Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/199

 Rh We shall soon see, I think, that its atmosphere was not within the Christian fold. Jamieson remarks, in an off-hand manner, that extreme unction with blood was in use among the Goths long before the introduction of Christianity, but I have failed to find any authentic justification for this statement. It will be observed, however, that it was with "a bright red liquor" that the unction of the extremities was performed in our tale.

II. We may next take the notion contained in the curious word widershins. In my book I adopted a friend's suggestion that this word is derived from the words wider, against, and shine, "the course of the sun". For this I have been taken to task by my friend Mr. J. Gollonez in the Academy, who informs us, with an appalling array of Teutonic learning, that it is rather from wider, and a word sinn, equivalent to "sense", but the very existence of which in English has to be assumed ad hoc; so that the word simply means " contrariwise". On my pointing out that this does not explain the sh in "widershins", nor the special sense "opposite to the sun's course", Mr. Gollonez allows that "shine" had some influence on the word as a folk-etymology. "'Twas Tweedledum," I said. "No," says Mr. Gollonez, "'tis Tweedledee, with only an infusion of Tweedledum." But that etymology is so exact a science, one would feel tempted to smile.

But whether "contrariwise" or "counterclockwise", as the mathematicians say, the idea attached to zvidershins is ancient, though not archaic. It points to a time of opposition between Christendom and paganism. To do things in a way opposite to the Church way was to league oneself with the enemies of the Church. Hence the door of the Dark Tower opens to him that has gone round it three times widershins, just as the Devil appeared to those who said the Paternoster backwards. This element in the story points, then, to a time when Christianity was introduced into these islands, and had the upperhand.

III. Yet there are, seemingly, elements in it which must