Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/97

 Reviews. 87

parallelism with Swipdseg (who indeed may be Herem6d under another name) as the eponym of the Dagling, or Dayling, clan. The English genealogies (cited also in Flatejar-b6c) gives to Here- m6d for father Itermon {^) and for grandfather Hrtethra, and there need really be no hesitation in acknowledging the identity of the Herem6d to whom Woden gave a helm and mailcoat with the Herem6d of Beowulf s Lay, of whom it is written —

. . hine mihtig god msegenes wynnum eafe^um stepte ofer ealle men for'5 gefremede —

an obvious allusion to Woden's signal favours to his son, purged of all heathenism in the true Alfredian manner. Herem6d is made to have lived earlier than the other great exile, Sigemund, and this agrees with the priority in the Hyndluli6d verse, and seems to point to Herem6d's peculiar connection with Woden- worship and the struggling beginnings of this cult which the Cheruscans were to make so notorious and powerful. We do not know Herem6d's clan ; he first appears to us at the Dane- king's court among the Scioldungs, his own pedigree running up to Sceaf in the O. E. genealogies. The Heath-bard hero Starcad, Storwerc's son, was also Woden's foster-son, and though his hard, tough, old-fashioned ways, contempt for southern civilization, honourable observance of chastity, and giant-like behaviour in general, smack of the old days, he is yet clearly, as Mr, Chadwick shows, a person whose fame can only have added to the glory of the god he served so earnestly, who was ever his patron and protector. Saxo (vi. 187) cites Teutonic knowledge of Starcad's experiences and feats. The explanation on p. 31 of Coifi's spear- throwing is not that of Baeda, who refers it explicitly to the priest wishing to break the tabu that forbad (as in the Icelandic Hof kept by Ingimund the old, a man of Gaut blood) the bearing of weapons or war-gear within the sacred teiiienos.

It is to be hoped that Mr. Chadwick will follow this beginning up with monographs on Tew and on Thunder, with a view to getting at fixed points in the developments of religious behefs and cults in the north of Europe. The connection of Woden and Brage (probably a mere by-name of the Friend of Mim) with song and the amours and other earthly adventures of Woden are worth considering, if only for the curious parallels to other myths they