Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/414

 410 Rudwin amongst the Ingaevonic tribes, who lived about the mouth of the river Elbe and who beyond doubt are the progenitors of the so-called Anglo-Saxon race. This vehiculum of Nerthus, who, as will be shown forthwith, probably is identical with the goddess Tacitus found worshipped by the Suevi in a ship- procession, was a ship-cart, a terrae navis, as was the ship of Isis, which travelled on land and water, 47 and also the skidbladnir, the ship of Freyr, which sailed in the air and on the water. The theory that the vehiculum of Nerthus was a ship-cart finds further support in the fact that the procession set out from her sacred grove in an island of the ocean. 48 The procession of Nerthus is doubtless identical with the posession of Freyr, 49 whose life-size statue was drawn about the country in a ship- waggon when the winter was at an end. 50 In this procession the god was attended by a beautiful girl called his wife, Freya, 51 while in the Nerthus procession recorded by Tacitus, the god- dess, present in her ship, 52 probably was accompanied by her husband in the form of an image. There is no doubt that Nerthus is the same as Freya, the Teutonic wood-goddess. 53 As Freya she is the female counterpart of Freyr, as Nerthus, of Freyr's northern double, Njordr. Nerthus-Freya, moreover, is identical with Wanne Thekla, who also comes and goes in her ship. 54 She may perhaps also be the same as Nehellenia. 55 In popular legend and lore Freya is known in Lower Germany as Holda (Hulda), Frau Holl (Holle), and in the Upper German regions, in Swabia, in Alsace, in Switzerland, in Bavaria, and in Austria as Hertha, Bertha or Perchta. 56 The Germanic Freya 47 Cf. Simrock, op. tit., pp. 369sg.; Sepp, op. tit., p. 55. 48 Cf. Rademacher, "Carnival," (Hastings') Encyd. of Rel. & Elk. iii. 226a. 49 Cf. K. Miillenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde iv. 468*0. 80 Cf. Grimm, op. tit., i. 107. 61 Cf. Frazer, op. tit., ii. 143. 62 Cf. J. Bing, "Gotterwagen," Manus. Zeitschrift f. Vorgeschichte vi. (1914) 281. 63 Cf. K. Mullenhoff, loc. tit.; Frazer, op. tit., ii. 144nl; S. Reinach, op. tit., p. xxxi. 61. 64 Cf. J. W. Wolf, op. tit., p. xii. 30. M Cf. Chambers, op. tit., i. 108*?. 66 Cf. Grimm, op. tit., i. 272. 67 Freya has also been identified with Venus. Freitag (more correctly Freytag or Freyatag) is equivalent to Vendredi (Veneris dies). We also have the Venusberg in Germanic mythology; cf. Reinach, op. tit., xxxi. 53.