Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/308

 296 The Ancient Teutonic Priesthood.

Istaeuones,^ according to their descent from the three sons of Mannus. It seems likely therefore that worship was once paid to these brothers. Perhaps the cult of Irmin may be traced. When the elder Drusus was on his expedition to the Elbe in B.C. 9, he heard that there were ' pillars of Hercules ' in existence, but was prevented from obtaining more precise information by the difficulty of crossing the sea. From Tacitus' account [Germ., 34) it would seem that these pillars were rumoured to be in the direction of Holstein. Now this was, in the second century, the country occupied by the Saxons.- In the time of Karl the Great, that is to say some centuries after the westward migration of the Saxons, the chief object of their worship was a lofty wooden pillar in the neighbourhood of Eresburg. This pillar, which was called Irminsul {quod latine dicitur uniuersalis colutmia), was destroyed by Karl in the year 772.^ Is it not likely that the Saxons practised a similar cult in their earlier home, and that this was the source of the story mentioned by Tacitus ? This view is especially favoured by a passage of Widukind (i., 12). After describing a legendary victory of the Saxons, he proceeds : " In the morning they planted their eagle at the eastern gate, and piling up an altar of victory, they paid appropriate reverence to the objects of their worship, according to the superstition of their fathers, representing by name Mars, by the likeness of pillars Hercules, by position the Sun, who is called Apollo by the Greeks." By ' Mars,' he means Irmin, as is shown by the next sentence : " hence the view of those who hold that the Saxons are descended from the Greeks, has a certain amount of probability, for Mars is called Hirmin or Hermis in Greek." In spite of the confusion of native and Graeco-Roman mythology, this passage shows that the Irminsul was connected with the cult of a deity or hero named Irmin, and renders it probable that this was the god whom the Romans called ' Hercules.' The cult of Hercules was known also to the Cherusci, another tribe of the Irminones, though there is no evidence that

' These names are represented in several different forms in the MSS. of Tacitus and Pliny. The true form of the second is, of course, Eruiiuones.

' Ptol., 2, xi., II, 17; cf. G. Schlitte's instructive paper, Var Anglerne Tyskere ? (Flensborg, 1900), p. 47 ff.

3 Translatio S. Alexandri, c. 3, Enhardi Fuld. Annul., 772; for further references cf. J. Grimm, Deutsche Myth.* i., p. 96 f.