Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/287

 The Ancient Teutonic Priesthood. 275

It may, however, be urged that it is unsafe to form such a conclusion as this on what is mainly negative evidence. The apparent absence of prophetic claims on the part of the priest may be due to the poverty of our information. It must be seen, therefore, whether the view here put forward is in harmony with the evidence of later times. Direct evidence on this point is only to be obtained in the North, for elsewhere the native literature does not begin until all reminiscences of heathen society have vanished. The Northern evidence will be discussed in the next section. In the meantime, however, there is some indirect evidence which tends to confirm this view. In the sub- divisions of the tribe the temporal leader seems to have held a semi-priestly position. Among many tribes, espe- cially the Franks, the chief sub-division was the hundred. This body formed a unit for military purposes, and had, like the tribe itself, its own meetings for the administration of justice. Each hundred had a leader of its own, who, in Prankish annals, is called centenarius or tribunus, and in the native language hunno or cotinc} Now this last word, cotinc, i.e. goding, is a derivative of god, and can hardly have meant anything else than * priest.' How such a name could come into use may be seen from the history of the Icelandic ^c(f/; the local leader must in heathen times have had priestly functions. Again the ' princeps,' in his judicial capacity, seems to bear a semi-priestly character. We have seen that the guardianship of the tribal law was one of the chief cares of the priests. But the expo- sition and interpretation of the law in district and village assemblies was the business of the princeps. This custom survives in the ancient laws of the English, where it is laid down that the exposition of the secular law in the shire- moot is the duty of the aldorman? It is for ignorance of

' Cf. Schroder, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte,^ ^. 31, n. 18. -Edgar, iii., § 5; cf. Stubbs, Constitutional History, i., p. 134. T Z