TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

SACRIFICE.
libamina, Uotelsa holocaustum, Molbech s ed. pp. 171. 182. 215. 249.
Also the O.Swed. Uplandslag, at the very beginning of the church-
balkr has : sengin skal affguSum Uotce, with dat. of person, implying
The true derivation of the word I do not know. 1
an ace. of the thing.
At all events it is not to be looked for in bloS sanguis, as the dis
agreeing consonants of the two Gothic words plainly show; equally
divergent are the OHG. pluozan and pluot from one another;
besides, the worship so designated was not necessarily bloody.
remarkable passage in the Livonian rhyming chronicle 4683 tells of
the Sameits (Schamaits, Samogits) :
ir Uuotekirl der warf zuo hant
sin loz nach ir alden site,
zuo hant er Uuotete alles mite
ein quek.
Here, no doubt, an animal is sacrificed. I fancy the poet retained
a term which had penetrated from Scandinavia to Lithuania with
out understanding it himself ; for bluotkirl is merely the O.Swed.
blotkarl, heathen priest ; the term is foreign to the Lithuanian
language. 2
A few more of these general terms for sacrifice must be added
(see Suppl.). OHG. antheiz (hostia, victima), Diut. 1, 240 a . 246,
258. 278 b
; and as verbs, both antheizon and inheizan (immolare),
Diut. 1, 246. 258. OHG. insaken (litare), Gl. Hrab. 968 b
, insaJcet pirn
(delibor), ibid. 959a 960 a
37
, to which add the Bavarian stapfsaken,
EA. 927 ; just so the AS. onsecgan, Cod. exon. 171, 32. 257, 23.
onsecgan .to tibre (devote .as sacrifice), Csedm. 172, 30. tiber
onscegde, 90, 29. 108, 17. tifer onsecge, Ps. 65, 12. lac onsecge
Cod. exon. 254, 19. 257, 29 ; lac onscegde, Csedm. 107, 21. 113,
15. Cod. exon. 168, 28. gild onscegde, fedrn. 172, 11. and
onscegdnes (oblatio). As inheizan and onsecgan are formed
with the prefix and-, so is apparently the OHG. ineihan pirn
(delibor),
Hrab. 960 a
, which would yield a Goth, anddikan ; it is
1 Letter for letter it agrees with <Aotdeo I light up, burn, which is also ex
pressed in 0u<0 and the Lat. suffio ; but, if the idea of burnt-offering was
originally contained in blotan, it must have got obscured very early.
2 Even in MHG. the word seems to have already become extinct ; it
may survive still in terms referring to place, as Wofegraben, frfofegarten in
Hessen, conf. the phrase Uotzen mussen, to have to fork out (sacrifice) money.
An old knife or sword also is called blotz (see Suppl.).
A