Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/455

Rh Christian festival. But as to the very existence of this goddess, the opinions of mythologists are divided; for she is referred to only by Bede, and by him only in one passage, to explain the name "Esturmonath", given to April by the early English. Not a trace of her existence is left among other Teutonic peoples; but as the Germans also speak of "Ostermoneth", whereas all surrounding nations use the Biblical "Pascha", Jacob Grimm gives the goddess a German name also, "Ostara", and labels her, upon etymological grounds, "the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, and whose meaning could easily be adapted to the resurrection day of the Christian God."

In Holtzmann's German Mythology she is also referred to as the goddess of Dawn. "The Easter Hare is unintelligible to me", he adds, "but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara."

Oberle also concludes that the hare which lay the particoloured Easter eggs was sacred to the same goddess. Among other authorities who have no doubts as to her