TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

293 GODDESSES.
fact and fiction ; the great point is, that she brings us tidings of a
Sue vie goddess.
Cisa seems the older and better spelling, and Ciza
would be harder to explain. Now from this name of the goddess
we can hardly derive that of the town Cisara, supposing it to be a
purely German derivative names of ; places are never formed with
such a termination from male or female proper names. It seems
more likely that Cisara Cisae ara, from the altar and temple of
the goddess : and later writers might corrupt Cisaram into Zizarim,
Zizerim. We read that she was most devoutly (religiosissime)
honoured by the Suevi, her anniversary is a grand festival devoted
to games and merrymaking, the day is precisely defined as the
fifty-ninth after Aug. 1, it fell therefore on Sept. 28. At such a
season might be held a feast of the divinity who had prospered the
harvest just gathered in. On Sept. 29 the Christians kept one of
their grandest days, that of St. Michael, who often had to replace a
heathen god of war and victory. It seems worthy of notice, that
the Saxons had their great feast of victory about the same time,
viz., the beginning of October ; Widukind pp. 423-4. With the
first Sunday after Michaelmas the holy common-week was considered
in the Mid. Ages to begin;, Scheffer s Haltaus, pp. 141-2. na der
hillifjen meinweken, Weisth. % 240. In the handing down of a
precise and doubtless genuine date, I feel the credibility of the story
confirmed.
Now who is Cisa ? One naturally thinks first of that Sftevic
Isis (p. 257) in Tacitus, whose name even is not unlike Cisa, Zisa,
if we make allowance for the mere dropping of the initial, an
omission which the Eornan might be prompted to make by the
similarity of the Isis that he knew.. But even if Zisa be totally
different from Isis, she can with all the better right be placed by
the side of our Zio, in whom also was displayed a thoroughly
Swabian deity (p. 199) ; nay, together with our supposed feminine
Ziu (p. 203) there may have been a collateral form Zisd, so that her
Zisuiiberg would exactly correspond to the god s Ziewesberg, Zisberg
(see Suppl.). Shall I bring forward a reason for this guess, which
shall be anything but far-fetched ? The Mid. Dutch name for the
third day of the week had the curious form Disendach (p. 125), which
being of course a corruption of Tisendach brings us at once to Tise
= Zisa. It is a matter for further researches to demonstrate, 1 but
1 Down in the Kiese between the rivers Lech and Wertach,
in the midst of
Sueves, at a time supposed to be before even the Romans settled in. the region^