Britain ... - Blue-Lite

244 NOTES TO THE DEVOTED ONE.
preside over fields and woods, over pleasure and pain, they
acknowledged one Almighty God, who dwelt in heaven and
ruled over all, employing himself only in heavenly things. The
other gods they believed had separate offices j they were the
offspring of the Almighty, and the nearer they approached to
the God of gods, the more were they to be revered."
(9) We to these gods, high councillors ofsplendour. . p. 144.
One of the names of the Sclavonic god Radegast, was Slavaradge,
which is said, in the Windish language, to signify a
councillor of glory.
( 10 ) For I would have my Danish subjects
Christians. .
p. 144.
"Though the generality of the Danes, at this period, were
either pagans, or only a kind of half Christians, their king,
Canute, who became also King of England in 1017, was a zealous
Christian, according to the mode of the age in which he
lived." Dr. Henry's Hist, of Great Brit.
In Canute's ecclesiastical laws is the
following ordinance:
" We strictly
all
prohibit heathenism : the worship of idols,
the sun, the moon, fire, rivers, fountains, rocks, trees of any
kind, and the practice of witchcraft, or committing murder by
magic, or firebrands, or any other infernal devices." Spel.
Condi. To what did the murder by firebrands allude ? Had it
not a similarity to an Indian ? superstition When a Hindoo is
determined to seek a deadly but private revenge on an enemy,
he seizes the half-burnt stake to which a widow has been fastened
on the funeral pile of her husband : conveying it home,
he sets it up and strikes it with some weapon, pronouncing
the name of his foe, who from that moment is supposed gra-
dually to perish.
n
( ) Not all the Christian priests that own thy power,
Shall win me to . forsake my father's gods. p. 144.
According to Jornandes, the Venedi, the Slavi, and the Antes,
were tribes of the same people, who joined the Goths at their
first irruption from the Ukraine into Dacia and Msesia. So
great, at one period, were the conquests of the Sclavonians, that
their language has been even extended from the Adriatic to the
confines of Japan. Such was the obstinacy with which these
Sclavonic tribes adhered to their superstitions, that the arms of
the Teutonic knights were for a long time employed in the
attempt to exterminate idolatry. The ancient customs of the
Slavi, together with their national independence, were pre-