Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/284

 262 Reviews.

from it seated, or set it down unemptied, or fail to follow its course round the hall with silent attention, under pain of being held responsible for breaking the chain whereby fresh life was to be drawn into the clan. With each round of the horn a certain viinne, or health, was drunk, three principal healths, or in some cases three times three, marking the usual course of the ceremony. Sometimes the drinking was accompanied by vows of future deeds, the ale being not only the pledge of good intentions but an actual means of setting in motion the forces necessary to the deed. This was especially the custom at funeral feasts, when the dead man's successor was expected to renew the family life by some such fresh departure. The boisterous joy shown on these occasions was a sign that the revitalization had been successfully accomplished, and not in any sense an incongruous element in an otherwise serious ceremony.

The word blot used in connection with the annual and special clan feasts is sometimes translated "sacrifice," but would perhaps be better rendered as " dedication," since it does not necessarily include the idea of slaying. In many cases no doubt a specially selected animal was killed to provide a common ceremonial meal, but we also hear of both animals and men being blotet'xw the sense of being dedicated to the gods. Torolf, Torsten, and Torgrim were all members of a- family in which the custom had been established of dedicating a son to the god Tor. One thus dedicated was known as a blotmand^ and was counted a source of strength to his clan. In another case a certain Floki dedicated three ravens to the gods before starting on a voyage to Iceland, in order that the birds might show him the way.

This is the nearest approach to any idea of propitiation of a personal deity that we can find in Herr Grtmbech's interpretation of early Germanic religion. If his interpretation is correct, the religious ceremonies of the northern races must be looked upon as special concentration-points in that, daily life which was not merely the aggregate of many individual lives, but one life animating a whole clan, from its earliest known ancestor to the last descendant worthy to escape the oblivion of the niding.

B. M. Cra'ster.