TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

224 PALTAR.
have Hcrmo&r interweaving himself in the thread of Haider s
history ; he is dispatched to Hel, to demand his beloved brother
back from the underworld. In Saxo he is already forgotten ; the
AS. genealogy places its HeremoS among Woden s ancestors, and
names as his son either Sceldwa or the Sceaf renowned in story,
whereas in the North he and Balder alike are the offspring of OSinn ;
in the same way we saw (p. 219) Freyr taken for the father as well
as the son of NiorSr. A later Heremod appears in Beow. 1795.
3417, but still in kinship with the old races ; he is perhaps that
hero, named by the side of Sigmundr in Saem. 113 a , to whom OSinn
lends helm and hauberk. AS. title-deeds also contain the name;
Kemb. 1, 232. 141 ; and in OHG. Herimuot, Herimaot, occurs very
often (Graff 2, 699 anno 782, from MB. 7, 373. Neugart no.
170. 214. 244. 260. annis 8U9-22-30-34. Eied. no. 21 anno
821), but neither song nor story has a tale to tell of him (see
Suppl.).
So much the more valuable are the revelations of the Merseburg
not only are we fully assured now of a divine Balder in
discovery ;
Germany, but there emerges again a long-forgotten mytlius, and
with it a new name unknown even to the North.
When, says the lay, Phol (Balder) and Wodan were one day
riding in the forest, one foot of Balder s foal, demo Balderes volon,
was wrenched out of joint, whereupon the heavenly habitants
bestowed their best pains on setting it right again, but neither
Sinngund and Sunna, nor yet Frua and Folia could do any good,
only Wodan the wizard himself could conjure and heal the limb
(see Suppl.).
The whole incident is as little known to the Edda as to other
Norse legends. Yet what was told in a heathen spell in Thuringia
before the tenth century is still in its substance found lurking
in conjuring formulas known to the country folk of Scotland
and Denmark (conf. ch. XXXIII, Dislocation), except that they
apply to Jesus what the heathen believed of Balder and Wodan.
It is somewhat odd, that Cato (Dere rust. 160) should give, likewise
for a dislocated limb, an Old Roman or perhaps Sabine form of
spell, which is unintelligible to us, but in which a god is evidently
invoked: Luxum si quod est, hac cantione sanum fiet. Harundinem
prende tibi viridena pedes IV aut V longam, mediam diffinde, et
duo homines teneant ad coxendices. Incipe cantare in alio S.F.