TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

GEAT. JSCILD. BEOWULF. 369
and then Frotho ; but the AS. genealogy places its Scild after
Scedf, and singularly
makes them both ancestors of OSinn. From
Scedf descends Sceldwa, from him consecutively Beaw, Tcetiva, Gedt,
and after several more generations comes Woden last. The ON.
version of the lineage is in harmony with this ; and even in the
Gothic pedigree, which only begins with Gduts, we may suppose a
Skaufs, Skildva, Taitva to have preceded, to whom the OHG. names
Scoup, Scilto, Zeizo would correspond.
None however is so
interesting as Sceldwa s son, the Anglo-Saxon Beaw, called by the
Scandinavians Biar, Biaf, but in the living AS. epos Beewulf. It
is true, the remarkable poem of that name is about a second and
but
younger Beowulf, in whom his forefather s name repeats itself ;
fortunately the opening lines allude to the elder Beowulf, and call
his father Scild (Goth. Skildus, agreeing with Skioldr) a Scefing, i.e.,
son of Scedf. Beaw is a corruption of Beow, and Beow an
abbrevia-^
tion of Beowulf-, it is the complete name that first opens to us a
wider horizon. Beowulf signifies bee-wolf (OHG. Piawolf?), and i
that is a name for the woodpecker, a bird of gay plumage that hunts
after bees, of whom antiquity has many a tale to tell. 1
Strange to
say, the classical mythus (above, pp. 206, 249) makes this Picus a
son of Saturn, inasmuch as it either identifies him with Zeus who
is succeeded by a Hermes, or makes him nourisher of Mars s sons
and father of Faunus. We see Picus (Picumnus) interwoven into
the race of Kronos, Zeus, Hermes and Ares, the old Bohemian
Stracec = picus into that of Sitivrat, Kirt and Eadigost, as Beowulf
is into that of Gedt and Woden. If the groups differ in the details
of their combination, their agreement as wholes is the more
trustworthy and less open to suspicion. And just as the footprints
of Saturn were traceable from the Slavs to the Saxons and to
England, but were less known to the Northmen, so those of the
divine bird in Stracec and Beowulf seem to take the same course,
and never properly to reach Scandinavia. The central Germans
stood nearer to Eoman legend, although no actual borrowing need
have taken place.
What a deep hold this group of heroes had taken, is evidenced
by another legend. Scedf (i.e., manipulus frumenti) takes his name,
1 Can the name in Upper Germany for the turdus or oriolus galbula,
Birolf, Pirolf, brother Pirolf (Frisch 1, 161), possibly stand for Biewolf (or
Biterolf) ? The Serbs call it Urosh, and curiously this again is a hero s name.
Conf. the Finn, uros [with heros ? ], p. 341.
24