Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/276

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NOTES AND QUERIES. p* s. m. APRIL s, m

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The prose version renders the lines thus :

" Therewith the Shaker of the world, the girdler of the earth, struck the twain [the Aiantes] with his staff, and filled them with strong courage, and their limbs he made light, and their feet, and their hands withal."

MR. BRESLAR will scarcely find here the origin of " laying on of hands." We have the same verb KOTTTW in 'Iliad,' x. 513 :

3"

" And Odysseus smote them [the horses] with his bow, and they sped to the swift ships of the Achaians."

The stroke of Poseidon to the Aiantes and the stroke of Odysseus to the horses were applied with the same quickening intent and effect. K. M. SPENCE, D.D.

Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.

Since the appearance of my note I have had the good fortune to come across an article in the Contemporary Review for March, 1895, by Prof. Percy Gardner, 'The Descent to Hades,' which throws a flood of light upon my own queries. It would take more space than is allowable to quote from it in extenso ; but briefly Prof. Gardner contends, and appa- rently proves, that much that is mystical, inexplicable, esoteric, in the ' Iliad ' and the ' Oydssey ' is due to the interpolations of " Onomacritus the Orphic sage, who had a share in the collection and editing of the Homeric poems at the Court of Pisistratus." " Orphism," according to this authority, " the Greeks derived from Thrace, and the mysteries of Sabazius from Phrygia. They represent Pythagoras as iourneying into Egypt and the far East, and thence bringing back his theo- sophic lore." " Orphism," briefly, is a species of Kabbala, and bears the same relation to Homer that Kabbala in a modified sense bears to the Scriptures and the Oral Law. The Hagada is saturated with its subtleties.

One passage is so valuable that I venture to quote it bodily :

"In regard to Hebrew utterances as to the world beyond the grave one point is noteworthy. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul belongs not to the Jews, but to the Greeks. The coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead, and in particular of the bodies of the dead, the future glories of Israel : these are the ideas by which Hebrew writers are dominated. The notion of places of bliss and torment, awaiting the soul at its exit from life, though it appears in later Jewish literature, appears in a subordinate place.

And that this notion is exotic is indicated by the fact that, so far as it is clothed in physical imagery, the imagery can be traced not to earlier sacred books of the race, but to the literature of the Greeks, and in particular to that part of it which was dominated by the ideas and the doctrines of Orphism."

This is to my mind convincing enough, knowing as I do how much the ancient Jewish philosophy is tinged with mysticism and surcharged with Kabbalistic teaching. Evidence of this abounds in plenty in the Talmud, one example from which must suffice. It is recorded there, and recited by Jews on Seder nights, that "the righteous, with crowns on their heads, shall sit on the right hand of the Almighty and shall derive ineffable delight from converse with Him." This is no un- pleasing reward for well-doing, and compares not unfavourably with the followingquotation from Plato's 'Republic,' which, according to the learned professor, owes its inspiration to the philosophy of Orpheus. Plato says :

" The blessings which Musseus and his son repre- sent the gods as bestowing on the just are still more delectable than these : for they bring them to the abode of Hades and describe them as reclining on couches at a banquet of the pious with garlands on their heads."

Whether Orphism and Kabbala are con- vertible terms for the same set of esoteric doctrines which have deflected the ideals and rites of two powerful races for thousands of years in converging lines, I must leave others to determine. M. L. BRESLAR.

Percy House, South Hackney.

[Many other replies are acknowledged.]

"SwEEN" OR "SwEAN" (9 th S. iii. 69, 212). The suggestion that sween, to cause to sub- side, is the same as the O.N. svina, to subside, is not quite right. The O.N. svina is intran- sitive, and would have become swine in English.

What we want is the causal form. This would have been, in O.N., *sveina,^ answering to a Mod. E. swain, and even this is not quite exact. The vowel-sound suggests an A.-S. form, which does not appear. It is, however, sufficiently clear that swean represents the causal form corresponding to the O.N. *svma, and means " to cause to subside." There is nothing gained by trying to confuse it with sweat or sweat. The consonants n, I, and t have different functions. It is clear, at any rate, that sweat has nothing to do with swean, because the root- vowels are different. Sweat represents the causal form from the root- verb swelan, to burn (root- vowel <?) ; whilst nvean represents the causal form of O.N.
 * svina (root-vowel I or ei). That is, they