-----

Footnote 118:

Grimm; Munch; Luning; Kemble; O'Donovan; Butler.

SECTION XV.—_Eormen._

The third son of Mannus was said to be Er, a word, perhaps, connected

with Tyr on one side, and Ares on the other; for Ertag is the Tuesday of

Southern Germany, and Eresburg, now Mersburg, was the centre of the

worship of the continental Saxons. The day was, however, also called, in

Bavaria and Austria, Ermintag, or Irminstag; and the deity worshipped at

Eresburg was Irman, or Ermin; and perhaps the word should be considered

as Er-man in conjunction. From him the Herminiones of Tacitus are said

to be descended, being chiefly the old Germans and the Franks.

At Eresburg, even up to the eighth century, there stood a great central

temple, containing a marble column on which stood an armed warrior,

holding, in one hand, a banner bearing a rose, in the other a balance.

The crest on the helmet was a cock, on the breastplate was a bear, on

the shield that hung from the shoulders was a lion in a field of

flowers. Around lived a college of priests, who exercised judgment and

made biennial offerings. Before going out to war, the host, in full

armour, galloped round the figure, brandishing their spears and praying

for victory. Lesser images were carried with the army, and, on its

return, captives and cowards were slain, as offerings to the great idol.

This temple was destroyed by Charlemagne, who buried the idol where

afterwards stood the abbey of Corbye. In his son’s reign it was dug up,

and carried off by the French as a trophy, when the Saxons rose to

rescue it and a battle took place, after which it was thrown into the

river Innen, but was fished out, exorcised, purified, and made to serve

as a candelabrum in the church of Hillesheim.

The battle was called Armansula, and the image Irmansul; whence many

have fancied that Irmansul was the chief German god.

_Sul_, or _saul_, is, however, a pillar; and it is a very curious fact

that two sacred columns were the penates of every Teuton’s hearth and

city. When a migration was decided on by the Scandinavians, a solemn

feast was held, the master of the house seated between his two _sulur_,

or columns, which he uprooted and carried with him, and, on his approach

to his intended home, he threw them overboard, and followed them with

his ship, landing wherever they were cast up. It was thus that the

situation of Reijkjavik, in Iceland, was determined. Such columns, down

to a very late period, stood at the gates of the elder towns in Germany,

and were called Ermensaulen, or, sometimes, one the Rolandsaul, the

other the Ermensaul.

Eormon, in the Anglian of Beowulf, means universal; _eormoncyn_, the

whole of mankind; in old Norse, _jormün_ is the world, and _Jormungandr_

is another name of the Midgard snake which encircles the world. Most

likely, the Irmansul thus signified the universal column, the pillar

adored by all men; just as the Anglo-Saxons called the great Roman road

Eormenstreot, or Ermingstreet, the public road. _Er_, then, would be the

divinity, _man_ the human word, and Erman would thus express something

revered by all; and thence, the name of the tribes of the Hermiones and

Hermunduri, both meaning all the people. Later, the word _jormün_, or

_eorman_, came to mean only very large; and, probably, the Saxons of

Thuringia had forgotten the original signification of their columns when

they gave the single one of Irmansul such an exclusive prominence. Some

have tried to explain one pillar as Heermansaul, pillar of the army man,

and the other as Raginholdsaul, pillar of firm judgment, as emblems of

military and civil power; but though this meaning may have later been

bestowed on them, the signification of Eormon is decidedly adverse to

this explanation, and it is safest to translate it, when it occurs in

names, as public, or general.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐

│ English. │ French. │ Spanish. │ Italian. │

│Armyn │Armand │Armando │Arminio │

│Armine │ │ │Armanno │

├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤

│ German. │ Swedish. │ Dutch. │ Swiss. │

│Hermann │Hermann │Hermanus │Herma │

│ │ │Herman │Hermeli │

│ │ │Manus │ │

├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤

│ Slovak. │ Lettish. │ Esth. │ Lithuanian. │

│Jerman │Ermannis │Herm │Ermas │

│ │ │ │Ermonas │

└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

When the Cheruschi, themselves Herminiones, broke the heart of Augustus

by cutting off the legions of Quinctilius Varus, their leader was

Arminius, probably Irman or Eorman, though after-generations explained

it as Heerman or Armyman. So that the hosts of Hermans, named when

national feeling was roused by French invasion, are in his honour;

previously, the Dutch Jacob Hermannsen had rendered himself into Latin

as Arminius. From Holland the Norfolk name of Armyn must have been

imported.

The Germans use, as the feminine, Hermine and Herminie, which properly

belong to the Latin Herminius; and the French have made their own form

of Armand into Armantine. A Burgundian hermit, Ermin, too, gave St. Ermo

to Italy, a name inextricably mixed with Elmo, the contraction of

Erasmus; it is the St. Erme of France.

Very early, so as to be almost mythical, was the Thuringian Irmanfrit,

or Irnvrit, who hardly conduced to ‘public peace’ by calling in the

Saxons; but Hermanfred continued in use in Germany, and was known to the

French as Hermanfroi.

The Burgundian version of the great world-girding snake was Ermelind, a

name that came to a saintly virgin of the sixth century from whom

Ermelinda flourished as an Italian name, being probably common to both

Lombards and Burgundians, as both Vandals.

But these Irmins are most frequent in ancient Spain. The Suevi had

Hermanrik, or Hermanarico, public ruler, and the Goths, Hermanegar and

Hermangildo; the last being the prince who is revered as having been

converted from Arianism by his orthodox Frank wife, and whose death, by

his father’s persecution, sealed the triumph of Catholicism in Spain.

Hermenburga was a princess, offered to, but refused by, a Frank king;

and Ermesinda, or, as Southey’s poem calls her, Hermesind, the daughter

of Pelayo, carried the blue blood of the Balten to the line of Alfonso.

Her name meant public dignity.

Parallel to these the Anglo-Saxons enumerate Eormenric, Eormenburh,

Eormenburg, Eormengyth, Eormengild; and after the Conquest there still

continue the forms of Eremburga, Ermentrude, and Ermengarde; the last by

far the most frequent, and not yet disused in Germany.

SECTION XVI.—_Erce._

The Anglo-Saxons were accustomed to perform an incantation to restore

the fruitfulness of their fields. It began by the cry _Erce_, _Erce_,

_Erce_, _Eordhan Môder_, as if it were not earth itself, but her mother

that was called upon.

The same word _erce_ is used for ark, chest, or ship, in the Anglo-Saxon

New Testament. And Erce does not seem to have been entirely forgotten;

for Erche, or Herkja, is a famous lady in old German hero songs.

From thence, too, may have sprung the Old German adjective _ërchan_,

meaning holy, genuine, or simple, which is thought to have named the

famous Hercynian forest of ancient Germany, which would thus be the

sacred wood.

The founder of the East Saxon kingdom in England is called both Escwine

and Ercenwine, the darling of Ese, or of Erce. In the Kentish genealogy

we find Eorconberht, sacred brightness, answering to the Lombardo-Italic

Erchimperto; and also Eorcongot, sacred divinity.

St. Eorconwald, holy power, was a bishop of London, about 678, and may

almost be reckoned as the second founder of St. Paul’s, where his shrine

was greatly revered; and about the same time Erkenoald was a _maire du

palais_ in France; and Erchenold, or Herchenhold, was an old German

name, meaning probably firm in truth.

In old knightly times, we find the German Erchanbald, meaning a sacred

prince, from which the French took many a Sire Archambault, and the

Italians Arcibaldo.

The Scots, by some strange fancy, adopted Archibald as the Lowland

equivalent of Gillespie, the bishop’s servant. So frequent was it in the

houses of Campbell and Douglas, that, with its contractions of Archie

and Baldie, it has become one of the most commonly used in Scotland,

recalling many a fierce worthy, from old Archibald Bell-the-Cat

downwards, and always translating the Gillespie of the Campbells to

Lowland ears.[119]

-----

Footnote 119:

Grimm, &c.

SECTION XVII.—_Amal._

Amal is a very remarkable word. We have had it in Greek, as Αἰμύλος; in

Latin, as Æmilius; in the Keltic as Amalgaidh; and in all it would seem

as if one notion could be detected—that of work. Even in Hebrew Amal

means to work; _aml_ is work in old Norse; and we have still our verb to

_moil_, taken therefrom. _Mahl_, be it remembered, is in German a time;

_mahl_, a stroke; _mahlen_, to paint or make strokes; and so in the

North, _maal_ is a measure, or an end, a goal. Probably there is a

notion of repetition of marks, stroke upon stroke, in all cases, and the

Sanscrit meaning of Amal, or spotless, without mark, is in favour of the

meaning.

It is safest, however, to translate the Teutonic Amal by work, the

thought most familiar to the sturdy northern nations who used it, and

loved work for its own sake.

In the Vilkina Saga, the mighty smith Velint’s first great trial of

skill was with Amilias, an armourer at the court of King Nielung. Velint

struck him with his sword Mimung; he said he felt as if a drop of water

had flowed down him. “Shake yourself,” said Velint, and the unfortunate

smith fell down cloven painlessly from head to heel, an example of

labour _versus_ skill.

Aumlung, the strong, is mentioned in the _Book of Heroes_, as feasting

at the Nibelung court; and it was at Duke Amelung’s court that,

according to the Danish ballad, old Sir Hildibrand had been staying for

twenty-two years, before, going back to Bern, he met his unknown son

Alebrand.

Amala was a favourite Lombardic commencement, and was likewise much in

favour with German ladies; it became first Amalie, and then, when Italy

and France had taken up the Latin Æmilia, this old Teutonic form was

mixed up with it; and Amelia in England, Amélie in France, are scarcely

considered to differ from it; and though historically Emily is the

descendant of the Æmilii, Amelia of the Amaler, yet both alike come from

the original Amal.

Amalaswinth, which would bear the translation, dignity of labour, though

probably it was only given in the sense of dignity of the Amaler, was

the unfortunate Lombardic queen, whom the Romans could not protect from

the treachery of her favourites. Amalasontha is what historians call

her; but on Burgundian lips it came to be Melisenda, Melicerte,

Melusine.

Melisenda is in Spanish ballad lore the wife of Don Gayferos, and, being

taken captive by the Moors, was the occasion of the feats that were

represented by the puppet show in which Don Quixote took an

unfortunately lively interest. Melisende again was the princess who

carried the uneasy crown of Jerusalem to the House of Anjou; and,

perhaps, from the Provençal connections of the English court, Lady

Melisent Stafford bore the name in the time of Henry II., whence

Melicent has become known in England, and never quite disused, though

often confounded with Melissa, a bee, and sometimes spelt Millicent.

Melusine was a nymph who became the wife of the Lord de Leezignan, or

Lusignan, on condition that he should never intrude upon her on a

Saturday; of course, after a long time, his curiosity was excited, and

stealing a glance at his lady in her solitude, he beheld her a serpent

from the waist downward! With a terrible shriek, she was lost to him for

ever; but she left three sons, all bearing some deformity, of whom

_Geoffroi au grand dent_ was the most remarkable.

Melusina continued in use in the south of France, Holland, and Germany,

and is occasionally used in England. We find Melicerte in old French

chronicles.

The very ancient queens of Navarre and the Asturias have a wonderful set

of aliases, and one, the oddest, is “Amelina, or Simena, or Ximena,” the

sister of Sancho I., of Navarre, who married Alfonso the Great. Could

the Spaniards, by any possibility, have contracted the soft _Amal_ into

the harsh guttural _Xi_, which sounds as if it came from a Moorish

throat. Yet, Goths as they were, they show no Amal, though their Ximen

and Ximena reach up to 700, and Ximena survived long as a name among

their ladies, and was the wife of the Cid, whence the French turned her

into Chimène. Emmeline, as it is now generally spelt, came from France

as Emeline, and is frequent in old ballad poetry, and in northern

registers, as Emyln. It is probably another form of this same Amaline,

or _lind_, Amal’s serpent.

The northern races have the one much reduced name of Malfrid, from

Amalafrida, of peace.

The ladies have certainly been the chief owners of Amal, as a

commencement; but it has had a brilliant part to play in the form of

Amalrich, Almerich, or Emmerich, on the German side; Almerigo in Spain;

Amalric, or Amaury, in France; Almerick in England. Amaury was an

Angevin king of Jerusalem; and our own Sir Almerick St. Lawrence was

brother-in-arms to Sir John de Courcy, and founded the House of Howth in

Ireland. The House of Lusignan, Melusina’s descendants, called it Aymar;

and in this form it came to England with Henry III.’s half-brother, whom

he promoted to the see of Winchester, but who episcopally called himself

Ethelmarus; though his nephew, Aymar de Valence, kept his proper name.

Emmery is a surviving English surname, and Merica occurs in old

Yorkshire genealogies.

But it is the Italian form, Amerigo, which was destined to the most

noted use,—when the adventurer, Amerigo Vespucci, gave his name to the

tract of land that Columbus saw for the first time in his company;

little knowing that it was no island, but a mighty continent, which

should hold fast that almost fortuitous title, whence thousands of

miles, and millions of men, bear the appellation of the forgotten

forefather of a tribe of the Goths—Amalrich, the work ruler; a curiously

appropriate title for the new world of labour and of progress, on the

other side the Atlantic.

Amalberge is an old Cambrai name; Malburg a Danish one; Amalgund,

Amalbert, Amalbertine, and Amalhild, have also been known. The French

Amelot must be the contraction of one of the masculine forms.[120]

-----

Footnote 120:

Grimm; Kemble; _Int. to Beowulf_; Weber; Dugdale.

SECTION XVIII.—_Forefathers._

The deification of forefathers, or the claim to divine origin, whichever

it might be, led to the employment, as a prefix, of the very word that

expressed them—that word which we use still at the beginning of

_ancestors_, and that the Germans call _ahnen_. In old German the

singular was _ano_, and it signified a remote forefather. The

_Rigsmaal_, an old Icelandic poem which explains the origin of the

various castes which the northern races acknowledged, represents

Heimdall, the porter of heaven, as wandering to the earth, and being

entertained by Ai and Edda, or great-grandfather and great-grandmother,

who lived in a lowly hut; then by Avi and Amma (Lat. Avus), or

grandfather and grandmother, who had a comfortable dwelling-house; and

lastly by Fadher and Modher, whose abode was a splendid mansion. The son

of Edda was Thrall; the son of Amma was Karl; the son of Modher was

Jarl; and from these descended the three castes of the North—the

thralls, or slaves; the churls, bondr, or farmers; and the jarls, or

nobles.

This is an absolute mythic allegory by way of explanation of existing

circumstances; but the names therewith connected mostly survived, though

they refer to these mere embodiments of abstract ideas.

_Ai_, or _ani_, enters into the composition of the Icelandic Anar,

ancestral warrior, and thus, no doubt, contributed to form our surname

of Anson, which, like almost all our great naval names, thus traces back

to some ancient viking, who has done us at least as much good as evil,

by leaving us his sons to keep all other invaders from our shores.

The old Saxon histories call some of these enemies by the name of

Anlaff, in particular the chief who visited King Æthelstan’s tent in a

minstrel’s disguise, and betrayed himself by burying the guerdon that he

was too proud to keep. The same persons whom England called Anlaff, and

Ireland Amlaidh, were, in the North, Alafr, or Olafr, according to the

custom of pronouncing the diphthong _a_ like an _o_, and then so

spelling it, _e.g._, Aasbiorn, Osbiorn. The latter syllable is _laf_ or

_leif_, from the verb _lev_, the Anglo-Saxon _leafan_, our own _leave_.

It is a word that never is used as a commencement, and but rarely stands

alone, though the North sometimes has a Leifr, and it is used in the

sense of what is remaining. Anlaff, or Olaf, is thus what is left of his

forefathers, his ancestor’s relic, and a very notable relic was the

gallant king Olaf Trygveson, the prime hero of the _Heimskringla_, whose

last battle is so nobly described there. Scarcely less noble is his

relative, Olaf the saint, the ally of England, who fought her battles

near London-bridge, and has left his name to the church of St. Olave,

near the site of the battle, though, unluckily, English tongues made him

St. Toly. St. Olaf was over-harsh in his endeavours to introduce

Christianity to his subjects, and perished in a war with the rebels,

assisted by Knut of Denmark and England; but his name continued

glorious, and another royal St. Olaf, in Sweden, assisted to make it one

of the most national of Scandinavian names, even to the present day.

Its Latinism is Oläus, and its contraction Ole, or, rather, this answers

to the very old Aale, which, in its turn, answers to the Analo, Anilo,

Anelo, of the old Germans.

_Leif_, or _laf_, we shall often meet as a termination, both in the

North and in Germany, where it generally becomes _leib_ or _lip_, and

then the modern Germans take it for _love_, and thus have changed the

old Gottleip into Gottleib. In the North it has scarcely fared better,

especially in the case of Thorleif, or Thor’s relic, who changed from

Tholleiv to Thoddeiv, or Tadeiv, on the one hand, and on the other, to

Tellev, which, thanks to some classically-disposed clergyman, has been

written Teleph, and referred to the Greek Telephus.

Of the other names connected with the _Rigsmaal_, we find Edda, the

great-grandmother, giving title to the ancient poem on cosmogony and

mythology that may be regarded as the parent of all the northern songs.

Thrall was likewise, in spite of its meaning, used as a name.

The next generation, Avi, Amma, and the son Karl, are the prominent

ones. The equivalent of Karl, Bondr, a farmer, is now and then a

northern name; but it is the great Frank Karling line whose names so

curiously answer to these.

Were they of the middle class of landholders, and were they proud of it,

and anxious to trace their connection back to the grandfather,

grandmother, and churl? Whether there were a Frank version of the

_Rigsmaal_ we do not know, but the leading name of the family was Karl,

the churl (of which more in its relation to the cycle of Romance), and

it is found in constant company with Amma, or Emma, and alternates with

one that almost certainly represented Avi, or grandfather.

Charles, Pepin l'Heristal, Charles Martel, Pepin le Bref, Charles the

Great, is the succession till the alternation was broken by the death of

Pepin, the eldest son of Charles the Great. Now this most undignified

Pepin is traced by the best authorities to be one of the many forms of

the primitive and universal _abba_, father, papa, and to answer to the

old German names of Bobo, Bobbo, and Poppo. And it is not, therefore,

probable that Pepin and Emma stood for the northern Avi and Amma, both

alike with the son Karl?

Amme, or Emma, no doubt formed by the first lispings of a child, is

_amme_, a nurse, in Germany, and _ama_, a housekeeper, in Spain. As a

name, it was at first exclusively Frank, and used by the Karling

daughters. The first Emma mentioned was the daughter of Charlemagne; and

the sister of Hugh Capet, who married Richard the Fearless, of Normandy,

was likewise so called. Her granddaughter was the wife, first of

Ethelred the Unready, then of Knut, and the supposed heroine of the

ordeal of the ploughshares. Emma was considered as so un-English that

her name was translated into Ælfgifu. However, we find ‘Emme’ among the

daughters of Dru de Baladon, who came over with the Conqueror, and thus

‘Emm’ and ‘Emr’ are by no means uncommon in the registers of Yorkshire

and Durham, even down to the seventeenth century. Then Prior, when

modernizing and sentimentalizing the beautiful ballad of the _Nut Browne

Maid_, supposed to be on the history of the shepherd Lord Clifford,

called it Henry and Emma, whence it became rather a favourite romantic

name of literature. Clergymen were apt to use it, in Latin registers, as

a translation of Amy, as well as of its own Em. It is also confounded

with Emily, and at the present day recurs extremely often in England,

while it is almost disused in France, its native home. The Welsh use it

as a translation of Ermin, probably a legacy of the Roman Herminii.

Emmott is another old name of northern England, probably amplified from

Em; but Emeline, as has been already said, is far more probably Amalina

than any relation to Emma.

Jarl, as might be expected, was a very favourite eponym; but not in the

same pronunciation; for it first became Irl, then Erl, in nomenclature.

Erling, a name much used by the Norsemen, and often corrupted into

Elling, is the son of the earl; and the Swedish once had a Jarlar, or

earl-warrior, who changed into Erlher, Erlo, Erlebald, Erlebrecht,

Erlhild.

CHAPTER III.

NAMES FROM OBJECTS CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.

SECTION I.—_Day._

The rich imagination of the North could not fail to preserve the Eastern

myths of natural appearances and animals with their myths, and these

ideas are as usual reflected in the names of the race.

In the _Edda_, Nôtt, or night, the dark, one of the Jotun, is the wife

of Dellingr, the brilliant and beautiful, one of the Æsir, and their son

is Dag or Day. Mother and son each have a chariot in which they career

round the sky, in pursuit of one another. The horse of Day is Shinfaxi,

of shining mane; the horse of Night is Hrimfaxi, rime or frost mane.

Day had many namesakes, though more often at the end than the beginning

of a word.

Dago, Tago, or Tajo, was a Gothic bishop of Zaragoza, whom King

Chindaswintha sent to Rome about 640, to bring home a copy of St.

Gregory’s _Comment on the Book of Job_, which had been dedicated to a

King of Spain, one of the Suevi, but had been lost in the irruption of

the Arian Goths. The Roman clergy had been equally careless. Pope

Theodorus could not lay his hands upon the manuscript; and the search

became so tedious, that finally Bishop Tajo betook himself to prayer,

and obtained a special vision of the holy Pope Gregory himself, who

directed him to the depository of the manuscript.

This same Dagr figures in the _Landnama-bok_; and the North has Dagfinn,

perhaps once an allusion to the resplendent glory of Odin, but usually

translated white as day. Dagulf, or Daulf, day-wolf, was no doubt in

allusion to the wolf Sköll, who hunts the sun daily round the sky, and

will eat her up at last; whence to this day a parhelion is called in

Sweden a sun-wolf, Sololf. Eclipses are caused when the wolf gains on

the sun, who has no namesakes in Teuton nomenclature, the few that sound

like it being from another source, namely, _Salv_ or _sölv_, anointing

or healing. The feminine _ny_, though meaning the new moon when standing

alone, is only the adjective new, and means fresh and fair, so that the

northern Dagny is, fair as day. The Norse ladies also have Dagheid or

Dageid, cheerful as day.

Dagobert, or bright as day, was that long-haired king who, next to

Clovis, impressed the French imagination. He was the employer of the

great goldsmith St. Eloi, and the throne or chair of King Dagobert,

ascribed to that great artificer, is still in existence. A successor in

the _fainéant_ times was canonized, and together the two Dagoberts,

making one, have become the theme first of heroic and then of burlesque

in France. It was Takaperaht in Old German; and there, too, Tagarat, or

Dagrad, is to be found; but in general, _dag_ or _tac_ comes at the end

of words.

Dagmar—the favourite queen of the Danes, whose only fault was lacing her

sleeves on a Sunday—is called only by her epithet, Danes' joy. Her true

name was Margaret of Bohemia, and the Danish princess Dagmar, who was

christened after her, was on her Russian marriage called Marie.[121]

-----

Footnote 121:

Blackwell, Mallet; Munch; Butler; Grimm; Thierry; Michaelis.

SECTION II.—_The Wolf._

It is for the place that he occupies in the Teutonic imagination, rather

than for his own merits, that the wolf stands foremost among the

creatures that have supplied Teutonic names.

He is also the most universal. Zeeb, Lycos, and Lupus, have been already

mentioned; and the midnight prowler, as the most terrible animal of

Europe, held his place in imaginations, whence the lion and tiger faded

for want of personal acquaintance. The French have no less than

forty-nine proverbs about wolves, many no doubt remains of the beast

epic.

Wolves called Geri and Freki sat on either side of Odin’s throne, and

devoured his share of the bears' flesh of Valhalla, a banquet he was too

ethereal to require. Wolves chase the sun and moon round their daily

courses; and a terrible wolf called Mangarmr, or moon-gorger, is to

devour the moon at the coming of the wolf-age, which, in the _Voluspa_,

shadows the last days of the world. Fenris, the wolf of the abyss, is

the son of Loki; and though bound by the Æsir at the cost of Tyr’s right

hand, will finally break loose, destroy Odin himself, and only be rent

asunder by Vidur in his resistless shoes.

Nevertheless, _ulf_, _vulf_, _wolf_ was highly popular as a name-root;

perhaps more common at the end than the beginning of a word, but often

standing alone. It was the diminutive Vulfila that was the right name of

that good bishop whose Mæso-Gothic version of the Gospels goes by his

Latinism of Ulphilas.

Ulf was twenty-three times in the _Landnama-bok_; and _ulf_ in every

possible form ravaged the coasts of Europe. _Wolf_ was again the

hereditary prefix in the House of Bavaria, where the dukes varied

between Wolf and Wolfart, till Wolfen became the designation of the

family, and a legend was invented to account for it. An ancestress had,

it was said, given birth to twelve infants all at once, and in the

spirit of the child who, being shown his twin brothers, asked “Which

shall we keep,” sent her maid to dispose of the eleven unnecessary ones

in the river. The father met her, and asked what she had in her apron.

“Only whelps,” she answered; but he was not to be thus put off, made an

inspection, saved the children’s lives, and called them the Wolfen, or

wolf-whelps! The _Book of Heroes_, however, makes the Wolfings descend

from the brave Sir Hildebrand, and be so called from a wolf on their

shield granted them by the Emperor Wolfdietrich, in remembrance of an

adventure of his own infancy, when he had been carried off by a she-wolf

to her den, and remained there unhurt—whence his name of Wolfdietrich.

The male line of the Wolfen, however, in time became extinct, and the

heiress married one of the Italian House of Este, which adopted the

German Wolf in the Italianized form of Guelfo, and constantly used it as

a name. Thence when the popes set up Otto d'Este, one of the Wolfen of

Bavaria, as anti-emperor in opposition to the House of Hohenstaufen, his

partisans were called Welfen; those of the Fredericks, Waiblingen, from

the Swabian castle of Waibling. The Italian cities rang with the fierce

cries of Guelfo and Zibelino, for the pope or the emperor, and Europe

learnt to identify the Guelph with the cause of the Church; the

Ghibelline with that of the State, when the origin of the words had long

been forgotten.

One of the Bavarian Wolfen d'Este became Duke of Brunswick Luneburg, and

from him descended the Hanoverian line of English sovereigns, who in the

time of Revolution thence were said to be properly sumamed Guelf, or

even Whelps, with about as much correctness as when Louis XVI. was

styled Louis Capet.

We had a wolf among our sovereigns in the days of the Heptarchy, in

Vulfhere, king of Mercia, the same as the northern Ulfar, and German

Wolfer, meaning wolf-warrior. Also Vulfhilda was a sainted abbess in

England, while Ulvhildur colonized Iceland. We had also Vulfred,

Vulfnoth, Vulfstein, better known as St. Wulstan, the admirable bishop

of Worcester. These English wolves of ours have a great inclination to

lapse into sheep’s clothing and become wool, in which form we use them

in the harmless surnames of Woolgar, Woolstone, Woolmer, Wolsey.

Ulfketill, or Ulfkjell, as odd a compound as can well be found, was one

of the pirates who invested England, but is a peaceable inhabitant in

Domesday, where Ulf swarms, as Ulfac, Ulfeg, Ulfert, Ulfener, Ulfric;

just as he does in the Iceland Domesday, as Ulfhedinn, Ulfherdur,

Ufliotr.

In Germany, Wolfgang, perhaps best rendered as Wolf-progress, was a

sainted bishop of Ratisbon, in the tenth century, whence this strange

name flourished, and, coming to Göthe, became prized by all his

admirers. There, too, is Wolfram, the wolf-raven, Wolfrad, and Wolfert.

Some have translated _ulf_, or _wolf_, at the end of a word by help; but

this is impossible, as though _hulf_ is help in German, the _f_ is the

property of that language alone.

A few of the Danes seem to have learnt to respect the qualities of the

magnificent Irish wolf-hound, whose qualities are highly praised in the

_Heimskringla_. Then they took to calling themselves Hunde; and a son of

Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, is called both Hvalp and Hund. The name of

Hundolf is, however, supposed to be either hardened from Hun, or else to

be from a word meaning booty or plunder, so as to mean the wolf of

plunder.[122]

-----

Footnote 122:

Grimm; Turner, _Anglo-Saxons_; Blackwell, Mallet; _Dictionnaire des

Proverbes Français_; Sismondi, _Republiques Italianes_; Anderson,

_Genealogies_; Lappenburn, _Anglo-Saxons_; Alban Butler; Marryat,

_Jutland_; Pott.

SECTION III.—_Eber, the Boar._

The boar, whom we found so popular in Roman nomenclature, is equally so

among the southern Teutons, among whom the tusky boar was one of the

prime beasts of chase. The Romans apparently viewed him and his titles

in their domestic aspect; but the Teutons honoured the fierce _Eber_ of

their forests as their highest and most dangerous prey, and gave him a

place among their mythology.

Freyr had a boar with golden bristles, called Gullenbörsti, and when the

corn waved in the wind, the saying was, “Freyr’s boar is passing by.”

Epurhelm, an old German name, was thus an appeal to the protection of

Freyr.

The boar Sehrimnar was likewise the future feast of the brave in

Valhall, daily hunted and eaten, and as often resuscitated for the next

day’s sport and banquet. Scandinavia lay too far north for his porcine

majesty; and the Norsemen had no personal acquaintance with him in their

daily life, whatever they might look forward to; and thus _Eber_, the

wild boar, does not figure in their nomenclature, and scarcely among our

own insular Saxons, though he is said to have ranged our forests.

But turning to the Goths, we fall at once upon Ebroinus, an evident

classicalism of Eberwine, not so much the boar’s friend, as Freyr’s

friend. Ebrimuth, another early Goth, is wild boar’s mood or wrath, and

in Visigothic Spain we find Eborico, namely, Eberik, boar ruler.

Frankland produced the formidable compound of boarwolf, Eberulf; but its

two owners grew up monastic saints in the sixth and seventh centuries,

and were honoured by the French as SS. Evrault, Evrols, Evrou, or

Evraud. The second of these saints was a native of Normandy, and is

patron of the abbey of Fontévraud, the burial-place of Henry II. and

Richard Cœur de Lion, and the noblest nunnery in France.

It is difficult, however, to distinguish between the forms of the French

Eberulf, and the German Eberhard, who was abbot of Einsiedlen in 934;

indeed, it is highly probable that the Norman St. Evrhault, though

derived from a saint Latinized as Eberulfus, and in German called Erulf,

was supposed to be the same as Eberhard, and that this accounts for the

English form of Everard, which sprung up from the four Evrards of the

Domesday roll after the Conquest. Eberhard hardly reaches the rank of

saint in the Roman calendar; but his exertions in a great famine that

ravaged Alsace, Burgundy, and Upper Germany, in 942, account for the

nationality of his name in all that region.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐

│ English. │ Italian. │ Frisian. │ German. │

│Everard │Everardo │Evart │Eberhard │

│Ewart │Eberardo │Evert │Ebert │

│ │Ebbo │ │Ewart │

│ —————— │ ————— │ —————— │Eppo │

│ French. │ Dutch. │ Lett. │Ebbo │

│Evraud │ │ │Ebo │

│Ebles │Everhard │Ewarts │Ebilo │

│ │Evert │Ebbo │Ebin │

│ │ │ │Etto │

│ │ │ │Uffo │

│ │ │ │Uppo │

│ │ │ │Appo │

└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The Germans likewise have a feminine from this ‘boarfirm’ word

Eberbardine, contracted into Ebertine, or Ebba, and in Frisian, Ebbe or

Jebbe. I am afraid these German forms do not certainly account for the

Saxon Ebba, or Æbbe, sister of St. Oswald, and foundress of the famous

priory of Coldingham. However, England had one St. Eberhilda, who was a

pupil of St. Wilfrid, and foundress of a monastery called Everidisham,

the locality of which cannot be discovered; but the abbess must have

left an impression on the ladies of the North, to judge by the frequency

of the occurrence of Everilda, which, with the contractions of Averilla

and Averil, is not yet extinct.

Offa, the Low German legendary hero—is very probably called by a

contraction of the wild boar. His name is repeated by the king of

Mercia, who seems to have borrowed somewhat of the legend in his story,

and Offa was not extinct even in Domesday.

Ebermund, a Neustrian Frank of Meerwing days, was founder of Fontenoy

Abbey, and was honoured as St. Evrémond, whence the territorial surname

familiar to readers of French memoirs.

St. Evre, who is frankly Latinized into Sanctus Aper, was the seventh

bishop of Toul, where the register of bishops presents a curious

succession of wild beasts, and some of the Ebbos and Affos of Germany

may be his rightful property, though they are now all turned over to the

charitable Eberhard of Einsiedlen. Eburbero, or Boar-bear, seems to have

been a German invention.

SECTION IV.—_The Bear._

The bear does not enter into the legends of the _Edda_, but he enjoyed

immense regard in the North, and was looked on as a sort of ancestor, to

whom, when he was killed, polite apologies were always made, and who is

still called by the pet name of the Wise Man, rather than by his own

proper term. Even in France he was mysteriously alluded to as le _vieux_

or le _grand père_; and probably the Swiss veneration for the bears of

Berne partly originated in the general devotion to the deliberate and

almost human-looking plantigrade.

The Anglo-Saxons made Beorn the great-grandson of Wuotan, and the

ancestor of the kings of Beornland; in Latin Bernicia, or Beornia,

afterwards the earldom that gave title to Richard, son of William I.

Legend again declared that the stout old Earl Siward Bìorn was actually

the offspring of a bear, and that the ears of his parent might have been

found concealed beneath his matted locks.

Norway and Iceland are, as in duty bound, the land of bears, but the

Pyrenees had their share likewise; and if the North has Bjornulf, the

same bear-wolf reigned over Gothic Spain in the form of Vernulfo; and in

the Asturias and Navarre, the bear’s mood was dreaded as Bermudo, or

Vermudo, and his protecting hand sought as Veremundo.

In the Pyrenees, too, flourished the bear-spear, the same with the

northern Bjorngjer, though southern tongues made Berenger and

Berengario, in which forms it was owned by many a mountain king of

Navarre and count of Roussillon, Barcelona, or Toulouse. There, too, it

formed the feminine Berenguela, and this, as princesses' names always

do, travelled farther; for Berenguela was queen of Castille, and mother

of St. Fernando; another Berenguela, or Berangère, as French tongues

called her, is familiar to us under that most incorrect historical title

of Berengaria, the bride of Richard Cœur de Lion. Another Berenguela,

who from Portugal married the king of Denmark, so misconducted herself

that Bjorngard or Berngard, the Danish version of her name, stands for

an abandoned woman.

Biorn of the fiery eyes was appropriately named by Fouqué; for the

_Landnama-bok_ shows forty-two Biorns, and the name is still common in

Norway and Iceland, where also are found still, as man’s names, Bersi

and Besse, also titles of the bear, and Bera by way of feminine.

Bjornhedinn is also northern, and there are numerous varieties of

compounds, one of them rather of late date being Bjornstern, bear-star,

probably in reference to the Pole-star. One of the present authors in

Norway bears the fierce name of Bjornsternja Bjornsen.

The most famous of all the bears is, however, of Frank growth. Some have

tried to resolve it into Bairn-heart, child-hearted; but though _barn_

is of most ancient lineage, found even in Ulfilas’s Gospels, all analogy

is against the interpretation; and there can be no doubt that when the

first historical Biornhard was named, his parents would much have

preferred his having the resolution of a bear rather than the heart of a

child.

That first was an uncle of Charlemagne, and from him it was that the

mountain, erst of Jupiter, was termed of Bernard, even before a second

Bernard, surnamed De Menthon, fled from his home for love of a monastic

life, and erected his noble hospice for the reception of travellers.

Then came further glory to the name through the Cistercian monk, whose

pure character was revered by all in the thirteenth century, until his

became a universal name throughout Europe; in Ireland absorbing the

native Brian. In Spain, too, Bernardo del Carpio is a great legendary

champion, nephew to king Alfonso II. of Leon, and who, in the battle of

Roncevalles, was said to have squeezed Roland the paladin to death in

his arms. Bernal Diaz is the simple-hearted chronicler of Cortes.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐

│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │

│Bernard │Bernard │Bernardo │Bernardo │

│Barnard │Bernadin │Bernadino │Bernal │

├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤

│ Portuguese. │ Wallachian │ German. │ Dutch. │

│Bernaldo │Bernardu │Bernhard │Bernhart │

│Bernadim │ │Berend │Barend │

│ │ │Benno │Barndt │

├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤

│ Frisian. │ Lusatian. │ Lettish. │ Esth. │

│Bernd │Bernat │Berents │Pero │

│ ———————— │ ———————— │Berns │Perent │

│ Slovak. │ Hungarian. │ │ │

│Bernardek │Bernät │ │ │

└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

It has the German feminine Bernhardine. The Irish Bryan adopts Bernard

as his English synonym.

Other less celebrated German forms are Bernwald; the French, Berault;

and Italian, Bernaldo. Berwart, abbot of Hildesheim; Bernclo, the

Bavarian bear’s claw; Berner, and many others where _bern_ or _pern_

ends the word.

Bahrend, Berndt, Behr, Behring, all are surnames from the bear in

Germany, and the last very appropriately named Behring’s Straits. It is

the same that came to England as Baring.[123]

-----

Footnote 123:

Munch; Lappenburg; Pott; Michaelis; Butler.

SECTION V.—_The Horse._

No sacred animal was in more request than the horse. The gods had their

wonderful horses. Sleipner (the Slider) was the eight-footed steed of

Odin; Gullfaxi, or gold mane, belonged to the giant Hrimgrim; and the

shining-maned and hoary-maned coursers of day and night have been

already mentioned.

The eastern origin of the Teutons was never more shown than by their

homage to horses. Beautiful and choice white steeds were reserved for

the gods, drawing the waggons that conveyed the images, when the army

went out to battle, or a colony migrated; and omens were derived from

their neighings when alive, and from their heads when killed in

sacrifice. Great sacrifices of horses were made on solemn occasions, and

feasts were made upon their flesh as a religious rite, so that the

abstaining from horse-flesh became absolutely a test of Christianity.

The horse was the national emblem of the Saxons; and Henghist and Horsa

are both old Teuton names for the animal, the first surviving in the

German _hengst_ and northern _hest_, the last in our ordinary word

_horse_: while the High German _hross_ has fallen into the modern

_ross_. White horses cut out in the chalky hill-sides of southern

England from time immemorial, attest the antiquity of the symbol still

claimed by the county of Kent, and by the Anglian-Continental kingdom of

Hanover.

In the old poem of _Beowulf_, however, Hengist is a Dane, invading and

oppressing Finn of Friesland, and afterwards slain. It is possible,

then, that Hengist may after all be a mere mythic name erected into an

ancestor by the Kentish monarchs. Some have tried to derive _hross_ from

_horen_, to hear or obey, in honour of the noble creature’s obedience;

but it is in fact only another form of the _ashva_ of India, to which

ἵππος, _equus_, and the Keltic _each_ have been traced; and it is

curious to find that Brittany preserves the word _ronse_, as does Spain

_ronzin_, the term that Don Quixote magnified into the magnificent

designation of Rosinante.

The nation that sat round their cauldrons and feasted solemnly on

horse-flesh might well call their sons Rossketyl, or Rosskjell. Three

are to be found in the _Landnama-bok_, and Roskil is not extinct in

Denmark. The agreeable title of Hrossbiorn, or horse-bear, is there to

be found likewise, and Saxo-Grammaticus dignifies as Rostiophus, a

gentleman who was properly called by the term of Hrossthiof, or

horse-thief.

Hrossbert formed into Rospert, Hroshelm into Roselm, Hrosmod into

Rosmund, Hrosswald, or horse-power, into Roswal, who was the hero of a

Scottish poem called _Roswal and Lilian_. He is the disinherited heir of

Naples; and, after a series of troubles, fights his way back to honour

and the hand of Lilian, the fair princess of Bealn.

The feminines Hrossmund, Hroswith, Hroshild, Hrosa, have by general

consent been changed from horses to roses, giving up the old idea of the

Valkyr on her tall shadowy horse, weaving her web of victory, and have

been treated of under the head of Latin flowers.

Hengst seems to have been used for the male, horse for the female; but

_jor_ in the North, _ehu_ in Old German, _ehvus_ in Gothic, meant both

horse and mare; and this _jor_, or sometimes only the _jo_, is not

uncommon in Norsk names, as Jogeir, Jofred, Jogrim, Jostein, or flower

of chivalry, Johar or Joar, horse warrior, Joketyll, or Jokell. The

women were, Jora, Jodis, Jofrid, Joreid, Jorunna, all, be it remembered,

being pronounced as with a _y_.

Afterwards Justin devoured Jostein, and George probably consumed some of

the others; indeed, some of the early specimens of Jordan among the

Normans, probably accommodated their names to the river in their

crusading fervour; but, _en revanche_, the great Gothic historian,

Jornandes, is supposed to have been so called by corruption from his

state name of Jordanes.

Jorund, which looks very like one of this race, is referable to another

source.

Probably in honour of Thor’s he-goats we find the goat figuring in

names, as Geitwald, Geithilt, and the wife of Robert Guiscard,

Sichelgaita.[124]

-----

Footnote 124:

Grimm; Munter; Munch; Dasent; Cambro-Briton; Blackwell, Mallet; Weber

and Jamieson, _Northern Romance_; Sturleson, _Heimskringla_; Kemble

_Beowulf_; Ellis, _Specimens of Early English Poetry_; Pott, _Personen

Namen_.

SECTION VI.—_The Eagle._

‘There is an eagle sitting on the ash Yggdrasil who knows many things.’

He is, in the North, _aar_, in Germany _ar_, in Scotland _erne_: though

we and the modern Germans use, in _eagle_ and _adler_, mere contractions

of the Latin _aquila_. Places named from the king of birds are found

wherever there are mountains.

His influence on nomenclature was exercised from the Dovrefeld and from

the Alps, for the eagle-names are chiefly either Scandinavian or High

German; we do not seem to have any native English ones.

The most noted of these southern ones are Arnwald, eagle power, and

Arnulf, or eagle-wolf, and it is very difficult to distinguish their

derivatives from one another. The saint of the Roman calendar was

certainly Arnulf, a prince of the long-haired line, who in 614 retired

into a convent at Metz, and became its bishop, when alive, and its

patron, when dead. Another previous Arnulf, after whom he was probably

christened, for their day is the same, was martyred by the heathen

Franks, about the time of the conversion of Clovis; and a subsequent one

was bishop of Soissons, under Pope Hildebrand. Arnoul was common as a

name among the Burgundian kings, and was known in Italy as Arnolfo; but

it has been swallowed up by Arnwald, or Arnvalldr, as he is in the

North, perhaps because this latter was made famous in Provence by

Arnaldo di Maraviglia, the troubadour; in Italy by the unfortunate

Arnoldo of Brescia, and later in Switzerland by the patriot Arnold von

Melchthal, and thus it has become popular enough to have the feminines

Arnolde and Arnoldine.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐

│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │

│Arnold │Arnaud │Arnoldo │Arnoldo │

│ │Arnaut │ │ │

├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤

│ German. │ Dutch. │ North. │ │

│Arnold │Arnoldus │Arnvalld │ │

│Arno │Arnoud │Arnalldr │ │

│Ahrent │Arend │ │ │

│Ahrens │ │ │ │

│Arold │ │ │ │

└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The Arnolds and Arnoldines keep their feast upon St. Arnulf’s day, thus

confessing that they have no patron of their own. Ernulf is an old form

found in Domesday Book, and not yet quite extinct.

The northern eagles are much confused by _arin_, a hearth, the same

which is found at the end of Thorarin. It contracts into _arn_ at the

beginning of a word, so that, except when we meet with it in full, as in

the case of the brave old sea-king, Arinbiorn, the hearth-bear, it is

difficult to tell to which to send the owner, to the _eyrie_ or the

_fire-side_. And further, _arn_ and _arin_ both contract

indiscriminately into _ar_ and _an_, so that the list of Northern names

is given rather in the dark. They are both masculine and feminine, for

Arna was both used standing alone and as a termination.

Arnridur or Arneidur, eagle haste, one of these eagle ladies, had a

curious history told in the _Landnama-bok_. She was the daughter of

Asbiorn, a jarl in the Hebrides, and was taken captive by Holmfast

Vedormson, who sold her to an Icelander named Ketell Thrymr. He was so

much smitten with her as to pay for her twice the sum demanded by old

Vedorm; but before the departure for Iceland, she found a quantity of

silver beneath the roots of a tree, sufficient for her ransom. Instead

of claiming it, her new master generously gave her the choice of

purchasing her freedom or remaining his wife; she chose the latter

alternative, and stands as honourable women do in the _Landnama-bok_, as

the mother of a house in Iceland.

Arnthor, and his feminine Arnthora, contract into Arnor and Arnora, and

this latter explains Annora, to be found in Norman pedigrees. Annora was

wife of Bernard de St. Valery; and was carried into the family of Braose

by king John’s victim, Maude de St. Valery, who called one of her

daughters Annora. It is also said that Anora is only the contraction of

Eleanora.

Ari was an adventurer who sailed to Greenland in fourteen days, fifteen

years before the preaching of Christianity in Iceland.

The other old Icelandic and Norsk forms are:—

Arnbiorg, eagle defence;

Arndis, eagle sprite;

Arnfinn, white eagle;

Arnfridur, eagle fair one;

Arngeir, eagle war;

Arngrimm, } or Angrim,

Arngrimur, } eagle mask;

Arnkatla, } eagle cauldron;

Arnkjell, }

Arnlaug, eagle liquor;

Arnleif, eagle relic;

Arnliotr, eagle wanderer;

Arnmodur } eagle wrath;

or Armodr,}}

Arnstein, eagle stone;

Arnthrudr, eagle maiden.

This Ari, be he eagle or hearth, seems to conduct us to the source of

the first syllable of Arabella. The first lady so called, whom I can

detect, was Arabella, the granddaughter of William the Lion, of

Scotland, who married Robert de Quinci. Another Arabella, with her

husband John de Montpynçon, held the manor of Magdalen Laver in the

thirty-ninth of Henry III., and thus it was evidently a Norman name. The

Normans made wild work with all that did not sound like French, and

their Latin secretaries made the matter worse, so that I am much tempted

to believe that both Arabella and that other perplexing name, Annabella,

may once have been Arnhilda, cut down into Arbell, or Anable, and then

amplified. “My Lady Arbell” was certainly what the lady was called, in

her own time, whose misfortunes are so well known to us, under the name

of Arabella Stuart, and from whom Arabella has been adopted in various

families, and is usually contracted by Belle. Some have made it

Arabella, or fair altar, others the diminutive of Arab, both equally

improbable.

The most common form of Arn at present used in Scandinavia is Arnvid,

the eagle of the wood, often contracted into Arve.

With much doubt I question whether the name of Ernest should not be

added to this catalogue. It is obvious to take its native German form,

Ernst, from _ernst_, earnest, grave, or serious, but this is quite

unlike the usual analogy of such names. Arnust was the older German form

of the name, and some even think that this was the proper name of

Ariovistus, the German chief who fought with Cæsar, though others

consider this to be Cæsar’s version of Heerfurst, or general, and others

think they detect the universal root _ar_, husbandry.

The more certain form of the name begins in Lombardy, where Ernesto,

lord of Este, was killed in battle by kinFg Astolfo, in 752. Is not

Ernesto just what Italy would make of Arnstein, after fancying that

Arnstino was a diminutive? Then, over the mountains, comes Arnust I.,

duke of Swabia, in right of his wife, in 1012, and Arnust the Strenuous,

Markgraff of Austria, from whom Ernst spread all over Germany,

especially after the Reformation, when Ernst, Duke of Brunswick, had

striven so hard to spread Lutheranism among his subjects that

Protestants called him the Confessor.

This is now one of the most national of German names, and it is working

its way into England, though not yet with a naturalized sound. Its

German feminine, Ernestine, is one of the many contracted by Stine and

Tine, or by Erna. Bohemian has Arnostinka.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐

│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ German. │

│Ernest │Erneste │Ernesto │Ernst │

├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤

│ Dutch. │ Bohemian. │ Lettish. │ Hungarian. │

│Ernestus │Arnost │Ernests │Erneszt │

└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

One or two instances of Hauk occur. Hauk Habrok was a noted pirate; and

there are two Haukrs in the _Landnama-bok_. The bird is now called _hog_

in Denmark, and most of our families named Hogg are supposed to rejoice

in Hawk as an ancestor.

As to Folco and his kin, though it is often attributed to the falcon, it

has, as we shall see, quite another source.[125]

-----

Footnote 125:

Grimm; Munch; Pott; Michaelis; Butler; _Landnama-bok_; Chalmers;

_Essex Pedigrees_; Dugdale; Anderson, _Genealogies_.

SECTION VII.—_The Raven._

Ferocious and predatory nations love and admire even the raven that

scents slaughter from afar, and is the comrade and emblem of the

battle-field. So as Oreb and Zeeb were among the Bedouin desolators of

Israel, Hraben and Ulf were among the wasters of Christendom.

Two ravens, Mind and Memory, go forth throughout the world, then

returning and perching on Odin’s shoulders, reveal to him all that

passes on the earth.

The raven seems to have been the special mark of Odin, and sometimes

used for Thor; for amulets have been found in Sweden and Denmark, where

a raven flies before the mounted figure of Odin, and again is seen in

company with the hammer of Thor. And who does not know the raven banner

of the sons of Ragnar, denoting probably their family _dis_, which

flapped its wings before victory and drooped them before defeat?

No wonder, then, that the raven has left traces in the nomenclature of

Teutonic Europe, though it is not always easy to distinguish its progeny

from those of _ragn_, judgment, and _rand_, a house.

The raven, in his harshest croak, entitled the Frank sovereign Chramne,

who is hard to recognize as the near kinsman of the sixteen Rafns of the

_Landnama-bok_, and Rabanus Maurus, the Latinism of the learned

archbishop of Mainz of the ninth century.

Hrafenhilldur, a suitable title for a Valkyr, and Hrafenkell also figure

in the _Landnama-bok_, and in Domesday stand Ravengar and Ravenswar,

showing the transition from the _gjer_, or spear, down to our word war.

Rafnulf is northern, but has been mixed up with the derivatives of

Randolf. Rambert, successor of St. Ansgar, in Holstein, was a bright

raven, Rampold a raven prince, and the Italian form Ramusio may be

another variety; but in general the raven comes at the end of words as

in Wolfram, Valdraban, Bertram, &c.

SECTION VIII.—_The Swan._

The swan might well figure prominently in the northern mythology,

familiar as she was, as the fair creature of the autumn, when huge

squadrons of the whistling swan fly southwards, athwart the darkened

heavens and pine forests, making the air resound with the solemn beat of

their heavy wings, and their deep peculiar cry.

Two swans, parents of all those who dwell on earth, had their home in

the holy spring of Urd, beneath the world-tree, Yggdrasil; and the power

and fierceness of these magnificent, pure, calm-looking birds connected

them with the Valkyrer, who were supposed to have swan wings, and to be

able to change themselves into swans. When the Valkyrier began to pass

into mere magic ladies, they preserved their power of changing into

swans, and by-and-by had swan garments, which they put off when they

wished to assume human shapes, and which were now and then captured by

some happy mortal, who thus won the owner for his bride. Swanhvit, or

Swan white, was thus the suitable name of one of the three Valkyrier who

married the sons of Vidja in the Vilkina Saga.

The swan transformations appear again in the beautiful tale, common to

all Teutonic countries, of the twelve princes transformed into swans,

and of the faithful sister who redeemed them by the nettle shirts that

she wove, ever in silence, through every vicissitude of life even to the

verge of death.

Svana is an Icelandic name, also Svanlaug, a swan ocean, which has

contracted to Svallaug. Svanhild was used both by Norway and Germany,

being Swanahilda in the latter, and Svanaburg and Swangarde were also

there; but it is strange that so pretty a word for a white-skinned

maiden should not have been more frequent. The Erse Gelges imitates the

sense, but we have no English swan ladies, for Swanhals was only the

epithet of the often commemorated lady, who is said to have discovered

the corpse of Harold of Hastings.

For the most part, the swans were left to womankind; but the Germans had

a Swanbrecht and Swanahold.

SECTION IX.—_The Serpent._

Either from terror, or from a shadowy remembrance of the original

temptation, the implanted enmity between the serpent and man has often

resulted in a species of worship.

The North believed in the Jörmungandr, or Midgardsorm, the serpent that

encircled the world and was one of the monstrous progeny of Loki.

And even till late in the seventh century the Lombards had a golden

image of an enormous viper to which they sacrificed, until St. Barbatus

recovered them from the heathenism into which they had relapsed.

One species of ship among the Northmen was called serpent. It was long

and low, with the gilded head of a dragon at the prow, a long tail

raised and curling over the stern, while with coloured shields ranged

along the sides, and thirty oars on either side propelling it, besides

the winged sails, it must have been more like a water-dragon than any

creature that has ploughed the waves since the Plesiosaurus, and this

probably accounts for the prevalence of the name of Orm among the

northern nations.

Twenty-two Ormrs appear in the _Landnama-bok_; Orm and Ormar (_Ger._

Wurmhar) are both in Domesday. Orm was the founder of the Scottish house

of Abernethy. Homer was considered, by the Danes of the middle ages, as

the translation into Latin of the name of Ormr.

Ormilda is likewise a northern name, and it is not quite impossible that

Ophelia may have been a translation of one of these serpent-names by the

Greek ὄφις (ophis); at any rate the fair Ophelia shows no precedents for

her name, and no other derivation for it occurs. The gentle maiden, with

her most touching fate, is altogether an invention of Shakespeare, for

though a woman appears in the old story of Amleth, she is of far other

mould, and Ophelia may have been merely devised by himself. If so it is

curious that he should have placed her in the chief land of serpentine

names. A few lovers of its sound have used it in England and America.

_Lind_ is another term for a serpent. The German dragons are always

called _lindwurmer_, and the word is, in fact, the same as that which we

still use as _lithe_, expressing supple grace; the adjective _linths_

becoming, on the one side _lind_, on the other _lithe_. The Spaniards

use _lindo_, _linda_, for pretty, with about the same difference of

sense, in the masculine or feminine, as we do when we speak of a pretty

woman, or a pretty man. Norse poetry considered it a compliment to

compare a gaily dressed lady to a glistening serpent, and thus the idea

seems to have passed from the reptile to the woman, so that, though the

German Lintrude is the only instance of a commencing _lind_, the word is

one of the most common of all terminations among German and Italian

names, and dropping its _d_, so as to become _linn_, was made to serve

as a favourite feminine diminutive, its relation to the Spanish _linda_,

fair, keeping up its reputation. Thus we have Rosalind, or Rosaline,

Ethelind, and many more of the same kind.[126]

-----

Footnote 126:

Munch; Mallet; Grimm; Chalmers; Laing.

SECTION X.—_Kettle._

Among mythological objects the kettle or cauldron can hardly be omitted;

certainly the very quaintest of human names, but perhaps referring

originally to the cauldron of creation, and afterwards to the

sacrificial cauldrons that boiled the flesh of the victims at the great

_blots_ or sacrifices.

In the North, the vessel is _ketil_; in old German, _chezil_; in

English, _cytel_; but the names from it seem to be almost entirely

northern, though the cauldron is certainly the _olla_, so common a

bearing in Spanish heraldry, and there at present regarded as the token

of a large following, beneficently fed, somewhat in the same spirit as

that in which the Janissaries used a camp kettle as their ensign.

Ketyl was the Norwegian conqueror of the Hebrides, and founder of the

line of Jarls, of the Western Isles; and the family of Ketyl was very

famous in Iceland, holding in honour an ancestor called Ketyl Hæng, from

_hæng_, a bull trout; because when his father asked what he had been

doing, he answered, “I am not going to make a long story of every fish I

see leap; but true it is, that I chopped a bull trout asunder in the

middle,” which trout turned out to be a great dragon.

Katla was Ketyl’s feminine, and not uncommon. The Eyrbiggia Saga tells

wonderful stories of a sorceress so called, who, when her son was in

danger from his enemies, made him appear first like a distaff, then like

a tame kid, and, lastly, like a hog, but all in vain, for her spells

were disconcerted by a rival sorceress, and she herself stoned to death.

Ketel does not often stand at the beginning of a word; but Ketelbiorn

and Ketelridur are both Iceland names, and both the masculine and

feminine are very common terminations; the masculine being, however,

generally contracted into Kjel, and then into _kill_ or _kel_.[127]

SECTION XI.—_Weapon Names._

Weapons were so nearly divine, so full of the warlike temper of their

owners, and so often endowed with powers of their own, that it seemed as

if they themselves were living agents in the deeds wrought with them.

The sword forged by supernatural smiths, the terrific helmet, the

heavenly shield, are dreams of every warlike nation, either endowing the

Deity with the symbols of protection or wrath or of might, or carrying

on the tradition of some weapon which, either its own intrinsic

superiority or the prowess of its owner, had made an object of

enthusiasm or of terror.

Some of these tales of magic weapons are perhaps, as Mr. Campbell

suggests, remnants of the days when the iron age was coming in, and the

mass of arms being of brass, one iron sword, “a sword of light,” as

Gaelic tales call it, would have given irresistible superiority to its

wielder, and even, perhaps, earned the worship that was paid by Attila’s

Huns to the naked sword.

It accords with this theory that Iron appears as a component part of

numerous names in Germany, and probably likewise in Scandinavia, though

there the similarity of the sound to _Iis_, ice, occasions a doubt

whether the word was intended for ice, or for iron. The North has,

indeed, the cold but not inappropriate Snæulf and Snæbiorn, Snæfrid,

snow peace, and even the uncomfortable Snælaug; and when their language

had dropped the form _eisarn_ for the metal, and called it _jern_, as we

do iron, they probably transferred to ice the meaning of the names that

once meant iron.

Isa is an old German feminine. Isambart, or iron splendour, is the best

known of all the varieties, having been used in France as Ysambar, and

travelled to England as the suitable baptismal name of the two

engineers, to whom so much of our ‘iron splendour’ is due. Its German

contractions are Isabert and Isbert.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐

│ Nor. Isgeir; Ger. Isegar, Isgar—Iron spear │

│ Nor. Isbrand; Ger. Isebrand—Iron sword │

│ Ger. Isebald; Fr. Isambaus—Iron prince │

│ Nor. Iarngard; Ger. Isengard—Iron defence │

│ Ger. Isenhard—Iron strong │

│ Nor. Isrid—Iron vehemence │

│ Nor. Isulf—Iron wolf │

│ Nor. Ising—Son of iron │

└────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Steel or Staale, likewise had one name from it in the North, and,

perhaps, likewise named even the historical Stilicho of barbarous birth,

but the sole hope of Rome in her final fall.

But the stone of the elder age was not forgotten; the stone that at all

times is the readiest weapon, and often the mark of the place honoured

by conflict. To say nothing of the Seax, whether stone or stone knife of

our ancestral Seaxnot, we find the North using the word Stein, both

alone and as a prefix and suffix; while in England, though it is not

very frequent, we have it in the honoured names of Athelstan and

Wulstan.

Norwegian

Stein, }

Sten (_Dan._), } stone.

Steinarna, stone eagle.

Steinbjorn, stone bear.

Steinfinn, white stone.

Steingrimm, stone helmet.

Steinhar, } stone warrior.

Steinar, }

Steinthor, } stone of Thor.

Steindor, }

Steinulf, stone wolf. Steinvar, stone prudence.

Another old word for stone is _hall_, much used in the North; and in a

few cases, such as that of the Scottish Halbert, or Hobbie, creeping to

our island with its Danish invaders; but except in this, and a few

surnames, unknown away from the North, save for the Hallar, or stone

warrior, of Germany.

The northern varieties, however, had much reputation in their own

country. Hallgerda is in the Njal Saga the haughty wife of Gunnar, of

Lithend, the dame whose virulence is the cause of all the vengeance and

counter-vengeance of the story.

Hallbiorg, stone protection.

Halldis, stone spirit.

Hallfrid, stone fair.

Hallgerd, stone fence.

Hallgeir, stone spear.

Hallgrim, }stone helmet.

Hallgrima,}

Hallkell, }stone kettle.

Halkatla, }

Hallmund, stone protection.

Hallthor, }

Haldor, }stone of Thor.

Haldora, }

Hallvard, }stone guard.

Halvor, }

_Grjot_, in German _gries_, is another word for a stone. It was not so

common as the others; but there was both a masculine and feminine

Grjotgard, who in Denmark were rendered, the one into Gregorius, the

other into Margarethe. The English lady, Græsia de Bruere (_temp._ Henry

III.), must have been named from _gries_, a stone.

So too was Gries-hilda—Stone battle maid. Griselda was the perfectly

patient wife whose tale was told by Boccaccio, and narrated by Petrarch

to Chaucer, who told it in his own way. The Scots seem to have been

peculiarly delighted with the lady Griselidis—and Grizell or Grisell

acquired fresh honour with Lady Grisell Baillie. Grizzie or Girzie are

the contractions, and there is a Grisley in the register of Madran,

Cornwall, dated 1662.

Though in general Borg, or Bjorg, is used to mean protection, yet

Bergstein is most probably a mountain stone, and it curiously answers to

two names of noted ecclesiastics from Somersetshire, whose first

syllable Dun is a hill; the same with our present word _down_, and the

_dunes_ on the other side of the Channel, where Dunkirk answers to our

Dunchurch. The word is probably the Keltic _don_, dark brown, grey, or

dun, used as the epithet of a hill, and lasting on like other Keltic

local titles in the _dunum_ of the Romans and the _dun_ of the Teutons.

The two Somerset Duns are the hill-wolf, Dunulf, who is said by one of

the traditions that ought to be true, to have been the swineherd whose

cakes King Alfred burnt, and to have been afterwards made by him bishop

of Winchester, which a Dunulf certainly was. The other was Dunstan, the

mighty ascetic Abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury, whose

career, between wisdom and devotion, frenzy and sternness, is one of the

least explicable studies of history.

His place in the calendar has given this rugged mountain stone a few

namesakes.

There is a race of names, chiefly German, beginning with _hun_, that it

would seem natural to ascribe to the Huns of Attila; but the original

term for this race seems to have been in their own language Hiognu, and

was retained in the pronunciation by other nations before writing and

Latin had made the word Hun. In old Germanic poems, the Huns figure as

giants or Titans, so that some translate, _huni_, or _hiune_, as a

giant. The word _hun_, however, also means a stake, and it is most

according to the ordinary analogy of nomenclature to suppose the names

thus commencing were used in the sense of a stake, meaning either the

weapon or that the bearer was strong and straight as a stake or a

support, like the staff in Gustav.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐

│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ German. │

│Humfrey │Onfroi │Onufrio │Humfrid │

│Humphrey │ │Onofredo │ │

│Humps │ │ │ │

│Numps │ │ │ │

└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The names of this commencement are Huno, Hunnerich, latterly lost in

Heinrich, Hunold, the French Hunaud, Hunibert, which was corrupted in

France into Humbert, and belonged to various counts of Savoy and

dauphins of Auvergne, Hunigar, in Hungeir and Hunifred, which the French

much affected in the form of Onfroi, which belonged to one of the

short-lived kings of Jerusalem, and was Latinized as Onuphrius. In the

form of Humfrey it was much used by the great house of Bohun; and

through his mother, their heiress, descended to the ill-fated son of

Henry IV., who has left it an open question whether dining with Duke

Humfrey alludes to the report that he was starved to death, or to the

Elizabethan habit for poor gentility to beguile the dinner-hour by a

promenade near the tomb of Duke Humfrey Stafford in old St. Paul’s. From

being a noble and knightly name, Humphrey, as we barbarously spell it,

came to be a peasant’s appellation, and now is almost disused.

The northern Hundolf, or Hunnolf, and Hungerdur, are in some doubt

between the dog and the stake.

The helmet is the most popular piece of armour in Germany. It comes from

the word meaning to cover, the very same that furnished _hol_, whole,

hale, and holy. To _heal_ a wound is to cover it, and health is

soundness. The Teutonic languages teem with derivatives from _hulyan_

and _helan_, of which all that shall be here mentioned are our own;

heel, the covered part of the foot, the hold of a ship, its hull, and

the provincial hulls (chaff), and hillier (a slater).

The Latin _galea_ was nearly related to the _helm_ of the German, and

may be from the same source. Indeed, it is, as has been said before,

doubtful whether Galeazzo Visconti was the offspring of a classical or

of a Gothic helmet. The only popular northern helmet is Hjalmar, the

helmed warrior, apparently in honour of one of the heroes of the Orvarod

Saga; but Germany has Helmar, Helmerich, in Friesland Elmark, the helmed

king, Helmund, or helmet protection, Helmbold, Helmut, Helmich, Helmtac;

besides numerous _helms_ at the end of words, of which Wilhelm is the

most notable.

The sword figures in northern and German nomenclature as Brand; but not

from the verb _to burn_, but from _brandr_, an elastic staff,

transferred to the blade of a sword. It would also mean the staff of a

bow, and a short straight stripe of colour, whence a cow so marked is

_brandet_ in the north, branded with us. The Brands are many, with

German and Frank commencements, such as Hildeprant, Liutprant, &c., but

seldom common; though Brand sometimes stands alone in the North, and

Brandolf, or sword wolf, is an old name. Perhaps the Zetland Brenda may

be the feminine.

Degen, a blade, is another sword name of rarer use, and exclusively

German. It also is compounded into Degenhard, then contracted into

Deinhard; but the primary meaning is the hero, as it comes from the same

word as _tugend_, virtue or valour.

Another very old term for a sword was _hjøru_, or _hiru_, in the North;

_hairu_, _heru_, in the Gothic; _heoru_, in Anglo-Saxon. Here we see

that the Heruli and Cheruschi, as the Romans called them, were both

sword men. Heoruvard, or Hereward the Saxon, was the sword guardian;

Heorugar answered to the northern Hjørgeir; there was a Gothic

Hairuwolf, or Heruwolf; in the North, Hiørulf, Hiørleif, and Hiørdis

also occur; but the syllable gets contracted into Her, and the names are

not easily distinguished from those beginning with _her_, a warrior.

Hjaraande is another northern form.

Boge, the bow, is sparsely found alone, and as Bauggisel in Iceland, and

now and then in Norway at the end of a name. Bogo was Old German, and

the surnames in Denmark Bugge, in England Bogue. But its English fame

rests upon a champion called Bogo, who was supposed by our ancestors to

have been Earl of Southampton at the time of the Norman Conquest; to

have fought a battle with the invaders at Cardiff, and to have left his

sword as a relic at Arundel Castle. Whether this ever occurred or not,

Boge was rendered by Norman tongues into Bevis, or Beavois, and was the

subject of an old metrical romance, where his great exploit is killing

the tremendous giant Ascapart, who had carried off his wife, the

converted Saracen princess Josyan. He lives to a good old age, sees his

twin sons kings, and dies happily on the same day as his wife and his

good horse Arundel, once doubtless Hirondelle, or the swallow.

His fame travelled to Italy, where Buovo d'Antona is accepted as one of

the heroes of romance, though he stands alone, not fitting into any of

the cycles. The etymologists of Elizabeth’s time were led by the form

Beavois, in which they spelt the word, to imagine that it was

Bellovisus, beautiful to behold. But if ‘Bevis of Hampton’ was anybody,

he was an Anglo-Danish ‘Bow,’ or Boge, a word which, like bay, bough,

and boughsome or buxom, comes from _bygan_, to bend.

The spear and the breastplate, Geir and Brune, will be mentioned in the

next chapter. The shield is now and then found in the North, as Skialde,

Skioldbjorn, Skiolulf, and Skioldvar, shield bear, wolf, and, more

appropriately, shield caution. The shield wolf is capable of being

contracted into Schelluf.

_Saro_, _saru_, _searu_, is the entire equipment or suit of armour;

Sørle is a Norwegian name for it, contracted into Solle; and among the

Normans was called Serlo, and considered to be the same with Saher.

If there were plenty of weapons, there was also balsam to heal their

wounds; that is, if the northern names beginning with _Sölv_ are rightly

referred to salve, the same word in the North as with us. The _v_ has

for the most part been left out by pronunciation, but the dotted _o_

remains to testify that Sölmund, or Saamund, has no connection with Sol,

the sun, as little as with Solomon, by which the Danish bishops rendered

it. Solveig, healing drink, is now Solva, and Sölvar is Sölvi.[128]

-----

Footnote 127:

Grimm; Munch; Dasent; _Int. to Nial Saga_; Weber and Jamieson; Spanish

Heraldry (_Quarterly Review_).

Footnote 128:

Munch; Michaelis; Ellis; Campbell; Montalembert.

SECTION XII.—_Thought._

Mind or thought amounts to a mythical character in northern fancy. The

word is _hugr_, the same with _hu_, still the Scandinavian word for

thought, as _heuge_ is in Holland, all coming from old verbs represented

by the Mæso-Gothic _gahugan_, and Anglo-Saxon _gehygan_.

The two ravens who sat on Odin’s shoulders, and revealed to him all that

passed in the world, were Huginn and Munninn, thought and memory; and

when Thor made his famous visit to Utgard, it was Hugi, or thought,

alone that was swift enough to outstrip him in the race. At Tours, the

Northern Lights are _le carrosse du roi Hugues_, perhaps originally from

some connection with speed of thought, though latterly mixed up with

Hugues Capet.

The name has been much used by all the Teutons, and it was not

inappropriately chosen by Fouqué, as that of the old knight in the

_Magic ring_, whose character he has sacrificed for the sake of making

him the representative parent of all the chivalry of Europe, except the

English, which he considers as independently typified by Richard Cœur de

Lion. This roving knight appears at home as Hugo; Hugur in the North;

Hugues, in France; Uguccione, in Italy; and even as Hygies, in Greece,

which last is, however, only a resemblance, not a translation.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐

│ English. │ Scottish. │ Gaelic. │ French. │

├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤

│Hugh │Hugh │Uisdean. │Hugues │

│Hugo │Hughie │ │Hues │

│Hutchin │Hutcheon │ │Huon │

│ │ │ │Huet │

│ │ │ │Hugolin │

│ │ │ │Huguenin │

│ │ │ │Ugues │

├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤

│ Provençal. │ Italian. │ German. │ Norwegian. │

│Oc │Ugo │Hugo │Hugr │

│ │Ugolino │ │Hugi │

│ │Ugone │ │ │

│ │Ugotto │ │ │

│ │Uguccione │ │ │

└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Part of the popularity of the name was, no doubt, owing to the Cymric

countries having adopted it as the nearest resemblance to the mighty Hu

Gadarn, from whom the national Hugh of Wales almost certainly sprung. A

Frank saint, Archbishop of Rouen, and one of the many canonized cousins

of Pepin, first made Hugo current among his own race; but the only

person who wore it on the throne was the Gallican Count of Paris, who

may have had it as a compromise between the Cymric Hu and Frank Hugr; at

any rate, it was long spelt without the _g_ in France, and declined as

Hues, Huon. The old Cambrai form was Huet, with the feminine Huette.

Hugo is very frequent in Domesday Book, and the name was much more

common in earlier times than at present. In Scotland and Ireland it has

been pressed into the service of Anglicizing the native Aodh, or fire;

but the Gaelic name Uisdean, pronounced something like ocean, is most

likely intended as a rendering of Hutcheon, the form in which the Scots

caught the Hugon of their Anglo-Norman neighbours, who revered the name

doubly for the sake of the good bishop of Lincoln, and for another St.

Hugh of Lincoln, _i.e._ the child murdered by the Jews, as in the

_Prioress’s Tale_ in Chaucer. St. Hugh of Lincoln is revered in the

north of Italy as well as at home; and Ugo is common there in all manner

of varieties, the most memorable, perhaps, being that of the terrible

Genoese, Ugolino de Gherardesca, whose fearful fate has been rendered

famous by Dante. In Dutch, it is Huig. Huig Groot was the home name of

the author whom the world hailed as Hugo Grotius, and the Walloons use

the contraction Hosch.

Hyge was the Low German form, and Hygelac is the sea-king of the Geats,

the friend and lord in the poem of _Beowulf_. The latter syllable _lac_

is the northern _leik_, and Gothic _laiks_, signifying both reward and

sport, the same word that in some parts of England has become _lake_,

meaning to play or to be idle, and in slang, to _lark_. It is rather a

favourite termination, but only a commencement in the Norse feminine

Leikny, fresh sport.

Hygelac is thus the sport of thought, or it may be, the reward of

thought. Hugoleik was thus not an inappropriate name for an old Frank

chronicler, who has had the misfortune to descend to the world by the

horrible Latinism of Chochilaicus. Hugleik was current in Norway, was

transformed by the Danes into Hauleik and Hovleik, and in Ireland seems

to have turned into Ulic, a favourite name, but latterly transmogrified

into Ulysses.

Hugibert, or bright mind, belonged to the bishop of Liege, to whom

attached the Teutonic story of the hunter’s conversion by the

cross-bearing stag, making him the patron of hunters, and his name very

popular in France, Flanders, northern Italy, and probably once in

England, since it has left us the two surnames of Hubbard and Hobart.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐

│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │Portuguese. │ German. │

│Hubert │Hubert │Uberto │Huberto │Hucpraht │

│ │ │ │ │Hugibert │

│ │ │ │ │Hubert │

└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

It used to be wrongly translated bright of hue.

Hugibald became the German Hugbold and the Italian Ubaldo, the prince of

thought; Hugihard, or firm in mind, is the French Huard.

CHAPTER IV.

HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.

SECTION I.—_The Nibelung._

As the Greeks believed in the exploits of semi-divine heroes, a sort of

borderers between Olympus and the human race, so the Teutonic race had

its grand universal legends of beings rising above human nature, and

often embodying beliefs that once had attached to the gods themselves.

The great Teutonic legend, holding the same place as the deeds of

Hercules, Theseus, and the Argonauts did in Greece, or those of Fionn

with the Gael, is the story of the _Nibelung_. How old it may be is past

computation, but it was apparently common to the whole Gothic race,

since names connected with it come from Spain, Lombardy, and France:

fragments of the story are traceable in England and the Faroe Islands,

and the whole is told at length in Germany, Norway, and Denmark. Each of

these three latter countries claim vehemently to have originated the

romance, but there is little doubt that it was one of the original

imaginations of the entire race, and that each division moulded the

framework their own way, though with a general likeness.

Names of historical personages, probably called from its heroes, have

led many to suppose it exaggerated history; but each attempt to fit it

on to a real person has resulted in confusion, and led to the perception

that the actors are really mythical, and the localities, which chiefly

lie in Burgundian Germany, were only connected with it by that general

law which always finds a home for every heroic adventure.

The tale is begun by the Norwegian Volsunga Saga, and, about half way

through, it is taken up by the Danish Vilkina and Niflung Saga, and by

the German Nibelungenlied, and it is finished by numerous Danish ballads

and German tales, songs, and poems, with the sort of inconsistencies

always to be found in popular versions of ancient myths, but with the

same main incidents.

Nifelheim, the supposed abode of these heroes, is interpreted to be

_nebelwelt_, the world of mist, or cloudland, and there can be little

doubt that the heroes said to be descended from the mythic Vili, Vidga,

and Velint, are, in fact, fallen deities. Germany, however, turned

Nifelheim into the Netherlands, and placed the realm of Brynhild in

Iceland, and the scene of Aldrian’s and Gunter’s court at Wurms, the

centre of the Burgundians.

It is highly probable that the story is another form of the original

myth, with the same idea, carried through, of the early death of the

glorious victor, and of the revenge for his death, but only through a

universal slaughter in which all perish. But the whole has become

humanized, and the actors are men and not deities; and thus the allegory

is far less traceable.

The story, as it begins in the Volsunga Saga, relates that there were

three brothers, Fafner, Reginn, and Audvar, or Ottur, whose name is from

the same source as _øg_, awe, so that he may be another form of Œgir.

Transforming himself into the beast that bears his name, for the

convenience of catching himself a fish dinner, Ottur was killed, in this

shape, by Loki. The father and the other brothers insisted that, by way

of compensation, in the Teutonic fashion, Loki should fill the dead

otter’s skin with treasure, which he accomplished, but laid the treasure

under the curse, that it should do no good to its owner. Accordingly,

the amount excited the avarice of Fafner, and after murdering his

father, he transformed himself into a dragon, and kept watch over the

treasure, to prevent Reginn from obtaining it.[129]

-----

Footnote 129:

Lettsom, _Niebelung_; Weber and Jamieson; Koepper; Howitt, _Northern

Romance_; Grimm, _Deutsche Heldensagen_.

SECTION II.—_Sigurd._

_Sig_, or _siga_, means, in all Teutonic tongues, conquest; and the

Victor seems to have been a very old epithet for the Divinity. St.

Augustin speaks of a Gothic exclamation _Sihora armen_, which he

translates as Κύριε ἐλεήσον, and the first word of which evidently

answers to Ceadmon’s epithets for the Almighty, _Sigorafrea_,

_Sigorugod_, _Sigoracyning_.

Odin was called Sigfadir, or conquering father, and this accounts for

the later notion that the adventurer was called Sigge, and assumed the

divine appellation of Odin.

Thence the victorious god, conquering the serpent, yet afterwards dying,

whether he were originally meant for Odin himself, or for another form

of Baldur, sank into a human serpent-slayer, bearing the name of

victory—Sigward, perhaps originally, but varied into Sigufrit,

Siegfried, and Sigurd.

The main points in Siegfried’s story are that he was the son of Siegmund

the Volsung, and of Queen Sigelind; born, according to the _Book of

Heroes_, under the same circumstances as Perdita, in the _Winter’s

Tale_; put, by way of cradle, into a drinking-glass, and accidentally

thrown into the river, where he was picked up by the smith Mimir, and

educated by him. In the _Book of Heroes_ he is so strong that he caught

the lions in the woods and hung them over his castle wall by their

tails. Reginn incited him to fight with and slay the dragon, Fafner, and

obtain the treasure, including the tarn-cap of invisibility. Also, on

roasting and eating the heart of Fafner, he became able to understand

the language of the birds. And by a bath in the blood he was made

invulnerable, except where a leaf had unfortunately adhered to his skin,

between his shoulders, and given him, like Achilles and Diarmaid, a

mortal spot. His first discovery from the song of a bird was that Reginn

meant to murder him at once; he therefore forestalled his intentions,

and took possession of the fatal gift, thus incurring the curse. The

_Book of Heroes_ calls him Siegfried the horny, and introduces him at

the court of the German favourite, Theodoric, and the _Nibelungenlied_

separates the dragon from the treasure, and omits most of the marvellous

in the obtaining it.

His next exploit was the rescue and awakening of Brynhild; but he fell

into a magic state of oblivion as to all that had passed with her, when

he presented himself at the court of Wurms, and became the husband of

Gudrun, or Chriemhild, as a recompense for having, by means of his

tarn-cap, enabled Gunnar to overcome the resistance of Brynhilda

herself, and obliged her to become his submissive bride. Revelations

made by the two ladies, when in a passion, led to vengeance being

treacherously wreaked upon Siegfried, who was pierced in his vulnerable

spot while he was lying down on his face to drink from a fountain during

a hunting party in the forest. The remainder of the history is the

vengeance taken for his death; and the North further holds that his

child, Aslaug, was left the sole survivor of the race, and finally

married Ragner Lodbrog, whence her descendants always trace their

pedigree from Sigurdr Fafner’s bane.

His namesakes are well-nigh innumerable. There are nineteen in the

_Landnama-bok_; and Sigurdr swarms in the earlier Scandinavian royal

lines, being, perhaps, most remarkable in the person of King Sigurd the

Crusader of Norway.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐

│ English. │ French. │ German. │ Bavarian. │

│Sigefrid │Sigefroi │Sigefrid │Sigl │

│Siward │Siffroi │Siegfried │ ————————— │

│Seaward │ ————————— │Sigfrid │ Norwegian. │

│Seaforth │ Italian. │Seifrid │Sigvard │

│Seyferth │Sigefredo │Sikko │Sigurdhr │

│ │Siffredo │Sicco │Siurd │

│ │ │Sigo │Sjul │

│ │ │ ————————— │Syvert │

│ │ │ Polish. │Syver │

│ │ │Sygfryd │Siewers │

└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

At the instance of the king of Sweden, our Edred had sent a missionary

named Sigefried, who is esteemed the apostle of Sweden, and gave a

Christian sanction to the serpent-slayer’s name, whence it has continued

extremely common there. The stout old Danish Earl Siward, the conqueror

of Macbeth, the same who had the bear’s ears and would only die upon his

feet, is an English version of the northern Sigurdr, and bore the name

that is now Seaward. Indeed Sæward is found among the kings of Essex in

616, and, in fact, that line have so many prefixes of _Sige_, that it is

likely that they thought themselves connected with Fafner’s bane. There

is a Sigefugel, or Sigewolf, in their descent from Odin, who may be

another form of Sigurd. Germany has made the feminine Sigfrida.

Some have considered the story to be chiefly Burgundian; and Sigmund,

conquering protection, the name of Sigurdr’s father, was that of the

first Catholic king of Burgundy, who was canonized both for the recovery

of his kingdom from Arianism, and for the severity of his penance, after

having killed his son, Sigeric, on a false stepdame’s calumny. His

relics were carried to Prague in the fourteenth century, and the effect

of the translation appeared at once in the name of the Bohemian-born

Emperor Sigismund, from whom this became European, and formed the

feminine Sigismunda. Gismonda is thus an old Lombardic feminine.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐

│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ German. │

│Sigismund │Sigismond │Sigismondo │Sigmund │

│Sæmund │ ————————— │Sismondo │Sigismund │

│ │Portuguese. │ │ │

│ │Sigismundo │ │ │

├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤

│ Norwegian. │ Polish. │ Illyrian. │ Hungarian. │

│Sigmund │Zygmunt │Sisman │Zsigmond │

│Sæmund │ ———————— │ │Zsiga │

│ │ Bohemian. │ │ │

│ │Zikmund │ │ │

└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Some have imagined that the curious correspondence of names, when

Sigebert, the Frank, married Brynhild, the Goth, is a sign that the

_Nibelung_ referred to the Austrasian court; but the Frank Sigebert

would have been a very poor serpent-slayer, and, no doubt, only bore the

name as a remembrance of him, as did our East Saxon monarch Sæbert, and

the Spanish bishop Siseberto. It has lasted on in Germany and Friesland,

to be called Sizo, Sitto, Sibert, and Sidde, and is the English surname

Sebright. Sigelind, conquering snake, now and then used by German

ladies, has the Eastern-looking abbreviation Zelinde.

Sigridur, or conquering impulse, was a favourite among northern ladies.

Sigrid the haughty of Sweden, was wooed by King Olaf Trygvesson, and had

accepted him; but on her refusal to be baptized, he struck her on the

face with his glove, and said, ‘Why should I have thee, an old faded

jade, and a heathen to boot.’ She remembered his discourtesy against

him, and stirred up the war, which ended in his fatal battle with Earl

Sigvalddr. Sigrid is Sired in Domesday; in the North, she is shortened

into Sîri, and then Latinized as Serena.

Sigvalldur, conquering power, curiously ran into Sjovald, from whence we

take our surname Shovel, one of the many by which our naval commanders

are traceable to the vikings.

Sigeheri, Sigehere, Sighar, conquering warrior, is what on Norman lips

was Sagar, and then Saher, the hereditary name of the De Quincys, and as

a surname spelt Sayers.[130]

The other forms are,

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐

│ North. │

│ Sigbiorg } │

│ Siborg } Conquering protection Ger. Sigburg │

│ Siber } │

│ │

│ German. English. Frisian. Italian. │

│ Sigebald │ Sibbald │ Sibold │ Sibaldo } Conquering │

│ │ │ Sibel │ } prince │

│ │

│ North. Sigbiorn; Eng. Siborne—Conquering bear │

│ │

│ German. Frisian. Spanish. │

│ Sigbod │ Sibot │ Sisebuto } │

│ │ Sibo │ } Messenger of victory │

│ │ Sibbe │ } │

│ │

│ Nor. German. Frisian. │

│ Sigbrand │ Sigbrand │ Sibrant } │

│ │ │ Sibbern } Conquering sword │

│ │

│ Nor. Sigfus—Conquering impetuosity │

│ │

│ German. English. Frisian. French. │

│ Sighard │ Sigehard │ Siard │ Sicard } Conquering │

│ Siegert │ │ Siade │ } firmness │

│ │

│ Ger. Sighelm—Conquering helmet │

│ Nor. Sighvatr—Conquering swiftness │

│ Nor. Sigmar; Ger. Sigmar—Conquering greatness │

│ Nor. Signy—Conquering freshness │

│ Ger. Sigrad—Conquering advice │

│ Ger. Sigrich—Conquering ruler │

│ Sigtrud—Conquering maid │

│ Nor. Sigtrygge—Conquering security │

│ Nor. Sigulf, Siulf; Eng. Sigewolf—Conquering wolf │

└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Footnote 130:

_Nibelung_; Weber and Jamieson; Kemble, _Beowulf_; Michaelis; Pott;

Butler; _Heimskringla_.

SECTION III.—_Brynhild._

A thorough Valkyr was Brynhilda, the maiden whom Odin had touched with

his sleep-thorn, so that she lay in a deep slumber in the midst of a

circle of flame, through which Sigurd made his way, aroused her, and won

her for his own; but became utterly and magically oblivious of all that

had passed as soon as he had returned to common life. This is the

northern version, the evident origin of our fairy tale of the _Sleeping

Beauty_, pricked not by the thorn of Odin, but by the distaff, perhaps,

of one of the Nornir. The _Book of Heroes_ reduces the circle of flame

to a mere strong castle, with seven gates; and the _Nibelungenlied_ only

takes up the story at the time of Sigfried’s appearance at the court of

Burgundy, and courtship of Brynhild’s rival, Chriemhild.

Brynhild had retained her matchless strength, and, like the Greek

Atalanta, was only to be won by a champion who could excel her in games

of strength, and her conquered suitors were all put to death. Gunther,

the brother of Chriemhild, being willing to obtain her on these

conditions, Siegfried, by means of his tarn-cap, invisibly vanquished

the Valkyr, while Gunther appeared to be her conqueror; and when she

thus had been compelled to give her hand, it was Siegfried who, again

unseen, broke down her violent resistance, and compelled her to become a

submissive wife, on which she lost all her supernatural strength.

Siegfried was rewarded by the hand of Chriemhild, Gunther’s sister.

By-and-by the two sisters-in-law had a desperate quarrel about

precedence; in the old northern version, which should wade farthest into

the Rhine when bathing; in the half-civilized German song, which should

first enter the cathedral of Wurms; and in the course of it Brynhild was

roundly informed that she had not given way to her husband, but to

Siegfried. Valkyr nature could not stand such an affront, so Brynhild

set on Hagen to assassinate Siegfried. The northern story makes her slay

herself, and be burnt with his corpse on a funeral pile, in Suttee

fashion; the German tames her into being merely brought to repentance

too late by the death of her husband.

No doubt Brynhild was commemorated by the name of the Gothic princess,

daughter of King Athanagild, who, for her misfortune, was married to the

Frank Sigebert, and through the whole of her long life continued a

fierce and dauntless resistance to her savage rival Fredegund, until,

when both were aged women, Brenhilda fell into her rival’s power, and

was implacably sentenced to be dragged to death by wild horses. French

historians aver that her name was at first only Bruna, and that hilda

was added to make it royal; but this is very unlikely, since Spanish

historians call her Brenhilda. The Latinism is Brunechildis, in French

Brunehault, but the name has not been followed, except by the northern

race, whose existence was hardly developed at the time of the

misfortunes of the Austrasian queen, and who therefore take it from her

original. Among these it has been contracted to Brunilla and Brynil.

The meaning is the Valkyr of the Breastplate, the _byrni_ of old

Scottish, _bryne_ of the North, _bruniga_ of the German, _broigne_ in

Old French, _bronha_ in Provençal. A near connection of this name is the

northern Bryngerd, placing the gentle Gerda in this cuirass; and the

North has likewise Brynjar, properly _hari_, the Cuirassier, and

Brynjolfr, which wolf in a breastplate was a great Icelandic ancestor,

and has been cut short into Brynjuv and Brynjo.

The Chriemhild, or Helmet Valkyr of the _Nibelung_, is the Gudrun of the

northern version; and Gudrun, as before said, would be either good

wisdom, or, far more probably, war wisdom. In the _Nibelungenlied_, the

action of the story begins with Chriemhild telling her mother her dream

of her favourite falcon being torn to pieces by two eagles; and when it

is explained to mean her future husband, vowing that she will never

marry. However, Siegfried’s arrival, and his successful exertions in

winning Brunhild for Gunther, overcame all the lady’s scruples.

She had lived happily ten years in the Netherlands with Siegfried

before, on a visit to Wurms, she was so ill-advised as to reproach

Brynhild with his victory over her; and afterwards was deluded into

sewing a mark upon his garments to show where was his vulnerable spot.

After his death, she found out the murderer by the ordeal of touch, and

treasured up a deadly and enduring spirit of revenge; perhaps the most

terrible of all the many forms in which legend has proclaimed the old

rule of blood for blood.

She was left the heiress of all Siegfried’s treasure, as well as of his

_Nibelungen_ or Netherlandian troops, but it was taken from her by her

husband’s murderer, and sunk beneath the Rhine. After thirteen years of

widowhood, she was induced to marry Etzel, or Atli, king of the Huns, by

the promise that he would avenge all her injuries; but still she bided

her time for thirteen more years, at the end of which space she invited

her brothers and all their champions to visit her in Hungary at

Etzelenburg. They had not long been there before she stirred up a most

tremendous battle, in which mutual destruction took place, as is

minutely related in the ancient lays. Finally her brother Gunther was

captured and slain at her savage command, and she herself slew the

murderer Hagen with Siegfried’s own sword. Immediately after, however,

she was put to death as an act of justice by old Sir Hildebrand; at

least so says the _Nibelungenlied_; but in the _Kœmpe Viser_ there is a

still further revenge, for the secret of the deposit of the treasure is

left with the son of Hagen, who beguiles Grimhild into the cave with the

hope of its restoration, and there locks her in and starves her to

death.

The historical Attila is really said to have had a German wife named

Kremheilch. The Gudrun of the North is a far more amiable personage. She

forgives her brother, and is with difficulty persuaded to marry Atli,

who is, in this version, Brynhild’s brother, and lays the plot against

Gunther, in order to avenge his sister’s death. She does all in her

power to warn them, but in vain; and when all had been slain, her senses

failed her, and in her frenzy she slew her two children by Atli, and

made him drink their blood; he died of horror, and she cast herself into

the sea, but was carried alive to the land of King Jonakr, whom she

married, and then underwent other misfortunes which extinguished the

last remains of her family. Her name of Gudrun has already been treated

of.[131]

-----

Footnote 131:

_Nibelungenlied_; Weber and Jamieson; Thierry; Mariana; Munch.

SECTION IV.—_Gunther._

_Gunth_ (Goth.), _guth_ (A.G.S.), _gunnr_ (North), _gond_ or _gonz_

(High German), all meant war or battle, and have an immense number of

derivative names, inextricably mixed up with those from God and Gut; and

it is even thought that there may be a close connection between them, so

much did the Teutons believe their deities to be gods of battle, and

goodness to be courage. The word _gunth_ has lived on even in Lombardy

in the Gonfalon, the war banner, solemnly carried out to battle in a car

as the images of the gods had formerly been, in charge of the official

known as the _gonfaloniere_ in the republics of northern Italy.

Gundahari, warrior, was really an old name among the kings of Burgundy,

who were, no doubt, called in honour of Gunther or Gunnar, the eldest

brother of Kriemhild, and husband of Brynhild. He seems to have been

brave but weak, led first by Sigurd, then by Hagen, but at last fighting

with great spirit.

Gunthar, or Gunnar, at full length Gundahari, continued in favour with

the Burgundians; and an abbot in Brittany being canonized, left Gonthier

to France, and Gontiere to Italy.

This masculine Gunnar was very common in the North, and so was likewise

the feminine Gunnr, war, or Gundvar, war prudence, both confounded in

Gunnar, which historians generally render as Gunnora.

Gunnhildur was in high favour in the North. One most celebrated owner

was the wicked queen of Eric Blodaxe. She was said to be a native of the

Orkneys, and to have filled Scandinavia with her crimes, upon the

details of which, however, Norse and Danish histories are not quite

agreed.

Gunhild again was the Danish princess whose murder on St. Brice’s night

brought her brother Sweyn down in fury upon England; and her nephew Knud

likewise had a daughter so called, but who was Anglicized into

Æthelthryth; and each generation of the Godwine family records a lady

Gunhild. After the Conquest, however, Gunhild died away in England; but

it has never been discarded in the North, where it is now called

Gunnilda, or Gunula.

That daughter of William the Conqueror, or sister of Gherbod the

Fleming, whichever she was, who was the ancestress of the Warrennes, and

is buried at Lewes, has a name so much disguised as to be as doubtful as

her birth. It maybe Gunatrud, a Valkyr title, or Gundridur, war haste,

or Gundrada, war council, the same as the Spanish Gontrado; at any rate

it has had few followers.

Gunnr and Göndol were both Valkyr titles, and the Valkyr Göndol’s most

noted namesake was a maiden of the Karling race, who was bred up by St.

Gertrude, at Nivelle; and on her return to her father’s castle at

Morzelle, used to go to her early devotions at a church half a league

distant from home. On winter mornings she was lighted by a lantern,

which the legend avers to have been blown out by the wind, but rekindled

by her prayers. Thence comes the name of St. Gundula’s lamp, applied to

the _Tremella_, an orange-coloured jelly-like fungus that grows on dead

branches of trees in the winter. She is the patroness of Brussels, where

the church of St. Gudule is the place used for coronations; but her

common title in Flanders is Ste. Goëlan, while the convent built in her

honour at Morzelle, in Brabant, is Ste. Goule.

War could not fail to have her wolf, the Gundulf of Norman England, the

Gunnolfr of Iceland, the Gundolf of Germany, and, far more notable than

either, the Gonsalvo or Gonzalo of Spain, always frequent among the

Visigothic families, and becoming especially glorious in the person of

the great captain, the brave and honourable conqueror of Naples, and the

trainer of the infantry that gave the predominance to Spain for a

hundred years, until they fell as one man at Rocroy.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐

│ French. │ Provençal. │ Spanish. │Portuguese. │ Italian. │

│Gonsalve │Guossalvo │Gonzalo │Gonçalo │Consalvo │

│Gonzalve │ │ │ │ │

└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

The war raven, Gunthram, figures in French history as Gontran, and the

war serpent is the German Gundlin, or Gondoline, when a lady; when a

man, the terrible Guthorm, whom, as King Alfred’s foe, godson, and

tributary, our histories call Guthrum. In Denmark, the name was very

early contracted into Gorm; but it has been so often spelt Gudthorm,

that a doubt has arisen whether the latter half of the word may not be

_thorm_ or _thyrma_.

It is very difficult to distinguish between the derivatives of _God_ and

_Gund_, both being very apt to eliminate the distinctive letters. On the

whole, however, it seems as if these warlike names had been some of the

most universal throughout the continent, though in England they were

very scarce, and do not occur in royal pedigree, nor in hagiology,

except in the case of St. Guthlac, the first founder of the original

Croyland Abbey, whose name in the North would be Gudleik or Gulleik, war

sport.

Hosts of northern Frankish and Visigothic names thus commence, and many

feminines end with this word. The other varieties thus beginning are:—

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐

│ Nor. Gunbjorg; Ger. Gondaberge; Goth. Sp.—War protection │

│ Nor. Gunbjorn—War bear │

│ German. French. │

│ Gondebert │ Gondobert } │

│ Gondeberta │ Gombert } War splendour │

│ Gumpert │ Jombert } │

│ Ger. Gondebald; Fr. Gondebaud; Sp. Gondebaldo—War prince │

│ Nor. Gudbrand, Guldbrand, Gulbrand—War sword │

│ Ger. Gundekar—War spear │

│ Nor. Gunlaug, Gullaug—War liquor │

│ Nor. Gunleif, (Eng. Cunliffe)—War love │

│ Nor. German. Spanish. │

│ Gudmar │ Gundemar │ Gondomiro } War Greatness │

│ Gulmar │ Gutmar │ Gondomar } │

│ Nor. German. │

│ Gudmund │ Gundemund } War hand │

│ Gulmund │ Gunimund } │

│ Ger. Gunderich; Fr. Gonderic; Sp. Gonderico—War ruler │

│ Sp. Gondesinda—War strength │

│ Nor. Gunnstein—War jewel │

└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Gunthe was the old German feminine contraction for any of these warlike

damsels, and being further endeared into Jutte, or Jutta, was probably

the source, under the hands of chroniclers, of the Judiths, who made

their appearance among the Franks so long before the days of Scripture

or saintly names.[132]

-----

Footnote 132: