Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/365

Rh ing cape into the sea, as the sun, greeting the rosy cliffs, sinks beneath the waters.

In Cædmon and the epic of Beowulf the word baldor, bealdor, is found in the sense of prince or chief, as mägða bealdor, virginum princeps. Hence the name Baldr or Baldur might be referred to the Gothic balðs, our bold, and stress might be laid on the origin of the name of Baldur's wife Nanna from a verb nenna, to dare. But Grimm remarks that the Anglo-Saxon genealogies speak of the son of Odin not as Baldur but as Bäldäg, Beldeg, a form which would lead us to look for an Old High German Paltac. Although this is not found, we have Paltar. Either then Bäldäg and Bealdor are only forms of the same word, as Regintac and Reginari, Sigitac and Sighar, or they are compounds in which bal must be separated from dag; and thus the word might be connected with the Sclavonic Bjelbog, Belbog, the white shining god, the bringer of the day, the benignant Phoibos. Such an inference seems to be strengthened by the fact that the Anglo-Saxon theogony gives him a son Brond, who is also the torch or light of day. Baldur, however, was also known as Phol, a fact which Grimm establishes with abundant evidence of local names ; and thus the identity of Baldr and Bjelbog seems forced upon us. Forseti, or Fosite, is reckoned among the Æsir as a son of Baldur and Nanna, a name which Grimm compares with the Old High German forasizo, prseses, princeps. The being by whom Baldur is slain is Hödr, a blind god of enormous strength, whose name may be traced in the forms Hadupracht, Hadufians, &c., to the Chatumerus of Tacitus, and may possibly be akin to the Greek Hades. He is simply the power of darkness triumphing over the lord of light; and hence there were, as we might expect,