Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/307

 The Ancient Teutonic Priesthood. 295

four pieces, each of which was howe-laid in a different region.^

The cult of Fro, though by far the most important of these ancestral cults, does not by any means stand alone. There can be little doubt that Skioldr must once have occupied among the Danes a position somewhat similar to that of Fro among the Swedes. In extant documents he is not often referred to as a god, but the importance of his cult may be estimated by the long continuance of the name, Skioldungar, as a designation for the Danes.'^ I suspect also that the origin of the Balder-myths is to be found in a tribal cult, though it is difficult to fix its locality. At any rate, the existence of two independent traditions, the one favourable, the other hostile to Balder, seems best to be explained on this hypothesis. It is not unlikely that the cults of Ullr and Heimdallr had a similar origin.

Cults of the same kind were known also on the Continent. In the Old Saxon Renunciation Formula, the convert is called upon to renounce Thunaer, Woden, and Saxnot. The last name is identical with the name Seaxneat, which stands at the head of the royal genealogy of Essex. We can scarcely go wrong in regarding this personage as a tribal god of the Saxons.

Most of the other English royal houses traced their descent through Woden to a certain Geat, of whom Asser [ad init.) says that he was worshipped long ago by the pagans as a god. He seems to be the same individual who is represented in Deor, 15 f., as robbed of all sleep by his passionate love.'^

Heligoland was dedicated to a god Fosite.^ This name is never met with elsewhere,^ and it seems likely that his cult was purely local.

Tacitus [Germ., 2) says that the Germans classified their race in three great divisions, Inguaeones, Herminones, and

' Halfdanar s. Svarta (Heinisk?:), 9.

- Its occurrence in Beowulf shows that it must have been in use as early as the sixth century. We find the Danes called Scaldiiitgi in the Historia de S. Ciithberto, §7, 11 (Symeon of Durham, A'. S., i. pp. 200, 202). The myth is given in Beowulf; cf. also Ethelwerd, iii., 3: Malmesbury, ii., §116.

' A similar myth is told of Fro in Skirnismal.

■* Alcuin, Vita Wilkbrordi, c. 10.

Forseti, who in Gylf.., 32, is said to be Balder's son. The identification is based on the assumption of a scribal error in the Vita Wilkbrordi,
 * Some writers, however, have identified him with a Norwegian god