TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

356 HEROES.
give Irmineswagen for the constellation arctus, plaustrum coeleste,
I do not know on what authority : this wain would stand beside
Wuotanswagen, Donnerswagen, and even Ingswagen.
Some of the later AS. and several 0. Engl. authorities, in
specifying four great highways that traverse England, name
amongst them Ermingestrcte, running from south to north of the
island. 2 But we may safely assume the pure AS. form to have
been Eormenstrcet or Eormenes-straet, as another of the four ways,
Wcetlingastrcet, occurs in the Saxon Chron. (Ingr. 190. Thorpe s
anal. p. 38), and in the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrun (Thorpe, p.
66), and andlang Wactlinga straet in Kemble 2, 250 (an. 944).
Lye has Irmingstrcet together with Irmingsul, both without refer
ences. The conjectural Eormenstrset would lead to an OHG.
Irmanstraza, and Eormenesstrset to Irmanesstraza, with the mean
ings via publica and via Irmani.
Now it is not unimportant to the course of our inquiry, that
one of the four highways, Wsetlingastrset, is at the same time
translated to the sky, and gets to look quite mythical. A plain
enough road, extending from Dover to Cardigan, is the milky way
in the heavens, i.e., it is travelled by the car of some heathen god.
Chaucer (House of Fame 2, 427), describing that part of the
sky, says :
Lo there, quod he, cast up thine eye,
se yondir, lo, the galaxie,
the whiche men clepe the milky way
for it is white, and some parfay
ycallin it han W ailingestrete,
that onis was brente with the hete,
whan that the sunnis sonne the rede,
which hite Phaeton, wolde lede
algate his fathirs carte and gie.
(
In the Complaint of Scotland, p. JO,
it is said of the comet : it
aperis oft in the quhyt circle callit circulus lacteus, the quhilk the
marynalis callis Vatlanstreit . In Douglas s Virgil, p. 85 :
2 IIII cheminii Watlingestrete, Fosse, Hickenildestrete, Ermingcstrete
(Thorpe s Anc. laws, p. 192) ; conf. Henry of Hunt. (Erningestreet), Hob. of
Glouc., Oxf. 1742, p. 299 (also Erning.* after the preceding). Ranulph
Highden s Polychr., ed. Oxon. p. 196. Leland s Itinerary, Oxf. 1744. 6, 108
140. Gibson in App. chron. Fax. p. 47. Camden s Britannia, ed. Gibson,
map to Lappenberg s Hist, of Engl., the direction
of the four roads is indicated.