Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/120

104 ownership:' we have the same root probably in the English word mete, 'to measure;' and one may go further and point out that the stem mediot, of the Irish comdiu, comdeth, is probably to be found bodily in the Anglo-Saxon metod, which applied only to God, and in its Norse equivalent 'mjötuᵭr,' as when in the Volospá mention is made of 'a glorious judge beneath the earth,' supposed to be Heimdal. These facts suggest that the word Comedovae was applied to a class of Matrae or Dominae, who, in their capacity of guardians of the weak against the strong, were supposed to discharge to some extent the functions of a judge or dispenser of justice by avenging his crimes on the wrong-doer; but it would probably be a mistake to suppose them to have partaken to any great extent of the character of the Greek Erinnyes.

As to these last, however, it may be gathered from later indications that vulgar imagination peopled all Celtic lands at the early time we are speaking of, with an indefinite number of hurtful and malevolent spirits, goblins and ogresses of all kinds, whose cult of terror seldom probably attained to the dignity of monumental record. But a characteristic exception occurs in this country in the case of an inscription found at Benwell, near Newcastle on Tyne: its brevity is remarkable, as the whole consists of the two words Lamiis Tribus, 'To the Witches Three' The devotee, who did not wish his name known, may have been a soldier from the Continent; but the three Lamiae were doubtless as British as the Three Witches in Shakspear's Macbeth.