TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

FKIKKA. FROTJWA. 299
that tliree divinities, Zio, Zisa and Isis, are assigned to the Suevi, is
already abundantly clear.
8. FPJKKA (FRIGG). FHOUWA (FREYJA).
Our inquiry turns at length to the goddesses of the Norse
religious system, of whom unequivocal traces are forthcoming in
the rest of Teutondom.
Foremost of these are Frigg the wife of OSinn, and Freyja the
sister of Freyr, a pair easy to confound and often confounded
because of their similar names. I mean to try if a stricter etymo
logy can part them and keep them asunder.
The name of Freyja seems the easier : it is motived no doubt
by the masculine Freyr (Gramm. 3, 335). Now as we recognised
Freyr in the Gothic frauja (p. 209), Freyja leads us to expect a
Gothic fraujo, gen. fraujons, both in the general sense of clomina
mistress, and in the special one of a proper name Fraujo. The
notion of mistress, lady, never occurs in Ulphilas. To make up
for it, our OHG. remains express it very frequently, by fruwd,
frdivd; the MUGr. frouwe, frou and our modern frau have preserved
themselves purely as common nouns, while the masc. fro has
vanished altogether. In meaning, frouwe and frau correspond
exactly to herre, herr, and are used like it both in addressing and
otherwise. 1 Our minnesangers are divided as to the respective
superiority of frouwe (domina) and wip (femina), 2
wip expressing
more the sex, .and frouwe the dignity ; to this day we feel frau to
be nobler than weib, though the French femme includes a good deal
of what is in our frau. It seems worthy of notice, that the poets
no Slav gods need be looked for ; neither does the Slav mythology know any
thing at all certain about a Ziza, alleged to be Ceres mamiuosa (Boh. cic, cec,
Pol. eye, Russ. titi, mamma), in support of whom forsooth our Cisa must be
see Hanusch 278. It were better to think of the MHG. name for
wronged ;
the zeisig (zeis-chen, siskin) din ztse, ein kleiniti zise, Ms. 1, 191 b . "Wh. 275,
30 which can ; scarcely have arisen from cicindela (glow-worm, Graff 5, 711) ;
however, no connexion has come to light between the goddess and the form of
a bird, though some little birds, the woodpecker, the titmouse, were held
sacred.
1 Like our fr6, the Fr. dame (dominus) is now lost ; dame (domina)
remains, like our frau. The Span, keeps both don and dona, the Ital. only
donna. The Romance tongues express the masc. notion by two other words,
sire, sieur (p. 27) and seigneur, signore, seiior, i.e., senior, out of which an Ital.
signora, a bpan. senora have sprouted, but no Fr. feminine.
2 Walth. 48-9. 57. Amgb. 45b 4fi a . Ms. 2, 182 b 21G a . Docen misc. 2,
278-9. frouwe uiide wip, Parz. 302, 7 (see Suppl.).