We prefer In a "If any man destroy another by witchcraft, water and, during the other four, three days let him fast seven years; three on bread and a week on bread and water." they had a nearer connection, and whose in. [the punishments are doled out. fluence, good or evil, they believed them-giving them from inedited sources. seives to be daily experiencing; these were, valuable Penitentiary printed in a collection like themselves, works of the Creator-with of Anglo-Saxon remains not yet published,are, passions, too, like themselves, and in whose among others, the following no ices :invisible society they were themselves frequently living. They were substantial be. ings also, but of a far more refined nature, and infinitely more powerful. They wielded the elements, caused most of the visible convulsions of nature, as well as many of the accidents with which humanity was visited. While Christianity destroyed every where the worship of Woden, the belief in the airy spirits of the popular creed was unimpaired; for whatever different opinion the monks might entertain of ther nature and calling, they found nothing in their own faith which directly proscribed them. In fact, the popular belief in these things and their effects was so intimately interwoven in the national character, that they held by it like the language, with which, also, they had a strong tie in the multitude of words and names for things and circumstances which called them perpetually to men's minds. The common ceremonies of life at every minute bore allusion to them; things so difficult to eradicate, that now, after so many centuries of successive improve. ment, and refinement, in our salutations, in our eating and drinking, even in our chil dren's games, we are perpetually, though unwittingly, doing the same things which our forefathers did in honour or in fear of the elves and dwarfs of the heathen creed. "If any one observe lots, or divination: or keep his wake (watch) at any wells, or at any other created things, except at God's church; let him fast three years, the first on bread and water, and the other two, on Wednesdays and Fridays, on bread and water; and the other days let him eat his ineat, but without flesh."* "The same for a woman, who useth any witchcraft to her child, or who draws it through the earth at the meeting of roads, because that is great heathenness." “If a mouse fall into liquor, let it be taken out, and sprinkle the liquor with holy water, and, if it be alive, the liquor may be used, but if it be dead, throw the liquor out and clean the vessel." "He who uses anything that a dog or mouse has eaten of, or a weasel polluted, if he do it knowingly, let him sing a hundred psalms; and if he know it not, let him sing fifty psalms." "He who gives to others the liquor that be a layman, let him fast three days; it he be a mouse or weasel has been drowned in, if he a churchman, let him sing three hundred psalms. And if he did it without his knowledge, but afterwards knew it, let him sing the psalter." In a Saxon homily against witchcraft and magic, preserved in the public library of the University of Cambridge, we have several notices of the heathen superstit ons of our forefathers, at a comparatively short distance of time from their conversion. "We are ashamed," says the writer, "to tell all the scandalous divinations that every man useth through the devil's teaching, either in taking a wife, or in going a journey, or in brewing, or at the asking of something when he be him* And again, "Some men are so blind, gins any thing, or when any thing is born to that they bring their offerings to immoveable rocks, and also to trees, and to wells, as Many of these ceremonies and customs ap. peared to the monks, and with reason, to be much more objectionable than others. Some of them bore too pointed an allusion to the worship of the old pagan deities-others were of a degrading nature, or of a mischievous tendency, which was quite a va riance with the lowest estimate of Christianity. Some of these were marked out for public punishment in the laws of the different states; but many more are entered in the penitentiaries and eclesiastical laws among the crimes to be atoned for by that spiritual punishment, which the penitence of the offender was made to inflict upon himself. Hence to us these penitentiaries and laws are the most valuable authorities for the early history of the popular superstitions. The Anglo Saxon penitentiaries, in particular, are full of cu. rious details of this nature, whether we find them written in the Latin or in the vernacular tongue, in both of which they are tolerably Us sceamed to secganne ealle da sceandlican abundant. A few specimens may amuse wiglunga pe ge-hwas menn drifað, purh deofles some of our readers, both from their conneclare, osse on wifunge, osse on wadunge, orde tion with the subject of which we are speak wat onginnad, oppe hi hwæt bis accenned. on brywlace, oppe gif hi manhwæs bitt ponne hi ing, and from the curious manner in which-MS. Bib!. Pub. Camb. Ii. 1, fol.33, 395. his wæccean æt ænigum wylle habbe, ogge æt Gyf hwa hlytas oboe hwatunga bega; obse ænigre opre gesceafie butan at G des cyricean; fæste he in gear, pæt an on hlafe and on wætere. and pa twa on Wodnes-dagum and Frige-daum on blate and on wæ ere, and pa ogre dagas bruce his metes butan flæsce anum. cine. "He who shall say any charm in the collecting of medicinal herbs, except such as the paternoster and the credo.” witches teach, and will not understand how | be holy prayers, or the liberal art of medifoolishly they do, or how the lifeless stone or the dumb tree may help them, or heal them, when they themselves never stir from the place."* "Moreover," he goes on to say, many a silly woman goes to the meeting of Many of the customs alluded to in the ways, and draweth her child through the foregoing extracts may be traced, under difearth, and so gives to the devil both herself ferent forms, nearly up to the present day; and her offspring." In fact, as the same and none more so than well-worship, some of early writer observes, every one who trusts the ceremonies of which are still performed in divinations either by fowls, or by sneez-in different parts of our island. We are ings, or by horses, or by dogs, he is no tempted to point out two inedited allusions to Christian, but a notorious apastate." Among this latter branch of popular superstition, the many Latin penitentia.ia in the British which we think extremely curious. Museum, there is one which is very full in its enumeration of such offences against "Christendom," although it seems that many of them were criminal, chiefly when committed by a priest or a monk. Amongst other offenders are here enumerated "He who endeavours by any incantation or magic to take away the stores of milk, or honey, or other things belonging to another, and to acquire them himself. "He who, deceived by the illusion of hobgoblings, believes and confesses that he goes or rides in the company of her whom the foolish peasantry call Herodias or Diana, and with immense multitude, and that he obeys her commands. "He who prepares with three knives in the company of persons, that they may predestine happiness to children who are going to be born there. "He who makes his offering to a tree, or to water, or to any thing except a church. 66 They who follow the customs of the pagans in inquiring into the future by magical incantations on the first day of January, or begin works on that day, as though they would on that account prosper better the whole year. "They who make ligatures or incantations and various fascinations with magical charms, and hide them in the grass, or in a tree, or in the path, for the preservation of their cattle. "He who places his child on the roof or in a furnace for the recovery of his health, or for this purpose uses any charms, or characters, or magical figment, or any art, unless it Sume men synd swa ablende pæt hi bringas heora lac to eord-fæstum stanum, and eac to treowum, and to wyl-springum, swa swa wiccan tæcao, and nellas understandan hu stuntlice hi do, osse hu se deade stán osse pæt dumbe treow him mage ge-helpan, osse hale for-gifan, ponne hi sylfe ne a-styriad of pære stowe næfre-Ib. fol. 396. When the Saxon hero, Hereward, was holding so bravely the marshes of Ely against the Norman Conqueror, he one day repaired in disguise to William's court, and before presenting himself there, passed the night in a cottage in the town where the court was then resided in the cottage a noted witch, who was held. It happened that at the same time there employed by the King to daunt the courage of Hereward's soldiers by her incantations. Being disturbed at midnight by hearing the witch in conversation with his hostess, he followed them into the garden. They repaired to a fountain of water which flowed towards the east, and there he heard them holding converse with the spirit of the fountain.* In the following rather humorous song, preserv. ed in a manuscript at Cambridge, written in the earlier part of the fifteenth century, we have an allusion by name to the ceremony of Anglo-Saxon Penitentiary, (see p. 200.) waking the well, mentioned before in the I have for-sworne hit, while I life, to wake the well. Sir John came to oure hows to play, Sir John he came to our hows, * Porro in medio noctis silentio illas ad fontes aquarum in orientem affluentes juxta [h] ortum domes etam (sic) egressas Harwardus precepit: Quas statim secutus est, ubi eas eminus colloquentes audivit, nescio a quo custode fontium Eac sume ge-witlease wif farad to wega gelatum, and teos heora ciid purh sa eorsan, and swa deofle be-tæcas hi sylfe and heora bearn.-responsa et interrogantes et sui expectantes.-De Ib. Gestis Herwyrdi Saxonis: This curious work will soon be published. Eall swa ge-lice se pe ge-lyfo wiglungum oose be fugelum, osse be fnorum, osse be horsum, osse be hundum, ne bio he na Cristen ac bis for-cus wiser-saca. Ib. fol. 394. t Towards the stream. + Stole. § Came frequently, He seyd that I was gracious I go with childe, wel I wot; If we believe the satirical writings of the reformers, the ceremonies attendant on the popular superstitions had frequently a similar dénouement to that which in the present instance followed the waking of the well. Not only were the popular superstitions of our pagan forefathers preserved in their full force, after the introduction of Christianity, from the circumstance of their having considerable influence over the minds of the monks themselves; but the first missionaries, by adopting many of the objects and places of former worship, in the hope of turning more readily the piety of their converts along with them into another direction, and sometimes in the pride of showing how the new religion had seated itself in the very strong. holds of idolatry, were the cause of preserv. ing, in the traditions of the people, many le. gends and articles of former belief, which otherwise would have perished with the ob. jects to which they had been linked. Our extracts have afforded us several proofs how general was the worship of trees; they were looked upon originally as the temple of the object, and not as the object of worship. Every body who pays any attention to the subject, knows how commonly, even at the present time, legends and popular traditions of the most grotesque forms are connected with trees that are venerable for their age and magnitude. Numerous notices in early writers, the greater part of which will be found collected in Grimm's Mythologie, show us, that in the earlier ages of western paganism such trees were universally the objects of superstitious reverence. When St. Boniface, sometime between the years 725 and 731, and during the reign of Charles Martel, visited the Hessians, he found, that though the greater number of them had embraced the Christian faith, there were still many who followed their old idolatry. Boniface was determined to do all he could to root out heathendom, and, by the advice of the converted Hessians, he resolved on cutting down "an oak of wonderful magnitude" which stood in a place called Gaesmere (Geismar), and to which their pagan forefa. thers had given, in their language, a name which signified the Oak of Jupiter (Thor's * I curse. + MS. Pub. Lib. Camb. Ff. 5, 48. Oak ?).* The work of felling this vast tree was commenced in presence of an immense crowd of spectators, many of them pagans, who believed that their oak would be proof against the power of the axe, and who seemed to regard this trial as a test of the superiority of the one religion over the other. But the Oak of Jupiter bowed and fell with a terrible crash, and hundreds of its worshippers bc. came Christians on the spot. Thereupon Boniface, by the advice of his companions, cut up the sacred trec, and with the timber built an oratory on the spot, which he dedicated to Saint Peter. The life of St. Amandus, A.D. 674, speaks of trees dedicated to demons (arbores quæ erant dæmonibus dedicata). In like manner, it was a very common thing to place a Christian church on the same spot where had stood a temple dedi. cated to some one of the German divinities. Besides these causes of the preservation of traces of the earlier Teutonic mythology, the language itself, in all its dialects and varieties, at every step bears marks of the original creed of the people who spoke it, not only in the names of the different mythic beings and of their habitation and worship, but in multitudes of expressions and terms applied at a later period to other objects and actions, which by their formation show how, at an early period, those objects and actions were connected with the popular culture. These are found more particularly in the names of plants and diseases, and of some animals, and in the apparently unmeaning formulæ which, at a much later period, ignorant people used as magical charms. Grimm has given several popular rhymes in vogue among the peasantry of different parts of Germany, in which are found the names of Woden and Irmen. Teutonic gods are still preserved in those of the days of the week. The names of the The information which these different au. thorities afford us, concerning the early forms of Teutonic mythology, is tolerably copious, but at the same time so unconnected and vague, that it required all the industry and genius of a Grimm to reduce it to order, and to elicit from it the outline and the details of a system. The materials of an early date come chiefly through the hands of those who seized most readily on the terrific and disagreeable points of the popular mythology. They do not make us acquainted with the more harmless elves and fairies, although Quorum consultu atque consilio arborem quandam miræ magnitudinis, quæ prisco paga norum vocabulo appellatur robur Jovis, in loco qui dicitur Gaesmere.-Vita Bonifac. ap. Grimm, P. 44: there are sufficient traces of them to take drenched England, as well as France and away all doubt of their having formed a part Germany, in torrents of blood. When we of the creed of our forefathers at that remote see that at that period, the learning which period. The elves and dwarfs are frequently had been so widely spread only served to alluded to in the Legends of the Anglo- defend the popular belief, we shall easily Saxon Saints; and, though they are much perceive how impossible it was for the pridisguised under the name of devils, or rather mitive missionaries to eradicate it from the of hobgoblins, yet there are good reasons for minds of theit converts. believing that from that period to the time. when it becomes more perfectly known to us, in this particular the popular belief had not altered.* The white ladies are mentioned in the Life of Hereward, already quoted, and in such a manner as to leave little doubt on our minds of their having been identical with the fairies of later times. In the earlier ages of Christianity among the Teutonic people, the Monks supposed that the elves and fairies of the people were neither more nor less than so many devils, whose business it was to delude people; so that in transmitting to us the outlines of the popular legends they give them a colouring of which it is not always easy to divest them. The latter half of the twelfth century and At later periods, without going so far as to beginning of the thirteenth was the period make them absolutely devils, some of the when the feudal barons possessed the great- most intelligent writers had very curious est power. It seems also to have been the ideas about their origin. Giraldus tells us age when literature was most patronized, of a fairy who lived some years with a northand the writings which it has left us, whether ern bishop as a faithful servant. Before he in prose or verse, in Latin or Anglo-Nor- left the service of his master, he told him man, (for those were the two languages in who and what he was. He said that the which people wrote,) show more spirit, ele-elves and fairies were a portion of the angels gance, and imagination, than at any other who fell with Lucifer from Heaven; but period of the middle ages. The chronicles inasmuch as, though they had been seduced at this period become far more interesting and deluded, they were not so criminal as than they had been before; there is more their fellows, their sentence had been less of life and anecdote in them; and, curiously severe; but that they were allowed to live enough, they abound in fairy legends. What on the earth, some of them having their pe makes them still more valuable is, that those culiar dwelling place in the air, others in the legends are evidently given as told by the waters, some again in trees and fountains, peasantry, without any, or at least with very and many in the caverns of the earth. He little, adventitious colouring. In Gervase confessed, also, that as Christianity spread. of Tilbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, and Wil- they had much less liberty than formerly. liam of Newbury, we have the elves and As much of the popular middle-age legends fairies in all their frolicsome airiness and in relating to the fall of the angels was probably all their glory, and we trace them in their rooted on the older mythology, this story dances and gambols by moonlight in their may itself be the shadow of an earlier article under-ground country, and in their interfer- of pagan creed relating to the origin of the ence in the affairs of men. From this time elves. the documents of the history of popular mythology are very abundant, and appear in multifarious shapes, like the superstitions to which they relate. Strange it is that so many centuries after the abolition of paganism, these superstitions, so intimately grounded upon it, should still keep their hold on people's minds so firmly as from time to time to give even a character to the age. At one time they turned the philosopher into a magician, and led the scholar in wilder vagaries after the philosopher's stone and elixirs than ever Robin Goodfellow put upon the benighted traveller. At a still later period of European history, when education had been much more widely spread, in the great cry against witchcraft, these superstitions * See our article on Friar Rush and the Frolicsome Elves, in Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 35. At the same time as the monks exerted an influence over the superstitions of the people, in modifying them into apparent accordance with Christianity, these superstitions were also influencing the latter, and without doubt gave rise to that multiplicity and multiformity of demoniacal agency which pervades the monkish legends. In their system the whole world was believed to be peopled with innumerable hordes of devils, who possessed only a certain degree of power, which they used in tormenting, seducing, and misleading mankind. Dis. eases were often the effect of their malignity, and conflagrations and numerous fatal accidents were commonly supposed to be brought about by their agency. They also exerted an influence over the elements, and caused storms, floods, and even greater convulsions of nature. The monks sometimes invented strange stories to account for the composition in the proper names of our influence which the devils thus exerted, forefathers, as Eormenrad, Eormenburh, because they were not aware of the real Eormenhild, &c. As early as the time of source from which they had been adopted. Tacitus, a German name was Hermunduri. An inedited English poet of the thirteenth We have met with an instance where an century, after explaining in a popular man- Anglo-Saxon prince gave to all his four ner the nature of thunder and lightning, daughters names beginning with Eormen. proceeds to show how it happens to cause It is also found in the composition in the so much mischief. When Christ suffered names of plants, &c. as Eormen-leaf, a death, he says, he bound the devil, and name found in one of the old glosses for the broke down hell-gates in order to let out malva-erratica. The head seat of the worthose who suffered there. His visit was ship of this god was the district about attended with such terrible thunder, that Lower Saxony, where his name was in the devils have been afraid of thunder ever modern times preserved in nursery rhymes; since; and if any of them happen to be as, for example, the following, which is pecaught in a storm, they fly, as quick as culiar to Saxon Hesse: wind, and kill men and destroy trees, &c. which they meet in their way. This is the reason that people are killed in a storm.* "Hermen, sla dermen, (Grimm, p. 211.) "Hermen, strike harp, Will hang Hermen up." As we have just observed, it required all the masterly skill of a Grimm to reduce the scattered and often apparently discordant materials, which such authorities have left us for the history of the mythology of the Teutonic tribes, into order and system; to show their analogies and connections with each other; to snatch facts from beneath the adventitious garb which time and error had given them; to make ceremonies and super stitions of a later period guide back to the substance of which they were only the shadow. This is what James Grimm has undertaken, and he has done it completely and satisfactorily. His Deutsche Mytholo gie is a store-house of facts, and of discov-roads, the Erming-street (which Somner is given to one of our great ancient eries, relating to every part of this curious subject. The first eleven chapters (something more than 200 pages of the book) are devoted to that branch of the subject which, with the exceptions of a few stray traces, belonged more exclusively to the period when Paganism reigned undisturbed over the minds of our forefathers. They treat of the gods and goddesses of their temples, their priests, and their worship. One of these, Irmen, the Eormen of the AngloSaxons, the same name that the Romans called Arminius, has an important connec tion with our own national antiquities. Like all the names of the Saxon gods and heroes, that of Eormen is very frequently used in We subjoin the passage for the sake of its quaintness: Ye mowe sigge whan thundre is menging of fur and wete, anon, And debrusede helle gates, with thundre thider he com: Of thundre hi beoth so sore agast that hi nute whoder fleo, Grimm thinks, with much probability, that this rhyme is part of some old song on the destruction of the great temple of Irmen (the Irmenseule), by the Frankish emperor Charles. What, however, is the most interesting to us, is the circumstance that the very absurdly derives from Here-man-stræt, that the name of another of these great via strata militaris.) It also seems probable ways, the Watling-street, has a similar derithe same name of alling-street was forvation. And, what is particularly curious, merly given to the milky way "Chaucer (House of Fame, 2, 427) describing that region of the heaven, says:— "Lo there (quod he), cast up thine eye, the whiche men clepe the milky way, "In the Complaynt of Scotland, p. 90, it is said of the comet: "it aperis oft in the quhyt circle, callit circulus lacteus, the quhilk the marinalis callis Valantstreit." In the Virgil of Gawin Douglas, p. 85: "Of every sterne the twynkling notis he, that in the still hevin move cours we se, Arthurys house, and Hyades, betaikning zane, |