TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

36 WORSHIP.
Lu. 2, 37; he construes it with an ace. of the person: blotan
fraujan is to him simply Deum colere, with apparently no thought
of a bloody sacrifice. For \arpeia Eom. 12, 1, he puts Uotinassus,
and for 0eocre/3r)<; John 9, 31 gpKUdstrtis. The latter presupposes a
subst. Uostr (cultus, oblatio), of which the S is explained in
Gramm. 2, 208. Usbloteins (TrapaxXTjcris) 2 Cor. 8, 4 implies a verb
usbldtjan to implore. Coedmon uses the AS. Uotan pret. bleot,
onllotan pret. onbleot, of the Jewish sacrifice, and follows them up
with ace. of thing and dat. of person : blotan sunu (filium sacri-
ficare) 173, 5. onbleot J?set lac Gode (obtulit hostiam Deo) 177, 21.
In Alfred s Orosius we have the same Udtan pret. blotte. I derive
from it lletsian, later blessian, to bless. The OHG. pluozan, pret.
pliez and pluozta, appears only in glosses, and renders libare, litare,
victimare, immolare, Gl. Hrab. 959 a 960 a 966 b 968 b . Diut. 1, 245,
258 a . No case-construction is found, but an ace. of the thing may
be inferred from partic. kaplozaniu immolata. A subst. pluostar
sacrificium, Ihwstar, Is. 382. GL emm. 411. Gl. jun. 209. T. 56, 4.
95, 102 *; pluostarhtis idolium, Gl. emm. 402. ploazlius fanum,
pluostrari sacrificator, ibid. 405. It is plain that here the word has
more of a heathen look, and was not at that time used of Christian
worship ; with the thing, the w^ords for it soon die out. But its
universal use in Norse heathendom leaves no doubt remaining, that
it was equally in vogue among Goths, Alamanni, Saxons, before
their conversion to Christianity.
The ON. verb llota, pret. blet and
blota<5i, takes, like the Gothic, an ace. of the object worshipped ;
thus, Gragas 2, 170, in the formula of the trygdamal:
sva vi5a sem
(as widely as) kristnir menu kirkior scekia, heiSnir menn hof llota
(fana colunt); and in the Edda: Thor llota, mik llota, llotafti 05in.
Sa3m. lll a
113 ,
b
141 ,
a
165 , a2 : always the meaning is sacrificio vene-
rari. So that in Goth, and ON. the verb brings out more the idea
of the person, in OHG. and AS. more that of the thing. But
even the O.Dan, version of the OT. uses llothe immolare,
1 The Gl. Hrab. 954 a : bao,ha, plostar, is incomplete ;
1, 166a it stands : bacha sacriticat, ploastar ploazit, or zepar pWzit;
in Gl. Ker. 45. Dint.
meant to translate only the Lat. verb, not the subst. bacha (/Su^r?).
so that it is
Or per
haps a better reading is bachat for bacchatur, and the meaning is non
Kicrificat .
2 Landn. 1,2: blotaOi hratna ]?ria, worshipped three ravens, \vho were
going to show him the road ; so, in Soem. 141 a , a bird demands that cows lie
sacrificed to him ; the victim itself is ON. bltit, and we are told occasionally :
feck at bloti, ak bloti miklu, otiered a sacrifice, a great sacrifice, Landn. 2, 29.