TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

GROVES. 75
heiligeforst. no. 273 (1143) : praedium Loubach in sacro nemore
situm. no. 297 (1158) : utantur pascuis in sacra silva. no. 317
(1175) : in silva sacra, no. 402 (1215) : in sacra silva. no. 800 (1292):
conventum in konigesbriicken in Jieiligenforst. no. 829 (1304) :
nemus nostrum et imperil dictum heiligvorst. no. 851 (1310) :
pecora in foresta nostra, quae dicitur der lieilige forst, pascere et
tenere. no. 1076 (1356) : porcos tempore glandium
nutriendos in
silva sacra. The alternating words forst, silva, nemus, are enough
to show the significance of the term. The name of the well-known
Dreieich (Drieichahi) is probably to be explained by the heathen
worship of three oaks ;
a royal ban-forest existed there a long time,
and its charter (I, 498) is one of the most primitive.
The express allusion to Thuringia and Saxony is remarkable in
the following lines of a poem that seems to have been composed
soon after the year 1200, Eeinh. F. 302 ; the wolf sees a goat on a
tree, and exclaims :
ich sine ein obez hangen,
ez habe har ode borst ;
I see a fruit hanging,
That it has hair or bristles ;
in einem heiligen vorste In any holy forest
ze Diiringen noch ze Sachseu Of Thuringia nor of Saxony
enkimde niht gewahsen
There could not grow
bezzer obez uf rise. Better fruit on bough.
The allusion is surely to sacrificed animals, or firstfruits of the
chase, hung up on the trees of a sacred wood ? Either the story is
based on a more ancient original, or may not the poet have heard
tell from somewhere of heathenish doings going on in his own day
among Saxons and Thuringians ? (see SuppL).
And in other poems of the Mid. Ages the sacredness of the
ancient forests still exerts an after-influence. In Alex. 5193 we
read der edele wait frone ; and we have inklings now and again,
if not of sacrifices offered to sacred trees, yet of a lasting indestruc
tible awe, and the fancy that ghostly beings haunt particular trees.
Thus, in Ls. 2, 575, misfortune, like a demon, sat on a tree ;
Altd. w. 3, 161 it is said of a hollow tree:
da sint heiligen inne,
There are saints in there,
and in
die hcerent aller liute bet. 1 That hear all people s prayers
(see SuppL).
1 From the notion of a forest temple the transition is easy to paying divine
honours to a single tree. Festus has : delubrum fustis delibratus (staff with