TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

HOLD A, HOLLE. 265
Sueves of Tacitus s time must have done honour to their goddess
by carrying her ship about. The forcing of unmarried young
women to take part in the festival is like the constraint put upon
the weavers in Kipuaria, and seems to indicate that the divine
mother in her progress
at once looked kindly on the bond of love
and wedlock, and punished the backward ; in this sense she might
fairly stand for Dame Venus, Hold a and Frecke.
The Greeks dedicated a ship not only to Isis, but to Athene.
At the Panathensea her sacred peplos was conveyed by ship to the
Acropolis : the ship, to whose mast it was suspended as a sail, was
built on the Kerameikos, and moved on dry land by an under
ground mechanism, first to the temple of Demeter and all round it,
past the Pelasgian to the Pythian, and lastly to the citadel. The
people followed in solemnly ordered procession. 1
We must not omit to mention, that Aventin, after transforming
the Tacitean Isis into a frau Eisen, and making iron (eisen) take
its name from her, expands the account of her worship, and in
addition to the little ship, states further, that on the death of her
father (Hercules) she travelled through all countries, came to the
German king Schwab, and staid for a time with him ; that she
taught him the forging of iron, the sowing of seed, reaping, grinding,
kneading and baking, the cultivation of flax and hemp, spinning,
weaving and needle work, and that the people esteemed her a holy
woman. 2 We shall in due time investigate a goddess Zisa, and her
claims to a connexion with Isis.
4. HOLDA, HOLLE.
Can the name under which the Suevi worshipped that goddess
yule-tide offer to their jauloherra small ships smeared with reindeer s Itlood, and
hang them on trees ; Hogstrom, efterretninger om Lapland, p. 511. These
votive gifts to saints fill the place of older ones of the heathen time to gods,
as the voyagers to Helgoland continued long to respect Fosete s sanctuary
(p. 231). Now, as silver ploughs too were placed in churches, and later in the
Mid. Ages were even demanded as dues, these ships and ploughs together lend
a welcome support to the ancient worship of a maternal deity (see SuppL).
1 Philostr. de vitis sophist, lib. 2 cap. 1, ed. Paris. 1608, p. 549.
2 So Jean le Maire de Beiges in his Illustrations de Gaulle, Paris, 1548, bk.
temps duquel (Hercules Allemannus) la deesse Isis, royne
3 p. xxviii : Au
d Egypte, veint en Allemaigne et montra au rude 1 peuple usaige de mouldre la
3
farine et faire du pain. J. le Maire finished his work in 1512, Aventin not
till 1522 did ; they both borrow from the spurious Berosus that came out in
the 15th ? century Hunibald makes a queen Cambra, who may be compared
with the Langobardic Gambara, introduce the arts of building, sowing and
weaving (see Suppl.).