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JFiw-JdM flje
Ortass of Jobe.
Familiarity with the classical gods of Greece and Rome is considered a
matter-of-course accomplishment in polite education. To show ignorance
on that point, would render a person liable to be placed in the Kimmerian
circle of outer barbarians. But how few are there who have even so
much as a faint notion of the Germanic Pantheon, in which the creed of
that race was once embodied, from which Englishmen have in the main
sprung! “ Bay after day, as the weeks run round,” says the author of
Words and Places, the Rev. Isaac Taylor—“we have obtruded upon our
notice the names of the deities who were worshipped by our pagan fore
fathers. This heathenism is indeed so deeply ingrained into our speech that
we are accustomed daily to pronounce the names of Tiu, Woden, Thunor,
Frea, and Saetere. These names are so familiar to us that we are apt to
forget how little is really known of the mythology of those heathen times.”
Sun- and star-worship was, according to Roman testimony, among the
earliest forms of creed of the Germanic tribes. The dies Solis, and the
dies Luna, had therefore no difficulty in being translated into a Sun-day
and Moon- or Mon-day. In Tuesday we have the name of the Germanic
god of war, Tyr, Tiu, or Ziu—in some Teutonic dialects also called Era
or Erich, the root of which word is no doubt the same as in the Hellenic
Ares. Hence Tuesday, in High German Pinstag, is in some Alemannic
and Bavarian districts called Zistig, Erschtag, or Erichstag. Wodan, the
All-father, furnishes the name for Wednesday. Thursday is derived from
the God of Thunder. Friday represents the day of the Germanic Venus.
In Saturday, the derivation of which was formerly traced to Saturnus, a
god Saetere is probably hidden—that name being, to all appearance, an
aZius for Loki, or Lokko, the evil-doing god, of whose malicious mind the
Edda gives so graphic an account in the song called “ The Banquet of
Oegir” [Oegisdrekka e^a Lokasennai)—a Titanic satire upon the dwellers
in Asgard.
If we look over the topography of all countries in which the Germanic
race dwells, or through which it has passed in the course of its migrations,
what deep imprints do we find of its ancient creed in the very appellations
of dwelling-places ! The God of War ; the All-father who rules the winds
and the clouds; the God of Thunder; the Goddess of Love ; the deity
who represents insidious mischief and destruction—they are all to be met
with, not only in Germany, Scandinavia, and other Continental lands, but
on English soil, too, where Tewesley, Tewin, and Dewerstone; Wanborough, Wednesbury, Woodnesborough, Wansdike, and Woden Hill;
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
Thundersfield, Thurscross, and Thurso; Frathorpe, Fraisthorpe, and
Freasley ; Satterleigh, and Satterthwaite, in all probability bear -witness to
a decayed cultus. Even so Balderby and Balderton ; Easterford, Easterleake, and Eastermear ; Hellifield, Hellathyrne, and Helagh, are no doubt
referable to the worship of Balder, the god of light and peace; of Eostre,
or Ostara, the goddess of Spring; of Hel, the mistress of the underworld.
And again, when in this country we meet with places called Asgardby and
Aysgarth, we have no difficulty in referring them to Asgard, the Germanic
Olympus.
Still, with all these traces of a pagan religion—which had its grandeur
and even some traits of charm—strewn thickly around us, how many are
there who think it worth while to read the thoughts of their own ancestors
in the mythic system so amply elaborated by them ? Among a large class
of people of highly cultivated mind, where are the readers of the powerful
text-book of heathen Germanic religion ? where the students of that folk
lore in which precious fragments of ancient creed are embedded, even as
glittering shells, of brilliant hue, are concealed beneath the incrustated
slime of the sea ?
Yet, on the mere plea of poetical enjoyment, an extended knowledge
of these subjects might be urged. Assuredly—as Mannhardt puts it, who
with Simrock, Kuhn, Schwarz, and others, has ably and laboriously
continued the immortal labours of Grimm, and of the many Norse scholars
—there is not, in the Germanic world of Gods, the perfect harmony and
plastic repose of the Olympian ideals of Greece. But their forms and
figures tower in lofty greatness through the immensity of space; and if
they are not so well rounded off as the deities of the later Greek epoch—
if they are somewhat apt to float, before the mind’s eye, like fantasticallyshaped storm-clouds, or like bright-coloured visions of dawn and sunset,
they are, on the other hand, less liable to be taken for mere idols of ivory,
brass, and stone.
Can it be said, however, that there is a lack of poetical conception in
the figure of Wodan, or Odin, the hoary god of the clouds, who, clad in
a flowing mantle, careers through the sky on a milk-white horse, from
whose nostrils fire issues ? Is there a want of artistic delineation in
Freia, who changes darkness into light wherever she appears—the
goddess with the streaming golden locks, and the siren voice, who hovers
in her snow-white robe between heaven and earth, making flowers sprout
along her path, and planting irresistible longings in the hearts of men ?
Do we not see in bold and well-marked outlines the figure of the redbearded, steel-handed Thor, who rolls along the sky in his goat-drawn car,
and who smites the mountain giants with his magic hammer ? Are these
dwellers in the Germanic Olympus mere spectres, without distinct con
tour ? And if their strength often verges upon wildness ; if their charms
are sometimes allied to cruel sorcery—are they not, even in their uncouth
passions, the representatives of a primitive race, in which the pulse throbs
with youthful freshness ?
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601
Again, what a throng of minor deities—surpassing in poetic conception
even Hellenic fancy—have been evolved by the Teutonic mind out of all
the forces of nature! Look at the crowd of fairies, and wood-women,
and elfin, and nixes, and dwarfs, and cobolds, that dance in the moon
light, and whisk through the rustling leaves, or dwell enchanted in trees,
or hide in glittering mountain-caves, or waft enthralling songs from
beneath the water, or bustle day and night through the dwellings of man!
The Greeks had all, or nearly all, this—for the elements of mythology
are the same in all Aryan lands : but there is a greater depth in the
corresponding Teutonic tales : they coil themselves round the heart like
invisible threads ; they seem so familiar and homely, and yet lead the
imagination into a strange dreamland.
Then, what a dramatic development Germanic mythology has ! The
Hellenic gods sit in ambrosian quiet in their lofty abodes ; they are
eternal gods, inaccessible to the corroding power of Time. True, there
are some faint indications of a final change when Jupiter himself is to
make place for a juster ruler. But, in the main, the deities of classic
antiquity live on in an unbroken, immortal life ; they are, as it has been
aptly said, like so many statues ranged along a stately edifice, each statue
perfect in itself—no idea of action, of tragic complication, arising out of
the whole.
How different is the Germanic view of the Universe! There, all is
action, struggle: and the world of gods itself is from the very beginning
destined to a catastrophe.. So long as the Aesir last, they are regarded as
the girders and pillars of the Universe. But at the end of time, the world
is to be consumed in a mighty conflagration ; the heavens and the earth
stand in a lurid blaze; Asgard and Walhalla, the abodes of gods and
heroes, are doomed to destruction; the Universe breaks down in a
gigantic crash :—
The sun darkens ;
Earth in Ocean sinks ;
From Heaven fall
The bright stars.
Fire’s breath assails
The all-nourishing Tree ;
' Towering flames play
Against Heaven itself.
That cataclysm shall be preceded by—
An axe-age, a sword-age ;
Shields shall be cloven—
A wind-age, a wolf-age,
Ere the world sinks !
Only after this terrible convulsion shall have ended, will there be
introduced a new and peaceful reign, with eternal bliss. Then the white
god of peace, whose death Loki had encompassed, will triumphantly
29—5
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
return. In the Voluspa, the prophetess foresees the coming of that
golden age—
She sees arise,
A second time,
Earth from Ocean,
Beauteously green ...
Unsown shall
The fields bring forth,
All evil be amended ;
Balder shall come,
Hoder and Balder,
The heavenly gods!
A mythic system of such poetic sublimity is as much worth being
studied as that of classic antiquity, or as the Hindoo Pantheon, where we
meet with the germs of the pagan religion of all Aryans. I have pro
posed to myself, in this present essay, to treat especially of Freia, who, in
Norse mythology, appears already divided into two distinct figures,
namely: Frigg, the consort of Odin; and Freyja, the goddess of love:
whilst among the Germans, properly speaking, Freia combines the
characters of Juno and of Venus—the motherly and the erotic element.
It may be prefaced here that, in the Norse system, a duodecimal series
of gods and goddesses is clearly discernible, to whom the figure of the
fiendish Loki is to be added. Germany, so rich in tales which contain the
ancient deities under a strange disguise, has in all probability had the same
duodecimal system of polytheism. Laborious researches strongly tend to
establish that hypothesis as a fact. .1 will not enter here more deeply into
this point to show the scientific mode of procedure, but will only quote a
passage from Max Muller’s work, which bears upon it. “ It might seem
strange, indeed,” he wrote, i£ that so great a scholar as Grimm should
have spent so much of his precious time in collecting his Mahrchen, if
those Mdlivchen had only been intended for the amusement of children.
When we see a Lyell or Owen pick up pretty shells and stones, we may
be sure that, however much little girls may admire these pretty things,
this was not the object which these wise collectors had in view. Like the
blue, and green, and rosy sands which children play with in the Isle of
Wight, those tales of the people, which Grimm was the first to discover
and collect, are the detritus of many an ancient stratum of thought and
language, buried deep in the past. They have a scientific interest.”
Out of a mass of such popular tales and traditions, the fair form of the
German Venus may be reconstructed with a great degree of certainty.
There is good ground for believing that the deities whom we afterwards
find in Asgard, gradually arose out of an elementary worship—that, like other
pagan gods, they are simply the result of a successive anthropomorphic
condensation of ideas connected with the worship of the forces of Nature,
and with cosmogonic speculations. That historical elements entered into
the formation of their divine images, I readily acknowledge. In fact, it
seems to me most probable that there is a mixed origin of all mythic
�FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OE LOVE.
603
figures. At any rate, the worship of the forces of Nature appears to be
the prevailing element in their composition ; and thus the first glimpse we
obtain of Freia, or Freia-Holda, shows her under the shape of a storm
goddess—that is, as the female counterpart of Wodan, the ruler of the
cloudy region, who was originally conceived as the storm himself—as the
dtma, or Great Breath, which pervades the universe.
Now, it speaks much for an early culture of the heart among the
Germanic race, that the vague idea of a storm-goddess should have so
swiftly become refined, as it actually did, into the form of Freia-Holda,
whose very name indicates friendliness, love, and benevolent grace. The
process of shaping and polishing the images of the other divinities of the
cloudy sky was a longer one. For a considerable time they seem to have
retained their floating and somewhat less circumscribed character. Even
when they had assumed that form which, under a more developed reign of
art, would have rendered them fit for sculptured representation, popular
fancy exhibited a marked inclination towards dissolving them, ever and
anon, into their aboriginal chaotic substance. Not so with Freia. Round
her, also, the most variegated myths clustered. Moreover, the various
attributes conferred upon her, were apt to give rise to a number of special
figures, ranging—extraordinary to say—from the typification of charms to
that of hideous witchcraft, from beauty to that of its very contrast.
Nevertheless, there is, as with the Greek deities, a clear, unmarred, central
picture, which shows Freia-Holda under an aspect of well-marked, noble
beauty. The mind of the people who revered her, fondly dwelt upon the
portraiture of her attractions and virtues, always adding new traits, and
elaborating it with fresh touches. Hence the mythic circle which
surrounds the worship of Freia, is in every respect one of the richest in
German folk-lore.
Lapse of time and local tradition have certainly given us a multiform
variety of Freia-Holda images. The Gods of Homer and Hesiod were not
exactly those of ¿Eschylus and Euripides. In the same way, the Germanic
Pantheon was not at all times fitted with the identical forms. The tribal
differences among the German race also went far to give a different
colouring to the original character of a deity. But even as we have a welldefined idea of the character and attributes of Jupiter, of Juno, of Mars,
of Venus, quite irrespective of the special myths, which vary considerably
according to time and locality, so also do we possess an average image
of Wodan, of Thunar, but most particularly of Freia.
Whilst other deities are heard in the tempest that bends the rustling
tree-tops of primeval forests, or hurriedly pass along the vault of Fleaven :
the Goddess of Love gladdens more visibly the glance of men, as she
glides slowly over flowery meadows, amidst a rosy sheen.
She is represented as being of entrancing beauty, with long-flowing,
thick, golden hair of great heaviness. Her body is snow-white; she is
©lad in a white garment, which spreads a rosy effulgence. On her
forehead hangs a single tangled lock of hair. She is covered, over her
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OE LOVE.
white robe, with a light veil, from head to foot. Round her neck she
wears a chain of shining jewels, from which a light streams forth, as of the
dawn of morn. Rose-bushes and willow-trees are her favourite resorts :
willow-trees overhanging crystal lakes. Her voice, full of melodious song,
enthralls men. Rs heavenly strains transport the listener to spheres of
unknown bliss ; he is drawn along, in rapture, in spite of his will. Whereever she walks, flowers sprout up on her path, and the merry sound of
golden bells is heard tinkling. A radiance of ethereal worlds follows
her footsteps. In the depth of night, the wanderer who has lost his way,
guides his walk after her beneficent apparition. The fields over which she
passes, are blessed with fruit.
About Twelfth-night time—that is, at the winter solstice—when the
German tribes were accustomed to celebrate one of their sun-worship rites,
Freia-Holda visits the households, looking after the industry of the maidens
at the spinning-wheel. She is the goddess of amorousness, but also of
housewifely accomplishments. She has a virgin-like appearance; in her
qualities, however, the two womanly elements are blended.
Her
residence is beyond the azure skies, in a sunny region behind the clouds ;
limpid waters divide her reign from the outer world. There she dwells
in a garden, where fragrant flowers and luscious fruits grow, and the song
of birds never ceases.
On the meadows, and amidst the foliage of that garden, the souls
of the Unborn—whose protectress Freia is—are playing their innocent,
unconscious games, gathering food from the chalices of flowers, until the
heavenly messenger comes who calls them into human birth. In that
garden, there is also the Fountain of Rejuvenescence—the Jungbrunnen
or Quickborn, where the sources of life are incessantly renovated, and
decrepit age once more changes into blooming youth.
Such, with a few strokes, is the image of the Goddess whose worship
was most deeply rooted among our forefathers—so much so, that it was
found impossible to overthrow her reign except by a substitution which
preserved the substance of her attributes.
Indeed, the German Mariolatry of the middle ages is to a large degree
traceable to these previous heathen customs. There are a number of
highly coloured hymns to the Virgin, the imagery of which is almost
literally taken from similar Freia songs, fragmentary pieces of which latter
have come down to us in children’s rhymes. Many of these hymns would
be perfectly unintelligible if we did not know the poetical surroundings of the
pagan goddess. Freia, the Queen of the Heavens, the sorrowing mother
of Balder, that god of peace who met with his death through the traitor
Loki, was transfused into the Mater dolorosa, the ‘ ‘ Mother of God ” of
the Roman Church; but in this transfusion she retained much of her
original character. However, in order to create a division-line, a notion
was fostered that Freia’s day, Friday—originally the favourite marriageday—was an unlucky day ; a superstition which prevails to this moment
arqong large numbers of uneducated people. Nevertheless, there are some
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605
Woks and corners where, even now, Friday is regarded as the proper
wedding-day—clearly a remnant of the old religion.
It was “ das ewig Weiblichef the worship of which the Germanic race
tenaciously clung to, though under strange forms of superstition. Out of
this frame of mind grew up the chivalric view about womankind, which in
Germany had its lyric representation in the poetry of the minnesinger.
The fervour with which that view was held, often assumed the shapeof an abstract principle, leading to the most ardent evolutions of thought
and sentiment, quite irrespective of individual passion and amatory
reality. It would be an error to suppose that aristocratic chivalry had
created this whole world of woman-worship. It was a trait characteristic
of the Germanic races as such—even at a time when they were only
just emerging into historical light. The early Roman authors mention
the veneration in which womankind was held by our forefathers. The
ancient Germans ascribed to woman a kind of sacred and prophetic
character.—(Tacitus, Germ., cap. viii.) And, no doubt, the institution
of monogamy, which was but occasionally broken through by the aris
tocratic chieftains ; the influence exercised not only by the priestesses
and prophetesses, such as Aurinia and Veleda, but by the German women
in general : an influence of persuasion, of wise counsel, and of heroic,
patriotic conduct, not an influence obtained by equality of political rights
■—all this points to the fact of an early development of more tender
sentiments, of which the Freia cultus was the religious outcome.
The name of the goddess appears in different forms, as Freia, Friia,
Frea, Frigga, Frikka, Frikk. It is traceable to a root meaning “to
love.” In Gothic, frijon means “ to love; ” hence the German
“Freund,” friend; hence, perhaps, also “freien,” to woo, and Frau.
In Low German, the verb “friggen ” is still extant, in the sense of “ to
love.” Thus Freia is a loving, befriending divinity; and through the
fertilising character,' naturally connected with these qualities, as well as
through the sunny effulgence which envelops her attractive picture, she
easily merges into the form of Ceres. There are indications, at least, that
she may have been revered also as a goddess of agriculture, and that
healing powers were attributed to her. Her sister was Voila (Fulness),
of whom we get a glimpse in the famous incantation song of Merseburg
*
—a divinity evidently typifying the abundance of Nature.
I have endeavoured, out of a confusing wealth of legends, to draw
the form of Freia in clear colours, choosing that type which the goddess
must have assumed at a certain period in the early life of the German
nation, when vague conceptions about the struggle of elementary forces
had been fused into more plastic expression, whilst the process of decay
and deterioration had not yet set in, which afterwards reduced the figure
of Freia-Holda to that of a mere sorceress, nay, even hag. But how,
* It begins with the words :— •
Phol ende Uodan
Vuoron zi holza,
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
it will be asked, was the goddess of love and domestic virtue wrought from
the crude idea of a divinity of the clouds who flits along the horizon ?
As the wife of the storm-god Wodan, she is, in the early form of the
tale, chased by him, even as the cloud is by the wind. Minor cloud
goddesses, or cloud-women, environ her; in some myths they are con
ceived as horses or swans.
They are the swift-running, fast-sailing
clouds, of sombrer or of more silvery hue. The flight of the goddess from
before her consort, and the representation of her companions as mares,
remind us of the Hindoo myth, in which a similar female deity flies before
the Ruler of the skies in the shape of a mare.
Soon the tale assumes a more poetic form; It is now no longer the
Ruler of the skies who chases his stormy spouse ; but, by an inversion not
unfrequent in the process of mythological formation, it is henceforth she
who wanders, wailing and in tears, over hill and dale in search of her
long-lost lover. The lamenting wind and the rain, which were connected
with the notion of a tempest-deity, are here converted into the plaints and
the weeping of the longing goddess. The howling storm softens into
loving grief, and the somewhat dark and dim deity which represented the
first, necessarily undergoes a corresponding transfiguration.
The same is the case with her cloudy retinue. The white and silvery
specks on the welkin come to the foreground; from swans, under which
form they were at first conceived, they change into swan-virgins. Nor do
they career or sail along the sky any more. They now act as the
embellishing suite of the loving goddess, who, after having scarcely met
with her eagerly-sought friend, loses him once more, and has, Isis-like, to
start on a new heart-rending peregrination. It would appear that the
ever-repeated change of the junction and the separation of the productive
and receptive faculties in nature is here shadowed forth under the guise
of loving satisfaction and grief. In this gradual alteration of imagery,
the successive humanization of the character of the myth is clearly
discernible.
Later on—I will here remark in passing—when the period of mythic
decay arrives, the early form and'character of the swan-virgins is entirely
lost. Of the swan, nothing then remains but the foot, which is tacked on
to the body of an elf, or even a gnome. The tales in which swan’s feet
occur, are very valuable for the attentive inquirer. The imprint of these
birds' feet serves as a trace leading back to the sanctuary of the Teutonic
Aphrodite, and thus helps to reconstruct our knowledge of the once wide
spread cultus.
To look upon the sky as a “ sea of ether,” as a“ heavenly ocean”—
samudra in Sanskrit—is an ancient Vedic notion. Freia, who resides
beyond the azure sky, at the bottom of a crystal well, is, however, in
more than one sense a water-goddess, for she belonged originally to that
circle of Vana-deities who in Norse tradition are said to have been
engaged in a long and fierce struggle with the Asa-gods, until peace was
concluded between the rival and hostile dynasties of gods, when Freia, with
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607
some others, was received into Asgard. Whether this tale refers to two
different cosmogonic systems held by different races in pre-historic times,
or whether it marks a religious struggle among separate Germanic tribes,
it is impossible now to decide. But the original character of Freia-Holda
as a water-goddess of the Vana-circle is still apparent in the fairy tale,
current to this day among the German peasantry, about 11 Frau Hoile,”
who is represented as walking up a hill with a golden, bottomless pail, a
kind of Danaides tub, from which water incessantly flows.
In another tale, Frau Hoile is said, when it snows, to have spread and
shaken her white mantle. It is the white robe which the Germanic god
dess once wore. Again, when white, shimmering cloudlets—called to this
day “lambs” (Lämmer) in German—make their appearance, Hoile is
said to drive her flock.
The former character of the protectress of
agriculture appears in this form of the legend.
The sunny attributes of the original water-goddess linger in another
legend, which says that when there has been rain during the whole week,
it is expected to cease on Friday—Freia’s day—when Frau Hoile has to
dry her veil, which she spreads for that purpose over rose-bushes and
willows, the trees anciently sacred to that northern Venus. In the same
way, the conception of Freia as a solar deity lingers in a Low German
children’s rhyme, which, though slightly deteriorated, describes with
wonderful fidelity the heavenly abode of the goddess in all its typical
particulars. In that rhyme, the water-carrying goddess, who walks up
the hill with the golden bucket, is called “ the little sun,”—
Wo dat sönneken den berg herop geit.
In German children’s rhymes, tales, plays, and dances, the last shreds
and fragments of the old heathen system of religion are wonderfully pre
served. The rhymes constitute a sort of poetised mythology for the use
of the nursery. They are the traditionary oral catechism of a creed which
is no longer understood. The Freia worship ; the adoration of the Nomes,
the weird Sisters of Fate ; the belief in a coming downfall of Asgard;—
all these pagan notions have left their vestiges in childish ditties. The
quaint Cockchafer ditties, to which I have yet to allude, are among the
most important in this respect. It is often difficult to sort out the mere
dross which has crept in by the misapprehension of words, leading to new
associations of ideas, in which the original meaning of the myth disap
pears. Yet these infantile songs, often apparently devoid of sense, are a
rich mine, from which ancient forms of religious thought may be dug out.
One of these rhymes runs thus :
Mutter Gottes thut Wasser tragen
Mit goldenen Kannen
Aus dem goldenen Brünnei.
Da liegen Viel' drinne.
Sie legt sie auf die Kissen,
Und thät sie schön wiegen
Auf der goldenen Stiegen.
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
The “ golden buckets ” of Freia are, in this ditty, already carried by
the “ Mother of God.” The mother of Balder, of the transfixed deity
■who has died, but who will hereafter introduce a millennium of peace, is,
under Roman Catholic influence, changed into Mutter Gottes. But her
heathen paraphernalia still cling to her. She still resides in the golden,
or sunlit, well. She is still the water-goddess; and “the many that are
lying ” in her celestial abode, behind the azure waves of the ethereal
ocean, are still the Unborn who dwell in Freia’s fragrant domain.
If we follow that train of ideas, in which Freia was regarded as a
representative of warmth, of light, of fire, we find it fabled that the
souls of the Unborn, when awaiting their human embodiment, are carried
earthwards in flashes of lightning. The soul, in other words, was con
sidered a heavenly ray or flash. In connection with this idea is the
sanctification of many things and beings who, on account of their colour
being that of lightning,—namely, red,—are received into the special
service of the Goddess of the Unborn. The red-billed and red-legged
stork and the red-winged lady-bird must here specially be mentioned.
They were once nearly worshipped. A halo of inviolability still protects
in Germany the stork. The lady-bird also continues to be held, by
children at least, in some sort of friendly reverence.
The lady-bird was supposed to aid in carrying, on its red wings, the
souls of children to their terrestrial destination. The very name “ lady
bird” points to the former goddess: the “Lady” originally was the
Germanic Queen of the Heavens, for whom the Virgin Mary was afterwards
substituted. In a Low-German dialect, the lady-bird is called Mai-Katt
(May-cat), which name points to the time of the year that was sacred to
Freia, and to the cat, a team of whom drew the car of the goddess.
*
Other names are : Sonnenkalb, Sonnenkdfer, Sonnenhithnchen, SonnemcendKafer, bringing us back to Freia’s sunny domain. The lady-bird is also
called Marien-Kafer, from the Virgin Mary; or lastly, Herrgotts-Kdfer,
the Lord (Herrgott') being, in this case, substituted for the Lady, a trans
position frequently observable in mythology, the male and female forms of
the ruling spirit of the Universe (“ Woden ” and “ Frau Gaude ”) often
taking each other’s place.
There is a Suabian song, in which the lady-bird {Herrgotts-Moggela') is
called upon to fly into heaven, there to fetch, on a golden basin, a golden
baby. In other tales, children are supposed to come from a “hollow
tree ”—aus holdem Baum, or aus dem Ilollenbaum. This strange notion
of the origin of mankind from the vegetable reign, which appears in
* There is a children’s rhyme in the Austrian dialect, representing the cat as going
to Hollabrunn,—that is, the well of Holda—where she finds a baby “in the sun.”
The Freia-Holda worship, in its bearings upon a Neptunic and a solar cultus, is in
this verse given in a few quaint words :—
Hop, hop, Heserlmann!
Unsa Katz hat Stieferln an,
Rennt damit nach Hollabrunn,
Findt a Kindla in da Sunn!
�FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OE LOVE.
609
Wrious German doggrels, is to be met with also among the ancient Greeks,
aS the saying shows : “ ou yap airo bpvoQ tart iraXaityarov ovS’ airo irkrpriQ.” In
the “ hollow ” tree we have, however, unquestionably Holda’s, or Hoile’s,
¡tree, on whose branches the unborn sat.
We shall afterwards see how a similar deterioration of terms led to the
idea of Holda as a witch who was charming in the face, but hollow in the
back, similar to an excavated stem with gnarly bark. In Hessian trials of
witches, long after the middle ages, we read of “ FrawHolt ” under such a
description ; the name of Holda, Hoile, or Holt, having, by a double
assimilation of sounds, given rise to the comparison of the sorceress with
a hollow tree—holt or holz signifying wood or tree. The corruption of
words is, indeed, one of the most frequent sources of new mythical
formations.
Even as the lady-bird, so the stork also was in the service of Freia.
His red colours, too, made him the representative of lightning, of electricity,
of the principle of vivification. He helped in carrying the souls of the
unborn earthwards. His mythic name, therefore, was “Adebar” or
“ Odebar ”—carrier of children, bringer of souls. Even now, he has that
name in various German dialects ; but its meaning is obliterated or
obscured in the popular memory.
As the typification of the spark of heaven, the stork was connected
with sun-worship. Hence, he was doubly sacred to our forefathers,
and is still partly so to our village folk, who frequently place a wheel for
him on house-tops and chimneys, that he may the more commodiously
build his nest on them. In solar worship, the wheel particularlyrepresents
the orb of the sun. It is used as such in the solstice-fires (SonnenwendFeuer), which German peasants light to this day amidst great jubilation.
When the peasant boys of Upper Bavaria and the Tyrol roll their
tarred wheels, which are set on fire, in the dark night down the mountains,
making them describe most wonderful gyrations, they sing songs in honour
of their loves. There are set rhymes to that effect, which have been
handed down through generations, and in which, according to the occasion,
the name of the particular sweetheart has only to be inserted. The solar
8>nd the Aphroditean cultus of Freia were blended in early mythology;
the traces of this connection are yet visible in such boorish merryBiakings !
So late down as the sixteenth century, the Roman Church thought it
advisable to take the heathen myth of Freia’s well, within which the
unborn are playing, and of Adebar the bringer of children, under its own
protection. So-called Kindlein's-Brunnen, to which women proceeded, in
ftrder to drink the consecrated water, were erected, or changed into holy
places of the Catholic Church, in many towns and villages of Germany.
Bishop John, of Saalhausen, had a chapel built, in 1512, over one of
these old places of Freia worship. Numbers of women congregated there,
doing reverence to the “ holy and chaste virgin at the Fountain of Life ”
{Qu&ckbrunneri). The weather-vane of the chapel was a stork, who carried
�610
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
a child in his bill—even as is still to be seen in the toys of German
children, who are much given to the notion that a fresh arrival of a brother
or sister is due to the obliging stork.
The cockchafer, too, seems to have been a hallowed insect of yore. It
is called Mai-Käfer in German, from the period of the year when it gene
rally comes first out of the ground ; and that period, as said before, was
the sacred time of the Goddess of Love. German children have a custom
of placing that beetle on their left hand, to which they generally attach it
by a thread, and then they sing a verse the meaning of which has long
puzzled investigators. Mannhardt has collected quite a variety of such
verses, all taken direct from the lips of German boys, in order to prove
that they refer to that final catastrophe when the gods and their giant
antagonists are warring with each other, and the Asa-world collapses in a
fearful tumult and universal conflagration. All the rhymes collected until
now make it extremely probable that they refer to the danger which
envelops, and finally destroys, Holda’s reign. Still, Mannhardt was not
able to give any verse in which her name is distinctly traceable.
Now, in the same way, it had formerly been rendered very probable
that all the Holda myths were Freia myths ; Holda being simply one of
the appellatives of the Goddess, which had branched out into a well-nigh
identical form. For a while, the hypothesis of the original identity of the
two forms seemed unsubstantiated. At last, however, in a Latin manu
script preserved at Madrid, the name of the deity was discovered in the
form “ Friga-Holda,” when the substantial unity of the two mythic
figures was placed beyond doubt.
Even so, I believe I can supply the missing link in regard to the
curious Cockchafer Songs, which are of such high mythological interest.
I distinctly remember a ditty sung by children, in which the cockchafer is
bidden to fly to his father (presumably Wodan, the consort of FreiaHolda),who is said to be “ at war,” and to his mother who is “in Holler
land,” where a conflagration has broken out, which consumes Holler
land :—
Maikäfer, flieg’!
Dein Vater ist im Krieg!
Deine Mutter ist im Hollerland—
Hollerland ist abgebrannt!
Iuchhe1
The latter joyful exclamation may be supposed to be the Christian
“ Io triumphe," the utterance of joy over the destruction of the heathen
Asa-world. I need scarcely remind the reader that the song which is sung
in Germany about the cockchafer, is also sung in some parts of this
country about the lady-bird. (“ Lady-bird, lady-bird, hie thy way home !
Thy house is on fire I Thy children all roam ! ” Or : “ Lady-bird, lady
bird, fly away home ! Your house is on fire ! Your children will burn! ”
See, for instance, Jamieson’s Northern Antiquities.')
In the folk-lore still current in Germany, the name of “ Freia ” is only
�FREÏA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
611
preserved yet among the people of the Ukermark and the Altmark. Other
wise, we meet with it in some Suabian, Franconian, Alemannic, and Lower
Saxon designations of villages, and different places, where her worship
once flourished. Thus there are several Frickenhausen, situated near
lakes—quite in keeping with the myth which makes the Goddess haunt
the water, even as Aphrodite rose from the waves of the sea. In other
parts of Germany the goddess is called Holda ; Frau Gode, Gauden, or
Gaue (that is, Woden’s wife, the “W” being changed into “G”—even
as war, in old-German werra, becomes, in French, guerre'); or Frau
Hera, or Harke ; Mother Rose ; Perchta, or Bertha. All these seemingly
distinct fairy figures arose from the personification of Freia’s attributes
and appellatives.
There is a multiform mass of legends, of a mixed heathen and Chris
tian character, in which the image of Freia is recognisable under the
oddest masks. As “Mother Rose” she has been received into the
legendary circle of the Roman Church. But why, many will wonder,
should the Virgin pass under the name of Mother Rose ? I forego
entering into the etymological explanation, which traces that name to a
cognomen of Freia, and will only mention an old pagan sorcery song,
clearly referable to that goddess, which says :—•
Kam eine Jungfer aus Engelland;
Eine Rose trug sie in ihrer Hand.
This “Engelland” is not, as some misunderstand it, England, but
the land of the white elfs, the fairyland of Freia. The “ Jungfer,” or
Virgin, who reigns over it, became the Virgin Mary; and the favourite
flower of the German goddess of love was converted into a symbol of the
Madonna.
As Mother Rose, Freia appears in a Christianised garb. But under
the names of Holda, Gode, Hera, and Perchta, she preserves, in the
tales, her heathen character as a fay—in a good or an evil sense. Most
astonishing are the transformations she undergoes under these various
appellations. Even as the storm-god Wodan, who led the departed
heroes into Walhalla, became changed, after the introduction of Chris
tianity, into a wild huntsman who careers along the sky with his ghostly
retinue, so Freia-Holda also becomes a wild huntress, who hurries round
at night with the unfortunate souls. Through this same association with
hobgoblin devilry, she is converted into a Mother Haule, or Ilaule-mutter,
a howling utterer of mournful wails about the dead. By way of direct
contrast, the once white-robed goddess with the snow-white body changes,
as Hera, into a white dove, a typification of loving innocence. At a first
glance, such quid pro quo's and metamorphoses into the very opposite
would appear incredible; but he who has studied the effect of misapprehended words and sounds upon the untutored mind of man will not be
astonished at these changeling substitutions.
The way in which the souls of the unborn were supposed to be called
from Freia s garden, is to this day represented in various children’s games
�612
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
in Germany, by words and expressive mimicry.
In the Perchta, or
Bertha myths, that linger in some secluded valleys, the crowd of the
unborn still appear as a suite of elfs, called Heimchen, who follow the
goddess. The Perchta legends are of a somewhat wild—occasionally
Bacchantic and Korybantic—-character, in which the gloomy element is,
however, not wanting. The goddess, who once typified the purest beauty,
assumes in them rather motley and multiform shapes : there are beautiful
Perchtas as well as “ wild- Perchteln,” the latter with a satyr-like appear
ance, running about with dishevelled hair. The Bacchantic and Korybantic
character of the goddess appears even from a passage in Luther’s writings.
He calls her, not Perchta, but with her softer name, “Frau Hulda,”
makes a Dame Nature of her, who rebels against her God, and describes
her as “ donning her old rag-tag livery, the straw-harness, and singing
and dancing whilst fiddling on the violin ” (liengt um sick iren alten trewdelmarkt, den stroharnss, Jiebt an und scharret daher mit irer geigen). The
straw-harness may be supposed to symbolize the former character of the
Teutonic Cythere as a Ceres, a goddess of productiveness and fertility in
every sense.
Representations of the Perchta myth have until lately been going on,
at stated times of the year, among the peasantry of Southern Germany;
and are, no doubt, still in vogue here and there. Near Salzburg, a
“Perchtel” is represented, in such masquerades, with a sky-blue dress,
wearing a crown of tinkling bells, and singing in highly jubilant manner.
The goddess, or fairy, here shows something of a vulgivaga character; a
trait cropping up already in the Eddie Hyndlu-Song.
The decay of the Freia myth may be said to have begun when her
powers of entrancing men made her to be looked upon as a dangerous
sorceress, as the incarnation of witchcraft. Still, before the goddess
simply became a hag—an ole Moder Tarsclie, that is, Old Mother Sorceress
—popular fancy wove some charming legends about her magic qualities.
On the banks of the river Main, there are Hulli-steine, Holda’s stones, or
hollow stones, on which a fairy form sits at night, bewailing the loss of
her betrothed one who has left her. There she sits, sunk in sorrow,
shedding tears over the rock until it is worn down and becomes hollowed
out. In another Franconian tale, the bewitching fay sits on a rock in the
moon-light, when the bloom of the vine fills the mountains and the valleys
with sweet ffagrancy; she is clad in a white, shining garment, pouring
forth heart-enthralling songs. The children, in those parts of the country,
are warned not to listen to the seductive voice, but ardently to pray their
pater-noster, lest they should have to remain with “ Holli ” in the wood
until the Day of Judgment. From this legend, Heine took the subject
of his Lorelei song, transplanting it from the Main to the Rhine. Holda
appears, in this Franconian version, with faintly-indicated surroundings
of a Bacchic nature ; and her abode is described as “in the wood,
whither many pagan deities were relegated after Christianity had obtained
the upper-hand.
�FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
613
Some myths of later growth convert Freia into a “Venus ” who has
lost all the attributes of domestic virtue, connected with the earlier image
of the goddess ; nay, into a sort of grim Lakshmi, half Venus, half infernal
deity, who sits in a mountain cave, where there is much groaning of souls
suffering damnation. Other legends, though painting her as a she-devil,
do not depict the “ Venusinne ’’-grotto as a place of torment, but rather
as one of magic attractiveness, from which even the repentant sinner, who
has been allowed to leave it for a pilgrimage to Rome, cannot break loose
for ever.
This view of the abode of Venus we get in the famed
Tannhäuser legend, about which we possess various ancient poems, dating
from the fifteenth century.
The identity of the German Venus legends with the Freia-Holda
cycle is proveable from various facts. There is a “Venus-Berg” in
Suabia, situated close to a “ Hollenhof.” In a Swiss version of the
Tannhäuser song, Frau Venus is called “Frau Frene,” a name evoking
the memory of Frea or Freia. The IIorseel-Berg, near Eisenach, an old
place of Freia worship, was especially pointed out as containing the under
ground abode of Venus. And in the same way as Wodan’s wife, when
she left the mountain at midnight, as a wild huntress, with her army of
souls, was preceded by a grey-bearded man, the trusty Eckhart, who with
a white staff warned off all people not to obstruct the path of the goddess ;
so also Venus, when she leaves the mountain, is preceded by the trusty
Eckhart. The identity is therefore fully established.
To complete the picture of strange transformations, I ought to speak
of Freia-Bertha becoming the Ahn-frau and the ueisse Frau of German
princely families and royal castles. The presiding female deity of the
Asa-dynasty is changed into the ancestress of kings who, with the pride of
rulers by right divine, trace their pedigree to celestial origin. In the same
way, the white-robed goddess, who once exercised a powerful influence, is
metamorphosed into a spectral “ woman in white,” whose appearance
foretells the coming of great events, or is even a harbinger 'of royal death.
I will not treat here of the curious chapter of Berthas, ancestresses- of
kings, who were represented as swan-footed, flat-footed, large-footed, or
club-footed, a characteristic which brings us back to the bevy of swan
damsels who surrounded Freia. I will only, in conclusion, speak of the
strange transfiguration of Holda into a Hel, of a goddess of Love into
a goddess of Death, whose name afterwards furnished the designation for
the infernal region, or hell.
And here it is first to be observed that Hel, the Germanic mistress of
the under-world, originally was a mother of life, like Holda, as well as a
mother of death. Her natne, which comes from lielen or hehlen—in
Latin celare—indicates that she is a deity who works in darkness and
secrecy. Hence, she represents, in the beginning, the forces of nature
that are active beneath the hiding soil. Consequently, she is not, properly
speaking, destructive ; she rather aids in nature’s rejuvenation. She
typifies the idea of life emerging from death, and of death being only a
�614
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
transformation of life. In the Edda, Hel is half dark or livid, half of the
hue of the human skin (bld half en half me# horundur lit); similar to the
Hindoo Bhavani or Maha Kali, the mother of nature and life, the goddess
who creates and destroys, the representative of love and of death, whose
face alternately is radiant with beauty, like that of Aphrodite, or expressive
of hideous terrors. In her beneficent quality, Bhavani carries a lotos
flower in her hand, even as Freia the rose ; and the waters of the Ganges
murmur her praise, as crystal lakes may have done that of the Germanic
deity. In her destroying and avenging character, the Hindoo goddess is
Kali the bloodthirsty, who rides a hellish horse. So Holda is converted
into a fiendish Hel.
Thus the images of life and death, of creation and destruction, of
beauty and of horrors, touch each other in a mysterious twilight. It is
an idea which may be followed through many religious systems ; for is
not Apollo also, the sunny'god, a typification of the pernicious power as
well as of ideal beauty ? and does not his very name bear the trace of the
destructive force ascribed to him ? The deep meaning contained in these
contradictory combinations attaches also to the mythological fancies of our
ruder forefathers ; and though it may sometimes be difficult to grasp the
sense that is enclosed in the veiling legends, they have, irrespective of
the philosophical significance which they struggle to express, a poetical
merit of their own, often exhibiting a bold and many-coloured imagery,
and a power of fashioning forms, such as we are wont to admire in the
products of classic antiquity.
KARL BLIND.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Freia-Holda, the Teutonic goddess of love
Creator
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Blind, Karl [author]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 599-614 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the Cornhill Magazine 25 (May 1872). Attribution from Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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[Smith, Elder & Co.]
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[1872]
Identifier
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G5349
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Mythology
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Freia-Holda, the Teutonic goddess of love), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Freia-Holda
Germany
Goddesses
Mythology
Paganism