paltac, a form that
I confess I have nowhere read. But both dialects have plenty of
other proper names compounded with dseg and tac : OHG. Adaltac,
1
Baldrs, Paltar, must be kept distinct from the compound Baldheri
(Schannat no. 420. 448), Paldheri (Trad, patav. no. 35),
Paldheri is the same as Paldackar (Trad, patav. no. 18).
AS. JBaldhere. This
2 Goth. kalds ) C vil>eis hutys gtilk
ON. kaldr V- but 1 villr hollr gull.
OHG. chaltj (wildi hold kold.
3 Conf. Gothic atyan and al]?s aldis, also aldrs ; Goth, fatyan and OHG.
faldan, afterwards faltan. As ]? degenerates into d, and d into t, any d put for
]?, or t for d, marks a later form : the Goth, fadr stands for fa]?r, as we see by
pater [the AS. feeder, modor, after a usurpation of 1000 years, must have
given place to the truer father, mother again]. In the ON. valda pret. olli,
we must regard the 11 as older than the Id, in spite of the Goth, valdan and
OHG. waltan [some would prefer to call valda an archaism].
4 Baldr may be related to bal}?, as tir to ty, and zior to zio.