Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/75

Rh Now that Thor and a Gaulish thunderer have been brought together, they cannot be allowed to part company at once. The former is known to have been credited with possessing a celebrated hammer called Mjölnir, with which he performed his feats of might, and the word is probably of the same origin as the Welsh malu, 'to grind;' Latin molo, 'I grind,' molina, 'a mill;' English meal; and related words, with a certain option between r and l, occur in the Latin martulus, 'a hammer;' Old Bulgarian mlatŭ, the same, mlatiti, 'to hammer or beat.' Moreover, as the lightning was the hammer or the bolt of the thunder-god, several of the kindred vocables had that meaning, such as Old Bulgarian mlŭnij Old Prussian mealde, and Welsh 'ment,' singular ' me&#x1efb;ten,' 'a lightning.' Thor's manner of using his mighty hammer was to throw or hurl it; and a similar idea underlies the Welsh word '&#x1efb;uched,' '&#x1efb;ucheden,' a lightning, which literally means what is cast or thrown, as it comes from the same etymon as '&#x1efb;uchio,' 'to cast or throw.' Here may be mentioned three remarkable terms for thunderbolts, recorded by Dr. Pughe in his Dictionary under the word '&#x1efb;uched:' they are Ceryg y Lluched, 'the stones of the cast or the lightning;' Ceryg y Cythraul, 'the stones of the devil;' and Ceryg y Gythreulies, 'the stones of the she-devil.' Before the thunderer's weapon developed into a hammer, it must have been a stone, more nearly resembling Thor's dreaded weapon. It was hard, however, for a Roman to avoid falling into error in regard to the Gaulish thunder-divinities. Thus the wheel-god,