Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/86

Rh scooping up water in the hollow of her hand, pouring it over her head, and it fell down in drops of pearl. The comb and the falling drops are all tokens that this White Lady was no other than Frî.

If I were to give all the stories of White Ladies that exist, I would fill a thick volume; but they all derive from the one source indicated. The White Lady, as in the case of the Hohenzollerns, is a death-token, because Frija is a death-goddess, to whom go the souls of the departed. A woman was once gathering sticks near one of the castles of the Hohenzollems, named Schalksburg, when she missed her little son. After long search she found him and rebuked him for straying. ‘Do not scold, mother,’ said he; ‘a beautiful lady in white took me on her arm, and she gave me this wild rose.’ He showed his mother a pink dog-rose. She took the child home, and put the flower in water. After three days the rose withered, and with its withering the little boy was dead.

Saturday is the only day of the week that may take its name from a classic deity. In Italian it is Sabbato, Samedi in French, Sabado in Spanish and Portuguese, Samstag in German, formed out of the Latin Sabbatum; and this is from the Hebrew describing the day as