TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

HERIMUOT. PHOL. 225
motas vaeta daries dardaries astataries Dissunapiter ! usque durn
coeant. What follows is nothing to our purpose.
The horse of Balder, lamed and checked on his journey, acquires
a full meaning the moment we think of him as the god of light or
day, whose stoppage and detention must give rise to serious mis
chief on the earth. Probably the story in its context could have
informed us of this ;
it was foreign to the purpose of the conjuring-
spell.
The names of the four goddesses will be discussed in their
proper place ; what concerns us here is, that Balder is called by a
second and hitherto unheard-of name, Phol. The eye for our
antiquities often merely wants opening: a noticing of the unnoticed
has resulted in clear footprints of such a god being brought to oar
hand, in several names of places.
In Bavaria there was a Pholesauwa, Pholesouwa, ten or twelve
miles from Passau, which the Traditiones patavienses first mention
in a document drawn up between 774 and 788 (MB. vol. 28, pars
2, p. 21, no. 23), and afterwards many later ones of the same district:
it is the present village of Pfalsau. Its composition with aue quite
fits in with the supposition of an old heathen worship. The gods were
worshipped not only on mountains, but on eas inclosed by brooks
and rivers, where fertile meadows yielded pasture, and forests shade.
Such was the castum nemus of Nerthus in an insula Oceani, such
Fosetesland with its willows and well-springs, of which more
presently. Baldrshagi (Balderi pascuum), mentioned in the Fri5-
fofssaga, was an enclosed sanctuary (griSastaoY), which none might
damage. I find also that convents, for which time-hallowed vener
able sites were preferred, were often situated in eas ; and of one
nunnery the very word is used : in der megde ouwe, in the maids
ea (Diut. 1, 357). 1 The ON. mythology supplies us with several eas
named after the loftiest gods :
OSins<??/ (Odensee) in Fiinen, another
Oolnsey (Onsoe) in Norway, Fornm. sog. 12, 33, and Thorsey, 7, 234.
9, 17 ; Hlesscy (Lassoe) in the Kattegat, &c., &c. We do not know
any OHG. Wuotanesouwa, Donaresouwa, but Pholesouwa is equally
to the point.
Very similar must have been Pholespiunt (MB. 9, 404 circ. 1138.
1 So the Old Bavarian convent of Chiemsee was called ouwa (MB. 2Sa 103
,
an.
890), and afterwards the monastery there der herren iverd, and the nunnery
der nunnen werd . Stat zo gottes ouwe in Lisch, mekl. jb. 7, 227, from a
fragment belonging to Bertholds Crane. Demantin 242.
15