TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

30 i GODDESSES.
marriages, and her aid is implored by the childless (Fornald. suj. 1,
117); hence hionagras is also Fricjgjargras. We may remember
those maidens yet unmarried (p. 264) being yoked to the plough of
the goddess whose commands they had too long defied. In some
parts of northern England, in Yorkshire, especially Hallamshire,
popular customs show remnants of the worship of Fricg. In the
neighbourhood of Dent, at certain seasons of the year, especially
autumn, the country folk hold a procession and perform old dances,
one called the giant s dance : the leading giant they name Woden,
and his wife Frigga, the principal action of the play consisting in
two swords being swung and clashed together about the neck of a
boy without hurting
1 him. Still more remarkable is the clear
vestige of the goddess in Lower Saxony, where to the common
people she is fru Frekc? and plays the very parts which we saw
assigned tofrau Nolle (pp. 267-8): a strong argument, by the way, for
the divine nature of this latter. Then in Westphalia, legend may
derive the name of the old convent Freckcnhorst, Frickenhorst, from
a shepherd Frickio, to whom a light appeared in the night (like the
fall of snow by night at Hildesheim, p. 268) on the spot where the
church was to be built ;
the name really points to a sacred hurst or
grove of Frecka fern., or of Friclco masc., whose site Christianity was
perhaps eager to appropriate ; conf. Frcecinghyrst, Kemble 1, 248.
2, 265. There is a VrcMeve, Frickslcbcn, not far from Magdeburg
(see SuppL).
Freya is the goddess most honoured after or along with Frigg ;
her worship seems to have been even the more prevalent and
important of the two, she is styled agoetuz af Asynjum, Sn. 28,
and blotgyoja, Yngl. saga cap. 4, to whom frequent sacrifices were
offered. HeiSrekr sacrificed a boar to her, as elsewhere to Freyr,
and honoured her above all other gods. 3 She was wedded to a
1 Communicated by J. M. Kemble,
from the mouth of an old Yorksliire-
inan . I account for the sword by the ancient use of that weapon at weddings ;
coiif. EA. 426-7. 431 ; esp. the old Frisian custom pp. 167-8, conf. Heimreich s
Nordfries. chron. 1, 53-4. In Swabia, as late as the 18th century, the brides
men carried large swords with fluttering ribbons before the bride and there
;
is a striking similarity in the Esthonian custom (Superst. M. 13).
*Eccard de orig. Germ, p. 398: Celebratur in plebe Saxon ica fru Frelce,
cui eadem munia tribuuntur, quae superiores Saxones Holdae suae adscribunt.
Fru Frcke has just been unearthed again by Ad. Kuhn, namely in the Ukermark,
where she is called Fruike, and answers to fru Harke in the Mittclmark
and fru Gode in the Prignitz.
3
Hervavarsapi, ed. Vend. p. 138, ed. 1785 p. 124. By the editors of the
Fornald. sog. 1, 463 the passage is banished into the notes as an unsupported
reading.