TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY VOL. I

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WODAN. 137
Can it be alluded to in the MHG. poem, Amgb. 3 a ?
Der nu den himel hat erkorn,
der geiselt uns bi imser habe ;
ich viirhte sere, tint wirt im zorn,
den slegel wirft er uns her abe. 1
Tn a Servian song (Vuk 4, 9) the angels descend to earth out of
God s window (od Bozhieg prozora ; pro-zor (out-look, hence window)
reminds one of zora (dawn), prozorie (morning twilight), and of
Wodan at early morn looking toward the sunrise.
The dawn is, so
to speak, the opening in heaven, through which God looks into the
world.
Also, what Paulus Diac. 1, 20 tells of the anger of the Lord
(supra, p.. 18), whereby the Herulian warriors were smitten before
their enemies, I am inclined to trace up to Wuotan Tanta :
super eos
coelitus ira respexit ; and again.: Vae tibi, misera Herulia, quae
coelestis Domini flecteris ira! Conf. Egilssaga p. 365 : rei&r se
rogn ok Oolnn ! wrathful see the gods and 0. ;
and Fornald. sog. 1,
501 :
gramr er ySr OSinn, angry is 0. with you.
Victory was in the eyes
of our forefathers the first and highest
of gifts,
but they regarded Wuotan not merely as dispenser of
victory ;
I have to show next, that in the widest sense he repre
sented to them the god to whose bounty man has to look for every
other distinction, who has the giving of all superior blessings ;
and
in this sense also Hermes (Mercury) was to the Greeks pre
eminently Swrcop edcov, giver of good things, and I have ventured
to guess that the name Gibika, Kipicho originally signified the
same to us 2 .
235. ed. 1842, 4, 5, 39. H. Sachs (1563) v. 381. According to Greek and O.
Norse notions, the gods have a throne or chair tha :
gengengo regin oil a rokstola
ginheilog got), Syem. l b .
Compare in the Bible heaven is God s throne, the
:
earth his footstool, Matt. 5, 34-5 ;
and Hel. 45, 11. 12 (see Suppl.).
1
Also MS. 2, 254 b : ze hus wirf ich den slegel dir.. MS. 2, 6 b : mit
einem slegel er zuo dem kinde warf. This cudgel-throwing resembles,
what meant so much to our ancestors, the hammer s throw, and the
OHG. slaga is malleus, sZec?(/e-hammer (Graff 6, 773). The cudgel thrown
from heaven can hardly be other than a thunderbolt ;
and the obscure
proverb, * swer irre rite daz der den slegel fiinde, whoso astray should ride, that
he the s.
might find, Parz. 180, 10, may refer to a thunder-stone (see ch. VIII,
Donar) which points to hidden treasure and brings deliverance, and which only
those can light upon, who have accidentally lost their way in a wood for
;
which reason Wolfram calls trunks of trees, from under which peeps out the
stone of luck, slegels urkiinde und zil, slegel
s document and mark (aim).
Haupts zeitschr. 1, 573. Lasicz. 47 names a Datanus donator bonoruin.